Would you take your copy of the scripture now, please, and open it to James, chapter 5. James, chapter 5. I'll be reading verses 1 to 6, and while I had intended to make it all the way through those six verses, well, you know me. We'll be looking at verses 1 to 3, but I want to read verses 1 to 6 so you can have the full context. James, chapter 5, beginning in verse 1. Come now, you rich cry, howling over your miseries which are coming upon you. Your riches have rotted. Your garments have become moth-eaten. Your gold and your silver have rusted. And their corrosion will be a witness against you and will consume your flesh like fire. You have stored up such treasure in the last days. Behold, the pay of the laborers who mowed your fields, that which has been withheld by you, cries out against you. And the outcries of those who did the harvesting have reached the ears of the Lord of Sabbath. And you have lived luxuriously on the earth and lived in self-indulgence. fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the righteous man. He does not resist you. Father, this is your word. And a convicting word it is. So Father, I pray this morning that you would help us to have our hearts set right about the issue of money, riches, and the love of it. Father, we want to be yours wholly. We want to be yours in that we love you alone and supremely, and that you would have first place in our hearts and everything. Father, we pray that as we look at your Word today, you would guard us from the love of money, that you would have first place in our hearts in all things. It's in Jesus' name we ask it. Amen. One of the many things that I love about Scripture is the clarity with which it speaks. Just one topic about which it gives incredible clarity to us is the topic or the issue of money. God has specific purposes for wealth and how it is to be used to glorify Him. 1 Timothy 6, verses 17 to 19 gives us several of those. Just listen while I read that text. 1 Timothy 6, verses 17 to 19. Paul writes to Timothy, command those who are rich in this present age. not to be haughty, or to set their hope on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly supplies us with all things to enjoy. Command them to do good and to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is life Indeed. Paul gives several important cautions in this text regarding wealth. The wealthy are not to be haughty. They're not to be proud because of their wealth. They are to set their hope in God and not on money. Why? Because it is fleeting. God is the one who gives riches and God is the one who supplies us with everything. And so our security is in Him, it is not in wealth. So instead of that, they are to use their wealth in ways that glorify God and not spend it on their own whims. They are to use it to do good for others. They are to be rich in serving God faithfully. They are to be generous with the money that God has given and eager to share it with others. They're not to store up wealth. but instead store up that which will bring reward in heaven. To put it simply, the purpose of wealth is not to hoard it. The purpose of wealth is not to keep it for yourself. The purpose of wealth is to be a conduit of blessing to others and to support the work of ministry. That is its purpose. That is its purpose. And that is what happens when the gift of riches from God is used rightly and used to great effect. Money can be a marvelous servant. And there is much that it can be used for, much that it can be used to accomplish for God and for his kingdom and for others. But when you turn that on its head, when wealth becomes what we love rather than God, there is tremendous danger in it. Money is a tremendous servant, but it is a brutal master. And having money as your master is a terrible, ruthless, unyielding slavery to you. And it leads to destruction, it leads to misery, it leads to pain, and it leads to death. And when you love money for what it can give you or how it will fulfill your desires and your pleasures, you are no longer serving God, but you are serving money. In Matthew chapter six, verse 24, Jesus said, no one can serve two masters for either he will hate the one and he will love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth. Dear friend, you don't want money for your master. You don't want to use it to provide all of your whims and your lusts and your pleasures, because when you do that, you love money for money's sake. And like all other false gods, and that is what it becomes, like all other false gods and all other idols, those who love money commit adultery with it against God. And so, like all other false gods, money has its lovers. You don't want to be numbered among them. In fact, the central idea of this text, I think, is best summed up by the words of another text of Scripture, so I'm actually borrowing that for our central idea for this text, and that central idea comes from 1 Timothy 6, verse 10, and it says this. The love of money is a root of all sorts. The love of money is a root of all sorts of evils. And again, that's 1 Timothy 6, verse 10. And James does a masterful job in these six verses detailing