James 4:1-12
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
James is that guy with no filter
He has no chill
And he is right in what he says thats what makes it even harder
Like you would make sure you avoided him if you weren’t living right
You aren’t answering your phone if James calls and you just want to stay in your funk
He has gone in on us for the last few weeks and I wish I had good news
But I don’t he keeps stomping on our toes
But in the midst of all of it he reminds us again and again that this is what the Gospel is for
The Gospel is not some abstract thing that doesn’t deal with real life
It has everything to do with our everyday
And today we see it has everything to do with why we fight and war with ourselves and other people and even God
So we are going to see 2 things today in chapter 4
Greater Grace, and Hope in Drawing Near
Greater Grace
Greater Grace
What is the source of wars and fights among you? Don’t they come from your passions that wage war within you? You desire and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and wage war. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and don’t receive because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.
You adulterous people! Don’t you know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? So whoever wants to be the friend of the world becomes the enemy of God. Or do you think it’s without reason that the Scripture says: The spirit he made to dwell in us envies intensely?
But he gives greater grace. Therefore he says:
God resists the proud
but gives grace to the humble.
II think we all have experienced what we saw last week …that we can say things that have been burning in our hearts and totally torch someones life
Last week we heard james use strong language and strong images for what our hearts can produce
He doesn’t let up in what we just read
One commentator said: James chooses the vocabulary of war to express controversies and quarrels, animosities and bad feeling among Christians, not because there is no other way of saying it, but because there is no other way of expressing the horror of it
When are hearts aren’t right we can live in ways that set us on a course for more pain and inflict pain in the people around us
Ever had that happen?
If you have you know James’ words aren’t over the top
But like a great counselor James challenges us to consider what is at our heart where the scortched earth words come from
Why do we do what we do
He has an answer if we are willing to listen
I have had to this week in my relationship with God…I have been in a fight with Him
Verse 1 says it is our passions that drive us
There is a study in college called anthropology
It is the study of people
the bible is anthropology
It tells us who we are and why we are the way we are and the hope there is for broken people and the pain we know
The first thing the anthropology of the bible tells us we have to know about ourselves is that we begin with what we love
Everything you do is not driven by what you know
It is driven by what you love and want and long for
James Smith says this and I challenge all of us to dig into our own hearts with the question- what do you love..what do you want what do you long for
You cannot not love., You long for something as ultimate and that is why you do what you do. the question is what do you love and long for
Are we willing to ask that of oursleves and see how that is what is at the core of our fights and battles even with God
That is why James is saying isn’t what sets fire to your life coming from your hearts misplaced longings?
he doesn’t say your fires in life are caused by what you know
He says they come from what you want when it is misplaced in things that can never deliver
That is the whole point of the Gospel and books like James
Smith said- “Jesus is a teacher who doesn’t just inform our intellect but forms our very loves. He isn’t content to simply deposit new ideas into your mind; he is after nothing less than your wants, your loves, your longings.”
2 You desire and do not have
You long and aren’t getting it in broken ways so you set fire to the lives you expect to give them to you
When God alone can provide in His ways what you long for
Smith again- “Jesus’s command to follow him is a command to align our loves and longings with his—to want what God wants, to desire what God desires, to hunger and thirst after God and crave a world where he is all in all.”
This is huge in verse 2
the word for desire is where we get our word for hedonism…the pursuit of pleasure
When somone stands in the way of our pursuit of pleasure how we want it and they keep us from it we torch them
That is what James is saying
This plays out everyday in our life
Your kids are disrupting your kingdom you want them seen and not heard so you lose it
Your spouse gets in the way of your self indulgence so you fight
God gets in the way of how you want to use sex money and power so we war against Him
James says at the core we don’t believe God is the author of our longings and we don’t believe His ways are the only way to be satisfied and whole
We place the weight of pleasure on things that can never deliver and wage personal wars when they fail or people get in the way of it
One author says Our base problem is unbelief. Failing to trust in the infinite God, we live anxiously, restlessly, always trying to secure and extend ourselves with finite goods that can’t take the weight we put on them
a lack of belief that our greatest pleasures are found along the grains of how god has made things to be
when they aren’t met we go to war
But what if we asked for Him to satisfy our longings for wholeness?
