James 4:1-12

Yesterday in the newspaper, there was a section entitled, Kids Offer Some Ways to Say I Love You. kids children offer some ways to say i love you love is when my mommy makes coffee for my daddy and she takes a sip before giving it to him to make sure the taste is okay love is when you kiss all the time then when you get tired of kissing you still want to be together and you talk more. My mama and daddy are like that. They look gross when they kiss.

Love is when you tell a guy you like his shirt, then he wears it every day. Isn't that great? And my favorite was this. Love is what's in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen.

well James was very interested in the believers to whom he wrote and they are loving one another caring for one another but they had a difficult problem in the church there was much quarreling dissension and fighting but the reason for it was that they had made some wrong choices in fact they had made a fundamental wrong choice. And it's that choice we're going to talk about this morning. But as we begin, let's pray. Lord, this day, open our hearts and minds. Calm the busyness of the week, the hurriedness of life, and let us pause for a few minutes in your presence this morning.

may we listen. May we hear what you have to say. May your words penetrate our hearts. May they penetrate our minds. And having heard clearly your voice this morning, may we go out from this place different people.

Different, different, different in a way that can be seen. Because we act differently. These things we ask in Christ's name. Amen. If you have your Bibles, let's go to James chapter 4.

Session 8.

And this morning we're going to look at the root problem. The root problem. A choice of friendship.

The scriptures are often troubling, I think, for Americans these days, American Christians, Americans in general, because of the way the scriptures present choices to us. we in this country very much like our choices don't we we want a menu that has many options whatever suits our fancy we don't like limited menus in our goals in our lives we want to be able to choose whatever avenues we want and having menus when we go to the restaurant with lots of choices. That's one thing. But when it comes to choices about the basic, most fundamental things in life, scripture is strangely troubling and unsettling because the choices are but two. Moses said it. I have set before you life and death. Choose life. Joshua said in another context as he ended near the end of his life he said okay you can either serve the pagan gods your forefathers served or you can serve the one true god as for me and my house we will serve the lord but there are only two choices there's either the true god or other gods when it came to elijah before the children of israel you remember the great confrontation with the prophets of Baal.

The children of Israel thought they could play both sides of the fence. And Elijah stands before them. And I always wonder what Elijah sounded like. I had this notion. It was sort of a thunderous voice that sort of rattled everything around.

If the Lord is God, follow him. If Baal is, follow him. But don't hesitate between these two choices. is choose, choose, choose. And Jesus, who I have this sense of, he was always able to talk to anyone at any time, and there was sort of a, I sense his voice as being calmer than what I sense Elijah, but his voice was no less penetrating when he said there are only two gates.

There are only two ways. one is the narrow gate one is the wide gate but we always don't we seem to want the third gate give me the other option give me the compromise we just don't see that and James presents choices to us this morning and he presents us two and the way he presents it is we can choose our friendships we can choose our friendships and he talks about that In James chapter 4, let's read verses 4 to 6. You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Or do you think Scripture says without reason that the Spirit He calls to live in us envies intensely, but He gives us more grace?

That is why Scripture says God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. So I would present to you today your first choice. Your first choice is you can be a friend with the world. Choice number one. Now you're only going to get one other one, so there are only two.

But this is choice number one. We need to make sure we understand what we are talking about when we say the world. In the scriptures, often that term is used to mean a human philosophy of life and conduct that is opposed to and apart from Christ. This is the humanity opposed to the things of God. Humanity that wants to go its own direction, its own way.

In this philosophy of life, the worldly view is that self is at the center. I get to choose. I am number one. What I want is most important. Self is at the center, not God.

So gate number one, or choice number one, self is elevated.

John in 1 John 2 15 and 16 says this when he taught he uses this term the world he says do not love the world or anything in the world if anyone loves the world the love of the father is not in him for everything in the world the cravings of sinful man the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does comes not from the Father, but from the world. He's talking about that philosophy that's opposed to the things of God. So we're not saying here that the world in the sense of the trees and the flowers and so forth is bad. We're talking about that philosophy of life that says I'm going my direction and against God's direction. That's what we're talking about here when we use this term, the world.

