Good morning Calvary Chapel. Good morning, please.
Good morning. Hey man, an exuberant brother
over there. Hey man, God bless you, man.
Please turn in your Bibles with us to James Chapter 4 and we
actually going to, I'm sorry, James Chapter 5.
Actually, we're going to start James chapter 5 today.
We're we're, we're cutting right through it.
I just want to thank everybody for coming this morning as my
sister is already so eloquently and graciously have already
given that that welcome. We thank God that you chose to
worship with us this morning. And we also thank God for those
who are watching on Facebook and those who are behind prison
walls who have chosen to listen to us this morning.
We thank you. We thank you.
It's always so good to see you guys to come in.
I look so forward to Wednesday nights and on Sundays when I get
a chance to just fellowship with you all.
It's such a blessing. You know, I, I, I thank God that
he calls me to be a part of a family, a, a family of believers
who truly, truly love one another.
And if there's one thing I can say, if you're here for the
first time, if there's one thing I can say, when you walk into
Calvary Chapel Westmoreland, the one thing you will experience
would be genuine love. You will experience that.
And I thank God for that. I thank God for that.
So we're going to go ahead and just pray and get into the Word
this morning. OK, Father, every day that we
have an opportunity to wake up and to give you praise and
worship, it's a blessing. David said that I will bless the
Lord at all times. That means we bless you when
we're suffering. We bless you when we're
abounding. We bless you in our mountaintop
experiences, Lord, and we bless you in our valleys.
We thank you for your faithfulness.
Great is your faithfulness to us.
And Father, as usual this morning as we come, we come and
gather, not just for fellowship, not just for the worship, but we
also come for the ultimate worship, which is to sit under
Your word and have an opportunity to obey you, to walk
in your truths. We thank You, Lord, that You
have given us of Your Word, and not only do you give us Your
Word, Lord, but through the power of Your Holy Spirit You
give us understanding of Your word, Cause us to be able to
rightly divide Your word, and we can only do that through the
power of Your Holy Spirit. So this morning we asked for a
manifestation of Your Holy Spirit upon each and every one
of us. To those of us who were
listening, I pray God that you would open our hearts and our
ears. Allow the Word to be a seed that
goes in to our hearts and that it takes up root there, and
cause it to bring forth fruit in our life that the world would be
able to see. And Father, for me, your
servant, I pray God that you would speak through me, that it
would be your voice that people hear.
It would be your words, your truth.
Lord, it's not mine, it's yours. So be with us this morning,
Lord, be with us. May we feel your presence.
In Jesus name we pray. Amen.
I could come and sit over there
and you can come up and take care of this if you Amen.
Amen. What is a blessing?
It's a blessing. I I was just thinking Pastor
Clark and myself and Brother Ted, as we were sitting out in
the what we call our prayer owl back there and we're lifting up
prayers to the Lord. I was just thinking about a song
this morning that was just really heavy on my heart, and
the song is great. Is your faithfulness.
And I think there's times that I kind of take a.
For. Granted, God's faithfulness in
my life, I think there's times that I just kind of expect his
faithfulness in my life. But the truth is, is that He's
faithful even when we're not, as his word clearly says.
And every day, regardless of whether we are having things go
so easy in our life or whether we're having things go hard, we
experience God's faithfulness. The fact that we're here today
is an example of God's faithfulness, fact that we woke
up this morning, the things that He provides for us.
We all have roofs over our head and we have food on our table
and we have clothes on our back. It's an example of God's
faithfulness, especially when you find that there's others who
don't have those things. But God has blessed us and have
given us above all things, the salvation that he's given us,
which is more important than anything that we can wear,
spend, or eat is the salvation of the Lord.
And we have that. We have that.
So thank you for taking that little ride with me this
morning. So just thinking about his
faithfulness in our lives. So let's go into James chapter 5
and I'm going to read this and we're going to go back and we're
going to look at it and we'll see what the Lord has to say.
