Do Not Envy the Rich

James’s Warning Against Envying the Rich

I want to invite you to take out your Bible and turn to James chapter 5. And tonight we're going to be looking specifically at verses 1 through 6. The title of tonight's lesson is Do Not Envy the Rich.

Do not envy the rich. Throughout the pages of the Bible, particularly in the New Testament, there are several warnings which are placed at the feet of the wealthy. Many cultures see wealth and prosperity as the hallmark of blessing.

And yet the Bible says that such things can and often are a curse. In fact, think about in your experiences people who have come into great wealth very quickly and often fallen into difficulty as a result of that.

Not knowing how to handle it. Not knowing how to handle the immediate wealth. Maybe it's winning the lottery or maybe it's coming into some type of an inheritance. Think of these young sports stars who go and they earn millions of dollars in their sports careers.

Or they earn millions of dollars in their movie careers. It's sad. You can actually watch. You can see young movie stars start out and they look so young and innocent and wholesome. And then they receive all this money and all this attention and all this fame and all this prosperity.

And how many of them die as a result of just excess? I think of several people that I have... Growing up, I watched men like Chris Farley, who was a comedian, very funny man. When I was a teenager, I thought he was very funny.

What was his death? It was a death of excess. You know, go back in history. Think of Elvis Presley. His death, what was it? A death of excess. It was sad to know that these men died so young and so early.

And yet they were so prosperous. They had so much. On several occasions, the Bible provides for us a sober reminder about the great responsibility which comes with affluence. I want to give you just a few Bible verses.

Before we get to James 5, I just want to kind of precede this with a few verses for our consideration. The first one is 1 Timothy 6 and verse 10. And you know this verse, but it's often misquoted. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils.

It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs. Now how is that verse almost always quoted? Well, almost always I hear people say money is the root of all evil.

But actually it says the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. I heard a guy arguing the other day that it shouldn't say all kinds. Because the King James Bible doesn't say all kinds. It says the love of money is the root of all evil.

He says the love of money is the root of every kind of evil. No, he says every evil is from the love of money. I said that's not true. People don't rape because they love money. They rape because they love sex.

Or they love dominance. Or they love to hurt people. That's why it should say all kinds. And that's what the word pas in the Greek means. It means all of kind. All of a kind. And there's all kinds of evil that comes from the love of money.

And the love of money can produce any and various types of evil. And that's what he says here. He says the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. It's through this craving. This desire for money that some have wanted away from the faith.

And how many... I know I don't mean to just be reminding us of sad things. But how many young ministers have we seen? That have become fascinated with the money that can be received if they just speak the right way and say the right things.

And they're willing to tickle the right ears. And they see the offerings go up. And so too do their paychecks. I tell this story all the time. But it sticks in my heart. A lady years ago told me, You, when you're preaching, need to make sure you keep your givers happy.

And I said, well thank God I don't know who they are. Because our treasurer makes it a point to not tell me who gives what. And I have learned over the years that the people I thought were the best givers didn't give much at all.

And the people that I thought weren't giving much were giving everything they had. So I don't know who the givers are. I mean over the years I've learned things about people sharing things. But I've never looked at the books, ever.

It's not my business here at the church. We separate that out for a reason. But there are men who make it their business to preach what people want to hear so that the coffers will be filled and their paychecks will increase.

And Paul says that love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. Matthew 6. This is in the Sermon on the Mount. Most of you remember this. I'm sure Jesus says, Do not lay up for yourself treasures in heaven.

I'm sorry, that was wrong. Let me back that up. Do not lay up for yourself treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. But lay up for yourself treasures in heaven.

My eye went to the wrong word there. Where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is there, your heart will be also. And of course, this is just Jesus speaking.

He says, you know, we lay up for ourselves treasures on earth. And when we lay up for ourselves treasures on earth, eventually they're going to die. They're going to go away. They're going to fade away.

The old adage is true. There are no U-Hauls on the back of hearses. You can't take it with you. Someone's going to eventually inherit everything that you have. And eventually even that will wear out.

