14.02.07
James (3): Is Yuppyville Everything (James 1:9-11)
I hope this admission doesn’t age me too much, but when I was hitting my early twenties, my ambition was to wear a suit to work every day, drive a jazzed up Vauxhall Cavalier (because they were the standard company car of the day) and have a job with loads of foreign travel. Yuppyville was where I wanted to live and work – that was the target I was aiming at so that if I ever reached it, I would have felt as if I’d made it. But the question James wants to ask us tonight is this – is yuppyville everything? Have you truly made it when you get there?
So far in our studies in Chapter 1 of James, we have seen that true Christian maturity is an uphill struggle attained through the joyful perseverance of the various trials God sends into our lives. We saw that God will give us wisdom to see our problems as opportunities for Christian growth. But now, from vs. 9-11, James gives us a solid example of one problem which the Christians of his day were facing – the problem of poverty; and inspired by God, James also gives us the wisdom to see poverty not as a hindrance to Christian growth but as an opportunity for Christian growth. I want to see three things about these few verses tonight which, I hope, will change our rose-tinted spectacles view of Yuppyville:
[A] Reversal
Yuppyville is a figment of our imagination. True wisdom, which comes to us as a gift from God shows that those who live in Yuppyville live in a dangerous place because a great reversal is and will take place. In vs. 9-10 you see two reversals:
1. The Humble are Exalted (vs. 9) – the lowly brother mentioned here is one who has been forcibly exiled from his home in Judea and has had to move to a strange new land where he is both poor and a stranger. As this Christian looks around, he sees worldly enjoyment being had by all but him. But this surely is one of the trials God has brought into his life to perfect his faith in Christ! And if this poor Christian could see himself the way the angels see him he would not feel sorry for himself. This poor man is highly exalted! This man has wealth of which the world knows nothing – he has inner wealth because he has the Holy Spirit living in his heart and he has the resources of heaven at his praying fingertips. When the angels look at him they see a glorious one – forgiven of all his sin and clothed in the righteousness of Christ, an adopted son of God. This man isn’t poor – he is fabulously wealthy because he is heir to an uncountable fortune. Do you realise how wealthy you are as a Christian! The painted dirt your neighbour calls gold and hordes like King Midas doesn’t make him rich – it just dupes him into thinking he is. But you are truly rich – for you have Christ in your heart and you are a Son of God. But then, the humble will be highly exalted – just like poor Lazarus who was in constant poverty – when he died he was carried into the bosom of Abraham. No eye has seen, no ear has heard what God has in store for us – because our feeble senses would be blown apart if we could but catch a glimpse of God’s glory in us. Yuppyville is yuckyville compared to this place – a place of eternal beauty and glory. Boast in that Christian!
2. The Exalted are Humbled (vs. 10) – by contrast, the wealthy brother should boast in his poverty and humiliation (I am making the assumption that this rich man is a Christian). What he has is no more than the toys of children – before God he is as poor as the next man. He came into the world naked, and though he should accumulate all the wealth of the world in his lifetime, it is no more than shiny rocks. All the gold in Fort Knox is nothing more than a quarry of painted dirt. As God sees this man, he sees a sinner who may be ‘rich’ in this world’s scheme, but is as poor as everybody else in the eternal scheme. If he comes to God at all, he comes naked because the gate into the kingdom of God isn’t wide enough to take him and his riches. Pity the rich, do not envy them – with divine wisdom you will see that the emperor has no clothes on - Yuppyville is a scam, a charade, cleverly created by the devil to lull human beings to spiritual sleep – and all the time, they are desperately poor in the really important things, the things of God.
[B] Removal
In vs. 11 we are presented with the tragedy of the rich man – he and his riches will be destroyed. There are two troubles which the rich man faces:
1. Trouble in this Life (vs. 11b) – the NIV translates this nicely, “in the same way, the rich man will fade away while he goes about his business.” In other words, the rich man never gets to the end of his business. The word which is used in the original is the word ‘journey. The idea is that the rich man is on a journey, but he doesn’t get to his destination before death takes him away. You know the idea – people work hard because they want to retire early so they can relax and enjoy the profits of their hard work. But they never get a chance to relax because they never have enough. They always have to aspire to a level of wealth above where they presently are, and so they are always travelling and yet they never reach their destination. They are always looking for the bigger deal, the higher promotion because their happiness in life is tied up with their wealth and they can never have enough of that. It makes them driven and restless – living their whole lives striving for something they will never get. It is never enough – there is always another peak to conquer, and another, – a bit like hill-climbing; you think you’ve got to the top of the mountain only to realise there is farther to go. Worldly wealth is an elusive thing, it’s the pot of gold at the foot of the rainbow, but it keeps moving. It leads to unhappiness and discontent because all your priorities are wrong and you never get to where you thought you wanted to go.
2. Trouble from this Life (vs. 11a) – the rising sun signals the doom of the flowers of the grass. In Palestine, the burning sun brought along with it another hazard, a dust storm called the sirocco. Between them, the sun and the sirocco withered the grass and caused its destruction. What had once been beautiful was now rotting on the ground. And that’s the way it will be with the rich man and his wealth. Death will cause their destruction. The man’s riches will be given to someone else and will be frittered away. The man himself will decay into the dust. His beauty will disappear. He may be remembered for a few years afterwards, but even the greatest of men are forgotten. Naked they came from their mother’s wombs, naked they shall return – nothing will follow them to the grave. They will have spent their lives working for something they can’t take with them. They will never rest with what they have – never really have a chance to enjoy life, and then they die. And the whole idea James is getting across is this – what’s the point? Don’t envy the rich their riches. Rather, pity them their pieces of gold painted dust. All they have will be taken from them, but for the humble poor who trust in Christ, although they have nothing in this life, they will have riches beyond their imaginations in the world to come.
[C] Reliance
Before we leave this passage, I want to address one of the key issues in this passage – the word we find in vs. 9 translated ‘boast’ – ‘let the humble brother boast in his exaltation’. And it also concerns whether it is wrong and sinful to be rich. This word ‘boast’ is used in the OT as another word for ‘trust’ – for example, in Jeremiah 9:22 we read, “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches.” The man who boasts in his riches is trusting in his riches; the man who boasts in his wisdom is trusting in his wisdom. What a difference that makes to our understanding of poverty and wealth! It is not riches which lead to the condemnation of the wealthy, but their trust in them and not in God. They put all their trust in this world and leave none for the next. It isn’t wrong for a Christian to be wealthy, but it is wrong when a Christian trusts in his wealth and not in God; or when a Christian desires wealth more than he desires God. And if we think about it, that can be just as big a problem for poor Christians – in their poverty they think that they can exalt themselves only if they have more money in their bank accounts and they can begin desiring money more than God – and that’s no less double-minded than the man who trusts in his own wealth.
Yuppyville isn’t everything – in fact, it is often more trouble than it is worth. Thousands of double-minded Christians live in Yuppyville and can’t decide whether they trust in God or in their own prosperity; they can’t decide whether they want God more than money. Remember the message of James – don’t be double-minded – keep your eyes upon Christ and not the fool’s gold of this world’s materialism. Don’t even bother envying your neighbour’s car. You are richer than you could ever dream! Keep your heart focussed on the real gold which waits for you in the city of gold in which you will be given a crown of gold for ever to be in the fellowship of the golden king. That is true upward mobility! AMEN