He says here in the in the first verse, he says, come now you
rich weep and howl for your miseries that are coming upon
you. Your riches are corrupted and
your garments are moth eaten. Your gold and your silver are
corroded, and their their corrosion will be a witness
against you, and will eat your flesh like fire, if 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. And the cries of the reapers
have reached the ears of the Lord of Sabeaf.
Verse 5 says you have. Lived on the earth and pleasure
and luxury. You have fattened your hearts as
in a day of slaughter. You have condemned, you have
murdered the just. He does not resist you.
What a sobering section of scripture.
What's really amazing about this is that after.
He gives us this section on we do not know.
When you look back at the end of chapter 4, he talks about we
don't know what's going to happen from one day to the next,
so we shouldn't do it presumptuously.
We should not live our lives absent from the dependence on
God and recognizing His will in our lives every day.
And then he comes down to Chapter 5.
Which is the first time in this scripture that he literally
speaks to the unbelievers. This is a message he's speaking
to the unbelievers throughout this entire.
Book So far it's been my brother and my brother and and it's been
about believers. But now he's taken a moment to
speak to the unbelievers. Now, these may be the
unbelievers who came and visited the church and he knew that
these unbelievers were abusing the poor, particularly those who
he's writing this book to, you know, the, the, the, the poor
believers, they're, they're abusing them.
And and he's going to talk about how they're abusing him.
And he takes this moment to not talk to the believers, but to
speak to these non believers. And he does it in the form of a
warning. And it's, I mean it, it, it's
almost, it almost cost chills when you think about this
warning that he's giving to these unbelievers.
I don't know if whether or not they, they, they truly heed this
warning, but this is indeed a very serious thing that he is
giving and saying to these unbelievers.
Now, one thing I do want to make clear, that the Bible doesn't
necessarily condemn being rich. It is not necessarily.
It's not condemning being rich. This is not an indictment
against people being rich, but it does warn, it warns US
against making wealth an idol in our lives.
It warns US against trusting in it or letting it corrupt our
hearts as it can so often. But instead, James, James is
urging us, and as we go through this, we're going to hear him in
many ways. Let us know that it is those
that to those who are rich, that you should have a posture of
generosity and a reliance on God.
Regardless of whether we're rich or poor, our reliance should be
on God, trusting in Him and not in anything that we have.
God has no problem with the rich in general because it's God who
made riches. He created riches, He created
wealth, and not only that, but He also gives us the power to
get wealth, but he is against trusting in those riches.
It almost goes right back to what's often been said, and
what's been said many times is that we should never, ever trust
love or or or or depend on the creation more than the Creator.
In First Timothy 6 and 17, he says command those who were rich
in this present age not to be haughty.
Don't be prideful or trust in uncertain riches.
There's nothing certain about riches.
You can have riches today, and tomorrow you don't have
anything. What's valuable today may not be
a value tomorrow. So he says don't trust in
uncertain riches. The only thing that's truly
certain is Jesus Christ, and it's only what we do for him
that will last, he says. So don't trust in uncertain
riches, but in the living God who gives us richly all things
to enjoy. So he gives, he's not a, he's
not against riches. He gives us riches.
He gives us all things to enjoy. Now I know some of you may be
thinking, when women, I ain't rich, I'm not rich.
When do I get my riches to enjoy?
And when you really think about riches, it's really relative
because if you leave the United States and going to another
country, you will see poverty on a level that you've never seen
it here in the United States. The worst poverty I've ever seen
was in Compton, CA. There's some places there that
are really, really poverty stricken, but then you go to
other places, other countries and Compton looks like Beverly
Hills compared to some of these places.
So it really is relative. It really is relative and and
quite honestly, God, you know, Jesus said, look, if you have
food and you have clothing, you really have what you need.
We're. Rich.
That's rich. So in Proverbs 11/28, he says he
who trusts in his riches will fall.
It's a it's such a snare. It's such a trap to trust in
riches. It gets you to feel like
everything's OK now because I can afford to get what I want.
But if you think about it, it's the rich who has more sorrows
than anybody, more sorrow than anybody.
