The Man and His Finances

Lesson Transcript

Good morning. Blessings to see you all. Um, for a text this morning, you can—I'm going to do a little shortcut. Uh, we're going to look at James chapter five. As some of you know, I taught Bible school here the other week, and, um, James chapter five, we looked at that. So, so I'm just going to say to some of the students that we're here, you're going to hear some of the same. Uh, we readjusted things a little bit in this passage, but stay with me. Don't walk out.

Uh, you'll hear some of the same, uh, things we talked about. Um, but I do—I do feel for this message here. I do, uh, have an outline. I was going to write it up here on the board, but it takes me way too long to do that. So I'm going to ask if I could have a—Conrad Sollenberger, you're really good at writing, aren't you? Would you do me a favor? Um, so I have three, three things I'd like to draw our attention to that sticks out in this passage. So the first is the sin of hoarding.

Number two is the sin of taking advantage of others. And then number three is the sin of extravagant living. And we'll see that in this, uh, James chapter five, verses one through eleven. Okay. It's the sin of hoarding and then the sin of taking advantage of others, and then the sin of extravagant living. And that is all found in these verses. And we're going to talk about money this morning. I know, ladies, in the last Sunday morning message I had, I got pretty tough on you folks. This morning, it's the guys.

Because we handle money every day, don't we? We have wallets. We have in there probably a credit card and some bills, and we have a checking account we can't get away with. We face it every day. So the title of this message this morning is The Man and His Finances. And I know this can be a subject, the sin of—uh, the sin of extravagance, extravagant living. Thank you. I can't write very well. I can write, but it takes me a long time. But I'm going to say I can back a haywagon into the barn, and most of you can't.

So that's a disclaimer. The power of money. I know this is a very controversial subject. It can be. And I will just say upfront, often what we do with something like this is we can look at the speaker, and you can see all the inconsistencies in my life on that subject. I'm sure there's many. And you can check out me. You can tune out me. But you cannot tune out the Word of God. Jesus calls money—he refers to money as a God whom we can serve. The Bible says that all evil has its roots in the love of it.

That's pretty scary, isn't it? The Bible refers to it as a value that is uncertain or not trustworthy. Another place, it's deceitful. It lies. It's not solid. It has the power to cause godly men to err from the faith. And we see this in Timothy, Paul to the letter in Timothy. And Jesus warns and talks so much about the subject of money. In fact, he suggests that we can lay up treasures on this earth with it, wealth.

But then almost always, when he says something like that, he backs it up by saying, "But you can also lay up treasures for yourself in heaven." And I often wonder, what does that mean? Is it some of the same? Can we use earthly wealth to build up and lay up treasure in heaven? I'm still trying to figure that out. What is the treasure that's going to go ahead of us and meet us there? Because he says, "You lay it up for yourself." So it's going ahead of us. Let's read the first couple of verses here.

And I don't want—I know this is going to be a very sort of negative tone to wealth and finances, but I want to try to bring out some of the positive things we can do with our finances as well. So it's not all bad. It has the power to do evil and to do good. But verse one says, "Go to now, you rich men, weep." Think of it. That language in it has a severe judgment behind it if we continue to read. When I read that, I get the picture of a child that you parents are going to discipline.

And you pick it up, and you head to the basement to bring judgment and discipline, and that child begins to howl and mourn and weep before it's ever there. Do you ever hear that? They're already starting the process, you might as well, because that child's wise. Because in the basement, it's going to meet judgment. It's going to meet discipline. It's going to meet pain. So start the process. And that's what James is saying to you rich people. You might as well start crying.

You might as well start weeping and howling because the miseries that are going to come to meet you on the last days. So the first sin we're going to look at—and bear with me, folks—the hard knocks that James is going to give to us this morning can come home very close to us, whatever category we might fall in. The world helps us with these. The devil teaches us that in our culture hasn't helped us a whole lot to renounce that. In whatever category, we like to categorize things.

The story is told of a carpenter that was once seen walking around on the job with his hammer, and he's hitting his knuckles really hard with his hammer. And his friend asked, "Why are you doing that to yourself? It must be painful." And he said, "Because it feels so good when I stop." The Bible says in Hebrews that no chastening of the Lord is joyous, but grievous. It hurts. But the joy that it brings is that beautiful peace yields that beautiful—uh—yields the beautiful peace of righteousness.

