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So it is good to be here and welcome, and thank you for letting me come back. It’s exciting. So, you may know, most of you probably do, but Becky and I are heavily invested in Red Village, probably as much invested in this church as any church, because half of our immediate family are members here or go here. Half of them. So, out of the twelve, six of them are here. And when they show up, you know, it’s a… We’re a force. It’s… It’s… It’s not that we’re… We’re bad. We’re just… We’re a lot. That’s what we tell people. We’re a lot.
So, it is good to be here. And so, Rob, obviously, is my son, and a couple of things this morning that will be interesting for me. I’ve been preaching a long time, and last Sunday, I know Rob spoke, so he and I spoke at the same time 600 miles apart. We’re from southwest Missouri, so that’s why you have the accent and I don’t. But, you know, I’ll just let it go, Jay. So there you go. Bad joke. Can be twice. Anyway. But I’ve never followed him in the pulpit, not once. Just to be honest, it kind of makes me nervous, so it’s kind of cool. I’m going to try not to embarrass him too badly. So that’s my prayer, is that I do okay on that.
And when you come to a place and you preach someplace that you’re not, you know, it’s not part of your circle. As a guest speaker, you want to be able to encourage. Right? And be an encourager and an uplifter. Some of those just really pump them up. So, Rob, he laid out the scriptures, and we figured it out. So, he said, “Dad, you can preach out of James 5:1-6,” so you can open your Bible to that. And I started reading it, and I thought, “Wow, that’s going to be a kick in the head right there. That’s going to be something.” It’s an exciting passage, and I’m looking forward to it, probably, and we’ll see how we end up on this.
I do want to say that as a dad and a granddad, I’m just going to take just a little liberty here. Becky and I, we pray over our kids, and I know you all do. And I say this when they’re not with us and when they are with us, and our daughter and son-in-law, they’re heading north as well today. We’re proud of you. Proud to be the dad and the granddad. It’s a pretty amazing ride. And so we’ve got a nine-year-old granddaughter, and then all the rest are grandsons, down to Peter, who is just a couple of months old. And we look and we think, “What in the world could we have done to be blessed so much?” And we’re very grateful for that. So I’m proud of him and Rob and the man he is and the dad, and that he married so well. And that’s just incredible. That’s what you pray for. That’s what you hope for.
And then with Pastor Aaron, one of the things that makes me nervous about preaching here is that I’ve heard him preach so many times, and he’s really good. I mean, he’s really a good pastor, and he’s such a good expositor, and so intelligent, so academic, and so caring. And I think, “I have to follow that?” You guys are used to some top-quality teaching. So my prayer this morning is that I’m not going to mess it up too bad, not say anything too dumb, and that we’ll get to the end of it. And that’s my prayer. That’s really, honestly my prayer. And above all of that, that God really, truly does move here.
So we’re very thankful to be here. With that, I want to pray, and then we’re going to read the word of God just a little bit. A little bit about it. I’m going to say a little bit about it. I know you’ve been in the book of James, so you probably understand all of the background, and then we’ll maybe get a couple of points of applications. And my goal and my prayer is that the Holy Spirit fills you all with his presence, his teaching, and his wisdom. Because, truthfully, it’s not me, it’s not Aaron, it’s nothing, Rob, it’s not Jay, it’s not any of us. It’s really God who needs to speak to us today. So that’s my prayer.
All right, so let’s give it a whirl. Let’s see what happens, and it’ll be a little different. I am not from Wisconsin, so that’s okay. All right. We’re all right on that. So let’s pray.
Father, thank you for the privilege and the honor to be here. Thank you for the firm foundation. Without a doubt, one of my favorite hymns. And when that thing was written and when it was inspired, what an incredible time of history. But thank you that the foundation still stands. It’s not moved, and it will not. And that’s what we stand on: for the word of God that is rock solid, eternal, that it divides and it pierces us. Let it pierce us today. Let it encourage us. Let it challenge us and convict us. Thank you that the Holy Spirit is the one who teaches us, that you use people like me, just regular guys that can have the opportunity to open up what is an incredible thing.
So for this conversation that we have today with each other and with you, Lord, let the Holy Spirit be the guide as we go into this passage. Open our heart, open our mind, open our soul, open our spirit. Take this junk from the week, pass it to the back of our mind, and let us focus on you. And, Lord, as we come to this, if there are people who’ve come in with a lot on their plate, they’re carrying a heavy load. If there’s something really weighing them down, let this be the time that they can drop it here and not leave with it. So, in the name of Jesus, I pray. Amen.
