James: Faith that Works (8)
Notes
Transcript
Resisting Pride
Resisting Pride
1 What is the source of wars and fights among you? Don’t they come from your passions that wage war within you? 2 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. 3 You ask and don’t receive because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.
The sin in us desires to wage war in the church.
Murder: 1 John 3:15 “15 Everyone who hates his brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him.”
Do you ask and how to do you ask?
Do you seek the Lord or your on pleasures?
The word spend is the same word used for the spending of the Prodigal Son
So how do we ask? Pray through God’s will.
Praying is to aline with God not to persuade God.
4 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. 5 Or do you think it’s without reason that the Scripture says: The spirit he made to dwell in us envies intensely?
6 But he gives greater grace. Therefore he says:
God resists the proud
but gives grace to the humble.
“You adulterous people!” (Spiritual Adulterous)
Where is the friendship? “hostility toward GOD”
Easy way to be a enemy of God. (friend of the world)\
A war between your spirit and the Holy Spirit.
“God resists the proud but gives to the humble”
When did pride show up?
We see the sin of pride in satan.
Luke 10:18 “18 He said to them, “I watched Satan fall from heaven like lightning.”
Satan’s pride made him think he was better than GOD.
1 Now the serpent was the most cunning of all the wild animals that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You can’t eat from any tree in the garden’?”
2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat the fruit from the trees in the garden. 3 But about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden, God said, ‘You must not eat it or touch it, or you will die.’ ”
4 “No! You will certainly not die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “In fact, God knows that when you eat it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
7 Therefore, submit to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
Submit to God (Remove the chance for NO)
Resist the devil (we can resist)(we fight from victory)
“he will flee” (Promise)
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.
“Draw near to God” (approach)
Worship, Study, Seek, Pray
As we seek the Lord we see how much sin is in our life.
11 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. 12 There is one lawgiver and judge who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor?
“Don’t criticize” This is not a problem in church is it?
“defames” (speak evil, slander)
“judges” (Judicial Process)
