Published: April 6, 2023 | Speaker: Chuck Hartman | Series: The Epistle of James - Part 10 | Scripture: James 4:13-16, 5:1-6
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father we do thank you for this opportunity again to be in your word and to seek to understand what your Holy Spirit has preserved for our instruction for our guidance and for our
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growth and Grace we pray that you would guide our thoughts and and grant us of your Holy Spirit to lead us into all truth and to keep us from error we ask
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in Jesus name amen so this evening we're finishing up the discussion on what James has to say about the rich
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and in this evening's class we get to portions of James concerning the rich chapters 4 and chapter 5.
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but before we do that I want to talk a little bit because these passages are often used and have been used been used to Advocate vows of poverty
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monasticism cloisterism monasticism cloisterism Liberation theology in modern era that the the true gospel is to alleviate poverty which doesn't really make sense
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because if poverty is Next to Godliness we should be promoting it and not you know alleviating it but they don't think that through but in other words it's easy to to look at James and say he's
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he's against the rich that his theology is is a Theology of poverty and that would be misreading him and even even on the surface not not
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having to look at the Greek and the grammar and all of that just looking at the surface you can see that what he is condemning is not riches in and of themselves but the misuse and the um
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the misdirection of effort in the pursuit of wealth I find I found I've found economic history and economics to be very
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um I think it was I think it was Thomas Chalmers in the 19th century called economics the Dismal science this was in the in the era of
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the malthusian cycle and he actually uh what's his name Robert who are also Thomas anyhow Malthus was a
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was actually a preacher he was an ordained Anglican Minister and he'd studied economics and he'd studied the history of societies and he came up with this this very encouraging malthusian
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cycle where um societies uh prosper and as they prosper and are getting wealthier and wealthier they have more and more children and they have more mouths to feed and before long they over
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tax their infrastructure and there's famine and pestilence and disease and many people die and then they die they die and they die until they get back to the point where they've got enough food
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to feed the people who are left and then they begin to prosper again so it's really bright really bright real happy thing we've renamed it yeah right we've renamed it the business
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cycle not much different though and in fact you know we've all we all lived through the Great Recession of 2008 and um it's kind of kind of funny to listen to economic economists
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they are a very depressing lot by Nature but they but they they have incredible hindsight
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um and there's always one of them will get incredibly famous because he was right and he predicted the crash of the market and everything
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going to well that's what they all say it's just one of them is going to get the timing right okay they're all very negative but some of them are actually um a bit more positive and they tend to
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be the patron saints of Western capitalism one of them of course Alan Greenspan he's known as the man who knew no one has quite figured out what he
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knew but I remember I do remember when he was the chairman of the Federal Reserve he was giving testimony in Congress and he he said gentlemen if what I'm
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saying makes sense to you then surely you've misunderstood me so um looks a bit like a turtle he's there on page 162 but
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after the debical of I guess there was the the.com boom and then bust and then there was
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some saving well Savings and Loan was back in the 80s but then there was the Enron crisis and a bunch of major corporations were found to be um cheating and cheating on a large
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scale and apparently when he was chairman of the Fed he exhibited an unusual degree of emotion he's not getting known to be an emotional man slapping the table and exclaiming there's been too much gaming
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of the system capitalism is not working there's been a corrupting of the system of capitalism of capitalism now I find that hilarious just the sheer
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naivete the the ignorance of human nature and that that a man of his training and his erudition could think that capitalism
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has ever been anything but corrupt that that there are there is actually within the economic world this thought
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that we can teach economists especially Business Leaders
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a survey was taken to the Chicago School of Business which is uh Milton Friedman was at that school so was um I guess it was Ludwig Van meisis who's an Austrian you know he was patron saint of
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Ronald Reagan so um this is big stuff in the capitalist world of Chicago 56 percent of the students admitted to
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cheating that's interesting who admitted it but if someone admits to you know you're gonna everybody gonna admit it if you're a cheater a cheater you don't necessarily admit it so
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so after these recessions hit there there's this slew of analysis postmortems what went wrong why did this happen why didn't these men these leaders of
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Industry why didn't they follow the you idiot they want to make money
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and you don't make money following the rules you make money by breaking the rules or rewriting them rewriting them to suit yourself so you rewrite subprime mortgages and then you bundle them up
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into junk bonds and sell them five times until someone finally figures out that this is a house of cards but in the meantime someone has gotten
