Jim Styles - Class 4: Living as a Friend of God

Automatically transcribed. Accuracy is good but not perfect, and words are sometimes wrong. Trust the audio over the text.

1. 0:00

   Well, I hope after all the activities today that some of us are more awake than the children that were sleeping on the chairs in the back during the readings. That just happens. I remember those days when our kids used to do that. We'd get to the readings point and everybody would just conk out as soon as they sat down.

2. 0:16

   And now Stu and I often feel the same way ourselves. That's why it happens. All right, so James chapter 4, though. James will keep you awake tonight, you see. He's got some nice practical words to end up on today. And then tomorrow we'll have a look at 5 in the Exhitation, God willing.

3. 0:35

   So, James chapter 4. We ended up, chapter 3, looking at these issues of the tongue. So we spent some time looking at how, you know, the tongue, it's that crazy, nasty little thing and what a forest fire it can kindle. And we found out that we've got to be careful about what we say, brothers and sisters and young people, because if we say the wrong thing, all it takes sometimes is that little word, like a match.

4. 0:56

   And on goes the forest fire and away it goes. And he encouraged us at the end of the chapter then, instead to seek the wisdom that comes from God, the wisdom that will allow us to, instead of being full of envy and self-seeking, it's a wisdom that will be gentle and peaceable and pure and willing to yield, without partiality and without hypocrisy.

5. 1:19

   See, that wisdom that comes from God is going to come from our reading of the word and our discussions with people about it. That will change our life. And what it will do then at the end of the chapter is it will now, the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.

6. 1:34

   So this wisdom that comes from above, that comes from our reading of the word, this wisdom will help us develop the character of God, the fruit of righteousness, and help us to control that tongue. And now what James is going to do in chapter 5 is point out to them that, look it, here's what happens in a collegial life if you don't control the tongue.

7. 1:54

   And he goes on about in chapter 4 now, and he's going to have a look at the wars and the fightings that are amongst these people. So look at those first three verses. Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members?

8. 2:10

   You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and you cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask. And you ask and don't receive because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures. You can see that that's not a very good evaluation of a collegial life.

9. 2:29

   Imagine saying that about your home ecclesia, that somebody writes to your ecclesia and talks about you having wars and fights in your ecclesia. And we think, well, we'd never do that. But then think back over the years at some of those business meetings, some of those arranging meetings, you see. Maybe some of those sister committee meetings.

10. 2:48

    I've never been to one of those, but I don't know what they're like. But I have seen a few arranging meetings in my years, and business meetings where people said things that shouldn't have been said, did things that shouldn't have been done, and treated people in ways which we shouldn't treat people. And this is what happens when we're not seeking the wisdom from above.

11. 3:09

    This is what happens when we're not single-minded, when we don't let God take care of things, and we think that I've got to do it. I've got to make sure that my idea gets pushed through, or my way of handling the issue. It's got to be done this way, my way, because I know it's the Bible way.

12. 3:25

    And so we force it down people's throats, and we end up exciting people's passions. And look at what it leads to, the wars and the fights that the ecclesiastes were experiencing at this time. Now, nobody's really sure whether people literally got into fistfights, and were beating each other up. But the words that are used in the Greek actually mean that.

13. 3:43

    They actually mean that people were literally fighting each other. And it may be that that's what was happening. In fact, you see the reference there to the fact that they murdered. In verse 2 there, you lust and do not have, you murder and covet. And you wonder, like, would they really murder anybody?

14. 3:59

    But you see over in chapter 5, you just look at verse 6 of chapter 5, when he's talking about the rich. You have condemned, you have murdered the just. He does not resist you. And it may be possible that some of these rich Jews were leading others into prisons. They were having them in prison and taken in by the law.

15. 4:19

    And it may be that they were actually turning them in and doing things for which they were responsible for the death of some of the believers. So something was radically going wrong in this ecclesial life sphere. And you can see it was definitely not a positive ecclesial atmosphere right here. So, you know, when you look back at where we ended up in chapter 3, James ended up on such a positive note there that the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.

16. 4:46

    And instead of sowing those fruits of righteousness, instead of being able to experience the joy and the peace and the goodness and the patience of God, instead they were doing these wars and these fights. And when you look at why, you know, why were these wars and fights going on? And you can see that, you know, basically they stem from the evil desires of the human heart.

17. 5:06

    We've got pride involved, which he's been dealing with through this chapter. You know, we just looked at it at the end of chapter 3, that where there's self-seeking and envy, you see, and when pride is there, then brothers and sisters or young people, you see, this can happen in CYC as well, that pride gets involved in the decisions that we make.

18. 5:25

    And we end up thinking, well, you know, I can't let everybody see that I was wrong on an issue. And so we fight it to the end. Or we don't want to lose to brother so-and-so and our sister so-and-so, you know, we're not going to give in on this issue because they want me to give in.

19. 5:38

    And our pride gets in the way and we're just not willing to yield. That is a key item, that willing to yield, you know, that we just had in chapter 3. You might look at that and read right over that, but boy, so many family problems are resolved, even between husbands and wives, children and parents, if somebody is willing to yield.

