James 4:1-10
Sermon • Submitted • Presented
0 ratings
· 1 viewNotes
Transcript
Scripture reading: James 4:1-10
Scripture reading: James 4:1-10
What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? Is not the source your pleasures that wage war in your members?
You lust and do not have; so you commit murder. You are envious and cannot obtain; so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask.
You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.
You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
Or do you think that the Scripture speaks to no purpose: “He jealously desires the Spirit which He has made to dwell in us”?
But He gives a greater grace. Therefore it says, “God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”
Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.
Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
Be miserable and mourn and weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom.
Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you.
What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? Is not the source your pleasures that wage war in your members?
The point that runs through the book of James is to make a distinction between a faith that is dead, and a faith that is alive. A faith without works is dead. A true faith looks like something. And in today’s passage, we are given some actions and insights into what a true living faith looks like.
And he begins this section with an important idea. He says that fights between people come from the desires fighting within your soul. That’s the real problem.
So there are two battles going on. But the inner battle causes the outer battles.
Beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from fleshly lusts which wage war against the soul.
So the internal division within our hearts causes the external divisions among us. And then he goes on.
James 4:2–3 (NASB95)
You lust and do not have; so you commit murder. You are envious and cannot obtain; so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.
What’s he saying? He’s saying that if we let our desires, our lust, our envy control us, we will fight one another. Why? Because now the focus is not on what other’s want, but what I want. The focus is not on what others need, but what I want.
And then he gives us an almost sarcastic solution. Why not pray to God for it? He knows why. He knows that we’re asking for the wrong things.
So what’s the real solution?
You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
The real solution is to unfriend the world. The very definition of friendship can be summarized in a two word question: “You too?” Friendship is having things in common. A common purpose, a common interest, a common ambition.
And what happens when you unfriend somebody? You delete them from your social media. You cut ties. You cut off contact. You don’t pick up their calls and you don’t answer their texts.
The world here refers to a culture that has removed God from the picture. It lives for the sake of pleasure and ambition. God is not welcome there.
And so we need to be different. We need to welcome God into our lives. In everything we do. In every part of our schedule.
Why? Because God welcomed us first. He welcomed us into this world. And in His grace, He welcomes those who repent.
James 4:5–6 (NASB95)
Or do you think that the Scripture speaks to no purpose: “He jealously desires the Spirit which He has made to dwell in us”? But He gives a greater grace. Therefore it says, “God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”
Spirit here is pneuma and it means wind. James is repeating what Genesis says, that our very breath comes from Him. Those who refuse to acknowledge this are proud, and God is opposed to them. God resists their ambitions. God gets in the way between them and their goals. But the humble give Him all the glory. My ability, my possessions, my health, even every breath I take, it all comes from God. And when we confess this, He gives us more grace. He favors us.
And so James gives us a list of actions to do.
Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.
The word for submit is hypotasso, meaning to subordinate yourself under someone. To enter into a submissive relationship. And this is the big one. All the other verbs show us what it looks like to submit to God.
We need to resist the devil. How? The devil isn’t going to flee from us. In fact he wants to come near to us in order to tempt us. But the devil is going to flee from God.
So we need God to come near. And we can do that by drawing near to God.
Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
What does it mean to draw near to God? We need to cleanse our hands and purify our hearts. The hands represent our actions, our habits, our schedule, and the way we plan out our day. The heart represents our motivation behind our actions. And we need to surrender all of that to God. That’s what it means to draw near to Him.
Psalm 24:3–4 (NASB95)
Who may ascend into the hill of the Lord? And who may stand in His holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who has not lifted up his soul to falsehood and has not sworn deceitfully.
And then James explains further on what it means to purify our hearts. It doesn’t just mean to check our motivations. It also means adjusting the things we delight in.
Be miserable and mourn and weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom.
He’s not telling us to be sad or negative people. He’s speaking primarily to those who are friends of the world. Because of their common interests and understandings, friends usually laugh at the same things. You wouldn’t hangout with people who don’t laugh with you. James is saying that if you laugh at things which make God weep, you’ve yet to surrender your heart to Him. If we laugh at sinful things, or if we actively seek out humor in the things of sin, then we’re taking a casual attitude toward sin.
Put another way, we must not delight and rejoice in the things that nailed Jesus to the cross. True surrender means aligning our heart with the heart of Jesus. Weeping at things which make Him weep. Getting angry at the things that make Him angry. And delighting in the things that bring Him joy.
What? You mean God even wants to control my sense of humor? Yes. James chapter 3 talks about controlling our tongue. James chapter 4 is about controlling our thoughts and desires. We cannot do this unless we humble ourselves before God.
Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you.
May we submit ourselves to God this morning, cleanse our hands, and purify our hearts. And I pray that God will exalt us.