James 5:1-6

All right, welcome back to the listeners commentary on the book of James. We have arrived at James chapter 5, the final chapter in this letter to the Jewish Christians scattered around the Eastern Mediterranean area. And in this chapter, there are two or three main sections. We're going to look at verses 5, 1 through 6 in this session. And James 5, 1 through 6 is in a very real sense, almost like a prophetic denunciation of wealthy rich persons who are exploiting the poor. James very much sounds like an old Testament prophet, Amos, or someone like that who calls out people who are using their riches in a wrong sort of way. And what seems clear from what James says is these rich persons are not believers. They're not followers of Jesus. They can't expect from what James says condemnation, judgment from God. And so it doesn't seem like they are believers. They are unbelieving rich people who are using their wealth in an oppressive exploitive sort of way. And so that raises this question, well, why is it here? James is writing to Christians. This letter is going to be read in the church. So why would James have an entire paragraph where he's condemning unbelieving wealthy persons outside of the church? And it's a fair question. And important one is we wrestle with what's the purpose of this text. So since it's unlikely that the very people James is describing in this paragraph are going to hear these words, the best understanding of why this text is here and what James is hoping to accomplish by it is James is wanting to give the Christians hope. So many of the Christians that James is writing to are poor believers. They had been really dispossessed from their homeland and forced to scatter abroad because of persecution and social opposition to their belief in Jesus the Messiah. And so they find themselves as really those poor people who are like now in this paragraph, tenant farmers for wealthy land owners and they are the ones that are being oppressed and suffering at the hands of those wealthy landowners. And so in writing this prophetic like denunciation of those wealthy landowners, James is trying to encourage the Christians to stand firm, to be faithful, that God sees and God hasn't forgotten. And so they can have hope in the midst of this because here's what God will do in holding these wealthy landowners accountable. And here's how he will avenge and vindicate their difficult situation. And so it seems like that's the purpose of this paragraph here. Now with that, let's jump then into the details of the text. This one really sets the stage for the topic and the issue that James is dealing with. He says, come now you rich, weep and how for your miseries which are coming upon you. And so again, this prophetic like denunciation of these rich persons, he calls them to weep and to how for your miseries which are coming upon you. This idea of weeping and howling here is this idea of not just lamenting in repentance per se, but more of anguish over condemnation. And that becomes clear in what James says that follows. This is condemnation language. They're supposed to weep and how because God is calling them to account and they are being condemned for their behavior. And notice this is addressed as we've said, especially to you rich. We've noted that this is you rich outside of the church, you rich unbelievers. What's really important to notice also is that they're not being condemned because they are rich. In fact, the New Testament never condemns people because they are rich. The Old Testament never condemns people just because they are rich. The problem isn't that they are rich. The problem is that they're using their power, their position and their wealth unjustly to oppress people who are relying on them for their well-being. And so it's not that they're rich, it's the problem. It's their misuse of their riches. It's the problem. And so James is calling them to really calling them to account for their misuse of their riches. James continues in verses two and three to really describe in sort of very graphic language, very picturesque language, the judgment upon them because of their, really, their hoarding their wealth. Listen to what James says in James 5, 2, and 3. He says, "Your riches have rotted. Your garments have become moth-eaten. Your gold and your silver have rusted. And their rust will be a witness against you and will consume your flesh like fire. It's in the last days that you've stored up your treasure." And James is writing very strong, stern, graphic language, speaking almost as if these things have already happened. He knows they haven't. He knows it's in the future when God judges them and God calls them to account. And yet he speaks almost like it's already happened to be very dramatic and graphic and how he describes it to speak of what God will do to them because of their oppression and the misuse of their riches. So he says, "These things, your riches have rotted that idea of your assets. We think of riches as a bank account as of dollar bills and coins, right? In their context, think of assets. Your assets, meaning your grain, your oil, the figs off your vines, your grapes, right, your fruit trees, all your assets. It's all rotted. It's spoiled rather than being able to be used by it. When you've put so much stuff in your barns that it's