No matter how much we do in this world, this whole world is going to burn up eventually. Luke 6, verse 13, No servant can serve two masters. He will either hate the one and love the other or will be devoted to the one and despise the other.

You cannot serve God and money. You just can't have two masters and money can't be your God and God be your God at the same time. It doesn't work. The parable of the rich fool is one that often comes to mind when the subject of prosperity arises.

This is in Luke 12. Luke 12, 16 to 21. Jesus told them a parable saying, the land of a rich man produced plentifully. And he thought to himself, what shall I do? For I have nowhere to store my crops. And he said, I will do this.

I will tear down my barns and I'll build larger ones. And there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years. Relax, eat, drink and be merry.

But God said to him, Fool, this night your soul is required of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be? So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich towards God. You know, we do all this planning for the future.

We do all this focusing on building and amassing for ourselves. Not concerning ourselves with others, but concerning ourselves only with what we have and what we can amass for ourselves. And eventually we die and it goes to somebody anyway.

Often to the government. How disappointing is that? The one passage about rich is though that most everyone remembers is Matthew 19 .24. You may not know it by title and verse, but he says this, Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.

How many of you remember that one? Of course. And that last one is actually subject to great debate. Because some have argued that there is actually a gateway in Israel called the eye of the needle. And Jesus was referring to that gateway that a camel could fit through, but he had to remove his saddle and had to get down low and go through by stooping and removing all of his baggage.

And so what Jesus was saying according to that particular view is that what Jesus is saying here is for a person to enter the kingdom if they're rich, they must humiliate or humble themselves and get down and stoop down.

The only problem is there is no such gateway in Jerusalem or in Israel that's a myth. There's no gateway called the eye of a needle that I'm aware of and it's just a myth. As far as I know. Now if you want to find it and tell me, I will gladly recant.

Yeah, I think that it's hyperbole. Do you know what hyperbole is? Hyperbole is exaggeration. It's actually in the Greek, I don't want to take too much of a detour here, but you know what a parable is, right?

Hyperbole is actually the same, the Greek. Because parable means setting something of equality beside something else. They're parallel. Jesus said the kingdom of heaven is like this and he gives a parallel.

Hyperbole is when you hyper-parallel something. I can eat a horse. Well, you might think, but somebody says I'm so hungry I can eat a horse. That's hyperbole. And I worked so hard today I nearly died.

That's hyperbole. Maybe. Right? So that's what I think Jesus was using here when he says that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, which would be impossible, but that's easier than a man who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven.

It's very hard, if not impossible, for a man of great wealth. Why? Because instead of owning his wealth, his wealth owns him, is Jesus' point. And many men have fallen and not been able to seek God because of their wealth has blinded them.

James’s Prophetic Denunciation of the Rich

Well, tonight we're continuing our study in James and we've arrived at the fifth chapter. In the first six verses, he deals with the rich. And I gave you all those verses as simply a preliminary sort of introduction to what James is going to say.

So let's read verses 1 -6 together. He says, Come now, you rich. Weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have corroded and their corrosion will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire.

You've laid up treasure in the last days. Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you. And the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts.

You've lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence. You've fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the righteous person and He does not resist you. As we begin looking now at verse 1, looking over verses 1 -6, as we look at verse 1, we need to understand that the same expression in verse 1 is used in verse 13 of the previous chapter.

Look in your Bibles and look up. Just look a little behind. So you're in verse 1 of chapter 5. Look up to verse 13 of the previous chapter. Now in the ESV, it says, come now. Do you have the other versions?

What do the other versions say? I don't have one of the worksheets. I printed them for you. Come now. Go to now. So it's pretty much the same. The Greek is agenoun. Agenoun is come now. Agenoun is now.

Age means come, of course. So the reason why I point that out is verse 13 of chapter 4 and verse 1 of chapter 5 start the exact same way. And I think that it at least indicates to us that there's a relationship between these two statements.

