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Redeemer Bible Church

Unreserved Accountability to Christ. Undeserved Acceptance from Christ.

The Ministry of Mercy, Part Four

Selected Scriptures

Introduction
An interesting feature of the gospel narratives is that whenever Judas is mentioned in
a list of disciples his status as the betrayer of the Lord Jesus is always present. You probably
don’t know too many Christian families with boys named Judas. For by virtue of the
enormity of his crime, his name has become synonymous with treachery, and treachery of
the grossest kind: the delivering up of the innocent and blameless Lamb of God.

In Germany, it is still illegal (as far as I know) to name your child Adolph for similar
reasons. No one would want to identify with one who had behaved so despicably, so
wickedly, so reprehensibly.

In the same way, when it comes to describing particular behaviors as especially vile,
we tend to attach the names Sodom and Gomorrah to them. For most Christians, the cities
of Sodom and Gomorrah stand for gross immorality, sexual filthiness, rape, and above all,
homosexuality.

When ministers decry the condition in the cultural condition of the United States,
with its Jerry Springer talk shows, its dating reality programs, and its celebration of the
sexually aberrant, they say that the America is in danger of becoming like Sodom and
Gomorrah. So we better repent of our immorality and impurity and everything else that is
contrary to sound teaching, and place ourselves at the mercy of the only one who can stay
the tide of his just wrath.

You will probably remember how the incidents of 9/11 elicited a barrage of would-
be prophets proclaiming that the judgment of the Lord was at hand to hold the nation
accountable for its overt approval of a Hollywood morality. Though the means for
accomplishing his end of releasing his wrath against a nation of godless, God-hating
offenders was not fiery brimstone raining from the heavens, two jet liners loaded with
enough fuel to traverse the contiguous forty-eight states did the job. “Thus says the Lord,”
the so-called prophets said, “this is for your homosexuality. Go the way of Sodom!”

Well, I hope that by now you have learned that such pronouncements not only
overstep the bounds within which the preacher of God’s word is permitted to tread, but they
fail to take into account all that Scripture says about the nature of Sodom’s sin against the
Lord. Oh, Sodom was certainly guilty of practicing homosexuality in the most brazen ways
possible—that’s for sure. But when we read on a little further, when we read from the pen

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of a true prophet of the Lord, we see that there was much more to the sin of Sodom than
merely the sexual.

Turn in your Bibles with me to Ezekiel 16 and read vv 46-49.

Now your older sister is Samaria, who lives north of you with her daughters;
and your younger sister, who lives south of you, is Sodom with her daughters. 47 "Yet
you have not merely walked in their ways or done according to their abominations;
but, as if that were too little, you acted more corruptly in all your conduct than they.
48
"As I live," declares the Lord GOD, "Sodom, your sister and her daughters have
not done as you and your daughters have done. 49 "Behold, this was the guilt of your
sister Sodom: she and her daughters had arrogance, abundant food and careless ease,
but she did not help the poor and needy.

There is no doubt of Ezekiel’s authority to speak the word of God. And from his
mouth (and pen) we see that when he mentions the guilt of Sodom, homosexuality is
conspicuously absent. According to v 49, her guilt was that she and her daughters had
arrogance, abundant food and careless ease, but she did not help the poor and needy.

According to Ezekiel 16, what brought about God’s remarkable act of judgment was
that Sodom had become fat while she watched others suffering in squalor. God judged
Sodom because she was arrogant. Proverbs 14:31 says, “He who oppresses the poor taunts
his Maker, But he who is gracious to the needy honors Him.” And Prov 17:5 says nearly
the same thing, “He who mocks the poor taunts his Maker; He who rejoices at calamity will
not go unpunished.”

A failure to help the poor and needy is arrogant; for as we learned from James 1, the
rich man needs to glory in his humiliation. The rich man must remember that the only
reason he enjoys good things on earth is owing to the sovereign grace of God; it is owing to
the undeserved favor of the Lord who owns the cattle on a thousand hills.