So, as we go into James chapter five, I’ll say, when he said, “James chapter five, 1-6,” I don’t have all of it memorized. The whole Bible? I don’t have a lot of it memorized. I will say I’ve read a lot of it. So I didn’t understand. I wasn’t sure. Reflect what he gave me, I thought, “Sure, Rob, I’ll get it. No worries on that.” So I come and I read it, and not for the first time, but maybe for the first time in a little while.
And here’s how it goes. This is going to be the New American Standard. I know yours is the English Standard Version, but you can probably follow along. And it says this: “Come now, you rich, weep and howl for your miseries which are coming on you. Your riches have rotted and your garments have become moth-eaten.” That’s the first two passages, the first verse of that passage. And I think, “Wow, this is going to really encourage Red Village. This is going to be one of those that’s going to really get them right there in their heart.” Right?
And so I keep moving. So surely it’ll get a little better. And it does. “Your gold and your silver have rusted, and their rust will be a witness against you, and it will consume your flesh like fire.” It’s getting better, isn’t it? It is. “In the last days, you have stored up your treasure.” So it’s even getting more tough, really. Hitting it hard. And it’s talking about… We’re going to talk a little bit about later, the misuse of riches, of our wealth. A little bit more.
“Behold,” it says in verse four, “the pay of the laborers who mowed your fields and which have been withheld by you. They cry out against you. And the outcry of those who did the harvesting has reached the ears of the Lord of the Sabbath, the Lord of the harvest.” So we’re talking about people who are oppressed. There are the oppressors and the oppressed. So we’re going to visit a little bit about that.
It goes on to hit us hard. It says, “You have lived luxuriously on the earth and led a life of wanton pleasure.” Sometimes I look at the New American Standard version, and I like the phraseology because it’s words that we just don’t see every day, like “wanton pleasure.” All right. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t used that phrase in a typical conversation in a long time, if ever really. Like, “Hey, I hear you’re indulging in wanton pleasure, Aaron.” You know, you just don’t say that word. What it is, is it’s the kind of stuff that’s not good. Let’s just leave it there, right? It’s the kind of stuff that… like, good. And your version will probably have a little bit more of a phrase that’s a little culturally or a little bit easier to read, but “you have fattened your hearts in the day of slaughter.”
And in verse six, it says this: “And you have condemned and put to death the righteous man that does not resist you.” And that’s the passage that we’re going to look at. All right? That’s the passage. And I think, “Wow, talk about a feel-good passage. That’s it. That’s the kind of passage that you’re going to see on a plaque in a flea market,” right? “All you rich people, all your wealth is going to rot, and the people that you’ve oppressed are crying out against you.”
And you understand. I’m going to go and talk a little bit more about some feel-good passages. And what I mean by feel-good passages is not fluff. Not the passages they think, “Oh, they just… they’re not as powerful. They’re not as significant.” Quite the opposite. Many times, it’s the… I do walk a little bit. I’m trying not to be too distracting because I know Aaron stays, and that’s why I have to really focus. So if I’m distracting Becky, you can… I’m probably not going to worry about it anyway, so don’t worry about it. So I don’t come that often. But anyway, these feel-good passages, they’re the kind of passages that really do, when you read them and you’re discouraged, they build you up.
In the Old Testament: Jeremiah 29:11, 31:1, Joshua 24:11. And then I’m going to hit Matthew. But listen to what these say. And the reason I’m going to do that, not to get away from the text, but I’m going to draw them back into the text. Because you want to look at the Bible in full context. It’s not simply six verses out of James that apply to us. And we have to take this passage and look back to the Old Testament and the New Testament and see how they connect, see how they intertwine.
So, Jeremiah 29:11, you know this: “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord. “What plans? For welfare, not for calamity, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and pray to me, and I will listen to you.” It says, that’s the good one, isn’t it? And then go, verse 21. Yeah, you know, amen. “Weep, you rich people.” Yeah, amen. That one. And that’s what we do, right? And I get that. I was like, “Oh, that’s a tough one.”
Jeremiah 31:1, listen to this: “At that time,” declares the Lord, “I will be the God of all the families of Israel, and they shall be my people.” Thus says the Lord, “The people who survived the sword,” and this is the descriptor of the people that are listening to this, “Who survived the sword, who were persecuted, who were being pressed, found grace in the wilderness, Israel, when it went to find its rest.”