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incredibly rich okay Ponzi schemes still around Bernie Madoff made off with a lot of money okay until they finally caught him so it I guess
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what amazes me is that anybody is amazed that this stuff happens and so when we read James and then we read for example what
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religious figures or at least professing religious people have to say about economics you see that they don't understand the nature of man James does
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but Alan Greenspan doesn't okay back in 2009 Pope Benedict XVI
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Benedict XVI it was his last encyclical before he retired and and what he has to say is once again
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he ought to know better especially um this particular Pope Cardinal ratzinger who was the head of the Holy office which used to be the Inquisition but he was in charge basically he was
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the policeman the head chief of police for Doctrine for Doctrine and a very well read and educated man but they look at the the world and he
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says in the list of areas where the pernicious effects of sin are evident the economy has been included for some time now really sometime now like 7 000 years okay we
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have a clear proof of this at the present time the conviction that man is self-sufficient and can successfully eliminate the evil present in history by his own action alone has led him to
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confuse happiness and salvation with imminent forms of material prosperity and social action then the conviction that the economy must be autonomous that it must be shielded from influences of a moral
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character has led men to abuse the economic process in a thoroughly destructive way in the long term these convictions have led to economic social and political systems that trample upon
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personal and social freedom and are therefore unable to deliver the justice that they promise okay he's right I mean if you read the the
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encyclical um it's um Grace and Truth it's it it doesn't say anything that is um heretical he quotes the scripture or how
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we're supposed to live how we're supposed to care for one another love our neighbor as ourselves those types of things but the but the I guess the silliness of it is to think that anybody's listening
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I mean how many corporate CEOs are reading the Pope's latest encyclical I'm sure that shows up on their desk first thing in the morning with a cup of coffee no
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coffee no in fact nobody's listened to the Pope in a long long time so
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and I I believe from their names that they um they um they are Jewish I couldn't quite find out I'm pretty sure the first one is his name's Hershey Friedman and that's not pronouns it's Hershey it's actually Hershey not his pronouns
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he's he's that's his name like the chocolate bar and then William Adler and they're professors of of Economics at two different universities and they wrote an article
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um where when was that published yeah 2011. so that would be after the Great Recession after the Enron debical
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after all the.com and and savings and all the stuff that went wrong he's in this article they write we argue that laissez-faire capitalism in its current form is unsustainable and that if it is
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to survive we need to develop a new moral capitalism moral capitalism an unexplored Source on the subject May that may provide insight into current difficulties is the Hebrew Bible
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that's the interesting thing about the article that's why I kind of alighted on it when I was looking through different articles was that they're actually using the Hebrew Bible they're Jewish and they're saying that it may
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provide some insight they don't want to go too far on this but they they start off on the wrong foot when they say laissez-faire capitalism we
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haven't had laissez-faire capitalism since Warren Harding was in the White House okay we have so much regulation now and we're going to talk about that tonight because the economic World in
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which we live is absolutely nothing like the one in which James lived and what laborers faced in his day they do not face today now that doesn't mean that what he has
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to say doesn't apply it just means that we have to think through how it applies because we don't have Lata fundia anymore we have huge multinational corporations but we don't have day laborers anymore
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we have um almost Byzantine labor laws that protect not only how long a worker can work but what he's allowed to do and
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not allowed to do and when he's allowed to do it and all of that so it's a different world than James's but that that doesn't mean that by any means that what he has to say isn't just as
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applicable today as it was then it is it's just not going to be applied I guess what I'm saying is you can't get all you can't get around James by saying well I'm not a big landowner and I don't
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have day laborers so I don't have to pay them at the end of the day they get their check at the end of the week you know we've got that taken care of and then okay we can check that off we're fine by James no that's that's a cop-out
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that's a short circuit Friedman and Adler in their article moral capitalism moral capitalism and again that's that's kind of uh
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that's kind of like if you remember print uh President George W bush um his his little thing was compassionate conservatism remember that well this is like compassionate cow or
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capitalism okay moral capitalism that is a contradiction of terms and now I'm going to sound like a communist but communism is even worse
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there is no economic system on this planet that is moral because this planet is not moral
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be free but man it is freedom yeah right and then but they they realize that leaving alone capitalism doesn't work so they're not going to leave it alone but who is it that's not leaving
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um you know it's like back in in 1913 where they realize that they really needed a Central Banking law that the constant they hadn't had a bank since 1816.