What if we looked to His design to stop the war and the pain our misplaced pursuits of pleasure bring us
You ask and don’t receive because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.
I want this church to thrive and survive the rest of my life
I love you guys and fight for this to make it
Those are good desires
But when my motives are so that I can prove people wrong, or have a big platform some day, or that I can prove to myself I am worth something they are misplaced motives
I already have a succesful church because we have each other
We are already making it
So what do I want?
And when I challenge myself with that I see he is answering and giving me that
But not the things that are wrong motives he won’t give me that
He made me and loves me and came to die for me because my heart looks to other things
Sin is to look to the God who made us to be whole in him and his ways and throw a middle finger up to him and say we will find it another way
And it torches out lives
Plantinga says what James is saying “Sin hurts other people and grieves God, but it also corrodes us. Sin is a form of self-abuse.”
That is why James uses hard language to call it out to get us to life
You adulterous people! Don’t you know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? So whoever wants to be the friend of the world becomes the enemy of God. Or do you think it’s without reason that the Scripture says: The spirit he made to dwell in us envies intensely?
This is to a church who says they love God but are cheating on God with the worlds ways of being whole
As a christian it is spiritual adultery to know and love god one minute and run to the worlds way as the way to be whole
What does that look like? I said last week people are told all the time to leave marriages because there spouse doesn’t make them happy for a month.
That is real worldly advice
Say as a Christian I follow that advice ?
That would shatter my family, feed the black whole of selfishness in me, and rip God’s heart out
That is what James is saying
God wants you to know the wholeness he alone offers and has stopped at nothing to show it ….and he is described as jealous for the hearts of his people
Exodus 20:5 Do not bow in worship to them, and do not serve them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God
In Exodus Israel was surrounded by countries with different God’s
God had done the miraculous in saving them and wanted there love and awe…and he deserved it
So he describes himself the way James says…as envieing the love of His people when we love other things and ways to be happy
Feel a little busted up?
I did
And thats the point of the Gospel
No matter how much torching of life we do we cannot ever burn down the forest when we are His
He is greater then our prone to wander hearts when we are HIs
But he gives greater grace. Therefore he says:
God resists the proud
but gives grace to the humble.
It is greater grace
Greater then what?
Greater then all he has described we do
J. A. Motyer says What comfort there is in this verse! It tells us that God is tirelessly on our side. He never falters in respect of our needs, he always has more grace at hand for us. He is never less than sufficient, he always has more and yet more to give
And he is saying if we humble ourselves to say we have bad motives and bad ways of seeking pleasure he gives grace to us and makes us whole
Grace is undeserved favor - Romans 3:24: “[We] are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” Grace is what inclines God to give gifts that are free and undeserved by sinners.
Grace is power for living - 2 Corinthians 12:9: Jesus says to Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
Grace lets us know we can run to Him - Hebrews 4:16: “Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace.”
there is an anti dote to the fires we set…it is humility and rest and return to the god of grace
Hope in Drawing Near
Hope in Drawing Near
Therefore, submit 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, sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be miserable and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.
Don’t criticize one another, brothers and sisters. Anyone who defames or judges a fellow believer defames and judges the law. If you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. There is one lawgiver and judge who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor?
Therefore means because this grace is so unreal it then plays out in our hearts
And a gospel heart changes what you do
One commentator summarized this transition
James for You Part Two
James has just been calling on his readers to return to God. He now unpacks what that will look like. Wonderfully, he shows us there is grace for those who submit to God. But the grace that forgives is also grace that changes and transforms people. James offers no lip-service Christianity. It is not possible to jump on board, receive blessings from God, and then run straight back into the old lifestyle. God’s grace prompts repentance in his people—a heart change that will lead to transformed behaviour.
Heart change takes courage
Verses 7-10 7 Therefore, submit to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Be miserable and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.
Our relationship with God and his relationship with us involves vulnerability and commitment
Tim Keller said: It’s not about fear or strict rule-following, but a love-inspired obedience that doesn’t want to disappoint God. This attitude changes us and helps us resist sin. Even though we might be afraid of losing our independence, we should remember that God, despite our past mistakes, is always loving. This teaches us the importance of being open and committed in our relationship with Him.