If that's what they're trusting in, they have more sorrows than
anybody. But he says, but the righteous
will flourish like a foliage. Wealth with integrity allows us
to have peace. Bible says that he who walks in
integrity walks securely. Don't have to worry about the
don't have to worry about the results of walking in a way
that's not of integrity, which brings on consequences.
Don't have to worry about that when you're blessing is in with
integrity. Proverbs 10 and 22 says the
blessing of the Lord makes 1 rich and he adds no sorrow with
it. Now I also want to take a look.
I'm going to go back to the Old Testament a little bit and take
a look as we talk about these riches and Deuteronomy 8 and 18.
God says this. He says, and you shall remember
the Lord your God. This is Moses speaking.
You should remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives
you the. Power.
To get wealth that he may establish his covenant which he
swore to your father's as it is this day.
And the Bible actually gives us both Old and New Testament
examples of people who trusted in him and he has blessed with
great wealth and we look at the Old Testament.
Abraham was a man of great wealth, but he was also a man
that followed closely with good effect.
God said that he is his friend. Job.
Lord said, you know, the Bible says he was righteous above all
man in that at that particular time he had great wealth.
He also suffered more than most of them, more than probably any
of us will ever have. Hopefully it'll be more than any
of us ever have to, but yet he was a man that had great wealth.
And of course, Joseph, man of great wealth.
And there's others that we could mention as well.
Isaac, Jacob had wealth. And these are people who love
the Lord. And also in the New Testament
there are examples of those who have great wealth.
Joseph of Arimathea, by the way, who's a very tomb that Jesus was
laid in. And while I mention him, I might
as well go ahead and mention Nicodemus, because Nicodemus
also a man of great wealth and believed.
In fact, he helped Joseph of Arimathea to wrap.
Jesus for his. Burial.
Then there's Philemon who was a man of God who was also rich.
So money itself is neutral, honestly speaking and and and
and just having it is not a sin. But when we love it and pursue
it more than we love or pursue God, that's when it becomes an
issue. That's when it becomes an issue.
It corrupts the heart. And to be honest with you, there
is very few things that people who really love money, there's
very few things that they won't do to to get it.
It's just like that selfish ambition that we talked about.
This is what I want and I'll do anything I have to do to get it.
That's the love of money. So yes, it becomes a problem,
but money itself is neutral and it's not money that's the
problem, but it's the love of money that is the problem.
And unfortunately for those who have money, and Jesus made this
statement himself, that those who are rich if they're not
trusting in the Lord. And if they're not committing
what they have to the will of the Lord, it's very, very
difficult for them to get into the Kingdom of heaven.
How difficult If you look at a the eye of a pen need I'm and I
bring that up because when I was young, I mean it says in the
scripture too, but when I was young, my grandmother and when I
would spend time with her and she would put her glasses on and
try to. You guys have any thoughts of
that? Your grandmother's, you know,
try to get that thread to get through that little eye, that
needle, and then eventually, eventually, she just looks at
you and say, look, your eyes is better than mine, you know,
here, come and do this. Now it's us who are saying to
younger people, your eyes are better than mine.
But yeah, I remember my grandmother doing that.
And then Jesus is saying it's easier.
For a camel to go through the eye of that needle than it is
for a rich man to get into heaven.
And again, this is not an indictment on people being rich.
This is talking about those who are trusting in their riches,
those who have decided that they were going to be selfish with
their riches. In First Timothy 6 and 10, James
says and and a lot of people quote this and they.
For some reason, they kind of misquote it.
They'll say, look, money is the root of all evil.
You hear that a lot. Money is the root of all evil.
But that is the misquote of that scripture.
It is not money that's the root of all evil.
Actually, what it says is that the love of money, and it's not
the root, but it is a root of all evil.
There are many, many roots of evil.
Money is one of them. Money is one of them.
So as we go through this now, James looks at two things in
this section concerning the wicked unsaved who are rich.
And the first thing he looks, he looks at how they acquired their
wealth. And then he's going to take a
look at how they use their wealth.
So let's go here to verse one. And it says here, come now.
In other words, listen, take heed.
