Sermon Transcript

0:00:14.0

Well, good morning, everyone.  Did you know that almost half of the world’s population lives on less than $2 a day?  Now, that’s a staggering thought, isn’t it?  That nearly three billion people on our planet get by on two $1 bills.  Did you know that 20% of the people in developed countries consume 86% of the world’s goods?  Did you know that one billion children on our planet live in poverty?  That’s 1 in 2 children on our planet live in poverty.  Did you know that 30,000 children everyday die in poverty?  Now, why am I telling you all of this?  Because it’s so easy, friends, as conservative, evangelical, Bible-believing people who attend Immanuel Bible Church…it’s easy for us to have our theology right, to have our doctrinal ducks in a row, and to miss the heart of God when it comes to the poor and the oppressed peoples of our world.  We’ve been studying through the book of James, and I think we’re in week 12 of a 14-week study.  And we’ve come to chapter 5 and verses 1-6.  And I’m gonna just warn you ahead of time, because these verses, you know, you need to strap on your pew-belts for these.  Because James is about to unload- and I think that’s a fair way of characterizing it- he’s about to unload his concerns about the wealthy and social justice.

0:01:53.8

Now, we don’t often hear the words social justice in churches like ours.  And conservative Bible-believing people have often been criticized for not having concern for the poor and the oppressed, by being more concerned about winning people to Christ and giving them an eternal home than worrying about whether they have a roof over their head and a home to live in on this side of eternity.  And some of that criticism is justified.  Some of it, I think, is unjustified. Religious charities, Protestant and Catholic, have abounded on this planet.  And Protestants and Catholics have started hospitals and done numerous things, oftentimes not seen in the media or the public arena.  Certainly, political conservatives have been criticized for not having compassion for the poor and the oppressed and the voiceless in our society.  I’m grateful to our president, who came into office eight years ago and brought a message and some policies that he terms “compassionate conservatism”.  And it was a start.  Some say we haven’t done enough, but it certainly raised some awareness among political conservatives that, hey, we have some work to do on this particular issue as well.  We may differ in terms of how we express that compassion, but, nonetheless, we can’t be conservative and lacking in compassion as well.  And nor can we hold the glorious name of our Lord Jesus Christ and call ourselves a church that is on mission for God, and miss the very heart of God that bleeds through the pages of scripture for the poor, for the oppressed, for the voiceless in our society.  And this is where James brings us this morning.

0:03:38.6

One scholar says there is no book in any literature that speaks so explosively of social justice as the Bible does.  And that scholar is dead on.  You can’t honestly read through the scriptures from Genesis to Revelation without getting a sense of the heart of God as He reveals Himself in the pages of the Old and New Testament.  He has a passion for, a concern for the poor, the oppressed, the downtrodden, the ones upon whom the arrogant rich abuse themselves with policies and whatever it might be.  He’s concerned about the voiceless.  And God, through His prophets and through His people, give a voice to the voiceless over and over again through the pages of scripture.  Before we get to James 5:1-6, I want to take us on a little bit of a survey through the scripture.  It’s not an exhaustive survey.  It’s really just a glimpse into the pages of scripture and into the heart of God with regard to this subject.  God’s heart for the poor and for the oppressed.  As I study through the scriptures, and as I land upon these types of passages, four aspects of God’s heart begin to emerge here.  For instance, number one, God identifies with the poor.  I find this…and you don’t need to turn to these passages.  It would take us too long to turn to them.  Just listen to the Word of God.  Listen to the heart of God from these scripture.  Jeremiah 22:16, “’He defended the cause of the poor and needy, and so all went well.  Is that not what it means to know me?’ declares the Lord.”  Proverbs 14:31, “He who oppresses the poor shows contempt for their maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God.”  How about Proverbs 19:17?  “He who is kind to the poor lends to the Lord, and He will reward him for what he has done.”  Psalm 140:12, “I know,” the psalmist says, “that the Lord secures justice for the poor and upholds the cause of the needy.”  God has a special place in His heart for the poor, the oppressed, for the voiceless.  He identifies with the poor.  He defends the cause of the poor and the needy in society.