Friendship with the world means this though. And James just leaves us no middle ground here. You know, he doesn't soft pedal the words. Friendship with the world means we are enemies of God. If you love the world, you've just chosen to be an enemy of God.

If you love the world, you hate God. you cannot love this philosophy of life that puts self at the center and at the same time claim that you love God you can say it but the reality is you hate God because you have chosen to go against him and to oppose him and the other word I don't think I actually put it and this was a terrible error on my part as a teacher well I'm close here we violated the first and second if we love the world. What's the first commandment?

Oh, no. What's the first commandment?

You shall have no other gods before me. It is the foundation of our lives, folks. We only got one God. Or I hope it's the foundation of our lives. And what's the second commandment?

no idols. You shall not make for yourself any idols in the form of anything in heaven above, on the earth below, or underneath the earth. For the Lord your God is a... What kind of God? He is a jealous God.

He will not let you share your love. You can't claim to love Him and at the same time elevate someone else or something else to the level of godhood. And when you do that, if you do that, if we as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ become lovers of the world, and this is the word I left out, what does James say we really are? Look at verse 4. What does James say we are if we as the people of God love the world?

We have committed adultery. And the imagery here is that as people of Christ, we are the bride of Christ. We are married to Jesus Christ. And any time we give our love to something else or someone else besides him, let somebody else take his place, we have committed adultery.

There's an inevitable result when we become friends with the world. And here there's a result. Read verses 1 to 3 with me.

What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something, but you don't get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight.

You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive because you ask with wrong motives that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. Go to verse 11. Brothers, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against his brother or judges him speaks against the law and judges it.

When you judge the law, you're not keeping it but sitting in judgment on it. There's only one lawgiver and judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you, who are you to judge your neighbor? In this passage, James starts with the results of friendship with the world. but I started with the danger of making the wrong choice because it's when we choose the world to be friends of the world that all of these bad things happen.

Bad things like we pursue what we desire. And that word for desires in the text there is the word from which we get the English word hedonism. Everybody knows what hedonism is? Hedonism is the pursuit of pleasure. And the reality is when we become friends of the world, we pursue our own pleasures.

We want to have what we desire. We become self-centered, self-seeking, and lovers of self. And in the New Testament, being a lover of self is not a good thing. It's a bad thing. Scriptures teach us to have the right esteem toward ourselves, but when we become lovers of self, it's this elevation of ourselves to put ourselves at the center of life instead of God at the center of life.

And when we become self-centered, self-seeking lovers of self, we covet, James says. We want those things that others have that we think we ought to have. And we get this covetousness. We want possessions like they have. We want as much stuff as they have.

We want the status they have. they have. We have this lack of contentment with our lives because we're always wanting more. This self-centeredness never can be satisfied because we always want more and more and more to be at the center and to have things the way we want them. It gets to the point that James says we even pray with wrong motives. He says there's a problem. We don't ask God for things. That's one problem.

But the problem, he says, when we have this philosophy of the world, when we're friends with the world, we ask with wrong motives. We ask for stuff just to fulfill our own sinful pleasures and our own sinful desires. And I think we're getting a real warning here that what we need to be praying for is that we would not be friends with the world, that we would not just seek to satisfy our own sinful desires by getting more stuff just the way we want it, but that we would more and more be friends with God and do things the way that he wants it. And the problem, whenever we're lovers of self, self-centered, coveting, we quarrel and we fight with one another. And we even kill, James says.

Scholars have debated, was there literally murder within the body of Christ? Had there been a situation where some group or individuals had gotten so hostile toward one another over something within the church that there was actually murder? Or maybe the sense here is that we kill whenever we slander. And some have said because James specifically addresses the problem of slander in the church, maybe it's killing sort of with quotes. We kill them with the tongue.

We kill them with the way we talk about them. But it's possible that there had been some sort of controversy or dissension to the point that somebody had killed somebody else. But at least we know that there was the killing with the slandering of others. Isn't it amazing how difficult and unpleasant life can be when we always have self at the center? We take offense so easily.

We are not satisfied. We always want more. status. Life's just easier when we can let go of self. You know, the small slights when we don't get things just the way we want it, that's okay.

