A sermon preached by Pastor Lewis Polzin on September 26, 2021 at St. Peter–Immanuel Lutheran Church in Milwaukee, WI, on James 5. You may play the audio of the sermon here.
A mostly unedited transcript of the sermon follows the jump:
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
The text this morning is from the Epistle of James, the fifth chapter:
Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure in the last days. Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the righteous person. He does not resist you. Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it, until it receives the early and the late rains. You also, be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand. Do not grumble against one another, brothers, so that you may not be judged; behold, the Judge is standing at the door. As an example of suffering and patience, brothers, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. Behold, we consider those blessed who remained steadfast. You have heard of the steadfastness of Job, and you have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful. But above all, my brothers, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or by any other oath, but let your “yes” be yes and your “no” be no, so that you may not fall under condemnation. Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise. Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit. My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.
Thus far the text.
My dear friends in Christ,
Our passage today is confusing, because it is so severe, but there is so much hope. And they don’t stand alone. James corresponds so well with our Old Testament and Gospel texts, too. Let’s look at Numbers first. Moses is getting beaten down so God anoints 70 elders to help him out. These elders would prophesy, forth tell God’s Word. And there are two elders who, for whatever reason, didn’t go with the other 68 and prophesied in the camp. Joshua got concerned for Moses, that his reputation, that his countenance would be damaged in all of this. But, what Moses realizes is that God is the one causing them to do this. They were chosen by God to serve. In the same way, men started casting out demons by the apostles, and John saw it. They weren’t part of the in-crowd, and John got worried, I think, both for Jesus and himself. They don’t belong to the disciples. Stop them. But Jesus plainly says that he will not stop them, because if they’re against him, if they’re not against this group of men, then they are for them.
The Spirit of God rests upon who he will. It's true. We don't really choose who the Spirit of God rests on. In fact, none of us who are gathered here really had any choice in who were gathered here tonight with. The Spirit of God has rested on all of us and has chosen us and has brought us even to this place at this time, to hear the Word of God.
Of course, the way the Spirit rests on us is different. Eldad and Medad prophesied the Word in the camp. The men near Jesus cast out demons. We are called by the Spirit to believe in Jesus and to spread his Word to the world. You don’t get to have the download, you don’t hear God’s voice speak in your ear. He’s said everything he needs to in his Word. Our job is to believe and call others to believe, our job is to repent and be forgiven. That’s what the Spirit resting upon you looks like today. Every step of the way, the Spirit of God is the one who motivates you to come here week after week and to hear the Word of God and to receive our Lord's Supper. The Spirit of God uses you. And if John saw you today, he would thank God for you because he learned his lesson, that, though we are separated by eons, we are for Christ and not against him.
What has all of that to do with James? Come now, you rich. Weep and howl. Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth eaten. This is not a good thing. James, you have to remember, is going through his epistle and he's showing people that yes, it is true, you have been freed from the condemnation of the law in terms of your salvation. Jesus Christ has saved you by his obedience to the law and not your own yet. Still, do not neglect your Christian duty, do not neglect the works that God has appointed for you from before the foundation of the world. These people cheat and defraud. Apparently, not much changes in two thousand years. James is condemning these people, calling them rotten to the core.
Now you might think, Well, all right. James is not talking to me because I am obviously not rich. I don’t defraud people. I don’t cheat them out of their money. But, there is something here for us. There are ways that we can use the gifts that God has given us to serve his people and in the ways that God has appointed for us, and there are ways we squander these gifts.
We talk about, from time to time, our time and our talents and our abilities and how we supposed to use those for God and his kingdom. Well, how are we doing with that? I mean, God has blessed you with so much. And even if we were to be the ones who are starving in this country, and I thank God, that's the case for most of us, we are wealthy beyond wealthy in comparison to the entire history of the world. And even if James was speaking not just about money, God has given you those talents and abilities that you've honed and that are just somehow innate to you. You using them. Are you using them to honor God? Are you using them to take care of the people that God has put into your midst?
I remember when social media was just starting up and, when I looked around the office in which I worked, the number of people who were checking that rather than entering their data, clearing the checks, and making calls grew exponentially overnight. We wasted our employers’ time and money. We wasted the ability to serve with what we were trained to do. We do this all the time in all of the ways that we kind of work around what God has given to us. We don't steward rightly the things that he's given us; we use them for our purposes and our greed and our satisfaction. And that becomes a really dangerous thing. And if that's the case, then James is absolutely speaking to us in this where he's saying your riches are rotted. Your garments are moth eaten. And not only that, that corrosion is going to be evidence against you. That corrosion is going to eat your flesh like fire.
James is serious. James isn't lying in here. This is exactly what awaits for the person who abuses and disuses what God has given them. You lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence and you have fattened your hearts in the day of slaughter and you've even condemned the righteous, the innocent person. We should hear that and be a little scared. And we should think immediately, have I done this? And I think you have to answer, yes, but James, doesn't leave this here.
James knows that this is all of us. He knows that this is the way that we operate in this world. A long as we're in this world, we are going to struggle against that sinful flesh. And if we're struggling against the sinful flesh, that means that sometimes the sinful flesh gets its way. And we recognize that we shouldn't be doing that, that we don't want to do that. That there are better things out there, but the struggle is real, right?
I always say that there's grace in the struggle. If someone is struggling with something, struggling with the sin in their lives, struggling with some understanding of God's Word, that means that there is a battle happening between that sinful flesh and that Spirited flesh, a struggle between the Old Sinful Adam and the New Adam that Christ created in you. If a struggle is there, that's actually a really good thing. I worry for the people who don't struggle. I worry for the Christian who is complacent. I worry for the Christian who doesn't see anything wrong with them. I worry for the Christian that doesn't see how their sin is affecting themselves and those around them. If there’s no struggle, then they have forsaken the path of righteousness because now they are complacent in their work and they think, Nope, the battle is won. I'm done. I don't have to do anything.
