Sermon Tone Analysis

Intro

Sharing Rothschild’s Wealth

“It isn’t fair,” a poor man once declared to one of the Rothschild’s, “for one man to have millions and millions of dollars, while his neighbor may have nothing at all.”

Rothschild motioned to his secretary and asked him to get the figures on his total wealth.

While the secretary was doing this the rich banker consulted an almanac to find out how many people there were in the world.

Wouldn’t it be nice if the Rothschild family would share their wealth with you and me?

Well, when the figures had been compared and a few calculations made, Rothschild again spoke to the secretary.

“Give this man three cents,” he said, “that is his share of my total wealth.”

So when considering the total population of the world and how his wealth would be evenly distributed, only $0.03 was the fair share for any one person out of the wealth of the Rothschild family.

Now whether this anecdote truly happened is irrelevant to the fact that wealth is relative and fleeting.

The apostle James has something to say about this too

In the previous verses, we saw that godly wisdom comes when we ask God in faith.

This verse is somewhat surprising here, it appears suddenly and seems to have little to do with the context before.

But upon further reflection the connections come into focus.

The conditions of poverty constitute a “trial,” parallel to the others already hinted to by James.

Having riches also brings trials to the Christian.

The contrast between faith and double-mindedness can parallel that between humility and pride in wealth.

Here is an illustration given directly by James, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, to apply this godly wisdom as opposed to worldly wisdom.

Questions flooded my mind here as I read these verses: Are both the poor and the rich Christians?

Is this poverty economic or spiritual?

Why should each “take pride” or “exult”?

What do “riches” reveal about us?

The first question has occasioned the most debate.

All agree that the poor brother is a member of the Christian community.

But what about the rich man?

David P. Nystrom, James, The NIV Application Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1997), 54.

James introduces a subject here that he plans to harp on more as this Epistle progresses (especially Chs. 2 & 5—which I’m sure we’ll get to in the next 12 months or so!):

The Poor & the Rich

What James is saying

What James is not saying

I want to expose “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” about these subjects.

I bet most of you are aware of at least that title from that 1960’s Clint Eastwood movie.

but instead of diving into the themes of that movie, I’m just stealing the title for a way of an outline.

1.

The Poor (v. 9)

The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly (v. 9)

In this verse, James addresses ‘the lowly brother’.

Whom did he have in mind?

There is no difficulty here.

He was addressing all of his readers who were poverty stricken as a result of the persecution they were encountering.

If you’re sitting here this morning, and are saying “the only two chances I have at getting rich are: slim and none!” this is for you.

i.

What James is saying

This is the “good.”

James did not want the terrible circumstances of these poor and persecuted people to make them think of themselves as second-rate or inferior Christians.

To keep this from happening, he encouraged them to take pride in their high position.

Kent Hughes writes about these early Christians: ‘… because they were economically low, they were low in the eyes of the world and, no doubt, in most instances low in their own eyes.

Their poverty produced a lowliness of mind.’

Warning against poverty

(the mindset of poverty)

And what was their high position?

It is their position as ‘brothers’.

James calls them “brothers!”

Their poverty could not negate or nullify God’s appointing of them as brothers and sisters in the faith.

No matter how low they were in terms of the world’s goods, they were exceedingly rich in spiritual terms!

They had been torn out of the condemnation and ruin of sin by the saving work of Jesus Christ and had been made part of the family of God forever!

We need this word quite as much as James’s readers.

This is a day in which many Christians are being made to feel inferior because of their faith.

These days, we are frequently told that we are guilty of hate crimes if we adhere to the teaching of the Bible.

An easy example of this: The Bible teaches us that Jesus alone is the way to heaven (Jn 14:6).

But as we believe that, live that, and share it with others, we find ourselves accused of being intolerant!

Many Christians find themselves constantly beaten down especially at work or in school or, perhaps, even among friends and family.

And, while it may not be so severe here in America, it is certainly true that many Christians in other places are actually suffering from poverty only because of persecution.

Every Christian who feels life’s cruel pounding can crawl into the warm wisdom offered by James.

No matter how hated we are in this world, no matter how low and despicable we appear to be, we actually enjoy the highest of all privileges, namely, being part of the family of God.

James’s point in verse 9 can be stated, then, in this way: The key for the low Christians is to keep in mind their high position in Christ - the low are actually, in reality, high!

ii.

What James is not saying

This is the “bad.”

With our sin nature and cursed minds, sometimes we tend to read more into these words and verses than what is really there and it happens easily when talking about classes of people.

Being poor is more spiritual

This is false, but it is an easy theological trap to fall into since it sometimes appears that scripture, even Jesus’ own words, seem to condemn the rich and exalt the poor; for instance: The Rich man and Lazarus, The widow’s mite, The Young Rich Ruler, and so forth.

However, ti is still possible for a Christian in poverty to be just as much a snob as a Christian in prosperity.

The believers who are not rich should never envy or mistreat those who are.

Bitterness comes with no price—freely available to the poorest person.

Proverbs 30 has a prayer that demonstrates this principle:

Here in Proverbs, we see that both ends of the financial spectrum can have its problems and both ends can lead us into sin.

Illustration: I heard of a monk once who lived during the middle ages and he deeply struggled with lusting after women.

He was so fed up with his sin that he decided to spend at least three years alone in the Arabian desert in order to flee from his temptation.

He cut his solitary confinement short and came back to his monastery to report that his time in the desert was plagued with his thoughts and mental images of sin.

This was proof to him, his contemporaries, and even to us this morning that even extreme poverty cannot rid sin and create spirituality.

The Prosperity Gospel

This is the “ugly.”

I want to mention here that the Prosperity Gospel (otherwise known as the health and wealth gospel) is pretty well rejected by us here in conservative evangelicalism and for good reason but sometimes when we adamantly reject a wrong idea and totally avoid a bad ditch, we end up crashing in the other ditch.

In other words, some of us might totally reject the Prosperity Gospel to the extreme of thinking that any rich Christian must be wrong.

I agree with Charles Grant when he said: “Being poor is a problem, but being rich ain’t the answer.”

2. The Rich (v.10)

The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly

Not all James’s readers were being persecuted.

Some were doing quite well.

Their property had not been seized.

They had not been refused the right to do business and to make money.

In some way or another, either they had managed to avoid detection, or those who had detected their Christianity had chosen to be tolerant in the dispersion.

if you’re sitting here this morning saying, “there is no better companion in life than my fat wallet” then this is for you.

James seems to come down harsher on the rich.

One reason is the rich unbelievers were the most guilty of persecuting the early church.

But perhaps it is also because Jame can still recall his half-brother’s words about wealth often being an obstruction to the reception of the gospel Mr 10:23–25

And the temptation facing these early Christians, whom James classifies as ‘rich’, was to think that they were better off than their suffering brothers because they were better in some way and God blessed only them.

i.

What James is saying

If the key for the low Christians is to remember their high position in Christ, the key for the high Christians is to remember their low position as mortals.