Listen to what I'm about to say. I'm about to say something that
you really need to hear. And again, remember, he's
talking to unsaved people who are wealthy and he knows that
these people have used their wealth to abuse the poor and
oppress the poor. He says, come you who you rich,
speaking directly to them. And then he says this, weep and
how for your miseries that are coming upon you now, when you
would listen to most rich people who are really trusting in their
wealth and thinking that because I'm I'm rich, I don't have to
depend on anybody but me. The last thing that they would
think that they would have to listen to is somebody say,
you're going to be miserable. How can I be miserable?
I got everything I want. Oh, miseries coming.
So this is almost written in in the in the flavor of an Old
Testament prophet who was saying judgment has been declared and
it's coming upon you. This is what you have to look
forward to. You think you have to look
forward to enjoying the rest of your riches, But that's on this
side. When you are judged, when you
when judgment hits, you got another problem.
I was listening to Phil the the guy from Duck Dynasty.
He was speaking one time and he said something and, and, and I
remember who remembers Duck Dynasty by the way.
OK, OK. I just want to make sure.
He said something very injured. He said, you know, we have 3
problems. He caught my attention.
I'm listening. He said the one problem we have
is sin. All have sinned and come sure to
the glory of God. That's the one problem we have.
The second problem we have is death, because it's appointed to
every man wants to die and then after this the judgement.
But then he said the third problem is judgement.
That's the third problem we have.
And that's why it was important for Jesus Christ to come,
because He delivered us from the sin.
He took on our sin. He became sin for us.
Jesus is the answer to that problem.
But Jesus is also the answer to the problem of the second issue,
which is death. Because Jesus says that if you
believe on me, though you be dead, yet shall you live.
And those who believe in me that are that are alive, you shall
never die. So Jesus is the answer to that,
but he's also the answer to judgment because he took on the
death of the judgment the penalty for death for us.
He handled that. That's why it's important to be
in Jesus Christ because without him those are still going to be
a problem for everyone of us who don't trust in Him.
So this is about this unbelieving non Christian rich,
rich folks who was oppressing the poor believers, some of whom
James is writing to, like these people that James are writing
to. These people are being oppressed
by the poor. This is a warning to the wicked
who trust in their riches. He said you better in
anticipation of what's coming. You can just start weeping and
howling now. Just start weeping and howling
now because judgment is coming. It's already been, it's already
been pronounced. And then in verses 2 and 3, he
says your riches are corrupted. So these are the things that
they trusted in. And here when he talks about
your riches, they're actually talking about their food, their
grain, their wheat. He says it's corrupted.
In other words, it's molded. It's as good as molded.
It's not going to do you any good.
And then he said in your garments are moth eating.
You walk around in these expensive clothes and you and
you're thinking that hey, I'm looking good and you know I'm
going to always look good like this.
But but but but James said no, they are moth eating.
Those garments will be eaten with moth.
Who remembers the mothballs? All right, I got a lot of folk
about you generation here today, mothballs with you young folks
who wondering what are they talking about years ago, you
walk in your closet and you'll be overwhelmed with the smaller
mothballs. I'm going to go to my
grandmother's house. I knew exactly when I walked
past her closet because the mothball smell would just bounce
out of there like crazy. But the reason why they use
mothballs is because, yes, garments would be eaten by moth
that would get in your closet and they will start eating like
your sweaters and things of that nature.
So the older folks used to use the moth balls and put them in
there because it was like a pest.
It worked like a pesticide and would keep the moth away.
And I'm wondering if it really worked, but they used it.
I know it worked against me because I didn't want to go in
the closet that that smell was so that smell was so powerful,
you know, and even like, you know, when when they were, you
know, my grandmother would come over to the house sometimes I
could smell it on her clothes, you know, say, wow, grandma got
that sweater out of the closet, that muff.
But that's what they believe. But James is saying won't be no
mothballs here, bro. You know the the the moth is
going to eat. Your garments that you think you
are so great and you think you're looking so majestic,
what's going to be eaten up? And then he goes on in verse
three, he says in your gold and your silver is corroded.
Wow, gold and silver corroded. And we're always told that gold
don't corrode, but he's saying it's going to be corroded.
