James 1:9-11
Now at first glance, these few verses might seem to be introducing a new subject. We have moved away from trials and troubles and wisdom to deal with money. Now we’re talking about poverty and riches. But, in reality what James is doing here is giving us an example of how God’s wisdom is applied to circumstances. He chose to talk about money issues because money holds one of the strongest grips on the human heart. It is one of the most powerful influences on human ideas about security and power.
In fact, even in the Old Testament we find proverbs about the blessings of wealth. Wealth in and of itself is not a bad thing. Proverbs 3:13-16 is just one example, but a powerful one, that links wisdom and riches as follows. “Blessed are those who find wisdom, those who gain understanding, for she is more profitable than silver and yields better returns than gold. She is more precious than rubies; nothing you desire can compare with her. Long life is in her right hand; in her left hand are riches and honor.”
James is not contradicting that in his teaching. Wise living does tend toward prosperity. But James is simply pointing out that wisdom calls for a wariness about seeking wealth for its own sake instead of wisdom for its own sake. We tend to prefer riches, and we only want enough wisdom to know how to get richer! Wealth does bring blessings and allows wealthy persons to be more generous and a great blessing to the community in which he or she lives. But James reminds us that it is too easy to trust in riches for security in a way that becomes ultimate, in a way that replaces trust in God.
So, in these few verses James shows us one way to apply the wisdom of God to the circumstances of life. Conventional wisdom would say, money is good, the more the better. But James shows how God takes a different view and encourages us to take a similar view. And this goes to both extremes, how to think about poverty and how to think about great riches.
First, he says, “Believers in humble circumstances ought to take pride in their high position.” That does turn things upside down! It’s similar to Jesus saying, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Those who come to Jesus with nothing receive everything he has to offer. What is the high position of the humbly impoverished Christian? God takes special care of those who depend on him for everything. I am reminded of George Mueller, who ran several orphanages in London in the 1800’s. He never did a fund raiser. He felt God had called him to pray and ask only God for the daily needs of the children.
There are several reports of having all the children in the orphanage sit down to dinner even though there was nothing to put on the table. George Mueller led the children in a prayer of thanksgiving for God’s provision. Then there would come a knock at the door. Once the milk man’s cart had broken down and he had to donate all his goods to George because it would spoil before he could get his cart going again. Once a bread vendor had a similar problem when a nearby customer had canceled their order at the last minute, after delivery was on the way. The bread man started to head back to the bakery but decided to stop at George’s house to ask if they could use any.
That’s just one example. It is not to lay down a method. It doesn’t mean: never do a fund raiser. But there is simply a principle here, that those who must depend upon God for finances usually find that he does provide. Their high position is that of knowing that God is doing the blessing and feeling his love for them as expressed in his care for them.
One very easy way for all of us to apply this principle in our own lives is to become very intentional about refusing to hoard money as if we need every penny. We should practice regular giving, or tithing. The world thinks it’s crazy to give your money away, especially when you get no benefit from it, not even any strings attached like having a say in what the church does with the money you donate.
Once while I was working in a furniture factor in Grand Rapids, I was busy with a stack of wooden frame members for office cubicle partitions. All I was doing was filling holes with glue and then pushing a short little dowel in each hole to get them ready for the next step in the assembly process. So while I was standing there with another guy, him on the other end of the stack doing the same mindless task, the foreman comes over and says, “I don’t know guys, sometimes I wonder, what’s the point? I work hard all day and all week to get a paycheck that I spend on food, housing and bills just so I can stay alive and go to work again to earn more money that keeps me alive and healthy to keep on working.”
I said to him, “Carl the way you describe it, if that is really all there is to life, you are right, there is no point. It is pointless. You’re on the hamster wheel, running all day and going nowhere.”
He seemed a bit taken aback at the way I resolved his wondering. He then asked me, “Do you have a point, a reason for living?”
I said, “Sure I do. I live for God and he gives my life meaning and purpose. And he takes care of meeting my needs.”
He came back with, “What purpose? You’re doing the same as me, just working a crumby job so you can stay alive to keep on working. And you’re getting less pay than me! If you’re working for God, why in the world are you working here? If God takes care of all your needs why do you even have to have a job?”