20. 5:59

    I mean, just think about it on the freeway when you go home this weekend and you go to get on the freeway and there's this whole line of cars all lined up and you're trying to get on the freeway and cars are behind you and you're trying to get on and you try to get on and there's a whole string, maybe a truck's up there, got everybody backed up and there's nowhere to get on and you're stuck.

21. 6:17

    There's cars behind you. There's people along the side of you. If somebody isn't willing to yield, you're going to have an accident. Somebody is going to get hurt and it's such a practical problem in life that it's okay to yield. One of the greatest powers that people have admitted about kings is the power to forgive, the power to let go.

22. 6:38

    Imagine that power that we have in our families, amongst the brothers and sisters, our wives and our husbands. The power that you have to yield and to just give in on an issue and that's okay because it's not really that important. And if that will resolve the problem, wow, that's so many issues I've experienced in life.

23. 6:59

    If somebody had just been willing to yield, the problem would have been resolved and we could have talked out on the sidelines and maybe better, what would have been better to do the next time. But for that point in time, willing to yield, full of mercy. But you can see they had this problem of pride getting in the way and then there was the desire.

24. 7:18

    Sometimes we get involved in these ecclesial situations where we've got this desire where we've got to win on an issue because it makes us feel better. Oh, we won that one and brother so-and-so lost that or sister so-and-so is not going to beat us on this issue. And our pride gets in there and our desire, all these human nature problems that we have.

25. 7:36

    And so we want to feel like we won something. But it's the same problem Paul said he was fighting in his own numbers in Romans 7 there at verse 23 when he said, I see the law in my members warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.

26. 7:52

    At least if we know what we're dealing with, we can try to fight the problem. If we're just so used to giving in to it and we don't even acknowledge it's a problem, then it's hard to ever develop that wisdom of God and let the word of God work in our life. So all of us have made these kind of mistakes in the past.

27. 8:09

    I know I have. And so you look in the past, you try to figure out what went wrong and how we handled an issue and try to make sure in the future that by the grace of God we do a better job next time around. Everybody learns from their experiences and we try to do that rather than turning into the fights and the wars.

28. 8:25

    And when you look at his reasons that he puts down as to why they were warring with each other, why they were fighting, it's about lust. I mean, there you are. That's the good old human nature. You lust and you don't have. So they were frustrated. They wanted something in ecclesial life. They wanted either ecclesial power or something that the ecclesia would have to do and you don't get to have it.

29. 8:44

    You get down to our situation, it might just be that, well, you're talking about the color of the carpet and you're having an ecclesial business meeting and you've seen, you know, ecclesiastes discuss for hours what color of the carpet, the drapes and all those kind of things. What color are we going to paint the walls?

30. 8:57

    Sometimes those are the greatest debates that ecclesiastes ever have. You know, it's, to me, those seem like such little things because I don't care about the carpet or the walls or the curtains. I don't even notice them, actually. I couldn't even tell you what color they are when we go places. But some people really do notice all that stuff and that's important to them.

31. 9:15

    Maybe I notice other stuff in ecclesia and I'd end up having my problems with those issues. But we all have our little list of things that's important to us and when it comes down to it in the end, none of those are very big issues, really. I mean, those are the small potatoes in God's view.

32. 9:29

    And when we fight and we war, all those kind of things, then what the angels have to do is bring big issues into our life. To make us realize that was small stuff we were fighting over. That's sad. You know, if we'd learned a lesson on the small stuff, maybe we wouldn't have to deal with those big, sad issues.

33. 9:46

    The health issues, the job issues, the situations with accidents that people have. You know, what else can the angels do? If we make big mountains out of little molehills, they're going to have to make us face those issues in life. Husbands and wives, it's the same way. If we can't learn to get along and give in and yield on some of the small things of life, the angels don't have any choice but to make us face big issues.

34. 10:12

    Either that or we're lost. And so they do. They bring bigger issues into our life that really matter and they make us sort out what really was important. And they make us look back and say, wow, I can't believe we made such a big issue about that. It doesn't seem so important anymore.

35. 10:27

    And it's sad, but it's so true to human life that that's what ends up happening to us. And so they murdered, they coveted, they fought, they had war. He goes on and says, James said, you ask and you don't receive. And why didn't they get it? Well, it's because you asked for the wrong reason.

36. 10:45

    First of all, he says, you don't get it because you didn't ask. And the problem was, they weren't asking for anything with single-mindedness along the lines of the will of God. They were just asking, they didn't bother asking God. Maybe they thought it was wrong to ask for some of those things because they knew right away that God wouldn't want to give you those things.

37. 11:03

    So you don't even ask. And then there were the issues where they were supposed to ask and they didn't receive because they just wanted it for their own pleasure. And we know that's not what God's going to do. He doesn't just give us those things. You want it so you can spend it on your own pleasures.

38. 11:19

    But what really surprised me in this section right there is that James then calls them adulteresses. Now, in most of our Bibles in verse 4 of chapter 4, it usually says adulterers and adulteresses. But actually in the Greek, he only uses one word. He just says, you adulteresses. And he just lumps them all together as a bunch of females that are committing adultery.