those evils for us. In this text, I've got five headings for you. There's only two that we're gonna be able to see today. Only two we have time for today. And the first one is this. The love of money leads to judgment. The love of money leads to judgment. This is verse one, look at it again. Come now you rich, cry, howling over your miseries which are coming upon you. James begins verse one for us the same way that he began chapter four, verse 13. Do you remember that? Back up just a few verses in your Bible and look at that. We started off last week with this. Come now you who say today or tomorrow we'll go to such and such a city and spend a year there and engage in business and make profit. Now chapter five, verse one, come now you rich, cry, howling over your miseries which were coming upon you. The structure in the Greek of those two verses at the beginning of them is identical. It's again a call for them to pay attention, to listen well to James' words that he's about to say. And as we said last week, the same thing applies here. You could translate this, now listen you. And what he has to remind them of here is very serious. The first group he said that to, we saw this last week, starting in chapter four, verse 13. The first group he said that to were those who lived as if God did not exist. We called them last week the practicing atheists or the practical atheists. They ignored the sovereignty of God in favor of their own desires and their own pursuits. They ignored the sovereignty of God in favor of making profit over obeying God and seeking His will. The rich that he's confronting here in these verses are doing a very similar thing. They're using the excess of material wealth that God has blessed them with, but instead of being a conduit through which wealth flowed to others and to support God's work, these people stopped up the conduit at themselves and became ponds of stagnant water, if you will. They wouldn't allow the blessing of God to flow to others. These people have what they needed, and then they have more. And then they have an excess above that. The word rich here is the Greek word plosios, and it means an abundance of earthly possessions. Listen, an abundance of earthly possessions that exceeds normal experience. So this isn't just what you need. It's not just wealth above what you need. It's excessive wealth above the wealth above what you need. So this is material wealth beyond what we would see even as normal for the rich. They have everything imaginable and never or almost never share it with others. And so because they have ignored God and his lavish blessing to him and then chose to use it all on themselves, James informs them judgment is coming. Judgment is coming, and one of the realities we need to understand here is that God cares what you do with the blessings that He has given to you. And the truth is, they don't belong to you. They are His. And whatever blessings you and I receive in this life, we're just stewards of the gifts that we possess. We're stewards of what He's given us. And that stewardship is for His glory and the good of others. And it's not so that we, rather, that we can keep it all for ourselves. So what does James tell these people to do? Come now, you rich, verse one, cry. Cry and howl, he says. The word for cry means to weep or bewail with great mourning. This word is commonly used to describe the wailing that happens or the crying that happens at a funeral. is also the word used to describe the intense crying that often occupies or accompanies mourning and repentance of sin. James used it back in chapter four, verse nine in that exact same way. And he tells them in addition to crying, he says howl. Howl, this is to cry with a loud voice. And the word howl can simply mean crying out either in joy or pain, but in this context, it is obviously one of mourning. Interestingly enough, this is the only place in the Bible where this word appears. This is beyond just crying. It's the intense wail of the soul that cannot be held inside. It's uncontrolled grief. This is what should happen when you realize the seriousness of your sin and are broken over it. When you can't hold your brokenness in. Your grief over the sin that you've committed. This isn't mourning because you got caught. It's mourning because you're broken over the fact that you've offended your Lord. That's the kind of mourning that should be happening. That's the kind of mourning that these people should be involved with. Misery because of their sin. Now, in the case of these money lovers, in the case of these money worshipers, if you will, there is a different reason that James calls them to mourn. They've sinned in especially wicked ways. We're going to be seeing that as we work our way through this text this week and next. They had sinned in especially wicked ways and they had not repented. So now James says, well, because you're not going to repent over that, I'm going to tell you that it's time to mourn. because of your impending judgment. The second half of verse one, come now you rich cry howling, why? Over your miseries, which are coming upon you. James says, listen, what you've got