I said, “I have this job because that is the means by which God has decided that my needs should be met for now. I also serve the Lord by going to church, learning about him and what the world needs. I also support the ministry I enjoy by giving some of this money back to God.”
That really seemed to take him by surprise. He said, “You give your money away?”
“Yes, well, not all of it. I do need to pay the bills and God understands about that. But I give Him at least ten percent. It proves that I trust and know that God will meet my needs. And it makes this work I am doing here more than just earning a living. God uses some of the money I make here to spread the gospel. So I am making better use of this money than anybody who just spends it all on himself.”
Here's an idea I heard: 90% is better than 100%. James would agree. Tithing, or giving away 10% of your income, would leave you with 90% of all the money you earn. But that’s better for you than having all 100% because regular planned giving will instill in you the right attitude of not trusting in riches, but instead trusting in God who owns it all anyway.
On the other hand, James says to the wealthy Christians that they should take pride in their humiliation. This is another topsy-turvy surprise because the world thinks that wealthy people ought to be proud of their riches. In fact, there was a strong opinion in those days, and ours too I think, even among the religious people, that wealthy people had been especially blessed by God. Their riches were considered to be God’s reward for careful and faithful living. We’ve mentioned the prosperity gospel before and this thought is a component of that. The teaching goes that God wants you to be rich because you are his royal child. So, if you are not rich, you’re just not having enough faith in God.
But James throws that out the window with this teaching. What is so humiliating about being rich? The fact that it is temporary. It will all fade away. You can’t take it with you. In addition, the security that seems to belong to those who have enough money to buy whatever they need to solve any problem, is a false security that could fade away in a moment’s notice.
Think of how many people learned this during the financial crisis of 2007–2008. It is considered by many economists to have been the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Many people lost thousands, even millions of dollars as they watched their investments lose their value, right before their eyes!
Many of those people were faithful, God honoring Christians too. I’m sure there was a lot of emotion expressed as these people watched their financial security disappear. But I bet rejoicing was rare! Yet, James says they should have rejoiced. They should have taken pride in that humiliation because God was using those circumstances to call people back to a more reliable security, to trust in him rather than in material riches! Christians who possess the godly wisdom James is teaching us about were better able to weather that storm of financial loss than many others who became nearly suicidal when it appeared to them that they had lost everything.
Now I want to give more examples that James could have picked from. I want to spend the rest of my time applying this same kind of wisdom to other areas of life in which Godly wisdom takes a nearly opposite view of things than mere human wisdom would lead us to. In fact, in these next examples we will see why it is that Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1:25, “the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom.”
Strength is my next example. People seem to think that for a leader to be strong means that he has solved all his own problems so that he is fully equipped to help other people solve theirs. But in fact the best leaders are those who know that they are not perfect and are courageous enough to be honest about that. People can more easily relate to someone who has been in their shoes and still walks that way too. Someone who appears to have it all together also appears to be too far ahead of those who need help, so those who wish they could be strong go on believing they can never attain it.
Similarly, church people often put on their best face on Sunday mornings. Probably all of us have at some time had an argument in the car in the way to church. But as soon as you open the door in the parking lot, you’re all smiles to everyone else you meet. People think that if they don’t look like they have it all together, their brothers and sisters would reject them for being not good enough Christians. And sadly, the power of gossip in our communities often upholds this impression. People who are honest about their weaknesses, or are found out, often do get shunned by other Christians.
But here is the dirty little secret about that. The ones doing the shunning are doing it in the effort to deny or hide their shame and guilt about their own shortcomings. Thus, they don’t grow to maturity themselves because they don’t work on their own issues and they also hinder others by making it dangerous to be honest and seek help. But in an opposite atmosphere, where Christians trust each other to be supportive and refuse to be judgmental or spread gossip, vulnerability and authenticity are highly valued and they are the greatest help in making forward progress to greater maturity. On this I speak from personal experience with the Celebrate Recovery ministry.
Celebrate recovery is based on living according to the wisdom of God as given by Jesus in the sermon on the mount, specifically the beatitudes. The world says, “You can change yourself.” God’s wisdom says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” Which means, “I have to realize that I am not God and admit that I am powerless to control my tendency to do the wrong thing. Without God, my life is unmanageable.”