39. 11:42

    And I think the reason for that is because he sees us as a grouping, as a community, that when we do this, when we're married to Christ, and we've taken on a relationship with Christ and with our God, that when we behave this way, we're as bad as people that are out there committing adultery.

40. 11:59

    That's the way he saw the community. You're just a bunch of adulteresses the way you're behaving. You're like a woman who's just committing adultery, leaving the relationship that she made with her husband, and you're out there seeking a different relationship, not part of this family line at all that you originally made a commitment to.

41. 12:15

    And that's what he says to them. He says, look, you're a bunch of adulteresses. Don't you know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? And he goes on in verse 4 when he talks about whoever wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Now, I can remember as a young person, and for all the young people, you can take note of this, when I was a young person, all the older folks in our ecclesia, they used to use this passage in James 4, and they would always hammer us about the fact that, you know, we shouldn't have friends in this world.

42. 12:44

    You shouldn't have friends with this world because friendship with the world is enmity with God. And that's true. You know, we shouldn't really have our best friends really shouldn't be people of this world because our best friends really should be people in the truth, people that are walking with us on the road to the kingdom.

43. 13:01

    But you realize, this passage doesn't really mean that at all. That's not what this is about. When James says that in James 4 right here, what he's doing is he's chewing out all the brothers and sisters that are warring and they're fighting. This is an adult problem. They're beating each other up because of their pride and they're boasting and they're self-seeking and they're fighting this stuff out and they're acting like a bunch of adulteresses.

44. 13:27

    And he says, you guys, you adults, don't you realize when you behave like this, you're friends of the world. You're behaving like the world. And when you act like people of this world, you're not single-minded, you're not behaving like a member of the family of God. When you do that, you're not a friend of God anymore.

45. 13:47

    Abraham was a friend of God. But when you act like this, when we get up at business meetings, when we get up at ecclesial meetings, at arranging meetings, when we treat each other in beating and we do these kind of verbal wars and these spars that go on, when we send the emails out and we hit send and we do all these things where we say things that we shouldn't say and we war with one another in ecclesial life or in family life with husbands and wives, then James looks at that and says, look, you're just behaving like the people of this world.

46. 14:16

    You're no different than them and God doesn't have a relationship with them so what you've done is committed spiritual adultery. You're a bunch of adulteresses. You shouldn't be doing this. And so, you know, he's very direct. He just lays it out and says, you're just like an adulteress who's left the relationship with her husband, we've walked away from our God and now we've committed spiritual adultery because we're not living as a member of the family.

47. 14:40

    So that's how he sees it, that whoever wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God, that friendship with this world is enmity with God. We can't behave like the people of this world. Now, that's a problem because we're around them all the time. You go to work and you see people behave like that.

48. 14:57

    You see them handle their issues like that. You're in your neighborhoods where you see people and you watch other parents and how they raise their children or you watch husbands and wives in the neighborhood and you see how they treat one another and they tell you how they scheme and they do all these different things to get what they want.

49. 15:14

    And what happens when we are under pressure, brothers and sisters, our tendency then in the mind of the flesh is going to be to revert to that kind of behavior and we're going to want to act like that too because it looks like, ooh, that's a quick way to get what we want.

50. 15:28

    And when we do that, we are behaving like the people of this world and when we do that, we are no longer a friend of God. We've moved into spiritual adultery at that point and we've got to come back. We've got to come back at that point. And for anybody who's done that to us in ecclesial life, anybody who's mistreated us or whatever, we've got to give them some slack and let them come back.

51. 15:48

    Let them come back. I mean, James is going to end up this letter at the very end. You might wonder when we get to chapter 5 tomorrow why he does this. But the very last thing he says in chapter 5, after all these things he's gone through, it seems like it's so anticlimactic at the end.

52. 16:05

    But the last two verses of chapter 5 are that if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone turns him back, let him know that he who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save a soul from death and cover a multitude of sins. Why would he end his letter like that?

53. 16:21

    It just seems like it's the wrong way to end this letter. But, if you were living in this situation and people were warring and fighting and the ecclesia was just rampant with turmoil and people were saying and doing things that were wrong and people then were leaving the ecclesia because that's what we do when people get frustrated and there's all this climatic stuff going on, all the drama in the ecclesia and nobody can get along and people are warring and fighting.

54. 16:47

    What do people do? They walk away. They figure, if that's what the truth's like, forget it and they wander away. And James leaves them with this last note about trying to be a member of the family of God. When you see people wandering away for that reason, get out there and grab them and remind them.

55. 17:05

    Just because we aren't living the truth and just because individual people are making mistakes, don't write it off and say it's not God's truth and you're going to walk away from God. Don't do it! Instead, be like God and run after those people and try to bring them back. That's the spirit we should have.

56. 17:24

    And you can see it's a great way to end this letter because this is what they were experiencing. People were walking out. They were leaving. They were frustrated. Who wants to be a member of an ecclesia when you come together on Sunday morning or a Bible class and all the people just sort of look at each other and they're not even sure whether they like each other.

57. 17:40

    That's no fun and it's no fun to come home to a family like that either. That's not family life with God. That's not the family we want to have. We want to have people to get along. And so James is trying to give some practical examples and wisdom as to how you can get along.

