Have you gone to your closet and found a moth eaten sweater or jacket; James 5: 1 Verse one is a call to repentance, as he counsels the rich to weep and howl for the miseries that are yet to come upon them. Regarding their attention to material wealth, he urges closer inspection. Look, he says, at your riches. Look closely. Your riches are corrupted, your garments are moth-eaten. You might have closets full of shiny, clean looking garments, but up close the work of the moth would become visible. James 5: 1-3 “ Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth eaten. Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days.” Moth-eaten garments are useless. They will fall apart. Your wealth is only apparent. Trying to make use of it will reveal its illusory nature. Your gold and silver is cankered, and its rust will testify against you. Now gold and silver do not rust. But you can store gold and silver coins or objects in a steel box, and if that box is exposed to moisture, you can find gold and silver inside with rust deposts on it. Rust would testify that some time has passed and the metal boxes have lain unattended. The materialistic rich did not become that way in a moment. Years of nurturing, cultivating greed take their toll. I had an older brother well 2 yrs older than myself. He kept saying to me . Ed. You need to buy some gold your dollars bills are not going to be any good. The only thing that is going to have value is gold . Well I watched as my relatives searched the house over to find the gold my brother had saved. Finally they found it in the upper part of the garage where he had added to his gold for several yrs. All I can say, it sure never did him any good. Don’t get me wrong this brother was a dedicated man of God if there ever was one on this earth. But these verses reminded me of Ken. My brother and his gold stash. In reading these verses we are dealing with a entirely different kind of person. They cheated their workers of their wages. For the sake of their own pleasure they committed themselves to injustice, even plotted murder. This is where they travelled, to injustice for which they find no repentance read v’s 4-5------- Verse 6 says these are so bad they kill, they don’t care about anyone or any thing but themselves. Do you know any that has reached this state? Now notice verses 7- 11 “Be patient therefore brethren unto the coming of the Lord.” He points to the fact of the harvest principle. Just as the owner of the vineyard waits for the fruit of the earth, so too does the divine husbandman wait for the vine of the earth to ripen. When the time of early and then latter rain comes, then He knows that the harvest is near. The argument is that God waits so very patiently for His harvest, and we must wait so very patiently for the harvest of justice. In mercy God lingers, He withholds the finalization of judgment until all have irrevocably committed themselves to a certain moral character. Only then will final accounts be settled. We have no quick-tempered nature to coddle, we are not to enter into oaths at the drop of a hat, or to swear about anything. The answer to affliction is prayerful living.
Posted on: Tue, 17 Sep 2013 10:52:23 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015