So from God’s perspective a failure to help the poor and needy is tantamount to
mocking God; for it says, “I have arrived by my own achievements. I am not obligated to
anyone. If they want an abundance of possessions, then they should work for it. That’s
what I did!” How foolish! How arrogant! As the Scripture repeatedly attests, “God
opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble” (Jas 4:6).

For this Sodom was guilty: her enjoyment of abundant food and careless ease at the
expense of the poor and needy. For this, Sodom was destroyed by fire and brimstone from
the sky.

Have you ever wondered why Lot’s wife looked back? She was not looking back
because she had taken a same-sex lover. She was looking back to a life of abundant food
and careless ease! And for that, she was transformed into a pillar of salt. She along with her
arrogant counterparts faced the judgment of God because they did not help the poor and
needy.

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Do you see how serious the ministry of mercy is to the Lord? Do you see how he
has aligned himself with the weak and oppressed, with the poor and the outcast? God
opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. What I am saying is that he really
opposes the proud! We need to come to grips with the gravity of this ministry. We need to
come to grips with the reality of the situation. “For judgment will be merciless to one who
has shown no mercy” (Jas 2:13).

Well, in order to get a clearer picture of the seriousness of the ministry of mercy, let’s
turn in our Bibles to Jas 5:1-6.

Come now, you rich, weep and howl for your miseries which are coming
upon you. 2 Your riches have rotted and your garments have become moth-eaten. 3
Your gold and your silver have rusted; and their rust will be a witness against you
and will consume your flesh like fire. It is in the last days that you have stored up
your treasure! 4 Behold, the pay of the laborers who mowed your fields, and which
has been withheld by you, cries out against you; and the outcry of those who did the
harvesting has reached the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. 5 You have lived luxuriously
on the earth and led a life of wanton pleasure; you have fattened your hearts in a day
of slaughter. 6 You have condemned and put to death the righteous man; he does not
resist you.

The point of this passage is fairly straightforward. Do not oppress the weak, because
if you do, you will find yourself fighting against God.

The Denunciation of the Rich

As you can see, the passage begins with a call for the rich to cry a lot and to do it
loudly. But the call is not so much a command as it is a prediction in the tradition of the
Old Testament prophets. Something is about to befall you. Look again at v 1: Come now,
you rich, weep and howl for your miseries which are coming upon you. The call is a call
to mourning because miseries, troubles, distresses are looming like a dark cloud on the
horizon.

Now as the passage unfolds, we see that the reason for James’ prosecutorial language
is due not to the fact of the rich being rich, but of the rich abusing their riches. In so doing,
he is picking up on a major theme of the Old Testament. Let’s look at several examples,
starting with the prophet Isaiah cf. 3:14-15; 10:1-4; 41:17.

The LORD enters into judgment with the elders and princes of His people,
"It is you who have devoured the vineyard; The plunder of the poor is in your
houses. 15 "What do you mean by crushing My people And grinding the face of the
poor?" Declares the Lord GOD of hosts.

Woe to those who enact evil statutes And to those who constantly record
unjust decisions, 2 So as to deprive the needy of justice And rob the poor of My
people of their rights, So that widows may be their spoil And that they may plunder
the orphans. 3 Now what will you do in the day of punishment, And in the
devastation which will come from afar? To whom will you flee for help? And where
will you leave your wealth? 4 Nothing remains but to crouch among the captives Or

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fall among the slain. In spite of all this, His anger does not turn away And His hand
is still stretched out.

The afflicted and needy are seeking water, but there is none, And their
tongue is parched with thirst; I, the LORD, will answer them Myself, As the God of
Israel I will not forsake them.

Now turn with me to Jer 7:2-7. Here, Judah’s remaining in the land is predicated
upon them amending their ways by doing what is right by one’s neighbor. Look down to vv
5-7: For if you truly amend your ways and your deeds, if you truly practice justice
between a man and his neighbor, if you do not oppress the alien, the orphan, or the
widow, and do not shed innocent blood in this place, nor walk after other gods to your
own ruin, then I will let you dwell in this place, in the land that I gave to your fathers
forever and ever.

