How many of you have buttons that people can press to make you angry, things that will be said or done that you might otherwise be cool, calm, or collected; but if they press the right buttons, then watch out. When I was a little boy, it was if someone said something about my mama. That would press my buttons, and I’d turn into a raging animal. But we have things that make us angry, and a lot of times there is just cause for that. Does God have some buttons that we can press? When you read His Word, are there things that you found that made God angry? The Passage we’re going to read this morning is an angry Passage. God is communicating through James, and he’s communicating anger. If you read the Prophets, if you read the Gospels, there were times Jesus was angry. What are some of the things that God gets angry about? Do you know what I found God gets angry at? God gets angry at those who exploit the innocent. He gets angry at bullies, people who discriminate, take advantage of the poor, the handicap. God gets really angry when he sees people misuse their authority and their power. Judgment is brought on those people. That’s what we’re going to talk about today. Have you ever been exploited in your life? Has that ever happened to you? Somebody has exploited you at some point-maybe a parent, maybe an employer, maybe a teacher or a coach. I can remember when I was about 11 or 12 years old. I wanted to earn money to buy my mom [a gift for] Mother’s Day. I asked the man at a local antique shop, “Can I come and work for you?” He said, “Yeah, you do this and you’ll get $20.” It was going to take me maybe an hour or so, and I thought, “Wow! That’s a lot of money,” especially in 1972. So I took the job, but he just abused me. He made me work hours and hours and hours. It was hard manual labor-labor that a 12-year old had no business doing. I remember how much my hands hurt and my back hurt. Sometimes I was afraid that I would drop the loads on my foot or fall down the steps. I just remember basically crying and thinking, “Boy, this is really hard.” Then I didn’t collect my money. I went back week after week after week until finally one day he said, “I have 10 bucks for you at the house,” and that’s not the price we had agreed to. It wasn’t the job we’d agreed to. It wasn’t the duration we’d agreed to, and I just felt exploited and used. It makes you feel bad. It makes you feel terrible inside, yet around our world we know that elderly are exploited. We know people with disabilities are exploited. People are exploited because of raise. The poor can be taken advantage of. Basically anybody can be exploited in one way or another. Sometimes even famous and wealthy people can be exploited by a manager or somebody else. So, really, exploitation is when you use your power, use your authority and influence, to take advantage of a situation; to take advantage of a person; to manipulate them; to get your way; to profit yourself at their expense. That’s exploitation-to take advantage of the vulnerable, to take advantage of the weak. Before we get into James this morning, I want us to turn our attention to a Passage in the Old Testament. [We’re going to] look at a man in Chapter 12 by the name of Rehoboam. Rehoboam was a king who was in succession from Solomon and David. He was the grandson of David. He was the son of Solomon. If you studied ancient Israeli history, you would know that those were two of the most successful kings Israel ever had. Those two: David brought the capital of Jerusalem; David started the Temple; David led them into a time of peace and prosperity. He was a man of God, and he was followed by his son, Solomon. Solomon finished the Temple and finished the palace. Solomon led them into a time of even greater peace and even greater prosperity. So here comes Rehoboam. He is stepping into some big shoes. Now, expectations are high, but the people really didn’t know what kind of a man he was. He was just about ready to lead. This was pretty much his inauguration, and it was in a city called Checkum. Israel sent a representative crew; a man by the name of Jeroboam was there as well who is a leader. Then others from the community stepped forward, and a large contingency of the Israelis went to this new king; and they were going to ask for help. Let’s take a look at Chapter 12:4 of 1 Kings (page 342 of pew Bibles). “‘Your father…’” That would be Solomon. “‘…put a heavy yoke on us, but now lighten the harsh labor and the heavy yoke he put on us, and we will serve you.’” Now it almost like slavery is going on here, but that’s not the case. The heavy yoke is taxation. The heavy work is the amount of work they must do to pay the taxes they owe because Solomon lived a lavish lifestyle. How do you think his 1,000 