James

Judgment on the Rich

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Judgment on the Rich

Genre: Sermon

Lesson: 14 of 16

Track: #32

Year:

Dictation Name: RR328Q32

[Rushdoony] Let us worship God. It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord and to sing praises unto Thy name oh most high, to show forth Thy loving kindness in the morning, and Thy faithfulness every night. Let us pray.

Our Lord and Our God we thank Thee that Thy mercies never fail, they are new every morning, they surround us with Thy protecting care. Give us grace therefore to be grateful, to rejoice in Thee, and to know that Thy promises unto us are yeah and amen for all eternity. We come into Thy presence again to give ourselves to the study of Thy word; instruct us, teach us in the way that we should go, and give us obedient hearts. In Christ’s name, amen.

Our scripture is James the fifth chapter verses one through six. The subject: Judgment on the Rich. James 5:1-6. “Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. 2 Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth eaten. 3 Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days. 4 Behold, the hire of the laborers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth. 5 Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter. 6 Ye have condemned and killed the just; and he doth not resist you.”

Without a knowledge of Acts 6 verses 1-8 it is almost impossible to understand our text. In Acts 6:1 following we see first that the early church, following and improving on the synagogues practice, took care of all needy widows, of all needy people. Second, the deacons were appointed to carry on this duty. In Greco-Roman practice rich patrons commonly took care of poor clients in return for praise and adulation from them. Statist welfare was supplanting this practice. In Judaism the care of the needy was a religious duty, and this the Christian synagogue, or church, carried on. The picture then is this; in Rome and throughout the Roman Empire the very wealthy took care of welfare in their area. This was done not out of any religious duty but as a way of building up a following, they would take care of these people who would sing their praises, and they would have an amen chorus perpetually. In Judaism the practice was to do all you could for the poor and the needy as a religious duty.

Now Statist welfarism was coming in, Rome was beginning to feed, or had for a while been feeding, all those who were in need. As a result the old Roman practice was disappearing and also the Biblical practice of a personal care for the needy; it was a period of transition. Many converts, both Jews and Gentiles alike felt liberated from the old requirements. The growing emphasis on individualism within the empire left many unready to maintain the old requirements of God’s law, or Greco-Roman practice. The part of individualism in this was considerable, and also in our problems today. We have see conservatism for some time exult individualism, rugged individualism. But because it has become progressively irreligious, even anti-Christian, what has happened is that Statist welfarism has replaced a Christian concern.

So there was a real problem. Not only were the requirements of charity neglected but the law of Leviticus 19:13 regarding prompt pay was also set aside, there was neither charity nor justice. Now the law of Leviticus 19:13 had to do with paying a man his wages at the end of the day’s work. Most work then was in terms of day wages. You went to work, if there were enough people who were brought in for the work it was done in the day, if not two or three days. A good deal of it was harvesting; now any of you who have grown up on a farm know that you cannot predict that it will be one, two, or three days. You go out there and you start, say picking the peaches, and you find that there are a fair number there that are not ready to pick as you get up on the ladder and start picking, so you may leave a third of the tree unpicked and you finish in a day or a day and a half, you come back a couple days later. So how do you pay? Day wages, and that was the practice in antiquity as it was not to many years ago in this country. Why require a man to come back a week later, or a month later, and stand around and wait while you decide whether you are ready to pay him or not. It is injustice, it is fraud.

For James this meant that judgment was on the way, as indeed it was. We see that the early church developed a strong faithfulness to charity and justice, and no doubt James letter contributed greatly to this change. For the present however the situation was an evil one, and James is unsparing. He tells the rich who are unjust and uncharitable to weep and howl because of the miseries that will soon overwhelm them. This is strong language, but strong was the judgment that soon came.

James indictment first is that their wealth will turn to rust and moth. We can understand that costly woolen garments can be moth-eaten. But gold and silver do not rust, and James knew that full well. This is therefore a startling image, what James says is that the most secure forms of wealth and security will turn against them by God’s judgment. Their plans for security have experience behind them, but James warning has God’s judgment behind it. Their gold and silver will eat their flesh as it were fire “ye have heaped treasure together for the last days” the last days does not mean the end of the world, but God’s judgment repeatedly in history. A sound plan for security that leaves out God becomes a death-dealing fire.