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since 1816. okay when um well actually 1826 when Andrew Jackson killed the bank the second bank so haven't had a bank you know and all these bank failures and nobody's
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currencies any good they finally decide in the early 20th century we need a banking law we need a Federal Reserve we need this so we're gonna turn it over the bankers to figure it out that's like
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that's like the hen house is a mess so let's turn it over to the fox okay that's cool that's gonna make it better you know that's okay so
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um history is funny if it weren't so sad but they um so they're gonna go into the scriptures and they do they do a fairly good job they come up with four principles
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that they feel if followed would provide moral capitalism and and would go a long way towards solving the problems okay the first principle is that we
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should pursue material wealth but not greed okay so principle one
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the Bible recognizes that there will be poor as well as wealthy individuals what matters is how the wealth is used and whether or not one is grateful to God for it wealth peace and or long life
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should be seen as rewards from God for obeying his laws okay now that's that's not a bad summary of God's promises to Israel
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that there would be the poor you will always have with you but you are to be compassionate to the poor and then they talk about the whole structure and it is quite amazing I
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remember back when I was doing my doctorate on economics getting a book by a very very popular modern uh Evangelical writer and the title of
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the book was the subtitle of the book was all the Bible has to say about money and wealth
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and you open up and he starts in the book of Acts and you go through the book and except for a proverb here or there he never quotes the Old Testament
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now this particular author is dispensational so that kind of guides his hermeneutic but actually
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the majority of the Old Testament is economic in nature whether it's the the laws that that God gave through Moses or the setting up for example of the Year of Jubilee
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or the sabbatical years when you were to leave the land fallow the Year of Jubilee that's that's a remarkable idea that every 50th year all debts are forgiven everything is reset
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and they even had Provisions whereby you couldn't take advantage of that okay if it was the years just leading up to it you you were not allowed to take advantage of it and then there what the
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prophets had to say was almost entirely addressed at the economic oppression of God's people by God's people selling them into slavery usury charging them too much you know you shall not
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keep a man's cloak until morning because he will need it to sleep in
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Israel was not to touch them slavery economic Endeavors were what they were judged for as well yes yeah so you know you read through the prophets and you realize economics is a major and
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not not what you know Pope says these days we see a lot of evidence no it's always been a major part of sin
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for there to be a long forgiveness based on Leviticus 25 I believe and they still see that as a weakness they don't no no they don't want to hear that um and I and I anyhow so we are the material wealth is
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fine greed however that quoting again from this article greed is always bad the acquisitive motive implanted in us at creation is not bad now I've looked
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and I'm I'm not very good at Hebrew but I cannot find the word acquisitive nature the phrase acquisitive nature when God created man in His image
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I do not find that God breathed the breath of inquisitive acquisitive nature into him and Man became a capitalist Soul now I don't see that okay and I'm not going to make any stereotypical
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jokes about jewishness and making that comment but there is no acquisitive acquisitive nature acquisitive nature implanted into man man was to labor and be fruitful
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but acquiring is actually something rather frowned upon especially property adding property to property was one of the things that caused the economic
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oppression of so many of the Israelites and so this acquisitive nature they justify it as being implanted us at creation and it's not bad it represents
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a Divine providential motive for work and expenditure of any for energy for our own good I I don't necessarily buy that but principle two industriousness
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they somewhat Echo um max Weber's analysis hard work is a part and parcel of man's Creative Design quoting from their article according to the Bible working hard is an integral
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component of a moral life now that is a really broad summary of Biblical teaching okay um and they don't really flesh it out very well but they do quote Psalm 128 verse 2 when you eat of the labor of
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your hands you shall be happy and it shall be well with you um he they talk about the Sabbath rest and the importance of that's that rest but that the other six days are devoted
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to labor to labor um and and I think it's important to point out that labor and working is part of creation not the fall
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that God ordained that Adam would tend the garden and really tend and keep were the same words used of the levitical priests in the Tabernacle and that's what Adam was to do in the
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garden and so we're you know the the idea of of um of this Heavenly Bliss of non-work is is not biblical
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and it's not it's not part of our nature even Jesus said of his father my father is working until now you know the I the idea that that true
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blessedness is in idleness is is not only false but pernicious it's dangerous so they kind of hit you know industriousness is something that should be advocated but now they start to get
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into the moral part principle three social responsibility
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from Genesis 4 on God answers Cain's question am I My Brother's Keeper Brother's Keeper and for the rest of the Bible he answers yes you are
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and let me show you how you are okay not only are you to love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength but your love to your neighbor as yourself and and social relationships first of
