Its good to be back with you today. How many of you watch The Apprentice? Anybody watch that reality show with Donald Trump? Have you seen that? Okay, not too many Apprentice fans. I happen to be someone who has watched that show in the past-not every season-but several of the seasons, especially that first year. Ive always been intrigued by Donald Trump and his success. I remember reading The Art of the Deal, so I really wanted to watch that first reality show when the contestants came on and competed for a job; and every week, somebody was fired. Youre fired! is the famous expression. The first season we were watching, they announced they were going to build a skyscraper, a Trump hotel in Chicago that would be the tallest building in the world. Now they scaled that back after 9-11, but it still ended up being 93 stories tall, something like that. The children would say, Can we stay at the Trump Tower? Can we stay at the Trump Tower? Is it done yet? Id say, No, its not done. Someday… So finally, I said Ill check on it for you because they would ask almost every summer, Can we stay at Trump Tower? It was done, and I said, Okay, this summer were going to stay one night. Dont get used to it. I mean normally a hotel for us is just a place to hang the hat. It doesnt have to be fancy. Were just going to sleep there-crash and unwind a little bit. I said, But if were going to go to Trump Tower, then that becomes our event. When its time to check in, were going to stay there until its time to check out. Were going to soak everything we can out of this experience because its going to set Mom and Dad back a little bit, so we did that. We stayed there. We felt a little bit like a fish out of water-a lot of hoity toity types there. We had the meal there, and of course you had to dress up. You never really felt comfortable. It was kind of a formal dining experience. It made us want to go back to a regular restaurant and just get a cheeseburger or something. You have stuff on your plate, its really small, and you dont know what it is; but it tastes good. Even after they tell you what it is, you dont know what it is; but we had a lovely experience. We watched the fireworks at Navy Pier from our room, and we just had this beautiful view of the skyscrapers, the Wrigley building, the Tribune building, and then the Chicago River ran right underneath us. We saw Lake Michigan, and it was just gorgeous. We had a good time. We really took it all in, but one of the painful experiences for me was when it was time to go and we had to exit. I didnt think this through because the valet goes to get your car, and its like a show. There are people walking around, other patrons there, and youre like, Oh, what car is going to drive up next? Here comes a Rolls Royce, oh! Here comes a Bentley, oh! Here comes a brand new Mercedes, oh! A brand new Jag convertible, oh! Here comes Pastor Jeffs 2002 Toyota. Thats not my car! What is this? Whered my car go? (Congregation laughing). I had to tell the valet, and he doesnt hear this every day, but I had to say, Yeah, when you start the car, you have to put it in neutral for a few seconds. Then put it in drive. My son was like, Im out of here. They were like, Can you just pick us up down the block, so nobody knows were associated with you? But its my car. Its a decent car, but all of the sudden I found myself ashamed of my car because of all these fancy wheels that were going by. On our last day, we said, Hey, were Cubs fans. Lets go to Harry Carays and get a burger. So we were walking around the streets killing time, and we see what says, The Chicago walk. Its down by the Chicago River, so you go down some steps [to get to it]. I said, It sounds good. Lets go on the Chicago walk, so we went on the Chicago walk; and immediately we realized what we had done. There was a sense of regret for the decision that wed made because we were walking through what was a place where homeless people stayed. We didnt realize that at the time. There was a stench of urine that greeted you. Rather than being the scenic experience, you felt like you were intruding by going through somebodys privacy, their bedroom. There was a man under a tarp that was just waking up. You just felt bad. He said, Well, you shouldnt have come down here. Brenda was like, Well, we didnt know that was the case. We went up the steps, and as you went up the steps, the first thing you saw was the Trump Tower, this opulent structure that stands for prosperity and this real estate mogul-this expensive place where we had stayed that night. In juxtaposition with just a matter of feet away from this luxury hotel were these men living in a community under the bridge. I thought about the contrast between the rich and the poor, and Im certainly not rich; but rich is a very relative term, isnt it? To the men living under the bridge, our family probably seemed rich. We had decent clothes. We werent worried about our meal or where we were going to stay that night. We had a car to drive. Compared to them, we were rich; but compared to most of fellow Trumpers at the hotel, we werent rich. I dont know how much it showed, but we were just common middle-class folks trying to see how the other half lived for one night. Most of those patrons-even though they were pretty well off-most of them are poor compared to Donald Trump himself, if you were to compare their wealth to the Trumpster. Yet, you compare Donald Trumps wealth to someone