Wealth and Poverty at the Cross

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We'll be in James chapter 1.
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Thank you.
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Appreciate you.
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James chapter 1, verses 9 to 11.
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You'll notice if you've been part of this study, I only take a little bit at a time.
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No reason to rush, but if you are new, I want to kind of catch you up to where we are because we just started about a month ago, I guess.
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We've been looking at the epistle of James.
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This is the half-brother of Jesus Christ, and he is writing very early in church history.
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He's probably writing between the years of 45 and 50, which would have put him at the earliest of the writers of the New Testament.
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The Bible is not, the New Testament is not given to us in the order that it was written.
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It's given to us in the order of priority.
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The Gospels come first, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, followed by the book of Acts, which is the second book of Luke, because Luke wrote Luke and he wrote Acts, so you have the two parts there.
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And then you have what we call the Pauline Corpus, which is the writings of Paul.
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And then you have the general epistles, beginning with the book of Hebrews, James, 1 and 2, Peter, 1, 2, 3, John.
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The reason why they're called general rather than Pauline is obviously Paul wrote the Pauline epistles, but also Paul wrote to specific churches and specific individuals, to the church at Corinth, to the church at Thessalonica, to Timothy or to Titus.
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The writings of James and Peter and Hebrews are not written to specific individuals, but they're what we call Catholic epistles, which means they're universal.
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They're written to the whole church.
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They're not specific to one church or one region.
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And the word Catholic, by the way, oftentimes we think Roman Catholic, but that's not the case.
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In this time in history, Catholic just means universal or the entire church.
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Yes, sir? I have a thought on that question.
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What's with 2 John then? What do you mean? Because I was wondering, like, why is 2 John even in it? Well, okay, in that regard, though, but it's to the elect lady, and is the elect lady an individual or is that the church, the elect of God? So I mean, there's a question there.
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I think it can be seen one of either way.
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But I mean, in general, these are general epistles.
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We don't know who it's to, even if it was to an individual.
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Some people think that's Mary, right? Other people think it's a specific woman who had a house church, like the mother of Mark had a house church, and that's where Jesus had the last supper, right? So we don't know who it was to.
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It's not like when we talk about when Paul wrote to Titus, we know who Titus was.
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And there's some generality rather than specificity.
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So that's when I say general epistles.
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Yeah.
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Well, I believe that every book that's in here is here because God wants it to be.
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And just like in the Old Testament, you have minor prophets.
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They're minor in size, but they're not minor in their importance.
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It's just their size, right? And so we have this short parable.
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What's the whole first, second, and third John? First John is about how you may know that you have eternal life, and second and third John are about how we are to understand the concept of truth and error and who we are to accept as people who come to proclaim truth.
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What does John, second, third John, tell us about people who come proclaiming falsehood? We're not even to let them in our house, right? And so it still has a value, even though it's a short book.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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It's okay.
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No, I'm sorry.
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Was that not the question? I don't mean to...
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I don't really know how to phrase the way, the aspect from which I'm asking it.
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Okay.
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All right.
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Well, I mean, if you...
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We'll move on with James, but if you come up, you know, later on afterward, if you come up with how you want to ask it, the book of James, as I was saying earlier, is the half-brother of Jesus.
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He was the first...
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Well, he was the pastor at the Church of Jerusalem, and he is preaching to the twelve tribes in the dispersion.
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And that's referring to all the Jews who had gone out into the world, having been dispersed from Jerusalem because they were believers in Jesus Christ or followers of what was called the way.
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Early Christians were called followers of the way.
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And he says in verse two, count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds.
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And we've talked about that, what it means to count a trial as joy.
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And he says, you know, the testing of your faith produces steadfastness, let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
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If anyone lacks wisdom, and you remember we talked about that, the wisdom that's being talked about there is the wisdom to understand trials, the wisdom to understand why we're going through these things.
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And if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach.
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It will be given to him, let him ask in faith and not doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind, for that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord, he's a double-minded man, unstable in all of his ways.
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Now, verse nine through eleven is our subject for today.
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Verse nine, let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation and the rich in his humiliation, because like a flower of the grass he will pass away.
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For the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the grass, its flowers fall and its beauty perishes, so also will the rich man fade away in the midst of his pursuits.
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Let's pray.
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Father, thank you for your word, thank you for the truth of the word, thank you for the epistle of James and the importance that it gives us.
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It's like the book of Proverbs, Father, it is a book of wisdom, and I pray that we would have a desire for wisdom today.
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God, I thank you for every one of these men.
