The Trials of the Poor and Rich

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Ascension Presbyterian Church - Longwood, Florida Rev. Christopher Brenyo "The Trials of the Poor and Rich" James 1:9-11 September 3rd, 2023 www.ascensionpresbyterian.com

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I'm going to ask you to remain standing for the reading of the Word from the book of James, in chapter 1.
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We're going to begin reading today in verse 9, and I'll read to the end of the chapter. And I want to remind you that this is
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God's holy and infallible Word. James 1 -9.
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Let the lowly brother glory in his exaltation. But the rich in his humiliation, because as a flower of the field he will pass away.
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For no sooner has the sun risen with a burning heat than it withers the grass.
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Its flower falls, and its beautiful appearance perishes. So the rich man also will fade away in his pursuits.
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Blessed is the man who endures temptation, for when he has been approved he will receive the crown of life which the
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Lord has promised to those who love him. Let no one say when he is tempted,
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I am tempted by God. For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he himself tempt anyone.
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But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed.
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Then when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin. And sin, when it is full grown, brings forth death.
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Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above and comes down from the
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Father of lights. With whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.
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Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we might be a first fruits of his creatures.
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So then, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath.
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For the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God. Therefore, lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word which is able to save your souls.
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But be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror.
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For he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was.
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But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does.
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If anyone among you thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this one's religion is useless.
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Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this, to visit orphans and widows in their trouble and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.
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The Lord be pleased with our study here in the book of James. Please pray with me.
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Lord, help us to see that in Christ we are one, we are one body, and we are not respecters of persons.
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Help us to not show favoritism to the rich, to the more like -minded, to those we have a natural affinity for.
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But help us to love your people, to see our own circumstances and estate rightly, and give thanks and boast in all these things.
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We ask this in Jesus' name, amen. Please be seated. Today, the title of the message is
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The Trials of the Poor and Rich. And we're gonna be concerned with verses 9 through 11.
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The trials of the poor and the rich. How do we apply biblical wisdom to our economic status?
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How do we think and live as Christians who are to prize our union with Christ and we seek growing up to full maturity as one of the ultimate ends of our lives?
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How are we to view our economic situation? First, as a point of outline,
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I have two of them. It's derived right there from the text. The lowly brother's exaltation.
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The first point we'll consider is the lowly brother's exaltation. Second, we will consider the rich man's humiliation.
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The lowly brother's exaltation and the rich man's humiliation.
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In the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6, another connection seems to be drawn by James to that portion.
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Jesus says in 619 and following, do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal.
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But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.
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For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
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This paragraph is not a deviation from what we've already been discussing in chapter one, and in fact, this seems to be a case study of applying wisdom to the issues of life.
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In midst of God's covenantal promise to Abraham, in the latter part of Genesis 15, one, it says, do not be afraid,
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Abram. I am your shield, your exceedingly great reward.
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James has convinced us, and the backdrop of James 1 seems to be that we, the people of God, prize union with Christ above all things.
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And not only that, a compulsion of the Christian life is that we would grow up to full maturity, so riches or poverty aren't the chief circumstances of life that we are concerned about.
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We are concerned more with our union with Christ and more about growing up into full maturity.
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God tells us here in Genesis 15, and it's littered, of course, throughout scripture, that he is the greatest treasure.
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If he's not the greatest treasure, we are in trouble in many ways. God has to be the greatest treasure of our lives.
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We cannot prize other things more than we prize our relationship with the
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Lord. Christ, his gospel, his salvation, are the pearl of great price.
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And in a manner of speaking, we should sell all that we have and buy that field.
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Nothing is more precious and more treasured than being in union with Christ, to have his salvation.
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I hope that is the burning compulsion of your life. I hope that's the testimony of your life, that your greatest treasure is the treasures of heaven.
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That your greatest treasure is your relationship with the Father, the Son, and the
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Holy Spirit. I want you to notice something in the text. There's something here, it's a biblical paradox.
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And it seems to be an important scriptural device that the Holy Spirit, through human authors, uses.
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That causes us to peer a bit more deeply into the truth that is being set forth.
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A paradox is a tenet or proposition contrary to received opinion, or seemingly absurd, yet it's true.
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Look at me and see if you can follow along with this. Children, pay attention here. How can the lowly, humble brother be exalted?
