Mo' Money, Mo' Problems

Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems

James 1:9-11

The James Series

            How many of you all would like to be rich? Richer beyond your imagination? Banks come to you for a loan? Now how many of you would like to be poor? Broke as broke can be? If it cost a nickel to travel around the world, you couldn’t get out of sight? You’re so broke you go to KFC to lick other people’s fingers? So broke that if you threw a pity party you couldn’t bring the snacks? Most people, if they were able to choose, would choose to be rich rather than to be poor. “Money can’t buy you happiness,” right? Can it rent it? Have you ever seen a sad man riding a jet ski? No, money can’t buy you happiness. It can’t even rent happiness. You can have fun for a short period of time, but once that time is over you’ll go back to your previous level of happiness, or even worse, you will become more depressed because you have found one more thing that didn’t satisfy. Money can’t buy you happiness but neither does poverty. In fact poverty can’t buy you anything. You will have a tough time finding someone who used to be broke, became fabulously wealthy, and then all of a sudden became happy. Just as you will also have a tough time finding someone who was fabulously wealthy, who then became broke, and suddenly became happy. What this means to me is that money is not a contributor to happiness. I know people who can’t pay their bills and they are perfectly happy. I also know people that have money coming out of their ears that are perfectly happy. I know rich and poor people who are absolutely miserable.   

So what do the rich and the poor have in common? Well according to Proverbs 22:2 it is that the LORD has made them both, but there is something else, too. As the Notorious B.I.G. and Puff Daddy so eloquently put it, “The more money you come across the more problems you see.” The Lord has made both the rich and the poor, and He also made us both to have problems. Proverb 30:8-9 says, “…Give me neither poverty nor riches—feed me with the food allotted to me; lest I be full and deny you, and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’ Or lest I be poor and steal, and profane the name of the Lord.” The author of this Proverb was wise enough to see that there were rich people who completely lost touch with the reality that they are dependent on God, as well as to see that it is not good to be so desperate that you take drastic measures just to feed yourselves.

Let’s take a quick poll:

-How many of you have ever filled up a glass of water, drank part of it, and then left it sitting around, or drank what you wanted and dumped the rest out?

-How many of you have ever went to the sink, cup in hand, and prayed earnestly that clean drinking water might come out when you turned the water on? And secondly, how many of you have ever thanked God after drinking that clean water?

-How many of you have at least one car in your household? Two cars?

Review time:

-In America, for the most part, we don’t have to be concerned with the quality of our water unless we live near a factory, or a dump site. If that is the case, call Erin Brokovich. Therefore, since we rarely have to be concerned about clean drinking water, we rarely think about it. If we rarely think about it, then we certainly don’t pray for or thank God for it on a regular basis. In fact, we get pretty agitated during hurricanes when we have to boil our water.

-Because water is so plentiful in America, we take it for granted drinking only what we want, or need, and occasionally forget about it and leave it on the counter for the cat to drink out of and eventually knock over all over your school books.

-If you, or someone in your household, owns a car you are in the top 8% of the richest people in the world no matter what size, shape, condition, make, or model. If you own two cars, you are in the top 1%.

Now…how rich do you feel? You may not feel rich but you are. If you spent a week in Haiti, or lived in a shack in South Africa for a few days you would come back thankful for all of the blessings you have. So why don’t we feel rich? For one, we are so blessed that we rarely need to think about our daily necessities (food, water, clothing, shelter) and therefore, we focus on what we don’t have. Secondly, “mo’ money, mo’ problems.” The rich have problems. The poor have problems. We think that once we reach a certain financial level that all of our problems will go away. Some will go away, like, “how am I going to pay rent,” but they will be replaced with “How am I going to afford to send my kid to college now that they don’t qualify for financial aid?”

Today’s topic is not about money. It’s not about rich versus poor. It’s not about the benefits of being rich or the benefits of being poor. By the way, being poor is not a spiritual discipline, just like being rich is not a sign of God’s favor. Today’s lesson is about problems—we all have them.

James 1:9-11 “Let the lowly brother glory in his exaltation, ¹⁰ but the rich in his humiliation, because as a flower of the field he will pass away. ¹¹ For no sooner has the sun risen with a burning heat than it withers the grass; its flower falls, and its beautiful appearance perishes. So the rich man also will fade away in his pursuits.”

In Israel, there is a grass that will grow at night and then burn and wither each day as the sun rises. Reading this passage, I always imagine a growing, beautiful plant in a pot sitting right next to a potted dead plant. The first plant is beautiful but no sooner than the sun rises it’s going to wither and die and look exactly the same as the other plant. Oprah Winfrey, the richest woman in the world will eventually pass away. When she does her skeletal remains will look very similar to Mother Theresa’s, a woman who took a vow of poverty.

So what is this passage saying? Don’t try anything? Ambition will get you nowhere? Not at all. There are two characters in this passage: the rich and the poor. Let’s look at the poor first. James says for him “to glory in his exaltation,” or glory in his being lifted up to an elevated state. But I thought it wasn’t spiritually beneficial to be poor? Yes, but in James 1:2 it says, “Count it all joy, my brethren, when you fall in various trials….” James is telling the poor man to glory in the fact that God is putting him through difficult situations in order for great things to come from it. Verse 4 says that doing so will make him “perfect and complete, lacking nothing.”

Then there’s the rich man. It seems the rich man has more problems because James goes into greater detail describing all of the bad things that will happen to him. Perhaps it is because the rich are used to fixing every problem with money and have a harder time believing they need God. Maybe James spends more time trying to convince the rich that, like that grass, they to will burn away. In summary James says for the rich man to “glory in his humiliation.” The rich man and the poor man will go through different trials and problems but the end result will still be the same—God making us “perfect and complete lacking nothing.”

So what’s the point? What are we supposed to be getting out of this? You are going to go through trials, whether you are rich or poor, white or black, male or female. The question is, “How will you respond to those trials?” Will you cave under the pressure? Will you seek another source other than God to get you through—like a new car, new girlfriend/boyfriend, new cell phone or other gadget? James says to count it all joy. Take it all in and embrace it. Ask God when you are going through various trials, “Lord, what am I to learn from this?” It may seem like I’m blowing off trials like they are nothing, but I am not. Trials are tough. Maybe you have lost a friend, or a loved one. Maybe your parents are divorcing, maybe you’re failing your classes, or you’re pregnant. God wants to talk to you. He wants you to be perfect and complete, lacking nothing. Maybe the one thing he wants to teach you is, “Hey, my grace is sufficient for you. I’m all you need.” Maybe God is trying to get your attention for the first time and accept Him as your Lord and Savior.