Published: March 30, 2023 | Speaker: Chuck Hartman | Series: The Epistle of James - Part 9 | Scripture: James 1:9-11, 2:1-7
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thank you for the grace that you have given us in revealing yourself to us through your creation and through your word and then by your spirit through your son
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Jesus Christ we pray that pray that the Wonder the magnitude of that Grace
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would all us daily that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us and in that you commend your love to us and then pour
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out your love through the Holy Spirit which you have made to dwell within us we pray that we might give honor give honor to you
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to you through Jesus Christ and by the holy spirit in our thoughts in our Ambitions in all that we do and ask that you would forgive us in
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those many times when we fall short by Omission or Commission we ask that you as you have promised would cleanse us from all
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unrighteousness and conform us to the image of your son Jesus Christ Jesus Christ we pray that you would guide our conversation tonight and bless us as we enter your word open your word to our understanding and
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our souls to your obedience we ask in Jesus name amen
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so tonight we shift to another theme the rich and the poor primarily the rich James has a whole lot more to say about the rich than he does the poor and what he has to say is located pretty
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much in these four passages and as you read them you you somewhat feel like you're descending into Dante's
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Inferno you start out in chapter one and there's a significant question as to whether or not the rich man in verse 10 is even is a Believer or not there's no
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reason to think that he's not in in that particular Passage particular Passage except for what James has to say
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elsewhere concerning the rich starting in Chapter 2 he rails against favoritism which we'll talk about this evening and then Lord willing next week we'll look at chapter chapters 4 and chapter
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5. by the time he gets to chapter five uh he's pretty much in full profit mode and he's denunciating
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the rich the rich and warning them against the condemnation that is imminent but even in even in chapter one where
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his tone is much Milder he does say in his metaphor the sun rises with its scorching wind and Withers the grass
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and its flower falls off and the beauty of its appearance is destroyed so too the rich man in the midst of his Pursuits will fade away and what's significant about this and
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it's often overlooked we read it and we tend to hear that it's the rich man's riches that will fade away
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that's not what he's saying it's the rich man and his riches won't help him at all so James's attitude towards
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riches and wealth cannot be
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uh he seems to be rather negative about the whole idea of wealth and and that presents and has presented for 2000 years not just James but the whole concept of wealth has presented a challenge to the church
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to Christians to Christians there's a a book by uh Simon Shama historian and in this particular book he's he's
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he's recounting the economic development of Dutch reformed Holland primarily in the in the 17th century when Holland had had thrown off the Yoke
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of the Spanish monarchy that had controlled that land for Generations for Generations and had started on a Mercantile Venture that would end up spanning the
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world Dutch East Indies company for example Royal Dutch Shell the oil company you know all flows out of this the title of the book is what I think is significant it's called the embarrassment of riches
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and it it leads me to to a hermeneutical discussion as we start this this whole discussion on wealth and
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what what should be our attitude toward wealth now now of course none of us consider ourselves wealthy
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but most of the world and the inhabitants of most of the world would consider each one of us very wealthy compared to their lives and certainly anybody transported from
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the first century except 0.1 percent of the population would consider us crisis filthy rich
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filthy rich and the hermeneutical issue that I want to discuss is the challenge of culture now we've talked about Christ and culture and how should the church
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respond to culture that's not that's not what I'm talking about when I'm talking about the fact that we live in a culture that isn't even remotely similar
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to the cultures in which the scriptures were written were written I mentioned this before just just take it in one example the word Kingdom
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who Among Us knows what that word means in day-to-day practicality I mean we say okay we're Americans we threw that off 250 years ago well even
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then the monarchy of Great Britain was nothing like the absolutism of the Roman Empire okay so even then when there were and there are monarchies today and there are
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some monarchies that are pretty close to Absolute particularly in in um in Muslim lands but not in Western not in Europe or Western the Western World and we do
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have dictators of course but they tend to come and go but this idea of Kingdom we read about it in the New Testament especially in the Gospels have you ever stopped to wonder what
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that actually means to a 21st century American Christian reading about Kingdom is it a constitutional monarchy
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does heaven have a parliament okay I mean what you know what what cultural um connection do we have so the terms