like Warren Buffett or Bill Gates, and he doesnt seem so rich anymore. Rich is a relative term, and James is going to contrast the rich and the poor for us this morning; so lets take a look at James 1 as we continue to go through this Book together. We call it the Gospel According to Jim. Jim, of course, is the informal name for James; and even though this is the Book of James, James has a rather informal style. He is kind of a laid-back, sitting on the porch swing, sipping on a lemonade, man of wisdom who just drops these nuggets-this knowledge just oozes from them. He just sits back and he talks about life; and you just take it in. That's the feel we have when we read the Book of James. Were going through it chapter by chapter, verse by verse; and I believe Pastor Jerry left off last week with Verse 8. Verse 9 (page 1196 of pew Bibles), The brother in humble circumstances ought to take pride in his high position. But the one who is rich should take pride in his low position… Right away, James does what James always does. His statements are very shocking at face value. They almost seem the reverse of what they should be. Its like the woman in the meeting who talked about us being the safest, most secure, wealthiest nation, which puts us at a serious (pause) disadvantage. It puts us at a disadvantage. James says, The brother who is poor should take pride in his high position. The one who is rich should take pride in his low position. James, didnt you get that backwards? Isnt that a typo? What hes going to explain to us here is the Gospel has a different meaning to different segments of society. Its the same Gospel; its the same message, but who we are sharing it with has a different impact upon them. I want you to notice that he is speaking here to Christians. He says, The brother… His audience is believers. Hes not speaking in a generic sense to all rich and to all poor. He is speaking to those who are rich who come to the faith and those who are poor who come to the faith. He talked about speaking to the Diaspora, the scattered believers in the very beginning of his Book-believers who have been scattered for a number of different reasons. This Verse is similar to a Verse in 1 Corinthians 7:22 (page 1122 of pew Bibles), if we could just put that Verse on the wall. It says, For he who was a slave when he was called by the Lord is the Lords freedman; similarly, he who was a free man when he was called is Christs slave. So the Gospel to the slaves said, Look, youre a slave, but, you know what? In Christ, youre free. In Christ, you need to know you matter to God, that you have just as much significance as the rich man. In fact, it was not uncommon in the days of the church for a slave to be an elder and to lead a congregation that his master was a member of; and at the church, it was the slave who was in authority over his master. That was not an uncommon scenario at all. So he is saying to the slave-hes lifting up the slave and saying, Theres not slave nor free. We are one in Christ. Then he speaks to the wealthy, to the free; and he says, Look, you are Christs slave. You are doulos. You are a bondservant. You are the property of the Master. You who are masters, you have a Master that owns you that you are subject to. So we have the same Gospel, but a very different presentation, depending on who the target audience is. James says, Likewise, the same thing is true to the poor. To the poor who come to Christ, he says, Listen, you who are poor, you are rich. You have been redeemed. You have been purchased by Christ. You matter to God. You might feel like you dont have significance. You might feel like you dont matter very much, but you matter. You matter to God more than youll ever know. Rejoice that God has exalted you. He has lifted you up. You are spiritually rich. Your sins are forgiven. You have an inheritance in Heaven. You are a son or a daughter of God, and you who are poor rejoice in your high position. Know that you have significance; know that you have a purpose and that God loves you very much, so that message of the Gospel would lift up the poor. Thats the message I gave to the Haitian Church in the Dominican Republic and Pastor Jean because they look at the Americans, and they envy us. Theyre envious of our lifestyle, of our clothes, what we have. I get up there, and I share the Gospel, and say, You, tonight, are as rich as I. In fact, in your faith, you are richer than I am. In the message to the rich, the Gospel is very different because sometimes the rich can be pretty impressed with themselves, sometimes arrogant-not always; but sometimes they can say, Well, look. Look what Ive amassed. Look what Ive accumulated for myself. Look how well I have done for myself. Look how successful I am. Look at the Rolls Royce that I drive or the luxury penthouse I live in. Look at the size of my bank account, the number of properties I own, and they start looking at all these tangible earthly things; and they can get a little bit puffed up. James says, You know what? You are one heartbeat away from eternity. You are one breath away from eternity, just like the next guy. You are as dependent upon God as anybody else, and, One day, James says, youre going to pass away. Hes going to talk about that. He says, One day, youre going to pass away. Even Mr. Trump and his entire Trumpish splendor will one day pass away. His buildings are going to belong to somebody else. Theyll belong