Finally, turn over to Amos 8:4-10.

Hear this, you who trample the needy, to do away with the humble of the
land, 5 saying, "When will the new moon be over, So that we may sell grain, And the
sabbath, that we may open the wheat market, To make the bushel smaller and the
shekel bigger, And to cheat with dishonest scales, 6 So as to buy the helpless for
money And the needy for a pair of sandals, And that we may sell the refuse of the
wheat?" 7 The LORD has sworn by the pride of Jacob, "Indeed, I will never forget
any of their deeds. 8 "Because of this will not the land quake And everyone who
dwells in it mourn? Indeed, all of it will rise up like the Nile, And it will be tossed
about And subside like the Nile of Egypt. 9 "It will come about in that day," declares
the Lord GOD, "That I will make the sun go down at noon And make the earth dark
in broad daylight. 10 "Then I will turn your festivals into mourning And all your
songs into lamentation; And I will bring sackcloth on everyone's loins And baldness
on every head. And I will make it like a time of mourning for an only son, And the
end of it will be like a bitter day.

Though we could cite many more examples of God’s denunciations of the rich, one
more should suffice. In Luke 6:24-25, Jesus says, “But woe to you who are rich, for you are
receiving your comfort in full. Woe to you who are well-fed now, for you shall be hungry.”
The rich who misuse the wealth that God has given them come under his condemnation.
James puts it this way: Come now, you rich, weep and howl for your miseries which are
coming upon you.

Now even though the context shows that wealthy land owners are in view, this does
not mean that there is no word for us in the passage. As Western Christians we could easily
dismiss the teaching of this text as entirely irrelevant. “I’m not rich,” many of us could say.
But we must not forget, first of all, that one does not have to be a land owner or the CEO of
a lucrative company to be in the category of rich. Richness has to do with our ability to
meet our needs and the needs of others.

Secondly, we must not forget that comparatively speaking we are some of the
wealthiest Christians in the world. We have more discretionary income than most of the

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people of the world. According to the most recent statistics, we in the West are privileged
almost beyond comparison.

One-point-three billion people live on less than one dollar a day and 3 billion live on
fewer than two dollars a day. That means that nearly half the world’s population must
make due on less than two bucks a day! Two bucks! In saying that, it is important to keep
in mind that this dollar figure is calculated according to what is called “Purchasing Power
Parity” or PPP.

Without going into the details of how PPP is calculated for poverty, the bottom line
is that the prices of goods in countries will tend to equate under floating exchange rates so
that people would be able to purchase the same quantity of goods in any country for a given
sum of money. So when we say that 1.3 billion people in the world are living on less than a
dollar a day, we are saying that they are living on whatever we as Americans could buy with
a dollar at the grocery store.

Here is a partial list by percentage of just such people. For the sake of brevity I’ll
only give you those countries with people in this kind of poverty greater than 30 percent:
Botswana 33.3, Burkina Faso 61.2, Central African Republic 66.6, Ethiopia 31.3, The
Gambia 53.7, Ghana 38.8, Honduras 40.5, India 44.2, Lesotho 43.1, Madagascar 63.4,
Malaysia 72.8, Mozambique 37.9, Namibia 34.9, Nepal 37.7, Niger 61.4, Nigeria 70.2,
Rwanda 35.7, Sierra Leone 57.0, Zambia 63.7, Zimbabwe 36.0. Less than $1.00 a day!

Relative to the rest of the world, would you say that we are in pretty good shape?
Do you think that we are rich? This passage applies to us.

Now none of this should be construed to mean that there are no poor people here in
the United States. We should consider anyone poor whose income level falls below what is
necessary to satisfy basic needs like food, clean water, shelter, health care, and employment.
This differs from generation to generation and from country to country. In the United
States, the poverty line for a family of four is an annual cash income (before taxes) of
$18,400. For a family of six, the number is $24,680.