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all you know he calls to himself a people named Israel and now in the church he baptizes us into a body not individual so social responsibility but
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here what the authors are talking about is social responsibility in in in the world outside the church when they're not Christians the Bible demands that
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our entire economic system be built on foundations of social responsibility they quote the Babylonian talmud the talmudic sages thought business business
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ethics were so important that they say the first question an individual has asked in the next world that the final judgment is were you honest in your business dealings
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business dealings now that's just one rabbinic Sage um but it was it is all through the rabbinic the mishnah and the talmud how a man runs his business how he treats
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his employees how he pays his bills his suppliers and all of that is part of his character and and it will be judged so the idea of soap now the problem with social
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responsibility is what does it mean today's social responsibility means you know to combat global warming okay or to to fund
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um irreverent and and immoral art or what is social responsibility I think James touches on it and so does Paul
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um but I think it's a it's an important point that they make that we're not Islands Milton Friedman and we'll talk about him hopefully before the evening's
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out but Milton Friedman was very influential during the Reagan Administration I think he was the chief of the of his economic advisors and Economic Council
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Economic Council um but he he's famous for a book he published in 1962 called capitalism and freedom and in that book he says the business of business is business
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okay that's that's a very profound statement as to why capitalism is not okay and and so these authors are saying no no the business of business is not just
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business and so well the principle for human
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principle four is is kind of the denumal of their entire argument you say another core value of the Bible is the idea of being holy which is closely tied to the concept of social responsibility and spirituality
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predatory capitalism that is focused on maximizing profit and exploiting labor now that's a redundant statement I mean even the phase predatory capitalism is redundant
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you know I've I've heard economists say that capitalist true capitalists hate Monopoly not the game but the actual no they hate competition
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I mean go read the biography of of Rockefeller or melon or Carnegie or Vanderbilt any of them and come away saying that capitalists love competition no they
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don't they want everything from production to sales from raw material to finished product and the stores that sell it sell it okay that's capitalism so the you know
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say predatory capitalism that's redundant that's redundant capitalism is predatory okay communism is worse let me keep saying that right communism is worse because
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least was predatory capitalism others will benefit from the activity of the Predators the Predators the food cycle the the you know it will spill and there were people who will be
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employed whose lives will be improved the standard of living will go up whereas in capitalism misery is just Universal in communism I'm sorry in communism misery is just Universal okay so because
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you're handing over the control of the economy to completing competence politicians rather than those who for whatever their motive which is
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mostly venal mostly venal they're going to run the system as efficiently as they can and that's going to benefit the maximum number of people and that's the best you can say about a human economic system
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and as for the Judgment that belongs to the Lord okay so um you know what they have to say here I think is it's true
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but they but they they betray several things they betray first of all their own atmosphere being they're they're members of this economic system listen to what he's another core value
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that's corporate speech you know what are what are your core values what are our core values the Bible doesn't have core values another core value of the Bible is Holiness no
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it is the only value I mean what are you talking about core value it's like the Bible has a mission statement okay so you know uh you go into heaven there's a Lobby and there's our mission statement
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and then a list of our core values that that's that's world speak that's world this is worldly wisdom is what we're talking about and the reason I'm talking about it is exactly that because James's
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letter is a is a running commentary between worldly wisdom and wisdom from above and that's how we discern from what James has to say what is bad
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about riches and what isn't what is worldly wisdom and what is divine Heavenly wisdom so these these men and I mentioned last week this idea of
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worldly wisdom it often sounds right and that's why it's so dangerous when you read these books you go for
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example um good to great okay never mind the fact that it's written by a Mormon all right it is one of the most popular books among Christian businessmen that
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was ever written men who could not possibly tell you anything out of the Holiness code in Leviticus 19 could quote Stephen Covey what's wrong with that picture
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well what he has to say sounds good it sounds right but there's something wrong with it okay because it's not wisdom from above it's wisdom that is worldly sensual
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demonic that's how James describes wisdom from this world and and when we look at the economic our economic lives and one of the reasons I think economics is so vitally important is that it's something
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we all do we're all economic we're homo economicus we all buy and sell and trade and live and we're all economic creatures
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and so there's you know we're not all priests we're we're not all you know we're not all evangelists we're not all these other things we're not all Engineers we're not all economists