I'm not—I'm butchering that, I'm sure. Fruit. Thank you. It brings forth a beautiful fruit, and it yields plentifully. That's the joyous part. And folks, when we look at the Word of God, that's what I get so excited about the Gospel and the power of Jesus, because it's the only religion I know of that in its Word has the power to change us, to shape us, to build our character.

And the burden of my message here this morning, the burden of James, is what can we glean from the power of God's Word to just change a little here and a little there in our concept when it comes to the value of things, possessions, money, or whatever. The story is told of a neighbor of Abraham Lincoln years ago. He heard someone cry outside his house, and he went out to his front door to investigate. He saw Lincoln passing by with two sons screaming. "What's the matter, Abe," asked the man.

"Just what's a matter with the whole world? I have three walnuts, and each boy wants two." Now, that's a real problem. You know, when I think of this, the sin of hoarding, do you know of people that just want to gather and heap up walnuts? Think of the walnuts. Think of the treasure that he says in the next two verses. He says, "Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten." So, ladies, you don't get off.

If you have 150 dresses in your wardrobe and you're only wearing 20 of them, you have 30 of them, that's all it's good is moth food. He says, "You can't keep it." And then they're, "The riches are corrupted. The garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver has cancer. And the rust of that shall be a witness against you, and it shall eat your flesh as it were fire.

You have heaped treasures together for the last days." Verses two and three speak of the person here that is just—this person doesn't know what he wants to do with all his walnuts. He just wants walnuts. If you try to heap up walnuts, you can't, really. They roll over here and under here and under here, and they get away. And that's the picture here that we get. The gold and the silver, it has cancer. The garments are moth-eaten, and everything else is rusting. We can't keep it. We can't pow it. We can't.

But, you know, the world helps us and says, "Oh, you want more walnuts. Well, I don't know what I want more walnuts for. I have enough, way more than I need, but I just want more walnuts." You know people like that, that everything we do has to make more walnuts. And there's walnut companies out there, if we want to use that term interchangeably, that say, "Oh, you want more walnuts? We know walnuts better than you do. We can invest your walnuts.

We can put it in this big company, and we can take 50 walnuts and accumulate 100 more walnuts from it." You see the picture? That's what he's saying here, the sin of hoarding, just collecting. He said, "Start crying a while because all this is going to stand against you." We say, "We can't take it along. We can't. When we die, it all stays here. But the evidence and the rust of it is going to meet us on that day." You see that seriousness?

The real evidence that we had all these things gathered to myself is going to be an evidence that day. I would like to think of another way. You remember the story in the Bible where Jesus was there teaching, if I have it right? There's a young man, a man that stood up out of the crowd and came to Jesus and said, "I need help." And Jesus, "Well, what is it?" He said, "I have a brother.

Would you go talk to him about our inheritance, that he would divide it equally among us?" Remember what Jesus said, "Who made me a ruler or a judge over these things?" He just sort of backed away from the responsibility. So then Jesus just says to him, "As you go and you divide your inheritance with your brother, I'm going to give you one strict warning.

While you do that, I'm going to say, 'Beware, beware of covetousness.'" Now, that boy at that point was probably pretty clear and clean, but he had the potential to fall in one of these categories. You see that? And Jesus just left him with that warning. Then he turns around, and he gives the story of the rich farmer that had an extra good year. I think I can relate to that as a farmer. We call it a bumper crop. The wheat and the beans and the corn, sometimes we just have a good year.

The human tendency for the farmer is, "Well, next year it might be a poor year. We might have a drought. So why not just build this barn huge, put a wing out here and a wing out here? And the bumper crop, we're going to store in here." Remember what he said about that man? "We're not going to put it in here to give to Africa or the poor or all the needs of the world." But he said, "Soul," he said to my soul, "this is what I'm going to do with it.

I'm going to store it up, and it's all going to go to myself, and I'm going to have many years of ease. I'm going to live it up. It's all about me." God came on the scene and said, "No, you're not. I have a different plan. This night, this very night, not next year, not next week, this very night, I'm going to come back to get you. Your soul is going to be required. And then what? Then whose are all these things going to be?" And then he turned around to his disciples and he said, "You see those birds out there?