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that we read in the Bible and in many cases we have very little which is why ever since the Reformation the reformed view or the reformed
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hermeneutic of the historical grammatical method we study the scriptures according to the original languages and the grammar and the syntax of the use of the words and
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that means something but there's also in front of the hyphen there's that historical and that is we we try to study the scriptures first in their context
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which which we don't always get from scripture and so in studying scripture it is beneficial for the church that we
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also study culture and Archeology and as best we can to approximate back to the first century Mediterranean world
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to understand what what did for example the phrase the phrase Christ is Lord okay that phrase was a phrase not used it's
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used of Christ by Paul but it was used of Caesar kaizar I don't know what is s curios
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yeah Caesar is Lord well Christ is Lord then becomes a rebellious and traitorous statement
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not just uh Orthodox Doctrine you know as as we view it but in fact a radical dangerous and treacherous comment a claim that would mean instant death
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to any who were heard making it okay so the culture really does color the meaning and and the same is true with the word
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poverty or poor or poor in fact the particular word that that James uses in these sections regarding the poor the poor refer to those who are
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abject in poverty as opposed to another word that means you have to work for a living so they have a Greek word for those who have to work for a living and it means
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poor but it's in contrast to those who don't have to work for a living that's the rich then there's another word that means you're on a 24-hour verge of starvation
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so when we talk about this concept of poverty do we really know what that means now there are places in the world today that suffer chronic poverty
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that would approximate what the word meant in the first century or actually what the word meant for many Century millennia Century millennia what the word means is that there's a large segment of the population that truly lives on the edge of starvation
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we have salaries and wages and we have unemployment insurance and we have social security and Welfare we have an incredible safety net our social safety net
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that rendered us just completely insensitive to what the Biblical word poverty means poverty means poverty is is what the proverb the
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writer of proverbs agur says will drive him to steal poverty is what drove Jean Valjean to steal that loaf of bread and do 19 years
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in a hard labor camp okay and that's just the 1800s so poverty is not something that that is a distant past and and it's even present as I said in
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some countries today poverty is in the biblical sense is a life that is that is tied intimately day by day
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to the vagarities of nature the early Reigns and the latter rains it didn't mean going on vacation or not it didn't mean cutting back on Christmas
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presents this year it meant dying of starvation or emigrating and poverty in the ancient world drove
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migration not just the flocks but the people it drove urbanization as people were going to cities to try to find work so the idea of a day laborer
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is is again not ancient my forebears the Mediterranean immigrants to the United States tended to be day laborers
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and they wanted to be paid as the day go by and so they were called dagos that's where that lovely term came from
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okay huh no kidding yeah Spanish uh particularly Italians because there were more of us than the Spanish but we were day laborers and so that's why we they
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call us degos I don't know where what came from okay um I have no idea don't really want to know but so that's just to say that that's not that distant past
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but but we live you know that's you know my grandfather in 1921. so 100 years ago um but but that's that was even better
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um their livelihood even day by day was much more secure of work because of industrialization than an agrarian economy like the Middle
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East to the near East and the ancient world and so when James is writing about riches in poverty you know we know about the the one
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percent and and it has always been the case that the vast majority of wealth is held by a minuscule minority of people that's never changed and I don't think
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it ever will and what that that whole argument against the you know the Socialist argument fails to realize is that in the modern
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world our poverty level in in our country is higher than the per capita GDP of most every other country in the world out of like 147
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countries you know Walmart ranks third of the Nations or not third but up there so even our idea of poverty
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you know Lyndon Johnson declares war on poverty what what is what does he mean poverty okay not what James means for sure
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and and not what these people faced every day so when James is writing it's one of those things like Kingdom
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that you know when we talk about the rich and the poor the poor we have to first try to put ourselves back into that culture and realize that while a very small percentage of people held all the money
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or most of the money they actually really held all the money and the rest of the population was pretty much down at the bottom scraping to live day by day
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okay and that's why in chapter five when you get to the depths of The Inferno here down in the bottom layers of of hell you have the the wages of the workers
