Date: 31.7.16
Text: James 4:1-12
Title:Friendship with the world?
Place: Sunday @ 6
File: James 4
Preacher: Stephen Taylor
The story goes that an old Indian Chief, of an American Indian tribe, who had just become a believer because of the regular visits to his tribe by an early American preacher. As the preacher continued to make his visits to him, he continued to teach the Chief in the workings of his new faith. One day, as the preacher came to visit, he asked the Indian, "well, Chief, how's it going?"
The Chief replied, "It’s like Two Dogs inside of me, a White Dog & a Black Dog and they are always fighting." So, the preacher asked, "Which dog is winning?" To which the Chief replied,"The one I feed."
Is that true of you? It’s certainly true of me. There is often a war going on inside of us between the white dog, the good dog and the black dog, the bad dog. There are competing desires. There is a battle of the will. And the result of the war inside of you will determine how much of a war is outside of you. That’s where James goes to next in chapter 4:1.
- The War (verses 1-3)
“What causes fights and quarrelsamong you? Don’t they come from your desires that battlewithin you?2You desire but do not have, so you kill.You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God”.
Remember James is talking to Christians here. He is talking to people like you and me and he says that there is a war going on outside of you, that’s why there are these fights, these quarrels, these conflicts. He says that the cause of the conflict out there are due to the conflicting desires in here. So when my desires conflict with your desires, and when I don’t get what I want, then the sparks are really going to fly!
You see sin is at the heart of the problems of our world. Wars start when someone wants what someone else has. Murder, rape, stealing occurs when we desire something & someone else gets in our way. And so we do what we have to do to get what we desire, what we want, or what we need. The tug of war all around us begins with the tug of war within us.
For as Christians there is still a tug of war within us. Jesus might have forgiven our sin, he might have taken our wrongdoings as far as east is from west but the source of that sin is still within me. My nature,which is naturally selfish, naturally self centred, naturally sinful is now at war with God’s Spirit. The black dog and the white dog now both live within me.
Now not everyone is like that. Some non-Christians have so destroyed their conscience that it no longer competes within them. The white dog has been completely destroyed. They don’t seem to have any qualms in doing things that are wrong. But we Christians do and continue to do because we have these desires battling it out within us.
At the end of chapter 3 James told us that we should be asking for wisdom. God freely offers to give us his heavenly wisdom which is peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit. But here he says we do not have these things because we haven’t asked for them. We still want to have the ultimate control of our lives and really don’t want God to come into every aspect of it. And so James continues 3“When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives,that you may spend what you get on your pleasures”.
Even when we do ask God for the things that we desire, God does not give us what we want because it would not be good for us. Or maybe we don’t get these things because we are asking for things with the wrong motives. Or maybe we are not getting these things because all we want is God’s pleasures rather than God’s character.
In his book Why Prayers are Unanswered, John Lavender retells a story about Norman Vincent Peal.When Peale was a boy, he found a big, black cigarin a dark side street, and lit it up. It didn’t taste good, but it made him feel very grown up…until he saw his father coming. Quickly he put the cigar behind his back and tried to be casual. Desperate to divert his father’s attention, Norman pointed to a billboard advertising the circus. “Can I go, Dad? Please, let’s go when it comes to town.” His father’s reply taught Norman a lesson he never forgot.“Son, he answered quietly but firmly, “never make a petition while at the same time trying to hide a smouldering disobedience.” If there is sin in our lives or if we are asking just for our own pleasures, God may choose not to answer our prayer.
Lastly that means that we need to either “cleanse our hearts or stop our prayers.” If God is not answering our prayers it must be because it is the wrong thing to pray for, or it is the wrong timing to receive it or we have the wrong motivation in praying it. So take a long hard look at your heart to see if that is where the blockage lies. So we have seen the war, next is
- The Problem (verses 4-6)
4“You adulterouspeople,don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.5Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us?”