just spoiled and now it's useless to anything." He says, "Your garments have become moth-eaten. And in the ancient world, it was really uncommon for someone to have more than one or two garments unless they were extremely wealthy." And so plural, the idea here is they have so many garments that they can't even wear them all. And now they've become moth-eaten. And it's that picture of just, they've just got so much, they've gotten abundance and they've got all this stuff. Can't even use it all. And it's now going to waste. Your gold and your silver have rusted the ideas. They've become tarnished. It's become corroded. It's just sitting around, in other words, doing nothing. And then he says, "And they're russ. Their corrosion will consume your flesh like fire." In other words, they're going to be a witness against you. All this hoarding, all these piles and piles of useless stuff, it's moth-eaten and rotted and corroded. It's now going to be a witness against you, James says. And it will consume your flesh like fire. And then James says, "It's in the last days that you've stored up your treasure." One of the last days, well in the New Testament, consistently, the last days could better be described as the last stage of what God is doing before eternity arrives. And that's where we're at in human history. The last days are regularly described in, say, Acts 2 and Peter's Pentecost sermon. Or Hebrews 1 at the beginning of the Book of Hebrews. The last days is describes the time period between Jesus' first coming and his second coming. The last days is the period that we're living in. Why? Because there's nothing else that's left except for Jesus to return and all people to be held accountable and our eternal destinies to be determined. So it's the last days. It's the last stage. At any moment, Jesus could return and your life, my life, these wealthy, rich persons life now is going to be called to account. That's the picture. And so it's in the last days that you've stored up your treasure. As James continues in verses 4 through 6, James really begins to zero in on or zoom in on how really this wealth is being misused in the treatment of the poor. Not only do they have so much excess, they can't use it also. It's rotten and tarnished and corroded and mothied. They've just got so much access. Not only that, but they are withholding justice and fairness from their workers, from their employees, from their tenant farmers. That's the picture that's going to be described here verses 4 through 6. Listen to what James says, James, right, behold the pay of the laborers who mowed your fields and which has been withheld by you, cries out against you. And the outcry of those who did the harvesting has reached the ears of the Lord of Sabbath oath. Notice the charge against them. They have laborers who mowed their fields. In other words, these are wealthy landowners. They have tenant farmers who live on a section of their land and farm it for them. Those tenant farmers are supposed to get a piece of the produce, right, a share of the harvest in order that they have food to eat or that they can sell to make a little bit of money. And notice what he says, the pay of the laborers who mowed your fields has been withheld by you. That's the first charge against these guys in relationship to the poor. They've withheld their pay and notice it's not like we're out of season. They've already moat your field. They've already harvested the fields. And so there's plenty of produce. There's plenty of now opportunity for the wealthy landowner to make money off his farming endeavors. And so he should have money to pay his workers. And yet he is withholding that pay from them. And so here is this heartlessness of these rich people who are practicing injustice against the poor workers on their farms. And James says this pay will cry out against them. In other words, it's crying out for justice. It's crying out for help. And it says the outcry of those who did the harvesting has reached the ears of the Lord of Sabbath. And so in the first half of the sentence, James says the pay cries out against you. Second half here is the outcry of those who did the harvesting. The point is the same. They're crying out for justice. Their needs are being taken care of. And the outcry has reached the ears of the Lord of Sabbath oath. What's Sabbath oath? It's not Sabbath. It's Sabbath oath. If you're reading, say the NIV, you might say of hosts or armies. The idea of Sabbath oath is the Lord of hosts, the Lord of armies. And so the picture is God who has his angelic hosts, his angelic army who does his bidding. He has heard their cry and he will bring justice. He will respond. And so God has heard their cry. James goes on and continues to really issue charges against these wealthy landowners. He writes, "You have lived luxuriously on the earth and led a life of want and pleasure." That's the second charge. "You're withholding pay from your workers while you're over here living in selfish extravagance." They've lived luxuriously on the earth. The idea of luxuriously there is they have plenty of excess as you've already described. This is the only place this Greek word is used in the New Testament. And it pictures this idea of just soft, delicate, luxurious living where you don't have to work hard, you don't have to try for