Listen to sermon Text: James 5:1-6 Speaker: Gabe Molinaro
A proper eschatology (view of end times) will lead us view others rightly, and our hearts will be free from caring too much about this world or caring too little. And there will be a “passionate riskiness” when it comes to your wealth.
Conservative churches are too hung up on the ‘when.’ They are apocalyptic. There is apathy about THIS life and an obsessiveness about the after-life. Why care for the poor? Why care for the earth? Let’s not do anything to improve social conditions. Let’s just save their souls. Why? Jesus is coming back. He may come back tomorrow! The signs, the signs!!! They don’t invest in others because THIS life doesn’t matter enough.
Mainline churches, on the other hand, are ambivalent about when Jesus is coming back. “Who knows?” There’s an obsessiveness about this-life and apathy about the after-life. They get all their satisfaction on whether they make it in THIS world. They don’t invest in others because THIS life matters too much.
Biblical doctrine cuts against both of those things.
The individual’s death is to an individual what the 2nd coming is to the human race. If your eschatology is on straight – your heart will be free from not caring out this world, and caring too much about this world. There will be a passionate riskiness when it comes to your wealth.
Moreover, for the Christian, another reason that we are so concerned with money and our own comfort is that we have forgotten the one who did not resist, but died for us.
Karl Barth: “Instead of striving for a higher position, more power, and more influence, Jesus moved from the heights to the depths, from victory to defeat, from riches to poverty, from triumphs to suffering, from life to death.”