0:06:16.1

Secondly, I also notice as I read through the scriptures that God made a special plea on behalf of the poor and needy at special times in redemptive history.  First at the time of the exodus.  We could go back to the book of Exodus.  Remember when the Israelites were in slavery?  And God heard the cries of His oppressed people who had been in slavery for some 400 years under the Egyptians.  Exodus 20 is the time when Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments.  And what precedes all of that are these words.  “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.”  In other words, as I begin to codify my relationship with you through these Ten Commandments, I want you to remember I was the one that heard the cries of oppression coming from you.  And I answered those cries, and I delivered you from the oppressor.  God’s special plea for the poor also happened at the time of Israel’s captivity.  If you read through the Old Testament, and especially the Minor Prophets that prophesied during the time of the Babylonian captivity, Israel was not only in captivity and in slavery for 400 years under Egypt.  But later God sent them into captivity with the Babylonians for 70 years.  And as God was about to deliver them and as He sent prophets to them, He brought hammer sledge after hammer sledge from the voice of the prophets saying to them…for instance, from the prophet Amos, “This is what the Lord says: For three sins of Israel, even for four, I will not turn back my wrath.  They sell the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals.  They trample on the heads of the poor as upon the dust of the ground and deny justice to the oppressed.”  Before God was about to deliver His people from the Babylonian captivity, He says, “Listen, folks, you need to quit oppressing the poor.  You need to quit cheapening their life by selling the needy for a pair of sandals.”  The book of Amos itself, some scholars refer to it as “the cry for social justice”.  Years ago when I was in seminary, I was teaching a Bible study class at a church on a Sunday morning.  And I was assigned the book of Amos.  I was trying to figure out what do I do with this book.  It’s just hammer sledge after hammer sledge after hammer sledge.  But in many respects, it reflected the heart of God who was defending the cause of the week and the needy, the voiceless and the oppressed in society.  He was calling His people.

0:09:01.7

God also makes a special plea for the poor at this pivotal time in redemptive history, at the time of the incarnation when Jesus was born into this world, when God became flesh.  And Jesus grew to be a young man, and at age 30 He inaugurated His ministry.  And do you remember in the gospels where He reached in the temple for the scroll of Isaiah.  And He announced His ministry with these words, by reading from Isaiah’s scroll.  Luke 4:18-19, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,” He says, “because He has anointed me to preach good news.”  Now, He could have stopped right there.  But He goes on to say, “He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”  From the moment Jesus came out of the blocks in His ministry, He says, “I’m here for the poor, for the oppressed, for the voiceless in society.  And I’m here to bring them freedom and to release the captives.”

0:10:10.0

And then at the time of the final judgment.  Fast forward in your eschatology to Matthew 25.  We have in Matthew 25 and 26 two or three parables of the end times.  And Jesus tells a story about how, when the Son of Man will come in glory at the end of the age, He will gather all the nations together.  And He will put some on the left and some on the right.  This is the judgment of the sheep and the goats.  And He says to those on the left…or is it on the right?  I don’t know.  It’s not a political statement if you’re thinking that.  But He says to some on this side, He says, “I was a stranger, and you didn’t take me in.  I was hungry, and you didn’t feed me.  I was naked, and you didn’t clothe me.  I was thirsty, and you didn’t give me water.  I was a prisoner, and you didn’t do anything about that to release me.”  And He says to these over here, “I was a stranger, and you took me in.  I was hungry, and you gave me food.  I was naked, and you gave me clothes.  I was thirsty, and you gave me something to drink.”  And they’re saying, “When did we do this?”  And He says, “When you did it unto the very least of these, you did it unto me.”  And the sheep go into eternity and a wonderful eternity with the Lord, and the goats go into a place called hell.  At the final judgment, still matters of social justice and social concern are on the heart of God.

0:11:41.0

I continue reading through the scriptures, and I discover that God chooses the poor as His special instrument.  James has already referred to this in chapter 2.  If you have your Bibles open to James, just look at chapter 2 and verse 5.  He reminds us.  He says, “Listen, my beloved brethren, did not God choose the poor of this world to be right in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He has promised to those who love Him?”  James isn’t saying that rich people can’t come into the kingdom of heaven.  But Jesus did say it’s more difficult for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.  Rich people can come to faith in Christ.  But James says that God takes His message, the gospel message, to the poor and to the poor in spirit because they more readily understand their need for the grace of God.  We could go to 1 Corinthians 2 as well, where Paul talks about how God has chosen the weak things of the world to confound the wise and so forth.  God has a special place in His heart for the poor, but He also has a special plan for them as well.