And on the surface, I think that relationship is pretty obvious. Both are dealing with people who are practical atheists. We talked about this last Wednesday. If you look at verse 13, come now you who say, today or tomorrow we'll go to such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit.

Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life for you're amiss that appears for a little time and then vanishes? Instead you ought to say, if the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.

As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it for him, it is sin. That whole section is dealing with a person who lives his life as if God doesn't exist.

The practical atheist. The person who says, you know what, I'm going to get up and do what I want to do and I'm not going to consider the will of God. I'm not going to consider God's prescriptive will.

I'm not going to consider God's hidden will. I'm not going to consider God at all. I'm going to do life as I want to do life and let the chips fall where they may. I'm not concerned. I'm going to make my plans according to my timetable, according to my standards, according to the way I want to do life.

I'm going to live my life as if God doesn't exist. And James says, that's arrogant and boastful and wrong. He says, come now, you who say this. And that word, come now, it's beginning what we might call a prophetic utterance.

A prophetic utterance is something that we see quite often in the Old Testament where the prophets of old would stand up and they would make a decree or a cry out from God against the sin of people and they would cry out like Isaiah or Jeremiah would cry out against the sinfulness of the people.

And that's what I want to point out in this because if you look at verse 1 of chapter 5, he says, come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. You have to understand from verse 1 to verse 6, there is no call for repentance.

It's just judgment. There is no call for repentance. It's just judgment. This is a statement of judgment against wickedness. Now, I want to quote Calvin here. I don't quote Calvin a lot even though some might suspect me to.

I don't quote Calvin a lot, but I do want to quote him this evening. This, of course, is John Calvin in case you didn't know. This is what he says. They are mistaken as I think who consider that James here exhorts the rich to repentance.

It seems to me to be a simple denunciation of God's judgment by which He meant to terrify them without giving them any hope of pardon for all that He says tends only to despair. He therefore does not address them in order to invite them to repentance, but on the contrary, He has a regard to the faithful that they, hearing of the miserable end of the rich, might not envy their fortune and also that knowing that God would be the avenger of the wrongs they suffered that they might with a calm and resigned mind bear them.

So what Calvin is basically saying is what he's doing here, what James is doing is James is saying look at the rich, look at their judgment, don't envy them. Isn't it like us to envy the rich? Remember the show Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous?

Robin Leach. And he brought you into the homes of the most opulent people and he showed you all that was possible if only you had enough money and he fancied the world with these trinkets and baubles of the uber rich.

We still have shows like that. We don't have Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, but they have a show called Cribs. I'm sure you don't watch it. MTV, Cribs, it's almost the exact same thing, but for the modern millennial generation they take them through the estates of the rich, modern rich.

We have shows like these Fixer Upper shows. My wife watches these Fixer Upper shows and I try to watch them, but when they come in they say well we have a budget of $850 ,000. I'm like I'm done. We're on a budget of a $1 .5 million budget.

I was like you know what? I'm out. Exactly. You could buy 10 houses. So I only say that because it is within our nature, within the sinful flesh to look at that which we don't have, the riches and excess of the world and envy that.

And what Calvin is saying, that James is saying, so again I'm kind of looking through Calvin's lens here. What he's saying that James is telling us is that when we look at the rich and we envy that, we're envying that which is bringing about their judgment and we shouldn't envy that.

We shouldn't want that which would simply increase judgment, but we often do. Think about what the prosperity gospel is. What is the prosperity gospel if not the exact opposite of what James is doing?

James is warning, don't envy the rich. And the prosperity gospel is saying no! Want riches. That's why you come to God. That's why you pray. That's why you give money because it's like a pyramid scheme.

If you'll give 10, God will give you 20. If you'll give 1 ,000, God will give you 10 ,000 because it's a seed. And your tithe is what you owe and your seed is what you sow. So if all you're doing is tithing, don't expect anything because there's no seed money in that.

But I've heard it all. I've heard one minister say that no one had better say anything about his Maserati. He had a brand new Maserati in the parking lot. He said, you better not say anything about it because I gave $10 ,000 in the offering plate this morning and unless you gave that same amount, you ain't got a word to say to me.

