halves are considered the winners and the have-nots are called losers. Material possessions therefore are a real trial and it takes the wisdom of God to navigate the waters of what you have to make sure that it doesn't have you. And that's why we need what God proclaims in our text this morning, which is this, our theme, God's good news for the failing poor and rich. First, we have to face the bad news of our poverty and riches. And lastly, we have to rest in God's good news for both the poor and the rich. So here's the theme again, God's good news for the failing poor and rich. First, facing the bad news of our poverty and riches, and second, resting in God's good news for the poor and rich. This text teaches us economics in the light of eternity. Now, some people think that James is jumping around from topic to topic without much connection, but I'm not convinced. The letter begins abruptly with trials and the wisdom that we need to pray for in order to overcome those trials. And then James right away presents us with the greatest trial you will face in your life, for most of us anyway, poverty or riches. Now, I don't have to convince you that poverty is a trial, do I? Does anyone respect or look up to the poor? Not without God's wisdom. The poor are neither honored nor admired in our culture. They're used by the politicians wanting votes. Do children look at the poor and those who have very little and say, I want to be just like that person? Has any of your children ever looked at a homeless person or a drug addict on the streets of Lethbridge and said, Mom, I want to be just like that person? We don't give out medals for being poor. No one sets up parades or special receptions for the poor. They're pitied, maybe, ignored, despised, abused. The poor can have a very hard time getting justice in the court systems. The poor so often feel overwhelmed and helpless in their needs. They desperately wonder, where's my next meal going to come from? Think of the many refugees, the millions of them in this world, packed in tent camps with no privacy at all. So many barriers in the way of such people gaining the liberties and comforts and peace of mind that you and I take for granted every single day. We live in a very materialistic culture as Madonna likes to croon in her lyrics, I am a material girl and I live in a material world. We've de-spiritualized everything and declared that there is no eternity, there's just money and what money can buy. Right now is all there is and you need to get as much as you can get for yourself and it's what you have that makes life worth living and such a culture looks at the poor and finds nothing to celebrate. And if the game is material possessions and pleasures, then the poor man is miserably lost and the poor woman will always remain a loser. Now our culture does have its poor, not nearly as many as most parts of the world or most parts of history, but it does have them. And yet I dare say that none of us really qualify as poor. Oh, some of us have our cares and financial stresses, and I don't mean to belittle those. But really, if you're honest, those are about luxuries, not necessities. Food, clothing, and shelter are the only things you really need. The Bible says if you have food and clothing, be content with that. Everything above and beyond really is a luxury. Do you realize that a quarter of the world's population would love to move into and live in your garage and that they would consider it a major upgrade and a massive privilege to do so? A hundred million people are predicted to starve through the COVID shutdown. And I don't think anyone from this congregation listening is worried about starving. You are not poor. And when James wrote this letter, the majority of the people he had in mind fit this category. These Christian Jews had lost so much because of persecution. Some of them had lost houses and lands and a share in the family business. They had to leave everything behind and scatter the persecution and flee in an agricultural economy. They were just one below average growing season from being in real trouble. They're despised by the Gentiles for being Jews and they're despised by the Jews for being Christians. And is it any wonder if someone who struggles like this becomes beaten down and discouraged and feels so worried and worthless in their own eyes? I'm not speaking to the poor this morning. Our congregation doesn't have them. And yet it is important that we see the poor like Jesus did. You see, in Jesus' times, the Pharisees said that the size of your bank account showed you how much God approved or disapproved of you. They saw suffering poor people as, well, they're just getting what they deserve. Obviously, they're not serving God and living God's way, and so God is punishing them. And that's why the disciples are completely astonished when Jesus looks at them and says to them, do you know how hard it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven? It's easier for a camel to crawl through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to be saved. And the disciples are astonished because that turns everything the Pharisees taught them upside down. And they look at each other and they say, well, if the rich people can't be saved, who then can be saved? Because then God doesn't approve of anybody. It's good for a moment to think just how much emphasis God places on caring for the poor. Jesus in Mark 10, the passage of the rich young ruler, tells him the one thing you're missing in your life is a ministry to the poor. Jesus in Luke 4.18 describes his own ministry as being anointed to preach the gospel to the poor. What he was able to do, he was one of them. He had no regular income and no home to live in. Yes, he also spoke to the spiritually poor as blessed by God, but we shouldn't separate that from physical