58. 17:56

    And sometimes to do that you've got to lay it on the table call a spade a spade and say look if you behave like that that's what you're doing at least recognize here's the problem. You're behaving like the world. You're committing spiritual adultery. For all of you who think that adultery is so bad and you can see it in other people and you'd be abhorred if somebody else did it.

59. 18:15

    Look what happens with what you're doing. When you behave like this you're committing spiritual adultery. So get your act together and solve your problems a different way and try to seek that wisdom that's from above which is gentle and peaceable and willing to yield and full of mercy. So that seems to be at least where James is having.

60. 18:35

    And so we've got to make a decision then brothers and sisters as to which way we want to go. Now whose friend do we want to be? Do we want to be the friend of the world and behave like the people of the world from all the things that we've learned from work and our neighborhood and all the things that you guys have seen in school the young people that you're exposed to so many things at school as to how young people scheme their way through things and try to get stuff out of each other.

61. 18:58

    Look at how they scheme with their teachers and I'm on the other end of that all the time and they're always scheming to get stuff out of teachers you see and you know after a while we get used to that but at least we know the schemes are going on but there's schemes going on all over the place.

62. 19:10

    It's Jacob revisited. You scheme your way through life. You want this you create a scheme. You want that you create a scheme. That's double-mindedness you see and we can't let that come into our thinking. It does but we have to fight it and try to keep it away because we want to become a friend of God and friends of God what they do is they trust him single-mindedly and they let God work these things out and they show kindness and patience and peace with one another and let God have some time to do it.

63. 19:41

    See our problem brothers and sisters in a Christian community is that somebody was just telling me on the way here that Christians they said I guess it was some quote from Mark Twain or something I've never heard it but Christians are the only I forget exactly how it went but they're the only soldiers that leave their wounded behind and that's true it's sad but it's true that in the Christian community people get out their Bibles justify what I want to do with my Bible and if you get wounded along the way not too bad for you you just didn't follow the Bible you get left behind it's almost like what we say in Michigan now about the old no child left behind issue it's no teacher left standing is what's happening and that can happen in ecclesial life too that you know here you have this good idea we're going to march ahead and arm with the truth and get out our Bibles and go forward and instead what you leave is all this carnage behind along the way because we didn't have enough wisdom to realize it was destroying people and it really wasn't helping so we got to be careful that we don't get so really gung ho on some of these issues like that that we just march forward and leave people behind and really what will happen in ecclesial life is that both sides of issues or whatever how many sides there are everybody gets out a Bible and everybody justifies what they're doing with a Bible especially amongst Christadelphians all the Christadelphians do that we all know our Bibles so whatever side

64. 21:07

    we happen to be on maybe not the color of the carpet in the curtains but when it comes down to like Bible issues and that kind of stuff we all get out our Bibles and we use our Bibles and we support our side and we all say that I'm following the Bible I have God on my side and you don't you see and that's what we think and the other side thinks the exact same thing and so that's not the solution because we both think that we are on God's side and maybe the problem is neither one of us are on God's side because God's side is probably one in which you'd be willing to yield peaceable full of mercy and kindness that's the side that God is on and a lot of times we're not on that side and we want to we just got to force other people so when you look at what was going on wrong here is that they were like they ask he says you don't receive in James 4 here because of their pride they were it could be something like ecclesial status that they were asking for things in ecclesial life and you don't get them because they're not the thing that you really need maybe you want to be up here in ecclesial life you want to be an assistant recording brother or whatever job that you want to have and you pray to God and you ask for it and you don't get it and you don't get it because you're not supposed to receive it you've got the wrong goal in life you're asking for God

65. 22:19

    to bless this issue that you want you want the ecclesia to vote this way and they don't vote that way and you don't get it because God's trying to teach us wait a minute we're doing it for the wrong reason we're doing it because I want to win on this issue not really because it's God winning on this issue or maybe we're asking to put other people down and so it's just the wrong thing and it certainly reflects back on the problem in Luke 18 when you saw the issue with the Pharisee when he stood and he prayed and he thanked God that he wasn't like the other men you know extortioners unjust adulterers even as his tax collector see that's such a common human problem we see ourselves as being right up there on the issues with God and all these other people are on the wrong track and they look and probably see us in exactly the same light that's what happens when you have sides in a collegial life so we have to be careful that we sit down we talk things out with one another we try to listen listen you know as he said be quick to listen and slow to speak slow to speak and that we try to understand and seek some sort of peaceable solution in a collegial life one of the practical solutions that I just noticed when you try to look for things not that you can solve all problems not everything's solvable in a collegial life sometimes God wants problems to be there because he's flushing out things in a collegial life and making us face issues