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but we're all economic creatures and that's why the scripture really does lay it on heavy with regard to our economic life the the
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way we live in society in in conclusion in relation to our economic life so um again these principles they're
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they're not wrong what Pope Benedict the 16th had to say it is encyclical was not wrong it just wasn't right they don't have the right understanding
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of man of man especially Friedman and Adler they it's amazing they have no concept that these idealistic
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these idealistic platitudes are impossible for fallen man and in fact chances are if they were Universal there would be no capitalism we'd figure something else out
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I mean if we actually took these principles to Heart we would probably come up but now we're talking about the new Earth new Earth okay we're not talking about this Earth anymore all right so anybody who says capitalism
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is the economic system of the Bible hasn't read the Bible or capitalism they know neither know neither okay anybody who says that Socialism or capital or communism are the way of the
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church because what we see in Acts you know they they they all gave up what they had and and they shared evenly you see there was communism there wasn't communism Peter said to ananias was it not in your
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control before you sold it and after you sold it were not the proceeds yours see anania since the fire would have been fine if they'd said we sold a plot of land and here's half the proceeds
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that would have been fine they would have been praised for being generous but they passed it off as all of it they lied to the holy spirit that was their sin not owning and selling and no their sin
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was lying so you know you got to read the scripture carefully to realize that you know what we think is the sin and what is often preached is the sin is a complete misreading of the passage
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and again clearly in the English it's a misreading of the passage so kind of in conclusion I'm going to put up just kind of two
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um principles that I think are
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is the most effective and efficient way to fulfill the creation mandate to subdue the Earth now I'm only saying that in terms of the economic systems that have been tried
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okay and it is actually the most equitable I'm going to defend that briefly but
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that is not to say that it's Godly or holy or even biblical I'm just saying that of all the human systems it's the most efficient okay it's the most efficient because it implies the maximum degree of human
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rationality to the money making process which means get rid of all waste and fluff even the sense of ergonomics where you
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stand and how you do the procedure that whatever you're putting together how you do it and the reason is the most Equitable is because it then realizes
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that you know what if my if all of my typists get carpal tunnel syndrome my productivity goes down I lose money lose money okay if my workers are killed in the
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machine the machine's broken I may not care about the worker at all do you see what I'm saying if my Minds blow up I not only use lose all those minors and a lot of bad press I lose
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that shaft that shaft it's got to be redug it's going to cost me money I'm going to get nothing back from it from it so you see what I'm saying there's no altruism here altruism here it's just sheer business and many of the
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men that you read about these Financial Barons that's exactly how they looked at it but in reality the lives of those people are going to improve sometimes
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intentionally there were men like Robert Owen who created an industrial Cloister in in the textile industry in England that was somewhat of a paradise he had schools he
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had Parks because he realized that happier workers happier workers work better work better right but then Carnegie realized the same thing for completely different
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that left to ourselves goal descent into all kinds of Lawless nonsense so it gives it opens up the most reasons from what remains in creation of God's
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goodness to motivate us past our nature yeah it does motivate us past our nature which they do say industriousness or or wealth that did in that that desire to
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earn does motivate us but it also you know why do we have parks now national parks state parks
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because 150 years ago rich people wanted a nice place to go to take a walk okay a couple years ago we went to Acadia National Park on right off the
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coast of Maine it's gorgeous it's gorgeous I mean all of the trails are crushed Cinder with granite lining all right you don't see any of that at
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Paris Mountain okay that's because that whole island was basically bought and built by The Rockefellers for themselves and then eventually they gave it they
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libraries because they wanted their name to live on so now we have libraries we have art museums we have hospitals okay because of these rich people all right not because not you know they
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didn't earn their way to heaven that way but we've got nice things because of this so it there's a trickle-down effect that that you don't see in other economic in the Mercantile system of the
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British Empire there was no trickle down in communism there's no trickle-down and that's one of the reasons why Christians tend to lean towards capitalism because they have benefited
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from it our poverty level per capita per capita is higher than the per capita GDP of two-thirds of the countries of the world
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are poor in this country are rich compared to most third world countries
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um forever that a republic can only work in a small homogeneous city state and that was argued 200 years ago when they were forming our
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constitution was this can't work we're already too big okay I'm still working you know but we can't guarantee the future we don't know what but all we can say is what
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we've seen in history economic history capitalism is the most efficient system for taking advantage and and you know they say well capitalism will just rape
