Rotting Riches and Fattened Hearts | James 5:1-6 | Faith That Works

The things of this world all have an expiration date. In this sermon on James 5:1–6, we examine the danger of putting our trust and security in silver and gold instead of in the living God. James uses the imagery of livestock being fattened for slaughter to describe the danger of living in luxury and self-indulgence while harming others.

The call on us is to realize that what James is doing through the Holy Spirit is a blessing—it is an opportunity for us to return to placing value in the things of God. We pursue the things of God, desiring to love God and neighbor in light of the mercy shown to us in the gospel.

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Thank you for joining us for this week's sermon from First Reformed Church in Edgerton, Minnesota. Each week, we dig into God's word, trusting that the Holy spirit will continue the good work of sanctification in us. At some point last year, we decided to go to a movie at the State Theater in Sioux Falls. I had seen a few movies there when I was young. In fact, I can vividly remember standing on the sidewalk on Phillips Avenue, must have been 1983, waiting to see the movie Annie. I have that vivid memory every time that I'm on Phillips Avenue down there. But I hadn't been there since they'd remodeled it and updated it. I had eyed their website for quite a while, and either there was nothing of interest that I wanted to see or it didn't work out with our schedules. Well, I actually had the thought to check their website. It so happened that a movie of interest fit into our schedule. It was the 40th anniversary of an iconic film from my childhood, The Goonies. As you likely know, that film follows the adventures of a group of kids whose parents are about to have their homes foreclosed on because of economic hardship.

Now, before this tight group of friends are displaced from their homes, they go on a quest for treasure that would solve all the economic woes of their parents. These kids make their way through many difficult traps and obstacles, and they arrive at a pirate ship that has been hidden for centuries. The movie concludes with us feeling good about the gold and other riches that they found because it lets them stay in their neighborhood and it lets them remain friends. Now, I've seen the film multiple times over the course of my life, but I don't know if it was finally seeing it in a theater on a large screen, or maybe it's wisdom that comes from age. But on this viewing of the movie, I was particularly struck by the scene where the characters find the pirate's gold. They're on the ship, and there they are, and there's a table covered with treasure, and sitting around that table are skeletons. These kids had nearly lost their lives multiple times because these pirates had set these traps to protect this treasure. And these fictitious pirates stranded their ship in a cave and locked themselves in to protect that vast treasure that they had acquired.

All of that effort for wealth and riches beyond our imagination. And as the quest of the film comes to its culmination, here are these pirate skeletons sitting around a table. Now, in my younger years, I was so focused on the resolution of the primary plot about this crisis of these kids having to move and no longer be friends, that I never They thought about the dead pirates on the ship. They risked life and limb to get jewels and gold. But then they went to elaborate lengths to protect it and just sit around a table. And eventually, some teenage kids find it a few hundred years later, so now their houses won't be torn down to make way for a golf course. Now, the movie is meant to be fun. It has a fun plot, and it holds a lot of nostalgia for me, and I'm sure for a lot of you as well. But that story beneath the plot is a harrowing lesson for us. Because we store up treasures in this life. But in the end, it's all corroded. It all goes away. We started seeing this idea last week when we were at the end of James 4, because there James told us, Our lives are but a mist.

They're a vapor. But now James is moving on beyond our lives. He's making sure that this stuff that we chase in this life is any better off. All of it is temporary. As we make our way into the fifth chapter of James, we arrive after traversing four chapters of Practical and convicting admonitions and observations. Here now, at the start of this chapter, you might breathe a bit of a sigh of relief with the way it starts out because you think that after all of these things that James has brought up that cuts to our hearts, finally, we look here and we can think, maybe James isn't talking to us. He's talking directly to the rich. As we sit here, we think, Well, I'm not rich. Finally, I'm off the hook here in James. Well, I'm sorry if I'm the first one to tell you this, but you're rich. I'm not talking about in a spirit or in abstract sense here either. I'm talking about in every sense. You live better than most kings did in the first century. You have better conditions and their protections than they could have ever imagined. Even fast forwarding to our present time, you've got it really good.

If you've ever been in a poor neighborhood in a third-world country, you know what I'm talking about. There are a lot of people in the world right now who live in houses that are smaller than your bathroom, and they pretty much eat nothing but bread, and they think they've got it pretty good. We can't come to these verses here and think that we're off the hook. We can't think that we're outside the scope of the intended audience here. We are right in the crosshairs once again in this chapter of James, and they are not words that are easy for us to hear either. They're just as hard as any of the other admonitions we've seen in James so far. He He tells the rich that they are to weep and to howl for the miseries that are coming upon them. Now, James doesn't soften this at all. It's been more than 25 years since I read the book, How to Win Friends and Influence People. But I do know for a fact that none of the language in how to win friends and influence people sounded anything like this. James is not saying this to us to make friends with us or to make us feel good, right?