to look forward to because of your sin and the way that you have incorrectly used and managed your wealth are miseries that are coming upon you. That's what you have to look forward to. And this depicts an extreme distress of someone who is in intense agony or in trouble. In fact, the leading lexicon of the New Testament, Greek, calls this wretchedness. Romans 3, verse 16 uses this word to describe what lies in the path of those who hate God. This is the horrible distress and trouble that will come to the wicked rich as they stand before God. This can only be a description of judgment that is coming. Now, you must understand that as James writes this, this could only mean one of two things. First, it could refer to the agonies of hell. That's what's coming for the unsaved. And he could be and may be addressing those in the church who don't know Christ and profess to know Christ, but are using their riches in a wicked way. But it could also refer to the discipline of God in this life and its severity for believers who refuse to repent when they sin. So who does James have in mind here? Well, I think it could refer to both, frankly. Whether you're someone in the church who is really an unbeliever and claiming to know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, or if you're a believer who has fallen into intense sin. If someone is acting with the wickedness described in this text, it could be either. Either the unsaved who have nothing left to look forward to except the exquisite horrors of hell, or it's a believer who is in unrepentant sin and the Lord will discipline them because they refuse to repent. Paul describes this kind of discipline in 1 Corinthians 11, verse 30. There he says, for this reason, he's referring to, he discusses sin right before, a certain type of sin right before this, and then he says, for this reason, many among you are weak and sick and in number sleep. He describes really three levels of the discipline of God for the believer. First of all, he says, many among you are weak, are weak. Weakness describes weakness of the body. This is how David describes this in Psalm 32, verses three to four. David writes, when I kept silent about my sins. So David says, listen, when I had sinned and I had not confessed it to God, When I kept silent about my sin, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. What's he saying? When I refused to confess my sin to God, I was miserable. He goes on, for day and night, your hand was heavy upon me. My vitality was drained away. That's weakness, isn't it? My vitality was drained away as with the heat of summer. I felt like I was baking under the sun, completely exposed. I had no strength and I had no ability to continue, David says. But what happened when he confessed his sin? The very next verse, Psalm 32, verse five, I acknowledge my sin to you, and my iniquity I did not cover up. I said, I will confess my transgression to Yahweh. That is not only to admit that you have sinned, but it also is to agree with the Lord. That's what that word confess means, to agree with the Lord about the severity of it. I said, I will confess my transgression to Yahweh, and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. What's David say, I confess this, and the Lord took away that reproach, that weakness. Second, Paul says, some of you are weak, some of you are sick. That's pretty self-explanatory. If God brings weakness and we refuse to heed his warning, well, he might just bring sickness upon us. Now please understand, I'm not saying that all sickness is the result of God's discipline. Oftentimes it's a trial or a test, as we've seen earlier in the book of James. But it can be because of sin. So weakness, sickness, and third, he says, and a number, sleep. That's a biblical expression for death. A biblical expression for death. In this person, the refusal to repent is so set there, so stubborn that God will literally take you out of this world because you are no good to him or his kingdom while you're on this earth. So this is either talking to unbelievers who are awaiting hell or believers who must expect discipline and severe discipline if they continue to refuse to repent. Now, before we move on, you need to understand three things. There are more implications we could draw out of this, but three for sure. Number one, James is not condemning the idea or the reality of being rich in and of itself. He's not condemning the idea or the reality of being rich in and of itself. In fact, we could point to several New Testament texts, several New Testament examples of people who were undoubtedly rich and are commended. So it's not a sin to be rich. Understand that. In fact, you remember in the introduction, we discussed the God-glorifying purposes for which God has given wealth. And when someone who has been given tremendous wealth by God uses their wealth for those purposes, God is glorified in that, He is pleased with that, and He will often give them more. Why? Because they have shown and they have demonstrated by their life that they're gonna follow that pattern, that they're gonna do what God has called them to do with their wealth. So