WWJBD
Part 4 – Friend of God
James 4:1-10
I left my truck at Andy’s house while I was in Chicago week before last. I came home and on Sunday night Nikki and I ran over to get it. I was going to take it home, but she convinced me to bring it over here to the parking lot and set it out there. So we did and Monday morning I got a voice mail from a guy who said he saw it and needed to talk to me right away. So we got together Monday afternoon and he said he and his wife live in Atlanta but have some property down in Sparta they needed to check on. They usually take 20 all the way to wherever you get off to go to Sparta, but he said for some reason the Lord told him to come this way. So he did. He pulled up here Monday afternoon and said “Brett, the Lord told me to buy this truck.” I said “good, because the Lord told me to sell it.” He bought that truck and never even drove it. God is good. Obedience works.
Okay, James 4. What would Jesus’ brother do? We’ve looked at wisdom and the payoff in getting it. We’ve talked about why the works we do are an extension of our faith. We’ve talked about the damage that can occur when we let our tongues get the best of us. Today we are going to look at the test of friendship with God.
James 4:1-3 (READ)
An underlying idea that you need to understand while reading the book of James is that there are some serious issues in the church as he writes. Remember these Christians that he is writing to are not just one body of believers, but most likely many who were scattered back in Acts 8 when persecution broke out in Jerusalem. So they are Christians who have been on the run for quite a while.
Apparently they have really begun to lose focus on the things that Jesus taught them and the apostles passed on to them. We learn from reading in James 1 that there were some real trials that had come their way and that just hearing the word of God in the midst of the trials isn’t enough, but that they need to do what the Word says. In chapter 2 you begin to get the idea that there was some struggling for popularity and showing of favoritism to those who were affluent. In chapter three we see that some with influence had begun to teach things that were a little screwy and that jealousy and selfishness was running rampant in the church and the church was being divided.
James is writing this letter to a church that is in crisis. And it is into that context that we read chapter 4 verse 1 “What is causing these quarrels and fights among you?” James is donning the role of Pastor to these churches to help them see again what the real issue is.
In verse 2 he talks about the ideas of the evil desires that war within us. This statement makes a bit more sense when you understand that the Jewish rabbis believed that evil impulses had their seats in the various organs and therefore there was literally a war going on inside of us….when we are pulled one way by our conscious and another by evil desires.
James says that there are things that these people want but they do not have them so they are going to great lengths to acquire this stuff. He says that they were scheming and killing to get it. You fight and you quarrel to take the stuff you want from the people who have it.
The reason that they were fighting is because they had gotten all caught up in the desire to acquire…stuff. Whether that stuff is material possession or leadership position or whatever…there was a clear sense that these churches had lost sight of all that Jesus taught us.
He goes on to say in verse 2b “And yet the reason you don’t have what you want is that you don’t ask God for it. And even when you do ask you don’t get it because your whole motive is wrong…you want only what will give you pleasure.”
And in one statement, James gets to the crux of so many of our problems. MOTIVE. And motive is once again (just like last week) a condition of the heart. These early Christians were scattered further away from the core of the church in Jerusalem and the further they got away from the church (the HUB of activity) the easier it was for them to get mixed up in the world.
I find it is so easy to get mixed up in the world. The world is so appealing today. Stuff is so appealing. I really struggle with the desire to have things. And if I am honest, there are times I even scheme to get them.
Example. Something I never told anyone about my truck is that I spent some time looking for a truck. I really wanted one. I even “prayed” about it. I asked God to open the doors for me to have one if he approved. Doors didn’t open. But I kept looking and one day I found this truck and long story short, I talked with the dealer and called the bank and got creative and worked the system until I figured out a way to make it work for me. I bought the truck. And I told you that when Nikki and I were convicted about the opportunities to do some ministry that demanded resource, because of my scheming to buy that truck, we didn’t have the resource. Thus God telling me to sell it and then providing Mr. Reed to buy it.
Point. My desire to have things (that I got) real quickly got in the way of what I know God called me to do. And I think this is what James is saying. If you aren’t careful, you can quickly get caught up in the pursuit of pleasure that is found in stuff. And while stuff is necessary, when it gets in the way of what Jesus has taught us, it becomes problematic. And when it is taken to the extreme, which is has been for too many Christ followers, verse 4 & 5 tells us what happens.
(READ v4&5)
By adulterers he means you who have been unfaithful to God! James quickly calls them to the reminder of their commitment to the faith. When we made the decision to follow Christ, we made a promise to make Him and Him alone first in our lives. We promised to not allow anything to get in the way of our relationship. We said that we would spend the rest of our lives pursuing his pleasure, not the pleasure of anyone or any other thing.
But the churches that James is writing to have broken that promise…..and so have we. Who of us has not been completely unfaithful to our commitment to pursuing God alone?
We have allowed “stuff” to distract us from the pursuit of God’s pleasure. We let the world speak into our lives and draw us away from moving toward God with every breath that is in us. James goes all the way and says in verse 4 that “being friendly with the world, makes you an enemy of God.”
This is one of the few times the New Testament writers make a statement and then immediately repeat it. He says, “I say it again, if your aim is to enjoy this world, you can’t be a friend of God.” What is he saying?
I think he is saying that if your engagement in the stuff of this world is drawing you away from the things of God, then you had better reevaluate. Why? Because the nature of the things of the world is such that if you allow it to grab your attention to any degree, it won’t let you go. And it is designed by the “prince of this world” to distract you from he who wants to make you complete.