Celebrate Recovery actually does church, discipleship and fellowship the way God really intended it. A bunch of sinners helping other sinners believe the gospel so that we give God a chance to do the work he wants to do in us. This requires a fearless and unhypocritical openness and honesty as we trust each other with who we really are and what we struggle with instead of pretending we’re ok. In this way, being honest about our weaknesses results in our greatest strength.
Another example is that the world’s wisdom says those who are physically weak due to disease, illness, and aging are pretty much useless in the world. But God says that they are just as human and valuable as anybody else. They are also as qualified to run the race of faith as those who have young athletic bodies. It's a spiritual race where God calls us to perseverance in faith so that we receive his power to discard anything that would break our stride or cause us to drop out.
Another example is that the world’s wisdom says you have to compete and work hard to accomplish the American Dream of success. But that actually is just a dream. Jesus says, if you try to save your life you will lose it. The way up is down. God exalts the humble but brings the proud low.
But the most amazing example of the difference between this world’s wisdom and God’s wisdom would be what the Bible calls the foolishness of the cross. Paul spells this out in 1 Corinthians, chapter one, starting in verse 17. He wrote, “For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel—not with wisdom and eloquence, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.”
Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.”
As we apply Godly, biblical wisdom to our present circumstances, let us rejoice that this congregation is so small right now. We have tremendous potential for growth if we grasp God’s wisdom and live by it. For it also says in 1 Cor. 1:27, “God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.” So, would you rather be weak or strong? God says, and James says, rejoice in your weakness and we will end up boasting in God’s great strength!
Now this doesn’t mean that growth is automatic just because we are small. It just means we don’t have to let the size of this congregation be a source of discouragement. As I said last week, healthy things grow. We do need to seek God’s help to discern if there is sin to repent of, or unhealthy habits that we need to work on and seek God’s help and strength for change. We each need to be sure that we are in fact seeking to be filled and controlled by God’s Holy Spirit founded on a saving faith in Jesus Christ.
We need to continue in the book of James and learn the principles of discipleship that he lays out in the weeks ahead and shows us what a healthy Christian looks like and what a healthy church looks like. There are no quick fixes. We have to be in the process of dying to our own ideas and wisdom and learn how to trust in God’s wisdom and power.
Now at first glance, these few verses might seem to be introducing a new subject. We have moved away from trials and troubles and wisdom to deal with money. Now we’re talking about poverty and riches. But, in reality what James is doing here is giving us an example of how God’s wisdom is applied to circumstances. He chose to talk about money issues because money holds one of the strongest grips on the human heart. It is one of the most powerful influences on human ideas about security and power.
In fact, even in the Old Testament we find proverbs about the blessings of wealth. Wealth in and of itself is not a bad thing. Proverbs 3:13-16 is just one example, but a powerful one, that links wisdom and riches as follows. “Blessed are those who find wisdom, those who gain understanding, for she is more profitable than silver and yields better returns than gold. She is more precious than rubies; nothing you desire can compare with her. Long life is in her right hand; in her left hand are riches and honor.”
James is not contradicting that in his teaching. Wise living does tend toward prosperity. But James is simply pointing out that wisdom calls for a wariness about seeking wealth for its own sake instead of wisdom for its own sake. We tend to prefer riches, and we only want enough wisdom to know how to get richer! Wealth does bring blessings and allows wealthy persons to be more generous and a great blessing to the community in which he or she lives. But James reminds us that it is too easy to trust in riches for security in a way that becomes ultimate, in a way that replaces trust in God.
So, in these few verses James shows us one way to apply the wisdom of God to the circumstances of life. Conventional wisdom would say, money is good, the more the better. But James shows how God takes a different view and encourages us to take a similar view. And this goes to both extremes, how to think about poverty and how to think about great riches.
First, he says, “Believers in humble circumstances ought to take pride in their high position.” That does turn things upside down! It’s similar to Jesus saying, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Those who come to Jesus with nothing receive everything he has to offer. What is the high position of the humbly impoverished Christian? God takes special care of those who depend on him for everything. I am reminded of George Mueller, who ran several orphanages in London in the 1800’s. He never did a fund raiser. He felt God had called him to pray and ask only God for the daily needs of the children.