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crying out against you because if they didn't get paid they didn't eat didn't eat yeah well there was no safety net no no uh savings account
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and so the culture there when we talk about wealth in the ancient world trying to set this scene
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there are several categories of what what we know and we and we know a lot because there was a lot of writing going on from the age of the Greeks on through the Roman Empire so there's a there's a tremendous amount of
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archaeological and extra biblical data that allow historians and Scholars to to piece together what life was like social life was like and there are three
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um categories of wealth in the ancient world that James seems to allude to in three of these passages so the first
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the first one is the the big farm known as the latifundia
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it's interesting that in the especially the Roman Empire this concept of the later fundia became a prevalent characteristic of the
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economy what's interesting to me is that this is probably the reason that the Mosaic law forbids adding property to property and moving the ancient boundary markers
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because what this does is it creates large land holders
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like ranches in Texas larger than some states of the Union yes and it was a problem because the Jews weren't obeying and they were adding property to property
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and what that does so the Lata fundia it it basically just means a large farm but that that's not really how it was
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used was acquired was acquired Often by illegitimate means by predatory methods that whenever a farmer was in
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arrears somebody would come in and offer him a price for his farm and he had no choice but to accept it and along with the deal the
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farmer would be allowed to remain the farmer of that land he would become a tenant farmer tenant farmer but he was to buy his seed from the
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landlord at interest at interest and so he would be going deeper and deeper into debt and obligation to the owner of the later fundia until eventually all these small land
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holders that were now gobbled up by and sometimes they were adjacent sometimes they were spread out uh for example a patrician in Rome might have lot of fundia in North Africa or in Ikea or in
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Sicily or and I shouldn't say or and they would have these vast Estates throughout the Roman Empire and they would always be in the market for more Marcus Crassus a member of the first
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triumvirate with Caesar and Pompey gained his money by buying up burned down tenements down tenements you know and at literally fire sale
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prices but now that was an urban example of latifundia so what happens is the tenant farmers
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would grow deeper in debt in debt to the owner now the owner never showed up it's gonna be another class that arises usually within the provincials
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that are essentially the foreman okay and they're going to be the ones who run the show just like Plantation Foreman in the South and really kind of the beginning of the mafia
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in Sicily was this idea of Lara fundia absentee landlords who ran their operations through individuals who then kind of became
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kapos in that area so there's a crime element that often comes in but the most important aspect of this for most of the people is that within within a
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generation oftentimes within a few years the money that the tenant farmer received is gone he's now in debt to the owner just for
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next year's seed and he can't get out of debt because if he doesn't plan he doesn't eat doesn't eat and this gift gives rise to a form of slavery that we know as
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well serfdom the idea of Serfs the difference between a surf and a Slave is a Surface not the property
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the property of the Lord but in most countries that recognized or or in any way had legal statutes to regulate serfdom the surf belonged to
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the land the land and so he was indirectly owned by the land owner right he couldn't leave the land and he was bound to The Land by his
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economic situation economic situation and so this is where serfdom comes from this idea of Lata fundia in the ancient world but it's really the idea of any
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any time in any culture when property is added to property is added to property to property in our own culture yeah my wife's parents were Dairy
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Farmers their family had been Dairy Farmers I was very hard to find a single-family dairy farm anymore they're all owned by Archer Daniel
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Midlands you know they're all owned by some huge conglomerate throughout the West you don't have Family Farms anymore and if you do have family farms they're essentially tenant farmers
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for the corporation that owns the land so it's endemic to to human economics to to accumulate and to add and this is what was going on in the in the ancient
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world so that by James's Day by the first century first century a large percentage of the population were living in in basically surf conditions that they were tied to the
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land irretrievably and that they lived Harvest a harvest at best and we're always one bad crop from starvation or
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migration which they were not allowed to do in a lot of fundia culture so that's one aspect one aspect now in the ancient world you have
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through this acquisition of land and through the Pax Romana through the oversight of the Roman administrators and and that was what Rome was really
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known for Alexander the Great conquered more land faster than any Roman general but the Greeks had already shown since