They can't do what you can do. They don't have a hammer and two by fours. They don't have a grain drill. They don't have a combine. They can't do any of these things, but they're taken care of." And then he says, "Are you not worth so much more?" I love that passage. Jesus is telling his disciples, "Those birds are part of his creation." But he turns to us, and he says, "You're the crown of my creation. I have breathed into you the breath of life, and you're mine.

If I take care of those birds, why wouldn't I take care of you?" So I would add to this, we want to trust. We want to trust Jesus with our finances. We want to partner with him. To get from here to here, something has to happen in our heart. A mindset has to change. Think of the story is told of a wealthy industrialist who leaped from the ninth-story room window of a Chicago hotel, leaving behind him this note, "I am worth $10 million as men judge things. But I'm poor in spirit that I cannot live any longer.

Something is terribly wrong with life." Zacchaeus. Remember the story and the Bible? Zacchaeus, the little bit we know about Zacchaeus, Jesus says he was chief of the publicans. That means, I guess, another way of saying he's the chief of the tax collectors. And Jesus says he was rich. And Jesus also says he was a sinner. Now, in the children's Bible stories, we're often made aware that he was also short. So we have those four things sort of that stand out who make up this person.

But there's another thing that I think many times we miss. He was where this rich man was that jumped out of the Chicago hotel. There was something way down deep in the heart of Zacchaeus that was missing. How do I know that? Because I think he was an adult man. I don't think Zacchaeus, if he was a chief ruler, I think he was an older man. I just assume he was my age or older. We don't know that. But the Bible says that he ran ahead. And when I see a man my age run, something's going on.

I would say, "What's the matter? Where's he going? What's the drive?" Zacchaeus, the Bible specifically says he ran ahead, and he went up into the tree. And there he is. He wanted to see Jesus. And Jesus comes along, and he says, "Hmm. May I come to your house tonight?" I love that story. Zacchaeus received him. I don't know what they talked about in that meeting, but he met Jesus. Did they drink coffee together? Did they drink tea together? We have no detail what they even discussed.

But whatever happened, Zacchaeus came out, and he was transformed in his heart. And I'm here to say, if this sermon does nothing else for us but give us a mindset and a whole new revolution in our heart and our mind about wealth and finances, remember he stood up, and he says, "Lord," with delight. It wasn't like, "Oh, dear. To be a follower of Jesus, I have to give half of my goods to the poor. And if I've wronged anyone, I have to go make it right fourfold." It was none of that. It was voluntarily.

Zacchaeus said, "Lord, this is what I'm going to do." It was a delight to him and a joy and a spark. And that's what I want. That's what you want. Something's going on inside of the man that changed. In business, we buy and sell tractors, as most of you know. And I say that brings out who we are and what we think about money. And I'll give you the I want to give, in this sermon, the best experience probably I had in selling a tractor.

It was way back, close to 20 years ago, one of the first tractors we sold, a used tractor. And these two stories I'm going to give are two extremes, and they're both from plain people that comes home pretty close. So I share these to be there were certain two men that saw my ad, and they came. Hey, they called. "Can we come and look at this tractor?" "Sure." They came. They looked at it. They drove it. They liked it. They came into my shop.

"Now we're going to make a deal on this." The price was listed in the paper. And I was prepared for them to say, "Well, we'll give you this much or whatever. Would you consider an offer?" Instead, they say, "We like this tractor. It's just what we're looking for. It's good and solid. And we think it's underpriced a little. We're just going to give you a little bit more than you're asking price." I'm shocked.

That became so personal to me because after they left, I was so attracted to that mindset, not that I got a little more money. It didn't make me rich or make them poor. There was a mindset. There was a whole different way of thinking. And I wrestled with God that afternoon, said, "God, I have never done this. And how does this work in business?

We want to all get a good deal." I'm like, "How can I ever make money in business if whenever I find a good deal, I'm going to turn it into not a good deal, if that makes sense?" Here's what came to me that day, and God made it very clear to me. It's not about the good deal. It's about a mindset and an attitude. And I am not going to make you broke. But I have tried to run my business ever since that with that mindset.