And then this is one of my favorite passages. “The Lord appeared to him, appeared to him from afar, saying this: ‘I have loved you with an everlasting love. I have drawn you with loving kindness.'” If you look at the imagery of the Old Testament language, it’s like a gram. It’s what it is. It’s like a mother. It’s somebody who loves them eternally, unconditionally. And their arms may only be this wide, but when all of their kids or grandkids come around, they seem to be able to draw all of them into a circle. And that’s the image of that passage. And it’s given to the people who were oppressed and needed it.
Then it says again in verse four, “I will build you and you’ll be rebuilt. You will take up your tambourines and go forth to the dances of the merrymakers.” Just as long as you don’t go into wanton pleasure, you’re okay. All right, it’s on that one again. “You will plant vineyards on the hills of Samaria. The planters will plant and they will enjoy.” That’s another one.
All right, then we go on. And I’m kind of doing something a little bit different here, Aaron. I’m preaching off of an iPad. I’m not… I’ll tell you how many times I’ve done that. I’ll use one hand twice. This is twice, the second time. So if it gets a little weird dirther than normal, then that’s the reason. All right.
Joshua chapter 21, the reason for those of you who have a little more gray hair is the letters are bigger and the light’s better and it works. All right, so Joshua chapter 24:11, another passage that I’m going to bring into this. And Joshua, you know this one? If it is, you can see him, and he’s talking to this group. He says, “If it is disagreeable in your sight to serve the Lord, choose for yourself today whom you will serve, whether the gods which your father served, which were beyond the river, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living.”
And then he says this. You know it. “But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” That’s the kind, right? That’s the one.
Then we move into the New Testament. I actually preached on this a couple weeks ago at kids camp. I think I did okay. None of the kids left, but none of them could leave. All right. They were there at camp; then they couldn’t leave. But I said, “Come to me.” It says this: “All who are weary.” Jesus speaking, “Come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. For I am gentle and humble in heart. You will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
So I go to those feel-good passages, not because they are fluff, because they are not as powerful. And oftentimes it is those ones that we see so often that we neglect the most. It is not the ones like Dr. Spence said in Springfield, the passages that I don’t understand that keep me up at night. It’s the ones that I fully understand. Think about that.
So this passage, on a casual read, it’s a bit different than those, isn’t it? It’s not the feel-good one. It’s not the plaque. It’s not the one you see in the flea market or, you know, when you watch a cooking show from whatever they’re called, I mean, the Pioneer Woman or whatever, and you don’t see on the back of their kitchen, you know, “Weep, you rich people, because your roots are going to rot.” That’s not what you see back there.
But the passage is powerful, and it addresses some very deep cultural, relational, financial, and spiritual issues. These people were having it badly. They were really not having a good time. We’re going to talk about the context of it, but culturally, it talks about what’s going on in their world. Socioeconomically, it’s about the government, about the systems, about the people who were caught up in the systems, about those who were the ones who were driving the systems and those who were the victims of the systems.
It talks about relational, about how we get along with people who are different than us, not only how they look or how they talk, but maybe economically, socioeconomically, how we get along with all the people who are not like us. Maybe some are from the north and some are from the south. Some are huggers and some are not. Some like that, right? Some like that. So all of those types of things, financially, it talks about those. Spiritually, it looks into that. It’s talking about some deep issues, and it’s really hitting them pretty solidly.
And he’s talking to all the people at this point. So, a little bit further on it says this. It says, “It was written to the church in its infancy.” I know that you’ve seen and heard the background of this passage, but let me go over it real quick. Just… It’s… The initial audience appears to be Jewish Christians. James, probably the brother of Jesus. It was written to a group of Christians who were spread throughout the area.
And this particular section is interesting because it talks about true religion and true faith and true wisdom throughout this book, and then it hits it right where we live, honestly, right where we live. James is that practical. But James also said, “If anyone thinks himself to be religious and yet does not bridle his tongue and deceives his own heart, what is man’s worth? Religion is worthless.”
“It’s pure. Pure religion is pure and undefiled religion in the sight of a God, or Father, is to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and keep oneself unstained by the world.” And faith is mentioned three times, 13 times, I mean, in the Bible and in James and in wisdom. It says in verse three, chapter three, verse 17, “But the wisdom from above is first, pure and peaceful, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy.” That’s a whole sermon right there. Right?