wives and concubines were paid for? How do you think his palace was paid for? All of his ships and his horses? And all of the children he had to have with those 1,000 wives and concubines? How did Solomon afford this very lavish, extravagant lifestyle? He afforded it through taxation of his people, and that taxation was high. They had to work long and hard, so they went to the son and said, “Look, could you lighten our load a little bit? Could you lower our taxes?” Remember there was no two-party system or multi-party system. There wasn’t anybody campaigning against Rehoboam who was saying, “I’ll lower your taxes! Solomon was way too hard on you! I’ll be easier on you in this administration!” That’s not there. This is a monarchy. He is king, and what he says is law; so they just fall on his mercy. They’re asking nicely. They’re not coming demanding [these things]. They’re saying, “Please? Pretty please with sugar on top? Could you lower this demand? Can we have some more money to take care of our houses for a change instead of the palace? What do you say, King?” So here’s what the king does. The king says, “‘Go away for three days and then come back to me.’ So the people went away. “Then King Rehoboam consulted the elders who had served his father Solomon during his lifetime. ‘How would you advise me to answer these people?’ he asked.” So he goes to the elders. He goes to the guys who had been with his dad, the old timers, the veterans of public life. He says, “You guys are the elders. You advised my father. What do you advise me? What should I do when they say this to me?” Verse 7, “They replied, ‘If today you will be a servant to these people and serve them and give them a favorable answer, they will always be your servants.’” In other words, listen to them. “If you’ll listen to the people, if you’ll lighten their load, they will be loyal subjects. They will serve you. They’ll do anything for you, but listen to them. Don’t disparage them. Listen to what they have to say. Serve them.” That was a key word. “Use your power and use your authority to serve the people,” not the other way around. What did Jesus say? He said, “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many.” The One who had the most power and the most authority of all came to be a Servant of all. If anybody could have abused His power, God could, but He did not. He came as a sSrvant. He came humbly. He says, “Be the servant to the people. Help the people.” So Rehoboam thanks them for their advice, but he doesn’t listen to it. He doesn’t like what he hears, and he’s going to get a second opinion. Sometimes we receive good advice, but we don’t like it; so we keep asking advice until somebody tells us what we want to hear-not you guys, but the 11 o’clock service. They do that all the time. You just keep asking around until somebody agrees with you. Then you listen to them. That's not really seeking advice, is it? Who does he go to next? It says in Verse 8 that Rehoboam “rejected the advice the elders gave him and consulted the young men who had grown up with and were serving him.” He consulted his entourage, his peeps, his posse. Notice they were around him, so they were living large too. Rehoboam is the son of the wealthiest man to ever live, so he’s living large. He has quite an extravagant lifestyle himself, and if you were in his entourage, you were doing all right too. These guys know if the tax base is lessened, if you have to tighten the belt a little bit, that’s going to cramp their lifestyle too. They don’t like it. In fact, they want more money-not less, more taxation-not less. They want [to know] “what’s in it for me? What’s in it for me is if he prospers, we prosper,” so here was their advice. Verse 10, “The young men he had grown up with replied, ‘Tell these people who have said to you, “Your father put a yoke on us-make our yoke lighter”-tell them, “My little finger is thicker than my father’s waist.”’” Now that sounds pretty weird to us. You’ve never said that to anybody in your life. You never got into an argument when you were a little kid and said, “Oh, yeah? My litter finger is bigger than your waist.” But you have said things like “I have more intelligence in my little finger than you have in your whole body!” We have an expression like that. Think of it like that. “He has more strength in his little finger than you have in your whole body.” That's in essence what he’s saying. “Tell them you are tougher than your father. Tell them you make their father look like he’s soft. Tell them if they think they’ve seen tough, they haven’t seen anything yet.” Then the advice gets worse, “‘My father laid on you a heavy yoke. I will make it heavier. My father scourged you with whips. I will scourge you with scorpions.’” Now, don’t