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I thank you that you brought them here, I thank you for Pastor Mark and his desire to minister to them and his allowing me to be here, Lord, by your ordination to come to preach your word.
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And today, Lord, as we talk about a subject that has destroyed many a man, Lord, the subject of the pursuit of wealth and the pursuit of the passion of satisfying and gratifying the flesh, Father, I pray that you would first and foremost keep me from error, for I am a fallible man, capable of preaching the truth, and I do not want to do that.
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So for the sake of your name, for the sake of their hearts, and for the sake of my own conscience, Lord, I pray that you would keep me from that.
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And I thank you, Lord, for again allowing me to be here, in Christ's name, amen.
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Two weeks ago, I think it was, 15.7 million people purchased a Mega Millions Lotto ticket.
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Did you all hear about that? 1.54 billion dollars was up for grabs.
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It was, well it was, it was, I know that it was a billion dollar option.
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So there were people, 15.7 million people purchased the Mega Millions Lotto ticket and this was the odds.
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It was one in 302 million chance of getting that prize.
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One, yeah, well I can afford it, right, I can go buy a ticket.
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It's a one in 302 million chance.
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It's sort of like that one movie with Jim Carrey, so you're saying there's a chance.
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No, but people lined up.
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Every time I'd go to the kangaroo to get me a Polar Pop, every time I'd go, there'd be people lined up, wanting to give their money to the lady behind the cash register and get their Powerball ticket, or whatever it is, the Mega Millions ticket.
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I feel sorry for somebody that bought the ticket as a present to somebody else and it won.
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You'd hope that a person who did that would be a little generous with their winnings.
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But, it's just amazing how much the world, how much importance the world places on wealth.
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And as I was thinking about this text, and I was thinking about you all, and I was thinking about what I wanted to say today, I just was, in my mind, just sort of going through how much time and effort and how much of our lives is wasted in the attempt to accumulate wealth.
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Some folks work decades to build it, only to store it up and not enjoy it, and then someone else gets it when they die.
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As they say, they don't put a U-Haul on the back of the hearse.
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You can't take it with you.
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Someone's going to get it, if not you.
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And what's interesting, I was explaining this to my daughter the other day.
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My daughter just got a job, and my son has had a job for a while, and I said, you know what working does, is working assigns a value to your time, and essentially assigns a value to you.
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You are worth $10 an hour, or you are worth $15 an hour, or we're going to rent you for this amount of time to do this amount of work for this amount of money.
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And so it ascribes to your life, you're going to give me this much of your life, and I'm going to give you this much in return.
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And folks spend so much time trying to figure out how they can get more for their life, and how much they can get more in their life.
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Some folks go, they don't want to work for it, so they steal it, or they gain it by some other nefarious means.
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They sell drugs, or they go and they hurt people and take it, and then they waste it, and they flaunt it, and they have no value to show in the end.
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They make it rain, as it were.
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Yeah, I know.
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They want to show what they have.
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When it comes to money, folks, dream of it, hope for it, pray for it, scheme for it, think about it.
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Some folks even send money to preachers, hoping that it will help get it.
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That's become the most horrible tragedy, I think, in modern Christendom, or the modern church, is that people who are on television, who are pastors on TV, and not all of them are bad, but most of them are, and so many of them spend their time trying to get people to send them money with what promise? What's the promise of the televangelist? If you send me money, you're planting a seed for God to give you more money.
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Yes, but wait, there's more.
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It's the sham wow of the Christian world, right? It'll do this much more.
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And so we've changed the church, we've changed the face of Christianity, because where at one time it was about seeking godliness as a means of gain, because godliness itself is gain, now we seek the gain without the godliness.
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We'll pay for it if necessary.
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And I've heard tele-preachers say, I know you've been saving your money, it's in the cookie jar over your refrigerator, if you'll go and take $100 out of that and you send it to me, God will take that seed money and he'll return it to you tenfold, and then he'll tell a story of a lady who gave him $100, and then next week she received a check for $1,000, and this is proof that God...
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Yeah, yeah, yes, thank you.
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Yeah, name them.
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I don't care, Peter Popoff is...
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Yes, sir.
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Yeah.
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Absolutely.
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Absolutely, and it's such an interesting thing about Simon, his history, because Acts 8, right, is where this is, and you have Simon, they called him the magician, he was a man who had already had somewhat of a following, because he had been among the people as a spiritualist and a leader, and he wanted what the disciples had, he heard the gospel preached, and some people think that he was a believer, but the Bible indicates that he was a false convert, and...
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Yeah, yeah, that's what we call false conversion.
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The Bible talks about this a lot.