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Troy that they couldn't organize themselves out of a paper bag you know they couldn't eat they couldn't they couldn't get along with each other they had no administrative Talent
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whatsoever and so that's why their their empire such as it was didn't survive Alexander's death Alexander's death before the four generals who who
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inherited it were fighting each other and by the time the Romans came along it was really just to dust up the The Leftovers Rome on the other hand they put together very Innovative
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administrative system in each of its provinces which gave the wealthy the wealthy the chance to get wealthier
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and when you get wealthy you want more than just what's sold locally you want the spices and the silks and and the horses and whatever that come
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from trade from trade so in any wealthy economy that is almost always first grounded in agriculture and then that agriculture if it is a
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surplus you sell it you ship it to Rome you ship it to places that don't have large arable plots of land and so you end up with a second class
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these were The Men Who said we will go here or there and spend a year and make a profit okay and so James is talking these are the men who a lot of fundia these are the
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men whose laborers are crying out for their wages their wages these are the men who would go and trade and buy and sell and make a profit and they were very powerful
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uh economic force in that ancient world they um they um they weren't as wealthy as the great landowners but they were clients of the landowners
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and the landowners kept them both busy and Rich and Rich because it was the landowners who wanted all the things that the merchants were applying the Seas to bring okay the the
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Silk Road from China and all all the um the different Minerals and Gems and spices from around the known world these were the guys who who moved it
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around this is basically how Holland got so wealthy so wealthy during the Dutch reform period of the 17th century was through its Navy its
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Merchant Marine and it's its own Industries textiles primarily dyes I guess eventually printing as well but uh so these Merchants were
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um what's the word they catered
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to the very wealthy now in doing so they also became wealthy but as I said James refers to them in chapter four
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and then there was another class not really an economic class because this was more of a this was more of an administrative class these were the officials and primarily the tax
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gatherers okay so this this class of people who were charged and and made official by the
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Roman governor Roman governor they were given patents to collect the taxes now they could collect whatever they could collect they only had to pay in
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what the tax was so it was a great deal of dishonesty here many of these people were Native they were provincials they were Jews in in
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Judea Palestine and of course they would be despised by the other provincials because they were agents of the oppressive uh Imperial Force the
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Imperial government Imperial government so Tax Collectors but an interesting feature of this and this this may be a coincidence but James uses a word in chapter two
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when he talks about someone coming in in fine clothing and gold rings gold rings gold rings it's a unique word that referred
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primarily to the equestrian class of the Roman Empire Roman Empire okay this was a a social marker kind of like in the Norse where the Mighty
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Warriors would be they'd have the gold rings on their arms and however many they had was a mark of their prowess and their renowned but here it was a wet book it was a mark of
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your wealth and your influence and so the equestrian now the equestrians
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the equestrians were an aristocratic class in Roman society from Antiquity from from Julius Caesar's period and downward below the patricians
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at the top were the families who could trace their heritage first through both parents and then that was modified later on to just through one parent one parent to the founders of Rome and they were
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the Patrician and they were they were the top they were the Senators but as the empire grew and as the legions became more larger and more
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necessary there became a greater and greater need for the the horse the horse owner
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cavalry and back then you had to own your own horse and it's and and all its trimmings or whatever they call those things and normally you had to have several horses because the the battle
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was fought after a long journey you might need several horses in that battle so those who had the money to have their own stable
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own stable that's where equestrian comes from okay and that became a class and there was actually um uh an official amount of money something like 300 000 systers
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that you had to have more property in that value to be in the equestrian class but once you were in the equestrian class that was a a badge of social
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distinction now you were allowed I don't know all the distinctions you think you were allowed to wear the toga but not the sash okay there was there were things that
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designated you as you walked down the street it would be a visible designation oh that's a patrician or he's an equestrian but it was still a very high rank
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and as as I said James seems to allude to this to this in chapter two it's almost as if he's saying a poor man and when he uses that again that word poor is not just a man
