Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Good morning. Would you pray with me?
Dear God, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning, grant us that we would hear them, we would read, mark, learn, inwardly digest them, that we may embrace and ever hold fast to the blessed hope of everlasting life which you have given us in our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Today's reading is from the Book of James, the end of chapter four through part of chapter five.
Do not speak evil against one another, brothers and sisters.
Whoever speaks evil against another or judges another, speaks evil against the law and judges the law.
But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law, but a judge.
There is one lawgiver and judge who is able to save and to destroy.
So who then are you to judge your neighbor?
Come now, you who say, today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there doing business and making money.
Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring.
What is your life for? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.
Instead, you ought to say, if the Lord wishes, we will live and do this or that.
As it is, you boast in your arrogance, and all such boasting is evil.
Anyone then, who knows the right thing to do and fails to do it commits sin.
Come now, you rich people, weep and wail for the miseries that are coming to you.
Your riches have rotted and your clothes are moth eaten.
Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be evidence against you, and it will eat your flesh like fire.
You have laid up treasure for the last days.
Listen. The wages of the laborer who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out.
And the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the of the Lord of hosts.
This is the word of the Lord.
[00:02:50] Speaker B: So I realized at the start of summer that over the last two decades I've been preaching here at Knox. I've been woefully negligent in preaching about James, perhaps because there are some hard texts in James, like the one Angela just read. But I've endeavored to remedy that this summer by doing not just a single sermon on James, but a series. And today we come to that latter part of the fourth chapter and the first part of the fifth. Now, throughout this short epistle of James, one can find three prominent elements of human life featured. First of all, there are wants or desires. These are sometimes described with the Greek word thelos, meaning wish or want or desire. That's the word that shows up in today's passage in reference to God's wishes or will or desires. But there's another Greek word for an especially strong or passionate desire. We read in the first chapter of James that epithumao, or strong desire, can give birth to sin.
Doesn't necessarily, but it can. In Luke, Jesus speaks of epithumao, that he has to be with his followers again to celebrate Passover. And in Philippians, we read Paul of right, of his epithema, or passionate desire to be with Christ. So it can be good, but it isn't necessarily, and we learn from James, it can give birth to sin. But whether it's helpful or harmful, good or bad, these desires are part in the framework of James. Of the human person. The second element is knowledge.
This refers to the human ability not just to see something, but to understand it, perceive it. Knowledge is often referred to with the Greek words.
In the opening of James, we read, brothers and sisters, you know, or ginosko, that the testing of your faith produces endurance. Now, that's meant to be valuable knowledge, because with that knowledge, you won't necessarily give up when things get hard because you know, oh, this can help produce faith. Knowledge can be valuable.
And knowledge, like desire or will, we often imagine as internal, the desires we often imagine coming from the heart and the knowledge penetrating the head.
But in James, there's yet a third element of the human condition, and this is the one that James is famous for emphasizing. He was so famous for emphasizing this third element that Martin Luther and others have sometime critiqued him for emphasizing works. Too much doing or acting is this third element we find in James. Humans, we read in James, desire. They have knowledge and they act. Or in Greek, they poieo or proso or ergazomai, all words that mean do.
And since actions are visible, they will sometimes reveal, according to James, what's going on inside. Whether desire has given birth to sin or whether somebody has knowledge but is failing to act on it. James notes, if you know the good and don't do it, that's sin.
Desiring, knowing, doing. Three prominent elements of human life in James. In this epistle that is very much focused on what constitutes the good life and how it might be lived.
Now, if you're looking at a contemporary text as to what constitutes the good life and how it might be lived, you will still see these aspects of the human condition featured. Wanting, knowing, and doing.
Take this book, for example, by Zig Ziglar, how to get what yout Want.
Now, he's also the author of Secrets of closing the sale. If James is an ancient text on how to live rightly, this is just one contemporary text on how to live rightly, how to live a fulfillment, meaningful human life. And by that title alone you can see these three aspects of the human condition declared or at least assumed. Number one, you have wants. You have desires.
Second, you need knowledge in order to receive these wants. Where do you get it? Well, you get it from this book.
Then with the knowledge that Zig Ziglar has to give to you and those wants that you had going into it and that made you purchase the book, you will then act exactly as Zig Ziglar instructs you to. And he has all this knowledge, he says, that will help you realize your wants, like how to set goals and how to track your progress and things like that. The assumption is still that wants and knowledge and action is part of the picture now. Zigler's not an outlier when it comes to making such a promise and outlining such a method to get what you want to receive this knowledge and act so you can get it. You can find books of that title by other authors like Wallace Wattles, Jay Gauthier senior, Orson Sweatt, Marden by Raymond Hull or Tom Gallagher or Jason Shen, who is also the title notes the author of Ass Kicking.