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It's a paradox. The rich man is exalted, how is he humiliated in the same breath?
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This is a paradox that's used in scripture. And it causes us to look with greater concern and carefulness to try to understand what it means.
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There's a few others, of course, the scripture is full of these. In Matthew 10, Jesus said, he who finds his life will lose it.
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How can you find your life and then lose it? And he who loses his life for my sake will find it.
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It's a paradox. Matthew chapter 20, the last will be first and the first last.
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The last cannot be first, we might say, rationally. The first cannot be last if it's first.
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There's a paradox. Paul in 2nd Corinthians chapter 6 says, as unknown yet well known.
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As dying and behold we live, as chastened and yet not killed.
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As sorrowful yet always rejoicing, as poor yet making many rich.
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As having nothing and yet possessing all things.
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Again, Paul in 2nd Corinthians 12, it's very tied to this theme in James 1.
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I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches.
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In needs, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake.
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Parenthetically, I should say, he's counting it all joy. As Lawson quoted this morning, for when
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I am weak, then I am strong. Christ, Paul is taking part in the sufferings of Christ.
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He has a share in those trials and therefore he takes pleasure in infirmities.
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That's paradoxical. He doesn't mind being reproached.
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He doesn't mind being in need. He doesn't mind being persecuted or in distress because it's all for Christ's sake.
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In our text today, James gives a paradoxical statement.
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He says the lowly, poor, humble Christian has a cause for boasting and rejoicing.
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The world looks down upon the poor, but the poor in Christ are rich in faith.
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In Christ, the poor man is exalted. He possesses the true riches of Christ.
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And like Paul, it seems the trials that come upon the poor man in faith reveal the genuineness of his belief and trust in Christ.
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That's how the lowly brother can glory and boast in his exaltation.
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He has no money in his pocket, but he's a joint heir with Christ. He possesses all things in him.
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So if you are a poor person, and I should point out to you that no one living here, no one in this room is poor, say, well,
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I feel like I'm poor. You're some of the richest people who have ever lived. Right now, we are all in the upper echelon of all the income earners.
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You students in Bible college, you possess and own more things than the vast majority of the people in the entire world.
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There's another element to this paradox. The rich man, exalted in the eyes of the world, and we all would like to have a bit more money.
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We would all like to pursue a bit more. And Rockefeller, who was richer than all of the billionaires today, combined by percentage.
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If you were to take his wealth and compare it, he says, how much do you want? And he said, just a little more.
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We all can relate to that. The rich man, exalted in the eyes of the world in Christ, can boast in his humiliation.
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Well, what's the humiliation of the rich man? He's going to experience trials that his wealth is unable to fix, to cure, to beliorate.
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The Christian of either humble or wealthiest state is dependent upon Christ.
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And so in our text today, there is a unifying theme. The lowly brother and the rich brother, there is a leveling of the playing field for them because trials are going to come on both of those men.
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And they must be dependent upon Christ. They must be ones who do not doubt.
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They must ask him for wisdom, and they cannot be double -minded, or they'll be unstable in all their ways.
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The Lord's Supper, which is the greatest expression of our union with Christ, it's prominent in our liturgy.
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Rightfully so, I believe, was also an occasion for misunderstanding economic things and the status of people within the church.
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I'm going to ask you to turn to 1 Corinthians 11. These are very familiar verses to us.
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The church at Corinth is here reproved by the Apostle Paul for their errant practices at the table.
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Worldly syncretism had taken root. A caste system of some kind was established among them.
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Look at verse 17 and following, 1 Corinthians 11. Now in giving these instructions,
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I do not praise you since you come together not for the better, but for the worse.
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First of all, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you, and in part,
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I believe it. For there must also be factions among you.
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That those who are approved may be recognized among you. Now I want to point out this to you because Corinth is a church with many problems.
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No one's ever, Paul never says that you're having problems at the church at Corinth, you should leave.
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Isn't that interesting? You can say, you should leave and go find, you should move to Philippi. He doesn't say that. But when they come to the
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Lord's Supper, this greatest of all symbols and this great thing we partake in to show our union with Christ in one another, there's divisions and there's factions and there are those who are approved and seeking honor and all of these terrible things.
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They're losing sight, they're coming to the supper and not celebrating the supper.