But when we come to a passage like this, one of the temptations is to oversimplify or to overgeneralize. We can do things like this, and honestly, that’s really what we do with a lot of things. The way we do that is that we overgeneralize or oversimplify to make us look a little better or to justify some of the things in our life that we’re really not comfortable dealing with. So we’ll overgeneralize.
So let me go through some ways that we could look at this passage in James that says, “Come now, you rich, weep and howl, for your miseries are upon you.” Just, “Come now, you’re rich.” And then it talks about that.
We could say that all rich are evil and all poor are righteous, but that’s not accurate of that word. When we could overgeneralize, “Well, this is what the Bible says: Come now, you’re rich and you’re the bad people, and the poor are the oppressed.” That’s not really what that passage says.
We could say the rich are greedy, all rich are greedy, and all poor are generous, but that’s not accurate. We could also say all the rich people are the oppressors and all the poor people are the victims. Because of just… If we look at the context, if we look at that passage without the context, we could overgeneralize, oversimplify, and really not do that passage any justice because we wouldn’t be accurate in that.
First of all, we would have to identify who is rich and who is poor. I mean, it was easy enough in this passage, but I don’t know many out here who are maybe billionaires, millionaires, or, I don’t know, hundred heirs. I don’t know. That’s probably more like it, right? I don’t know if you’ve maybe had a third-world country that you’ve oppressed or things like that. I don’t think so.
But we would have to identify where that mark is. So how we would do that, most conveniently, is the rich people would be the ones we perceive to be richer than we are, more wealthy, and the poor be less, and we would almost always compare ourselves favorably. It’s just what we do. So we want to be careful not to make this a thing about comparison.
The text is practical, and it’s beneficial. And regardless of where you stand in this, helpful and hopeful, and it gives us some hope about a relationship with Jesus in the midst of a cultural and a financial, in a world system that does have oppressors and victims.
So as we go into this, all right, I’m going to ask three questions. I never quite know when to end here because we do so much afterwards. So I’m going to… I’m just going to go for a little while and then I’ll quit. But, okay.
But the three questions are this: As you look at this, what do you have? How did you get it? And what are you doing with it? All right, so when you look at this passage, one of the things that he is doing, James is doing, is he’s saying, “You who have this?” Whatever that may be? And these were the people who were oppressing their help. They were taking advantage of. They were killing people. They were doing some bad things.
But the question is, what do you have? And it’s not a comparison thing. Not what do you have in comparison to somebody else, but what do you have? And it’s not a judgment thing. It’s just a simple assessment. I do some hospice work as well. So in that work as a chaplain, not a nurse or a medical director or anything like that. But I know when you do an assessment for a medical chart, what they’re wanting is not a judgment call. They’re wanting facts. They’re wanting things that are true. They’re wanting some descriptors so that a third party can come in and they’ll read a note that this chaplain came in and saw this and saw that. And some observations, not a judgment, but just some observations. Why is that? So that we don’t cloud our plan of care by our bias. That’s the reason.
So what do you have? Without trying to compare, ask yourself, what do you have? How did you get it? That’s another one. Because when you look at the passage, the reason that James is railing against these people is not why they have it or that they have it. It’s why they have it. It’s how they got it. And he says, “This is how you got it. You got it by taking advantage of people.”
There weren’t the contracts that we have now. It wasn’t, you know, you didn’t sign on anything. It wasn’t getting paid by the hour or salary. It was, “I was going to go up and I was going to work for Aaron, and I was going to mow his grass. And this was the handshake agreement.” Yeah. He’ll give me, you know, $10 to mow the grass. That was a good deal, probably, right? So… And I mow the grass and I weed eat it, and I go up, “Hey, man, I need some money now.”
He said, “Sorry, there’s nothing here. I don’t have to pay you anything.” Well, we might have some legal recourse. In our culture, they had nothing. And it wasn’t just $10. It was what they used to feed their families. It was what they used to take care of themselves. It was what they used to put clothes on and their shelter. That was the culture at that point, and they couldn’t do anything about it. So that’s the reason that he asked that.
But I’m just going to ask you, how did you get it? Was it honest? Was it ethical? Was it not? We’ll get to that. And then what are you doing with it? That’s the other part. He never says in the Bible that if you get a lot of money, if God blesses you with wealth, that you’re evil. Look at some of the heroes of the faith. David was pretty rich. Solomon was. He had a pretty good bank account. Some of these other people, these men and women in the Bible, you look at that.