And I could write a book on the experiences I had with business and money and how it has the ability to destroy relationships and build relationships and make friends and so on. In the business world, most people in America still respond very well to the golden rule. Most people in America do not respond well when gold rules. That turns out to be sour business deals. Why am I saying all this? I am saying what those men walked away that day was so appealing, and I wanted what they had in a desperate way.

I wanted to change my mindset. I wanted to want what makes them tick and what made them do that. Here's some of the conclusions I came to: it's because it speaks of generosity. It speaks of goodwill. It speaks of delight. Everything that a Christian should represent reaches into our finances and how we treat people. I believe that with all my heart.

And the Bible says, "That freely you have received, so freely give." And if you claim to be born again today, if you have received the grace of God in your life, if your sin's been taken under the blood of Jesus, you have been given more than anyone in the world. It speaks of generosity, and it's an expression of gratitude when we change our mind about finances. Jesus says, "If you don't forgive, you can't be forgiven. But if you forgive, you will be forgiven." And I think that reaches right into our pocketbook.

And Zacchaeus learned that if your pocketbook isn't converted, you're not fully converted. Jesus says that as you give, so it will be given to you, pressed down, shaken together, and overflowing. My dad was a pro at that. When we were bagging oats with chaff in it, it's bulky. And I'm holding the bag, and he has the shovel. We put it in, and I say, "The bag's full." He says, "No, it's not." And he goes in there with his and he presses, and he presses, and then he shakes, and it's half full. You thought it's full.

We get another time that much in, and it's overflowing. That is the imagery that Jesus gives: pressed down, shaken together. And we should be, as God's people, the most generous of all. The next sin we want to look at, the sin of taking advantage of others, and that's in verse 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 Sabboth." Now, that word is used twice in the New Testament, and I understand that word is a Hebrew word to describe the God of the armies, the God of judgment. It's not the picture of this jolly old grandpa that just wants to be nice to his grandchildren. It's the opposite. It's the God that stands there, and he sees, and he hears, and he's going to bring justice. It's the military name for God.

And in Acts, it's in Romans 29:9, I believe it is, that that word is used, and in that point, it has the idea of that if it wasn't for that kind of God, we would all be destroyed with Sodom and Gomorrah. But that God, the God of the armies, stood against the powers of darkness, and he sent his Son to this world, gave us a seed where we can be blessed and called the children of God.

Now, in this passage here, it says, "The cries of those that have been taken advantage of, they enter into the ears of the Lord." We can, as humans, put earbuds in. We can pluck our ears, but God can't. God chose to have his ears open to the cries of those that have been taken advantage of, and he has to hear that 24/7, all the time. We turn it off. We bypass it. We can if we choose to.

Colossians 4:1 says, "Master's given to your servants that which is just and equal, knowing that you also have a Master in heaven." So when we do our business dealings, if we run a business and we have employers working for them now, here in their Old Testament system, they had a system that the hired hand would come and work for a day, and the paycheck was at the end of the day before the sun went down. The wage as the paycheck was due. We can read that in Deuteronomy, and I believe James is referring to that.

When we look at Jesus' story of the vineyard workers, it was that way. Remember, at the end of the day, they all came for their hire, and their law was before the sun goes down. And here, these rich old guys are standing there just withholding some of their wages. Do you want to be identified with those people? They better start crying, is what James says. They're taking advantage of the poor. They're taking advantage of others. In our business dealings, we can do that.

I'll give you the worst, probably, experience I've ever had in dealing with equipment. It just happened a couple of months ago. And there again, I'm not lifting these people up and I'm not slamming them, but I am using them as Jesus did. There was a certain man. After I came across my John Deere 640 front-end loader for a tractor, it was just an attachment, not the tractor. It was a $5,000 item. I was going to I picked it up at an auction.

I was going to put it on one of my tractors at home, and I didn't get around to it. We're getting ready for a wedding. I'm cleaning up the place. Here's this loader. Well, I'm going to just put it out in the paper and just sell this thing. I want it out of here. I'm not going to use it. And I thought a very reasonable price on it. A certain man called me the first day it hit the paper. "Hey, your John Deere loader." Yeah, I said, "I still have it.