66. 23:39

    so it's not like everything is going to be resolved but you know we certainly pray for God's help and wisdom you know I think all of us would try to do that it might be wise sometimes when you have a collegial problem to just get a few people together to quietly meet and find a solution sometimes they can do that sometimes getting a whole big group of people or maybe an entire ecclesia together or two or three ecclesias isn't really necessarily the best way to go you might have too many people involved so you have a few people get together almost like the Acts 15 conference did in Acts 15 at Jerusalem conference where they got a few people together they talked out the issue they solved the issue themselves and then they carried that forth to the group and that might be a practical solution for more than just the Jerusalem conference or for some of the bigger issues like we might do with the reunion efforts or something like that there might even be issues in your own ecclesia where it might be better to have a few people try to hammer out a solution rather than expecting everybody to be involved at some big ecclesial business meeting and it's probably wise to try to leave out the people at that point who are so emotionally involved that they really can't work together for a peaceful solution and that happens sometimes sometimes people are just too emotionally involved and they just aren't going to work out a peaceful solution and so that's when some of the older wiser folks around need to get together

67. 24:58

    and say alright we need to get some people that are going to work this out we'll solve the well you know God willing they'll look for a solution and then they'll present that to the ecclesia and see what happens rather than deal with the problems that these folks had where they literally they wanted to bite each other's heads off and they verbally were abusing each other and maybe even fighting and warring with one another now in the next section right there in James 4 look at what he says in this next verse at verse 5 this is one that's puzzled me for a long time I've listened to other people's suggestions on it and you can read some yourself see what you think I gave you a few different versions right there at verse 5 but he goes on and the King James says do you think that the scripture saith in vain the spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy the New King James changes that to or do you think the scripture says in vain the spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously which is pretty similar if you look in the NASB NIV some of the other versions and this is the one actually that I think that Brother Smart had picked up in his book was something along these lines and I believe Brother John Martin had supported it as well that what he's getting at here is he says or do you think the scripture speaks to no purpose and then he says he jealously desires the spirit which he has made to dwell in us you see it's about

68. 26:16

    God desiring the spirit that he has implanted in us you see that he wants to dwell in us he's jealous about that spirit that he wants to dwell in us it's about God having the jealousy he's jealous about this this new creature that he's trying to develop in every one of us and what he wants jealously is for us to respond the right way he wants to see his character in each one of us and so he doesn't quote from any specific passage what he does is they look back over the scriptures don't you realize when the scriptures point out time and time again that what God constantly does with his people is he whether it's Israel or in the new testament is he's constantly extending mercy to his people and he's constantly trying to win them back and he wants his character to be developed in those people and to me that makes a little bit more sense and it follows pretty good in the context here of James 4 because if people were willing to change right now and they're willing to now try a new pathway and instead of walking away folks were going to be brought back James foresees the fact that what they're going to need to do to solve the wars is you're going to have to be willing to yield and you're going to have to extend mercy that's the only way this is going to be solved and he's going to go on to point out that the way you do that is that you humble yourselves everybody gets brought low and God then extends grace to those who

69. 27:43

    are not proud he extends grace to the humble that's what he does and we should be doing that ourselves so what he then goes on to quote then in verse 6 actually I threw that phrase in there just so you can see that I really think that what he's gone back to is things that James has built on earlier in the book when he jealously desires the spirit which he's made to dwell in us if you go back to chapter 1 he mentioned of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth that we might be a kind of first fruits of his creatures and then in verse 21 of that same chapter of James 1 he says to lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word which is able to save your souls so God's children then are born of his spirit through the word that he implants in them and he jealously desires that spirit and he wants it to grow that's what God is after so what James goes on to say is something I think that's sort of like based on this law of jealousy that was in the Old Testament when he talks about God jealously desiring the spirit you remember the law of jealousy that was in Numbers chapter 5 the law gave us the power all the fellows that are here at least I mean we had the power to end up thinking that look if I end up thinking that Sue over there has got some relationship with a guy and she's doing something that she shouldn't be

70. 29:02

    doing that she's left me and she's committing adultery if I even think that you see I can bring her up before the community and make her drink that water of bitterness and actually put her to the test and I can do that you see and maybe ahead of time she could have apologized she could have said all kinds of things about why she didn't do it but the fellows under the law you see had the right to do that you could bring your wife up and you could run them through the test of the law of jealousy that was there and this is the kind of spirit that God realizes is in human people that he put it there probably to try to solve the problems in the lives of these Jews at that time because he wanted to stress the concept that he wants spiritual faithfulness that's what he wants but unfortunately it could be abused you see and it could go through all this stuff where anybody that wants to could run their wife through this test and you know maybe they wanted to get out of the relationship so if something happened to happen to her at that point and her thighs all swelled up and then you just figure well see she was guilty and there's no repercussion at all on the fellows for having put their wives through this even if their wives weren't even guilty it's just like well okay you passed the test and that's the way it was left but see the problem is that's the spirit that can be generated in the human mind amongst the

71. 30:21

    guys especially you see if you're following this law that way in a legalistic way like that of wanting to put your wife to the test and I think what James is trying to show is that look that's not what we ought to be thinking when our brothers and sisters end up coming back to us and they say alright we goofed on this we made a mistake we shouldn't have been having these verbal wars we shouldn't have been having these fights and you're trying to make amends you have to as a community we have to bend over backwards to recognize that and reward that and say that's great I feel the same way we've made a mistake we shouldn't have done these things we were going down the wrong pathway this is not a time to play that yeah see you were wrong you know I knew I was right all the time and I'm glad you're going to admit you were wrong this is maybe a time for all of us to look extend grace at that point and mercy and be willing to yield on these issues and so what James says is that look at this is the way human thought is we tend to take this jealousy issue this yearning to be the right person and all that and we want to prove the other guys wrong all the time but that's not the way God is if you come back to God after having committed the worst sins you can ever imagine and you come back to God in prayer and acknowledge you were wrong and you plead for his forgiveness

