Time and Money

Introduction

Well, I’ve already asked you one question. You didn’t seem to like that question. I asked you if you’ve ever been robbed or stolen from, and unless I missed it, nobody raised their hand. I can’t believe that. So either you’re the most fortunate people in all the world, or you didn’t feel like participating, or you just didn’t like that question. If you didn’t like that question, you’re really not going to like this one. Have you ever thieved anybody? Have you ever robbed or stolen? Not been stolen from. All right, show of hands. Come on. I have, I have, and I think by the end of this lesson, you’re all going to raise your hands. But I have stolen. It’s confession time. I don’t remember how old I was, but I was young.

And we used to go to a little country store that we called Jerdens. Jordan Store was owned by William and Wanza Jordan. And we went there all the time. And I was in there one time with my mom. And I must have been hungry because I stole a candy bar. And I’ll never forget the look on my mom’s face when she caught me eating that candy bar. I’ll also never forget having to walk back in and having to face William and especially Wanza. She was just mean.

And having to confess that I had stolen that candy bar. I’m scarred to this day. I can’t eat more than three Snicker bars at any one setting.

But I also confess, and I think maybe you can confess with me that in other ways and at other times, far more recent than I wish to confess, that I have stolen. Not maybe in the traditional way that you think of robbery or thievery. But in the way that James talks about.

And we only use this, these two sections really, in James chapter 4, verses 13 through 17 is section number one. And then James chapter 5, verses 1 through 6 is the second section, where James in the first section is going to say we can steal and rob when it comes to time.

But not by breaking in somebody’s home or taking a gun into a bank and demanding money, but maybe by withholding our time, our money, and our resources, in ways that God would want us to share them, and therefore be guilty. Maybe stealing. Where God has asked us, demanded of us that we use the blessings, the time and money and other resources that He has afforded us to share with others, and when we fail to do so, we’re robbing, robbing our fellow man, and even worse, maybe robbing God. Let’s look at the text here in James chapter 4, beginning in verse 13. The text says this come now, come now, you who say today or tomorrow, we will go to such and such a city and spend a year there, buy and sell and make a profit.

Whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It’s even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. Instead, you ought to say, if the Lord wills, if the Lord wills we will live and do this or that, but now you boast in your ignorance or your arrogance, and all such boasting is evil. Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin. We’re very familiar with that first section of scripture that talks about the proper mindset when it comes to the allocation of our time. We’re particularly familiar with that one section that our life is but a vapor. A little less familiar is the second section that has to do with the allocation of our money.

Read with me the first six verses of chapter 5, where again he says, Come now, come now, you rich, weep and howl for your miseries that are coming upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth eaten. Your silver and gold are corroded, and their corrosion will be a witness against you, and will eat your flesh like fire. You have heaped up treasure in the last day. Indeed, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, they cry out. And the cries of the reapers have reached the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. You’ve lived on the earth in pleasure and luxury. You’ve fattened your hearts as in the day of slaughter. You have condemned, you’ve murdered the just, and he does not resist you.

Let’s start with just the exposition of those texts. James, in this brief epistle, as you may remember in your previous studies of the book of James, deals with a lot of just practical Christian living. And telling Christians how they need to live and conduct themselves in their everyday livesese two sections, James 4, 13 through 5, verse 6, are taken by some scholars to be what people trying to sound smart would call an apostrophe. Now, an apostrophe in this setting is not talking about punctuation. It’s talking the rhetorical sense of an apostrophe is when in the midst of a discourse, the speaker or the writer starts talking rather than the people he’s normally talking to, he steps aside and talks to people who aren’t really there. Maybe a great example of this.

Last Sunday we studied 1 Corinthians chapter 15, and in talking to those Christians about the resurrection, Paul uses an apostrophe. When at the end of 1 Corinthians 15, he says, Oh death, where is your sting? Death wasn’t in the congregation at Corinth, but he addresses death. That’s called an apostrophe. And so some scholars believe that in these two sections of Scripture, James is not addressing the saints that he’s been addressing throughout the rest of this book, that he’s talking to worldly people. And there’s a couple reasons that they would argue that. Number one, a little bit of the language is different. Both of these sections begin with that phrase, come now. That’s not found anywhere else in the book. But a phrase that is found throughout the book is missing from these two sections.