But that isn't the point of the book of James at all. He's not trying to make us feel good about ourselves. He is calling us to repentance. He wants the people who are reading this to turn from their sin, to abandon the futile way of life. He has told his audience here that their Our lives are but a midst. But our human nature is such that we will still seek after the things of the world. Even if we come to grips with our mortality, we will still go after the desire theirs of the flesh because we are so easily pulled away from the pursuit of the eternal by the temporary distractions of this life. All the objects of this life, turn out to be shiny objects that will avert our attention more than anything else, more than the things that are eternal, more than the things of God. As we slide into verse 2 here, we see James using a different type of imagery than what we had in chapter 4. Our lives are a mist in chapter 4, something that fades away quickly and is completely gone. As he points out the futility of riches here, he says that they degrade slowly.

He says that the garments are rotted and moth-eating. The things that we so often value seem to be stable. We look at them and we think that they're going to last a while. But then something happens, even if slow, they start to fade. We've all lost something that we value to time. We know that rot doesn't happen quickly. You see the first evidence is of rot, and you ignore it, but then it continues, and eventually you know that this thing that you value is going to fade away. You're going to lose what you value. You. It's like an infection that spreads. James isn't just talking about the stuff they have rotting or being eaten by maws. He is primarily concerned with the way this obsession with riches corrodes the soul. That's his biggest concern. We know this because he speaks of the corrosion of silver and gold here. Now, everyone knows that gold and silver don't rust and they don't corrode. They were fully aware of this in the first century. So this statement hits hard When you realize that gold and silver actually don't corrode. What James is doing is James is saying that these things have corroded, but it's you that is experiencing the corrosion.

Gold doesn't have rust on it. Your heart does because of your obsession with gold and silver. The gold looks perfectly fine. So what's are corroded. The hearts of the ones who have put their trust and security in silver and gold instead of their trust in the living God. The corrosion, as I said, is of the not of the precious metals themselves. Really, that cuts deep. I'd rather my stuff be described like this than my heart. I'm not wild about something that I own, corroding, but that language applying to me, I am definitely not a fan of that idea at all. His language here, that it will eat your flesh It's like fire. It's strong language. It should wake us up to the reality of what obsessing over possessions can do to us. We know the truth of this. We know it. So many of the stories that are told to us in literature use imagery like this. A great example of this is Golem from the Lord of the Rings. Now, Maybe you've never read the books, but I'm sure lots of you have probably seen the films. In that story, Smeagle wasn't just an ordinary hobbit until he came into contact with the One Ring, and it came his obsession.

It was not only the desire of his heart, it physically altered him into looking like a completely different creature. In those stories, he had possession mission of the ring. But the point that Tolkien was ultimately making was that Golem didn't own the ring. The ring owned him. The ring literally rotted his flesh away. It made his skin pale, and it destroyed his mind. That same idea is what James is getting at here. While Golem is just a story told by a gifted author, you know the underlying truth of what Tolkien crafted in his writing. We know the truth of what James has said here in verse three. Obsessions over possessions that fade is not only a bad idea because it doesn't ultimately fulfill you, it will also do so much more than that. The pursuit of the temporary things of this world can completely alter who you are, and it can even destroy you. James makes sure the point is clear on all this by informing them that they are laying up treasure in the last days. There will be a day that will be the end of history, and there will be no more value in the silver and gold and other possessions of this life.

That day is coming. Gold and silver don't rust, but they are of no value to you in the new heaven and the new Earth. Honestly, it's easy to justify the accumulation of wealth, isn't it? We're building for the future. We're building for our family. We're trying to be good stewards of the gifts God gives us, and we justify it with thoughts that the more we have, the more we can give to God for the advancement of his kingdom. Noble goals. There's nothing inherently wrong with those thoughts or with those goals. There's nothing inherently wrong with having wealth. It's about what we value and how we desire those things. This last part of verse 4 reminds us that there is a terminal date for the things of the Earth, and so we need to be deliberate to have an eternal perspective about wealth and possessions. Our call is to live with a perspective that looks to the Kingdom of God and not to the Kingdoms of this world. The things of this world all have an expiration date, every last one of them. We don't know when that is, but we do know that prosperity and wealth do not last forever.

This is where we need to stop, and we need to ask ourselves the hard questions. Where do our treasures lie? What are we living for? Or let's go even deeper. Day to day, moment to moment, where is our focus? Is it on that which rots and corrodes or on that which has eternal value? Have the things of this world corroded your heart and changed you? The words of James here are convicting, and they cause us to ask important questions of ourselves. The call on us is to realize that what James is doing for us here through the Holy spirit is a blessing. It's an opportunity for us to return to placing value in the things of God instead of the things of the world. Because we have heard the word of the gospel, and because we have been called to repentance in faith, we know where we turn when we realize the corrosion that is happening within us. We turn to the one who has made us clean and the one who has guaranteed that we can have an eternal perspective. We must not despair of our condition, but instead return to the Lord our God, for he is gracious and merciful.