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    he doesn't put you up there to some test like that he doesn't run you through the ecclesial mill and have everybody publicly you know hammer you down for having made the mistakes that you've made what he does is James quotes from the Proverbs and he says look at he starts out verse six but you see this is God he's not like us he's merciful he's kind he's forgiving because he loves you and he gives more grace what a God that we have who when we make mistakes and we come back to him and we acknowledge that we blew it instead of hammering us down for our mistakes he extends more grace to us because he's so glad to have us back and he hopes we've learned some lessons he extends more grace as he quotes from in Proverbs three right there therefore God resists the proud but he gives grace to the humble so if we come back you see in this spirit of humility if we're willing to resolve our ecclesial issues our family issues our marital issues whatever and we come in there with the spirit of humbleness and humility then we ought to be like God if the other person is like that who are we to stand there and say well yeah but you made all these mistakes you did all this stuff wrong you know he says look God is willing to give more grace what a God that we have and therefore why don't we get to be like that as well so humility is the key that he's now going to build on right now is that if this

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    is going to work the way you do this is through humility this is how you solve these ecclesial issues these family issues these marital problems if you want to extend it right through the family the solution is brothers and sisters to come down off our high lofty platform of I'm right you're wrong and I got to get you to see it and instead submit to God submit to God and humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God and he will exalt us in his own due time that's James' solution too submit to God and show humility that's the solution back because when we all lower ourselves down to that level then we can all walk back up together and accept God's will and the decisions that he brings into our lives and if he brings these challenging things into our lives then don't fight it just accept those things and realize that these are tests that he's putting us through these are challenges that he's going to run us through to see whether we're single-minded do we believe he's going to work it out or do we think I've got to do it I've got to make sure that this gets done the right way as he says resist the devil and he'll flee from you you see don't keep dwelling on this idea of I got to do it I got to do it we've got to aim to be single-minded so he goes on here in verse 7 and says look submit to God that's the solution resist the devil he will flee from you this is what we can do we can submit

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    we lower ourselves you see the problem's in here if we're going to find a solution the problem isn't fixing all of them out there the problem is me I've got to fix this problem I've got and I'll let God work on the other people so we humble ourselves in the sight of God we resist the devil and the temptations that we're going to have to hammer this out ourselves and let the flesh take care of the issue and what we do instead in verse 8 we talk to God we draw near to God and he'll draw near to you and cleanse your hands you sinners and purify your hearts you double-minded James gets pretty very clear right here and it lays it right out if you want to resolve these problems we've got to wash our hands of the sin that we're involved in and we've got to make sure we don't get involved in these evil pursuits purify your hearts you double-minded and stay focused on the issue of trying to bring about ecclesial unity and trying to get the job done and accepting the fact that look it may not be done my way but it might not be one of those issues that we've got to like elevate up there as though if this is the most important issue in the world and most of them aren't brothers and sisters we just tend to make them that way so we got to cleanse our own hearts of the evil intentions and then let God take care of some of the others and God really does care about what we do when some of

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    these ecclesial issues come out brothers and sisters I really believe that what God does sometimes is he brings these issues or lets them come into our ecclesial life and it may be possible that the other side is totally wrong and you're in the right all the way and the Bible supports you all the way 100% but still God's waiting to see how you're going to handle it that matters a lot to him when he goes to entrust us with eternal life it's not just whether we've got the right issue and we're right on the issue what God's waiting to see is how you're going to handle it what are you going to do now you're going to ram it down somebody's throat you're going to do it like God does it be kind and patient and give people a chance how are you going to handle this and he's waiting to see whether we live like his children and so don't end up thinking ever that it's just right all we have to do is be on the right side and all we have to do is have the right answer but God's way beyond that he wants to know whether you're going to implement it the right way and that's tough that's very challenging takes a lot of wisdom from him that's where you pour over the Bible and try to figure biblical examples how did they do it how do you accomplish this and you plead with him in prayer to try to find a way that will be successful in order to bring about peace in an ecclesia or in a family

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    and that's a lot harder than finding the right answer so he suggests that we humble ourselves before him you know that lament and mourn and weep now because God could turn all that into joy and if we humble ourselves to accept God's will in our lives now and show kindness to others then he says that God will grant us grace in verse 6 and he will lift us up in verse 9 so I mean that's the encouraging thing right here is that if we humble ourselves now if we lament and mourn !