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Verse 20, it says, therefore when you come together in one place, it is not to eat the
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Lord's Supper. For in eating, each one takes his own supper ahead of others.
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And one is hungry and another is drunk. What? Do you not have houses to eat and drink in?
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Or do you despise the church of God and shame those who have nothing? What shall
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I say to you? Shall I praise you in this? I do not praise you. For I receive from the
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Lord that which I also deliver to you, that the Lord Jesus on the same night in which he was betrayed, took bread.
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And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, take, eat. This is my body which is broken for you.
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Do this in remembrance of me. In the same manner, he also took the cup after supper, saying this cup is the new covenant in my blood.
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This do as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.
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For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death till he comes.
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Therefore, whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the
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Lord. Contextually, it seems that the unworthy recipients are those who are part of these divisions and factions.
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Esteeming rich over poor, friends, family connections, whatever it is. They're not seeing the unity of the body of Christ.
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This is a problem in the world, and if we are to be people who have wisdom, we have to recognize there are no second class citizens in God's kingdom.
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Verse 30, for this reason, many are weak and sick among you, and many sleep.
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For if we would judge ourselves, we would not be judged. But when we are judged, we are chastened by the
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Lord that we may not be condemned with the world. Therefore, my brethren, when you come together to eat, wait for one another.
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But if anyone is hungry, let him eat at home, lest you come together for judgment.
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And the rest I will set in order when I come.
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We don't quite often use 1 Corinthians 11 as a cross reference to the book of James, but I have reasons, and you'll learn more in just a minute.
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I'll go back to the book of James. The Corinthians had lost sight of the unity of the body of Christ.
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Elsewhere, you'll remember in Galatians chapter 2, Paul had to withstand Peter to his face.
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Peter had favored the Jewish Christians over the Gentiles. But here in James, James confines all, like Paul does under sin, he confines all under trials.
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The trials all believers experience reveal our fellowship in the sufferings of Christ.
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We would do well to examine ourselves in relation to Christ and his people.
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Do we show preference for the rich? Do we show preference for those who are more like -minded to us?
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Do believers have those who have a more natural affinity with, the ones that we like a little better?
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If so, we undermine the very unity we have been incorporated into.
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So if I favor the rich, I'm disunifying the unity of the body of Christ.
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In verses 9 through 11, we have application of several of the ideas already set forth in the chapter.
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To see the world rightly and to act accordingly is wisdom. We boast in our exaltation and humiliation.
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Whether we are rich or we are poor, we count it all joy in Christ.
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We're gonna learn in just a few moments about the dangers of the wealthy and their relationship to the church.
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I want you to look back at verse 9 again. One of the things that may be a background to James chapter 1 is brethren who were formerly wealthy, who had become poor as a result of their
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Christian faith. A very big theme in Paul's writings is the taking up of the collection for the
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Judean saints. I remember that as you read through Acts and the epistles.
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People who came to Christ, I want you to imagine how isolated they were.
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The Jewish people, of course, were despised by their neighbors. And they had formed guilds and basically little trade associations among themselves.
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And they found a way to trade in goods and services. And some of the relationships that they built would be used later because the church filled with Jews and Gentiles.
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And those Gentile areas would be the place where those New Testament gospel churches would flourish.
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But now Jewish brethren coming to Christ were cut off from their means of employment and their ability to trade.
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They were not only hated by the world around them because of their ethnicity, but now they were despised by even the
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Jews. So we had some people who were rich men who became poor.
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And James tells them to glory in their exaltation. Not surprisingly, again in Matthew 6, that Sermon on the
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Mount portion, it comes up here again, I think, in our discussion.
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The double -mindedness he warns us against, we talked about last week, is found in our assessment of our own economic state.
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Matthew 6, 24, Jesus says, no one can serve two masters.
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For he will either hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other.
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You cannot serve God and mammon, which is money.
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So the double -mindedness is here, the doubting is here, the wisdom of God necessary is here, counting it all joy is all here.
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And it's interesting, in verses 9 through 11, we see that the economic state of the believer is an excellent case study of the principles that James has already set forth.
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This section is absolutely connected to the context. The believer, whether rich or poor, needs to view scarcity and prosperity in the same way.
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And how's that? Christ is the true treasure. Trials will reveal our dependency and need of him.
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Both parties can count their trials as all joy. Imagine the rich man, he has all the money in the bank, and he gets a fatal diagnosis.