He is slow to anger. He is abounding in steadfast love. That is where we go. It is vital that we do this because the problem with this corrosion that happens within us is that rarely affects only us. While I've drawn out what focusing on possessions and the things of the world does to us, As we come to verse 4, we find that our internal desires affect those around us as well. The desires of our hearts and focusing on our own gain will inevitably cause us to take from others. Here, James uses the example of those who mow their fields and harvest for them. What James has been saying, seem to be painting with a pretty broad brush. But now it seems like there is something very specific in mind for him. He starts to paint a picture for us with a brush that has a much finer tip. He's going to give us a specific example. And whoever James is addressing, they brought in people to work in their fields, and then they held back their wages from them. And he speaks of wages that were being held back by fraud. Now, this is a It's a clear violation of the law of God, because in the law, wages were not only to be paid, they were to be paid in a timely manner.

James says that they have lived on Earth in luxury and in self-indulgence. They aren't cheating these laborers out of their wages because profit margins are slim and they can't feed their own families. What's happening is they're profiting off of others to benefit themselves. And in doing so, James says that they have fattened their hearts in the day of slaughter. This is really amazing imagery that he's using here because we all know about preparing an animal for slaughter, right? You feed them to fatten them up, to get them to the proper weight. It is something that we're very aware of. But the animal is really none the wiser. They go to the trough multiple times a day. They eat without having any knowledge at all that they're just a few weeks from being the right age and the right weight, and their future is bacon. These who are oppressing the laborers are like livestock, in James' description, except they're filling the trough themselves. They're thinking that the truck will never come to take them to slaughter, that they do not have a destination at the stock yards. This is really humbling imagery. James continues to show us the scope of this sin as the passage we read this morning, closes up.

Their selfish and reckless use of the power they hold over others is causing dramatic harm. The idea here is that because of their positions of power, The ones that they harm have no recourse. They can't take them to court and get recourse for what is due to them. And in doing so, James says that they have murdered the righteous person. Now, like earlier in the Book of James, it's unlikely that this is these people committing premeditated killing. The point that James is making is that in their sin, they are harming others, and maybe it's even leading to death. The ones that they're harming have done no wrong. They don't resist the oppressor, but they are harmed despite their innocence in this situation. It's likely that much of what James describes here is going to apply to us specifically, and we can see the wrong in it. But we also have systems in place in our time to avoid these types of evils to take place. I don't want to focus too much on that. What I want to focus on then as we close up is more related to the full picture of what James is saying here in these verses.

In James, his focus is to call us to be doers of the word and not just hearers. If we are doers of the word, we will ultimately love God and our neighbor in light of the mercy that God has shown to us in the Lord Jesus Christ. We will desire to value the things of God. We will desire to put sin to death. What we have seen over the past two weeks in James is the futility of valuing possessions because all of it is just temporary. It's all a mist. It's a vapor. It's a beep. Our natural, sinful inclination is to see the temporary things of this world as ultimate. We see the now, and all that matters for us is what is in front of our faces. But here James, we're given an important and sober reminder for us that what's in front of our faces is not ultimate. The material riches that we pursue will rot, and they will fatten our hearts. It makes no sense to pillage treasures and then hide them on a ship in a cavern for someone else to discover long after we've departed from this life. So the question I want to challenge us with this morning as we wrap up is that if we understand this truth, why do we so tightly cling to that which we cannot keep?

Why do we do this? We live like the pirates on that ship that think that security is found in what we can possess and lock away. The truth of the gospel is that our security is not found in the temporary or the things that we can pursue and possess. The only security we have is in what God has freely given to us. The Lord Jesus Christ denied riches and earthly power to suffer and die, to give us a gift that cannot be taken away from us. And We see this in 2 Corinthians 8: 9, For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich. For your sake, Christ became poor. That through his poverty, you might have the riches of the Kingdom of Heaven. The blessing of salvation is far greater than anything that we might gather to ourselves in this life. And in light of this truth, what do we do? How do we live out these truths? We pursue the things of God. Desire to love God and neighbor in light of the mercy that has been shown to you in the gospel.

Ask yourself, am I pursuing that which moths can eat? Or am I going After that which can be destroyed? Or am I pursuing that which never fails, that which can never be destroyed? Am I pursuing riches that will build me up in faith or riches that will corrode my heart? Am I filled with the nourishment of God's word? Or am I fattening my heart with the desires of the flesh? May God grant us the grace to be honest with ourselves, to answer those questions boldly and truthfully to ourselves. And in that grace, Christ. May he help us to see our lives in light of eternity instead of clutching desperately to the fading treasures of this life. While our life is a vapor, It's also a gift. So may we live looking to eternity and bringing glory to Christ with that gift of life he has given us, that he may be glorified in the lives of us, his people. Amen. Let us pray. Great and merciful God, we are so blessed to have the gift of your word to give us this proper perspective on the things that we so we easily desire. We pray, oh God, that you would help us to be nourished by your word, to be built up and seek the things of the Kingdom of God instead of the Kingdom of Man.

Grant that we would seek you that we would seek your righteousness, knowing that you have blessed us in Christ. May we look to the cross, knowing that Christ left the glory of heaven to suffer and die, that we might have the riches of your kingdom. And may we be satisfied with that great truth. It's in the name of Jesus we pray. Amen. Thank you for joining us for this week's sermon. For more information about First Reformed Church, head to our Facebook page or website, edgertonfrc.org.

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