In other words, it's going to be rendered invaluable.
You see, when you die, regardless of how much money you
have, how much gold and silver you have, it means nothing Once
you die. You don't take it with you.
I said, you know, he said you, James, I mean Paul said you
bring nothing into this world and you will carry nothing out
of it. You will carry nothing out of
it. So your gold and your silver is
corroded and their corrosion. Now this is really interesting.
He's saying in your corrosion will be a witness against you
and will eat your flesh like fire.
It's almost a picture of being in a courtroom where you as the
person that may be the defendant and you want someone to come and
testify on your behalf. So you choose the person that
you trust in the most to come and testify on your behalf.
The to, you know, hopefully give a testimony that would get you
out of trouble. So you try to bring the most
reliable person that you can think of the the one that you
trust in the most. And you put them in front of the
courtroom and you and they give their testimony.
But the testimony that they give actually is the very one that
indicts you, the one that actually renders you guilty.
So instead of testifying for you, it's testifying against
you. They're trusting in all these
gold and the silver and the clothes and all these things,
but it's going to corrode, and that corrosion is going to be
like a witness against you. And in judgement your flesh will
be eaten like fire. Just like that gold and those
precious stones were going to corrode, so will you in
judgment. James is not being gentle here.
He is really being as direct as he possibly can with this
warning. And then he goes and he looks at
the next, the next portion of that same verse, right here in
verse three, he says you heaped up treasure in the last days.
You heaped up treasure. That means you stored up
treasure. You, you didn't use your
treasure to help anybody. You didn't use it to bless
anybody. You used it.
You stored it up. Just wanted to keep it for your
own selfishness. You knew what you wanted to do
with it. You want your easement to come
as a result of what you have heaped up.
And over in over in Luke, Jesus gives a, an example of this
person who decides that they are going to heap up their treasures
and just hold on to it. They're not going to use it to
bless anybody with. They're just going to hoard it
for themselves. And it's over in Luke chapter
12. And I'm going to go there real
quick because I it speaks to this particular section of the
Scripture, Luke chapter 12. And he says this.
Let's look at verse 16. Actually, what I'm going to do,
I'm going to go back to 14 and then I'm going to read it
through to 21. He says this, he says, but he
said to him, man, who made me a judge or an arbitrator over you?
This was someone who was crying out and wanted their brothers to
divide up the inheritance, the financial inheritance that they
received. And, and Jesus said, look who
made you know, who made me an arbitrator or a judge over you?
And then in 15 he said, he said to them, take heed and beware of
covetousness. Exactly covetousness that you
know that, that, that, that strong desire for something that
somebody else has for wealth or money or whatever it is that
someone else has. He says for one's life does not
consist in the abundance of the things he possesses.
One's life doesn't consist in the things that we possess.
It does not identify us. The things that we have, whether
it's money or whether it's it's food or clothing or whatever it
is, those things don't identify us.
Your car, regardless of how nice it is, doesn't identify who you
are. Your house does not just say who
you are. My life, your life does not
consist of the things you possess because those are
uncertain riches. They don't last, they don't
last. And then in verse 16 he says
then he spoke a parable saying the ground of a certain rich man
yielded plentiful. He had a bump in his in his
harvest. He had a bump and it yielded
much and overnight this man just became rich, became wealthy.
And you thought and he thought within himself saying what shall
I do since I have no room to store my crops?
Now listen to his question to himself, what should I do
because I don't have enough room to store my crops?
Well, how about giving some away?
I know some people here who have gardens and you get crops out of
your gardens rather it's zucchini.
It might be Peppers or I know for us sometimes we get cabbage
and things of that nature that you have.
And when you have an abundance of those things, you give them
out to your neighbors, you give them to people, you bless other
people. But this, but this guy is saying
what should I do with them? And I know that that happens
because even comes happens here. People give away eggs.
I've seen people give away zucchinis.
I mean, they've brought it to church and say here who who
needs it and other produce they say who needs it, who wants it.
But that's the heart of you here in at Calvary Chapel.
You guys give. Do you have a heart to give?