to his children and maybe their children; but somewhere along the line, its going to be sold. Right now the name Trump is on everything. You use Trump shampoo when you take a shower. You drink Trump water when you work out. Everythings Trump. Some day that name comes off the building; it comes off the brand. Theres going to be a generation that goes, Whos Trump? Isnt that something in cards? Those buildings will belong to somebody else, or those buildings may even get torn down. He says, All that stuff passes away, so he reminds the rich of their humble position. You are as dependent upon God as the next person. What you have is fleeting. Life is fleeting. Be aware of that. Be mindful of that-that you belong to God and what you have belongs to God. So the Gospel is a humbling message to the rich. He goes on and says in the rest of Verse 10, …because he will pass away like a wild flower. For the sun rises with scorching heat and withers the plant; its blossom falls and its beauty is destroyed. He talks here about life and the toll it takes on all of us, the wind that beats against us, and the sun that is relentless. To me, that testifies of the relentlessness of life, the trials and the hardships that we face that take their toll on us- they mentally, physically, and emotionally beat down upon us. Then I think about the withering and losing of our beauty. He talks about the appearance because we are the plants in this analogy. I think about aging. You might live a healthy life, and I dont care if you have the finest doctors and you eat the best diet, youre going to age. Youre going to grow old, and youre going to die one way or another. Thats the reality of it. That really hit home for me this weekend. Some of you know my aunt has been ill, and she passed away. Yesterday, I was able to do her memorial service; so following the funeral, we went to the house for a reception. I watched a media that my cousin had put together. It was a panorama of Aunt Vis life from a young girl all the way through until recently. It really is quite an eye-opening experience when you can see this panorama view of a life during the course of five minutes as the song played. At the beginning of the song, I seen her as a young teenager; and she is vibrant. She was just bubbly and giddy anyway, so I can just imagine her… In all these pictures, she is laughing. Shes teasing somebody. Shes enjoying life. I see her with my dad; I see her with my grandma. I see her enjoying life, and then I see her as a woman who started to date. I see Uncle Bob, but I dont see Uncle Bobs tummy. Its not there. I had never seen him without a tummy before, and he had a full head of hair. How about that? I dont remember that either. I watched them begin to court, and I could see in these photographs their romance bud and their love bloom in their lives. Then I saw shots of her as a radiant bride in a beautiful white dress. She had a bouquet of roses, and she was smiling. She was vivacious and life was ahead of her. I saw them as newlyweds. They bought this house in Rockford that I had spent many days in. I watched as construction went up, and I saw the life that they lived together. Then as the media goes on, I see them start to age. I see Violas hairdo change. I see her face get a little rounder. I see her clothing get a little looser. I see Uncle Bobs tummy return. I see his hairline recede. I watched them as middle age set in, and I saw Aunt Vi. I said, Thats the one I remember. Thats the Uncle Bob I remember. Then I watch them age, and I see them in their retirement years. Then I see her alone. I then see her hair become grey, and I see wrinkles appear. Then I see the onslaught of the cancer, and I see that once optimistic face have a look of fear, concern, and then confusion. I watched that expression change, and then I seen her shortly before she passed away. The song ended there. There is something about seeing that panorama that makes it a very sobering experience, and it gets you to think. Even as I left that reception, I pulled off to a restaurant to gather my thoughts for this weekend some more and to kinda make sure I knew where I was going. I prayed a little bit, and I plugged in that media into my computer and watched it one more time. I let those images sink in. I pulled out pictures of myself that she had. This one shows me 40 years ago. This one shows me 30 years ago. This one shows me 10 years ago, and I see that in myself. I recognize that we are all passing through life. James reminds his audience of that. He says, Were going to fade like the flowers. The beauty is going to wane. Life will take its toll. In the same way, he says, …the rich man will fade away even while he goes about his business, even while hes busy living life, he will fade away. That reminds me of a parable in the Gospel of Luke 12 that Jesus told. Sometimes Jesus parables are hard to understand. Sometimes we really have to dig to get the meaning, but this is not one of them. This is a very straight forward parable. In Verse 16 (page 1031 of pew Bibles), he tells us about a rich man. …The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop. He thought to himself, What shall I do? Notice, thats important-the ground of the man produced a good crop. This man would not have success if it not for what God had provided. He might have been a great farmer, but he isnt going to be able to make his own dirt, is he? The ground of a certain