The bigger problem behind the war James says is that we are adulterers! We are an adulterous people. We are married to one person and we are having an affair on the side. Now some of you will say I’m not married so how can I possibly be adulterous? Or I am married and I’ve remained faithful to my spouse, how can God call me an adulterer? But God is not looking at your physical relationships but your spiritual ones.
If you are a Christian you are married to Christ. The Church is the bridegroom of Jesus. We are people who have declared that our first love, our greatest love, our life changing love is the relationship we have with our life giver. If we are Christians our hearts are pledged totally to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We have asked for forgiveness from our old way of life. We have said He will now come first in all our dealings. He is our Lord.
But the problem is that the black dog within us still wants to be friends with the world - the society that on the whole is against God, has forgotten God, is rejecting God. We want to have a bet each way. We want to love God and love our money. We want to love God and put all our efforts into our career and our family and our home. In short Jesus has given his life for you, his entire life and we want to give him just some of our life in return.
And James says God will have none of that. “You adulterous people don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God?Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. If we love anything more than we love God, we are committing spiritual adultery. If we put anything before God we are committing spiritual adultery. And by doing that we become God’s enemy.
Let me give you an example. Money. Money is not a problem per se. We need money to live. We can’t escape having money. But when we chase after money and then use it to spend it just on our pleasures then the black dog is winning within us. When we grow our savings in order to wear the trendiest clothing, to eat the nicest foods, to go on holidays to the most beautiful locations and to fill our lives with all the modern comforts because this will please our selfish desires then we have betrayed our Creator.
Why? BecauseGod has granted us thesethings not for individual pleasure but forthe sake of his kingdom. Food should be cooked to give your body health & strength so you can better serve God or it can be used as a form of hospitality to grow relationships with others not to pander to our desire for the best of foods. Cars can be used to transport others around not just used as a status symbol. Holidays can deepen our relationships with friends or family or from them we can learn about how the rest of God’s creation lives not just to tell others we have travelled to France or the Great Wall of China. Phones, computers, belongings can be used to keep in touch with people who need our help and support.
So Money can be enjoyed and used to serve your first love God Himself. Or wasted on yourself and then it begins to take the place of God Himself. But when we do this, when we turn away from our first and only true love and start loving something else or someone else in God’s place, will God just divorce us and move on to his next lover? No God is faithful, even when we are unfaithful. And his jealousy longs for us. His passion for us does not just pass onto another. For He places his Spirit within us and he draws us back to himself through giving us grace, more grace. Verse 6. “But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: “God opposes the proudbut shows favour to the humble.
God’s solution is grace. More grace. He gave us grace when he saved us, amazing grace. And so God’s solution when we love other gods more than Him is to give us more grace. God’s solution to our problem of the war inside of us is to give us His grace. His undeserved favour. He will give and give and keep on giving. He will feed the white dog and keep feeding the white dog. He wants you to have true peace, he wants you to have true joy. He doesn’t want you to be controlled by your own wrong motives, he doesn’t want you to worship the world’s pleasures. So he keeps on sending us grace, Grace upon grace. So what is
- The Response. The appropriate response (verse 7-10)
7“Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil,and he will flee from you.8Come near to God and he will come near to you.Wash your hands,you sinners, and purify your hearts,you double-minded.9Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to
gloom.10Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up”.
Our response. 7 imperatives. 7 orders. 7 commands. Submit yourself then to God. Give yourself over again to Him. Your life is not your own. It was purchased with the incredibly high price of the death of Jesus. So listen to the white dog. Obey the white dog. Follow the white dog’s leadings. And resist the devil and he will flee from you. At the same time resist the black dog. Don’t feed the black dog. Don’t follow what it has to say.
You know the more you do the wrong thing, the more the black dog wins. But starve him of attention. Ignore his promptings and he grows weaker. Resist the devil, rely on the strength of Jesus and you will find out that the devil is no match for God. He seems strong. He says he is strong. But he is a liar. Resist him and he will flee.
Submit to God, resist the devil and then come near to God and he will come near to you. Live in the presence of God. Fill your thoughts and mind with what’s in God’s word. Pray continually when you are walking to school, throwing a ball around or doing your work. Include him in all aspects of your life and you will find that He will be near to you.