You're the first man calling." And he questioned me on almost every detail on it, said the things used. I never used it. I was going to use it. The cylinders might be leaky. I don't know. But here's what you get. We painted it up a little, and here's what you get. "Well, since you don't know much about it, would you take a little less for it?" And I'm like, "Well, I probably can. I really want to sell it. It has another two weeks on the ad or so. But you're the first guy calling.

I want to sell it." So he worked at me, and he worked at me, and he got me whittled down to rock bottom. And then he said, "Now, would you deliver it for that?" "Well, where do you live?" I didn't know him. He didn't know me. And I'm going to protect his last name. His last name would fit right in here, folks. Comes home pretty close. I'm three hours away, we decided, and most of the road is toll road. So it's going to take the bulk of my day to deliver this thing.

With my truck and trailer, I'm going to have to pay toll to get there and pay expensive fuel to get there. I felt it sort of asking much, but I said, "I want to get rid of this thing. I will deliver it for that." "Okay," he said, "I'll put a check in the mail for you." And soon after we made a deal, my phone began to ring. There's other callers. "Hey, you still have that loader?" "Yes, it's still here, but it's sold. I'm sorry." "Oh, dear. Just what I'm looking for." At that price, I knew it wouldn't last.

So it had 10 calls, probably. And I'm like, "Oh, this tight old guy. He got me clear down here, and all these other callers are saying I would have given you full price." So we made arrangements. I delivered this loader, and he said he wasn't going to be there. His brother's going to be there. His brother offloaded the thing. And then, oh, in the meantime, while I loaded this thing, I noticed there's a grill guard that could go with this loader, but we never talked about the grill guard. So that was extra.

I said, "Well, I don't want to give it to this guy. He already took advantage. But I'll be nice to him. I'll just put it on there and gave it to him. It's a $700 item." So two days later, my phone rings, and I recognize the number. And I thought he's going to call me and say, "Thank you for that extra package you sent along." Instead, he said, "You misrepresented this loader. It's not quite the way I thought it would be." And we talked about the things that were misrepresented and so on. I said, "Well, I'm sorry.

The brackets weren't painted. I didn't tell him that on the phone." So I said, "Well, the brackets need painted. I thought the paint's still good on them." Anyway, long story short, he said, "You owe me a refund." And I said, "Okay." I said, "Well, I want you to be happy. I just want you to be happy." So we did a little calculating. I did a little calculating. $300 worth of labor and aggravation that he went through, maybe, I was calculating.

I thought, "I'll be generous and just say, would $800 make you happy?" And he said, "No, it's going to take at least 1,000 to cover for all this." I thought 800 was very generous, but it's going to take 1,000. And anything under 1,000 I live in a valley with a lot of farmers. I'm going to tell all the farmers that if they ever see your number show up, it's a bad guy. He misrepresents things. And don't even bother buying anything from this guy. I said, "Now, you really make me feel like a crook and a liar.

You really make me feel bad," I said. "I want to make this right." And I live in a valley, too, where I know a lot of people, and I don't think I'm the kind of person you think I am. Well, that's what he's going to he said, "I will keep my mouth shut about you if you give me $1,000." By then, I was half mad, I'm going to admit. I told my wife about it. And he said, "Well, this guy doesn't sound normal." I said, "Yeah, he's perfectly normal.

I think this is how he rolls because he was kind and gentle and very humble through the whole discussion. Never got upset." So I decided, "Well, I'm going to teach him a lesson, and I'm going to give him all the money back, the whole works. I'm going to give the loader, the grill guard, and everything. And I'm going to let him know that I'm not like he is." And I knew that was the wrong spirit. I had to repent of that attitude. And then I came up with a plan that I think was God-given.

This poor man needs help with his finances, and I want to be instrumental in helping with that. So I'll give him a check of $2,000. And then we have the 1,000 was his. The extra 1,000 was floating. It wasn't mine anymore. I just gave it to him. But it's not really his either. And I expected nothing less than a phone call to say, "Well, thank you." Then I was going to do this. I'm going to say, "Okay, the $1,000 was extra. It's not mine. It's yours.