poverty per se either. Romans 15, Paul is eager to travel with the collections gathered for the poor. Galatians 2, Paul and the apostles in Jerusalem agree on this one thing. They're very eager to serve the poor, not just with the gospel, but with help in their desperate needs. These are only a small handful of all the texts that could be quoted. And that at least begs the question for us, do you see the poor the same way your Lord does? Why is it that God has given some people in this world far more than they need and has given others so little? Also Christians. because he wants to testify to the world through the changed hearts and lives of the rich and poor just how the gospel takes hold and changes your attitude about what matters most. What a trial then poverty is, both for the poor and those who react to the poor with compassion or contempt and negligence. But then James mentions a second trial, and the trial of riches. And I can almost see your amazed glances through your computer screens. Is riches a trial? Is that something to be concerned about, to pray about, to long to be set free from? One poor person once said it like this, I know it's no sin to be poor, but it's no pleasure either. And if riches are a curse, this man said, well, then please smite me with it. Why do people say things like this? Well, what doors do riches open in this present world? Money seems to open pretty much any door. What do most elections boil down to? Money. The rich are coddled, feared, respected, honored, and even, in some ways, worshipped. Riches can buy you the best seats, the best education, the best work, the best opportunity, the most pleasures. Riches, who gets elected to public office? Usually the rich because they seem to have all the power. Forbes Magazine in the United States publishes every year the list of the top 500 most wealthy people in the world, and most of them are billionaires. And rich people actually argue when the list comes out about whether they've been placed high enough on it or not. No one looks at a poor man and says he's living the life I would like to live, but how many drive past a luxury mansion or the expensive car and mutter to themselves, I wish I had that, and jump into the claws of the green-eyed monster. Young people, imagine someone gave you a choice. You can either be poor and struggle all your life long to make ends meet and yet have great spiritual character and real happiness in your relationships, or you can make the Forbes list of billionaires and have a miserable family life. Which would you choose? And don't think of the rich here only as billionaires. The richer the people who have more than they need, people who can enjoy luxuries, people who can get a decent education and have access to good health care, and people who don't have to wonder where tomorrow's meal is coming from. And that means all of us are rich. All of us are suffering the trial of riches. If there's a truly poor person listening this morning, I don't have to convince you that your poverty is a trial, but I do have to, with God's help, convince the rich listening that your riches are a great trial. Why? Is there something sinful about riches? No. God has given some of his people great riches, riches obtained by honest work, not by fraud or abuse. But why then are riches a great trial? Well, first this, because riches dull your heart and eyes to the weight of eternity and the things that matter most. You think you don't need God for anything because you can pay for whatever money can buy, and yet a sense of need and dependence is the foundation on which all real spiritual life begins. This week I listened to the sad testimony of a pastor serving a church in Dubai. The riches in Dubai are incredible. They say you can go to a different mall in the city of Dubai every week and not hit the mall in a year. Eighty percent of the construction cranes in the world are in Dubai. In fact, they joke it's the national bird. New members enter the church and they enter with bright eyes and ready to serve the gospel. And after two years, most of them have lost all their missionary zeal and are caught up in their luxuries. And it's considered a success to get them to show up to worship now and then, let alone participate in the life and ministry of the church. And as for getting people to church during the week in Dubai, you can forget it. In poor areas of the world, Christians gather almost daily for fellowship and prayer and instruction. But even in our society, the midweek meeting is pretty thin. Riches give us eternity amnesia. Children, you know what this is? If you have an accident and hit your head hard, then the person can totally forget who he is, can forget his own name, his family, his everything. And riches are a knock on the head spiritually. Because they easily, and dare I say, because we're sinners, almost automatically knock eternity completely out of your mind. And all you can see at the moment is your gadgets and your stuff. And second riches are a very great trial because they have a way of corrupting your heart and hardening your heart with a stinking pride, a miserable pride. I hear reformed people too sometimes say things like this. Anyone who's poor in our culture got that way by making foolish choices. And don't help them, all their troubles are self-inflicted and they don't deserve or need our help. When Jesus said, If you did it to one of the least of these, my brothers, he calls the poor, you did it to me. And if you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me. I was once on a flight to the Netherlands and was seated in the first row cabin. Or I should say, not in the first row cabin, I wish. But there I go again. The wrong kind of riches. I was seated in the first row behind the first row cabin. And of course, you know I have long legs. And I thought, this