Slide 10
Why not try to do that now? Talk to him as you drive in the car. Thank him for the lunch you eat. Sing songs to him as you wash up. Ponder what he has taught you as you wash yourself in the shower. Ask for a clean heart as you clean your teeth. Commit your world to him and ask him to look after it as you go to sleep.
Slide 11
Submit to him. “Wash your hands,you sinners, and purify your hearts,you double-minded”.
You see if God has drawn near, you become more aware of your failings, your sins, your weaknesses. He is holy and you are still unholy. He is strong and you are weak. So him being around highlights the true nature of your actions. It is like when you are driving around you normally aren’t thinking of the road rules but if you see a policemen, you suddenly notice your speed, your driving ability and you concentrate even more.
9Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom.Don’t live just for you and your happiness. Live for God. Grieve your mistakes. And he will replace happiness with joy. He will show you what your heart truly wants. And what truly satisfies.
10Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up”. Those who live lives like this may miss out on some of the pleasures of the world around us but they will gain the ultimate pleasures. They will be exalted by God. They will be cleansed. They will be strengthened. They will live in the presence of God.
The proper response to God’s grace is to open yourself up for more Grace. To fill yourself with God’s presence. To rely upon God’s strength. To trust that God will do something great in your lives. It is not a cheap grace where we take what God offers and then see what we can get from the world around as well. No we are saved by this grace, we are transformed by this grace, we live in the light of this grace. And
- The result? (verses 11-12)
11Brothers and sisters, do not slanderone another.Anyone who speaks against a brother or
sisteror judges themspeaks against the lawand judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it,but sitting in judgment on it.12There is only one Lawgiver and Judge,the one who is able to save and destroy.But you—who are you to judge your neighbour?
The result of all of this? There but for the grace of God goes I. So I won’t judge my neighbour. I will not speak ill against my neighbour. I will not look down my nose at my neighbour. I will not sit in judgement on my neighbour, that is God’s job and he will do it perfectly well without my help. I don’t want to feed that black dog any more. And one of the best ways of feeding the black dog is saying that I am better than someone else. That I have it right and they have it wrong and so judge them, without the advice of Jesus. That is not the right response to God’s grace. And only feeds the black dog within you even more.
- The Application.
Alright where does that leave us? And where do we go from here with this teaching? I think we need to go back to James 1:27, the key verse in this book. 27“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look afterorphans and widowsin their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”
If we want to live a life that pleases God we need to keep ourselves from being polluted by the world. So how do we do that? Well for many people in the Church the answer has been to remove ourselves from the world. Withdraw from the world. Church history is full of people who tried to distance themselves from the world. Anthony of Egypt was one of the first. He lived in the desert for 10 years, humbling himself and praying in order that the world would not pollute him. But he became a bit of a rock star and so there were thousands of people clambering for his help and advice. The world still crowded in on him.
Friends it doesn’t work to try and withdraw yourself. By protecting yourself by finding a good Church. By just having Christian friends. Watching Christian shows. Listening to Christian music. That doesn’t work unless God changes your heart. Unless he fills your insides with his presence and his grace. Don’t withdraw from the world instead as Jesus said “Be in the world but not of the world.”
So how do you do this?Look how Jesus did it. Matthew chapter 8 ”A man with eprosycame and knelt before himand said, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.” 3Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man.“I am willing,”he said.“Be clean!”Immediately he was cleansed of his leprosy.
The leper was unclean. He was contagious. Anyone who touched him could get what he had so most people avoided him. But Jesus didn’t do that. Jesus didn’t remove himself so that he wouldn’t get polluted, affected by what the leper had. He engaged the leper. He went up to him and touched him.
And what was in Jesus was stronger than what was in the leper. And Jesus wellness defeated the leper’s illness. Jesus purity was greater than the leper’s uncleanliness. The white dog in Jesus was stronger than the black dog in the leper. Friends feed the white dog of Jesus and he will defeat the black dog of sin that is within us all.