You can do with it whatever you want to do." If you're not sure what to do with it, I was going to say, "You look around in your community, and you find a poor widow, or you find a struggling couple, young couple maybe, that's barely making their ends meet, and you just bless them with that." That was my plan. Folks, I'm still waiting for the phone call. It's all silent. No hardship on me. I'm not poor. He wasn't taking advantage of the poor. And I'm not crying out against him or to God, but he didn't know that.

He did not know whether or not I lead at the last dime of that to make my ends meet. The bottom line is he got a John Deere 640 self-leveling loader for one-fourth of the original asking price, and that stinks. It just should not be named among the people of God. Ladies, when you go to a yard sale and they're asking $5, most of the yard sale things I've seen are way underpriced. When you see it, they want $5 for it. And you say, "Well, would you take two?" You know what? That shouldn't be us. It just wouldn't.

It's not sinful to walk away if you think it's overpriced and it's more than what you want to pay. It's not sinful to walk away and not make the purchase. But it can be sinful and leave a poor taste and testimony of God's people when we do what these guys were doing. We got to move on. I think you got my point. Am I saying it's wrong to get a good deal? Am I saying it's wrong to negotiate and offer a price on things?

I am saying I think it's wrong when we go out and we do private sales and we try that another thing this man said, it might be worth that to everybody else, but it's not worth that to me. So I go to Walmart or to Wise Markets, and there's a box of ice cream that I really want, but they want $7 for it, and it's not worth that to me. It might be worth that to everybody else. It would be ridiculous to take that to the counter and say, "It's only worth 350 to me." We don't do that, do we?

But we do it among in private ways, in so many ways. And I'm just cautioning us. God's people should be the easiest people to do business with and make it a pleasant experience with everybody involved. God is not going to make us go broke. He promised that, "I'm going to take care of you." Now, verse 5 and 6, here's another group of people. "You have lived in pleasure on the earth and been wanted." The word wanted, I understand, just means undisciplined.

"You have nourished your hearts as in the day of slaughter and have condemned and killed the just, and he does not resist you." Get the picture. James must have been a farmer because there's farmer language here. You're just like that animal, that beast that goes to the trough and eats and eats and nourishes his stomach. It's like my beef cattle. They go there. They eat three times or as often as they want to. There's no discipline at the feeding trough. They just gorge.

They nourish their stomach, and then they lay back and chew cud, and they grunt. I'm not sure if it hurts or why, but they're just rolling out the pounds. You get the picture? And here, James is saying, "You rich old guys, you rich old guys, you have all these walnuts, and it reflects your lifestyle. And you are just eating up and eating up, and you are gorging yourself with extravagant living." What does that mean? In America today, we have it at our fingertips.

Somebody said, "It's easier to become a millionaire than it is to keep my weight off." Now, think about that. Now, think about it. I think since COVID, there's a greater discrepancy between the rich and the poor. And we see that happening all around. And folks, James is guarding against that. You've nourished your hearts. You didn't nourish your stomachs, maybe. You nourished your hearts with just a good living. You have condemned and killed the just. Who's that?

Who are these just that he's talking about that we have killed if we're living this way? It was referred to this morning already, the story about the rich man and Lazarus. You remember that story? When I read that story, it just makes me mad. So here's this rich old guy that would fall right under here. He has purple clothing, which meant what it did in that time. We have things that identify with purple clothing today. He's sitting in his nice big house. Get the picture.

Out by his gate, here's this poor man, Lazarus. And the Bible says that he was full of sores. Now, I don't know what those sores might have been. I imagine maybe boils or I get these ulcers in my mouth and on my tongue at times. They're so tiny, but they can be so aggravating and painful all day long. Do you ever get those things? I mean, it's like a toothache. I don't get toothache, but I get these other things.

And I just imagine here's this poor beggar out there at the gate of this rich old man, and he's full of sores. And then he's not asking for much. All he's asking for is the crumbs that fall from the rich man's table. That's all. That's not asking a lot. And instead, this is what he gets. The dogs come and they lick his wounds. Folks, it's one thing to have wounds. It's one thing to have a dog lick your good, dry skin. Health is good. Please. I mean, I despise that. I'll pet your dog. I love your dog.