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the Earth and Destroy no he won't warehouser plants more trees than Greenpeace will ever hope to put in the ground okay and and the soil crop rotation soil
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erosion that is all against what the capitalist wants now yeah there are some who are just going to go in like Venture capitalists they're just going to go in buy a company tear it apart sell it for
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parts and make their money yeah okay that's that's conclusion too conclusion too is that the corrupt nature of Fallen human of the Fallen human heart will result not only in an
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unequal but also an unjust distribution of wealth in the world all right so we have conclusion one and then we must have the caveat
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Fallen man will always render the system not game the system is Greenspan thought
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yeah they're gonna game it oh my word many of you ever want to read a book about gaming the system it's called The Big Short
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Big Short and it's written by someone who game the system a broker on Wall Street it's quite fascinating if you can I mean some of the terminology is worse than things Paul says but uh you know because
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they don't understand I don't understand what I don't know how bonds work when they go up that's bad when they go down that's good that makes sense they'll render the
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system both and often unjust
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and we're going to continually like we always do always do turn to our politicians to fix the problem and they will as they always do make it
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worse and then something will come down for our children our grandchildren we don't know some other system will come out I mean we do not have again as I said we have nothing like laissez-faire capitalism in
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the world today our our capitalism is highly highly regulated so let's look at what James then says in chapter 4 and chapter five and
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there's two different groups of people that he lays into in chapter four starting in verse 13 come now you who say today or tomorrow
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we shall go to such and such a city and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow you are a vapor that appears
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for a while and then vanishes away now this is a repeat of what he said in chapter one about the rich man that he's like the flower of the field and the shirako wind comes and he he
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Fades away and he's gone instead you ought to say if the Lord Wills we shall live and also do this or that but as it is you boast in your arrogance and all
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such boasting is evil
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into full profit mode which he will hit in chapter five at the beginning of chapter five he will be The Reincarnation of Ezekiel or Jeremiah and all of them but here he's he's not um
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he's he's chastising those who who are traveling the world to make money that in the pursuit of wealth these are those Merchants we talked about last week uh
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the the the men who bought and sold and made profit on this these are the men who took risks And Then There Were The Men Who developed insurance policies
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they they they're they were right after okay you're sending all your goods out on a ship that might not make it hereby this policy here's the premium and um you know if you do it enough you make
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money and their ships don't sink and everybody's happy everybody's happy till you think about it um but that's where insurance came from was from these people they would go where they like
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for as long as they like this is quoting from one of the commentators they're resolved together with their refusal to recognize wrecking with death has a very modern ring
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modern ring one of the Essential Elements of capitalism in the capitalist mindset is what they called rationalization this is all through
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Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations this is kind of the idea of keeping a ledger keeping track of every expenditure every sale every income every outgo every he
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used the really exciting metaphor of making pins making pins and by the time you get a third of the way through you just want to be stabbed to death with all the pins that he has
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talked about and if anybody tells you they've read wealth of nation they're a liar nobody can read that book all the way
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tedium oh yes it actually is a very negative one it's very negative one because much of capitalism and one of the reasons why some of these capitalists developed recreation parks for their workers was they realized the
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numbing effect the mind-numbing effect of factory Line work doing this putting the rivet in the same piece of leather 12 hours a day
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before long these they were going to be driven to drink in which case they did half as many rivets the next day okay so oh no no no no we have to have church schools and we
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have to have parks and get outdoors and give them time off that's where it came from see it trickles down not out of altruism and kindness but out of efficiency and productivity
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all right so um what he's saying here of course James is that you know these men are are good
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businessmen they're developing a business plan and it reminds me it's in the notes from last week but it reminds me of the scene in Ben Hur where where someone of these comes back and and Charlton Heston says
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my good friend whenever you come back I find myself richer we all need a friend like that If I Were a Rich Man
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um he was that's how the her family made its money its money through their agent who bought and sold and went and he spent the whole year going around buying things and selling
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things and bringing the proceeds back to the her household okay so um that's been going on a long long time it still goes on is there anything wrong with it
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well actually James doesn't say there's anything wrong with it it's not their commercial Endeavors he's condemning here it's their arrogance and
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presumption he's really echoing Moses in psalm 90. where Moses says in one passage versus 10-12 the Days of
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Our Lives are 70 years and if by reason of strength they are 80. yet their boast is only labor and sorrow for it is soon cut off and we fly away