Could your family of six make it in the Twin Cities on less than $25,000 a year? Not
without significant help from the outside. Not without public housing, Medicaid, and food
stamps. My health insurance alone costs about $9,600 a year—and my family and I are
healthy! If a family making $24,800 a year had to spend nearly $10,000 of it on health care
(if they are healthy), how would we even begin to think about living on $14-$15,000 in a
metro area like this one?

In 2001, roughly 11.7 percent of the U.S. population lived in this kind of poverty.
Perhaps the most troubling of the statistics for poverty in America, however, is the one
related to race. 22.7 percent of blacks and 21.4 percent of Hispanics were poor compared
with 11.7 of the total population.

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In addition, poverty rates are highest for families headed by single women,
particularly if they are black or Hispanic. In 2001, both black and Hispanic female-headed
families had poverty rates exceeding 35 percent. It is hard to believe that there does not
exist in the United States the kind of partiality condemned in back in James 2; and partiality
of a kind that moves beyond the merely economic to include the racial.

And although children make up 25.6 percent of the general population, they
represent 35.7 of the poor—a disproportionate number of the poor in the United States.
Children under the age of 6 are particularly vulnerable to poverty, especially if they live in
single female-headed households. 48.9 percent of children in this category lived in poverty
in 2001.

Now just in case you were thinking the graceless thought that the only reason such
people can’t make ends meet in the most prosperous nation on the planet is due entirely to
laziness, you need to know that in addition to having a Pharisaical spirit, you are mistaken.

There is an entire category of persons referred to as the “working poor” who are
people who spent at least half the year in the labor force, but whose incomes fell to below
the official poverty level. According to the most recent report from the U.S. Department of
Labor, nearly five percent (4.9) of the nation’s poor—that’s 6.8 million people—held down
jobs.

Before I came to Redeemer in September of 2002, I just barely rose above the poverty
line. In order to do this I held a full-time job at Calvary Baptist Church, a 30-hour a week
part-time job at Starbucks, and filled in some gaps with radio V.O. work. In addition to my
wife’s home duties, she also held a part-time job. Yet even with these jobs, it was still
necessary for us to receive public assistance for moderate-income housing (we were only
$900 above the “Low Income” mark) and to participate in what is called WIC—a program
for mothers of infants and toddlers that supplies them with coupons for surplus food.

All this is to that most of us, though not wealthy land owners are rich nonetheless.
So when the majority of us in this church hear the words of Jas 5:1, Come now, you rich,
weep and howl for your miseries which are coming upon you, we need to be careful to
place ourselves in the equation. For there are dangers in being so well-to-do, some of which
are described in the rest of the passage.

Hoarding Our Wealth

The first we’ll call hoarding. Look again at Jas 5:2-3: Your riches have rotted and
your garments have become moth-eaten. Your gold and your silver have rusted; and
their rust will be a witness against you and will consume your flesh like fire. It is in the
last days that you have stored up your treasure!

When we have been blessed with material wealth, there is a tendency for us to find
our comfort, solace, and security in it. It makes us feel safe. And if you have never had
money, you nevertheless know this to be true because you have always felt vulnerable by

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your poverty. If our tendency were not to trust in riches we would not need to hear things
like this:

But those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a snare and many
foolish and harmful desires which plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the
love of money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered
away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs….Instruct those who
are rich in this present world not to be conceited or to fix their hope on the
uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly supplies us with all things to enjoy (1
Tim 6:9-10, 17).

Now here in Jas 5:2-3, the Lord is telling the rich that all that they had been trusting
in, all the wealth they had amassed would avail for them absolutely nothing in the Day of
Judgment. To the contrary, their hoarded wealth will serve as a witness against them,
testifying to their irresponsible and wicked use of the riches given to them by God.

Rather than storing up good things for themselves for the future, by misusing their
wealth they are storing up judgment for themselves. They have been focusing on earthly
treasure at the expense of the heavenly kind. Luke 12:33 says, “Sell your possessions and
give to charity; make yourselves money belts which do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in
heaven, where no thief comes near nor moth destroys.” And Prov 11:24 says, “There is one
who scatters, and yet increases all the more, And there is one who withholds what is justly
due, and yet it results only in want.”