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who has to work for a living it is abject rags okay it's about as about as far a distinction because by this time in the first century there weren't a whole lot
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of patricians left but there were a lot of equestrians and in fact Roman citizenship and social distinction had been given to
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provincials by this time so that Paul's family are Roman citizens and it may have been that Paul's father was an equestrian it wasn't something that you had to be born Roman anymore but what
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he's saying is you got these two visits we assume they're visitors because they don't know where to sit you know the language seems to think these are two two visitors come in one of them dressed in rags one of them
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looks like pig pen from Charlie Brown and the other one comes in in colorful robes and gold rings okay in other words a dirt poor bum and
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an equestrian walk into a bar no uh you know you've got this fast visible you know graphic image that James puts down in chapter two
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and and it really it really highlights the economic chasm but that Chasm was not
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unique because the word that describes the poor man described probably 60 percent of the population of Palestine if not more they were that poor okay I'm reading a
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biography of Theodore Roosevelt and as a 14 year old he was taken to Europe because his family was incredibly wealthy and to the to Egypt and to Nile
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and he keeps the diary so they have this diary now and he makes a comment I won't get it right but he he's writing to his his aunt back in in the states and he says well I guess I should describe what
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the people wear here he says um oh it appears that up until the about the age of uh 10 or 12 they wear um nothing afterwards they dawned a shirt handed
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down to them from some ancient ancestor and wear it until the day they die and what is he describing he's describing abject poverty right
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and so that's and I think that's not uncommon even today and maybe not that bad anymore bad anymore but certainly
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but certainly Theodore Roosevelt okay his father was incredibly wealthy the Roosevelts had been in America for hundreds of years and had tons of money and he's traveling
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in Egypt and just the gap between this wealth and just abject poverty okay not only does he only have one shirt that shirt has
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been handed down since the time of animhotep okay animhotep okay that's what James is talking about so that leads the question
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how do we apply that I mean we don't we don't we don't experience that in the western world I mean even if you if you work in a soup kitchen you're not going to encounter
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the kind of abject poverty that that we see in in um in the biblical world but then there's another problem and this is another hermeneutical issue
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issue um so this is just to kind of describe the backdrop to what James has to say about wealth and poverty in the ancient world it's it's not a matter of relative
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it's not a matter of what car you drive or what neighborhood you're in it is a stark contrast between those who have all the money and all the power and all
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the influence who control the courts and those who have none of it okay and that's going to factor into this idea of favoritism and we'll talk about that a little bit later this
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evening but evening but moving from there we have we have um we have the issue of wealth in
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the title of that book I mentioned earlier and the embarrassment of riches not only describes 17th century Holland but it describes the the church's attitude toward wealth
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throughout most of its history we don't have nearly as much trouble with it as we used to the idea of being wealthy seemed unchristian itself
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Jesus says it's harder for a rich man to get into heaven or the kingdom than a camel to pass through the eye of an eagle kind of sets the tone okay that wealth and Faith wealth and
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faithfulness wealth and devotion seem to be inimicable seem to be opposed to each other and you'll see this in vows of
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poverty throughout the Middle Ages but that's not when they started they started earlier than that the idea that worldly wealth was itself inherently
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evil and should be shunned by any Christian and so that that's a problem that's a problem with reformed people during the reformation and afterwards but the the
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the real problem that comes out is that is that how do I put this uh I want to put it I have several quotes here but I want to put it in um
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uh in in simple terms
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this idea of biblical or maybe I should put it this way a Biblical Christian life not just Christianity
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but an idea of a of a person living a life according to scriptural principles and he's a Believer anybody I said this I think last week anybody who follows the proverbs
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the proverbs will benefit from them right I mean you don't have to be a Christian to benefit from the wisdom of proverbs basically if you like I said if you sow
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you reap if you don't sow you won't reap so um but a Christian who orients his or her life according to biblical principles will become for example
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right do his work as under the Lord and frugal
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well what will diligence and frugality lead to
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this is particularly true when you when you can put together a society of diligent and frugal people like in Holland in the 17th century okay it's going to lead to
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prosperity but Prosperity leads to Pride and apostasy