take that literally. Again, this is figurative speech. They weren’t slaves. They weren’t whipped. He doesn’t mean to literally attack them with scorpions. This is the equivalent of you having a tough teacher or a tough coach and you saying, “Boy, Coach really cracked the whip today!” What does that mean? He just really cracked down on you. There’s no messing around. It’s serious business. He really made it hard. He said, “You think my father cracked the whip? I’m a dangerous man! I’m going to come at you with deadly force like a scorpion. You think life was hard? It’s only going to get harder,” and that’s the advice he listens to. How discouraging. They come back three days later hoping for good news, hoping that he’ll lighten their load, and they’re just shocked, dismayed, and crushed at his reply because he basically says verbatim what his friends told him to say. He says, “My little finger…” and all of that. “Yoke is heavier. My father scourged you with a whip. I will scourge you with scorpions,” so the king did not listen to the people. Look at the response in Verse 16, “When all Israel saw that the king refused to listen to them, they answered the king: ‘What share do we have in David, what part in Jesse’s son? To your tents, O Israel! Look after your own house, O David!’” We’re going to look after ourselves. Now what that meant by David-it was not any disloyalty to King David. It meant a disloyalty to Judah, a disloyalty to Jerusalem, to the palace, to the king who ruled over them. They said, “You keep your palace. You keep your capital. We’re starting anew,” and that’s what happened. David and Solomon had reigned over United Kingdom, and the kingdom would now be divided between north and south, between Israel and Judah. Twelve tribes made up the nation of Israel; 11 of those tribes were going to choose, Jeroboam, his rival, to be their king; and only one tribe-the Tribe of Judah in Jerusalem-would be their king. So now you’ve taken your revenue, and instead of increasing your revenue, he now has 1/12 the revenue that he had before. Instead of increasing his power, he has now diminished his power because his army is 1/12 of what it was before. His wealth is going to begin decreasing. The advice of his pose backfired miserably. He could have used this as a defining moment for people to just love him and serve him. He could have used his power and authority to benefit his kingdom, but instead he became greedy and wanted to exploit them even more. As a result, he lost the power. Guess what happens next? Have you ever heard of Shaq in the NBA? Before there was Shaq in the NBA, there was King Shishak of the East. I want you to turn to Chapter 14:25. In the fifth year of King Rehoboam, Shishak, king of Egypt, attacked Jerusalem. It was a slam dunk. He took everything. It says (page 345), “He carried off the treasures of the temple of the Lord and the treasures of the royal palace. He took everything.” Everything-everything, all the gold-everything gone. Everything Solomon had made was gone. It’s ironic, isn’t it? He wanted to increase his power by exploiting people, and he lost his power. He wanted to increase his wealth through heavier taxation, and he lost everything. There’s a lesson there. He was all about himself-nothing about God, nothing about his people. The lesson is if you put your trust in things and live for things instead of the Lord, those things can be taken away from you. What’s more? If you live for things instead of living for what counts, you too will perish. The chapter says he died right there. He accomplished nothing except to lead Israel astray, lead Israel into temple prostitution, and to lead Israel into idol-worshipping. He was an awful, terrible king, and he blew a golden opportunity because he became greedy and wanted to use people to advance his own comfort. James is going to talk about that. Let’s turn to James 5 (page 1198). We’re in Chapter 5 which is something. It means we’re nearing an end which you may think is good. Maybe you don’t. Maybe you’re enjoyed the Book. I don’t know, but again, James is going to be a straight-shooter with us-as he always has been. Chapter 5:1, he says, “Now listen…” Remember we talked about this word a couple weeks ago. It can be translated as come on! He’s saying, “Come on! Come on now!” Come on now “you rich, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming upon you.” Now before we read the rest of the passage, understand-you’ll see this once we’re done. He’s not talking about people with money. He’s talking about people who have money who exploit others. They have resources, but their only goal is to increase their own bank account; and they do it on the backs [of the poor]-like the children that we saw who are breaking