is great. I can stretch them. And so I put my shoe underneath the curtain separating it. And it was, of course, behind the seat back. So I thought, this is great. And 10 minutes later, a flight attendant came, looking uncomfortable with the chore assigned to her, but telling me that my foot was bothering the first class passengers. the snooty arrogance. The tip of my shoe was not even considered worthy of being behind a seat in the first class section. Yet how easily that same arrogance can rise in us when we see the homeless in our own area. When you are arrogant, And when you look down on others because of what they have or don't have, you are greatly dishonoring God. You are hardening your heart, and the deceitfulness of riches is squeezing out the love of God and your neighbor, and you're saying to yourself, I'm a success because of what I have. Who is in danger, the greatest danger of being the double-minded man of verse 8? The rich. Because they can easily afford to maintain a double life, one on Sunday, or when church people are looking in a totally different life elsewhere. Where you dive into all the pleasures the world has to offer when you think you're out of sight and nobody recognizes you. And you develop friends and pleasures that seduce and warp your soul. And you tell yourself, well, I'm a Christian. But if you read the end of verse James, you're one of those people who, as soon as you walk away from the Word of God, the mirror, forget what you saw and do your own thing, and you deceive your own soul. And Jesus said this, you know. James is just echoing Jesus here. Remember the parable of the sower? Some of the good seed of the gospel falls among the thorns. What are the thorns? Well, Jesus mentions two things. First of all, there's the cares and worries of life. You could call it the trial of poverty and its stresses. That's not all. Second, the deceitfulness of riches. In other words, both riches and poverty choke out the word so that it becomes unfruitful. Riches are just as big a threat, perhaps a bigger threat to spiritual life than poverty. And that's why James here spends twice as much time on the rich as he does to the poor in this text. Whether you are rich and poor or poor, therefore, you are in great spiritual trial, perhaps the trial of your life. What are you doing about it? Are you living steadfastly resisting the temptations of riches and poverty or are you blinded by them? Does your view of what makes real riches and what makes real poverty line up with God's? Maybe you hear all this this morning and you say, I feel like a complete fool. Lord, give me real wisdom. Clear my head. Knock some sense into my heart, please. Well, James is a good pastor. He doesn't leave it with putting his finger on the sore spots. He gives, in this passage, the gospel cure for both riches and poverty, and that's our second point, resting in God's good news for the poor and for the rich. So what is God's good news to those battered by the trial of poverty? God turns our messed up values upside down as a culture. And he has James give us what seems to be the ultimate paradox. A paradox is simply a contradiction. It seems like two things that don't fit together. And a paradox is simply this, the truth standing upside down and shouting to get our attention. The truth that shows us we are the ones upside down and we are the ones who are mixed up. And James does this by teaching each of us what it is that you should be boasting in. Now we tend to think of bragging and boasting as wrong, right? Isn't that what your parents teach you children? Don't brag. But the Greek word here shouldn't really be translated as bragging. I'm not sure what the best one-word translation is, but if I had to pick one, I would probably pick the word glory in because the word boasting is about properly identifying what gives you in your life honor or shame. What is it that honors you? What is it that you should be ashamed of? What should you glory in and be thrilled about and see worthwhile and see as a real blessing? What should the Christian poor rejoice in and glory in? Their riches. Verse nine, let the poor person rejoice in that he is exalted, meaning lifted on high. Say what? And again, James is just being like Jesus here. Remember the letter Jesus wrote to the struggling, persecuted, poor congregation of Smyrna in Revelation 2. He said to them, I know your works. I know your tribulation. I know your poverty. And then he adds, but you are rich. Two of the best weeks of my whole life I spent in Asia serving the persecuted church. sitting in a pastor's meeting listening to the translator as the reports were read of a new congregation. They'd been at church for only six months and they realized that a real church is a missionary church. And so we have to be evangelists and they sent a missionary to the next village and not having the money to pay a regular salary the families of the church each gave up one week's grocery money to get the missionary started. And during that week these families were fasting and praying for their new missionary. Now you tell me Are these people poor? Who's the poor one and who's the rich one? When you imagine yourself sitting next to them this morning, they won't let poverty get in the way of missionary zeal. And we think luxuries are more important. The gospel to such despised, persecuting, suffering Christians is found in one little word in verse 9. Brother, do you realize what this is saying? Sinners born as enemies of God, whether you're born with a golden spoon in your mouth or born wailing because of your poverty and desperation and hunger, enemies of God. But when God through Christ embraces such a poor sinner, he or she becomes rich at that moment with true and lasting riches. And Jesus said it too, didn't he? Earthly riches can be stolen, they can