0:12:53.1

And then, finally, I learned through this little survey of the scriptures that God casts down the rich who oppress the poor.  And there are a number of scripture references in your notes there.  I encourage you to read them in your personal time.  But all of that brings us back to one of those scriptures, and that’s James 5:1-6.  Remember I said strap on your pew-belt, because James talks about God’s anger and His judgment toward the arrogant rich.  Not all rich people, but the arrogant rich who oppress the poor.  One scholar said it this way.  “The Bible does not condemn wealth as such, but there is no book which more strenuously insists on wealth’s responsibility and on the perils which surround a person who is abundantly blessed with the world’s goods.”  You see, the Bible doesn’t condemn us for having wealth, but it does remind us of our responsibility.  Remember, nearly three billion people on our planet, friends, get by on less than $2 a day.  You can’t even pay your mortgage or a portion of your mortgage with that, I suspect.  The Bible also warns the wealthy of the perils of having wealth.  Paul said to Timothy, “Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap, and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction.”  He goes on to say that the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and some, “having gathered wealth, have fallen away from the faith,” he says.  And so there’s always a warning in scripture to those who have this world’s material goods.  There’s the warning of our responsibility to those who have less, and there’s always the warning of the perils that might accompany wealth.  

0:15:00.0

And so with that in mind, let’s tackle James 5:1-6.  I call these the sins of the arrogant rich.  One scholar refers to James’s words here as “seething, as an attack upon the arrogant rich, as an indictment on anyone who may have the world’s goods, but who hold it arrogantly, and who old the poor and oppressed in contempt.”  Four sins of the arrogant wealthy.  The first is hoarding.  But before we get there, let’s just read these introductory words in verse 1.  He says, “Come now, you rich, weep and howl for your miseries which are coming upon you.”  Now, these are not exactly the words that you would find at a “Think and Grow Rich and Happy” conference, okay.  You know, who wants to sign up for something like this?  But James is really aiming it, again, toward the arrogant rich, those who hold their wealth in such a way that they have contempt for the poor and the oppressed.  The first of the sins of the arrogant rich is hoarding.  He goes on to say in verse 2, “Your riches have rotted and your garments have become moth-eaten.  Your gold and silver have rusted; and their rust will be a witness against you and will consume your flesh like fire.  It is in the last days,” listen to this, “that you have stored up your treasure!”  Now, these words in verses 2 and 3 sound very reminiscent, very similar to words that we find Jesus speaking in the Sermon on the Mount. It gives us more evidence that James was probably within earshot of his brother as He preached that famous sermon on the mountainside.  So hold your place here in the book of James and turn with me to Matthew 6.

0:17:01.2

Matthew 5, 6, and 7 contain what is famously known as the Sermon on the Mount.  And Jesus lands upon this very subject.  He addresses money and wealth and our relationship to it in Matthew 6:19-24.  Let’s just focus on verses 19 and 20.  He says, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.  But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in and steal.”  Jesus says the safe place to invest your money is not in earth, but in heaven.  And He gives us permission for a little sanctified self-interest here.  He says do this for yourself.  Lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven, not on earth.  Because if you lay it up on earth, the moth will eat it up.  The rust will corrode it.  The thieves will come in and steal it.  It’s not a safe place.  And James picks up on that language here.  He talks about the moth.  He talks about rotted garments.  He talks about gold and silver rusting.  He talks about treasures being stored up.  Now, neither James nor Jesus are against a savings account.  If you went down to the bank last week and opened up a savings account and got serious about saving some of your money for the future, that’s okay.  I could take you to plenty of places in the scripture that encourage us to save and invest for the future.  And if you don’t have some kind of a savings plan and a retirement plan, you need to get one today or tomorrow.  But don’t just store up savings and investment for the future here on this earth.  You’ve got to think beyond that and even to eternity.  And don’t cross the line- and this is a fuzzy one- cross the line from legitimate saving and investing that we all need to do, and hoarding.  (0:19:00.0) Hoarding.  Storing up more than you legitimately need for today and even for tomorrow, as you save and invest for the future.