But when we're friends with the world and have this constant desire to put ourselves at the center, we never get to rest. It's always a constant tension and dissension and division. So choice number one is friendship with the world. choice number two is friendship with God. And here's what James says it means we must do if we're going to be friends with God. Verses 7 to 10. We must submit yourselves then to God.

Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn, and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom.

Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will lift you up. So friendship with the world. But if we want to be friends with God, we must do several things. These are all imperative actions. All of these verbs, submit, resist, come near, or draw near.

All of these are imperative actions that we are to take. First command is to submit to God. This is the completely opposite of what we will do if we're friends with the world. We will not submit to God. We want to do it our way.

But here we are to submit to God. The image of this word submit is that there is a rank and order in life. and that the one who is the general is the Lord himself. And that if we're friends with God, we will recognize his kingship, his generalship of our lives, and we will voluntarily yield to his authority and treat him as the commander-in-chief. And what he says, we will do.

this word submit is just not an American word. We ought to just take it out of our dictionaries. We just don't, we just don't. And this, I mean, people stumble all over this word submit in the New Testament. Even people in churches.

Don't we sort of deep in our guts recoil at this notion of submitting? We just have a hard time bowing down. Don't we? You bet we do. We are stiff-necked and proud.

You want to be God's friend? You've got to recognize he's the king. You've got to bow down. I always like the image of the bended knee. And in front of a lot of groups, I do it.

It's even hard to do it, to get out on our knees and acknowledge. I like in Ethiopia when they worship, many of them when they worship, when they're singing, as they sing, they hold out their hands and they bow down as they sing. They rock a little too. But they bow down. It's part of their worship and it's a visible outward picture of submission.

We bow down to his kingship. As we submit, we are to resist the devil. Yes, the devil is a real personality according to Scripture. I think we can have the danger of saying he's behind every little tree. But as C.S. Lewis points out, the other danger is we act like he doesn't exist.

He does exist. And submission to God requires that we resist the devil because he does not want us to do this to the Lord. But if we're going to do this to the Lord, the devil because he will present opportunities to disobey the Lord. Just as he did with Eve, he will deceive. Just as he did with Adam, he will deceive. He presents these deceptive things. That word resist means to stand firm, to hold your ground. It means not to yield.

and it's the great image of in a battlefield when the soldiers stand like a stone wall. Those of us from the south know about stone wall and so do those from the north.

Stand firm like a stone wall, resist the devil and submit to God. If we want to be God's friend, we must also draw near to God. And there's an image here of what it was like when the Old Testament priest would go into the tabernacle. When the priest would prepare to draw near to God by going into the holy places of the tabernacle. And they had a ritual they had to go through.

They had to go through some ceremonies of purification. and James in his discussion here sort of echoes the imagery of this Old Testament when the priest would prepare to go before God. He had to go through some ritual cleansings such as washing his hands and as he washed off the dirt outwardly it was the imagery of the sinner washing himself inwardly, seeking God's forgiveness, God's cleansing. So if we want to draw near to God, if we want to enter into the holy places with Him, the first imagery is we need to deal with our sin. We need to seek His forgiveness and cleansing.

We need to turn from our sin and turn to Him and ask for His cleansing. The second image is purification of our hearts And this purification is for the double-minded, James says. So the sinners wash hands. That's the picture of cleansing from sin as we draw near to God. The second aspect of drawing near to God is purifying our hearts.

You double-minded. And what purify hearts means is clear, I think, when he uses that word double-minded. To be double-minded is to be undecided. to sort of be tossed back and forth on the waves. At one moment, yes, I'll serve the Lord, but then on the next, yes, I'll do what the world wants me to do.

To be double-minded is to have a divided loyalty. It's the picture of having a heart that is part given to the world or to self and part given to the Lord. James says, you want to draw near to God, you've got to have a purified heart,

solely committed to the Lord. We've got to be like the three musketeers who in the service of their king said they would protect the king and give him their total loyalty. And that was a settled, supreme loyalty for which they would give their lives. And the idea of a pure heart here is that we have a settled, single, supreme loyalty, a loyalty from which we will never turn. Our hearts are solely committed to him.