So, to give any amount of energy to these temporary distractions of the evil one is to remove that attention from the only one who deserves it. And it becomes a real dangerous thing, real quickly.
But why? Being that we are in the world, why are the stakes so high regarding our enjoying even the good things the world has to offer. 2 thoughts:
1. Compared to God, there is nothing good that the world has to offer.
2. When we became Christians, something happened to us….
Listen to the apostle Paul in Colossians 2:11-13,20; “When you came to Christ you were circumcised but not by a physical procedure. It was a spiritual procedure – the cutting away of your sinful nature. For you were buried with Christ when you were baptized. And with him you were raised to a new life because you trusted the might power of God, who raised Christ from the dead. You were dead because of your sins and because your sinful nature was not yet cut away. Then God made you alive with Christ. He forgave all our sins…You have died with Christ and he has set you free from the evil powers of the WORLD..so why do you keep on following the rules of the world…..”
When you trusted the power of God to save and your trust led you to commit to him in baptism, the nature that you brought into this world was destroyed. It was cut away. It no longer exists. It has no power to distract or detour you in your pursuit of God. So in a sense, though you are exsisting in a physical body on a physical environment (earth), you are actually a spiritual being whose identity is not here…it is there (heaven).
And Paul is saying as such, you have been set free from the alluring attraction (or distraction) of this world, so why would you keep chasing after the things that are here? And once again, James simply builds on Paul’s thought to say if you do chase after material stuff, you cannot chase after the things of God.
But here is what we do. Here is how we work this out in our minds. Have you ever heard someone say or maybe you’ve said “but God wants us to enjoy things in this world…”? “God wants us to be happy while we are here. If we weren’t happy, then there wouldn’t be much chance of others desiring to know God. So God wants us to enjoy things in this world.”
But what I think a more accurate thought is that God wants us to enjoy the things of God in this world. And when we begin to look at it that way, a lot of the things that I have found pleasure in have very little to do with God. Example….my truck.
Now I could get real creative and say “well, my truck is actually a tool that I use to glorify God. I can use it to accomplish my ministry more efficiently. It is more comfortable, and it has colder air (which is important in GA) and you know, somebody might need a truck to move and mine would always be available. [These aren’t just ideas I came up with for the sermon…I really said these things].
Now, am I saying that nice trucks are always a distraction to the things of God? No, vehicles are necessary. But I am saying that the truck was distracting me from the things God was calling me to…and I have a perfectly good car sitting in my garage.
Okay, let’s get past my truck. You think about your life. You think about the stuff that you are finding pleasure in that aren’t #1 necessary or #2 are necessary, but could be accomplished with much less or #3 are simply not necessary and not moving you into a deeper relationship with God. And it is these things that James is thinking of when he says “..if your aim is to enjoy this world, you can’t be a friend of God.”
When I consider the things of God in this world that I am to enjoy I think of things like: Nature, Family, Friends, The Church, Spiritual things outside the church, service, love, compassion, the poor, the marginalized. And you see that these are all things that have very little if anything to do with the stuff that James says in verses 1&2 they were killing and scheming and fighting and cheating each other to get.
This kind of teaching causes us to get real introspective and think, what am I chasing after these days that has very little to do with the things of God. And are these things distracting me in any way from passionately pursing God….from being a friend of God? Because if they are, then I can’t claim friendship with Him…I become his enemy as I work against him in creation.
So if so, then what? If we are guilty, and we are….what do we do? Look at verse 6.
(READ v6)
As always, God has prepared a way to rescue us from ourselves. He gives us grace to make better decisions.
Then in the following verses James offers 10 exercises for getting refocused. I am not going to spend a bunch of time on these because you can read and they are pretty clear.
v7 “So humble yourselves before God”….recalibrate and recognize that God is big and what we experience in our measly 80 years on this earth is only a small part of the big picture….there’s more….and what we do here is training for what we’ll do there.
“….resist the devil and he will flee from you..”…anything that distracts your attention from God is of the enemy. Satan isn’t trying to win you to a “side” or a “cause”. There is not God’s team and Satan’s team. Satan is simply trying to distract you. If he can move your focus from the things of God, that’s his goal….and if he can use a truck to do it, he will. But if you resist him, he has no choice but to flee from you.
v8 “Draw close to God and he will draw close to you.” – One of my favorite verses is in 1 Chronicles 28:9 “For the Lord sees every heart and understands and knows every plan and thought. If you seek him, you will find him…” Call on him and he will show himself faithful.
“…Wash your hands you sinners; purify your hearts you hypocrites. Let there be tears for the wrong things you have done. Let there be sorrow and deep grief. Let there be sadness instead of laughter and gloom instead of joy.”….reevaluate and when God speaks to your spirit about an area where you have befriended the world, then repent and obey. True repentance is marked by Godly sorrow for having grieved the heart of God. This is different from guilt. Guilt is not of God. Guilt is either of the enemy, the world or yourself. It is not of God. If and when God convicts your heart of distraction and speaks to your spirit about it, then repent and obey. God will honor this. He’ll call you his friend.
Verse 10 says, “When you bow down before the Lord and admit your dependence on him, he will lift you up and give you honor.”
There is honor in being a friend of God. Now we know how to avoid missing the opportunity. One last verse, skip over to verse 17. As you soak on this today and in the future, recall James final words of this chapter “Remember, it is sin to know what you ought to do and then not do it.”