Those who hoard their wealth not only demonstrate that their priorities are
misplaced, but also that they have no care for their fellow man. They deprive the poor of
what is their right. The poor have a right to our wealth because we are members of the
human family. This is why the Bible refers to helping the needy as “doing justice.” Psalm
82:3 says, “Vindicate the weak and fatherless; Do justice to the afflicted and destitute.”

William Perkins, the great Puritan divine, has rightly said: “...the goods we have are
not our own, but the Lord’s: we are but keepers and stewards of them. And it is God’s will
that the poor should have title to part of every man’s goods and for this cause it is a shame if
they have not release without roving, begging, or crying....”1

It is our obligation not to hoard our resources, but rather to share them with the
needy. “Instruct [those who are rich] to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous
and ready to share, storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the
future, so that they may take hold of that which is life indeed” (1 Tim 6:18-19).

A failure to do this and instead to hoard our riches will result in certain judgment: It
is in the last days that you have stored up your treasure! In this case, the irony is palpable.
Our treasures will be the witnesses at our tribunal in which the verdict will be a decisive one
for the divine prosecutor.

1
William Perkins, Treatise on Vocation (n.p., n.d.), 472.

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High Living from Our Wealth

And as if such a warning is not enough, James indicts the rich again in vv 5-6,
exposing us to another danger associated with wealth. Look down to vv 5-6: You have
lived luxuriously on the earth and led a life of wanton pleasure; you have fattened your
hearts in a day of slaughter. You have condemned and put to death the righteous man;
he does not resist you. This second danger we’ll call high living.

You have probably heard that no matter how much money we make we always find
a way to spend it. This is the temptation. The temptation is to live like citizens of Sodom—
to live luxuriously on the earth and lead a life of wanton pleasure. To live luxuriously is
to live a life of luxury, usually associated with intemperate feasting and drinking.2 And the
second verb that is translated led a life of wanton pleasure is closely related to the first; it is
just a bit more extreme. It means to indulge oneself beyond the bounds of propriety, to
indulge oneself excessively in satisfying one’s own appetites and desires.3

I should add that the second term is found in the LXX of Ezek 16:49: “Behold, this
was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had arrogance, abundant food and
careless ease, but she did not help the poor and needy.” So in James’ treatment of the sins
of the wealthy, we find a verbal echo to Ezekiel 16 and the sin of Sodom.

And like their brothers and sisters from Sodom, James’ audience’s problem was not
their feasting or drinking per se, for food and drink are not intrinsically sinful. The issue here
is intemperate feasting and drinking, seeking to satisfy our lustful pleasures at the expense of
the poor. The “at the expense of the poor” part is found in v 6: You have condemned and
put to death the righteous man; he does not resist you.

By all the wasteful eating and drinking, the poor have gone hungry. By all their
revelry, they have condemned and put to death the righteous poor, and he in his weakness
was unable to resist.

Instead the wealthy ought to have fed the poor rather than stuffing themselves with
the produce of their land. Isaiah 32:6 calls such people fools: “For a fool speaks nonsense,
And his heart inclines toward wickedness: To practice ungodliness and to speak error
against the LORD, To keep the hungry person unsatisfied And to withhold drink from the
thirsty.”

The condition described in v 5 is bad enough—living luxuriously on the earth and

leading a life of wanton pleasure is so much hedonism. But when it is achieved on the backs
of the needy it is doubly offensive.

This reminds me of the news we heard at the beginning of the war in Afghanistan,
where it was discovered that Taliban leadership had been building palatial dwellings for
themselves (complete with cooling systems for their cattle), while systematically

2
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3
spatala,w

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engendering fanaticism and a life of so-called “simplicity” on their subjects. Or back in the
80s when televangelists Jim and Tammi Bakker had extorted huge sums of money from
(mainly poor) unassuming viewers to provide (among other things) an air-conditioned
doghouse for their puppy.