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who knows the power of your anger for as the fear of you so is your wrath so teach us to number our days that we may have that we may gain and here's where the connection is a heart of wisdom
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see there's the difference the worldly wise says I'm going to go here I'm going to go there I'm going to lay out I'm going to go here and I'm going to buy this product then I'm going
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to go there and sell it and buy this and and I've got to line it up because it's got to be increasing in value as I go all right so at the end of the day I have profit over what I'm spending and
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then selling then selling that's capitalism that's capitalism that's worldly wisdom on the face of it there's nothing wrong with it
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with it if you're going to go into business you better do that or you better not go into business because not only Will you fail everybody who works for you will be
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unemployed okay so again looking at it it's like yeah okay yeah okay but that's not worldly that's worldly wisdom that's not wisdom from above now James kind of fixes it with with
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what um seems to be almost a magical mantra if the Lord Wills okay and that phrase
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um sometimes you'll see it in especially Puritan writings but sometimes in in modern reform writings you'll see um something something
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DV okay Deo Valente if God Wills all right
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it's pretentious and there are few sins more heinous [Laughter] fair enough let's not use but you've seen it and now you know what it means
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you probably already did um but it it's this idea that we are submitting our plans to God and um
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and um they're certainly you know nothing wrong with that but I think it's it's like churches that recite the Lord's Prayer every Sunday
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I I have a hard time believing that it means anything to them
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anything more than that's what we do at this point in the liturgy and and the reason I say that is is because you know our heart is desperately wicked and sin still resides within us and we
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are we are prone to Ritual and and so you know we recognize that in the in the high churches the ones that
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have the incense and the Latin and the ritual we recognize oh that's just ritual but not us we we don't have that problem you know we spout every time we pray we
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say in Jesus name okay in Jesus name has become our amen it's just how we end our prayers
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and I don't I don't want to say that um we shouldn't do it but I also don't want to say we should do it and in this fortunately
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I'm I'm actually supported by John Calvin who says is it is indeed right and proper when we promise anything as to future time to accustom ourselves to
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such words as these if it shall please the Lord or if the Lord will permit but no scruple ought to be entertained as though it were a sin to Omit them
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okay if someone prays and doesn't say in Jesus name does it count
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the better question is if someone prays and says in Jesus name and doesn't mean it does it count these clearly this is like all other matters it's a matter of the heart
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and and if you don't say if the Lord Wills that's that's not a sin
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because your life will manifest whether you mean it when you say it or mean it even though you don't say it it's it's a pattern of life that James
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is he's not saying all you guys need you capitalists you're making all this money for Ben Hur this is great okay but oh you just need to say if the Lord Wills then it's okay
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everything you're doing is okay no their entire manner of life was arrogant presumption they were presuming upon the future of which they had no control
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and in doing so they were blaspheming the name the name that they claimed because he is the one who has control of the future he knows the beginning from
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the end he is the alpha in the Omega he knows our days even before there's one of them when Moses says teach us to number our days he's not he's not saying you know teach us how many days we'll
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live or how to figure out how long we'll live that's not what he's saying he's saying teach us to understand that our days are 70 years or if by strength 80 in other words they are a fleeting Vapor
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he's already described what he means by teaching us to number our days it means teaching us to realize that we are here like a flower and gone the next
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day but that God knows the number of our days before there is even one of them and the psalmist writes that that knowledge is too wonderful to me
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and that should be our attitude throughout and so when we make our plans because again he's by no means condemning plans
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even uh any any plan right at any length as as Calvin says if it pertains to the Future
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then our heart attitude should be should be if the Lord Wills how will that be manifested well I think mostly if we manifested
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when the Lord doesn't will and how we respond to that it'll be manifested in the negative because as long as the Lord Wills what
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we want we're okay right and we say praise the Lord I got a promotion you know I got a new car I got you know I got what I wanted and I said you know I give credit to the
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Lord because I said if the Lord wills and and he did but what if he doesn't how do we respond to that see that's what betrays the heart whether the mouth ever says the words
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it's the heart that that betrays the person the character when the plans are thwarted does that make sense
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and and I think this applies and I think it applies that definitely applies in the mirror the mirror it applies to everything we plan I mean it applies to vacation plans
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yeah um are are we truly submitting ourselves to God to God whether we say it or not will show up when our plans are thwarted and how we
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yes that's um up to this point I mean he's still speaking to the community of the diaspora so he's speaking to the community and and he's going to continue to do that even in chapter 5.