0:19:12.6

Fear is what often moves us from saving to hoarding.  “I’m not quite sure what tomorrow will look like, so I just need to get all I can, can I get, sit on the lid.”  It was Wesley who said, “Make all you can, save all you can, and give all you can.”  Especially if you’ve got a heart for the poor and for the oppressed.  The Old Testament Israelites learned a lesson about hoarding.  Do you remember when God was providing for their daily need, their sustenance?  He said, “I’ll give you manna every day.”  And manna, when they woke up in the morning, had fallen from heaven, this kind of coriander seed, bread-like thing that would feed them every day.  And they would go out and they would…it’s like going to the grocery store and just, you know, picking off the shelves.  And they would (0:20:00.2) pick their manna, and they would eat.  But the Lord told them, “You collect enough for one day.”  But some of the folks either didn’t believe Him or they didn’t get the message.  And they got enough manna for that day.  But then they said, “Hey, I’ve got a pantry back in my kitchen.  And I’m gonna store up for tomorrow and the next…let’s buy a week’s worth of groceries.  Let’s go down to Sam’s and get a month’s worth of groceries here and store it up in our pantry.”  And what they found out the next day as they looked into their pantry, they didn’t find manna.  They found maggots.  It rotted.  Have you ever reached into the back of your refrigerator for those leftovers you forgot about?  That’s not exactly the picture that James gives here.  It’s a lesson, though, that the Israelites learned about hoarding.  The manna lesson was about trusting Him for our daily needs.  Jesus taught us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.”  When we cross the line, friends, from saving to hoarding…I don’t know where that is.  I guess that’s between you and God and your financial planner.  But we have so much of the world’s wealth.  Most of us could empty out our closets and still have so much to wear from day to day.

0:21:19.7

James says- interesting picture here- “Your gold and your silver have rusted.”  Last I checked, precious metals like gold and silver don’t rust, do they.  But he says this rusted gold and silver “will be like a witness against you.”  James almost pictures a courtroom scene where you and I are on trial for what we’ve done with our wealth.  And the prosecuting attorney comes in with these bars of gold and silver that are corroded with rust.  And he says, “Your Honor, here’s the evidence of their hoarding.”  The picture of rust on gold and silver is to remind us that even the most precious things in life, when hoarded, will eventually corrode in the eyes of God.  He also says it “will consume your flesh like fire.”  He says to the arrogant wealthy, “Stop your hoarding.  Look around you and see the poor, the oppressed, the hurting, the needy.  And quit storing up for yourselves treasures on this earth and begin storing up for yourselves treasures in heaven.”  I like that idea because, as we help somebody else, we’re also helping ourselves, aren’t we.  We can’t take it with us, but, boy, we can send it ahead, can’t we, as we help others around us.

0:22:44.6

The second sin of the arrogant wealthy is stolen wages.  Let’s read on in verse 4.  He says, “Behold, the pay of the laborers who mowed your fields, and which has been withheld by you, cries out against you; and the outcry of those who did the harvesting has reached the ears of the Lord of Sabbath.”  Here he is speaking to the wealthy merchants, the employers who employed the day laborers to mow the grass and to harvest the fields.  And they withheld their wages.  And the cries of the oppressed who don’t have the money to hire the labor attorney to take their employer to court to get the wages that are due them, those cries are being heard to the Lord of the Sabbath, he says.  Social justice in the Bible, when it comes to employer and employee relationships, looks like this.  Do not defraud the worker.  Do not withhold the wages that are due him.  The laborer is always worthy of his wages.  You ever heard things like that in the scriptures?  Now, that’s an important word for all employers to hear.  Maybe you owe somebody some wages today.  Maybe you’re not an employer.  But has anybody here hired a contractor to do a little remodeling on their house or maybe somebody to cut your yard or to do some landscaping?  Earlier this summer, I hired somebody to strip and reseal my back deck.  It was clear that it hadn’t been taken care of in the years preceding our move in.  So I could either watch the, you know, summer heat just obliterate my deck or, you know, pay a little bit of money to have somebody to strip it and reseal it.  So I got this mailer in the mail and this guy who says he does this for a living.  So I called him.  He came out to give an estimate, and he said he was real hungry for some work because the economy was bad and didn’t have many jobs.  And he said, “I can get on it right away, and I’ll give you a great price.”  And, boy, he gave me a great price.  And six weeks later- on a job that was supposed to take about three or four days- six weeks later I’m sitting here thinking, “My deck is in worse shape than it was when we started, okay.”  But this guy has put in some time.  There have been some materials he’s used.  But we’re kind of at a crossroads.  And I’m thinking of calling him up and saying, “Listen, your services are no longer needed because I need to get this done.  And I need to get it done right.”  And in my heart of hearts I’m saying, “I’m not gonna pay this guy a penny.”  And then my wife reminded, “You’re the pastor of Immanuel Bible Church.  You better be careful there.”  But in my heart of hearts I was also saying to myself, It’s not worth staining the Lord’s reputation, let alone Immanuel’s, over a few hundred dollars.  So I called him up.  And I said, “Listen, this isn’t working for you.  It’s not working for me.  What’s a good settlement?”  We agreed on half, and I wrote him a check.  And we went on.  Do you owe somebody some money?  Somebody who, you know, is just struggling to make a living, you know.  This is the idea here.  Stolen wages.