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does it always no does it often yes listen to a somewhat lengthy quote from John Wesley John Wesley famous Methodist preacher of the 18th
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century he says he says I fear wherever riches have increased the essence of religion has decreased in the same proportion
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therefore I do not see how it is possible in the nature of things for any Revival of True Religion to continue long for religion must necessarily produce
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both Indus industry and frugality and these cannot but produce riches but as riches increase so will Pride anger and the love of the world in all
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its branches its branches how then is it possible that methodism that is a religion of the heart though it flourishes now as as a Green Bay Tree should continue in this state
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for the methodists in every place grow diligent and Frugal consequently they increase in Goods hence they proportionately increase in Pride in anger in the desire of the
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flesh the desire of the eyes and the pride of life so although the form of religion Remains the spirit is swiftly Vanishing away is there no way to prevent this the
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continual decay of pure religion we ought not to prevent people from being diligent and Frugal right and that's an obvious that's that's a
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no-brainer we must exhort all Christians to gain all they can and to save all they can and in effect to Grow Rich
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about a generation earlier said it much more simply more simply he said religion begat prosperity and then the daughter consumed the
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this is something that has been well documented especially in the modern science of sociology this relationship between true piety
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true piety and prosperity and prosperity even the monasteries with a whole bunch of men who have given up their worldly possessions
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grew rich grew rich through their industry
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challenge if we if we want to avoid this dissipation and this uh pride and this desire of the things of the world that we need to be poor
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but the way to be poor is to be lazy okay right right I mean reading the wisdom of
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scripture you know we we can't Advocate poverty we can only Advocate that which leads to wealth and even this the Old Testament you you
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have the blessings and the cursings the mount gerizim and mount ebal and what was it God said if you will obey me you're going to be rich okay you didn't
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say it that way okay but he says you know you're going to prosper in everything your hand does and then he actually in in Deuteronomy he actually predicts it that's exactly
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what's going to happen and he says and then jesharun the name for Israel grew fat and kicked and kicked they grew prosperous because they were
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obedient for some generations and then they grew dissipate they grew lazy they grew self-sufficient and no longer dependent on the God who gave them the
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power to make wealth and while their wealth will retain long after their religion was gone
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but eventually it would not eventually when the when the soul is gone the body will die
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improves and we grow Lacks and you know or we we have many years of of good health and we don't suffer from the illnesses that others around us have
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and we tend to think ourselves indestructible that there's something unique about as an individual no but you're right all these things is like you know doing the right thing can
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lead to the wrong end and that doesn't make sense because you know that doing the wrong thing leads to the wrong end okay being lazy leads to Poverty Proverbs is clear on that so we have
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this you know it's it's it's not a Prosperity Gospel it's not that God's will is that all of us should be rich that is not taught in
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the scriptures the scriptures but it is taught that if we live our lives in obedience to his word he will bless he reveals himself as a god who's
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predisposed to bless his people I think that's the extent of what we can say about biblical Prosperity message is that God reveals himself as a father
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predisposed to bless his children in but there's an interesting passage and is it Deuteronomy 15 where he starts out by saying you will
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have no poor among you and then a few verses later he says should there be any poor among you and then a few verses later the poor will always be among you which is it okay
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the answer is yes uh one of the most interesting books that I read years ago now but a German sociologist by the name of
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Max Weber Max Weber his book is entitled the Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism and in this book he points out the connection and he says very clearly he's
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not trying to indicate a causal connection but he points out this historical connection between protestantism and especially
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Calvinism and the success of capitalistic economic principles in other words prosperity and we'll just give one of his his uh
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his comments his comments from the notes he says from that followed for the individual an
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incentive okay let me back up a little it kind of starts with Martin Luther Martin Luther Kind of tore down the Roman Catholic concept of calling
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in the Roman Catholic Church a calling is only that to the priesthood or to a convent a calling is a religious vocation
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all other callings are not called that they're just work Luther said no all legitimate labor and he considered much of monastic labor to be illegitimate but throw he kind of
