Sermon Tone Analysis

James, like many biblical writers, says much about an alternative lifestyle, but it has nothing to do with LGBTQ.

The OT prophets foreshadowed and the non-Gospel NT writers looked back on an alternative lifestyle most fully proclaimed by Jesus.

Much is being said in our society about cancel culture and being “woke.”

For true believers, cancel culture isn’t our problem because we are already part of a counter-culture called the Kingdom of God whose inhabitants shouldn’t have to be “woke” to true injustice because we should never have been asleep.

As we’re going to see today, we cannot hold to the culture James calls the world and the counterculture called the Kingdom of God at the same time and still be considered friends of God.

To be the culture’s friend is to be God’s enemy.

You spiritual sluts who have been sleeping around on God, whoring for the world, don’t you know being the culture’s friend, any version of the culture, pits you against God (even if you call yourself a Christian)?

Therefore, if you scheme how to be the culture’s friends, to live by the culture’s values, to get what the culture offers, to be focused on your rights and not your responsibilities, you make yourself God’s enemy, your doing, not God’s.

Is the scripture wrong when it says the spirit God breathed into us intensely covets what the culture offers?

But God’s grace is sufficient for those who will repent.

God is hostile to those who look at others with contempt, but the faithfulness of those of low status will find grace.

[James 4.4-6 (JMT)]

We’re going to break it down verse by verse today.

As we’ve seen, James was not afraid of offending his hearers for a good reason.

The problem here isn’t adultery but spiritual adultery.

Here James simply continued a theme common in the Bible.

“The problem is not that we’ve tried faith and found it wanting, but that we’ve tried mammon and found it addictive, and as a result find following Christ inconvenient.”

(Arthur Simon, Bread for the World founder)

I know the language I used in my translation is strong and would have been highly offensive to any other congregation I’ve served, but it is no stronger than James’ would have been perceived to be.

James explicitly described the nature of the adultery.

It was friendship with the world; we would say culture.

The values of the culture, any human culture, are our default setting.

In the US, our cultural values, even in many churches, cause us to be human havings, not human beings.

James used even stronger language for the consequences of our adultery.

It pits us against God; puts us at cross-purposes with God; removes us from the will of God.

Whether or not it was our intent, the result is we have rejected friendship with God to make ourselves God’s enemies.

But why is this true considering many of us were taught to be a good American was to be a good Christian?

Because if we were taught that, we were taught wrong.

Because Jesus taught us there would NEVER be any such thing as a Christian majority in any culture.

Because we willingly entered a counterculture, an alternative lifestyle, whose values will never be wholly, or maybe even partly, endorsed by ANY human culture.

If you doubt what I’m saying, take note of the disciples’ reaction in this next passage.

We cannot live two value systems simultaneously which is the reason when it comes to politics Christians are not Democrats or Republicans, they are…well, Christians, endorsing only what is right according to the King and opposing what is evil.

Because in this new culture, our rights are God’s responsibility, our responsibilities, including the rights of others, are ours.

Okay, when I started this lesson, I intended to take in verses 4-6, but this might be all we can digest for today.

While the challenge is explicit and James is unapologetic, we will see next time he is equally explicit about the reward for those who will take it up.