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Jesus said a seed fell among the rocky soil, the pathway, the weeds, but the seed that fell in good soil bore fruit, right? So what's the picture there? The picture is the seed falls among false soils, or false converts, right? Jesus said, not everybody who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, right? But those who do the will of my Father will enter the kingdom of heaven, right? So we know false conversion exists, and Simon is one of them, but what I was going to get to with Simon, Simon, he was in love with the prestige that he had, he had a following already, he seized this opportunity to get more prestige, to get more of a following, and so he takes it, I'll get baptized, and he allows Philip to baptize him, Philip baptizes him, now he's a follower of Jesus, so to speak, right? Air quotes, he's a follower.
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He meets the apostles, the apostles, he sees them do many mighty works, and he says, I'll buy that from you, and Peter says, away with you, let your money perish with you, and he then departs, and this is what the book of Acts doesn't tell us, but history does, because remember, we should study history too.
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History tells us that Simon actually became a part of the group called the Gnostics, which were an early anti-Christian group that were attempting to, through what they called gnosis or knowledge, attempt to separate themselves as a specifically different type of Christian movement, and they didn't believe Jesus had a body, they believed that matter and spirit were two separate things, and that matter was inherently evil and spirit was inherently good, and if Jesus was all good, he couldn't have had a body, they had all these weird false teachings.
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In fact, if you remember, when John says, if anyone comes to you and denies that Jesus has come in the flesh, he's not of God, that's, he's talking about the Gnostics, because they would say Jesus didn't have a body of flesh.
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He's specifically referring to a false teaching that was in the early church, and Simon was among them.
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Why do you think someone like Simon would have went to that movement? Because he could have prestige, because he can teach whatever false thing he wanted, he has an opportunity here.
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There's no demand for orthodoxy in the cults.
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There's no demand for truth in cult movements, and that's what Gnosticism was, it was an early cult movement.
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It still exists today, just in different forms.
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There are a lot of cults today.
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But money becomes the idol, the desire for fame, the desire for importance, the desire to be a high person, rather than a low person.
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And money itself is one of the things that drives so many people.
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It has the power over many people, more power than they want to admit.
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The British Journal of Psychiatry estimated that between the years of 2008 and 2010, 2008 to 2010, there were between, well, right around 10,000 economic suicides.
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Do you know what an economic suicide is? I lose all my money and I kill myself.
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Right? That's called an economic suicide.
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Somebody who is very wealthy loses...
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Yeah, absolutely, people throw themselves out of their windows, right? Because they lose everything, they commit suicide.
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That's called an economic...
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Exactly, I've lost everything.
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Why between 2008 and 2010, though? There was a major recession in the United States, a lot of people didn't realize it, but the stocks were crashing, things were happening, it was under Obama's first term, there was a lot of things that were downturning in the economy, and people were committing suicides by the thousands because of money.
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Jesus even said it was harder for a rich man...
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Well, we're going to get there, you jump ahead of it, but you're right.
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No, no, no, it's okay, I'm glad we're thinking on the same thing.
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Because the point of all this is to say, money is an idol in the lives of many, and when the money goes, the hope goes.
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And when the hope goes, the sense of comfort and security goes.
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And when the sense of hope and comfort and security goes, I have nothing else to live for.
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And so they lose everything, and they're even willing to take a pill, or pull out a rope, or step off a windowsill.
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Now we come to the text, because all that was introduction, because James is going to describe two different types of people in this text.
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He's going to describe the lowly brother, and he's going to describe the rich.
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It's interesting, I like the fact that he doesn't say the poor and the rich.
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Read it again with me, beginning here at verse 9.
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He says, let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation.
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We'll get back to that in a minute to see what it means.
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But he says, let the lowly brother boast, and the rich in his humiliation.
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In a modern sense, he would say, let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation, and the rich boast in his humiliation.
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Even the word boast isn't there.
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The idea is carrying on a parallelism there.
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One is supposed to boast in his exaltation, one is supposed to boast in his humiliation, and he's comparing the two.
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The lowly brother, in absolute literal terms, the phrase lowly brother means the humble.
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And so if you think about the word lowly as being someone who is humble or of humble status, and you say, well, how do we know that that is talking about someone who is financially poor? Well, because it's compared to the rich.
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If this term was used independent of the word rich, then it could mean all kinds of different things.
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When we talk about lowly, it could be low of spirit or low of these things.
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But because it's being compared directly to the rich, and by the way, the word rich here is pretty easy.
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It means rich.
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Sometimes we get really difficult.
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Oh, the Greek word here means this, and the Hebrew means that.
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It just means rich, y'all.
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Wealthy, well-to-do.