You love to give. And this is what this is and
what this is what this is saying.
This guy is saying, look, what am I going to do with it?
I'll tell you what I'll do with it.
Look at what he says here. So he said, I will do this, I
will pull down my small barns and I'll build greater barns,
and there I will store all my crops in my goods, and I will
say to my soul, so you have many goods.
He said it to himself, He's pumping himself up.
So you have many goods, you have a lot, you have an abundance,
you got it laid up for for a long time.
And I will say to myself, so you have many goods laid up for many
years. Take your ease, eat, drink and
be merry. But God said to him, you fool,
this night your soul will be required of you.
This man had no idea that he would not be able to enjoy any
of those things beyond that very night, that very night.
So he may have been blessed to receive the riches, but he
didn't have control over how long he would live to enjoy him.
Only God has that, only God has that.
Then whose will those things be which you have provided?
And this is the, and this is the whole moral to this story in
verse 21. So is he who lays up treasure
for himself or stores up treasure for himself and is not
rich toward God. That's what this guy was dealing
with. You know, they, they, they had,
James said. You guys have treasured up, you
have, you have heaped up treasures, you have stored up
treasure in the last days. And when the Lord's about to
come back and you're storing up treasure instead of using that
treasure to bless other people, verse 4, indeed, the wages of
the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by
fraud. Now we're going to get into
verse 4. Now we're going to get in to
what or how they acquired the wealth, how they acquired it.
You know, what did they do with it?
You know what? You know, how did they acquire?
How did they get this? Well, how did they accumulate
all this wealth? Listen, how they did it.
It was ungodly, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields,
which you kept back by fraud. They cry out.
And also the cries of the reapers have reached the ears of
the Lord of Sabolas. Now James is saying here, you
didn't just get the money because you earned it.
You're not acknowledging what God did to give you this wealth.
You're not acknowledging the power of the Lord in your life,
the gift of Lord in your life, the blessing of the Lord in your
life. You're not acknowledging him at
all. All you're thinking about is
what you have and what you did. So he said they secured this
wealth by basically stealing because they defrauded the
people who worked for them. That's a sad thing because the
Bible constantly talks about, particularly in the Old
Testament, the Bible constantly talks about in several places,
that when someone works for you, when someone goes in the field
for you, you don't wait to pay them the wage.
Now we work and you know, we might get paid every other every
other week, maybe twice a month. We have those kind of schedules.
But back in this particular time, they didn't.
At the end of the day, they were paid their wages because they
needed them. They needed them just like
today. A lot of people, they can't go.
I mean, they're going from paycheck to paycheck.
If they miss a paycheck, if somebody they went to go pick up
their check one day and someone said I'm sorry, you're not
getting paid today, that could mean them being homeless.
That could mean them not having wheat food again until the next
payday. It could mean a lot of things,
but back in the days when they were, when they were doing,
having people come in their fields and work, these people
could not wait for a week or two weeks to get paid.
They needed their wages right then and there.
And that was the law that God gave.
Listen to what it says here in Leviticus chapter 19 verse 13,
it said you shall not cheat your neighbor nor rob him.
The wages of him who is hired shall not remain with you until
morning. And then I want to look at
Deuteronomy. Over in Deuteronomy chapter 24,
verse 14, he says you shall not oppress A hired servant who is
poor and needy, rather one of your brethren or one of the
aliens who is in your land, within your gates.
Regardless of whether it's somebody that is a Jew or
somebody that you have acquired to be a servant of you in your
house, you should not deprive them of their wages each day.
Verse 15 Each day you shall give him his wages and not let the
sun go down on it, for he is poor and has set his heart on
it. They are depending on those
wages. He can't go home and tell his
wife he didn't get no money that day.
How the kids going to eat? How are we going to keep this
place up? So then it says, you know, lest
he cry, lest he cry out against you in the Lord and it be sin to
you. So I mean, so it was a law back
then that you paid. And they knew this because he
was writing to Jews and they knew this.
So that's how. So he was basically emphasizing
how corrupt and how selfish these unbelieving wealthy people
were. So you kept them back and and
and and and and the The sad thing is this.