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threw that in with prostitution this is not legitimate this is um parasitic so he wasn't you know but all legitimate labor a minor which his family were
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minors um uh a boot black uh a Cooper whatever that's a lineage it's a calling that's the venue in which the child of God glorifies his Lord
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so he redefines calling and that becomes kind of the essence now what the Protestant does when he works every day is his calling before God it's not just what he does for a living
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it's his Ministry and it's the venue in which he gives glory to God so that's a radical uh reorientation of the concept of work
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that Luther brings about from that followed for the individual an incentive methodically to supervise his own State of Grace in his own conduct and thus to penetrate it with asceticism
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in other words not being you know this basically diligent and Frugal okay not asceticism in the sense of of wearing um camel hair rags and you know not taking
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baths but ascetism in the sense of not wasting not not get being given over to luxury this aesthetic conduct meant a rational
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planning of the whole of one's life in accordance with God's will this would even go so far as to account books this is where the the daily accounting of every penny
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was done at the end of the day he sat down and did an account this is called rationalization okay it's not justifying something that's bad it's it's thinking about what
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you're doing and keeping track of what you're doing it's you're rationalizing all of your activity he says and this asceticism was no longer an opus super relegationist in
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other words a work beyond what you owe God this idea in the Roman Catholic Church that you can you can do what God demands and then you could do more
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and those who do more actually have an excess that the church then gives to others okay that the idea of super irrigation he says no that's not what it is it's
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not a work of of extra but something which could be required of everyone who would be certain of salvation the religious life of the Saints is distinguished from the natural life was
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and this is the most important point no longer lived outside the world in monastic communities but within the world and its institutions this rationalization of conduct within
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this world but for the sake of the world Beyond was the consequence of the concept of the calling of ascetic protestantism now whatever goes on to make the point
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that this resulted in prosperity especially among the reformed communities the hugino in France
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the Dutch reformed in Holland the Puritans in England and then over in the colonies and pretty much everywhere you travel where Protestant and
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especially reformed Christianity has gone so has prosperity and you contrast that with everywhere Roman Catholicism is gone
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and it is a stark contrast isn't it both in political Liberties but also in economic prosperity economic prosperity so you have this I think undeniable
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historical reality historical reality that biblical Christianity leads to prosperity now this is nothing more than what the writer of Proverbs says and I'll just
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read a few he who tells his land will be satisfied with bread but he who follows frivolity is devoid of understanding of understanding I love this one
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because it because it hits home where no oxen are the trough is clean but much increase comes from the ox the ox okay everything neat and clean
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there's probably nothing going on a lot of activity a lot of manure Maybe but there is increase because of it the plans of the diligent lead surely to
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plenty there it is chapter and verse Proverbs 21 5 the plans of the diligently surely to plenty but those of everyone who is Hasty
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surely to poverty Hasty is the opposite of rational in the economic sense economic sense the rationalist in economics plans his
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Harvest he rotates his crops he breeds his cattle his cattle for particular seasons even okay and it becomes really a science of
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economics and all it is is living life with an eye to Eternity doing your work is under the Lord but then all of a sudden these people
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find themselves really wealthy able to travel able to build huge Manor Homes able to furnish them with imported
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and that leads to Pride because also the other thing that wealth Buys in this world is power you know the Golden Rule he who has the gold makes the rules okay you don't usually I don't know there are
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any countries out there other than Haiti that's ruled by the poor and Haiti isn't anymore but the idea of of an inversion of society and give the government over to the poor
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it never worked okay is the wealthy who run things and that's their wealth and it's also the rest of society's recognition
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that the accumulation of wealth indicates some natural ability that most people don't have now I'm not talking about inherited wealth but the accumulation of wealth from
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industry is typically respected even where it's resented okay and that's not just among Christians that's that's just population
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in general throughout history those who accumulated wealth might be hated but they're feared or they're at least respected
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so we have a real dichotomy here in terms of our relationship to wealth we have a situation in which if we live right we're liable
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to be prosperous if we're prosperous we're liable to be prideful if we're prideful we're liable to fall away from the Lord who gave us the power
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to make wealth in the first place it's like a vicious cycle and um I think Wesley wasn't able to answer it he couldn't