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The opposite of poor.
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And that's what it's doing here.
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It's creating a comparison and a contrast.
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The worldly low person, what's that? I thought it meant you were blessed.
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Well, in this sense, in this, oh, yeah, well, if you ask Peter Popov, he'd say he was.
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Unless you have riches, you are not blessed.
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And that's the modern false teaching is that riches equal blessings.
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We're going to see later, as my brother already said, sometimes riches equal curses.
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As he already pointed out the passage where it says it's harder for a rich man.
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And that's absolutely right.
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And so there is a distinction in verses 8 and 9.
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The distinction is the lowly brother, if we wanted to, we could say he's the poor brother.
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In this sense, I think that's proper.
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And then the rich or the wealthy.
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And the comparison is between the two.
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And he says the lowly brother, let him boast in his exaltation, and the rich in his humiliation.
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So there's two words here.
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It says the lowly brother is exalted, and the rich brother is humbled or humiliated.
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So we have a combination.
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We have exaltation, which means to be lifted up, and that is for this man.
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We have humiliation, and that means to be brought down, and that is for this man.
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Now let me ask you a question.
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Have you ever been humiliated? Now most of us think of humiliation as something like maybe our pants fell down at an event.
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Recently there was a man and his daughter, he was dancing at his daughter's wedding, and he had lost a lot of weight, and he was excited that he had lost a lot of weight, but he had lost the weight, but the tailor hadn't fixed his pants.
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He had his suit on, and while he was dancing with his daughter, his pants fell down.
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That's humiliating.
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That's embarrassing.
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That's right.
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But that's not really humiliation in the sense of what this means.
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Humiliation means to be brought low.
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There's a passage in Philippians that says, Have this mind within you which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped, but he made himself nothing, taking on flesh.
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Right? He brought himself down.
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See, Christ is God, and he brings himself down.
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He humiliates himself.
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We call this the humiliation of Christ.
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It doesn't mean he dropped his pants at a party.
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Right? It doesn't mean he tripped or spilled a drink on himself.
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What it means is he who was God and is God, and the second person of the Trinity, became flesh.
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He took on a human nature.
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And by taking on a human nature, he takes on humiliation.
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Because it's humiliating for God to become a man.
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And yet he does that for us.
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Right? So the ultimate humiliation in Scripture is Jesus becoming a man, or the Word of God becoming flesh.
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John 1.18 The Word became flesh and tabernacled among us, or dwelt among us.
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Right? That's the ultimate humiliation ever.
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Well, that's the type of humiliation that's being talked about here.
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Somebody who is high in the world comes to the cross.
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And what's the first thing that the high and mighty must do when they come to the cross? Get on their knees.
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That's right.
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Humble themselves before the mighty power of God.
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They have to humble themselves at the cross.
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And so, this is James' point.
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He said, let the lowly boast in his exaltation.
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We're going to talk about that in a minute.
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But let the rich man boast in his humiliation.
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That he came with everything the world had.
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He came with everything the world offers.
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He came with an arm full of what the world's gifts are, and he had to throw it all down at the foot of the cross.
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And he had to humiliate himself at the foot of the cross.
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And we should boast in that.
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That's what James is saying.
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But then he says, let the low person boast in his exaltation.
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That's the opposite.
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Because when the low person comes with nothing, he's given everything.
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When the low person comes with nothing at all, when he has no place to hang his hat, no place to be sure that he has anything, when he has nothing at all, he comes to Christ and he becomes an heir of God through faith.
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And he becomes a joint heir with Jesus Christ.
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He becomes part of the family of God.
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You all know that song? I'm so glad I'm a part of the family of God.
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I've been washed in the fountain, cleansed by His blood, joint heirs with Jesus as I travel this sod.
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Because I'm part of the family, the family of God.
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That's what we get when we come to Christ.
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Even if we have nothing.
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And we have nothing.
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We have no righteousness to bring.
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We have no gift to offer.
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We have no payment that we can make.
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And so we come to the cross with nothing, and the Bible says Jesus seats us in heavenly places with Him.
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You were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you once walked.
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But God, yes.
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Does that kind of relate with the first will be last and the last will be first? Absolutely.
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Absolutely.
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All of these things dovetail together.
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In fact, I want to show you a few passages that are interesting in this vein.
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I want to just look at three very quick passages to show you that the Bible describes the lowly and the rich.
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And they're always in distinction.
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There's something interesting about the lowly and the rich in the New Testament.
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And by the way, this is different than what everybody thought.
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Because at the time of Jesus, here's what people thought.
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If you're rich, it's because God loves you and He's blessing you.