You look at that. He never says you should not seek to do that, but he’s asking you, what did you do? Or are you doing with it? Again, not a judgment call. I’m not trying to say what you have to do. That’s between you and the Holy Spirit. They’re convicting questions. There are a few things that people really like to be convicted on. I use that word satirically. I mean, in jest is, you know, politics is one. This is a year. We’re not going to go down that path. But we really like that, don’t we?
And then our choices, our family choices, we really like people to challenge us on our financial, don’t we not? We don’t like that. So I know these questions are penetrating. So here’s the deal. I didn’t write the passage, and I was told to preach on it. So you can blame the Bible and Rob for this one. All right. I’m good with that.
As we look at this passage real quickly, the rich people in this passage were not good people. Not because they were rich, but because they were not good people. Once in a while, in my culture, I get… So we… I’m a director for Southwest Missouri, an association down there, and I’m a chaplain. I pastored a while. But we’ve lived in Fort Worth in seminary, and we’ve lived in different areas. I preached at… Where was I last week? Fordland. Fordland. And you probably haven’t been to Fordland. First Baptist Church. It’s about this right in here. It’s a pretty small church, and once in a while you’ll hear people just say generalized things about people that aren’t like them, like city people.
You know, all city people are this way; all northern people are this way; all southern people are this way. And mostly it’s regional like that. All those Methodists, they’re rich. All those Baptists, the people at First Baptist, they’ve got the money or whatever. You hear all this stuff, and Becky and I get to hear it because we get to go to all the churches, so we get to hear how everybody’s not very good. It’s kind of fun. We really don’t. The people are very encouraging.
But the people in this passage, they were not bad people because of their wealth. They were simply bad people. They were taking advantage of other people. They were truly taking advantage of other people. So when you look at the poor, they were indeed victims. They were true victims. They were being oppressed. They were being… They were martyrs. And not like we experience in the United States. I realize that Madison is a little bit different culture than southwest Missouri. I understand that.
But when we talk about oppression and we talk about being a martyr, we talk about being a victim, these people were true victims. It wasn’t that they just got slammed on Facebook or Twitter or X or whatever it’s called, and they had somebody on social media ghost them or whatever like that, or try to cancel them. It wasn’t something where they were offended by something that was said. They said something else and got into this back-and-forth thing. It wasn’t that they picketed or did anything like that. They were oppressed, truly oppressed. They were taken out. They were spread out. They were pulled from their homes. They were killed.
Look at Hebrews chapter eleven. And that hero, that book of faith, it says, “These people, by faith, lived,” and it talks about people who were truly oppressed. All right, so when we talk about the poor in this passage, they were oppressed, truly. They were Christians. He was talking to these Christians.
And then, but there are others that were oppressed, and they prayed. And that’s probably one of the most significant, I think, teachings in James is when you get into these situations, it talks about chapter one. “Count it all joy.” What? When you file and when you fall into these… These bad times, we don’t do that. But he says these types of things what, build character when you are being oppressed, count joy?
We don’t do that because we say, “God, deliver us out of it, not deliver us through it.” So when we get to that, this is what we need to do.
Let me see if I can pull this up here. What do we do with this passage? I want to read it again that you can get back to it. All right. It says, “Come now, you rich, weep and howl for your miseries which are coming upon you. Your riches have rotted and your garments have gone, have become moth-eaten. Your gold and your silver have rusted, and their rust will be a witness against you and will come and will consume your flesh.”
I’m reading out of the Bible here. It’s easier over here. “It is in the last days that you have stored up,” they’ve done it. It says, “Behold the pay of the laborers that mowed your fields, which have been withheld. They cry out against you. And the outcry of those who did the harvesting have reached the ears of God. You have lived luxuriously on the earth and a life of wanton pleasure. Don’t be doing that, all right? You have fattened your hearts in the day of slaughter. You have condemned and put to death the righteous that do not resist you.”
That’s the context. All right? That’s the passage. What do we do with that in the 21st century? What do we do with that?
We’ll go back to the three questions, honestly. Ask those questions. And now it’s going to get just a little personal. But what do you have? And don’t… Don’t do it to try to be guilty or try to justify it. Just be honest. Are you doing okay? Are you not doing okay financially? You have a lot? You’re not doing a lot? Are you in a pretty good spot? It’s not that you’re bad or good. It’s just an assessment. That’s all it is.