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There is no medicine, there is no cure, all the gold can't buy me my health.
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He's gonna be dependent upon the Lord. Both parties can count their trials joy.
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Both need to patiently endure in order to grow up to full maturity. Both are in danger of doubting and double -mindedness.
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The rich man puts his confidence in the gold coins in his pocket, and the poor man looks to the rich man's pocket and said, if only
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I had those gold coins, everything would be okay, and so becomes double -minded. He thinks improperly about wealth.
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The poor man could be a covetous idolater and a lover of money in the same way that a rich man can.
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A rich man could be perfectly righteous in his wealth because he obeys the law of God and walks in faith in obedience.
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So the richness or the poverty are not the issue, but the heart and its orientation to Christ.
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As you know, the scripture has a lot to say about being rich and poor, and I could spend a lot of time here, but we're gonna talk about it more later in two sections in the book of James.
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So I wanna give you a couple of others, one of them another not so familiar reference to something like James 1, 9 through 11.
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In Proverbs 22, the scripture saying much about the rich and poor.
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The rich and the poor have a common bond. The Lord is the maker of them all.
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I am gonna ask you to turn another place. Turn back to 2 Samuel chapter 12.
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David's understanding of the law of God is the basis of his outrage when he is confronted by Nathan after the
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Bathsheba incident. So Nathan uses the idea of the rich and the poor to illustrate
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David's need of repentance. 2 Samuel chapter 12, this is after the
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Bathsheba incident. After he subjected Uriah to the front line of the battlefield and he dies.
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2 Samuel 12, the Lord sent Nathan to David, and he came to him and said to him, there are two men in one city.
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One rich and the other poor. The rich man had exceedingly many flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb, which he had brought up and nourished.
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And it grew up together with him and with his children. It ate of his own food and drank from his own cup and lay in his bosom and it was like a daughter to him.
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And a traveler came to the rich man who refused to take from his own flock and from his own herd to prepare one for the wayfaring man who had come to him.
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But he took the poor man's lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him.
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So the rich man is going to try to show biblical hospitality, but what he decides to do, he's got a big flock of full herd of sheep out there in the pasture, but he's going to go take the poor man's one sheep for this purpose.
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How does David respond? So David's anger was greatly aroused against that man.
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As the magistrate, as the prophet of God really, is the one who understood the law of God.
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He understood that this was wickedness for the rich man to take advantage of the poor.
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David's anger was greatly aroused against the man and he said to Nathan, as the
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Lord lives, the man who has done this thing shall surely die. And applying biblical case law to the case, he says, and he shall restore fourfold for the lamb because he did this thing and because he had no pity.
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Then Nathan said to David, you are the man.
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Thus says the Lord God of Israel, I anointed you king over Israel. I delivered you from the hand of Saul.
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I gave you your master's house and your master's wives into your keeping and gave you the house of Israel and Judah.
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And if that had been too little, I also would have given you much more. Why have you despised the commandment of the
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Lord? To do evil in his sight. You have killed Uriah the
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Hittite with the sword. You have taken his wife to be your wife and have killed him with the sword of the people of Ammon.
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Now therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house because you have despised me and have taken the wife of Uriah the
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Hittite to be your wife. Thus says the Lord, behold, I will raise up adversity against you from your own house.
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And I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of the sun.
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For you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel, before the sun.
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Verse 13, David says to Nathan, I have sinned against the
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Lord. Now, turn back to James with me. There are dozens upon dozens of verses of scripture about the relationship of wealth and poor, being impoverished, being rich.
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We're not going to talk about all of those. There's another illustration I'd like you to consider.
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I'm not gonna have you turn there, but the equality, if you will, of the rich man and the poor man in the standing before God is illustrated in a place like Leviticus 12.
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And you say, well, what's the significance of that? It's the offering that is given for the newborn.
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And in it is a provision for the poor among the people which made up the majority of them.
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I want you to listen to this and be mindful of it. The days of her purification are fulfilled.
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This is after she's given birth. She shall bring to the priest a lamb of the first year as a burnt offering.
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And a young pigeon or a turtle dove as a sin offering. This is very important.
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And if she is not able to bring a lamb, then she may bring two turtle doves or two young pigeons.