It's the loyalty that says with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego we'll go to the fiery furnace before we will bow down to that image. That's the kind of loyalty that we need here. This is where I think in our culture we fall short. We are double-minded people. We think, we really think we can serve the world and serve God.

We really think we can love God and love riches. We really think we can. We think we can juggle that. If you are friend with the world, you are an enemy of God. If you are friend with the world, you hate God.

If you are friend with the world, you are an adulterer or adulteress. You cannot, you cannot love God and something else in any ultimate sense.

We must have purified hearts. Blessed are the pure in heart. It's the pure in heart in the Sermon on the Mount that get the blessing. We'll see what that blessing is in just a moment. The last image of drawing near to God is grieving, mourning, and wailing.

I don't see a lot of grieving, mourning, and wailing in churches. Or outside of churches for that matter. These words are strong words. Grieving means to lament, to recognize my wretchedness before God. To mourn is to recognize my personal spiritual bankruptcy and to experience this deep ache of sorrow in my soul for my sin.

And to wail means to weep loudly. And it's the picture of we've seen some of those funerals in the Middle East these days. hearing the people there, loud wailing and weeping and mourning, I mean, just outwardly sorrow, sorrowing over the loss, if we're drawing near to God, we will have that grieving, that mourning, that wailing about our sinfulness. We will be truly sorry for what we have done and how we have lived our lives. our sense of shame.

We have lost our sense of grief. We have lost our sense of mourning. We don't wail for over any of our sins almost these days. Because we're so soaked in sin in this culture. We're so soaked in wrongdoing. And it's become our right and our choice.

And it's okay. It's our freedom being expressed. There is no grief. There is no wailing. There is no mourning. If we're going to draw near to God we will be sorry for our sins and we will be on our faces before him and we'll go and get some ashes out of the fireplace and put them on our heads and we'll put on some sackcloth and we will grieve.

Until God's people grieve for their sin they will never draw near to God.

I want grief. And in fact, James says we ought to get rid of the laughter we ought to get rid of the joyfulness because we need to grieve and mourn and wail. Now he's not saying that's the condition for all times and all places, but he says when we come to look at our sin, there ought to be grieving and mourning and wailing.

And then when we come before the Lord and get that cleansing, then there can be laughter and joy, but there needs to be a time of real grief and real mourning. Does anybody feel sorry for sin anymore? I just can't see it. I turn on TV. we delight in it we celebrate it

third thing if we wish to be God's friend we will humble ourselves and this is similar to submission but it's making clear that instead of elevating ourselves and being proud of ourselves

we will be people who because we have been grievers and mourners and wailers about our sin, we realize we have absolutely no right to demand anything of God. We have no standing before Him to claim anything in and of ourselves. And we throw ourselves on His mercy and on His grace, beg for His forgiveness and humility, because we have offended the Almighty. And because we have offended the Almighty, we recognize how humble we are in his presence and should be in his presence.

Submit, draw near, and humble ourselves

if we want to be God's friends. Well, what are the results of friendship with God? Here are several results. Number one, the devil will run from us. We're God's friend, and in being his friend, we're resisting the devil.

James says the devil will run from us.

Because when we are allied closely with the Lord God Almighty, Satan knows he can't do anything with us. Martin Luther, not Martin Luther King, Martin Luther, guy with the Reformation back in the 1500s, said if you can't defeat Satan with words of Scripture, which he said you usually could, He said, then taunt him, mock him, make fun of him. Devil can't stand to be mocked. I was at a conference at the Cove where John Piper spoke. John Piper is a minister at a church in Minnesota.

Fabulous speaker, probably the best preacher I've ever heard, probably the best. and in one of his presentations at the cove he began to talk about the devil running from us and he began to talk to the Satan. I was kind of looking around, you know, I was a little worried here when he started. But it was a powerful moment when he began to mock Satan. You're the greatest fool in the world, Satan.

You're the greatest fool. You've been beaten. You've lost. You're defeated and you're still fighting. You're going to be thrown and cast into the fiery pit.

You're going to live there forever. You're going to be locked away. You are a loser. You have been beaten. Jesus on the cross destroyed any power you've got in any ultimate sense.

