James 5:1 Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you
I recently heard about a study that came out about what Americans value. Now, there is a difference between a value and a virtue. A value is simply something to which you attribute worth. We value hard work or a day on the couch eating nachos. A virtue is something morally right or wrong that has to be defined by someone or something greater than self or society, and that someone is God.
The study was about the steady decline and recent precipitous drop of certain values in America. One of the values that has declined is the value Americans place on a good work ethic. Church attendance and the value we place on church has declined. There has been a drop in patriotism, that is, we don’t really have anything in common beyond ourselves, our tribe, and what we want. The one traditional value, not virtue, that Americans have that is on the rise is our value of money. I don’t mean the value of how much the American dollar is worth, but how much we value or want the American dollar.
Let me ask you a question, “How deep is your long game?” If you are just living for the weekend, then that is a poor life indeed. I look forward to the weekend, but I hope I have more to look forward to than just that. Others perhaps have the long game of a ten-year plan. Well, anything can happen in ten minutes, so there is only a certain amount of utility to that. Maybe you have a long game for when you are fifty-five and retire. There is a longer game than any of these, and that is what happens after you are fifty-five and after your time on this earth is done. How deep is your long game?
James 4:14 reminds us that we don’t even know what will happen tomorrow. How long of a game can you have when you don’t even know what is going to happen tomorrow? The answer is that the more I know about the far, distant future, the more stability and joy I can have in the short term. My certainty about eternity gives me a certain joy, happiness, and stability in this weekend, in the next ten years, at fifty-five, and far beyond. So how deep is your long game?
James 5 gives a contrast. Verse 1 says, “Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you.” He is really rough on rich people here. Now, it is not money, but the love of money that is evil, and sometimes it is hard for us to distinguish the one from the other. A lot of us love money more than we care to admit. This person is characterized not by nationality, virtue, or value, but by riches. “Ye rich men.”
In verse 7 we find those who are characterized by their relationship to God. “Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord.” So, you have two characters, the rich man, who is characterized by his money and what he has, and the brother, who is characterized by who has him, the Lord.
Notice the contrast between their sources of stability. For the rich man, the source of stability is money. Verse 2 says, “Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten.” That is ill-conceived dependence because money has wings and flies off. The source of dependence for the brother is the Lord. Verse 11 says, “[Ye] have seen the end of the Lord; that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy.” Most of us are rich relative to most people who have lived and most people who are living right now. Even when I think, “I don’t have what someone else has,” I say that living in a very wealthy county and a very prosperous state. So, that is not really objective. So, what is your source of dependence. For the man characterized by his money, it is his money. For the man characterized by his relationship with the Lord, it is the Lord.
What about the ethic of the man characterized by his money? Verse 3 says, “Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days.” That is what characterizes him. Jesus talked about a rich fool who tore down his old barns and built bigger. He wasn’t rich toward God; he was always heaping up. We value the ability to help our future selves by saving. It is good to save. It is not trusting God to be frivolous with one’s money. I am just saying that when you find this idea of heaping up money in the Bible, it is never favorable.
What about the man who is characterized by his relationship to God? Verse 7 says, “Be patient… unto the coming of the Lord.” Verse 8 says, “Be ye also patient.” Why? It is because “the judge standeth before the door.” The Lord is coming again. Verse 11 says, “We count them happy which endure,” and then we hear about the patience of Job. So, the ethic of the man characterized by his money is heaping up riches. The ethic of the man characterized by his relationship to God is patience.
We have two examples of patience. One is a farmer. You plant, then you wait. It is not a microwave; it is the ground, and God will bring the harvest that you plant. The other example is Job, a man who had everything, but lost everything. I would suppose that Job thought that God had abandoned him, forgotten him, and did not love him. But God had not forgotten Job, and God has not forgotten you.
What is the long game of the man characterized by his money? Verse 5 says, “Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth.” It is great to enjoy every day and the things that God has given us richly to enjoy. But if the earth is all you have, that is a dreadful poverty indeed. What about the man who is characterized by his relationship to the Lord? Verse 11 says, “Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end.” This is not the end at fifty-five, the weekend, or your end on the earth, but the end of the Lord. It continues, “That the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy.” When I am trusting God, I have my foundation in something that is grounded in eternity.
So, you have the rich and the brother. You have the money and you have the Lord. You have heaping up riches and you have patience until the return of Christ. You have that which is only on this earth and that which is into eternity. Regardless of how much money you have or do not have this day, the question to ask is, “How deep is your long game?” We don’t know tomorrow, but we can have certainty about eternity and that can change the way we live today.