anything. You can just live large and be comfortable because you've got so much. That's how they've lived. Not only that, he says, "You have lived a life of want and pleasure where you've just selfishly indulged yourself and whatever you wanted you bought and whatever you was appealing to you you went after." And so you lived a life of want and pleasure. And so his condemnation is they're living in selfish extravagance and not paying their workers. And then he says this, he says, "So you've lived a life of want and pleasure." Notice you fatten your hearts in the day of slaughter. James picking up the imagery of, say, fattening a calf for butchering. And he says, "That's what you're doing to yourself. All the stuff you're storing up, all the soft, luxurious living that you've got." It's like you're being fattened up like a calf for the day of slaughter, the day of slaughter then becomes a picture for the day of judgment when God will hold them accountable for their selfish, extravagant, luxurious lifestyle. James continues and has one more charge against these wealthy landowners. He says, "You have condemned and put to get death the righteous man. He does not resist you." And so in some sort of sense James is accusing them, condemning them for condemning and putting to death the righteous man. And the righteous man doesn't resist you. And the idea really seems to be that they're oppressing the poor who are too weak to resist. Too weak because the social structures didn't really allow it. Too weak because they don't have money to, you know, to go to court. And so they're just trapped. They're just stuck. And they can't really do anything to hold this guy accountable. They're at his mercy and he's withholding pay from them. And that idea of withholding pay in other Jewish writings is sometimes compared to killing them. Because you're stealing their ability to buy food for their family and put food on the table. In fact, the wisdom of Ben Sirak, also called Ecclesiasticus. It was an inter-test mental book, modeled sort of after the Proverbs. Written a hundred or so years before the time of Jesus and James says this. And Ecclesiasticus 34, it says, "The bread of the needy is the life of the poor. Whoever deprives them of it is a man of bloodshed. To take away a neighbor's living is to murder him, to deprive an employee of his wages is to shed blood." And that's what James is saying. James is in that same spirit, like by depriving these workers of their wages, by withholding their bread from them, their food from them, you are an effect of killing them. You're a man of bloodshed and James holds them accountable for that very same thing. Now let's just offer a few reflections or implications out of this paragraph that we ought to think about as God's people today. First is, God does not support selfish hoarding. God does not support selfish hoarding, whether in the church or outside of the church. God is a God of generosity and God expects his people to be generous, not to store up for themselves, to live a life of luxury for themselves, while others go hungry. God is opposed to selfish hoarding. And that is something that we ought to really, really seriously examine ourself on. At least in the United States of America where I live, we have storage sheds where people have stuff just stored up that they never even look at, they barely ever use. The whole storage shed industry speaks to our tendency to hoard and to have an abundance and to have more than we need. We can shop at the drop of a hat, we can shop online, we can run to a store, we have so much. And so as a result of that, I think we at least need to be honest and try to practice critical self-reflection, not self-condemnation, but critical self-reflection. And remember that God is a God of generosity. And so we ought to practice generosity as an antidote to slipping into selfish hoarding in a society where we have access to so much. So practice generosity as a way to not unwittingly become like the rich people, James describes here. The second implication of reflection, I think we should consider as we reflect on the theology of this text is that, while God is against selfish hoarding, He is for the poor. That's consistent throughout the text of both the old and the New Testaments that God is on the side of the poor. And He wants to see justice done to the poor. And so taking care of the needy, taking care of the poor, if you do that, you're in sync with the very heart of God. God will bring justice to the poor needy. And that's ultimately what James is offering here. He writes primarily to poor Christians throughout Palestine. He is saying that, "God is for you. God hears your cries. God will bring justice." Now notice in this text, it's not just any old poor. God speaks specifically of the righteous. You're resisting the righteous. And so these are righteous poor. These are God's people who are poor. And He's coming to their aid. Not only because they are poor, but also because they're His people. And so both are important, but God is consistently on the side of the poor, whether they're part of His people or not. God wants His people to have His heart, which means we care for the poor, and we bring justice to them to the best we can. That's a very important implication out of this little paragraph of Scripture as well.