0:26:07.7

A third sin of the arrogant wealthy is self-indulgence.  Let’s read on in verse 5.  “You have lived luxuriously on the earth,” he says, “and led a life of wanton pleasure; you have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter.”  The picture here is of a field of cows who are just gorging themselves on the field.  And they’re getting fatter and fatter and fatter, and not knowing that the day of slaughter is coming.  Lifestyle of the rich and famous, a self-indulgent kind of lifestyle.  It’s the picture of the rich fool.  Remember the story that Jesus told in Luke 12?  Had a surplus.  And rather than having a social conscience and thinking about the needy around him, he says, “I’m gonna tear down my barns over here, and I’m gonna build bigger ones over here so I can store up my surplus.”  He wasn’t saving and investing.  He was hoarding, growing fatter and fatter.  And he did not know that his day of judgment was coming that very night.  Self-indulgence.

0:27:18.9

And then, finally, just generally speaking, injustice.  “You have condemned,” verse 6, “and put to death the righteous man; he does not resist you.”  He says, “You, the arrogant wealthy, who have power because of your wealth, you’ve worked it through the court systems so that the innocent man is now condemned to death.  And he’s not resisting you because he doesn’t have the resources to hire the attorney to fight the battle.”  And just another indication of the injustice that inflamed the heart of James.  And he says this is not right.

0:28:00.5

Now, what do we do with a passage like this?  How does it apply to those of us living in our nation’s capital in northern Virginia attending Immanuel Bible Church?  I think there are three things that we can do on our way to remember the poor.  And I love the phrase that comes from Galatians 2:10 from the pen and the lips of the apostle Paul.  He says, “They only ask us to remember the poor, the very thing I was also eager to do,” Paul says.  Are you eager to remember the poor, the oppressed, the underserved, the disenfranchised in our world today?  Here are three things I want to suggest by way of application.  First, we need to raise awareness.  That’s why I started with some of those statistics.  You know, half of the world’s population getting by on less than $2 a day.  Can you spare something for folks like that?  We’ve been trying to raise awareness through this Your Faith in Action series from the book of James.  When we set out on this study of the book of James, I said, you know, “We can’t study the book of James, which is about putting our faith into action, without some kind of exercise.”  So we landed upon the shoes.  And you did a great job.  Six hundred pairs of new or gently used shoes, I think we called them, that you provided in the wire bins.  And they went off to Immanuel’s Hope and Central Union Mission.  And then we landed upon the sports balls, Camp Bennett, and these underserved kids.  Every kid that went to camp this year, 400 of them, I believe, got a new sports ball.  A football, a volleyball, a basketball. And you provided those so generously.  And now we’re doing backpacks.  These are just little exercises.  And I just want to say way to go, Immanuel.  Any time we raise awareness of needs in our community, needs even in other parts of the world, you have stepped up to the plate so generously.  And I want to thank you for that.  

0:30:08.7

In addition to that, this summer we have sponsored nine mission trips to other parts of the world.  To Ukraine, Nicaragua, Rwanda, Mexico, West Virginia, and even inner-city D.C.  And, friends, these are not vacations, in case you were wondering.  You ought to meet with some of the folks who have come back from these trips.  They have worked hard to serve the underserved in some remote parts of the world.  And many of you have given to support those who are going on mission, even our students who have gone on mission.  We’ve sent more junior high and high school kids on mission trips and short term trips this year than I think we have ever in the past.  I know more Immanuel people have gone on short term missions this summer than ever before. And hundreds of thousands of dollars from this congregation has been given to support the people.  Not everybody can go.  Some people can give.  Everybody can pray when it comes to trips like this.  

0:31:07.5

One of the stories that I heard about our medical outreach team that went to Rwanda…and we sent, for the first time, a group of medical professionals from Immanuel Bible Church to Rwanda.  And they came upon one particular child with significant medical issues.  And they weren’t intending to do this, but God just kind of put this child on their heart.  And we’re in the process of bringing her back here to the United States, here to Immanuel Bible Church, enrolling her in Immanuel Christian School at our expense, so that she can begin, not only her school, but the medical treatments here in the States.  And our medical team is beginning to work with other professionals in the area who can deliver that assistance to her.  I’m also told that, prior to my coming here, Immanuel Bible Church developed the family recovery fund to assist families in severe financial crisis.  And you have given generously to that.  And I appreciate that so much.  Immanuel has also helped during times of Katrina crisis, the hurricanes in Louisiana and in Mississippi.  You’re doing a fabulous job.  Anytime we raise awareness, you respond.  And I just want to applaud you for that and ask you to continue to do that, to reflect the heart of God in this.