Throughout the book, James will say, My brethren, brethren, my brethren, old brethren, he doesn’t use those terms in these two sections. So maybe that lends us to believe that he’s not talking to them, he’s talking to those out there who do not regard God in regard to their time and their money. But maybe the greatest argument that could be used is just the strength of the language, especially there in that section in chapter 5 of the rich and of just how miserable and horrible they were. If he’s talking to Christians, he’s talking to some pretty lousy Christians, if they were guilty of the things that he says those rich people. Also, in the book, he would earlier talk about here’s what rich people do to you.

And now he addresses the rich. Well, then which is it? Am I rich or is the rich people doing this to me? And so, anyway, that’s what a lot of scholars, and I would tend maybe to agree with them, that in this section, he’s not talking to those Christians. He’s saying, here’s what people of the world do. But now, regardless whether he’s addressing them directly or indirectly, the actions, the fact that we even have to have that discussion tells us that the actions in these two sections are so reprehensible that they represent worldly behavior. This is not what a Christian ought to do when it comes to their time. The Christian should always consider God. And the Christians should never, never be stingy with their money.

1. If the Lord Wills: Life Is but a Vapor

And so he says in this first section, you should say if the Lord wills. We recognize that he’s not condemning making plans, not even making financial plans for the future. What he’s condemning is making those plans, including financial plans for the future, without any thought of God and of judgment. What you ought to do, yeah, you can go to another city, you can buy and sell and make a profit. That’s fine. What you ought to do is include God in that equation, if the Lord wills, recognizing that that might not ever happen, because my is but a vapor. And I know you’ve heard this probably in a funeral before. Life is but a vapor. You boil a pot of water and you can get down, you see that little sheet coming above it.

And I think there’s maybe two points, maybe both points are made from that idea of that vapor that rises above that. Number one is it doesn’t last long. Life lived at its longest, brief. But also it’s very fragile. That steam, that vapor that’s coming up, just one wave of the hand, just a gentle wave of the hand, and it just goes away. And life is a reminder of that, isn’t it? A cruel reminder of that. I’ve told you, and you might add, I’ve bored you with so many stories of my childhood growing up in North Alabama. I told you about where I went to school, and I’ve even told you about where I went to church. I went to church at the Beulah Church of Christ, out on old Highway 31.

It was a small, relatively small congregation. At its biggest, I’m going to estimate we had about 120 maybe members in that little country church, sometimes maybe far smaller than that. But in that little small rural country church, by the time I had finished college, five of my young contemporaries had died before they left their 20s. Some had never made it to their twenties.

You can remember how difficult it was to get a phone call. There was a payphone, one payphone for every dorm, and somebody had to yell your name, and somebody yelled my name, Chapman, and then just dropped the phone, and it was just hanging dangling there. And I somebody finally yelled the third time, Chapman. I went running down there and picked up the phone, and it was my mom telling me that my classmate, the fellow I went to school with, Jean, had been murdered. Murdered. Philip died of cancer. David fell from the ceiling of his house and strangely and awkwardly landed on his head and broke his neck and killed him. Justin and Alan died of cancer. And that little small rural car, those weren’t people who lived to the ripe old age of whatever you consider a ripe old age.

Just a gentle wave of the hand, and that vapor showed the fragility of life. So make plans. Make big, bold plans for the future. But remember God.

2. You Can Steal in More Than One Way

The second section, he talks about money. And he accuses them of stealing. Not stealing in what we might call the traditional way. They didn’t rob a bank or they didn’t break into somebody’s house and take something. But those rich people had withheld wages from people who deserved it. And so scripture would have us to know that you can steal in more than one way. If you owe somebody something and you don’t pay what you owe them, that’s the same as taking a gun into the bank and saying, stick them up in the eyes of God. And so notice the powerful poetic language. Weep for your and how for your miseries that are coming upon you. And he lists those miseries. Your riches are corrupted. Your gold and silver are corroded, and their corrosion will be a witness against you.

How had their riches been corroded? Imagine their gold and silver stored up in their closet, and as it set there in their closet, unused and uncirculated, it just began to corrode. Gold and silver does that. It begins to turn green and corrode because it hadn’t been used. And that corrosion was their misery. And that will be a witness against you. In other words, on the day of judgment, that corrosion of that wealth that just sat there unused will stand up and testify against you. And even worse than that, that corrosion like a cancer, like a gangrene is going to come in and it’s going to affect you and corrupt you. You’ve heaped up treasure in the last days. The wages of the laborers that you held back by fraud, they have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts.