break, they can rust, but true riches in heaven can never be lost. For when you become a brother, that means God is your Father. He owns the world and all that's in it, and you are a joint heir with Jesus Christ. Not just of some things, but of all things. There's nothing God has made that He doesn't say to you, this is now yours because it's mine and you're mine. Now you might not see it yet, and you might not enjoy it yet. But there is nothing that can keep you from entering, as a Christian poor believer, the real riches that God has in store for you. Not all this world and all its suffering and losses can keep you out of eternal joys and glories. This is the highest exalting a human being can receive, even in this present world, to be an heir of such riches. God is called the Most High for a reason, and when he adopts sinners through Christ into his family, they are the most high people in the world, not the Forbes list of billionaires. And for those who are Christian brothers of Jesus Christ, they're rich in righteousness made right with God through Christ, rich in love because the love of God is poured out in their hearts through the Holy Spirit, rich in faith for they can live such cheery, thankful lives. I still remember a woman who came to my parents when they were missionaries in Nigeria. It was snack time. My mother was just handing out to all of us a cookie and a glass of water, and so she got one too. And she just had to bow her head and thank God for the amazing gift of a cookie. And I can tell you that the little Mordechs had always gobbled their cookies without any thought that God had given them anything noteworthy. I ask you, who was rich and who was poor, when you imagine that woman bowing her head in amazement. And is this not what keeps the Christian poor going? That God is their riches. You know, of course, that we as a congregation have sponsored a young Christian woman and her brother as refugees. They're desperate right now, hardly anything to eat, afraid of arrest and deportation, and yet she can speak so brightly about all that God has done for her and all that God will do for her, and of all God's goodness and faithfulness to her. And if you listen to her for just 10 minutes, it would never enter your mind to call her poor. You would say, she's rich. Rich in the things that matter most, rich in the things that last forever, in the things that cannot be lost. There's good news in this passage for the rich in Christ, too, and it's found in verses 10 and 11. The rich should boast or glory or be thrilled about what? About being made low. The rich man should boast too. There's good news for them, for us. Doesn't boasting come natural to the rich? How often such people brag about their success. Look what I have, look what I did. I heard a radio program once about the luxury market. It's not about getting what you pay for, it's being able to brag you paid the most for it. So people brag, for example, in New York State for getting an $800 haircut, although a $50 one would look just as nice, but it's so that you can go to your friends and say, look what I spent on a haircut. God says the rich should boast too in their poverty, in their being made low. That's God's good news for the rich. You're low. In what way is that good news for the rich? Well, the rich need to realize you are dying. You think you're so important, so invincible to bad news. You think that your whole life is going to unfold when and how and where you want it, but you're going to be brought low in a moment. And James uses as an illustration the wildflowers and the grass. And in Israel, the east wind, it's dreaded. It's called the Sirocco. It's the withering wind. And when the wind shifts and comes from the east, The air clears and the dry desert air comes in and the sun beats down and wildflowers have been known to wilt in seconds when that wind hits them. People are just as fragile. I don't have to convince you of that. We felt it painfully as a church the last year. But why is this good news? Why is it good news for the rich that you are like a flower and that you will die, first is? It injects a much-needed dose of humility in your heart. God is not at all impressed with your riches. It doesn't make you one bit more worthwhile than anybody else in the world. Your bank account doesn't indicate his approval any more than the homeless beggar. Death is the wages of sin, the reminder that no matter how high and successful and powerful and praised and celebrated you are on earth, to God you are nothing but a sinner in and of yourself. Who gave you all you have, assuming you came by it honestly? God. Who blessed your work? Who gave you the insight, skill, opportunity, background, and blessing that led to your riches? God and God alone. Is God supposed to be impressed with the things He gave you? Hardly. When you go to the funeral home, the morgue, The rich and poor are laid out and they all are in the same position. The homeless beggar who died from an overdose and the man who was on the Forbes list are identical in their death. Job said it like this, naked I came into this world and naked I will leave it. Proverbs says, the rich and the poor meet here. The Lord is the maker of them both and the judge of them both. And God doesn't consider the amount of things you have and your net worth to be the real measure of your success and your character. He measures how you saw your things. Did you have them or did they have you? Were they your identity or did you just manage them for God? Did you glory in the things that ought to be your shame? And were you ashamed of the things in which you ought to glory? God in his grace and his word. God knows that the rich need a constant helping of humble pie. That's the best thing he could do for you. One pastor tells the story of going to the cemetery to visit the grave