it'll bless them more because he knows that they're effective servants of his in that way. So being rich in and of itself is not a sin. That's number one. Number two, the problem here is not being rich. The problem here is how these people gained and used their money. We're gonna see that in verses two to six. The problem here is how these people gained and used their money. They used it sinfully. They gained it sinfully and they kept it sinfully. Third, just because you're not rich, or what you would consider rich, doesn't mean you can't fall into the sins that James describes here. So you might be sitting in the pew and going, well, pastor, I don't have anywhere close to that amount of money that you're talking about. No, probably not. But that doesn't mean you're exempt from this text. First, nearly all or all of us would be described by James as being rich compared to first century Christians. And second, many of these sins can be committed by nearly any or all of us. So what's James do? He calls them to cry. He calls them to howl because of their judgment that's coming. Now, what have they done? Well, we've seen the love of money brings judgment. Now let's see why that's true. So second this morning, the love of money leads to hoarding. The love of money leads to hoarding. Look at verses two and three. James writes, your riches have rotted. Your garments have become moth eaten. Your gold and your silver have rusted. and their corrosion will be a witness against you and will consume your flesh like fire." You have stored up such treasure in the last days. See what James describes here in verses 2 and 3 is what we would call the sin of hoarding. It is the sin of hoarding. Hoarding is holding on to wealth or possessions or whatever you would be holding on to so that they can't be used for God's glory, for God's intended purposes. In the introduction we noted that the reason that Yahweh gives wealth to us is so that we will be a channel, a pipeline, a conduit of blessing to others. A channel through which Yahweh can bring blessing to other people. So, do we need to provide for our families and pay our bills? Yes, we do. Do we need to save for sensible future needs and large purchases like when our cars wear out? Yes. Are we to use our money to support the ministry? Absolutely. Should we invest in winning the unsaved to Christ? Yes, we should. If we have the means, should we care for those in need? Yes. Those are all biblical purposes and proper uses of our wealth. And we need to plan for and use our resources wisely for those purposes. However, what we're not to do is to stash away our money, amassing fortunes that sit and have no purpose whatsoever for the kingdom of God. When that happens, the wealth that God has given to us sits and it stagnates and it accomplishes nothing. Two texts I want to read for you. Psalm 39, verse 6. The psalmist writes, Surely every man walks about as a shadow. Surely they make an uproar in vain. He piles up riches and does not know who will gather them. You pile them up and you don't know whether they'll ever be used or not. Listen to how wicked this sounds in Ecclesiastes 5, verse 13. Solomon writes, this is a sickening evil. Bible's words, not mine. This is a sickening evil which I have seen under the sun. Riches being hoarded by their master to his own demise. This is exactly what James is talking about here. Hoarding wealth. It sits unused for the purpose for which God gave it. And then the hoarder, rather than trusting in God, trusts in his riches. And then God brings discipline or judgment on the one who hoards. Now, as James talks about hoarding here, he's describing the three primary ways that wealth would be hoarded or abused in his day. These are the three most common ways, the three most common signs, if you will, of someone who hoards. And the first way, he says, is through food. Look at verse two. He says, your riches have rotted. They have rotted. Now, we know we're talking about riches in the form of food here because James tells them that their riches have rotted. Literally, it means to decay or to rot. It's a word that's used in different places in scripture to describe rotten wood or rotten flesh or rotten fruit. In James's time, the wealthy were known for their extravagant banquets for which they provided excessive amounts of food. But in this case, they're hoarding food to the point that it rotted without ever being eaten. God graciously gave it for sustenance and to stop hunger. The rich hoarded it and had so much that they could never use it. And the final result is that it rotted before it could possibly be eaten. So it went to no purpose. It didn't glorify God because its owner was greedy and refused to share with those who had need. So in this case, James is describing greed that causes the good gifts of God to simply rot away and be completely unused. These people are so greedy and living in such abundance that they don't even care. So first in verse two, he says, your riches have rotted. Second, he says, and your garments have become moth-eaten. Your garments have become moth-eaten. Often in James' time, wealth was measured by how many