They’ve crying out against you, and guess what? God hears the cries of the oppressed. And I love the verse 5 the best. You’ve lived on earth in pleasure and luxury. You’ve fattened your hearts as in a day of slaughter. If you’ve ever raised farm animals, you know exactly what he’s talking about. There’s that pig eating that slop, thinking he’s got it made. Because the farmer is treating him so good and feeding him so good. Little does he know that he’s getting fat for just one reason, so that he can be slaughtered. And here you are greedily making yourself fat. And little do you know that you’re just fattening yourself for the day of slaughter. Alright, what’s some lessons that we can draw and some applications that we can make in regard to the use of our time and money?

3. Don’t Be Arrogant or Selfish: Don’t Forget the Source

First of all, in that first section, can’t we learn this? Don’t be arrogant. Don’t be arrogant or selfish with what God has given you. God’s given you time. God’s given you money, whatever measure of those two quantities that God has given you, He’s given them to you. Don’t be arrogant about them. Don’t be selfish. Recognize that these things have been given to you by God. Don’t forget the source. Look with me in Psalm 10. We’ve talked recently about pride, what pride in Scripture, the pride that’s condemned in Scripture, what it is and what it isn’t. The pride condemned in Scripture is not the pride of a man who’s just mowed and edged and weed eated his yard and stands back and looks at it and says, Isn’t that a work of art?

God doesn’t condemn that kind of pride. But he does condemn this kind of pride. Psalm 10, look at verse 4. The wicked, the wicked in his proud countenance does not seek God. God is in none of his thoughts. Pride in Scripture that is condemned is the pride that says, I did all of this. God, who’s God? I did this. Never forget that every minute you live and every dollar you get to spend or save comes from God. Don’t forget their source. But Scripture would also have you to know don’t forget that these resources are limited. We weren’t turned over there, but you may remember Psalm 90. Psalm 90 says, Lord, teach us to number our days. Teach us to number our days to recognize that they’re limited.

I’ve only got so many hours in a day. I’ve only got so many days in a week. I’ve only got so many weeks and a year. I’ve only got so many years in my life. I need to think about how I’m using them. I want to tell you two things that depress me more than anything. Calendars and April the 15th. I told you before that I prefer paper calendars. I’m old school. But it’s kind of depressing taking down that old calendar and recognizing I didn’t do a whole lot. Look at how many empty days were on that calendar, especially if I just mark the days that I did something really meaningful. Really meaningful. And I’m going to tell you why April 15th depresses me, not maybe in the way that you think.

4. The Blessed to Be a Blessing to Others

But when I add it all up, my annual income for an old country boy from Alabama sounds like a lot of money. And then I look at my bank account. It doesn’t look like a lot of money. I have to realize, where did all that money go? Whether it’s time or whether it’s money, I must consider the source, and I must recognize that it’s limited. I need to give thought to both where, who blesses me, and what I will do with what little time and relatively what little money I’ve been blessed with. Can we learn this second lesson from these two texts in regard to our time and money? Is that I better be about this? I better use what I’ve been blessed with to bless God and others.

If my time and my money are from God, and Scripture teaches me that, then I’m simply a steward of these things. And God is going to hold me responsible. Seems like Jesus told a parable about that, didn’t he? That God’s going to hold me responsible for how I used the resources that he entrusted to my stewardship. That God’s not just on the day of judgment, not just going to check my attendance at worship services. He’s not just going to see how many passages of scripture I read and memorized, that he’s also going to say, what about those talents I gave you? What about all that time? What about all that money? Didn’t he tell a story about that in Matthew chapter 25? He didn’t use what I gave you to help all these people that were naked and poor, hungry, and in prison.

God’s going to hold us accountable to those things. The God who blesses us, the God who blesses us expects the blessed to be a blessing to others. That’s the proper use of my time, my money, my ear, my heart, and my all. And Scripture also teaches me this, that God will harshly condemn those who mistreat others.

That story that Jesus told in Matthew 25 tells me that in so doing I mistreated him.

Dare I say I stole the time and the money that God gave me.

