If Money Could Talk…
James 5:1-6
-Most of us have probably heard the saying, “Money talks.” Words are one thing, but when someone slaps down their money or writes the check, their words take on new meaning. Sometimes money produces results that seemed slow in coming with any other approach. This might be due to greed, or it might relate to how serious a person is about what they say they will do.
-A well-worn one dollar bill and a similarly distressed twenty dollar bill arrived at a Federal Reserve Bank to be retired. As they moved along the conveyor belt to be burned, they struck up a conversation.
The twenty dollar bill reminisced about its travels all over the county. "I’ve had a pretty good life," the twenty proclaimed. "Why I’ve been to Las Vegas and Atlantic City, the finest restaurants in New York, performances on Broadway, and even a cruise to the Caribbean."
"Wow!" said the one dollar bill. "You’ve really had an exciting life!"
"So tell me," says the twenty, "where have you been throughout your lifetime?"
The one dollar bill replies, "Oh, I’ve been to the Methodist Church, the Baptist Church, the Lutheran Church ...." The twenty dollar bill interrupts, "What’s a church?"
-Did you know money can be hazardous to your health? Two medical researchers at the University of Louisville have been looking into the question and have found that "13% of the coins and 42% of the paper money carry disease-producing organisms." Small denomination coins and bills are more dangerous because of their rapid turnover. Percentage of all paper money in the U.S. that contains traces of cocaine: 97%. (Don’t go sniffing your money!)
-So in today’s reading, James takes on the wealthy who have not played by the rules as they have accumulated much and shared very little. His words appear to be directed to wealthy unbelievers, showing his readers the fate of their oppressors. But he also shows some wrong attitudes and actions that have to do with money and the lengths people will go to in order to attain it. If money could talk, here is one of the main things we might hear from it:
Prop: Selfish and dishonest gain invites God’s judgment and leaves a person in ultimate poverty.
-TS: Let’s look at some of the issues James raises as he confronts the rich and speaks comfort to the poor. If money could talk, what would it say?
1. Money speaks about the misery of the miserly (5:1-3)
1 Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming upon you. 2 Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. 3 Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days.
-The corruption of the possessions of wealthy people witness against them. People who hoard and set out to accumulate great amounts of money and possessions fail to recognize that God gave them wealth for a reason.
-For many years Hetty Green was called America’s greatest miser. When she died in 1915, she left an estate valued at $100 million, an especially vast fortune for that day. But she was so miserly that she ate cold oatmeal in order to save the expense of heating the water. When her son had a severe leg injury, she took so long trying to find a free clinic to treat him that his leg had to be amputated because of advanced infection. It has been said that she hastened her own death by bringing on a fit of apoplexy while arguing the merits of skim milk because it was cheaper than whole milk.
At one time, she was the richest woman in America. Her estate was valued at from 65 to 100 million dollars. Her income from real estate, stocks, bonds, etc. was $5 a minute or $300 an hour. Yet Hetty lived her life on a lower scale than her scrubwoman did.
For example, she padded her thin, worn clothes with newspapers to keep the biting New York City cold from chilling her too badly. She was sole owner of a couple of railroads, she never indulged in the luxury of a Pullman berth. Instead she sat up all night in the day coach.
-One hot, sizzling day, someone found the world’s richest woman in the stuffy, hot attic of a warehouse that Hetty had inherited from her father. For hours and hours she sweated away doing what? sorting white rags from colored rags because the local junk man paid a cent a pound more for white rags.
-Realizing that if she had a permanent address the tax collector would swoop down upon her and claim $30,000 a year, Hetty Green drifted from one cheap lodging house to another, dressed in rags, and with so little baggage that suspicious landladies often made Hetty pay for her night’s lodging in advance.
-Prior to her death at the age of 81, the victim of a stroke of paralysis, the nurses who cared for her were instructed by friends of Hetty to wear their street dresses, not their white uniforms. In this way, Hetty would think that they were poorly paid servants. She would not have died peacefully if she had suspected that they were expensive, trained nurses. This was the life of Hetty Green, a woman who loved money. If she had loved God instead of money, how different her life would have been!
-Perhaps the last verse in James 4 will be the biggest regret for the miserly who chose to hoard, rather than to help: James 4:17 Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins.
-Of course, many of us have spoken these words: “Think of all the good I could do if I had a million dollars.” Have you ever dreamed about that? The fact is, most lottery winners are broke within a year. The more you have, the more you seem to require. So don’t forget about Paul’s warning to young Timothy: 1 Timothy 6:9-11 9 People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. 10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs. 11 But you, man of God, flee from all this, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness.
-A man was lying on the grass, looking up at the sky. Amazed at God's handiwork in the clouds, the man started to talk to God. He asked, "God, how long is a million years to you?" God replied, "A million years to me is like a minute." Then the man asked, "What is a million dollars to you?" God replied, "A penny." The man pondered for a while then asked, "God, can I have a penny?" God replied, "In a minute."