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Now, if we were to go back and read the account of Mary and Joseph presenting Jesus in the temple, we'll learn that Joseph and Mary brought the latter.
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They brought the two turtle doves, two pigeons, instead of the lamb.
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They were poor. Jesus was born into poverty and identified himself with the poor.
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And maybe one of the most powerful statements related to this is found in 2 Corinthians 8.
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It says, for you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor.
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There's another paradox, that through his poverty you might become rich.
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In 2 Corinthians 8, generally, Paul lauds the faithful giving of the churches of Macedonia to relieve the poor of Jerusalem.
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And a large number of texts speak to the issues that relate to rich and their mistreatment of the poor.
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But we're not going to get into that because there's more work to be done in these texts in James.
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However, I do want to point out to you the two internal references that will be of importance as we go on.
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Look at James chapter two. It says, my brethren, do not hold the faith of our
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Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with partiality. Introduced in chapter one and further expounded from chapter two and onward, and particularly in chapter five, verse two of chapter two.
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For if there should come into your assembly a man with gold rings and fine apparel, and there should come also a poor man in filthy clothes, and you pay attention to the one wearing the fine clothes and say to him, you sit here in a good place, and say to the poor man, you stand there, or sit here at my footstool, have you not shown partiality among yourselves?
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And become judges with evil thoughts. Listen, my beloved brethren.
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Has God not chosen the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which he promised to those who love him?
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The lowly brother can glory in his exaltation. God has chosen the poor of the world to be rich in faith.
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But you have, verse six, dishonored the poor man. Do not the rich oppress you and drag you into the courts?
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Do they not blaspheme that noble name by which you are called?
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And if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.
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You do well. But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.
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I'll turn over to chapter five really quickly. James chapter five, gonna get verse one.
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Come now you rich, weep and howl for your miseries.
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Your riches are corrupted and your garments are moth -eaten.
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Does that sound familiar? Sounds like Sermon on the Mount. Your gold and your silver are corroded, they're rusting, and their corrosion will be a witness against you and will eat your flesh like fire.
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You have heaped up treasure in the last days. Indeed, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out.
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And the cries of the reapers have reached the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth.
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You have lived on the earth in pleasure and in luxury. You have fattened your hearts as in the day of a slaughter.
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You have condemned, you have murdered the just, he does not resist you.
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The poor man, turn back to chapter one, can be rich in faith. The rich man can be destitute of faith.
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Both can experience the fullness of God's blessing through their faith and obedience.
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Their economic state is not the true measure. The lowly brother is to glory in his exaltation.
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The rich man is to glory in his humiliation. Trials fall upon every
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Christian. But there's another stronger warning at the end of verse ten.
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This warning is given to the rich and it's terrifying in a way, and particularly in light of chapter five.
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In Israel, during the spring, a great color burst occurs and explodes on the arid landscape.
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Those of you who are familiar with the out west or in Southern California, it looks very much like Israel, it's very brown.
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And after the latter rains, a burst of color, those of you who have lived somewhere other than Florida, there is an amazing transformation that happens in April, usually.
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The rains come, and the barren trees suddenly spring forth their leaves, and there's hope and optimism about, we're not gonna die in this dreadful winter.
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It's true in Israel as well. Its appearance, the leaves, the flowering reference here, it's reminiscent of Isaiah 40, we won't go there.
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It's beautiful, but this beauty is short -lived. Soon, scorching hot winds will blow from the south continuously.
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The rain is gone, and only a blowing heat remains.
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The grass withers, and the flowers wilt. It says in our text, so too, the rich man consumed with earthly wealth will see both his wealth and his life fade away.
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The rich man is building his investment portfolio. The rich man's counting his gold bars.
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Negatively speaking, the rich man doesn't think about the treasures of heaven. Pursue, James says, true riches, heavenly riches that moth and rust cannot destroy, that thieves cannot steal.
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And here, in this section, I think there's a good argument that could be made distinguishing the believing rich man and the unbelieving rich man.
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In verse eight, the Christian can be double -minded and struggle with it, but it's not fatal.
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For the unbeliever, his doubting and his double -mindedness is fatal.
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The rich man can be prone to these sins and be in the faith, but the unbelieving rich man is going to be consumed and burn up, and his beauty is going to disappear, and the rich man is going to fade away in all of his pursuits.