It was the fraud. It was the the actual wages that
they didn't pay that cried out. The wages that didn't pay cried
out. The reapers who were in the
fields doing the work, they cried out.
So how did they handle it? Did they go out and protest?
Did they loot this man's property?
Did they try to avenge themselves with it?
No, they prayed. They cried out to God, they
cried out to God. And God is going to be the
avenger. He's going to be the one to take
care of it says avenge not yourself, but give room to
wrath. Give room to godly wrath.
Let him take care of it. They didn't.
They didn't decide to go out and
and COO and loot and all these illegal things against them
because they didn't get paid. They feel like they have a right
to do it, but they didn't do it. But instead they trusted in the
Lord. They trusted in the Lord.
That's also an example of Jesus Christ in the way that he deals
with being threatened, the way that he deals with being
reviled. He said over in first Peter, he
says, you know, when he was reviled, he did not revile
again. And when he was persecuted, he
didn't threaten, but he committed himself to the one who
judges righteously. The Lord will take care of it
and that's who he trusted in. So this guy, so he, he is James
is saying basically. You know the the wages cried out
to the Lord, and so did the reapers.
Who did they cry out to? Now, when you first read through
this, it looks like it said the Lord of Sabbath, but it doesn't.
It's the Lord of Sabeath. Sabeath Sabeath means the Lord
of armies. It means the Lord of hosts.
He cried out to the one who is the captain of the host.
That means God can make an army out of anything.
This is a, this is a, this is the God of the host of heaven,
the host of heaven. Remember the plagues back in
Egypt and the host that he was in charge, that he cried out,
that he sent as an attack. He didn't send people.
What did he send? He sent frogs.
He said, you know, he said locusts.
He is the God of hosts. He's in charge of.
He is command over everything. And this is the person.
This is the one who their cries came out to.
And then this is what they did with it.
And we're coming in for clothes. You have lived on the earth in
pleasure and in luxury. You have fattened your hearts as
in a day of slaughter. Think about that.
Picture what he's saying The whole time you lived here with
all your money, not trusting in the Lord, not allowing, not not
doing the will of the Lord with it, not serving the Lord with
it. But instead, you lived in luxury
the whole time you were here on the earth, you lived in luxury.
It's almost like the the story of the rich man and Lazarus.
Lazarus and the rich man, right? You know, it was the rich man
that lived in, in, in, in luxury.
He lived in luxury all the time. The Bible said he, you know, he
fared sumptuously. He had the best of everything
every day. But meanwhile, right at his
gate, there was a poor man who was ill, and he did nothing to
help, nothing to aid this person, nothing.
And when he passed, when he died, he woke up in he woke up
in a place that wasn't the same place that Lazarus woke up in.
Lazarus woke up in the in the bosom of Abraham.
But this other person woke up in Hades tortured.
And this is what? And this is the picture that
James is drawing here. Yeah.
While you're here on Earth. Yeah.
You lived in luxury. In fact, you you even fatten
your hearts in the day of slaughter.
And that's a picture of the, that's a picture of the, the
calf, the, the, you know, the, the fatty calf, you know who
they prepared for the day of slaughter.
That's a picture of him. So they go out and they, and
they slaughter this calf. Praise and worship team can come
forward. They, they, they, they slaughter
this calf, you know, after they fatten him up, treat him good.
And you can imagine the other calf, say, how come he gets all
the extra food? You know, no.
Why is he getting all the good stuff?
Meanwhile, he doesn't realize that he's being fattened up for
a day of slaughter. And this is the picture that
he's painting with this guy, you know?
Yeah. While you're here, you're
looking like you're, you know, you're, you're you're you're
you're you're doing good. You know, everything is better
than everybody else. You have the best of everything,
luxury. But meanwhile, you're just
fattening yourself up for the day of slaughter.
When the day of judgement comes, that's what you're preparing
for. And then in verse 6, and we
close here, he says you have condemned, you have murdered the
just, and he does not resist you.
You have redeemed, you have murdered the just and he does
not resist you. There's so many loves that we
have that can cause us to want to do those things.