There are some authors who opt for a more abbreviated title. This one simply get what you want. Why not just cut to the chase?
And other authors have taken this title too, like Janine Dolan Colavito, Tony Burroughs and Julie Solomon. There are authors who choose not to abbreviate but expand the title. There's Ramin Zezimpor's not so best selling book get what you want without getting lucky.
There's Richard Templer's how to get what you want without having to ask. Because really, why do you want to ask to get what you want? That's way too much work.
And with that knowledge he gives you, you can get what you want without having to ask. Then there's how to get what you want when you want it. Because why should you not get it right when you want it? There's how to always get what you want by Olivia Sacco, because why would you want to get what you want only some of the time? There's how to get what you want every time.
How to get whatever you want.
There is how to get what you want in 15 minutes.
Why do you want to wait? You know, to get what you want. There's how to get what you want out of people.
There is how to make people do what you want.
And then there's one that I wish I'd read years ago, how to get your kids to do what you want.
There is also people, authors who add to that title just slightly. And it's now, how to get what you really Want. Because why get just what you want? You can read about how to get what yout really Want by authors like Jesse Miller, Tammy Ryan, Michael, Leslie. There's how to get what yout really Want. There's the Road to Happiness, how to get what yout really Want. There's Diana Hull's five Ways to Stop Spinning youg Wheels and what you really Want. And finally there's my personal favorite, Wayne Dyer, and Deepak Chopra's classic, how to get what you really, really, really, really Want.
Why settle for just what you really want when you can get so much more?
Clearly, there is a market in our culture today for this kind of promise.
You can get what you want. Your desires can be realized if you just get this we have to give you, and you act on it.
But if we're going to examine these contemporary texts with an eye to what the Book of James from some 2,000 years ago might have to say to us, there are some problems with this contemporary framework, the focus on how to get what you want.
There's a problem with seeing life as simply a matter of naming our wants, gaining knowledge to get it, and acting to receive it. One of the problems, according to James, is you might just want the wrong thing.
You might just want the wrong thing or the thing that will absolutely disappoint you when you get it.
You might want something that you strive so hard with focused attention and goal setting and resilience to get, and don't realize you're actually hurting yourself or hurting others in that striving.
Now, the Book of James cites one example repeatedly and powerfully, an example of how this focus on the wrong thing can take you in the wrong direction. We read in today's passage these words come, you rich people, weep and wail, weep and wail.
Well, why weep and wail if you're rich? Isn't that what we all want?
The reason we're told in the book of James is twofold.
One, those riches you acquire will rust and rot.
They're not the stuff that endures. They're like the many crowns of delicious broccoli I got from the farmer's market and put in the vegetable bin of my refrigerator, thinking, all these will be great to cook for us and enjoy for some Time to come. And then I forgot about them, you know, and then there starts to emerge this smell.
And then I finally look in the vegetable bin and find that what had been a solid has now become a liquid.
Imagine that. And that's the kind of portrait we get in James, of wealth when it's stockpiled, set aside for someday, and not shared.
One of the many warnings in Scripture of setting your mind and heart on riches comes from the book of Exodus. When the ancient Hebrew people were wandering in the wilderness, they were provided manna, you will remember, bread from heaven. God gave them lavish provision, and they were told not to gather too much and ensure all had enough. Make sure the gift kept moving. If not, it would rotate.
Wealth can do wonderful things. So many of us have witnessed it in the aftermath of the fire as gifts from one another, gifts from all over the country. Gifts of money have been a profound encouragement and support.
They've done great good. Wealth can allow a host of great endeavors and communities to grow and flourish. And we need, I've certainly become aware of this last year, some degree of wealth for food, shelter, and a host of other things we require to flourish. But like so many things, when wealth becomes stockpiled and not shared, like manna, like broccoli, it goes bad.
And yet another danger of pursuing wealth, the book of James warns us, is that it can become an idol. We can focus so much on profit, we forget people like our neighbor until, quote, wages of the laborers who have mowed your fields cry out and reach the ears of the Lord of hosts.
Our wants, like that of wealth, should not be a kind of north star, a guiding light, a center of gravity. It can't bear the weight. And our wants can harm our neighbors if we don't have an eye to others as well, especially the vulnerable.
Our wants alone can't be that guiding like we seek. Life is more than how to get what you want.
James reminds us of this.
Augustine of Hippo, back in the 4th century, famously came to this realization back when he was 19 and pursuing studies. He recognized that his desires were not as weight bearing as he had assumed they were. In fact, he concluded they need to be critically examined before being pursued.