This is essentially what was happening with the rich in James’ audience. They were
living lives of indulgence while the poor right in front of them were starving. It is this
behavior that allows him to say what he does at the end of v 5: you have fattened your
hearts in a day of slaughter. Like the irony of storing up vaults of wrath, the rich have
fattened their hearts for the slaughter. They have placed themselves under God’s judgment.

Now then, we have seen two vile sins: hoarding our wealth while our neighbor is
lacking and living high-off-the-hog while our neighbor is starving. Both of these sins,
because they represent the oppression of the poor, bring with them the fierce wrath of God.
Do you think that we should take the issue of the ministry of mercy seriously? Would we
not be wise to do so?

Withholding What Is Due

Well, just in case we thought it was safe to retreat, James addresses another abuse of
riches in this passage. And as he does he includes what I believe to be the most sober
warning of the text. It is found in the verse that we skipped—v 4. Read it again: Behold,
the pay of the laborers who mowed your fields, and which has been withheld by you,
cries out against you; and the outcry of those who did the harvesting has reached the ears
of the Lord of Sabaoth.

You have no doubt seen how often James uses illustrations, especially ironic
illustrations to make his points. In v 3, he says that the rich by hoarding have been saving
up for the last days! And in v 5, he says that the rich by high-living have been fattening
themselves for the slaughter! Here, however, James leaves off the irony, but illustrates his
point with a bit of personification. It is not initially the laborers who mowed (harvested) the
fields that cry out against the rich, it is the pay itself. The pay of the laborers who mowed
your fields cries out against you.

And why do the wages cry out? Because they have been withheld from those who
worked for them. They are in the wrong pockets. It is as if they are crying out from the
pockets of the wealthy and the wealthy are ignoring their cries. The injustice here is
obvious. Leviticus 19:13 says, “You shall not oppress your neighbor, nor rob him. The
wages of a hired man are not to remain with you all night until morning.”

Notice that the poor oppressed laborers in the fields of the rich cry out not for a
hand-out, but for what is their due—their wages, what they have earned. And because the
rich almost literally hold all the marbles, they use this to their advantage to try to squeeze
the poor for every penny. The bottom line for these land owners has become the bottom line
rather than vindicating the weak and doing justice to the poor.

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Now here’s where it gets frightening. The rest of v 4 tells us that the cry of the poor
over the unjust withholding of their wages does not go unnoticed. And though the rich turn
a deaf ear to their cry, there is someone listening. Look again at v 4: Behold, the pay of the
laborers who mowed your fields, and which has been withheld by you, cries out against
you; and the outcry of those who did the harvesting has reached the ears of the Lord of
Sabaoth.

Now if the text said that the outcry of those who did the harvesting has reached the
ears of the Lord, such a statement would be already as serious and as sobering as any
statement could be. Knowing the Lord’s disposition toward the poor and toward those who
would oppress them should be enough to rattle even the most callous offender.

But James says more than this. He says that the outcry of those who did the
harvesting has reached the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth!

Lord of Sabaoth is one of God’s titles referring to his supreme command over the
armies of Israel. But since the term Sabaoth (sometimes “hosts”) can include celestial
bodies or heavenly creatures,4 it has often been translated “almighty.” And he is the Lord
almighty in the sense that he is sovereign over all the hosts (or powers) in heaven and on
earth, especially over the hosts (or armies) of Israel.

The Great King, YHWH, then, has at his disposal innumerable heavenly hosts,
reflecting the glory and splendor of his absolute lordship. With this title he is pictured as the
divine warrior, the commander of all power in heaven and earth. His battles always bring
him victory. Psalm 24 celebrates the entrance of this great warrior into Zion: “Who is this
King of glory? The LORD of hosts, He is the King of glory” (Ps 24:10).

So when James says that the cries of the wages have reached the ears of the Lord of
Sabaoth, he is making a threat on behalf of God. The God who has a legion of human and
superhuman warriors at his command hears what the rich are doing to these harvesters, and
he is not at all pleased. God Almighty has heard the cries of the oppressed and his army is
with him.