The love of self, the love of money, and the love lovers of
pleasure, other than the lovers of God, which we read about back
in the perilous times of Second Timothy chapter 3.
And he's saying that you know you've murdered, even to the
point when he means murder, that means that you have abused this
person so much. You've even dragged him into
court and have taken their land and taken things because you
rigged it because of your money to be able to pay for bribes and
things like that. You can bribe all the officials
and all the judges because of the money you have and your
reputation. So you drag these poor people
who have nothing into court and you take what little bit that
they have and eventually they either die of starvation, they
die of starvation, or they're executed for a crime they didn't
even commit just so. You could get.
Their land. It almost brings back the story
of of of Ahab and Jezebel and Nabeth, how they took neighbors
land because oh, Ahab just had to have his land.
Like he didn't have enough king of Israel.
But no, I want that land. So his wife being Jezebel, don't
name your kids Jezebel. It's not a good name.
Don't name your daughters Jezebel.
So Jezebel said I'll go get that land for you.
Had this guy killed so he can take his land.
It's almost in that same vein. We take advantage of somebody
because we can. So he murdered.
They murdered him and the and the biggest thing here is that
it cries out to the Lord when that happens because he does not
resist, just like Jesus did not resist.
Jesus didn't resist when he was threatened, when he was reviled,
he didn't resist. He was like a lamb led to the
slaughter, never opened his mouth.
When he was being persecuted for our sins, when he was being
judged for our sins, when he was being executed for our sins, He
never opened his mouth. He didn't resist.
And this is what James is saying.
They don't resist you. They don't come against you.
They don't put up any kind of fight against you, but instead
they cry out to the Lord. The big question here is this,
that I want to leave you with. David says that I are, that I
put always. I put the Lord before me always,
even though because he's on my right hand, I shall not be
moved. The question is, what are we
putting before us? What is our love that we're
putting before us today? Is it the love of money?
Is it the love of worldly pleasures?
Is it the love of our own personal desires?
What am I putting before us that's a head of God?
Is he on our right hand? Or is it something worldly that
we want that we're putting before us?
So as we pray and as we think on that, let that come through our
hearts so as we can prepare for communion now we, we go to the
Father. Lord, I, I thank you so much for
your word. It, it does several things as it
goes forth. It's like a fire and it
cleanses. It's like a purifying fire.
It exhorts us, it warns us, as it did with these wealthy
unbelievers. What a warning.
Because Lord, even in this time, those who woke up the next day
can come before you. Repent.
Turn from their wicked ways, Turn from their wicked ways and
walk after you. Let their hearts be transformed
to become givers instead of defrauding people, to care about
people and to truly love others and to use their wealth for good
and not for selfish reasons. They can repent, ask for
forgiveness. But Father, we thank You for
Your example of how we are to walk even if we are being
oppressed, if we are being abused, how should we respond?
You give us an example in Your word.
We cry out to You. We put it before you, Lord,
because you are the one who judge righteously.
So thank you for your example in Jesus Christ.
I pray, Father, that there's someone here and that word, the
message has touched their hearts, Lord, and we want to
come to a point of surrender where we give our lives to you,
Trust in you. I pray that today that they'll
do that, Lord. And the day in which Jesus was
betrayed, the night in which Jesus was betrayed, rather he
took the bread and after he gave thanks, he broke it.
And he said, take, eat. This is my body which is broken
for you. Eat this in remembrance of me.
Same manner he also took the cup and after supper he said this
cup is a new covenant in my blood, the blood that was shed
for the forgiveness of sins for many.
Jesus shed blood for everybody, those who are righteous, and he
shed it for those who are not righteous, because he said that
it's not His will that any should perish, but that all will
come to repentance. Thank you, Lord, for the
opportunity of repentance through your grace.
Drink this, and as often as you drink it, drink it in
remembrance of me. As often as you eat this bread
and drink this cup, we show the Lord's death till he come.
Amen. Anybody who would like to come
off to the altar for that spiritual cleansing to go before
the Lord. Authors open.