If I'm lying, I'm dying. I heard it. I know who it was. He is the aptly named Frederick K. Price. And yes, his last name is Price because God deals in irony. And this man is a false teacher ad infinitum.

He teaches falsely. And it just so happens that I heard him say those very words. I got a new car and you can't say anything about my new car because I gave $10 ,000 in the offering plate. And I thought for a second, wait a minute, you get paid out of that offering plate.

So why are you bragging about what you gave? You get paid right back out of it. But that's a whole other... And no, it's... And that's the way that oftentimes giving is seen in the prosperity system is your offering is not as unto the Lord, but as an investment in your own prosperity.

You're giving so that you see your barns increase and your calves fattened and all that. So we see, he says in verse one, come now, this is a prophetic utterance, come now you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you.

Now again, it's important at this point to note that it is possible to be affluent and righteous at the same time. I want to make sure all that we've said bad about rich tonight, it is possible for someone to be rich and be a believer.

But the rich in this view have a context because if you, and I don't want to jump too quickly, but if you jump down to verse four, he says, behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields which you kept back by fraud are crying out against you.

I want to talk more about that in a minute, but just to start with, I want to show you that when he talks about the rich here, he's specifically talking about a certain type of individual, a person who is oppressing the poor in his riches.

That's part of the context. Again, I quote Calvin. He says, He does not speak of the rich indiscriminately, but of those who being immersed in pleasures and inflated with pride thought of nothing but of the world and who, like inexhaustible gulfs, devoured everything.

For they, by their tyranny, oppressed others as it appears from this whole passage. This is an oppressive rich person. And I call your attention to Luke 16. Think about when Jesus told the story of the rich man and Lazarus.

He said, There was a rich man who fared sumptuously, and he wore fine clothes. And at his door was a poor man who begged and desired nothing but for the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table. And then he talks about their death, and the poor man goes to Abraham's side, and the rich man goes to Hades, right?

What's the scenario there? Is it that he was rich that made him evil? Because I want to tell you something. Lydia was not poor. Remember we talked about Lydia on Sunday? Lydia was not poor, but she was righteous.

The mother of John Mark was not poor. She was the one whose home they were in whenever they had the Pentecost experience and later whenever Peter got out of prison and went to the home. Her home had a gate with a courtyard.

That's not cheap, especially in the ancient world. That expresses affluence, but she was faithful. You understand? The rich, who in their riches oppressed the poor, are the worst from the scriptural perspective of those who are rich.

Rather than using their riches to bless the poor or to bless believers or to bless others, they use their riches or in their riches oppress the poor. So that's something I just want to point out when he says, come now you rich.

There is a context here. And again, I want to point out something else about that word rich. Rich is a relative term. To the vast majority of the world, you are rich. To the vast majority of the world, the poorest Americans are super rich.

We have running water. We have televisions. And even poor people often have a little bit of disposable income. They go to movies or they might buy a candy bar. Even the buying of a candy bar is a big deal to people who have nothing.

And there are people in the world who have absolutely nothing. As it's often said, one man's ceiling is another man's floor. If you think of how riches often go. And for us, you know, we have so much.

Think about the people who don't have anything like what we have. So the term rich is somewhat relative. Yeah, the Tao people, you know, they had never even encountered anyone outside of their tribe. Live a very poor existence.

How does one judge what constitutes rich in James' view? Well, the rich person in James' view is a person who trusts in his wealth. And that is usually not a person who has very little because a person who has very little doesn't trust in their wealth.

But the more a person has, the more they tend to trust in it. In fact, oftentimes, I'm going to go back to ministers and ministries. Oftentimes, ministries will start very little finances and a lot of faith.

But the more the finances raise, the more the faith decreases and they start having faith in the finances and less faith in God. And it's funny how that teeter-totter seems to work. And that's, again, a person can be middle class, not rich by American standards, rich by the world standards, certainly, but rich in the sense that they are trusting in their riches.