What do you have? Just look it out and see it. God, what is it? Sometimes it surprises us about all that we have because we always compare ourselves with somebody who has more. But let’s look at it. What we have not in comparison to what Rob or Jay or what Aaron or what Mitch has or whatever, but what do you have? What has God blessed you with financially? What has he blessed you with talent-wise? What has he blessed you with? Relationships. What has he blessed you with? Your business. What has he blessed you? Your network. What has he blessed you with? You have some things available.
And be honest with that. Lord, here’s what I am. The thing about that is God already knows, okay? So we’re not going to surprise him. We’re not going to keep this CD hidden, saying, “Well, I’ll tell my accountant this, but I’m not going to do that.” Quick story. I can do that because I’m a guest preacher. But when my dad died, a little bit later, after he died, I got a bill from the IRS that I owed, I don’t know, a little bit of money in taxes for a CD that he cashed, but he didn’t tell anybody about. He didn’t tell the IRS about. It’s what he didn’t do. And I can hear my dad. I was telling Becky, “I got this bill.”
So I look it up, and sure enough, my dad cashed his CD. It wasn’t a lot, but it was enough that the government was interested in it. It’s got a little money, so… And I can tell you exactly what my dad said when he cashed his CD. And he was talking to the tax guy. He probably looked at that CD and he said, they asked him, “Art,” my dad’s name, “Did you cash anything?” And my dad said to himself, “They don’t even know about that. None of their business.” So he didn’t tell them, right? He didn’t tell them. God knew it. And I had to pay the taxes. All right, so there’s that. Well, it came out of his account. He just wasn’t ready. I wrote the check, but God knows.
And how did you get it? This is something that’s going to penetrate as well in the text of this, in this passage. The way they got wealthy was that they took advantage of people who had no recourse to go against them. That’s exactly what they did. They were hiring people and they were paying them almost nothing, if they were paying them at all. They were killing people that probably rose up against them and says, “You’ve murdered people.” It was a tough spot. These were some bad people. It was some bad corporations.
So today, hopefully, none of you fit that category perfectly. All right, but what we do have to ask is what we have. How are we getting it from an investment way? Are we investing in companies that are treating people well? I know that gets really personal, doesn’t it? I’m not an investment guy. I don’t know that much about it. We have a guy that we ask in a little bit, right?
But I can know this, that there are… Sometimes I go to companies like Guidestones because I know that they’re going to vet some of the things. And you guys know a lot more about that than I do. I’m not going to tell you how to do all of that. That’s between you and God. But how are you getting what you have? Is it honest? Is it honorable? Does it treat people fairly? Does it build up the people that work for you or work with you? Does it encourage them? Does it develop them? Does it help them to succeed, to be better? Does it elevate them to be able to maybe go beyond where they are now to a different station in life, to maybe they can be an employer or independent or whatever? How are you doing it?
That’s an easy question and a hard question, but that’s the question that the word of God demands. And then what are we doing with it? That’s the other thing. Are we honoring him? Well, you tell me to sell everything. I told Becky, I said, “The easiest thing we could do, Aaron, is, you know, because, you know, we could say, ‘Well, everybody at Red Village is rich, so we’ll just give you our Venmo number and you can relieve all your wealth to us.’ And you’ll be righteous and we’ll be the rotten sinners, but we’ll be the wealthy ones, right?”
So probably, it’s probably not the greatest application of the passage. We won’t do that. But I do know this, the things that we have, folks, you guys are some talented folks. I know you are, and I’ve seen you for what, 10-12 years? How long they’ve been here? They came for a year. Aaron, we pray for Red Village. We love Red Village. One of the prayers that we have is that God would move it a little bit closer than 600 miles away from us. And so far, that hasn’t happened. But we’re glad that they have a church and a family to where God is using them.
But I knew that you are talented. You have so much to do. And so here’s what I’m asking: what are you doing with it? Let me press on. If you find yourself guilty of what James is talking against, here’s what you do: you repent. That’s another popular word, right? We like that word. Nobody likes that word. I don’t like it, but it’s a good word. It’s a military word. You’re marching one direction, you stop, you turn and you go the other one. It’s that easy essay. But what happens is if we find a behavior that we’re doing that’s against the word of God, what we have to do is we have to stop and turn, and then we find ourselves veering back, coming in, and then we have to stop and turn again. We have to do that several times.