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    and weep now together and we ask for God's help and we plead for his help in our problems that what he can do is turn that in the end he can turn it into joy but for the moment we're going to have to turn that laughter and all of that joy into mourning and our joy into gloom in order to get this fixed and that's not easy to do because most of us don't want to do that by nature we just don't want to get down that low and low ourselves and cry to God and ask for help in an issue but if we draw nigh to him he will draw nigh to us and help us understand these problems and trials and walk us through our life so what he then does at the end of this chapter is he leaves us with some examples right here of how to measure our humility humility and this is again practical James now that he's laid it out in front of us and said here's the solution the solution is that you lower yourself you humble yourself in the eyes of God and let God take care of that and get your own act right get your own situation together in God's eyes and maybe some of this other stuff will work its way out but what you can do is work on yourself so he leaves us two practical ways of knowing how are we doing on humbling ourselves because somebody would read this letter and they'd say oh yeah it's the solution humble yourself in the eyes of God yeah submit to God right

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    I'm doing that right right they're still all wrong over there so now he leaves us with a couple practical examples of are you really doing it and here's his ways so you go on and look at verse 11 and 12 and he says here's how you can find out are you judging each other are you looking around at each other and making judgments and putting yourself up high and them down low that's not humbling yourself in the eyes of God and when you go around in life and you talk to everybody about what you're accomplishing in life and what you hope to do over the next year do you go around boasting about your own situation about what your plans are you boast about your economic situation about all the money that you've made all the stocks that you've invested all the blessings that you have is that what you do that's not humbling yourself in the eyes of God so he leaves us with two little practical yardsticks to measure whether or not we really are doing it you know it may not be the two you would pick but evidently he felt they were two practical things that he was hitting at with this community right now for them to find out where they really stood so in verse 11 he goes on he says look don't speak evil of one another brethren he who speaks evil of a brother and judges his brother speaks evil of the law and judges the law so there's the first thing if you really humble yourselves in the eyes of God and you really are believing

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    that you're down here then don't try to condemn these other people don't speak evil of your brothers and sisters and especially you know when you realize that you're judging the law because the law had said you shall love your neighbor as yourself and if you're judging all your brothers and sisters and you're saying evil things about them you're not following God's law you're not following that royal law of loving your neighbor as yourself so there's the first thing stop speaking evil things about each other and wow imagine how many ecclesial problems could be eliminated at least put at rest right there if everybody in the whole group just stopped saying anything bad about the other guy a lot of those problems would disappear or you know husband-wife relationships this is no different you want to solve a problem in a marriage immediately agree we're not going to say anything bad about each other anymore not going to tell anybody anybody anything bad about you anymore that's a start right there and now you can start going forward because now you've cut off the negative instead of continuing to go down now at least we're here we're not going to go any lower and now we can start to build our way back up but at some point you have to agree we're not we agree we're not going to go any lower we're not going to keep tearing each other down like that and so he reminds them look God is the judge not us we're not going to be the one that judges these people you know the wheat and the tares whatever they're all growing

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    together and they may all be wheat for all we know we may be the tares so quit judging each other because we don't know the motives that other people are operating on we think we do but one of the greatest things in life to ever do when somebody has a disagreement with you is to sit down and listen and ask them well what do you think that I believe on this issue what are you thinking about me and what I think and actually listen to what they're thinking and then try to deal with that and then you try to tell them what they're thinking you try to figure out you know where are we really at and a lot of times we don't even know why somebody else is doing what they're doing we thought we did we figured out we thought we had it all figured out and then we find out wow they had a totally different reason and realize that and then you have a basis upon which to move forward and try to resolve an issue and see James's point was that look God gave the law and he's got the authority and the knowledge to save or destroy and the law that he gave is to love your neighbor as yourself and so it's not our job to go around in ecclesial life and figure out well how are you measuring up how are you measuring up how are you measuring up to of course my fav five because I wouldn't want to deal with all the law because then I'd have to follow it all so you just pick

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    the ones that you really like and James was 20 that's that's not a solution who are you to judge another brothers and sisters and it's really true today now look James wasn't the only one dealing with this problem you'll see Paul does the same thing when he wrote to the Romans Paul ends up saying the exact same thing dealing with the same kind of problem and he the Romans were having the same issue why do you judge your brother or why do you show contempt for your brother in Romans 14 there at verse 10 for we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ for as it is written as I live says the Lord every knee shall bow to me and every tongue shall confess to God to God that's that's who we have to give an answer to not to each other so in verse 12 so then let each of us give account of himself to God and therefore let us not judge one another anymore but rather resolve this not to put a stumbling block or a cause to fall in our brother's way so this was a common ecclesial problem both in the days of James and then later on in the days of the apostle Paul because the problem with with all this is that you know we end up in judging one another what we end up doing as we feel like as we tear other people down that somehow makes us look higher and that's why James would really say here's the yardstick if you really believe you've humbled yourself in the eyes of God and

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    you really believe you are down here then you won't be trying to tear other people down because you'll realize you've got to work on yourself and you will quit judging each other and instead we'll examine ourselves as we will tomorrow morning that are once a week at the memorial service so the other thing he looks at at the end of this chapter is boasting this idea of boasting about what I've accomplished and if we're the kind of person that goes around boasting about what we've done about oh I'm gonna go over here and make some money or I'm gonna invest some money over here or we boast about our you know what we do in life and we go around boasting about the things that we're going to accomplish James's point is that look that's a little bit of a yardstick to let you know that you really have not humbled yourself in the eyes of God because what you're really doing is you're trying to make everybody else look you like way up there and so we boast about of our accomplishments we boast about what we've done and we boast about what we have and we're really not giving thanks to God for it we really don't believe God gave it to us and what we really want is all this pride and all this self-esteem that other people are feeding into us and James's point is simply that that's that's not what we're after here we're not going after those kinds of things this is double mindedness on the one side we say we've humbled ourselves and on the other side we're boasting