man… The rain, the sun, the ground, the seed-everything that God had provided produced a good crop. He was simply a steward of what God had provided. Verse 17, He thought to himself, What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops. He was so successful, so blessed, that he did not have the room to store them. Verse 18, Then he said, This is what Ill do. I will downsize, I will sell off some of my land. I will be content with what I have because what I have is enough for me. Thats not what he says. He says, …This is what I will do. I will continue to have abundance, but I will give away my excess. I will live on what I need, and I will give what I dont need to those who are less fortunate. Im going to bless the work of the Kingdom, Im going to bless the widow and the orphan, and Im going to help those in need around me. Does he say that? He doesnt say that. He says, heres my solution, …I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And Ill say to myself, You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry. Its time to retire. Youve worked hard. Youve amassed this fortune, all this stuff; and Im going to build bigger barns so I can retain it all for me. Im going to kick back, relax, and forget the world. Im going to enjoy my twilight years, enjoy the fruits of my labor. [Nope], God has other plans. Verse 20, …God said to him, You fool! Fool means someone who lives as though there is no God, lives with no moral compass. This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you prepared for yourself? Then Jesus gives His sobering admonition. He says, This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God. Does Jesus condemn the man for being rich? Does he condemn him for being successful? Does He say, Its wrong for you to have resources? Its wrong for you to have an abundance. Does He say that? What is he condemned for? Number one, he is arrogant. He is called a fool because he is self-absorbed. He gives no regard for God, spiritual things, or his fellow man. He is arrogant and prideful. He assumes tomorrow will be there. Secondly, he is self-centered. He is only consumed with his needs and his situation. Jesus does not condemn him for having the means. We said rich is a relative term. All of us in the eyes of the world are rich. Every person in this room is rich in the eyes of the world. If you go to a country where they dont know what theyre going to eat-theyre going to die. They have no medical treatment at all, nothing to really wear, [youd see that] were rich. But its a person who has an abundance and has put their trust in that abundance, put that trust in themselves, and has become stingy towards God and stingy toward their fellow man, these are the people that James is warning here. These are the people who have become careless and put their trust in the wrong place. My family and I went to a church called Willow Creek last Sunday. Some of you have heard of Willow Creek Community Church. Its a church thats significant because it started a movement. Its not just a large church-it started a movement: the contemporary church movement-that was started back in the 70s in a suburb of Chicago that met in a theater called Willow Creek. I can remember being at Trinity and some of my friends saying, Hey, theres this new church. It started in a theater. Its called Willow Creek, and they have drama, contemporary music, and media. I was like, In church? Yeah. Thats crazy! You want to come? Nah. I dont think so. I have a church, so I could have been there like in the very beginning; but I chose not to. But at Trinity College, a young student named Bill Hybels was listening to a lecture by Dr. Bilezikian. He was vision-casting about what the church could be and should be. He caught that vision, and he started this church by selling tomatoes in this affluent suburb of Chicago. That community was just getting ready to explode. It exploded, and the church exploded because they were meeting a need. They would ask, Why dont you go to church? People would say, We dont go to church because its a fashion show. We dont go to church because they always want money. We dont go to church because its boring. So he said, Well, lets start a church where we dont make big appeals for money, we dont dress up-we come casually, and where we heed the Gospel. We dont compromise the Gospel, but we use the arts and other things to make it interesting and not boring. This church exploded, and it became the largest church in America. In fact, it was the largest church in the Western Hemisphere. Now Pastor Osteens church in Texas is the largest church, but its probably still in the top three. Its humongous! They just built a 7,000 seat auditorium. When our family came, we wanted to sit up on top, so we got on the escalator. They were like, Were in an escalator in church. How weird is this? So we went up to the top, and there is this 7,000 seat auditorium that will be near full three times that weekend. This is, like I say, one of the largest churches in America. It has influenced tens of thousands of churches around the world and tens of thousands of pastors and leaders around the world. Theyre doing a tremendous work in missions, in evangelism, and in local domestic concerns; you name it, they are involved in it. I can remember back in the days when wed have leadership conferences I would go to, and thered be these time-out sessions where a small group of senior pastors would meet