And after a while, it will become more of a habit and more of a lifestyle. But initially, it will be tough. We repent. And what if you’re a victim? What if you truly are a victim of some really ungodly and harmful and destructive practices from wherever? Then we pray. That’s what these people did. They prayed. They prayed.
We go back to the feel-good passages. Jeremiah says, “I know the plans I have for you.” That’s a feel-good passage. But he was talking to people who were not always in a feel-good spot. “I have drawn you with loving kindness. I have loved you with an everlasting love.” That’s a feel-good passage again, to people who are not having it all that good. “Come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden.” Come to me, all who are what? Rich and easy? No. All who are weary and heavy laden. And I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you for my burden is light.
It says it’s a feel-good passage, but it is directed to people who are being oppressed, who are beat down. So my prayer, when you bring things to church that you don’t need to take back, don’t do it if you have it on you. Right? So when we remember those feel-good passages, let’s know this, that they are there more than just to be fluff. They are there to draw you out because some of the passages, they really kick us in the head. This one’s one of those, when you read this one, you don’t get up and say, “Wow, that was a good Bible reading this morning. Thanks, Lord.” You go, “Man, that was a tough one.”
So, wrap it up real quickly. I probably mean that. It says this: Wherever you are in this story, wherever you do find yourself, when you do that assessment and ask those questions and maybe find yourself on both ends once in a while, remember this, that God loves you. He loves all of those people. His love isn’t conditional on what your bank account or what your station is. It’s not; he loves you. And you said, “Well, yeah, yeah, you told me that. I mean, the Bible knows that.” I am telling you he loves you.
When you look in the mirror and you see this person, where you see all the flaws and you see all the mistakes and you see all the things that you’re inadequate at, all the things that give you anxiety and fear and the reasons that no one else should love you, he loves you. And when people say, “Man, you did a good job,” and, you know, probably not, but that’s okay, thanks. He loves you. So don’t forget that in this passage that hits us in that gut, he loves you.
And then he hears you when you pray. That’s a cool thing about this passage. The people that were being oppressed cried out. And James says, “Listen, you guys who are oppressing and killing and taking advantage, I’ve heard the prayers.” God has heard the prayers. That’s who you do not want to hear the prayers. If you are the one being the oppressor, you don’t want it to go to the very top. But he hears those prayers. What do you need to pray about? Maybe you need to pray about what you’re doing now and how to turn it around to be more godly. He hears that prayer.
Maybe you need to turn around your attitude about the people who are more or less than you. He hears that prayer. Maybe you need to just say, “God, pull me out of this situation somehow, rescue me through it.” He hears that prayer. That’s pretty cool.
And then, because we’ve all been in this situation where we needed to turn, when we repent, he welcomes us. And I think I like that part. I know I do. There have been times, Aaron, over the years, and I’ve pastored minutes so much. And you do something. We try to do our best. We really do. Guys, your pastor, we love you. Pastors love you, and we pour our hearts into you. But sometimes we just… Sometimes we don’t hit all the marks. I mean, sometimes we’re just missing a cylinder. Once in a while we say something or something like that and we don’t mean it. And we find ourselves in a place where I need to turn around. And God says, “Welcome.” He says, “Welcome.”
So, as I close out, look at this. It’s kind of cool. I’ve never done that before. As I close it out this morning, I’m going to pray this for those of you who know Jesus as your savior. It says in Ephesians, “Walk in a manner worthy of your calling, with humility and grace. Examine your walk, your life. Be thankful for the things that God has given you. Use them for his glory and honor. Use them to build people up.” That’s a pretty cool opportunity, mommy, some doesn’t know. You’ll have an opportunity to talk to your pastor and elders and deacons and whoever can help you.
But if you don’t know Christ as your savior, don’t delay. Don’t delay. The word of God is active and living. So when I told the people the passage, the director of the kids camp, I’ll just quote her, Becca Hungerford. I said, “Hey, yeah, I’m going to preach on Red Village. What are you preaching?” So I read this passage, and she says, “Are you kidding me?” Like, “No, it’s a feel-good one, right? It’s a feel-good one because God knows where you are. He loves you, and he can take you where you need to be.”
Father, in the name of Jesus, thank you for the word of God that penetrates us so deeply. Draw us into your presence, and thank you for the privilege and the honor to be able to speak in such a great congregation. May you bless them, may you watch over them, and may you increase them, and may the Holy Spirit work through them. Amen.