There are several reports of having all the children in the orphanage sit down to dinner even though there was nothing to put on the table. George Mueller led the children in a prayer of thanksgiving for God’s provision. Then there would come a knock at the door. Once the milk man’s cart had broken down and he had to donate all his goods to George because it would spoil before he could get his cart going again. Once a bread vendor had a similar problem when a nearby customer had canceled their order at the last minute, after delivery was on the way. The bread man started to head back to the bakery but decided to stop at George’s house to ask if they could use any.
That’s just one example. It is not to lay down a method. It doesn’t mean: never do a fund raiser. But there is simply a principle here, that those who must depend upon God for finances usually find that he does provide. Their high position is that of knowing that God is doing the blessing and feeling his love for them as expressed in his care for them.
One very easy way for all of us to apply this principle in our own lives is to become very intentional about refusing to hoard money as if we need every penny. We should practice regular giving, or tithing. The world thinks it’s crazy to give your money away, especially when you get no benefit from it, not even any strings attached like having a say in what the church does with the money you donate.
Once while I was working in a furniture factor in Grand Rapids, I was busy with a stack of wooden frame members for office cubicle partitions. All I was doing was filling holes with glue and then pushing a short little dowel in each hole to get them ready for the next step in the assembly process. So while I was standing there with another guy, him on the other end of the stack doing the same mindless task, the foreman comes over and says, “I don’t know guys, sometimes I wonder, what’s the point? I work hard all day and all week to get a paycheck that I spend on food, housing and bills just so I can stay alive and go to work again to earn more money that keeps me alive and healthy to keep on working.”
I said to him, “Carl the way you describe it, if that is really all there is to life, you are right, there is no point. It is pointless. You’re on the hamster wheel, running all day and going nowhere.”
He seemed a bit taken aback at the way I resolved his wondering. He then asked me, “Do you have a point, a reason for living?”
I said, “Sure I do. I live for God and he gives my life meaning and purpose. And he takes care of meeting my needs.”
He came back with, “What purpose? You’re doing the same as me, just working a crumby job so you can stay alive to keep on working. And you’re getting less pay than me! If you’re working for God, why in the world are you working here? If God takes care of all your needs why do you even have to have a job?”
I said, “I have this job because that is the means by which God has decided that my needs should be met for now. I also serve the Lord by going to church, learning about him and what the world needs. I also support the ministry I enjoy by giving some of this money back to God.”
That really seemed to take him by surprise. He said, “You give your money away?”
“Yes, well, not all of it. I do need to pay the bills and God understands about that. But I give Him at least ten percent. It proves that I trust and know that God will meet my needs. And it makes this work I am doing here more than just earning a living. God uses some of the money I make here to spread the gospel. So I am making better use of this money than anybody who just spends it all on himself.”
Here's an idea I heard: 90% is better than 100%. James would agree. Tithing, or giving away 10% of your income, would leave you with 90% of all the money you earn. But that’s better for you than having all 100% because regular planned giving will instill in you the right attitude of not trusting in riches, but instead trusting in God who owns it all anyway.
On the other hand, James says to the wealthy Christians that they should take pride in their humiliation. This is another topsy-turvy surprise because the world thinks that wealthy people ought to be proud of their riches. In fact, there was a strong opinion in those days, and ours too I think, even among the religious people, that wealthy people had been especially blessed by God. Their riches were considered to be God’s reward for careful and faithful living. We’ve mentioned the prosperity gospel before and this thought is a component of that. The teaching goes that God wants you to be rich because you are his royal child. So, if you are not rich, you’re just not having enough faith in God.
But James throws that out the window with this teaching. What is so humiliating about being rich? The fact that it is temporary. It will all fade away. You can’t take it with you. In addition, the security that seems to belong to those who have enough money to buy whatever they need to solve any problem, is a false security that could fade away in a moment’s notice.
Think of how many people learned this during the financial crisis of 2007–2008. It is considered by many economists to have been the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Many people lost thousands, even millions of dollars as they watched their investments lose their value, right before their eyes!
Many of those people were faithful, God honoring Christians too. I’m sure there was a lot of emotion expressed as these people watched their financial security disappear. But I bet rejoicing was rare! Yet, James says they should have rejoiced. They should have taken pride in that humiliation because God was using those circumstances to call people back to a more reliable security, to trust in him rather than in material riches! Christians who possess the godly wisdom James is teaching us about were better able to weather that storm of financial loss than many others who became nearly suicidal when it appeared to them that they had lost everything.
