Have your Bible with you to reference scriptures used in this lesson. You can view the video of this lesson on YouTube under the same title.

This lesson will deal with comments James makes to the scattered Jewish believers about rich people. We’ll look at scriptures found in Chapters 1, 2 & 5 to study these comments. The first part of Lesson 3 comes from James 1:9-11.

The rich are instructed to boast that God has humbled them. They are to talk about the fact that God has humbled them with excessive pride and self-satisfaction. They are to talk about how God has helped them realize they are less important than they think they are. The KJV uses the expression “ made low” for “humbled” in this passage. In other words, God has shown the rich that their position in life is not as high on the totem pole of life as they think it is.

Why would this statement be important to the Jewish Christians? We have to look at how the Jewish people thought during Biblical times in order to understand its importance. Having wealth was considered to be a blessing from God. The rich were looked upon as having special favor with God. They were respected by most people in society and were considered to be in a close relationship with God, because of possessing their wealth.

In the Old Testament book of Job, this attitude toward wealth is revealed in how Job’s friends talk to him after disaster strikes his life and he loses everything. His friends told him to repent of his sin. They said that because they believed bad things happened because of sin in a person’s life and good things happened because the person had a right relationship with God. Sin equals punishment, and righteousness equals blessings and wealth. That attitude still existed in the days of Jesus and the early disciples.

The rich were influential in society. They were powerful in politics and commerce. Their opinions had an impact on decisions made in their communities. Because of their influence on daily life, they were considered to be special people, the leaders, the best people a town had to offer, so to speak. They were idolized and envied by the average worker in the fields. Sound familiar?

For the rich to be made low, to be placed on the same level in life as everyone else would be a big deal. For the rich to come to the understanding that there is a power greater than theirs, a cause greater than theirs, a ruler greater than their rule would mean that they had recognized the existence of that power, that cause, that ruler and were willing to place themselves under the authority of the one who is source of those things.

For them to be humbled by God would also indicate that they realized they were not self-sufficient or everlasting. It would mean they understood that their existence is like a flower that blooms today, has a brief life span, dies and goes away without leaving lasting achievements. It would mean they a realized God exists and they were just like everyone else in his eyes.

For that, the rich are admonished to proudly let people know that God had revealed himself to them. They were to direct people’s attention to God, not to themselves. They were to admit they were not the most important one around.

Let us pray today that we can be like the rich in this passage. Let us pray we can point people to God and not to ourselves. Let us boast in the knowledge that God has humbled us.

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