And as we said earlier, certainly, if they're oppressing others by their riches. And let me tell you something. You can be a small business owner and not be rich, but if you're not treating your employees right, that still would fall into this category.

We're going to talk about employees in a minute because that's what he talks about. He talks about the people that mow your fields. And I looked it up in the Greek. It's mowing the field. They did it with a sickle, but it's still mowing.

You know, they had grass. Just like we have grass and they had to deal with it, too. And they would pay people to do that. And then they wouldn't pay them timely. Or they would pay them less than they had guaranteed them.

Or they wouldn't pay them at all. What are they going to do? You know, take you to small claims court? Most of them don't have enough money to do that. This is what James is dealing with. So verse 2, he says, Your riches have rotted.

Your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have corroded. And their corrosion will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure in the last days. Now, again, I said earlier on this is a prophetic announcement.

This is where I think the prophetic announcement is really kicking off because the terms have rotted, moth-eaten, corroded, all of those seem odd because they're all in the past tense. They're all in the tense of having happened already.

He says they are this. They are that. But the reality is the rich enjoy the world's goods and they're often changing and updating their goods. So they're not being moth-eaten. They're not being corroded.

They're not rotting. But James speaks of something like it has already happened. But he's speaking of something in the future. That's a prophetic way of speaking. To speak about something that will happen as if it already has happened.

Think about the way Paul talks about our salvation. For whom he predestined, he also called. Whom he called, he also justified. Whom he justified, he also glorified. He talks about your salvation, your glorification, which hasn't happened yet in the past tense.

Those whom he justified, he glorified. Why? That's an announcement of the certainty of it. God can speak of things that haven't happened yet in the past tense because in the mind of God, there is no future in past tense.

God lives outside of time and can speak of things as if they have already happened even though they haven't because of the certainty that He has. We have no certainty. But He does. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.

He can speak with certainty. And say, they're moth-eaten. They're corroded. They're destroyed. Because in the mind of God, that's the finality of it. On the day of judgment, all of the wealth amassed by the rich will stand as testimony against them.

Your gold and your silver and all this have corroded and they will be evidence against you. They will stand as a testimony against you. And they will eat your flesh like fire. Can you imagine what hell is going to be like for somebody that had it all in this world?

I mean, I don't even want to imagine what hell is like for anybody. But can you imagine what hell is like for the person who knew they had it all? And this world was nothing but pleasure from the time they got up to the time they went to bed.

It was nothing but pleasure. You know, it's so funny. You hear, that's why I don't go around sharing the gospel by asking people, hey, do you want to make your life better? I know that's how some people evangelize.

They'll say, Jesus has a wonderful plan for your life. He'll make your life better. I don't tell people that. Because I know what the response is from the people who have a pretty decent life. Why do I need Jesus?

I have money. Why do I need Jesus? I have women. I have cars. I have houses. I don't need Jesus. You need Jesus more than anyone. Especially if you have all that because you're so satisfied in all that.

Exactly. But we don't go up to people and say, how to have your best life now. If you're looking to have your best life now, you're an idolater. Yeah, we are often... That's a trifecta though. That often leads people to their often poor decision making.

So he says, you've laid up treasure in the last days. Again, this treasure that they have laid up is the overabundance of judgment that they will receive when they realize that they've wasted their life in the pursuit of wealth.

They're going to look back at their life and realize that the treasure, the only treasure they have, and this is sort of a play on words because he says, you've laid up treasure in the last days. The only treasure they've laid up is their own judgment.

And you say, how is that a treasure? It's not a treasure in that it's good. It's a treasure in that it's plentiful. The word treasure comes from that meaning a lot of something. You know, treasury, they have laid up a treasure of judgment for themselves.

Fraudulent Wages, Oppression, and Judgment

Now this point, James, points to the specific sin that often accompanies wealth in verse 4, and that's the willingness to defraud others. He says, Behold the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud are crying out against you.