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Those of you here may be trusting in earthly riches.
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The government and a tyrannical future could seize all of your assets. What will you do then?
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The cash you've been hoarding and storing up, maybe in light of a future tyrannical event, maybe that cash becomes worthless.
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Maybe you buy a big piece of land and you have crops, maybe they come and seize that too, what will you put your trust in then?
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When the trials come, the wise man, the faithful man, puts all of his trust in the
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Lord. Well, I want to close with the dying words of a very rich man.
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And this has been spread around for years since it happened. And these are the words of Steve Jobs.
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Some of you have contributed to the trillion dollar market value or whatever it is of Apple.
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You're carrying his devices in your pockets right now. This is what
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Steve Jobs, a very rich man, said. I reached the pinnacle of success in the business world, understatement.
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In others' eyes, my life is an epitome of success.
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However, aside from work, I have little joy.
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In the end, wealth is only a fact of life that I am accustomed to.
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At this moment, lying on the sickbed and recalling my whole life,
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I realize that all the recognition and wealth that I took so much pride in have paled and become meaningless in the face of impending death.
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Material things lost can be found, but there is one thing that can never be found when it is lost, life.
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The rich man gains the whole world and loses his soul.
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Eternal life can be found in the Lord Jesus Christ. Imagine this, the poor man and the rich man rightly discerning their need of Christ can come to Christ and find all of their needs met.
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Heavenly treasure, the joys of heaven and faith and obedience which last forever, this is what
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James is calling us to. Well, I've got a quotation
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I'd like to read from a very good New Testament commentator,
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Mateer, and this is from his work on our section, and it's related to walking in wisdom.
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I think it'd be good for us to take heed of these words. James chose to illustrate his theme, verses two through four, by reference to poverty and wealth, the count it all joy.
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He could have equally chosen any of life's contrasts, loneliness and companionship, long married life and unexpected bereavement, hope fulfilled and hope disappointed, work and unemployment.
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These are the endlessly varied testings which make the colors and the tapestry of each life, family life and childlessness, marriage and singleness, health and illness.
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There is no end to the list to be made and the contrast to be drawn.
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Life is like that. How then are we to steer a straight path to the goal of maturity?
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How are we to see what is of stable worth and what a tinsel of disappointment and loss?
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Only by the wisdom God gives. A wisdom that makes us see
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Earth in the light of heaven and life in the light of eternal life.
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The flickering pattern of experience in the light of the steady reality of salvation.
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And that wisdom is sought from God in the place of prayer.
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We live in a paradoxical world. The crushing defeat in the eyes of the world of Christ on the cross is the greatest victory.
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That is spilled out through the whole of the new creation. The things that look so bad in our lives turn out to be something useful and good.
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We can count it all joy. A few words of application, we'll close here. There is no economic hierarchy in the kingdom and both poor and rich will face trials that cannot be rectified with money.
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That's how the trials humiliate and humble the rich man. Secondly, I'm calling you today to be content in your current estate.
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Serve Christ wherever you are. Now later we're gonna talk about there's some things that can contribute to poverty, like laziness.
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There's things that can contribute to wealth, like industriousness. That'll come up a little bit in our applications in James.
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But today, be content in your current estate. Third, very basically, the poor and the rich can be idolatrous in relation to wealth and covetous.
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There's a lot of poor people who are more covetous and idolatrous concerning wealth and rich some of the rich people.
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So you think, well, I would never have this problem cuz I'm on the lower end of the economic scale, it's not true.
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Fourth, let the lowly brother glory in his exaltation.
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In faith, he possesses true riches. Let the rich man be humiliated.
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His earthly riches can be blown by the scorching wind and be destroyed. But if he has genuine faith, he will still see the true riches.
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Of Christ. James is stuck close to his original theme, and it continues next week,
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Lord willing. Let's pray together. Lord, we are so thankful for the practical wisdom of your servant.
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We ask that you would impress and imprint these truths into our hearts.
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Lord, we pursue things as flowers that are passing away and help us to pursue true riches.
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Lord, I pray today that the lowly brother would glory in the true riches of Christ.
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And the rich would see his riches as Paul did as filthiness and dung in the light of the excellency of his grace.
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Lord, help us to be good stewards of the resources you've given us. But more so,
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Lord, help us to be good stewards of our hearts that we would rightly discern our times.