their backs busting rocks every day, so somebody else can be a fat cat. They are exploiting those families. That’s the visual I want you to think of. I want you to think of these innocent people who are working hard and getting paid nothing so somebody else can get rich. He’s talking about the abuse of wealth, the abuse of power-not simply having money itself. “Your wealth has rotted…” You don’t use it for the right reasons. “…moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in these last days.” He’s saying is it just all for you? It’s all about you. It’s all about yourself. You don’t think about the kingdom. You don’t think about people. It’s all about you. “Look, the wages you failed to pay the workmen who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty.” You’re a bully! You are bullies! You’re bullying these people. You’re exploiting and manipulating these people. You think you’re getting away with it, but you’re not. A day of reckoning is coming. A day of judgment is coming, and you will answer for your actions. What you have and what you’ve lived for is going to be taken away from you. That’s the lesson of James. “You have used on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered innocent men, who were not opposing you.” The anger of God is against these bullies-against these manipulators, against these exploiters-and is being communicated through James; and it’s still being communicated. If you’re listening to this, and you are exploiting someone-it could be a child; it could be somebody you work with; it could be a spouse; it could be somebody else-if you’re misusing power, misusing authority for your own advantage at the expense of another, James is talking to you. He’s telling you that pushes God’s buttons. You’ll answer to that. You’ll give an account for that. Change your ways. It’s a warning to us. So that is number one. If you are an exploiter, he’s saying you better stop that [behavior]. You have another defining moment here. Use your power and authority to serve people, to lighten their load, to help humanity. Don’t exploit people. Don’t be a bully. Secondly, I think the Christian response is we’re called to do what Jesus did. How did Jesus treat people who exploited? How did He deal with those who were exploited? There is a Verse that I mentioned to you last week, I believe, when the missionary was here. I talked about John 17:18 (page 1071). Jesus says, “As You sent Me into the world, I have sent them into the world.” As the Father sent the Son to the world-how did He send the Son in the world? With purpose. “As God has sent Me into the world with a mission and a purpose, I have sent you into the world.” He sent us into the world with a mission and purpose. Now Jesus talks about mission and purpose when He begins His public ministry in Luke 4. He comes into His hometown of Nazareth. He comes into the synagogue to teach. They hand him the scroll of the Prophet Isaiah, and He begins to read from Isaiah 61. Jesus says these words from the Prophet (page 1018), “‘The Spirit of the Lord is on Me, because He has anointed Me…’” The Anointed One is the word for Christ, so this was understood to be about the Christ, to be about the Messiah when He comes. He has anointed me, and I want you to notice who the target audience of the Messiah is going to be. Listen carefully. “‘He has anointed me to preach the good news to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners…’” Not just literal prisoners, but anybody who was held captive by sin, who was held captive by deceit, by a bully. He came to set them free. “‘…and recover of sight for the blind…’” Not just the physically blind, but the spiritually blind. “‘…and to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’” The oppressed are the bullied. The oppressed are the exploited, the manipulated. “‘Then He rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on Him, and He began by saying to them, “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”’” I have come to live this out. I am the One of whom Isaiah writes, and I have come with a mission. My mission is going to be to the oppressed. I’m coming to help the weak, the vulnerable, and the oppressed. That’s what we’re called to do. [It’s] one of the aspects of being a Christian. We’re not called to be wimps. We’re called to stand up against abuse. When I was a youth pastor, we had a bully in our youth group in our school. We had a private Christian school there as well. His name was Ed, and Ed had been a thorn in my side since the day I started on staff-from the time he was in fifth grade until he was a senior in high school. He was one week away from his 18th birthday. When you looked at him, basically it was like looking at a full-grown man. He was a big guy-big