with Pastor Hybels. There would be 20 of us, 30 of us, in a small room for a Q&A and some one-on-one time with him. We would talk, and he would share stories. He reminded us-again, we were there-about how this place came to be and this facility that has been so influential came to be. God had put some people in that congregation who would say-unashamedly-that their goal was to make as much money as humanly possible. God had gifted them as businessmen to make money, and they would tell you unapologetically they wanted to make as much money as they could. The second part of that equation was they wanted to live on as little as they could. The third part of that equation was to fund the Gospel as much as they could, so these people in this congregation-and there were many of them, very successful in the eyes of the world-their goal, what really got them excited, what really tripped their trigger, was to be able to come to the pastor at tax time or whenever it was and say, How much, Pastor? How much do you need? Were building a building and writing six figure, seven figure checks to the church because they knew it was doing a good work, and they wanted to fund the Gospel; so that was their job. To some people, God tells them to sell their business, sell their house, and give it all to the poor. These people chose to live as humbly as they could but make as much money as they could to fund missions, to fund their local church and make a difference in the Kingdom. They didnt put their trust in themselves or their riches. They knew the source was God. God is not condemning those who have means or those who have resources here. God has gifted some of us to be able to do that. Im not one of them. Im just middle-class like most of us here, but some of us have that ability. James is saying, Listen-recognize who has blessed you. Make Gods priorities your priorities. It reminds me of a Passage in the Book of 2 Corinthians 8:9 (page 1146). Paul basically gives us the Gospel in one verse. He says, For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, so that you through His poverty might become rich. He wrote this to this church in Corinth that had been so generous to the church in Jerusalem with the giving of their resources. He said, You remind me of Jesus. He became poor that through His poverty or by means of His poverty, you might become rich. This verse is a testimony of the fact that salvation is not of ourselves. It is not something that we have earned; it is not something that we have manufactured or anything else. He doesnt say, Through your hard work, through your knowledge of the Scripture, through your Godliness and holiness, through your righteous living, you have become rich. No, he says it is through His poverty or by means of-this verb says-His poverty, through the efforts of someone else. What someone else has done, we have been blessed. We have been made rich. Thats the Gospel. It is not from you; it is all from Him. Salvation is entirely from Him. Did you hear the story about the man who was searching for coins, and he was on somebody elses property and doing one of those searches with a metal detector? Its dawning on me that I think I said that wrong all weekend (congregation laughing). Its going off, and hes looking for these coins. It goes off, so he says, I found something. I always thought that looked like fun. So he starts scratching around, and he finds a coin-an old coin, a Roman coin from the 300s. He didnt know it at the time; he just knew it looked old. He was like, Wow! He started digging and scratching, and he gets more. He digs and scratches more, and he finds more. Hes like, Wow! I need to get some help. He gets some help to excavate a little bit, and he unearths a treasure. They conservatively estimate the value at over a million dollars of old coins. Once he cleaned them off and polished them off, he had all these beautiful coins. They were worth over a million dollars. He was rich! He says to the owner of the land, Look, you allowed me permission to search on your property with my metal detector, and I have found a treasure chest. Its on your property, so were going to go halves. I take one gold coin; you take one gold coin, and were going to split this thing right down the middle. The property owner didnt know it was there, and he never would have known without this man; so by means of this man, his investment, his time, his knowledge, his efforts, his resources-by his means, this man benefited. He really didnt do anything. He just said, Yeah, sure. Go ahead. I dont even know if he knew he was out there. Maybe he didnt even know that, but he became blessed through the efforts and means of another, and that is the Gospel. We have become blessed because Christ invested in us, because He took the means to search us out and find us to redeem us. Through His poverty, through His incarnation, He left the splendor of Heaven to come to the manger, to come to earth-to be born to common parents and live as a common laborer. Through His poverty and His death upon the cross, His resurrection, you and I have become rich. We have an inheritance in Heaven. We have a Kingdom. We are sons and daughters of God. We have salvation that has been purchased through His blood. Thats what we come to remember as we reflect upon communion this morning. Im going to ask if our communion team would come at this time as we prepare our hearts and minds to receive the Lords Supper.