Sometimes those who are wealthy think that God is on their side (after all, he is the
one who has blessed them). But as it is with every gift of God, it doesn’t take too long until
we think that we have been blessed because we deserved it. Because we are so sinful, our
pride easily turns the gift of God into a wage for which we can congratulate ourselves.

But if these rich land owners are thinking like this, they need to think again. God is
absolutely not on their side. He is never on the side of the oppressor; he is always on the
side of the oppressed. The rich have been defrauding their laborers of what is rightfully
theirs. And God will judge them. The almighty, sovereign, Lord of Sabaoth will not sit
idly by while the rich take advantage of the poor, while they despitefully use them. No, the
Lord of Sabaoth will hear and he will act. What a sobering warning!

4
See Deut 4:19; Josh 5:14.

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Now then, I hope you are getting a deeper sense of the sheer weight of our
responsibility to the poor and needy. It is an awesome, awesome responsibility. Failing to
take the ministry of mercy with commensurate seriousness will result in the judgment of
God. Woe to us rich for the miseries that are coming upon us!

Conclusion
But before we close, I do not want you to miss perhaps the single most significant
aspect of this morning’s text: hope! That’s right; I said “hope.”

Taking the position of prophet and prosecutor, James declares the immanent
judgment of the rich who by their hoarding and high-living and unjust withholding of wages
have oppressed the poor. Now although it may seem as if the situation is utterly hopeless,
all is not lost. For underlying every prophet’s message of gloom and doom is the promise
that God will relent if his people repent.

Perhaps the best illustration of the prophetic sound of hope is found in the book of
Jonah. Jonah proclaims throughout the streets of Nineveh that in forty days the city will be
overthrown. The wickedness of the people had come up before the Lord, and the Lord will
not allow it to continue. Forty days and Nineveh will be destroyed.

This sounds pretty grim! In forty days judgment is coming. So what we read in
Jonah 3:5-10 is astonishing. Turn there with me.

Then the people of Nineveh believed in God; and they called a fast and put
on sackcloth from the greatest to the least of them. 6 When the word reached the king
of Nineveh, he arose from his throne, laid aside his robe from him, covered himself
with sackcloth and sat on the ashes. 7 He issued a proclamation and it said, "In
Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles: Do not let man, beast, herd, or
flock taste a thing. Do not let them eat or drink water. 8 "But both man and beast
must be covered with sackcloth; and let men call on God earnestly that each may
turn from his wicked way and from the violence which is in his hands. 9 "Who
knows, God may turn and relent and withdraw His burning anger so that we will not
perish." 10 When God saw their deeds, that they turned from their wicked way, then
God relented concerning the calamity which He had declared He would bring upon
them. And He did not do it.

You see, then, that the judgment of the rich in James 5 is not a foregone conclusion
any more than it was for the Ninevites. While there is life, there is hope. And with the
forgiveness of sin and new life that is always available through the gospel, we can know that
God’s relenting is only an act of repentance away. For it is through the gospel that we
know better even than our Old Testament counterparts the truth of 2 Chr 30:9b: “For the
LORD your God is gracious and compassionate, and will not turn His face away from you
if you return to Him.”

Shining through every call to weep and wail at the coming calamity of judgment is a
glimmer of hope, a ray of gospel sun that represents an act of mercy on the part of God; for

The Ministry of Mercy, Part 4 © 2004 by R W Glenn

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the very proclamation comes from the mouth of the God who is compassionate and
gracious, and will not turn his face away from us if we return to him.

Let us pray that the Lord not only would work in our hearts to absorb the gravity of
the ministry of mercy, but that he would grant us repentance to put aside all our hoarding,
our high-living, and our defrauding of the poor in whatever forms they come.

Redeemer Bible Church

16205 Highway 7
Minnetonka, MN 55345
Office: 952.935.2425
Fax: 952.938.8299
info@redeemerbiblechurch.com
www.redeemerbiblechurch.com

The Ministry of Mercy, Part 4 © 2004 by R W Glenn