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And if you're poor, it's because God has turned His back on you and is cursing you.
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If you're healthy, it's because God loves you.
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And if you're sick, it's because God's cursed you.
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This is why when Jesus came to the blind man, what did the guy say? Was it him or his parents who sinned that he was born blind? Right? Right.
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But the idea was if you're experiencing difficulty, it's because God's cursed you.
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And if you're experiencing blessing or benefit, it's because God's blessed you.
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And isn't that the false teaching of the teachers on television today? Yeah, that is the Spirit of Calvary.
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I've confessed the billion flow, right? Because I got the billion flow.
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He's dangerous.
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That also goes along with how we blame God or the devil for what's going on with us.
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Sure.
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Either one or the other.
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Yeah.
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Sometimes things just happen.
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Yeah, and God always has a purpose for it.
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Yeah, and God has a purpose for it, even if it's difficult.
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Even if we're low.
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Jacob and Esau.
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Absolutely.
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But let me real quick, I just want to show you three quick passages, and I want us to look for the common theme.
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Look first at Luke 16.
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So turn to Luke 16.
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Probably you might know it.
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If I read it, I know you'll know it.
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It's verse 19.
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Chapter 16, verse 19.
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This is a very powerful story.
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This is interesting, and I don't want to get too far off topic, because I have a tendency to chase rabbits.
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Abraham's bosom is a whole conversation, but there's another conversation here, and it's the conversation of when it says that there was a rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen, who feasted sumptuously every day, and at his gate was laid a poor man named Lazarus.
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I want to stop there just for a second and say this.
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There are parables all throughout the New Testament.
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There is not one other story that Jesus tells that uses a proper name.
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The good Samaritan didn't have a name.
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The kings that went off and left their stewards, nobody had a name.
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The prodigal son doesn't have a name.
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This is the only story where a proper name is given, which has led many to believe, including myself.
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This is a true story.
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This is not a parable, which makes it all the more frightening to think about.
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Now, again, I can't prove it.
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I base that on the simple reality that nowhere else is a proper name given.
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And in Scripture, that's how you can differentiate what we call historic narrative from parable.
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Historic narrative gives genealogies and gives proper names to the story.
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And it says here, there was a poor man named Lazarus.
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And so that, again, makes me think this is a true story.
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Covered with sores, who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man's table.
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Moreover, even the dogs came and licked his sores.
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The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham's side.
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The rich man also died and was buried.
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And in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and he saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side.
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Now, my point today is not to talk about Abraham's bosom and the chasm that separates them and all that.
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What I want to talk about is in this narrative, faith is not mentioned.
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Do you notice that? Now, we can conjecture that the poor man had faith and the rich man did not by virtue of the fact that we know that justification is by faith alone.
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Paul tells us that in Ephesians 2 and other places.
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And because this man went to paradise, Abraham's bosom, he did not go to Hades.
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We can conjecture or extrapolate from that that he was a man of faith.
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Even though he was poor and he was hungry and he essentially didn't have any worth that the world would say was worth, he was still worth to God because he went to Abraham's side.
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He didn't get to go to Abraham's side just because he was poor.
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That's the point.
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Poorness doesn't save you any more than richness automatically damns you.
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You don't get damned for being rich and you don't get saved for being poor.
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But, I'm going to show you three texts.
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This is the first one and we'll go to the next one in a second.
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There is something to be said in all of these texts for the rich being identified with the faithless and the poor being identified with the faithful.
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Even though it doesn't say it, it's implicit in the text that the poor are the faithful.
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And you say, why? Because it is the nature of the rich to trust in their riches.
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Yeah, well I was going to say, the poor man has no riches upon which to trust and thus it is more natural for him to cast his trust upon the only one he has, which is God.
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The person who's got the millions in the bank tends to trust in his millions.
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And that's why when they go away, he kills himself because his trust was in his finances.
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His trust was in his bank account and the bank account is frozen.
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Now I've got to go.
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So, even though it's implicit, I think it's a necessary deduction that we understand that the person here that is poor is not being saved just because he's poor.
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He's being saved because he is a person of faith.
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But, we'll look again.
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I want to show you Luke chapter 12.
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So, we're just a few chapters back.
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We're in Luke 16.
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Looking back at Luke 12, we see, beginning at verse 13.
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Sorry, it's taking me a second to get there.
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Hold on.
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Luke chapter 12, verse 13.
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It says, Someone in the crowd said to him, Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.
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So, just to give you the context of what's happening.
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Jesus has been out preaching and the people begin to see him as a spiritual leader and someone who can bring arbitration for family matters.