And the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. In Leviticus, if you want to make a note of this, in Leviticus 19 .13, Israel was given a very specific rule for how hired workers were to be treated.

Leviticus 19 .13 says this, You shall not oppress your neighbor or rob him. The wages of a hired worker shall not remain with you all night until the morning. Now what does that mean? Well, at this particular time in history, in an agrarian society, one that's based on farming, and that's how most of the world was up until about 200 years ago, most of it was based on an agrarian lifestyle, the workers were paid a daily wage.

The idea of a week wage or two weeks, you know, some people now get paid once a month, that's a relatively recent thing. They would receive their daily wage. The denarii was a day's wage. So the idea was if you held that back until the next day, you were robbing a man of what he needed for the day.

And so you didn't do that. You didn't hold back a day's wage until tomorrow because you were stealing from that man what he needed for today. And so it was against the rules. It was against the law of God that you not pay a man when he was due his pay.

And ultimately from that, we learn that employers are to treat their employees fairly. Now I could do a whole message on this because in our politically charged climate, we often hear about the dangers of socialism on one side, and we hear about the terrors of capitalism from the other side.

And I could, but I don't want to spend a whole evening on socialism and capitalism. But we tend in America to be capitalistic even though that seems to be shifting some. The younger generation seems to be somewhat fascinated with socialism.

The reality is this. Capitalism has done a lot in bringing about a prosperity in America. The free market and open system has done a lot. And don't think for a second that I agree with socialism because that's straight out thievery.

And the Eighth Commandment is thou shall not steal. And thus we cannot be socialists. Sorry. Straight up. It's thievery. But that's a whole other message. Capitalism though has its own issues because when employers in the pursuit of profit take advantage of their workers and do not pay them fairly and equitably, they are committing sin too.

And it happens. It does happen. Socialism is, as I said, it's potentially more dangerous because it puts all the power in the hands of the bureaucracy, the government, and that's bad. But capitalism can be bad too if the employers are not doing what they ought to do.

If they're more concerned with their profits than they are with their employees. And often they are. As long as men are sinful, no economic system will be perfect. I do think again, and I just want to say I do think capitalism is better because it has a certain amount of checks and balances that are associated with it more so than socialism.

But, no economic system is perfect as long as men are sinful. The evil rich who oppress their workers will have their workers cry out as a testimony against them on Judgment Day. That's what James tells us.

He says it will reach the ears of the Lord of hosts. Those men who needed that wage, those men who needed to feed their families, and you defrauded them, their cries will reach the ears of the Lord. That's frightening.

For any man who would ever call himself an employer. Because you are holding somebody's livelihood in your hand. In verse 5 and 6 kind of bring everything together. It says, You have lived on the earth in luxury and self-indulgence.

You've fattened your hearts in the day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the righteous person and He does not resist you. Again, what we're seeing in verses 5 and 6 may seem somewhat out of place because now He's talking about murdering righteous people and all that things.

But here's what you need to understand. It's all in context. Because in the ancient world, to rob a man of his daily wage was tantamount to murdering him. I want to quote an extra-biblical citation. This is not in the Bible.

But this was written at the time of the Bible just to give you a comparison of what was believed at the time from this same, you know, this is actually from the book of Ecclesiasticus which is an extra-biblical book.

This is what it says. To rob your neighbor of his livelihood is to kill him. And he who defrauds a worker of his wages sheds blood. So this is what was understood. If you hold back what a man needs, you're committing a form of murder.

And that's basically what James says. He says, you have condemned and murdered the righteous person. That person who came to work for you. That person who worked in your field. He mowed your field. He did what he was supposed to do.

You didn't pay him and you have essentially brought about his death. Not literally. But in figuratively. In the same way Jesus says if we hate someone we've committed murder. We have hated that man by not paying him his due.

And he does not resist you. Why does he not resist him? Maybe he can't. Maybe he doesn't have the power. A lot of people who are oppressed cannot resist those who oppress them. But God can. He doesn't resist you but there is one who will.