You're gone. You're history. Jesus is the king. You are not the king. You believe you rule this world, you're going to find out one day you're nothing.

You're a chump. You're a loser. Everybody in the audience is kind of. But you know what?

There's something about looking evil in the face and saying you're a loser and mocking him that helps us to resist him, to belittle him, not to make him something cute, something to toy with, but recognizing for what he is, the prince of darkness, the enemy from the pit. son Caleb was involved with a with an I agree campaign it's a something that some Christian organizations on a lot of college campuses have been doing and basically what they did they got t-shirts made up t-shirts and about 600 Christian students wore them on the Clemson campus and the t-shirt said I agree with and they picked three students names I agree with Gary Sue and Sam I remember the exact names. But one of these students was the president of the student body. One of them was a leader in the Christian organizations. The other was a Clemson football player.

And of course people would come up, other students, within a day or two all 13,000 to 14,000 students that come to the campus each day knew that these 600 or so Christian students were wearing these t-shirts that say I agree with these three people. And of course they would say what does this mean? What do you agree with when you say you Well, they had pamphlets where these three people had given basically their personal testimony about Jesus Christ. And there was basically a gospel presentation. And people would ask, and then the students would say, Well, we agree with them that Jesus Christ is Lord and the only way of salvation.

And they would give a pamphlet to these people that asked. Well, it wasn't long before other t-shirts started appearing. I agree with Jim and Jack Jim Beam and Jack Daniels and others I agree with Satan Caleb was talking with me about that and I said that's alright son I'd rather them wear the flag openly of where they stand than have it hidden and there's no greater compliment to wear a shirt that says essentially I agree with Jesus Christ and have somebody else say, as an opposing force, I agree with Satan. There's nothing better to be known than ones who oppose the prince of all evil, the prince of darkness. To be opposed by certain enemies is a high compliment, is it not?

Remember the movie Jeremiah Johnson? You're known by your enemies. If we don't have some enemies as believers, if we're not resisting some forces of evil, we're not being what we should be. resist him, he will flee from us because we've got the biggest, baddest guy on our side.

When we draw near to God, he will draw near to us. I often talk with folks who say they really would like to have a closer relationship with the Lord. They would like to know him better, more intimately, have a sweeter spiritual life. The Lord gives himself to those who seek him. You want a better life with the Lord? Get after him. Seek him. Pursue him.

Pray to him. Read his scriptures. Get on your knees before him. Because when we draw near to Him, He will always draw near to us. He will never forsake us if we seek Him.

The pure in heart, the Sermon on the Mount says, will see God. And I think that word see there means we will, those who are pure in heart, those who have hearts that are solely given to the Lord, will understand and perceive God and know Him in a way that others not. So don't tell me you want to know God, that you want to draw near to Him until you're ready to give Him everything you have. And when you are, then He will draw near to you. And lastly, if we are friends with God, we will ultimately be exalted.

I know that for so many, submission, humbling sound like terms of abasement but ultimately they are terms of exaltation because who will it be that will be lifted up in the heavens it will be those who in this life have submitted themselves to the Lord and humbled themselves we will get countless fold more in the next life than we have ever given in this life so seek the exaltation not of the world or of the power that is offered in this world, seek the exaltation that comes from God because it is the most satisfying and long-lasting. It's my prayer that this class will desire friendship with God.

That in a way that maybe we haven't in the past, we will draw near to Him.

That we will humble ourselves before Him. that we will submit to him. He's the best master that ever lived. Let's pray.

Lord, forgive us for our hard-heartedness, but today I pray for myself. I pray for this class.

Give us soft hearts that will yield to you. That will recognize your majesty and your glory. That you are the one who is due our honor and our praise. And give us a desire to know you and to seek after you. Because Lord we want to know you.

We want to have the fellowship with you. You hem us in behind and before. We cannot flee from your presence. Wherever we go you are there. you are the hound of heaven and for some of us in this class who maybe have strayed from the right path you are the master who is always looking you are the father who is always looking for the returning child I pray that we will all come home and fall into the arms of the loving father in whose name we pray Amen