changes of clothing somebody had. Now, if somebody from James' age would open up any one of our closet doors and see how many changes of clothing we had, they would proclaim us to be excessively wealthy. Even today, even by our standards, we hear reports about the houses and the closets of the rich. Man, I'm hoping that most of you are old enough to remember this. In the 80s, do you remember Imelda Marcos? Or anybody ever heard her name, Imelda Marcos? She was married to Ferdinand Marcos, who was the ruler of the Philippines. Listen to this, this woman owned 1,060 pairs of shoes. How many feet did she have? 1,060 pairs of shoes, 508 evening gowns, 15 mink coats, and 888 handbags. So measuring wealth by possessions and clothing is still going on today. This shouldn't be something that we look at and go, oh, that's a weird way to measure wealth. No, no, it still happens today. And even as today, the garments of the rich then were highly decorated. Or they were made out of rare fabrics. Or they had designer brands, yes, even then. They were very costly. And the rich had many changes of clothing on top of all of that. In contrast, listen to this, the average person in James' day had around two to three changes of clothing. That was the average middle class person in James' day. The poorest of the poor only had one. Now think about it for a minute. That makes it really hard to do laundry. Because you have to take the clothes off, are you following me, to be able to do the laundry. So you better make sure nobody's looking. Clothing of the nature that's described in this text was often handed down from one family member to another. It was of heirloom quality and so expensive that when you died you didn't just get rid of it, you gave it to the next family member. They kept it, they made alterations to it because it is valuable. This was considered luxurious in the extreme. But even their clothing, even the clothing of the rich, even those who were, we would look at it and say, the most secure in this life. Even their clothing was not immune to decay. Because you see, it doesn't matter how rich or poor you are, Moths could attack your clothing, especially back then when they didn't have houses that were nearly as tight and well-built as our houses are today. And you have to understand, it's not the moths themselves who eat the clothing. The moths go in and they lay their eggs on the clothing, and the larvae hatch and eat the clothing. Especially that that was made out of wool. And James tells the rich, look, you've got so many clothes, you can't possibly use them all. They just sit in closets until they become moth food. It's ridiculous. It's hoarding and it's wasteful for your garments to become moth food before you can even wear them. The middle class, on the other hand, don't have to worry about that, do they? Because they wore their clothes often enough that they were active enough that moths couldn't get to them. The third way he describes wealth here is literally by physical coinage itself. By physical coinage itself. Verse 2, your riches have become, or have rotted. Your garments have become moth-eaten. Verse 3, your gold and your silver have rusted. They have rusted. This is the actual physical coinage that they used for the day. Now, money then consisted largely of precious metals in those days. Today, we mint a penny or, well, we're almost done doing that, aren't we? They're going to quit doing that before too long. Minting pennies or dimes or nickels or dollar bills or whatever, we print them out of different types of alloy metals that are pretty durable. But money then consisted largely of precious metals. It was mostly actually gold, mostly actually silver. James says here, your gold and your silver have rusted. Now, we have a jeweler in our midst, Tim Began. Tim, does gold rust? It does? Not typically. Pure gold. Pure silver. No, it doesn't. That's what I'm, the good stuff. The good stuff. So you say, well, how can this be? Now, as we said, just pointed out, gold and silver that appear don't rust. But in James's day, we understand that the Roman government didn't do exactly a great job purifying all the metals that they used to make their coinage. And because they had other metals mixed in, those lesser metals would eventually begin to rust and cause corrosion to the coin itself. But that took a long time to happen. The point is that money was being hoarded, and instead of being used for the Lord's purposes and the kingdom of God, these people kept it stored up. They're supposed to be, aren't they? Conduits, as we've said, of blessing to others. Isn't that what Paul told Timothy the purposes of wealth were? We read it in the introduction. They're supposed to be conduits of blessings to others, but instead of conduits, they're like a stream that has a dam at the end of it. And their greed was the dam that was blocking the flow of blessing to others. And so they're keeping their money, they're storing it up, and it's beyond what they needed, beyond what they could possibly use, beyond even what their children could possibly use. And so it sat. Useless. to its owners. Useless to anyone else. Useless