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And this happens to me as a pastor all the time.
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I'll have people in the church come to me and say, Pastor, I'm having trouble with this person.
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Can you be the mediator between us? Can you sit in and arbitrate the situation for us? And if they're church members, I might have to.
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If they're not church members, I might choose to.
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But it's not always my place to do so.
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And that's sort of what's happening with Jesus here.
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This man, Jesus is teaching and he says, Teacher, make my brother share the inheritance with me.
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Be our family's attorney.
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Be our paracletos.
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That's what it was called.
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That's what Jesus would later call the Holy Spirit.
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Be our advocate.
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One who stands beside us and stands for us.
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Be our lawyer.
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And what does Jesus say? He says, But he said to him, Man, who made me a judge or an arbiter over you? Why would you ask me? Who am I to be your arbiter? Now, of course, Jesus could have been the judge.
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He could have been the only perfect judge in the history of judges.
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But at that moment, he said, Why would you think that's my job? I'm not here to be your family lawyer.
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I'm not here to bring mediation for you and your family.
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Verse 15, And he said to him, Take care and be on your guard against all covetousness.
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Remember what coveting is.
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It's seeing what someone else has and it's yearning that it be yours and not theirs.
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Yearning that you would have what they have or even more.
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He says, Be on guard against all covetousness for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.
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And then he told them a parable.
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And this is where the rich come in.
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It says, The land of a rich man produced plentifully.
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And he thought to himself, What shall I do? For I have nowhere to store my crops.
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And he said, I will do this.
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I'll tear down my barns and build larger ones.
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And there I will store all my grain and my goods.
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And I'll say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years.
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Relax, eat, drink, be merry.
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But God said to him, Fool, this night your soul is required of you.
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And the things you have prepared, whose will they be? So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.
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So here the rich man again is seen as what? The faithless.
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The faithless man who trusts in his riches.
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And he's seen as very greedy.
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Because he has gained so much for himself, instead of doing anything to disperse this to other people or to share it with even his family, he's decided to build bigger barns for himself.
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It's like the person who has the ten bedroom house where they live by themselves.
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Right? Is there anything wrong with that? Well, it depends on how you look at it.
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In this situation, Jesus said, or the Bible is saying, he's using this person as an example of a faithless person.
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The person who takes so much for themselves without being willing to do anything for others.
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And so this person is seen as a person who lacks faith.
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Last one, most of you again are familiar with these, but I like to bring them up because it distinguishes the rich and the poor.
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Mark chapter 10.
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And then we'll move back to James.
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Mark chapter 10, verses 17 to 27.
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This is actually one of my favorite scenarios in the life of Jesus.
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I've preached on this text several times, so I hope I don't get stuck on it.
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I'll try to make it just a brief statement about it.
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As He was setting out on His journey, this is verse 17, Mark 10, 17.
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As He was setting out on His journey, a man ran up and knelt before Him and asked Him, Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus said, Get down on your knees and repeat after me, Dear Lord, dear Lord, I have forgiven them my sins, I have forgiven them my sins.
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No, He didn't do that.
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He didn't lead them in the sinner's prayer.
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I want you to notice that.
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Because I think every evangelist in America could have got this guy saved.
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That should tell us something about our evangelistic methodology.
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How we try to get people saved by simply repeating a prayer.
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That's nowhere in the Bible.
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You know where it is though? It's in Islam.
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The repetition of a statemented prayer is how you are introduced into the faith of Islam.
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It's one of the five pillars of Islam.
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And it's the introductory method of how to get in.
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The repetition of the prayer must be repeated in Arabic.
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And a lot of people who say it don't even know what they're saying.
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But they say it for their entrance.
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And we have adopted such a horrible practice into the church by saying, If you want to be saved, repeat after me, I believe, I believe, that Jesus is...
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It's nonsense.
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And like I said, I can easily get off track, but that's because Jesus has got a guy here who's run up to Him, fallen at His feet.
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What must I do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus said to him, Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God alone.
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First of all, that's a challenge to the man's understanding of goodness.
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Because here's the thing about it, and again, these are things you have to think about.
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When the man called Jesus good, I think there's an implicit understanding that He Himself is also good.
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You say, well, that's not there.
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I think it's there in this respect.
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If you ask any man, what will they say? If I say, Are you a good person? Their response is, I'm a good person.
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In fact, the book of Proverbs tells us that almost every man will proclaim his own goodness.
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That's right.
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By what standard? And so this man comes, Jesus, good teacher! What must I do to inherit eternal life? And he thinks Jesus is going to give him some kind of law to follow or some kind of response or do this or do that.