broad shoulders, barrel-chested. He was a football player, a tough guy. He was the top of the food chain at the school. He could pick on anybody, and he did; and the kids were all afraid of Ed because of his size and because of his demeanor. He showed no respect to teachers, to pastors, and he certainly didn’t show respect to me. He would give me a hard time when I was preaching. He’d pass notes or giggle. He wouldn’t listen to me when I tried coaching him in football or basketball. He was just a very difficult person to deal with. One day, it reached a climax on a hayride. He was bullying one of the kids, another high school boy, and he pushed him off the hay wagon head first. I said, “Ed, I told you before we started, no rough-housing. That kid could break his neck. What’s wrong with you? Don’t ever do that again.” A little later in the trip, he started to do it again. I confronted him and said, “Ed, don’t do that! Ed, don’t!” and over the side the kid went. He pushed him off the wagon again head first. I was angry. I stood up and I said, “Ed, you go over there and sit down.” He didn’t listen to me. “When we get back to the church, I’m going to deal with you.” So Ed stands up and he gets in my face. He says, “Yeah, what are you going to do? Huh? What are you going to do?” I said, “Go sit down, Ed.” “Come on! Tell me-what are you going to do?” I said, “Ed, sit down.” “Come on! What are you going to do?” The hayride stops. Sixty teenagers turn and witness their youth pastor being bullied by the bully. What would I do? What was I going to do? I didn’t even know what I was going to do. So he was yelling at me, and it was a little bit intimidating. He was a big guy. Then he kind of crossed the line. He got to the point of making physical contact with me. He came and he kind of bumped me with his chest. He changed his tone from saying, “Come on! What are you going to do?” to a direct order. He said, “Come on! Do something! Come on! Do something!” He pressed a button that would not come back up, and I didn’t premeditate this, but I just poof (making the sound of a punch)! With everything I had, I pushed him. He lifted off the ground. His feet went flying; he went flying. He landed on his back and tumbled a good ways. He stood up in the cornfield and started cussing at me. Then he was saying, “I’m a minor! I’m a minor! I’m going to sue you! I’m a minor!” He was one week away from being 18. So I jumped off the hay wagon. I ran down to him and said, “Get on the hay wagon right now.” I said, “You’re just digging a hole for yourself. You’re digging it deeper all the time. Get on the hay wagon, shut your mouth, and I’ll deal with you when we get back.” When I got back to the school, everybody was waiting for their parents to come. We came around the corner, and they were all sitting there waiting by the entrance. They didn’t see me, but I could hear them. Guess what the talk is? “It was a great hayride, wasn’t it?” Nope. The talk was about, “Did you see what Pastor Jeff did? He pushed Eddie in the cornfield! That was awesome!” It was this ding dong, the witch is dead kind of mentality because nobody ever stood up to Eddie before. I was feeling bad about it. It was like, “This isn’t good.” But when Eddie came back to school-and I’ll just finish the story just so you know-he was a changed man. He came in and said, “How are you today, Pastor Jeff? It’s good to see you today, Pastor Jeff. How are you?” If I had something on my collar, he’d wipe it off. If I made a call at basketball practice and we were having a scrimmage and somebody would say go, “Aw, come on, Pastor Jeff, they didn’t fowl him!” He’d go, “Shhh shh shhh! Good call! Good call, Pastor Jeff!” He treated me with such respect the rest of the year. At the end of the year, he took me out for lunch. Actually he graduated and came back and took me out to lunch to say thank you for the influence I’d made in his life. I just noticed the level of respect for him and how he treated everybody because somebody had stood up for the bullied. There are Eddies in this world. There are bullies that misuse their power, that intimidate people who prey on the weak. You know some Eddies. Maybe sometimes it even involves you literally confronting someone about their exploitation. Turning the other way and watching it go on-that’s not what Jesus would have done; so sometimes it’s literally. It could be to a spouse; it could be to someone in your family; or it could be to an employer or somebody else. They are exploiting people, and you confront that. Other times the bullies look different. The bullies can be poverty; the bullies can be institutions that discriminate. Some of them show prejudice and prey on somebody because of a disability or whatever it is. They take