Warning to the Rich

“You rich people, listen! Cry and be very sad because of the troubles that are coming to you. Your riches have rotted, and your clothes have been eaten by moths. Your gold and silver have rusted, and that rust will be a proof that you were wrong. It will eat your bodies like fire. You saved your treasure for the last days. The pay you did not give the workers who mowed your fields cries out against you, and the cries of the workers have been heard by the Lord All Powerful. Your life on earth was full of rich living and pleasing yourselves with everything you wanted. You made yourselves fat, like an animal ready to be killed. You have judged guilty and then murdered innocent people, who were not against you.” (James 5:1-6, NCV).[Re-read James 1:9-11]

James paints a very unpleasant picture of the rich in this passage. His warning to the rich announces that judgment is coming and terrible troubles because of their lavish, selfish, and dishonest ways. All worldly possessions are precarious at best. Fine clothes will become moth-eaten. Hoarded silver and gold will rust (accumulations of money won’t last). Again, James sounds an echo of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount from Matthew 6:19-20: “Don’t store treasures for yourselves here on earth where moths and rust will destroy them and thieves can break in and steal the. But store your treasures in heaven where they cannot be destroyed by moths or rust and where thieves cannot break in and steal them. Your heart will be where your treasure is.” (NCV) James says wealth will “eat your bodies like fire.” Those who amass wealth will become obsessed with gaining more. The wealthy pay meager wages to workers, thus adding more to the rich person’s coffers while mistreating the poor. The plight of the poor is noted by the Lord, and while the rich seem to enjoy their wealth, they are unaware that there is a “pay day some day.” Even what they save up for the “last days,” will be of little use. Their days of rich living and pleasing themselves will meet a stern judgment. The tone of this passage is prophetic. A day of reckoning is coming and those who love riches will be judged. Wealth itself is not a sin, but when it becomes a god, pursued with an obsession that drives the wealthy to love and pursue riches without regard for others, then judgment is sure. Paul wrote a similar warning in I Timothy 6:10: “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.” (NIV). James also wrote about poverty and riches in James 1:9-11.

Is there a way out of the dilemma of the love of money? Consider these guidelines: (1) We brought nothing into the world and will take nothing out. (2) God gives us the power to acquire money. Our pursuit of money should be honorable and honest. (3) Our money should be used to serve God and others, not hoarded selfishly and with the idea of more possessions, more pleasure. God, help us to follow these guidelines.

c Ethelene Dyer Jones; Monday, October 25, 2010

Parable of the Rich Man’s Meditation

“And He told them this parable: ‘The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop. He thought to himself, What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops. Then he said, This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I’ll say to myself, You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry. But God said to him, You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself? This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God.” (Luke 12:16-21, NIV).

Those who have studied carefully the teachings of Jesus and documented them state that he taught more about money and the use of and love for it than any other subject. Why is this? Because how we live, including how we make our living and how we use our resources, all express our Christian faith. Jesus knew this, and often gave cryptic insights into how we should consider that “unrighteous mammon,” or money, which we are often tempted to set up as an idol. Yesterday’s thoughts on the unjust steward parable showed this concept. That parable was all about the theme of prudence and ingenuity in using property. Today’s parable, which someone has called “The Rich Man’s Meditation” also gets at the heart of man’s attitude about possessions. There’s an old adage, “The more one has, the more one wants.” Paul the Apostle, knowing this, advised his son-in-the-gospel, young Timothy: “For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs” (I Timothy 6:10, NIV).

In the parable of the rich man and his desire to build better barns in which to store his abundance, he suddenly found that he had none to store. Death came upon him suddenly. Someone has said, “You don’t ever see a U-Haul behind a hearse. You can’t take it with you.” Life is tenuous at best. We have assurance of today, but tomorrow is nebulous. It is not that we are to completely disregard money and its ability to help and sustain life needs. Rather it is the love of money we are to guard against, that insatiable desire to put temporal things first in our lives to the exclusion of loyalty to God. We need to constantly check our attitude toward money, earning and accumulating it; and also our attitude to others in terms of generosity toward the needy, and extension of the Kingdom of God.

I believe God made a plan, even for our money. He said, “Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse” (Malachi 3:10). “But that is Old Testament and the law,” some argue. Jesus did not come to do away with the law, but to fulfill it, to make it more applicable to the Christian life. Listen to the New Testament admonition: Jesus, in addressing the scribes and Pharisees on their diligent attention to tithing, said, “these ye ought to have done, and not to leave the others undone” (Matthew 23:23). He was talking of their tithing, but also of “weightier matters of the law: judgment, mercy and faith.” If Jesus is Lord of our money, how we earn it and manage it, we can gladly practice what Paul taught in II Corinthians 9:7: “Upon the first day of the week, let every one of you lay by him in store, as God hath prospered him.” We don’t need bigger barns or more secure depository sources. We need to honor God, first of all. Jesus said, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you” (Matthew 6:33). God loves us and wants the best for us. But our loyalty to Him is expected as we accept His provision for us. Not bigger barns, but bigger hearts for the things God wants us to partner with Him in doing in the world; that’s the idea behind Christian stewardship!

c Ethelene Dyer Jones; Saturday, September 4, 2010