THEY WILL
BRING
MISERIES
THEY WILL
DEVOUR THEIR
OWNER
James 5:2-3
THE CRY OF
THE LABORERS
FATTENED
FOR THE
SLAUGHTER
James 5:1
James 5:4
James 5:5
KILLING THE
JUST
James 5:6
Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten. Your
gold and silver 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 days. (James 5:2-3)
James understood the wealth of the ungodly from a spiritual point of view.
WEALTH
CLOTHES
MONEY
WHAT WE SEE
Farm
products
are rotten
Expensive
garments
are motheaten
Gold and
silver are
corroded
Indeed the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you
kept back by fraud, cry out; and the cries of the reapers have
reached the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. (James 5:4)
You have lived on the earth in pleasure and luxury; you have
fattened your hearts as in a day of slaughter. (James 5:5)
What can we learn from the parable of the rich man and Lazarus on this (Luke 16:19-31)?
God had made the rich man a steward of His means,
and it was his duty to attend to just such cases as that
of the beggar Everything with which he was
surrounded, his round of amusements, the praise and
flattery of his friends, ministered to his selfish
enjoyment. So engrossed was he in the society of his
friends that he lost all sense of his responsibility to cooperate with God in His ministry of mercy. He had
opportunity to understand the word of God, and to
practice its teachings; but the pleasure-loving society
he chose so occupied his time that he forgot the God of
eternity.
E.G.W. (Christs Object Lessons, cp. 21, pg. 261)