I'll say hi to your dog, but please don't let your dog lick my skin. I reject that. It grosses me out. It's disgusting. And here is this poor man. Think of it. Put yourself there. So he's just healing up these wounds, and he's thinking they're scabbing over, and they're just getting to the point where they feel a little better. And here comes not one dog. First dog takes his turn. Jesus said they were dogs.

And I just picture these big old greyhounds or Rottweilers or something with a big old wet tongue, and they just stir up fresh wounds again. Who killed the man? The Bible says Lazarus died. James says, "You guys have killed the just. You have killed " I think that rich man killed Lazarus. That's what I think, by his hard, old, resistant heart. He ignored him, and he condemned him, and he killed him. Could we say it that strong?

I'm told I read in from what I read I've never been to this city that I'm aware of unless I flew into it, but Lima or Lima, Peru - I'm not sure if I'm saying that right - the big city in Peru has some of the poorest people, sections of them. And then it also has some of the very rich people. You know, I read that the rich people went and built a concrete wall to protect themselves from the poor community. That sounds awful. They protect themselves from the poor.

You know, in Gary Miller, one of his books, if you read them, he has in there about this story of the rich man. And he said he thinks the rich man's house had more than one window. And the rich man chose to look out the other window at his rich neighbors and how he could compete with them. And he built a wall to that front window where that rich man was, and he just put his wall there, and he ignored it. God can't do that. God sees the big picture. In Peru, the same thing, to protect.

There's something in us that we just can't bear seeing people starve and in pain. So we put up barriers so that we don't have to look at it. We can ignore it. We say, "That sounds ridiculous." But what do we do to build barriers? I had a man tell me once. He said, "You know those cam magazines or those cam newsletters that come to our mail?" He said, "You know what I do with those things? I put them right in the trash.

I don't even open them up." He said, "All those people want is your money." And I'm like, "Oh, dear." That sounds to me like we're building barriers. We're building walls. In the story of the Good Samaritan, we have three men that interacted there in that story. We have the priest. We have the Levite. Do you know what they did to build a barrier? The Bible says that they walked along the way, and then they saw. All three of those men saw the same thing. Two of those men, it says, they went over the other side.

That was their barrier, their concrete wall, so they don't have to face this thing. And with everything we have today, I'm just going to put out the challenge. We know, according to statistics, every day, just this morning while we're here, several hundred innocent children died, thousands, 25. I don't know. The statistics are and they were hoping during COVID that they were making some progress to better this thing, but then COVID came along and I think lost a lot of ground again.

So in Bible school this week, there was a big concern in panel discussion. Roger Byers taught on nonresistance. So we had questions put in panel discussion. Well, what if this innocent child is in trouble and there's no one there to help? Is it right for me to intervene and become, I guess, nonresistant to protect the child? Those outrageous questions, we tried to answer. But then I'm thinking and I brought this up then.

I said, "Well, what about all the thousand children that are going to die while we have this session that are completely innocent and there's no one to defend them? Who's going to help them?" And that's something I think when we go out and we make our purchases, we don't want to identify with any of these guys, not a single one. We want to be over here, as Jesus taught his disciples, to trust him. These guys are disgusting. They're disgusting, folks, but we're in America, and we can so easily identify, so easily.

And I put out the question: When I make my choices, when I purchase clothing, and when I purchase that next smart thing, when I purchase that next vehicle, do I fall in any of these? Could it be pretty close home here? My second to the last pickup I bought, I needed power. I needed a good transmission. I bought a nice truck for what I was doing with it. I thought it was nice because it was a tool.

After I made that purchase, I have noticed that at the livestock auction parking lot, at the fueling station, I've got compliments of this truck. "Do you know you have a nice truck there?" "Well," I said, "it works well. I like it. It shifts well, and it runs well." "That is a nice truck. I've never had this happen to me." Folks, there's a part of me that sort of felt good. It sort of felt good.

But then there's another part of me that said, "How many of these nice things and these smart things can I put on or wear before I fall into this category?" Challenges to me. The last truck I bought, I had it narrowed down to two trucks that I was looking at. The one was nice. It had high mouths on, but it was nice. Somebody kept that thing very nice, but it was nice. It had the extras. Guys, I think you all know what I'm talking about. It would have been one of those.