And while it's true, you don't do anything to earn your salvation, there’s nothing required from you for that, there is absolutely work required of you from God to live for God and for your neighbor. And so we best be about it. That includes fighting against the sin that reigns in our hearts, pushing it down, avoiding it and trying to put good work in place of what our heart is calling us to, which is evil work.
And that is a hard thing to do. But if the struggle is there, the good news is that New Adam is working exactly the way that it should. The New Adam is trying to lead you into righteousness, into truth, into perfection, into purity. And if that's the case, then you may know that the grace of God is there for you because you're struggling.
None of us can be perfect. If we're honest with ourselves, none of us are good enough. And so, we need to struggle. And James tells us to be patient. I mean, it's kind of a weird turn. He goes from condemning these people, who've done these evil things. And now he says, be patient, and not just be patient, but he says, be patient, brothers. He just condemned these brothers. And now he says, be patient, brothers.
In Christian parlance, not everyone is a brother. A brother is only one who holds to the truth that Christ died for them, people who have repented and been forgiven: Christians. James has condemned us in our sin, and then he turns around and calls us brothers, brothers of Christ. This is good because now it shows us that yes, the condemnation is absolutely there for us when we are complacent in our sin. When we give into that evil, we are showing ourselves to be great sinners. And yet we must be patient until the coming of the Lord. And James is telling us, then, these things will be with you until the Lord finally comes and resurrects your body. He will grant you then the perfection that you have longed for in this life. Be patient, just like a farmer waits for the fruits of the earth to come forth; be patient until the fruit of Christ comes forth from the earth. And that fruit of Christ is you.
Christ will make you come out of the ground like a plant bearing fruit a hundred times. What you could otherwise even think of doing? Establish your heart, he says, for the coming of the Lord is at hand. Don't grumble. Behold, the judge is standing at the door. He's looking at this. And he's saying guys, it's time for us to turn. It's time for us to live as Christians. It's time for us to live in the righteous paths of the Lord. And if we're not doing that, there's a problem. But you, if you are a brother of Christ, be patient don't give in to sin.
And now here's where James ties in to what we heard in our Old Testament and in our Gospel lesson. Take for example, as those who are suffering and patient, the prophets who spoken the name of the Lord. You’ve got Job. And if you've ever read the book of Job, you would know that Joe, even though he is counted as a righteous man is full of sin. If you look at how Job finally gives into the proddings of the three friends who gather around him in his suffering as God and Satan take everything away from him, his riches, his children, his animals, and finally his health, Job finally succumbs and begins to try to justify God according to human intervention and not to give God his due. Job then shows that, yes, he is a righteous man, but what a sinner he is. And that's pretty rough. In fact, God even calls Job before him. God is silent through most of the book of Job, but near the end, God calls Job before him and tells him to stand before him like a man.You don't say that to someone who's doing everything right? You say that to someone who has sinned. You say that to someone who needs correction and yet what does Job end up confessing but the name of God. And having faith in God, having a repentant faith in God, he's restored to the righteousness that has been granted to him. And in fact, even so doing, gets two fold back of everything that he lost.
What a wonderful example that is that even as Job was patient in his suffering, even as a sinner, there was something greater for him coming. Of course, we know that Job still died. Job's been dead a long, long time. And yet still, he will rise up out of the ground, along with you, and give praise to God with his voice for Job's Words is still stand today. “Oh that my words were written! Oh that they were inscribed in a book! Oh that with an iron pen and lead they were engraved in the rock forever! For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth.” And the Redeemer will. And, so, too, will Job.
The prophets, the ones that prophesied in the camp of Moses, were an example of this suffering because they were denounced. The people of Israel were grumbling against Moses. Now they would grumble against the 70 elders that Moses had chosen out of the people of Israel so Moses didn't have to bear all the grumbling of the 2 million-some people that were there. Now it was spread among the 70. These men would suffer, too. And in their suffering, they would give into their sin because they're just men. They're not the Messiah; they're just men. And so they would give in. And so, too, would the men who would start casting demons out of the people around John, around the apostles, around Jesus, and still, even in their sin, they would still be counted among the righteous. They would also be saved. They would be mocked and ridiculed, persecuted, and cast out, and they'd die. All these people, all these prophets, were sinners one and all. And they would do marvelous things, but James’ condemnation would stand for them. Yet, they would repent in faith and find the forgiveness of sins and the hope of the resurrection.
That's the end for us, too. We are called to righteousness. We may not be the prophets going out in the camp, but we are illuminated by the Spirit. We have him dwelling with us. We have been anointed by him to share the Word of God. We should expect then that persecution would come. We would expect then that mockings and beatings and all of these things will come, just as they came for the prophets of old. And like them, we should expect that we will give in to sin and we will fall. We will fail our Lord.
But your call is to be patient. Wait for the day of the Lord. Be repentant because you've got to live each and every day until our Lord comes back or until he takes you to himself. That's the life of the Christian. And so, even as we give in to sin, we must be patient because we know the day is coming when that sin will be fully taken away from us, and it will be taken away from you because you've been claimed as one of Christ's own brothers. You are one for whom Christ died. You are one who has been declared righteous by the blood shed upon this earth. You've been claimed, you've been owned, and indeed you will be restored. Don't give in to the sin that sits in your hearts. But instead with patience, wait diligently for the Lord, repenting of your sin, and finding the forgiveness won for you from the cross, that you might see the day of resurrection. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Now may the peace of God which passes all human understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord! Amen.
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