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untie the knot okay all he could say is it just means that Revival of religion will never last long
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what does that mean well one thing it means is that we can't do this whole thing in our power with our own ability that that the the sin that still dwells with our members
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reminds us reminds us of our need constantly for Grace the trick is keeping that need in front of you even after you've become
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prosperous and that not many have been able to do and so so this is the world that James is writing to okay he's writing to a world that has a certain economic
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um Mosaic okay and he seems to address each one at some point in his passages regarding wealth except for chapter one which is the mild one
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um so he's he's doing that but he's also recognizing biblical wisdom James is not advocating the pursuit of
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poverty and I think that if there's any passage that that kind of epitomizes this conundrum that every
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child of God in the world faces it's proverbs 30. proverbs 30. verses 7 through 9. two things I request of you deprive me not before I die
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remove falsehood and lies far from me give me neither poverty nor riches feed me with the food allotted to me
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lest I be full and deny you and say who is the Lord or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God so it's like the
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skila and karibdas the the passage The Straits of Messina that if you get too far to one side the the Rapids will crush you against the rocks and you hit
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too far the other side and the whirlpool will suck you under we're supposed to sail down the middle and it's neither poverty nor riches
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but that still doesn't quite answer it
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moderate between the two yeah I don't know if it's apocryphal but you know the the the very famous
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request of of Rockefeller how much is enough how much money is enough and his answer a dollar more I mean it's an insatiable it's an addiction making money becomes an addiction
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an addiction and you wonder you look at these people someone figured out that if Elon Musk gave a billion dollars to every inhabitant of the United States man woman and child he would still have over 175 billion
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dollars left of course if you did give a billion dollars what would bread cost believe me everybody could eject their prices up based on that and you know
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it's not going to change anything but just the phenomenal amount of money that some people have leads everyone else to think
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what what do they need that much for but they're not going to get rid of it and they're going to keep going after more okay because that's the the nature of it
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it's um it's um uh it is an addiction okay I'm sure there's some endorphin that's involved it's Fargo been isolated and and categorized but we do have
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however one biblical example of someone who did it right and that's Boaz now we don't know much about Boaz
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but what we do know is the Bible isn't everything negative to say about him that's something in and of itself all right there's no one else that I can think of that the Bible had nothing
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negative to say about him I mean even even Samuel botched the raising of his right and mighty David well there's enough bad to say about him in some things so
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here's Boaz and what do we see with Boaz we see a man who's whose laborers praise him when he shows up to work and they greet him
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we see a man who will not glean his Fields twice Fields twice but his reputation so that the um Naomi would say to Ruth
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here's where you go to get food you go to the fields of Boaz because he is a righteous man and according to Leviticus he doesn't
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Harvest into the corners of his field he doesn't beat his fig trees twice he doesn't allow his his workers to go back through the vineyard a second time
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whatever they miss he actually tells them Miss some more over in that direction she's cute drop some more over there all right you know he's a righteous man
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and even when Ruth chose her intentions he's still righteous right he says I'm not your nearest
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Kinsman we've got to go to him first he was like wow this is an amazing man I wish there was more about him probably good that there isn't because he was a man but in the terms of economic Christian
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or uh what's his homo economicus the economic man economic man he's our man you know he's a wealthy man right a very
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wealthy man but he's a righteous wealthy man which at least indicates the hope that it can be done but there is only one
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JC Royal said about the thief on the cross he repented you know that God gave us one example that we might not lose hope but only one that we might not presume
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now that's a good statement and I think it's you know God gave us one example of a righteous economic man but only one okay to to uh to remind us
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of the dangers of wealth but we're faced once again
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God except the type of life that will lead to some degree of success in other words you can't leave an opposite life because that brings no glory to God you cannot be a beggar by
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Design you cannot be lazy you know you cannot be a nerdwell you cannot be a leech on society and say God be praised I'm a leech on society no for
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God's glory I'm a welfare case no that's come totally outside the parameters of biblical wisdom literature
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and yet if we do live according to that wisdom then we have the danger of as the writer