Living Humbly Means Not Loving Money

Money is a sensitive subject, oftentimes in the church. Raise the subject and emotions can rise up. Sometimes one's outrage can be justified. Religion has been an easy front throughout history for wicked people to swindle desperate or gullible people out of money. But there is another source of outrage, too. Money very easily turns into a god for us. And when people start talking about our god, we become defensive. The problem wouldn't be so bad if money weren't essential to our life. Not just that, money is a good thing. We need it as a means of acquiring other things. It becomes a bad thing when we make it the highest good. God is the only highest good. When we elevate something to that level, we end up relying on it instead of God. During the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew 6:19-21,24, Jesus told his followers, "'Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also...No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.'" Like most sinful things, the problem isn't in the thing itself but in us. We take a good thing that God made and serve it instead of God, rely on it instead of God. In 1 Timothy 6:9-10, Paul warns of this possibility when he says, "But those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a snare and many foolish and harmful desires which plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs." So how do we walk the fine line between acquiring money and loving money? How do we accept the blessings of God and use them for His glory without loving it more than the God who gave it? How do we avoid being the rich man Jesus talks about in Luke 12, "'who stores up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God?'" That is where James turns next. Ever since James 4:10, where he tells us to humble ourselves before God, he has been showing us what living humbly looks like. He talked about how humility required us to abandon condemnation of our neighbors. He then moved on to talking about how humility is manifested in trusting God and not ourselves. He now turns to the love of money. Some people think that the rich in this passage are unbelievers who are victimizing people in the church. But that raises the issue of why James addresses people who aren't likely to ever read his letter. It is more reasonable to think that James is showing us what the love of money will do to you. It is something we are all tempted towards. So, his condemnation of the rich in this passage are best understood as a warning about what loving money will do to you and as a list of symptoms to help diagnosis when we start loving money more than God. Loving Money Will Make You Hoard It, vs 2-3 The first symptom of loving money is hoarding. When people begin to acquire money, they first think it is a blessing, then they come to depend on it and feel like they deserve it. They see the money as for their own use and no one else's. Because when you start to love money, you begin to worry that you won't have enough. You feel you earned it and are entitled to it. But since you are loving it more than God, you are worried it might run out, so you try to hold onto as much of it as possible. This is the situation in Luke 12. A rich man who has more than he needs: Someone in the crowd said to Him, "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me." But He said to him, "Man, who appointed Me a judge or arbitrator over you?" Then He said to them, "Beware, and be on your guard against every form of greed; for not even when one has an abundance does his life consist of his possessions." And He told them a parable, saying, "The land of a rich man was very productive. And he began reasoning to himself, saying, 'What shall I do, since I have no place to store my crops?' Then he said, 'This is what I will do: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, "Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years to come; take your ease, eat, drink and be merry."' But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your soul is required of you; and now who will own what you have prepared?' So is the man who stores up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God. The rich man has full barns and doesn't know what to do. He never even considered that God has given him more than he needs so that he can give to those who could use it. The man is so self-focused that he decides the best possible solution is to build bigger barns to hold all his wealth. What is interesting is that you can love money without having a lot of it. Jesus is condemning both the rich man and the man who asks. In verse 15, He tells us to be on "guard against every form of greed." The first man also thought money would be the solution to all his problems. Both he and the rich man were wrong. God wants us to depend on Him not on the blessings He bestows. Hoarding is a sign we love and are depending on our money more than God. James 5:3 says that the rust on unused money will be a witness against you. Perhaps God is trying to give us the blessing of being used by Him to answer someone else's prayer. In 2 Corinthians 8:14-15, Paul says that this is precisely the reason God allows such inequalities, "at this present time your abundance being a supply for their need, so that their abundance also may become a supply for your need, that there may be equality; as it is written, "He who gathered much did not have too much, and he who gathered little had no lack." It gives those who have been blessed with a lot the joy of participating in the work of God to bless others. It also gives those who don't have as much the joy of learning to cheerfully depend on God for all things. Loving Money Can Lead You To Cheat People, vs 4 James goes on to point out a second characteristic of people who love money. Loving money can lead you to cheat people. People who are in love with their money will find ways of holding onto it at all costs. The example James gives is an employer withholding payment from the workers who labored in his fields. In ancient times, it was a requirement that workers be paid at the end of the day. Evidently some farmers withheld payment until the end of the harvest using a technicality of the law that the laborer shouldn't be paid until the job was finished and the job wasn't finished until the whole harvest had been brought in. James clearly has in mind Deuteronomy 24:14-15: "You shall not oppress a hired servant who is poor and needy, whether he is one of your countrymen or one of your aliens who is in