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And Jesus' first response is, you don't even understand what good is.
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And Jesus is not denying His own goodness, but He's saying, why would you think any man is good? No one is good except God alone.
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Jesus is God in the flesh, so He is good, but He's asking.
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That man didn't know this.
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That man didn't understand Christology or the understanding of the Trinity or the doctrine of Jesus' dual nature of God and man.
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He didn't understand any of that.
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He just saw Jesus as a man.
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He said, good teacher.
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Why do you call me good? No one is good.
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And then he goes on to this.
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He said, you know the commandments.
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Do not murder.
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Do not commit adultery.
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Do not steal.
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Do not bear false witness.
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Do not defraud.
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Honor your father and mother.
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And this is where the guy really breaks bad because he said to him, Teacher, all these things I have kept from my youth.
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No, you have not.
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No, you haven't.
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You've never kept the law of God one day in your whole wretched life.
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None of us have.
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I've never had a day in my life where I love the Lord my God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength perfectly and without any issue.
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I've never had a day in my life where I love my neighbor as myself perfectly as I should.
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I've never kept the law perfectly.
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Jesus did, but I haven't.
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So when this man says, I've done all these things from my youth, Jesus gets to the heart of the matter.
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That's the next part.
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And Jesus, looking at him, loved him.
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That's an interesting thing.
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Jesus showed grace to him.
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Loved him instead.
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That's right.
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He didn't say, you liar! Which I might have done.
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And that's why I'm not Jesus.
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Because I might, huh? Yeah, alright.
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He said, you lack one thing.
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One thing.
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Go and sell all that you have and give it to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven and come follow me.
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And everybody gets upset by that.
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I've never ever, ever once heard a preacher preach this and not heard people in the audience go, ugh! That's a good pie confirming that, right? No, it's this.
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You mind if I sit here? My foot's hurting.
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No, people do this.
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They say, well, if Jesus is asking this of him, what if he asked that of me? And that's the first thought everybody has is, oh man, what would I do if I was the guy? Now, I know.
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But I've never been in a church where a pastor preached this text and I didn't hear somebody go, ugh! Because they knew it was because they were sticking them right in the belly button.
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Right in the heart.
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Right where it hurts the most.
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I saw a sermon where it was a good time where they were hitting them with the axe and knives and stuff.
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And they didn't do everything they had to do.
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This is also a good verse to show people that believe in these wealth and prosperity preachers.
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Jesus didn't ask for a knife.
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That's right.
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He said, give it to the poor.
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That's right.
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And then come and follow me.
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I just, this passage, I'm sorry to be sitting my foot starting a little bit, but this passage is so important because one thing to remember, and this is important, this is not a universal statement that every Christian has to be in poverty.
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Some people think it is.
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Some people believe in the necessity of poverty to be a good Christian.
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If that were the case, then I don't think that you could have Christian businessmen, you couldn't have Christian leaders, you couldn't have Christian politicians, which I'm not sure we do.
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But what I'm saying is if all Christians, if it were the demand of Christianity that we be all poor always, then there wouldn't be any Christian men to work for.
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Yeah, you wouldn't have anything if everybody had to live like a monk.
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There was times in church history where they believed that that was the only way you could really be a faithful Christian, right, was to be poor and to be indigent and to be desperate.
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And what happens then is the state becomes overrun by the pagans rather than the Christians.
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I believe in Christian businessmen.
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I believe there were some.
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You know, J.C.
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Penney gave so much of his wealth away.
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He was the man, the Penney stores, J.C.
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Penney, he was a man of God and he gave away so much of his wealth.
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And that's one of the signs of a godly man.
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Yes, sir.
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So in the proper context, that means God will give you what you want not what you need.
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I mean what you need.
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Not what you necessarily want.
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And some of us need to be humble.
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Some of us need that.
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But yes, sir.
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That thought process actually goes against Scripture.
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What about those who have much to give? They have much to give.
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Absolutely.
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And to whom much is given, much is required.
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And that's what I think run J.C.
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Penney's life.
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He was given much and so much was required of him and he obeyed.
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So what I'm saying is this text doesn't say every rich man's going to hell or everybody that has money.
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Absolutely.
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And so when this text says that the lowly brother going back to James now if you want to turn back to James when it says the lowly brother should exalt in his exaltation and the rich brother should exalt in his humiliation that's saying there's going to be both in the kingdom of God.
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In the time of James there were people who were poor and there were people who were rich.
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But I'm going to tell you this and I believe this to be true.
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It was harder to be rich in Christian than to be poor in Christian.
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And I go back now to what you said earlier and what we've mentioned a few times because Jesus Himself said it's harder.