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    about our accomplishments in life so it was another good practical way and so he ends up this chapter at the end there that all boasting in verse 16 all of it is just arrogance and all such boasting is evil because back in verse 14 there he reminded us look your your life is just a vapor it's just like a pump of smoke out there the word vapor almost it means like a breath that would be like if you went outside and the temperature somehow dropped overnight into the 30s and you could get up in the morning and go outside and go and you can see your breath like that and that's evidently what the word means like a breath that's that's our life it's just like a breath that appears out there for a moment and then it vanishes away and if you really believe that then you don't go around boasting about your accomplishments you don't go around tearing other people down instead we look for ways to build one another up we look for ways of establishing peace and kindness in ecclesial life and we give thanks to god for all the things that we have not boasting on our own personal things because all such boasting is evil so what he says there is that what we ought to do then is in verse 15 instead you ought to say if the lord wills we shall live and do this or that see that's what humble people do they acknowledge god in their life this is single-mindedness not double-minded we are single-minded we're looking at how god's involved in our life and so what

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    we then do is we say well god willing we hope to do this and god willing we hope to do that and thank god for what he accomplished right here you know and that's what humility is about and other behaviors then are really telling us just like in the last chapter what the tongue really speaks if we if we find ourselves boasting about our accomplishments and tearing each other down in ecclesial life then the warning that james has for us is we really aren't humble and if we're really not humble brothers and sisters we're not going to solve those marital problems and we're not going to solve those ecclesial problems because we are in the way we are the problem and we have to work on us me i've got to work on my problem and when i get my problem sick and pull you know the the moat out of my eyes the big old log or whatever then you can see clearly to help pull the little speck out of somebody else's eyes these are just constant things that you see in the scriptures and james would have been aware of them all so whatever the issue is brothers this is when we go we go to go home when we pack up we go home in our cars or we go to a seminar we we say we're gonna have a seminars next week or those of you that are getting married and your hope is to have a child and somebody's pregnant we hope to have a baby see in all these things and people will hope to get married in all of them

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    we have to constantly say god willing god willing because that frame of mind is single-mindedness that if god wills this is what we hope to do and we try to flush out of ourselves this self-confidence and arrogance that this is what i'm going to do this is what i'm going to do and i'm going to do this and i'm going to do that that's not humility and that kind of thinking just leads to ecclesial wars and fights and family problems and in case we thought this was some minor thing you see he ends the chapter saying well look to anybody who knows the good and knows what what is good and what you're supposed to do and does not do it to him it is sin so james's point is look you know this brothers and sisters i'm not telling you anything new really i mean this whole weekend is nothing new it's all in james's letter anyway but even that it's not really new stuff we knew this when we walked in these are just it's a reminder weekend but we know what we're supposed to do in ecclesial life we know what we should be doing with our tongue we know that showing partiality is wrong you know and from chapter 2 we know that this spirit of fighting is wrong that we can't be feeding the fires and the flames of all this turmoil of ecclesial life or family life or marital life or whatever it is we know that's wrong but he lays it out now and he says look to him who knows what the good thing is you know what is

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    good to do the doers of the word if you know what to do and you don't choose to do it to you it's sin this is not just some passive thing where i knew what i was supposed to do and i didn't do it but that's okay we're saved by grace see this is where james gets down to the point that look this matters this doing of the word makes a difference because if we're not doing the word when we know that we were supposed to do it to him it is sin and he warns us that that's that's that's the failure that's uh that's where we make our mistakes paul ended up saying the same thing in romans 14 but he who doubts is condemned if he eats because he does not eat from faith or whatever is not from faith is sin it's the same kind of issue that he's dealing with about the issue of eating the meats offered to idols we know the right thing to do brothers and sisters what we've got to do then is take the lessons home next week and in our future lives god willing god will hopefully give us an opportunity to put these things into practice but make sure we realize that to james this was a major issue this issue of becoming a doer of the word a doer of the word will seek peace be willing to yield and go for situations in family life and ecclesial life which will bring unity and peace in the ecclesia that's what we want to aim for and to get there we got to humble ourselves we got to do that that's a

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    doing of the word and if we know that and we realize that is the key to success to those who fail to do that that is sin and he lays that out there on the line that this is not just some passive thing that you can get away with and think well god won't notice he does notice because he knows we we know what we ought to be doing so what we'll do hopefully god willing tomorrow then is we're going to look at james chapter 5 and we're going to look at how this will affect believers lives during their troubled times and he's going to go on into chapter 5 and cover some more examples of becoming a doer of the word when we're put under pressure when we're under the pressure of all these people that are that in this case the the rich that were causing all the trouble that they were in ecclesial life and then remind us about some of those solutions that we can use and practical solutions in life in order to make good responses and respond to god in a single-minded way we