your land in your towns. You shall give him his wages on his day before the sun sets, for he is poor and sets his heart on it; so that he will not cry against you to the Lord and it became sin in you." Things might have changed with the advent of banks, and credit, and the bi-weekly pay period, but greed stays the same. People who love money do whatever they can do hold on to as much as they can. They look for ways out of fulfilling their financial obligations. They take advantage of others who are either vulnerable, or needy, or desperate, or naïve. But James warns the greedy that God hears the cry of those who have been defrauded. James is saying that when you take advantage of those who don't have the power or strength or sense to fight back, you haven't just wronged them, you have made an enemy the God who fights for the defenseless. Loving Money Will Make You Self-indulgent, vs 5 The third sign James gives that you love money is that you are living a self-indulgent life. James 5:5 says, "You have lived luxuriously on the earth and led a life of wanton pleasure; you have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter." "Fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter" is an interesting phrase. It has two meanings. Perhaps the most obvious is the idea that their greed has made the rich person fattened like a calf, and God intends to judge them for their selfishness. That is definitely part of the message that James intends, but there is more. This phrase also paints a powerful picture of what self-indulgence looks like. In the ancient world, before the advent of refrigeration, meat had to be salted or smoked in order to preserve it. It was traditional, therefore, on the "day of slaughter" to have the ancient equivalent of a barbeque and invite your neighbors to enjoy a feast of fresh meat. James is saying that these people have spent their life as if it was a "day of slaughter," filling themselves with more than they needed and fattening themselves up instead of sharing with others. Loving money will do that. 1 John 2:15-16 says "Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the father, but is from the world." God does bless us so that we can enjoy life. But to spend our lives focused on pleasures and possessions as the highest goal is to miss the point. Or to use James's phrase, it is to fatten ourselves up enjoying life as if on a day of slaughter, only to discover that we are now the fattened calves and we are about to be slaughtered. Application James's condemnation of the rich is not intended to make us feel bad if we should happen to have money. It's designed to show us the dangers of loving money. This is what we will become if we don't heed his warnings. So how do we take the opposite road? Do we renounce whatever wealth we have? For some, if money is our god and it has become an obstacle to serving God, then perhaps God is calling you to do that like Jesus called the rich young ruler to do in Mark 10. But for most of us, if we want to see how to live humbly and trust God and not money, all we need to do is to reverse or find the opposite of the three signs of loving money. 1. Trust God, Not Money - This is really the main point. Get this right and the rest will come naturally as the obvious response of a person who trusts God not money. 2. Be a Conduit of God's Blessing - The opposite of hoarding is to give freely. This isn't a call to be reckless with our money, but rather to be prayerful about what we should do with it. Perhaps God has given to you, because He wants to give through you, as Paul said in the 2 Corinthians 8 passage above. God gives more to some so they will have the joy of being a conduit of His provision to others. God allows others to have less so that they will have the joy of seeing God provide. The key is to trust God and not money. When we have an abundance, we can be generous because it wasn't our money to begin with. And when we experience lack, we can trust that God is able to supply all our needs. 3. Fulfill Your Obligations - Most people don't cheat others because they want to. They cheat others because they feel like they need to. They feel like they have no other choice. When we feel like everything is up to us and we don't have enough money, we have a tendency not to do what we promised or fulfill our obligations or pay our bills. Trusting God and not money means that we should strive to be people of integrity who try to fulfill our obligations rather than withholding money we owe to someone else because we feel like we might need it more. This perhaps gets us close to the touchiest of all money topics: tithing. We sometimes don't give to the church because we don't think we can "afford" it. But we are called to honor God from the first of what He blesses us with. Not doing so is the equivalent of cheating or robbing God. Malachi 3:8 says, "Will a man rob God? Yet you are robbing Me! But you say, 'How have we robbed You?' In tithes and offerings." We should prayerfully consider how to trust God by fulfilling our obligations to Him as well. 4. Enjoy Life...with Others...Before God - The opposite of self-indulgence isn't to be sour and joyless. Rather it is to be joyful in the right way. God created this world and it is good. We are supposed to enjoy life. But we aren't supposed to do so at the expense of other people or all by ourselves. The best way of enjoying life is to do it with gratefulness to God and in the company of your family and friends. There is a wonderful passage in Deuteronomy 14:24-26 that shows this. In the context of giving our offering to God, provision is made for those who live too far away from the sanctuary to bring their offering to it. Here is what it says, "If the distance is so great for you that you are not able to bring the tithe, since the place where the Lord your God chooses to set His name is too far away from you when the Lord your God blesses you, then you shall exchange it for money, and bind the money in your hand and go to the place which the Lord your God chooses. You may spend the money for whatever your heart desires: for oxen, or sheep, or wine, or strong drink, or whatever your heart desires; and there you shall eat in the presence of the Lord your God and rejoice, you and your household." That last line is worth repeating, and internalizing, and living by. It is the true answer to a life of selfish overindulgence: "eat in the presence of the Lord your God and rejoice, you and your household." 2 Living Humbly Means Not Loving Money - James 5:1-6