What are we teaching our children? What are we teaching them in use of their time and their resources and their talent? Am I teaching my children to use what God has given you to glorify God?

5. Use What You Have to Prepare for Your Future

If my child has some ability, whether it’s musical ability or academic or heaven help me, some athletic ability. Am I teaching my child to use those things to glorify God? Or have I made the tragic mistake of using my child to glorify me with those talent? One of the most uncomfortable parables that Jesus told, we’ve referenced a few of his parables in Luke chapter 16. It’s an uncomfortable parable, not because of its teaching, but because of who he uses as the subject of that teaching.

And he uses this worthless guy as an example. And we’re just a little uncomfortable with that, aren’t we? Luke chapter 16, he says this.

So he called to him and said to him, What is this I hear about you? Give an account of your stewardship, for you can no longer be a stewardship away from me, I cannot dig, and I’m ashamed to beg. I might insert there, that’s why I became a preacher. I cannot dig, and I’m ashamed to beg. I have resolved what to do. When I’m put out of the stewardship that they may receive me into He comes up with a plan, a nefarious plan. So he called every one of his master’s debtors to him and said to the first, How much do you owe my master? He said, A hundred measures of oil. He said, Take your bill, sit down and write fifty. He said to another, How much do you owe?

He said, A hundred measures of wheat. He said, Take your bill and write eighty. So the master commended the unjust steward, because he had dealt shrewdly. Jesus adds this for the sons of this world are more shrewd in their generation than the sons of lie. Now what do I make of that? Jesus takes a guy who got fired from his job because he was no good at his job, and on the way out of the door, he cheated to make things easier for him when he got fired and said, Be like that guy. What? Maybe there’s a lesson in the application of parables here that we don’t take everything about this. Jesus is not saying, be dishonest, be crooked and shrewd in every way this person’s being shrewd.

But here’s what he says to do. Verse 9 I say to you, make friends for yourselves by unrighteous mammon. Mammon is just riches, wealth, and it’s not unrighteous because you got it through unrighteous means, just because it’s this world stuff. That when you fail, they may receive you into an everlasting home. He who is faithful in what is least is faithful also in much, and he who is injust in what is least is injust also in much. Therefore, if you’ve been faithful in unrighteous mammon and this world’s dirty money, who will commit to your trust the true riches? If you’ve not been faithful in what’s another man’s, who will give you what is your own? No servant can serve two masters, for either he’ll hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other.

You cannot serve God and riches. And so it seems to me that what Jesus is saying here is this unjust steward is an example, not because of the crooked things he did, but because he used what he had to prepare for his future. Stop there. Don’t be like that guy in any other way. You can use what you have, even things that we normally think of as being unrighteous stuff, like money. That God’s going to hold us accountable for how we use this world’s goods. And we can prepare for eternity by using this stuff, like time and money. In Scripture of you reap what you sow. And so I ask you again. Have you ever stolen anything? I have. And it was a lot more than a candy bar when I was a little kid.

Conclusion

I haven’t used my time as wisely as I should. Because as the Holy Spirit through James said, I knew to do good, and I didn’t. And I’ve robbed people of money. Oh, I’ve never broken anybody’s house or robbed a bank in a day in my life. But God’s blessed me. And there’s been others that I could have been a blessing to. And I withheld that.

And I may have some gold and silver in the bank somewhere. It may be turning green and corroding. And although I’m trying to lose weight, I’m still kind of fat. And is all of that just for the day of slaughter? May God bless me with enough time and money in the future that I can do better. But I can serve him, and I can serve you, and I can serve my fellow man and be a blessing as God has blessed me. Have you begun that walk? You see, serving God makes you a better person. Oh, does it get you ready for heaven? Absolutely. Never forget that. But it makes you a better person here. And God wants you to be that. He wants you to be a better friend, a better husband, a better wife, a better parent, a better child, a better everything.

And you can do that by becoming his child today. Would you believe in him? Would you repent of your sins? Confess. Don’t be ashamed of him. Confess his name today in every day of your life. And be immersed with him in the waters of baptism. Arising to be a new person. New in every way. New in your use of time and money and your devotion, your love, your faith, your interest, and serve him. We can help you to be a blessing and to be blessed by God this morning. Let it be known. Together we stand and as we sing.