At the fueling station, I would have gotten a few compliments. "You got a nice truck." And I battled with this thing. The other truck was less than half the miles, and it was less than half the price. I could afford either one of them. I live in America, and I had to make a choice. I chose the one that seemed more practical, the work truck. Nothing nice about it. Good and solid, not rust, not high miles.

When I chose that one, I pulled in the driveway, and Shalom said, "Sorry, Dad." I knew when I drove that truck to any fueling station, there's nobody going to stand back and say, "Oh, nice ride." There's nothing nice about it. It's just plain and simple. But you know the freedom that comes with that truck? I got a lot of mileage out of that truck already. The freedom that comes with it. I have brothers. Borrow it to haul firewood, to pull trailers. It can do either.

It's a heavy-duty truck, and I'm going to open that truck to the community. You can use it. You can haul firewood on it. Just don't beat it all up. You can use it to haul mulch on it, clean it up when you bring it back. It's a tool. It won't get you a lot of stairs, but it will bless you. It won't cost you anything to use it. The only cool thing I had said about that truck was when I had my oldest grandson in it for the first time. He climbs in there.

He says, "Grandpa, what are these black cranks here on this door?" I said, "Well, you turn that once, and then you see what happens." And he turned the crank, and the glass went up and down. And then he stopped, and he looked at me in all sincerity, in all honesty. "Grandpa," he said, "this is the coolest truck I've ever seen." You get the point? Beauty is truly in the eyes of the beholder. We get it? Do we my point I'm making here, friends, how much should this affect our lifestyle?

Jesus chose a ride too, and he chose the lowest of all. If you know anything about beasts, the only I usually tell people, "Why was a donkey ever created?" I say, "I know exactly why. It was created to be our Lord and Savior's ride into Jerusalem as a king. There is nothing classy about a donkey, not a thing, from the ears to the tail. It's not classy at all. It's not going to get the king's " You got my point, friends. If you have a nice truck and a nice vehicle, this message isn't for you.

But the power of God's Word has the ability to change us. And I don't want to relate to any of these guys here. They're all disgusting. James is asking us, if we want to go from here, from here, from here to here, our pocketbook needs to be transformed and converted. It's just that simple. We need a new mindset about finances. When we know there's children dying and starving every day, we know what Jesus chose. Is it right for me to drive a $50,000 vehicle? Does that fit? Is it consistent?

I'll let you think over that. Think over that. What impression are we leaving to the world? The world knows the power of money better than probably we do. They know it. They'll look at it, say, "Where's the testimony of God's people?" Now, quickly in closing, just a word to the poor. Maybe you are one of those that have been abused financially. Maybe you've had that inheritance money. Divide it with a brother, and he took advantage of you, and he dipped you. I don't know all of your history on that.

He has a word for that in verses 7 to 11. He says, "Don't let this become a grudge in your relationships. And be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord." Those are words of comfort to the poor, those that have been down, run over, and taken advantage of. And the cries have entered to the Lord. He says, "The Judge is coming back, and he's going to make all these wrongs right." Take heart. Be patient. Don't get bitter. Don't get hurt.

Don't victimize yourself if you've been taken advantage of because he says, "The Judge stands before the door." And then he goes into some of the prophets. He talks about Job and so on. We won't get into that for sake of time to get this thing over with. Just in closing, I want to refer to a Bible study that I came across in my studies. There was a particular Bible study being held, and the students, they were talking about that shout. When Jesus comes back, he's going to come back with a shout.

And one of the students just pops up and says, "Teacher, what is that shout going to be?" And the teacher was like, "Well, never thought about it." "Did you have any thoughts on it?" "No, but he just couldn't get beyond, 'What is the shout going to be?'" And the teacher said, "Well, you go home." This Bible study was continuing for a week or whatever.

"You go home, and you think about that and see if you can come back with a good answer, what you think that shout might be." And here's what he came up with, and I like it. He said, "I think I know what the shout is going to be. And the shout is going to be enough. Enough suffering, enough injustice, enough pain, enough dying, enough greed, enough starvation, enough selfishness, enough sin. The Judge is at the door, and he's going to come back, and all is going to be over.

And you and I want to get the weeping and the howling done now, not then. God bless you. Any thoughts?