advantage of the elderly. Sometimes the bullies we stand up to were doing it by getting behind people who were doing the job. Todd Powers-have you ever met a missionary who got more done for the Kingdom than that guy? He was showing us, “Here’s my Bible college. Here is me training 400 pastors. Here’s my missionary in Thailand where I’m rescuing children from human trafficking. Here’s my orphanage in Myanmar where we rescue children whose parents died in the cyclone. Here they are.” This guy has stuff going on all over. Last week, we sent him a love offering for $2,500. We were saying, “We’re behind you. You’re standing up to the bullies in the world. You’re helping the weak. You’re helping the helpless.” He said when he goes to Pakistan, he has to have armed guards that take him to the different venues. Every time he goes to a venue, if he’s going to the same place, they have to take a different route to get to the venue because of the threats that are against him. When he’s preaching, there are armed guards inside and outside of the building. As he’s telling me this, his parents are going (Pastor is covering his ears), “La, la, la, la, la, la.” He said, “You know, you’re welcome to come with me sometime if you’d like to.” I said, “I am busy that day. Besides that, my wife won’t let me go,” and that’s the truth. She said I can’t go. But we get behind somebody like that. That’s why we support Pastor Jean so much in Haiti or the Haitian pastor in the Dominican. I’ve never seen such blatant discrimination as that of the Haitians. They’re not allowed to legally own land there. They’re not allowed to send their children to school there. They’re not allowed to receive medical care. They live in the worst possible conditions, the worst jobs for the lowest pay that you can have. It is extreme! That's why our church pays for them to have a place of worship and pays for the mission to run a school there. We pay for that building where they can have a school and a place of worship every Sunday. We don’t take it out of the general. We just have an offering here or there, a fundraiser here or there. God meets the need, and we get behind Him. Remember last year we rallied around the Care House. The Care House comes along and helps children and their families who’ve been sexually abused. It records their testimony so they don’t have to come into a court of law and look at their abuser, the one who exploited them, in the face. They can do it in a safe, friendly environment. We spent about $12,000 and bought them all new recording devices that are now being used by the Care House. So what are we going to do this year? They lost so much funding when GM shut down... I just let the cat out of the bag a little bit. Come November-how many of you like cheeseburgers and French fries? You’ve heard of Fuddruckers before? There is a rumor in town that I go to restaurants sometimes. I don’t know who started that rumor (congregation laughing), but occasionally I go to Fuddruckers and have gotten to know the owner. You would not believe what he’s going to do for us. We are sponsoring an event there, our church is. A Tuesday in November, if you come in from the time that business opens until the time they close and get a cheeseburger, fries and a drink, all of the money is going to go to the Care House-100 percent. Not 10 percent, 100 percent, everything! It’s going to be free, so if your family is poor, it’s going to help the poor too. If your family is poor, they literally can come in and get a free meal or they can say, “Here’s ten bucks” for a family of five. That $10 goes in the kitty for the Care House. For some of us it will be the most expensive cheeseburger we will ever eat in our lives because some of us are going to give some big gifts for that cheeseburger. We’re going to give all that money to the Care House because we’re standing up for people in this community who are exploited. That’s why our church gets behind these causes. That’s why we’re involved. We roll up our sleeves, and we help these folks. This is part of the mission of the church. It’s just as much a part of the Gospel as sharing what Jesus did on the cross because Jesus said, “I’ve come here, and here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to go out, and I’m going to preach the good news to the poor. I’m going to help the oppressed. I’m going to deliver those who are captive.” So that is the mission of the church as well. That's, I think, one of the most important things we take away from this Passage from James. We need to be difference makers for the Kingdom. Make sure we’re using our resources, not hoarding them, but using them for God’s glory and to help people. We need to take care of our needs as well, but make a difference in our world.