Note: Devotion taken from last Sunday's sermon on James 1:9-11.
For the sun is no
sooner risen with a burning heat, but it withereth the grass, and the flower
thereof falleth, and the grace of the fashion of it perisheth: so also shall
the rich man fade away in his ways (James 1:11).
James works upon the
consciences of the rich by reminding all men of the brevity of this life. See
v. 10b: “because as the flower of the grass he shall pass away” (cf. Isaiah
40:80).
He continues in v. 11
to describe how the rising sun with its burning heat soon withers the grass and
its flower fades “and the grace of the fashion of it perisheth.” Go to any
nursing home, yeah, to any cemetery, and you see the condition of the youth of
yesterday. All the beauty queens, all the athletes, all the intellectuals, all
the successful businessmen, statemen, and captains of industry have gone the
way of all flesh. James speaks directly to the rich: “so shall the rich man
fade away in his ways.”
Those words remind me
of General MacArthur’s famous speech in which he said, Old soldiers never die.
They just fade away.” But MacArthur was wrong. They do die, and then they fade
away from memory. And what is more, even their death is not the end. As Paul
said in Hebrews 9:27: “and it is appointed unto man once to die, but after this
the judgment.”
All the richest men of
past generations have already discovered this, whether Nelson Rockefeller,
Howard Hughes, or Steve Jobs. And all the wealthy of the present generation,
whether Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos, will find it out soon enough.
Christ ended his parable
of the barn builder in Luke 12:20 with the rich man hearing the Lord say to
him, “Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee.”
The apostle Paul wrote
to Timothy in 1 Timothy 6:7: “For we brought
nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out.”
The truth also is that
you do not need to be a fabulously wealthy to be the rich man who is addressed
here. You simply have to be a man who rests in himself and his own ability and
who falsely thinks that everything is going to keep going just as it is now
forever and ever. It will not.
James challenges us to
ask ourselves: Where do I find my greatest contentment and consolation in life?
In Christ or in the things of this world?
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