7.12 - James 4, No More Than Four

Join Paul and Noah as they discuss practical applications from James 4, including the dangers of being friends with the world and the importance of humbly removing sin from our lives.

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Paul and Noah both preach and teach with the Cedar Park church of Christ in Cedar Park, TX. You can visit our site at: https://www.cedarparkchurchofchrist.org/

Transcript

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Well, good morning and welcome back to the Stand Strong podcast. We are here, I've lost track of the number of episodes, but I know that we are in James four, and this is the final episode for James four, where we're gonna be doing our no more than four. And I'm looking forward to this partially because chapter four is so rich. But this is the, this is the episode, each chapter where we kind of get to take time to consider what the, what. The points are that are most impactful for us, that have had, you know, the greatest impact on us and have had have caught our attention the most as we've studied this text. And so I always enjoy getting to swap those back and forth with Paul here, and I'm looking forward to what he has to share that this morning. Yes. Thank you Noah. I, well, as the 57-year-old preacher in the room, father raising, have raised three kids. And you know, I preached a lot from this Noah when I was younger. But first four, the friendship with the world. That is such a big subject. Mm-hmm. And first I think it's, it's worthy to keep it in its context. And sometimes that's hard with James. Mm-hmm. You know, he had said a lot previously to this, our chapter four division, but I like verse four. I'm just gonna read it again from the New King James version. Adulterers and Adulterer. Maybe your translations just says you adulterous people. And that is very strong language. The Holy Spirit doesn't go down that road. Unless there are extreme conditions going on in the hearts and the minds of the people of God. Yeah, to refer to him as you adulterous people. And then James asks this question or makes this point, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? And we talked about that a little bit, Noah, last episode about this or hostility that exists between us and God. And it wasn't that God moved, we moved, right? The issue was not God. The issue is us. So he says Who there? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world, makes himself an enemy of God. And you know that that's, that's common language. The Old Testament prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel, Hosea used that kind of language. Adulterers and adulterers is when they were dealing with people who had quote, played the harlet. Yeah. The hoard them in their hearts unfaithfulness to God. And it manifests itself in a lot of different ways. But the issue was that there was, that God wasn't in his rightful place. Mm-hmm. Idolatry was, was going on in their heart. And James talks about friendship with the world. John calls it loving the world. Paul calls it being conformed to the world. What James is dealing with, I think in this context is they had become divided in their loyalty and affection for God. Their heart wasn't fully given over to God to serve him, and that was creating a lot of the things that we noticed earlier in James, and certainly in chapter three, bringing us up to this point. So I just wanted to talk a little bit about friendship with the world. And James says, whoever wants to be Yeah. Whoever wishes to be. And I would, I would offer this, that generally, this is something that is so subtle in us that we don't realize that we have desired something other than God. That we ha there, there's an idol on our heart. Yeah. Or an idol in our heart. Sorry. And you know, Paul, in Romans eight speaks about the carnal mind being enmity of God. The reason I only share that passage is because the commonality is, James says, friendship with the world is enmity with God. Paul says, Romans eight, this carnal mind is enmity with God. And what I'm offering to connect those two passages is the, the reason it's enmity with God is it's causing. Us to commit ourselves to those things that God is against. Right? And again, the subtlety in this. So think about if we're adopting the world's values and standards, if we're putting what we want and how we think ahead of what God wants and what God thinks. And again, here's the danger as I see it, we start to excuse worldliness because it looks so normal. Hmm. Just like Israel and Judah, they had idols in their hearts, but yet they didn't realize it. Hosea says, you don't realize it. You don't realize this and such, I think was the, the situation in James Day. I know it's the case in our time, in our day, we excuse worlds because it looks so normal to us. So many around us in the world are doing it. Here's the greater problem. So many in the church are doing it. Right. The way we dress, what we watch, what we listen