for the kingdom of God. Useless for God's purposes. And it didn't further them because they already had all that they needed. It didn't help anyone else because they kept it to themselves. It didn't support those who ministered for the Lord. It didn't support the other ministries of the local church. It sat and was useless. And eventually, it sat so long that it began to rot, just like their food and their clothes. What's the point? The point is, it's just a waste. We're squandering all that the Lord had blessed them with. Many people have asked me over the years of ministry, I've had it asked of me a number of times, why doesn't the Lord make all his people rich? Why doesn't the Lord make all his people rich? And my response to that is that it's likely the grace of God that he does not. Why? Because most of us would waste it, or we would hoard it, or worse, we would just use it to fund our own sin. Frankly, in many cases, it's his mercy that he doesn't make us all rich. it would just multiply our sin. Then we'd have more discipline and more to give account for. So what's our lot to be? One word, contentment. Contentment, listen to this, Proverbs 30, excuse me, verses eight and nine. It says, give me neither, listen to this, give me neither poverty nor riches, Feed me with the food that is my portion. Oh, and by the way, inherent in that statement, who decides what our portion is? It's God, isn't it? Not us. Give me neither poverty or riches. Feed me with the food that is my portion, lest I be full and deny you and say, who is Yahweh? Or lest I be impoverished and steal and profane the name of my God. See how contentment keeps us right with the Lord? See, too much and we start to think that we don't need Yahweh. That we can take care of ourselves and we trust in our riches instead of in Him. Too little and we don't trust Him, so we steal. So the solution is to be content with what He's provided. The question is then, why do people hoard? Well, I think that answer is simple. They wanna have a large reserve, a large cash or a large money reserve to fall back on rather than trusting in the Lord because they see, are you ready for it? Security in those riches. Now is saving for the future fine? Yes, but we should never trust in riches, ever. And when we trust the Lord and use riches as he's intended, guess what he does? he continues to supply more. But when we're greedy and take what he's given and then trust in that instead of him, then we are guilty of tremendous sin and we've abused the good gifts of God. Why? Because we trust in wealth more than we trust in him. And then we love money and wealth, we love wealth more than him. And that's when it becomes an idol. And that's when we begin to worship and serve it instead of God. You don't want to be one of money's lovers. You want to be a lover of God. You want to be one who trusts in God. And by the way, God will be with us forever. Money is transient. Even the most conservative of investments and conservative of financial practices can turn on you in an instant. No matter the size of your bank account, it can all fly away. Money is fickle and fleeting. Listen, Proverbs 23, verses 4 and 5. It says, do not weary yourself to gain wealth. Because of your understanding, cease. What's Solomon saying there? He's saying, stop it. Do you make your eyes fly up to see it? Are you looking for it? Are you pursuing it? Are you staring after it eagerly? And he writes, but it's not there. Because it certainly makes itself wings like an eagle that flies toward the heavens. It's just gone. And not only can money not give you security in this earthly life, Your money can't protect you from the judgment of God. It can't, you can't bribe God. I promise you, he has more money than you do. In fact, he owns everything. Psalm 50 verses 10 through 12, it says, for every beast of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills. I know every bird of the mountains and everything that moves in the field is mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell you. for the world is mine as well as all its fullness. See, the only protection that there is from the judgment of God is to repent of your sins and trust in Christ alone to save you. There is no other way and there is nothing else to save. And so there is no hope for security, for salvation, or for personal peace in riches. Trust in Yahweh. Now look at the second half of verse three. He tells them your gold and silver have rusted, their corrosion, listen, will be a witness against you. And will consume your flesh like fire. You have stored up such treasure in the last days. James tells them and tells us here that hoarded money is not only not your friend, in fact it will be a witness for the prosecution against you in the Day of Judgment. The last half of verse 3 tells us that the rust that has accumulated and is eating your stockpiled money is a testimony against the one who has hoarded it. Its very existence testified to how the money, the rust on the money, the existence of that testifies how the money that the Lord gave and intended to use in his service was allowed simply to sit and decay. Tells us