According to Augustine's own autobiography, his confessions, at age 19, he was studying rhetoric, and he wasn't studying it to help other people. He was studying it, he writes, so he could be a better speaker and thus rise in the estimation of others. He wanted to rise in stature, in success, to win in the battle of words and raise himself up. He wanted the Tools to succeed to get what he wanted, which was prominence.
But in studying rhetoric and trying to get some of the tools, he came upon the work of a Roman orator who is also a philosopher, Cicero.
And in a work entitled Hortensius Cicero noted that every person sets out to be happy. They may even buy the first century equivalent of that book, how to get what you want. But the majority end up in Cicero's observations, thoroughly wretched.
Their pursuit of what they wanted landed them in conflict, frustration and disappointment.
And it's like Augustine felt cut to the quick. He recognized this as truth. He wrote, lord, this work turned my prayers to you and caused me to have different purposes and desires.
Augustine would not turn to the Christian faith and its scriptures until years later. But he found his own desires re examined in that real of Cicero. He no longer saw his desires as some infallible guide. He knew he needed something else to.
And that something else for Augustine is the kind of something else we see lifted up in the book of James. Augustine found in the Christian faith that God's desires revealed in Scripture. God's desires not just for his flourishing, but for his neighbor's flourishing for all of creation. So flourishing that could shape his desires, it could shape his knowledge, could even shape his actions.
You see a problem with making our wants. The sole compass of our lives is we can miss the chance to be shaped and molded by a power bigger, grander, more glorious than simply our little wants.
The truth is, our wants, they're kind of a mixed bag. You know, there's some good stuff in there, helpful stuff in there, important stuff to know. But some of the stuff can lead us in the wrong direction towards what Scripture calls sin.
Today's passage from James also reminds us that our lives are brief. We're gone in an instant. And our ability to realize our wants, even if we could, is so limited.
The degree of control we have over something as simple as going someplace and doing something is so Limited in 2025. I don't know about you, but I am acutely aware you can plan to do something.
You can have your wants, you can set out with your goals and desires. But then something may happen, like let's just say a fire, and you realize how little control we actually have over realizing our wants.
As the book of James puts it, come now, you who say today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there doing business and making money, yet you do not know what to morrow will bring.
Instead you ought to say, if the Lord wishes We will live and do this or that.
Well, friends, that's the statement I invite you to hold, to embrace, to take with you today.
If the Lord wishes.
In the original Greek, the expression is in Spanish.
In Hebrew, im yerzeh hashem.
In Arabic it is insha Allah. In Latin, deo volente.
If God wishes. If God wants.
If God wills.
You see, what the book of James wants to alert us to is that ours are not the only wants in the picture. There are God's wants as well. And God wants and wishes. Our scriptures proclaim ours and the world thriving. God wants, as the prophets declare, that justice rolled down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream. God wishes that the wolf might lie down with the lamb and swords be beaten into items of farming, into plowshares. God wants a people to know their beloved and then to be a blessing to all nations and people of the world. God wants that the mourners be comforted, that the poor be lifted up, the broken, restored, the sinner forgiven, the whole earth renewed.
God's desires, wants, wishes, they're not just about us, though they do impact us. They're about our flourishing, our renewal, our life in the fullest. But they're also about our neighbor, including that neighbor who works our fields or mows our lawns.
They're also about a kind of life where all creation is renewed through Christ our Lord.
One way to describe the Christian faith in a nutshell is that it's a recognition that there are not only our wants in the picture, there are also the wants, desires, wishes of a higher power.
And this higher power, this creative force behind all things, came to be with us in Christ. And that very incarnation of God's presence and love offered us not something as small as just what we want.
The one we call Lord offered us a whole new kingdom, God's kingdom. And offered it not just to you and to me, but to all people. We're invited to have our desires, our knowledge, our actions shaped by the one who wishes the that we and all creation with us might flourish in God's love poured out for us. Faith is embracing that gift.
Faith is saying, as Jesus did in the garden, there are my wants, O God, and they are real. God, if it be your will, if it's possible, take this cup of suffering from me. Jesus prayed, but then he prays right after that.
Lord, not my will, but yours be done.
May your will be done, O God, here on earth as it is in heaven.
So friends, set goals, identify what you want. That is a helpful practice. Name your dreams and by all means go after them. But alongside that work of looking at what you want and yearn for, and of trying to realize your dreams, embrace God's work of shaping you and of shaping your neighbor and all creation with you. Go after your dreams, but heed the advice of James. Have those dreams, those wants, those plans ever shaped by this great statement. If God wills, if the Lord desires, if the good Lord is willing, in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, Amen.