to, how we view worship opportunities or grow our faith. And I think James is making the point that worldliness and godliness cannot coexist. Yeah. So this is why he says, submit yourself to God. Right? This is why he says, draw near to God. This is why he says, and I think it's gonna connect to what you want to talk about. Purify your hearts. Mm-hmm. So this friendship with the world. James says, this is enmity with God, and the problem is you're committing yourselves to something that God is absolutely against. Yeah. As you've been talking, it just, it, it, when you actually sit and think about what it means to be, to wish to be friends with the world and, and why that puts you at enmity with God, your mind can't help but continue on a few verses forward to where the, the solution, the the the solution to this problem is. Humble yourselves before God. Because it does, it does require humility. You, you know, if, when worldly, when worldliness looks normal and worldliness is what is common, and perhaps maybe more more potently what's popular mm-hmm. And influential, then it takes us setting aside our pride. And our own self-image and our own desires and humbling ourselves before God. That's the solution to the problem. And it does connect. You know, my first one that I really wanted to, to spend time on was this verse eight. When he says, cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts. You double-minded. It's in the same context that we were just in, and there's right before it, there's this more general instruction of. Submit yourselves to God. Draw near to God, humble yourselves before the Lord. Now I said general, I didn't say easy. Those are very challenging instructions, but they are in a sense, general I. Right. And I feel like verse eight starts to get a little bit more concrete about what, how, how some of that is gonna play out, how some of that's gonna look like to, what does it look like to draw near to God and humble ourselves before God. Well, he says, cleanse your hands. Remove the evil actions and the evil lifestyles from you. You have to, you have to purify, cleanse your hands. You have to, you have to get rid of those things. You have to cease the immorality, and then you have to, he also says, purify your hearts. So there's the hands and there's the hearts. You have to remove not just the evil actions, but the evil thoughts and the evil attitudes that produce those actions. You have to remove the corruption from your heart. Now I'm making it sound like we are doing all of that on our own. That's not in in the context. These go hand in hand. In order for that to happen, we have to humble ourselves before God. But if we say that we're humbling ourselves before God, but we're making no effort to cleanse our hands and purify our hearts, we're not actually humbling ourselves before God. So there's this really strong connection of, of removing the evil from our lives. And if we wanted to connect it to a few verses earlier, removing the worldliness from our hearts mm-hmm. So that we can humble ourselves before God. Yeah. And like I said, that, that's such a subtle thing. I mean, there are, there are passages, the Apostle Paul to the Corinthians in his second letter second Corinthians chapter 11, he speaks about, your minds may somehow be led astray from the sincere and pure devotion to Christ. Your minds being led astray. Mm-hmm. Deceived, like Eve was deceived by the serpent's, cunningness craftiness. The mind is being led as straight. Stephen was preaching in Acts eight. And he was taking the people back to the days of Moses and Aaron and the golden calf. And he said, in, in, in Acts chapter seven, in your hearts you have gone back to Egypt. I. Yeah. In your heart, so we don't realize you were talking about, you know, these, these, these attitudes, these dispositions, these these ways of thinking in us that are so worldly, right? They're so much like the world, and why did they have all the fighting and why did they have the wars? He said, you covet, you desire, you want you, the, the, the point is you become so self-consumed. Selfish ambition James had talked about in chapter three that that's how, that's how this world thinks. That's, that's, that's how that's just demonic in its origin. And we, we become, I can become so oriented by this world and my own desires and ambitions. That it, it creates a lot of trouble in my heart and it creates a lot of problems in the church. Hmm. Yeah. Well, and the, the fact is, any problems, this is, this is a kind of a tough pill to swallow, but any problems that we see in the church, I. They're not coming from the head of the church. No, they're coming from us. They're coming from our hearts and our selfishness and our own our own sinfulness. And so when we see problems outside of us in the church chances are we've contributed to it. And that requires a little bit of introspection. And for us to say, no, I'm gonna humble myself before God. I'm gonna cleanse my heart. I'm gonna purify