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now what he what he thinks personally about these men I guess is between him and God in chapter five it doesn't sound good but these are not the rich of the world these are the rich of the church
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yeah right and why would he tell an unbeliever that all he needs to say is if the Lord Wills you know that no you need more than that buddy okay buddy okay all right you're outside the Lord's will
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when you're outside of Christ so no he's talking to those who are at least professing Jesus Christ I would I would think and that's a general consensus among most commentators is that as harsh
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as he is speaking to these people he's he's doing it from the perspective of their profession and their participation in the congregation okay
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um and to think that there aren't people like this like this in the church and have always been in the church is just naive that there have always been
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the powerful and the wealthy you go to a colonial church or or a church in England for example and you see the segreg the socio-economic segregation of
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the architecture the architecture you see where the Lord sat and then the merchants and then you see where the rabble sat okay so we we brought the
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world socio-economic segregation into our church architecture especially in protestantism okay especially in countries that had aristocracy and and nobility and then
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peasantry they couldn't Mingle any more than a church in the South would allow the blacks to sit next to the whites the whites okay so
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okay so um you know we don't have to look outside the church to see these sins and there there are the the only justification for the Holy Spirit to
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preserve these words is that there will always be rich and poor Among Us right just as it was in Israel and just as the prophets chastised them they were
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no less Jews for their sin and perhaps these are no less real Christians for their sin but their sin is Grievous because it's it's it's sapping the
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strength it's corrupting the heart of the congregation the congregation what they're doing is is verging on blasphemy so you know what he says in chapter 4 is
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is heated enough it's getting warmer as he moves through these passages but then we go to chapter five and like I said he's in full on profit mode come now you rich weep and how for your
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miseries which are coming upon you your riches have rotted and your garments have become moth eaten your gold and your silver have rusted and their rust will be a witness against you and will
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consume your flesh like fire it is in the last days that you have stored up your treasure behold the okay so right there that's that that echoes
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um it echoes The Sermon on the Mount it echoes the the prophets especially Ezekiel Jesus says in Matthew 6 do not lay up for yourselves Treasures on Earth
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where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal but lay up for yourselves Treasures in Heaven where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal for
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where your treasure is there your heart will be also that's really the issue it is not because these people are
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wealthy it's because the their wealth is their God their heart is in their wealth their energy of life is in pursuit of riches
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they are those to whom Brethren comes needing food and clothing and they say go be warm be fed just be off my doorstep
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okay they're they're the ones whose profession of faith is dead to whom much is given much is required so he again it's it's a false
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interpretation to say that James is condemning wealth condemning wealth I mean you think of his own congregation in Jerusalem and what we read of it there were a number of wealthy people
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and their wealth was humanly speaking the lifeblood of that congregation it was essential for their survival so it would be unlikely that the the
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chief Rabbi of that congregation would condemn wealth in and of itself and it would be very doubtful that a Jew would ever do so because one of the clearest teachings of
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the pentateuch is that God would bless them inordinately if they would be obedient you know that they would never be a borrower but only a lender
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that that they would be blessed beyond their neighbors