about the spiritual condition of the person who does this, doesn't it? That's the heart that treasures wealth and its accumulation more than God. And so it is a witness against them. and it will consume their flesh like fire, James says. What does he mean by that? Well, the judgment or the discipline of God will fall like fire. It will be intense, it will be quick, it will be passionate, and it will consume. It will be painful and you will not miss noticing it. For the sinning believer, that depicts the seriousness and painful nature of God's discipline. So Christian, do not think that you can go on living however you like and God won't bring discipline into your life for this. And when He does, its strength will match the severity of your sin. It will be exactly what it takes to bring you to repentance. That's what God does in His mercy. In His mercy. He brings discipline but it's only what is needed to correct his child because he's a good father and so even his discipline is gracious. So when that discipline comes, however severe it is, understand it's exactly what you need because your father is gracious. Now for the unsaved, the person James is talking about in this text. If it reveals their heart to be the heart of the unsaved, that's a different story. In that case, this becomes a vivid depiction of hell. It's a place of real conscious torment and their flesh will burn but not be burnt up. And they will know that pain for all eternity. So what's the point? The point is repent. Repent while you can, while there is still time, and trust in Christ alone to save you. Finally, in this verse, James shows the end of this foolishness. He says they've stored up their treasure in the last days. They've stored up their treasure in the last days. What does he mean by that? Well, the last days are the age in which we live. It's the time in which we anticipate the arrival of Christ. And so they're not only amassing this judgment against themselves for their hoarding, they're doing it more and more as Christ himself, as his arrival draws near. It makes no sense to do this and even less as they consider the reality that the one who is their judge is coming soon. As a Christian, you don't want Jesus to find you doing things that oppose him and embarrass you when he returns. Well, that's a tremendous deterrent to sin, isn't it? I mean, the next time you seriously contemplate sinning in some way, realize the fact that while I'm doing this, Jesus Christ could return while I'm in the middle of this act. Do I want Him to find me that way? You want Him to find you faithful. You want Him to find you obedient. You want him to find you loving God and your neighbor as yourself. You want him to find you worshiping him with all of your heart in your life and not find you having taken on another master, having taken on another lover, which would be money. Now in the case of the unsaved, Why would you make your judgment worse and your torment in hell that much more serious? Instead, stop that activity. Turn from your sin again and embrace Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. See, the love of money leads to judgment, doesn't it? The love of money leads to hoarding, which brings that judgment. It's a root of all kinds of evil. This is true of those who are seduced by money to be one of its many lovers. You don't want that. You want to be faithful to God. You want to love God. You want to trust in him, not in your wealth. Those are the first two points. We'll see the next three, and James just keeps bringing the intensity. We'll see that next week. Let's pray. Father in your mercy you point these things out to us so that if our lives are being controlled by this or we're tempted in this way. Father we pray that your word would pull us back from the precipice. That we would acknowledge that we've begun to love money rather than you. Help us to be honest with ourselves. Help us to look at ourselves truthfully. Help us to ask, even as the psalmist asked us, for you to search us and see if there be any wicked way in us with regard to this. Father, we confess that money is one of those things that is so controlling, so easy to fall in love with, so easy to trust because it appears to give us security. We can hold it in our hands, we can see it, we can touch it, we can feel it. We can't see you. But Father, you have told us and it is true that all that there is in riches is fleeting, it is temporary, it is not to be trusted. And if we let it, if it is not our servant but our master, it will surely lead us into sin. Father, help us today, this is us, to turn from that. First, if there are people who are here who don't know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, that they would repent of their sins and place their faith and trust in Him. Work in their hearts, Father. Draw them to You. Accomplish that today. But Father, for those of us who know Christ, we pray that none of this would be true, or if it is, that we would agree with You, that we would confess our sin and our love of money then we might return to fidelity and faithfulness and obedience to you alone. It's in Christ's name we ask it. Amen.