my hands. Or. Cleanse my hands and purify my heart, and I'm gonna be, I'm gonna, I'm gonna engage in God's solution to the problem. I'm not going to make the problem worse. Right. So I know you're wanting to go later in the chapter. So I want to go back to the beginning of the chapter with my second one. And again, I'm, I'm wanting to remind us of language that James has been using here in chapter four that we're to be oriented toward God. God is the focus, how God thinks is the way we want to think. We want to seek God, we want, we want the mind of God. So he says, submit to God, draw near to God, humble yourself. Don't make it about yourself, because self always becomes a barrier to God's glory and blessing. So you go back to the start of chapter four and the idea of asking God, James has talked about that. He said in verse two, you do not have it because you do not ask. Well, okay. Yes. That we could, we could talk about that. But I wanted, I wanna talk about verse three. He says, you ask, I says So now there people are asking, he says, but you don't receive. And the reason you don't receive. I like the English standard version. You ask wrongly to spend it on your passions. You ask wrongly other translations, you ask amiss or you ask from wrong motives. So the point is, your motives are not pure. Yeah. What's wrong with our motives? It's a heart issue. Mm-hmm. Purify your hearts. Friendship with the world, enmity with God. What's going on in my heart? So you've gotta purify your heart. Simply put, Noah James is telling you you're praying very selfishly. Yeah, and which is a little bit of a, it's kind of an oxymoronic or a paradoxical thought. Well, you're praying selfishly. But I think if we just take a minute to evaluate ourselves, we can see how that's not very hard. To fall into that. Yeah. And it, people say, well, well wait a minute. I, I, I pray for stuff that's related to me all the time. Does that make me selfish? Is that what you're saying is selfish? Right? No, that's not what James is saying. He's not saying that it's wrong to pray for yourself or about things that are important to you. He's asking us to check our motives. Proud people won't check their motives. In my pride, I'm, I'm so self-oriented, and I don't realize sometimes when my heart has consumed the selfish ambition, it's gonna negatively affect my praying. So James says, look, I want you to purify your hearts, okay? James, why? One of the reasons. So you can purify your praying. Now, what will he tell us In chapter five? I'm getting a little bit ahead, but in chapter five in verse 16, the effectual fervent prayer of what kind of man? Of a righteous man? Yes, of a righteous man has power to accomplish much. Who are the righteous? James has already been talking about it. Mm-hmm. He's already talking about the righteous, the righteous person are the people. Oh, those are the people that get it right all the time. And, and we laugh at that. We know that's the wrong answer. How can I be righteous if I'm not purifying my heart? If, if I'm seeking my own desires and my own ambitions, how can I be described as righteous if I'm a friend of the world? See there's a lot going on. See, if I'm seeking the heart of God, then I'm gonna seek the will of God. If I'm seeking the will of God, it's gonna be the result of the relationship I have with God. See, I look at my children as a father. If my children only wanted what I could give them and they didn't want me, they only loved what I could give. Yeah, what I could provide. They didn't love me. They weren't seeking me, they didn't care about me, and, and we can get to that point where we treat God like the genie in the lamp, or we view God as the great giver in this sky. We want what he gives, but we don't want him. Yeah. So that's a hard issue. So that's why I'm connecting it to our praying. James is saying you're praying very selfishly because that's who you are. And so that, I think that that flows, follows the train of thought that he's trying to take all the way into chapter five. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, that is, that ought to make us stop. Like that's the, the idea that you're praying selfishly is an indication of who you are as selfish people. That that is a sobering thought to consider. Well, my last one is, is the very last verse of chapter four. I, I think verse 17, I think it's one of the most challenging verses, but really, especially when it's taken in the context is such a challenging passage when he says, so whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it for him. It is sin. And this, this verse, I think, has been taken a number of different ways. Sometimes it's taken severely out of context to try to to try to disregard the idea of sin or even of God having a true standard. And obviously that's just disregarding the, the context and it's disregarding God's revelation of himself. But the reason I think this is such a challenging. Passage. Mm-hmm. Is that coming on, on the heels