of his son, and he noticed that in the older part of the cemetery, no one actually ever visited. There were no flowers there, no well-kept grave sites. You know why not? Because those people had passed away a couple of generations ago now, and there was no one left to visit their graves. Do you think it makes any difference whether the people buried in that older section of the cemetery were poor or rich? The one might have a fancier stone than the other, but they both end up in the same place, in the ground, next to each other. Two men once met on a bus. The topic of the conversation was a very wealthy man who had died, and the first one said, do you know how much he left behind? And the other one said, everything. He left it all. I've said it to you often, something my pastor used to say when I was a teenager in Colorado, you've never seen a U-Haul traveling behind the hearse on the way to the cemetery. There's a second reason why the coming humiliation of death is the good news that the rich need in this present world. And this will only seem like good news to you if you value what God values. If your heart has been made alive by the grace of God, if the miracle, if what is impossible with men has been done in your heart because it's possible with God, then he has shown you what your real riches are. It's character and godliness and integrity and faithfulness and generosity. And when you come to that conviction, your bank account becomes a daily trial to you. because it dulls your spiritual eyesight. It's a threat to your faith. It's a rival to the love of your heart. It's a brutal test if your loyalty is undivided or not. Oh, the trial, the burden of riches. But the day is coming for the rich in Christ when you can leave all that behind. Never again will those riches threaten you with spiritual coldness and self-sufficiency and pride. Oh, happy day, the rich in Christ will say, when I can lay aside that trial forever, it'll be the best day of my life when I can leave it all and when the things that matter to God now will always and only matter to me. What about you? You're rich, so am I. What's your attitude to these riches? Does the green-eyed monster have you, or do you see those riches as God's trial to teach you generous love? Do you keep running into the cave of the green-eyed monster, or do you avoid it like the plague? I read a saying this week actually that made me sad. It's this, this generation makes more money than our parents ever did, but we give less. It's sad if it's true of you. What a relief then to lay aside such a trial forever. You see, Jesus didn't just write a letter to Smyrna. He also wrote one to Laodicea. And I quote him now. I know your works. You're neither hot or cold. I'm going to spit you out of my mouth. Why? because you say I'm rich and increased with goods and I need nothing and you don't even know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked, to put it in contemporary language, if you are rich but you don't have Christ, you are more to be pitied and worse off than the homeless drug addict at the controversial self-shoot up center. And you don't even know it because you're blind. Is there someone listening whose soul has been so deadened by riches that that's you? If you remain obsessed with earth's riches, you will never become truly rich. You're the poorest person on the planet. Oh, repent of your sin, surrender to Christ, recognize what true poverty and riches are. What is impossible with men, the salvation of the rich, is possible with God through Christ. Now, I don't know about you, but this passage leaves me humbled before God. You and I need to get on our knees and say to the gracious Redeemer, the Lord Jesus, Lord, so often I get it wrong. So often I celebrate the wrong riches and I fret about the things that are not nearly as important as I make them out to be. And the rich Christ who went from the cross to the crown has a gracious answer for such people. Even after he writes what he does to the Laodiceans, he says this, and I quote, I counsel you, Jesus says, to buy from me gold tried and purified by fire so that you can be rich. What does it cost? unconditional surrender to Him. But it's all gonna burn anyway when Christ returns. And yet the riches He gives to sinners and the lowly last forever. Jesus goes on, I counsel you to buy white clothing from me so that the shame of your nakedness is covered. He can cover you with the white robes of Christ's righteousness. He says, I can anoint your eyes with eyesalve so that you will start to see clearly and understand what real riches are and aren't. Jesus says, as many as I love, I rebuke. Be zealous, therefore, and repent. It's the love of Jesus Christ that is reflected in the stinging rebukes of this text. Behold, Jesus said to the church at Laodicea, I stand at the door and knock. What a thing. Can you imagine? Imagine we're all here in the church building again. We're in a service and the doorbell's buzzing. It's Jesus. He was locked out. Can't come in, won't come in. Why? Well, because of our attitude towards riches and poverty. What a thing to say to a church. You've locked me out. You've locked me out." But he knocks and he promises and he says, those who hear my voice and open the door will have fellowship with me. You don't need to pray to be made poor. You need to pray to be made wise. For your problem as a sinner is neither physical poverty nor physical riches, but the foolish heart that's led astray by and therefore misuses them both. And your cure is the wisdom of God through Christ that can make you truly wise. As many as I love, I rebuke, Christ says. Why? Because in the cross, he gives you the solution to your folly. Then you start to pray with a Puritan, Richard Bailey, don't you? Lord, stamp eternity on my eyeballs. Eternal economics in Jesus Christ. Amen.