-So, don’t be miserly, but don’t go dreaming of being rich – even if you could do so much good with all that money. The truth is, if you aren’t being generous with the little you have now, you probably won’t be generous with great riches either. Next time you start to talk yourself out of being generous, just stop and think about what you are doing. Maybe you need to give generously just to break the hold that money has on you! I believe that is part of the reason Jesus told the rich young ruler to sell all he had and give it to the poor. His wealth had such a hold on his heart that he wasn’t able to truly love God or mankind. What else would money say, if it could talk?
2. Money speaks about the sting of the stingy (5:4)
4 Look! The wages you failed to pay the workmen who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty.
-Money is really talking here! It is crying out against the rich person who is cheating his workers out of their pay. It says, “This is how I got here!” These wealthy landowners are so stingy that it kills them just to pay wages to those who are working for them. Sounds kind of like Mr. Krabs from SpongeBob.
-There are numerous places in the Bible that talk about fair wages and how employers should not cheat their workers out of fair compensation. Deuteronomy 24:14-15 14 Do not take advantage of a hired man who is poor and needy, whether he is a brother Israelite or an alien living in one of your towns. 15 Pay him his wages each day before sunset, because he is poor and is counting on it. Otherwise he may cry to the LORD against you, and you will be guilty of sin.
-God hears the cries of those who are not able to defend themselves and He becomes their defender. He will come down hard on stingy people who not only gather everything for themselves, but take what belongs to others. They will feel the sting of God’s wrath – if not in this life, then certainly at the end of days.
-James makes no mention of repentance in this passage. Yet we know that it is God’s will that all people would repent for their sins and get right with God – including wealthy people! Without such repentance, the wealth of the wealthy would do them no good when they stood before God.
3. Money speaks about the judgment of the self-indulgent (5:5)
5 You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter.
-It is very likely that the Jewish aristocracy that included much of the Sanhedrin and the high priest were among the wealthy Jews that James is writing about here. The high priest and his associates had become very corrupt and were using the temple and the sacrificial system to make themselves filthy rich. Jewish families would carefully select a lamb without any blemish as their Passover lamb. Typically, the priests would invent some kind of problem with the lamb they brought for inspection. They would then offer to buy the animal from them for a ridiculously small sum of money and tell them they needed to buy an unblemished lamb from the high priest. Later, they would turn around and sell the same lamb they had judged unfit for sacrifice to the next Jew who needed a sacrificial lamb. It was extortion. It was wicked. And God was not pleased. This was apparently what provoked Jesus to make the whip and drive the money changers from the temple. God hates injustice. But on top of being dishonest, they had hijacked God’s holy temple and turned it into a very shady money-making scheme.
4. Money speaks about the degradation of the greedy (5:6)
6 You have condemned and murdered innocent men, who were not opposing you.
-James paid dearly for his stance against the fat cat priesthood aristocrats. Around A.D. 62 the high priest Ananus II put him to death because he had denounced the priesthood with all of its corruption. Ananus was soon deposed because of it, and of course, 8 years later the Jewish aristocracy was virtually wiped out in the Jewish Revolt.
-These harsh words of James were not limited to the corrupt priesthood, however. It was common for wealthy people to have much more clout in the courts. Not only could they hire the best lawyers, but their money did indeed talk to those who were supposed to stand for justice. A wealthy person could simply accuse a poor person of a crime and they would be imprisoned or executed. When King Ahab wanted Naboth’s vineyard, Jezebel hired two scoundrels to accuse Naboth of cursing God and the King, and he was executed, and Ahab seized his vineyard for himself.
-Greed can drive people to do unimaginable things. That is why it is so important to keep ourselves free from the love of money. Mammon worship is a downward spiral. What begins as working hard to earn lots of money can easily turn into taking shortcuts and lying, cheating, and stealing to obtain wealth. Some do it in secret in the middle of the night. Others do it in a suit and tie during the day. Some just keep hoping the get something for nothing. Regardless of the path a person takes, if greed is leading the way, then dishonesty and even violence (either direct or indirect) may soon follow.
-Sin in general works in a downward spiral. Selfishness can drive us to do the unthinkable just to get what we want! And even when we get it, we are never satisfied. Sin will take you farther than you want to go, keep you longer than you want to stay, and cost you more than you want to pay. God has a better plan. Turn away from sin and learn to do life with Him!
Conclusion: So where does that leave us? We might easily excuse ourselves from today’s message. After all, we aren’t miserly, stingy, self-indulgent, or greedy enough to lie, cheat, steal, or kill for money, are we? We are not the rich who oppress the poor, are we? We just work hard to make ends meet, and are content with what we have, recognizing that everything we have is from the Lord. But what if our money could talk? What would it say about us? Would it reveal things we wouldn’t want others to know about us? Would it show a greater attachment to the things of this world than to the things that last forever? If every dollar that we’ve ever spent could tell on us, what would it say? If that thought makes you a little nervous, maybe the Lord is speaking to your heart, saying, “We need to talk.” If you sense there might be something to this, please follow up and take some action. Set some time aside to talk and listen to the Lord. As you read your Bible, watch what it says about money. You can’t read far without running into some teaching on money and possessions. Do it God’s way! He will bless you for it!
-Let me leave you with a parting Scripture from Hebrews: Hebrews 13:5 Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, "Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you." This is what makes life good without having to always have more. Let’s pray.