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It is harder for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.
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Why? Because He does it through humiliation.
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He does it through the stepping down from His worldly power and authority and prestige.
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He's got to come down.
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Some of you may have heard this and as I say it I want to make sure that you understand if you've heard something taught a different way I'm not trying to argue but I'm going to tell you why.
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Some people say the camel in the eye of a needle was not Jesus...
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that wasn't literal.
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That was Jesus talking about a place in Israel where there was a hole in the wall where camels would have to get down on their knees to crawl through and that's what the picture is.
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It's a picture of a rich person getting down on his knees coming to Christ.
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That story, though it's a good story, there is no historical foundation for that.
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I think somebody made it up.
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There was no hole in the wall of Israel that was called the eye of the needle.
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That's not true.
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There's no reason why any man with a camel would put him through a short hole when there were many other gates that he could walk through.
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There's nothing about the story that makes sense.
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I don't believe it's true.
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I believe what we have in that statement, and by the way, the statement is Matthew 19.24 I tell you it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich person into the kingdom of heaven.
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I think that what that is is what's called hyperbole.
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Hyperbole means an extreme example.
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When Jesus said, if you see your brother has a speck in his eye, first remove the log from your eye.
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Well, you don't have a log in your eye, but that's a hyperbole.
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Right? That's hyperbole.
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Yeah, cut your hand off.
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Or what was the one Jesus said? He said, straining the gnat and swallowing the camel.
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Right? That's what the Pharisees were doing when it came to doctrine.
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They were straining the gnat and swallowing the camel.
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That's all hyperbole.
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So when Jesus said it's harder for a rich man, it's harder for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, I think that's really what He meant.
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A big old camel can't go through the eye of a needle.
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It's got to be a work of God.
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It's got to be a miracle.
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Something's got to happen in that man's heart to bring him down.
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I think it starts with pride, and I think it starts with where is your trust? And when your trust is in yourself, that's pride.
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When your trust is in your money, that is a different type of pride.
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But it's all pride.
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That's right.
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You cannot worship God and mammon.
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And I'm drawing to a close.
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Let me finish up with this.
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Because this is the point of everything.
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Because He goes on to talk about the fact that the flower of the grass will pass away, the sun rises, scorching, that withers the grass, the flower falls, and its beauty perishes.
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So also will be the rich man who fades away in his pursuits.
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And the idea is this.
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Yes, if you're rich, there's a problem.
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There's a rich...
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The richness can keep you from God.
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You need to humble yourself if you're rich and go to God.
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But I want to add a thought as we close, and that's this.
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It's not just the rich who need to be humble.
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Because even though the lowly brother should exalt in his being lifted up to the cross and lifted up to Christ and lifted up to heavenly places, I have met some pretty prideful poor folks.
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Oh, yeah.
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Me too.
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That's pretty.
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Amen, right? And if you can't say amen, like Voddie Bockham says, you ought to be able to say ouch.
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If you can't say amen, say ouch.
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Because some people pride themselves in their poverty.
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And some people become very prideful.
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Look what I have been through.
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Look what I was able to see myself through.
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Look how I picked myself up by my own bootstraps.
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And what do I say to that? You ain't got no boots.
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And you ain't got no straps.
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All you got is Jesus.
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Because here's the deal.
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It's like this.
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You know what a teeter-totter is? Right? You got a person on this side and a person on this side.
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A seesaw.
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Yeah.
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Right? Person here, person here.
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Right? In James' mind, this guy's the rich and this guy's the poor.
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And when they come to the cross, they both become equal at the foot of the cross.
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The rich man comes down.
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The poor man comes up.
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And everybody's at the foot of the cross.
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But let me tell you, there's another way of looking at this seesaw.
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And this is where I'm going to end.
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This is very important.
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There's another way of looking at this seesaw.
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And I'm going to take it from the words of John the Baptist.
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When John the Baptist said, I must decrease.
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Because I am here and Jesus is here.
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And we don't need to try to equal ourselves out.
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We need to change and bring Jesus up and bring ourselves down.
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And that's whether you're poor or whether you're rich.
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Whether you have a lot or whether you have a little.
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No matter who you are, where you come from, or where you're going, this is the most important thing.
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You come down so that Jesus will come up.
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Let's pray.
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Let's pray.
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Father, thank You for Your Word.
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Thank You for the truth.
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And thank You for all that You give us in Christ.
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Thank You for humiliation.
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Because it is in our humiliation, Lord, that we look up and we see the cross.
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And the ground is level at the foot of the cross.
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And we thank You for that in Christ's name.
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Amen.