Who are you friends with?
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God or the World?
God or the World?
Now before you answer, let’s examine James chapter 4 verse 1-12
I know you know the correct answer, but I want us to seek The Lord and let HIs Holy Spirit reveal to each one of us personally the truth. Because we have a real enemy and his only weapon is deception. He wants us to be deceived that is he wants you to believe lies. Like you aren’t good enough. Your life is too big of a mess to serve God. Or your sins are so bad you can never be forgiven. Or maybe it wants to deceives you into thinking that the sin in you life is ok. It is easy for us to rationalize why sin is ok isn’t it? Or am I the only one? It is easy when confronted with our sin to say well we all struggle. Is that true? Do we all struggle with sin? Of course we do, does that justify us allowing it in our lives and not fighting no!
Will you ever reach sinless perfection? We will but only when we die or the Lord comes back. So it is easy to believe the lie that since we will always be battling sin and finally victory only comes in glory it is tempting to ignore our sin and throw up our hands and say I will never overcome. Is that what the Lords desires for our lives? No, while we will not reach sinless perfection, we can live in the power of the Holy Spirit and live a more obedient life and glorify God and be more of a light to a dying world.
So as we turn our attention to the passage, what does it say about God?
Look with me at verse 5
5 Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”?
I start by looking at the definition of Jealous from the Oxford Languages Dictionary
jealous (of God) demanding faithfulness and exclusive worship.
God demands complete obedience. You can’t be half in with God.
4 You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
So we can’t love the world and love God.
What does our passage say about people?
The first thing I notice is we have a war going on inside of us, don’t we. We have flesh that defaults to loving the world and we have the very Spirit of God within us that hates the world. Look at verses 1-4
1 What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you?
2 You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask.
3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.
4 You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
Let’s look at verse 2, before you brush over it and say well I have never murdered anyone. Let’s look at what Jesus says about murder.
21 “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’
22 But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.
What else does it say about people?
6 But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”
We default to being proud?
What else?
11 Do not speak evil against one another, brothers. The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother, speaks evil against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge.
Finally look at verse 12
12 There is only one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor?
What does that say about people? We love to judge others and ignore our own sin
5 You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.
In closing let’s look at this dichotomy we are stuck in
Love God or the world?
Proud or Humble?
Judge or Not Judge?
Speak evil or well of others?