Second they had been unjust in their treatment of their workers, they have held back the wages of workers, paying them as late as possible. The cries of their defrauded workers have been heard by the Lord of Sabaoth, by the Lord of Hosts literally, but the term means “by the omnipotent God.” Are they so foolish as to think that the omnipotent and all powerful God will not judge them? Their treatment of the poor workers shows not only a contempt for these poor people, but also for the God that commanded that justice be done them. Because the working man then was a day laborer as we have seen, he was to be paid by the day. Now men work by the week or month, and they must be paid accordingly. The point of Leviticus 19:23 is that the worker must be paid faithfully as contracted.

Then third; James declares that these rich men have been mindless of their evil and their self-indulgence. They have been like cattle, which up to the time of their butchering eat and are mindless of the coming slaughter. These rich men have lived wantonly, and in terms of their pleasure as though nothing would ever change. They have condemned and murdered the just man, a man who in no way was resisting them or capable of resisting them; it was a Hebrew idiom to characterize the exploitation of the poor as a form of murder, and there is a great truth in it. Any time anyone is treated unjustly it’s a form of killing him. It killed the man’s ability to survive and it reduced the poor to a position near to death. James deals bluntly, very bluntly, with the problem of irresponsible wealth. He does not offer a political solution, it is not the duty of the state to take care of the poor. Had he thought so he could have appealed to the then current example of Rome and its state welfarism. He sees poverty not as a political problem, but as a moral problem. Paul states it as a commandment in II Thessalonians 3:10 that if any would not work, neither shall he eat. Those who could not work were to be provided for by the people of God. It may seem impossible to us, but in a good deal of history Christians have taken care of the poor.

James thus was attacking those who felt liberated from the law and who were disregarding their religious and moral obligations to be members one of another. Perhaps they assumed that because the world was changing, so too their regard for and obedience to God’s ancient law had changed. Moral relativism in any age is corrosive of law and society. Moral relativism to often seeks to take off what it sees as the rough edges of God’s law, but in so doing it supplants God’s word with man’s. Erosion then sets in to destroy the whole of the law.

When Christians handled welfare the poor were not as numerous as they appear to be now. They were helping those who needed help, and working to enable others to find work, or teaching them job skills. Whenever the state has taken over welfare it has begun to expand exponentially as more and more people join, for one reason or another, the ranks of the unemployed.

James is writing condemning the arrogance of the rich, they have replaced God’s law and their conscience and the consequence will soon be judgment unless they repent. Before long we see Paul collecting funds for the famine in Judea from churches in other countries. Clearly James letter had prepared the way for this because there were no dissenters to this moral obligation to be members one of another. Christian charity grew rapidly to the care of not only needy fellow members but of all needy peoples, its faithfulness to the extent of God’s law was noticeable. One of the aspects of the early church that commended it to unbelievers was its remarkable concern for and care of peoples in need; their own and also the needy among their pagan neighbors.

We need again the letter of James to revivify the church in this respect. There are already evidences of a renewed emphasis on Christian works of mercy. Statist welfare has always grown until it has destroyed the whole society, unless it is renounced, unless it is terminated. It reaches the point where there is not enough money that can be extracted, even by torture, from the haves to feed the have not. Let us pray.

Our Father we give thanks unto Thee for James’s letter, we thank Thee that it speaks to our time as to all times. Awaken us to our responsibility one to another, revive Thy church oh Lord and make us again a force for righteous. We thank Thee for the movements that have begun to bring about a change, and we pray that Thou wilt grant prosperity to them that they may flourish for Thy names sake. In Christ’s name, amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson?

It is an interesting thing that Christians are very, very active in furthering charity the world over. The hardest place is here in this country; there are so many rules and regulations that wipe out any attempt by Christians to be charitable, more than a few just here in California alone, food kitchens to feed the needy have been shut down because they have not met the regulations of some bureaucrat . This does not they have not been good, clean, effective work, they just have not met technical regulations.

One of the reasons why, for example, it is easier now for Christians to do charitable work in Mexico is that the whole of the controls is breaking down, everything is so totally controlled that nobody can control anything anymore or bothers to. We have not reached that point here, as yet.

If there are no questions let us conclude with prayer.

Our Father we give thanks unto Thee that we are Thine, that by Thy sovereign grace Thou hast made us Thy people. Give us grateful hearts and also responsible hearts that we may obey Thee, that we may serve Thee with all our heart, mind, and being in those things to which Thou doest call us. Make us effectual for Thy kingdom. And now go in peace; God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost bless you and keep you, guide and protect you, this day and always, amen.