Now I want to give more examples that James could have picked from. I want to spend the rest of my time applying this same kind of wisdom to other areas of life in which Godly wisdom takes a nearly opposite view of things than mere human wisdom would lead us to. In fact, in these next examples we will see why it is that Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1:25, “the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom.”
Strength is my next example. People seem to think that for a leader to be strong means that he has solved all his own problems so that he is fully equipped to help other people solve theirs. But in fact the best leaders are those who know that they are not perfect and are courageous enough to be honest about that. People can more easily relate to someone who has been in their shoes and still walks that way too. Someone who appears to have it all together also appears to be too far ahead of those who need help, so those who wish they could be strong go on believing they can never attain it.
Similarly, church people often put on their best face on Sunday mornings. Probably all of us have at some time had an argument in the car in the way to church. But as soon as you open the door in the parking lot, you’re all smiles to everyone else you meet. People think that if they don’t look like they have it all together, their brothers and sisters would reject them for being not good enough Christians. And sadly, the power of gossip in our communities often upholds this impression. People who are honest about their weaknesses, or are found out, often do get shunned by other Christians.
But here is the dirty little secret about that. The ones doing the shunning are doing it in the effort to deny or hide their shame and guilt about their own shortcomings. Thus, they don’t grow to maturity themselves because they don’t work on their own issues and they also hinder others by making it dangerous to be honest and seek help. But in an opposite atmosphere, where Christians trust each other to be supportive and refuse to be judgmental or spread gossip, vulnerability and authenticity are highly valued and they are the greatest help in making forward progress to greater maturity. On this I speak from personal experience with the Celebrate Recovery ministry.
Celebrate recovery is based on living according to the wisdom of God as given by Jesus in the sermon on the mount, specifically the beatitudes. The world says, “You can change yourself.” God’s wisdom says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” Which means, “I have to realize that I am not God and admit that I am powerless to control my tendency to do the wrong thing. Without God, my life is unmanageable.”
Celebrate Recovery actually does church, discipleship and fellowship the way God really intended it. A bunch of sinners helping other sinners believe the gospel so that we give God a chance to do the work he wants to do in us. This requires a fearless and unhypocritical openness and honesty as we trust each other with who we really are and what we struggle with instead of pretending we’re ok. In this way, being honest about our weaknesses results in our greatest strength.
Another example is that the world’s wisdom says those who are physically weak due to disease, illness, and aging are pretty much useless in the world. But God says that they are just as human and valuable as anybody else. They are also as qualified to run the race of faith as those who have young athletic bodies. It's a spiritual race where God calls us to perseverance in faith so that we receive his power to discard anything that would break our stride or cause us to drop out.
Another example is that the world’s wisdom says you have to compete and work hard to accomplish the American Dream of success. But that actually is just a dream. Jesus says, if you try to save your life you will lose it. The way up is down. God exalts the humble but brings the proud low.
But the most amazing example of the difference between this world’s wisdom and God’s wisdom would be what the Bible calls the foolishness of the cross. Paul spells this out in 1 Corinthians, chapter one, starting in verse 17. He wrote, “For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel—not with wisdom and eloquence, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.”
Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.”
As we apply Godly, biblical wisdom to our present circumstances, let us rejoice that this congregation is so small right now. We have tremendous potential for growth if we grasp God’s wisdom and live by it. For it also says in 1 Cor. 1:27, “God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.” So, would you rather be weak or strong? God says, and James says, rejoice in your weakness and we will end up boasting in God’s great strength!
Now this doesn’t mean that growth is automatic just because we are small. It just means we don’t have to let the size of this congregation be a source of discouragement. As I said last week, healthy things grow. We do need to seek God’s help to discern if there is sin to repent of, or unhealthy habits that we need to work on and seek God’s help and strength for change. We each need to be sure that we are in fact seeking to be filled and controlled by God’s Holy Spirit founded on a saving faith in Jesus Christ.
We need to continue in the book of James and learn the principles of discipleship that he lays out in the weeks ahead and shows us what a healthy Christian looks like and what a healthy church looks like. There are no quick fixes. We have to be in the process of dying to our own ideas and wisdom and learn how to trust in God’s wisdom and power.
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