of all of this? Check your heart type of message from James. Then he says, now you know what you're supposed to do. Mm-hmm. And if you fail to do it, that's an indication of what's going on in your heart. If you know but failed to do. That is an indication that your heart is not in the right place. And the fact is pure and undefiled religion has always been more than just not doing bad stuff. Mm-hmm. I, and I use the phrase pure and undefiled religion.'cause that takes us back to chapter one verse 27, pure and unfiled religion Before God is this right. And there's two parts, there's two main parts to it. One is to. Care for widows and orphans, and the other is to remain unstained from the world. And sometimes we think of righteousness as just that second one. Mm-hmm. You know that it's the cleansing of the hands and the purifying of the heart, but then nothing happens after that. Right. Well, that is not the full picture of righteousness or the full picture of holiness. The full picture is that we now know the right thing to do and we. Do it. We do it. And so I, I think that that's part of why James is just so in the face of us, as of our face as the readers. It's sin if we know the right thing, but fail to do it. We've been called to do good. We've been called to do, right. We've been called to lead virtuous lives and there's no shame in that, right? But if we have been called to that and we fail to do that, and I think in the context. That, that's emphasized in this, the, the section about boasting about tomorrow where he says, you know, instead you ought to say if the Lord wills. In verse 14, he says, what is your life? Your, you know, it's a mist. A vapor that appears for a time and then vanishes that really hits home even more. The urgency with which we ought to seek to do the right thing if life is actually that short and it is. Then there's an urgency to know the right thing and to do the right thing. And I think that we sometimes would be tempted if we took this out of context to think, okay, then I just don't want to know. I. Oh yeah, there you go. Right? Plausible deniability. Yeah. So in that sense, ignorance is bliss. If I don't know the right thing, then I can't help be held accountable. But that's, that completely misses the point. The point is, if you've experienced the grace of Jesus Christ, you know, now go do right. Yeah. Yeah. You know, think about the one talent man in Matthew 25. I've preached on that the one talent man was called Wicked. Mm-hmm. Why was he called Wicked? Because he could have done something when he did nothing. The ability to do good in any case imposes an obligation to do it. If the Lord wills, I mean, someone who says if the Lord wills. Has a mindset, has a spiritual compass, if you will, that's attuned to the fact that God is in control. I am not. He is sovereign. I am not. He is God. I am not. And so I bow to him. I yield to him. I'm in need of him, and so I recognize that the opportunities that are afforded me are given to me by him. Mm-hmm. To be used to glorify him. We're not interested in holiness by subtraction. There's just don't do, don't do bad things, right? No, it's okay. What is the good, right? If the Lord wills, what is the good that that is imposed upon me? And all of that connects back to your points earlier. If all of this ultimately is all the opportunities and all the abilities and all the responsibilities that we've been given are actually gifts from the Father for his glory. Well then, yeah, if we are selfish and self-centered in our hearts and therefore in our prayers and how we conduct our lives, then we are gonna miss the giver and get distracted by the gifts. But if we see the gifts as being something that the giver has given to us for his glory. It, then we can humble ourselves before him and we can draw near to him and he will draw near to us. Yeah. What, what kind of boasting is all such boasting is vain, right? You mean what We do that sometimes without realizing it. Mm-hmm. That we boast yeah. Tomorrow. Tomorrow. And I'm not trying to, to pick on people listening today, I can talk about me. There have been times in my life where the assumption of a tomorrow you know, or next week, right? And we just, we don't know. We don't know. So each day, each day is a blessing and we ought to see it as that and seize opportunities. Absolutely. Well, I've enjoyed James chapter four. I'm looking forward to next week in James chapter five. We will re, re. Start the cycle of looking at God and James chapter five, then ourselves, and then we will wrap up with no more than four from James chapter five. For those listening. Thanks for continuing on this journey through James with us. It's been good for me. I hope and pray that it's been good for you and your walk with Christ. I encourage you that as you seek to walk humbly before our Lord, and as you seek to purify your hands and your hearts, and, and to pursue the, the goodness that he has set before us, that you'll continue to stand strong.