0:32:38.9

We can also raise up people.  We’ve been doing that this summer through our mission project here locally and abroad.  But I want you to think a little bit about community life.  We’ve been talking about community life, this idea of getting off the corner and out into the community.  We are in a pilot program right now where we’ve launched, now, two communities this summer, the Sangster community and the Tara (sp?) Center community.  The Orange Hunt community is teed up in September to launch, and we’ve got four or five more after that.  Community life is coming to a neighborhood near you.  And, as it does, we are releasing the armies of compassion into neighborhoods and into communities.  We’re asking you, as community life comes to you and as we being to organize on a grassroots level in our church, to put your compassion glasses on.  I’ve got some new glasses on this morning because I can’t see this far in front of me.  Some of us can’t see the needs around us.  And community life is going to help us do that.  We’re gathered together as Immanuel people.  We’ll expand to reaching out to our neighbors.  And as we do, you and I are gonna bump into some people in need.  You might bump into a neighbor who has just lost his job.  And as a community group, you decide.  You know, this isn’t a budget line item in the church budget or anything.  You just decide as a community, “We need to reach into our pockets and help this family get through this time of unemployment.”  Community life puts on steroids this idea of “how does a wealthy congregation in North America, in northern Virginia, reflect the heart of God when it comes to social justice and social concern”.  

0:34:24.1

And it kind of goes without saying, we could raise money, too.  And we do that.  And every time we bring a cause before you, you respond so generously.  And I applaud you for that.  And I want to ask you to continue doing that.  It’s interesting.  The apostle Paul was passionate about the poor.  Did you know that?  In fact, the apostle Paul could reasonably be criticized as a fundraiser.  There was something called the Jerusalem offering that he mentions in four of his epistles.  The largest section of scripture in the Bible given to matters of financial stewardship is found in 2 Corinthians 8 and 9, that being in the New Testament, the largest section.  And it’s all about Paul coming back to the Corinthians and saying, “Listen, a year ago you said that you would give to this Jerusalem offering.”  You see, Paul came to all the churches that he planted.  And he said, “Folks, there are some brothers and sisters in Christ who are poor, who don’t have the material things of this world, in Jerusalem.  And I’m collecting an offering for them.”  Raising money on occasion is appropriate as well.

0:35:33.7

One last story, and then I’m done.  Several years ago I was at a conference, a pastors’ conference out on the west coast.  And I met a pastor from Daytona Beach.  I’m always very interested to meet pastors who are called to the beach, because, you know, beach ministry is really what, you know, I think God is calling me to.  But this…he was a founding pastor of a church I think in the Daytona Beach area in Florida.  And this church had a phenomenal story.  It was a marquis church in that area.  And I’m always interested as to how pastors get to where they are and how their churches grow.  And so he began telling me a little bit of his story.  And he says, “You know, when we first started the church,” he says, “I just sensed that God was telling me, ‘You go after the people that nobody wants, and I’ll give you the people that everybody wants.’”  And he had me leaning forward at that point.  And he said, “We began to very intentionally reach out to the poor, the oppressed.  We started reaching out to the prostitutes, to the drug dealers, to the gangs in our community.”  He said, “None of the churches wanted to reach out to them.  Oh, if they did, it was kind of over there somewhere.  But, oh, you know, sitting our pews with us…nobody was doing that.”  And he said, “We intentionally went after them.”  And he says, “Many years later, now, I have the mayor of the city sitting over here.  I have city councilmen sitting here and here and here.”  He said, “I went after the people that nobody wanted, but that owned something in the heart of God.”  And he said, “God brought the people that everybody wanted in that city.”  I don’t ever want to be on the receiving end of the indictment that James brings.  And Immanuel is not on the receiving end of that.  We do very well.  But, folks, let’s take it to the next level.  What does wealth have to do with our social justice and concern?  That’s the question we need to ask this morning.  Let’s pray together.

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Father, thank You for this day.  Thank You for Your heart.  Thank You for revealing Yourself the way You do.  And forgive us for becoming so familiar with this book that we gloss over those passages where You tell us to love the poor, the oppressed, to give voice to the voiceless.  Show us how to do that through this incredible platform You’ve given us called Immanuel Bible Church.  And we’ll give You the glory for that.  In Jesus’s name, amen.

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