A Manifesto for Gospel Living (Pt 4)

Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.

Well tonight we’re going to continue on in the series that I’ve titled a Manifesto for gospel living taken from the epistle of James and this evening then as the bulletin I think said was we’re going to be looking at chapter 4 We’ve already seen that this epistle’s purpose is not to teach core doctrines of the faith But rather by way of some examples show us how a true Christian should live If the books of the Bible had subtitles to them, I think you could subtitle James, how should we then live?

This letter is best viewed as a series of examples of what a Christian, what I call out in the wild, looks like. You can use it as a sort of an exam to see how your life measures up to what a Christian ought to look like. I’ve mentioned several times in past messages how some groups, particularly the Roman Catholics, like to use this book to support their teaching, that good works plays a role in ensuring one’s salvation. And to that point, a few weeks ago, I read about a meeting between Pope Francis, the current head of the Roman Catholic Church, and some school-aged children. And one of the boys in the group came up to him, and he was crying, and he told the Pope, he said, my father was an atheist, and he’s died.

And the boy wanted to know, was his father going to be in heaven or not? And the Pope replied by telling the boy that because the boy was such a tender hearted young lad, that that was surely proof that the father must have been a good man. And then he turned to the other children in the crowd and he asked them, would God ever turn his back on a good man? And all the kids yelled back, no. And then the Pope turned to the little boy and he says, well, there’s your answer. So basically what the Pope was telling the little boy was that good works can get you into heaven.

The Pope was basing his answer in part on this little bit of Catholic doctrine, which addresses the question of must one be baptized to be saved? Right out of the Catholic doctrine it says, since Christ died for all, and since all men are in fact called to one in the same destiny, which is divine, we must hold the Holy Spirit offers to all the possibility of being made partakers in a way known to God of the Paschal Mystery. Every man who is ignorant of the gospel of Christ and of his church but seeks the truth and does the will of God in accordance with his understanding of it can be saved. It may be supposed that such a person would have desired baptism explicitly if they had known of its necessity.

Now there’s a lot wrong with that statement. Never mind that Christ is the way, the truth, and the life. According to this teaching, a person can be ignorant of the gospel of Christ, hence ignorant of the truth, but somehow still live in the truth in a salvific way. I like to call this doctrine, the doctrine of all good dogs go to heaven. Clearly this teaching is contrary to scripture and James with his emphasis on good works does not support the notion that works plays any role in bringing a person to faith or maintaining them in a state of grace. James simply shows through a series of examples what a person of faith looks like.

He’s not describing how a person becomes saved or how they remain saved. So, so far, real quick by way of review, we’ve actually seen several examples then James gave us. Chapter one, we saw that a true believer has joy and trials, and we saw that he’s also a doer of the word. Chapter two, we saw that he’s impartial towards others, and that he lives a faith that has feet. Chapter three, we did a few weeks ago, we saw that a true believer has a tamed ton, and He also practices a wisdom that’s not of this world. This evening then we’re going to see three more examples of what Christianity lived out looks like. But these examples are a little different.

James expresses them as the opposite of what godly living looks like. And the three that we’re going to take a look at in kids in your corners, these are the fill in the blanks, you see three on godlies. The three things that James says a Christian should not look like is one, he should not have ungodly passion, two, he should not have ungodly judgment, and three, he should not have ungodly self-reliance. So let’s take the first one, the example of ungodly passions. The text starting there in verse one, what causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this that your passions are at war within you?

You desire and you do not have so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people, do you not know that friendship of the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. For you suppose it is to no purpose that the scripture says, he yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us. But he gives more grace, therefore it says, God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.

Submit yourself therefore to God, resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands you sinners and purify your hearts you double-minded. Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning your joy to gloom, humble yourself before the Lord and he will exalt you. James begins this example with a question. What is the source of the quarrels and the fighting among you? Presumably then this was not just a rhetorical question, but he was confronting a real problem that was occurring among the readers there. Now since we never get into fights or quarrels today, I’m going to walk through this example is a hypothetical for us, okay?

The term quarrels and fights covers the gamut from disputes that simmer over long periods of time to all out war. It can be a feud that festers just below the surface or it can be open hostility that just can’t be ignored. There are a few things really when you think about that destroy the Christian witness in the world quicker than when brothers and sisters in Christ engaging conflict with one another. We’ve all been there, we’ve seen it, perhaps been a part of it, but it really affects the witness. In addition, as we’re gonna see in a moment, it indicates that one or both parties in the dispute are behaving more like an enemy of God, and that obviously is not good.

It’s tempting when we find ourselves in a conflict to want to justify ourselves, but James’ question forces us to examine what is really going on in our hearts. He suggests that our conflicts, rather than being noble and just like we presume, like we tell ourselves, are often sinful passions at war within us which then spill out onto others. Now everyone has passions. James is not condemning passions in of themselves, but it’s when those passions are of the wrong kind and they rule us that he is concerned with here. If James was condemning all passion, then what would we do with verses like, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

Or when Jesus made a whip and cleansed out the temple, his disciples remembered that it was written of him, zeal for your house will consume me. And what about David in Psalms when he was longing for God like a deer, pants for water. You hear in all those examples passion. So whatever James is getting at can’t possibly mean that passion in and of itself is wrong. We can look at many more examples like this. So whatever James is referring to, it cannot then simply refer to strong emotional feelings. Being passionate about the right things is good and appropriate. In fact, I’d say it could indicate a problem if we’re not passionate about something.

The word James used his here can probably better be translated as the word pleasures. And it refers to those fleshly impulses that draw us towards worldliness. In the New Testament usage of this word, it almost always refers then to the wrong kind of passion. We see it used in Romans one where it says, God gave them over to dishonorable passions. In Galatians 5.24 where Paul says, and those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. And again in 2 Timothy 2.22, where Paul wrote, so flee youthful passions. You get the sense of where James is going with this. James says that our passions are waging war within us.

And so I asked the question, in what way are they waging war? Are our various ungodly passions fighting each other? Is my jealousy battling against my covetousness? What is this war that’s going on? Doesn’t make sense to say that one passion is at war with the other passion. So in what sense is a war going on?

I suggest to you that the war that’s going on is between our fleshly impulse, those passions, and the inner man, as Paul calls it. Paul, I think, described this internal battle in Romans seven when he said in verses 21 through 23, For I joyfully concur with the law of God and the inner man, but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war, this different law, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin, which is in my members. Earlier, if you remember in verse chapter seven, Paul described the frustration that he felt with wanting to do what’s right, but constantly being drawn to doing the wrong things.

It’s a tension that all believers have to deal with until we’re going to finally be set free from the presence of sin. So I believe that’s what James is describing for us by that war, is the inner man’s battle with the impulses that are in our flesh that are just a part of the human experience. Peter also identifies this internal war in 1 Peter 2.11. He says, beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh which wage war against your soul. We live in a culture where being real, quote, real or authentic, has become so valued that yielding to the passions of the flesh has become increasingly acceptable.

Expressions of our passions that once were verboten, even in just the public, are now widely approved and accepted and encouraged. As Christians, we need to do quite the opposite and learn to bring these passions into submission according to the Spirit of God within us. Obviously, we don’t encourage people to be fake or to ignore problems, but it does not follow that giving full expression to our passions whenever we want is the right thing to do. I’ve actually heard of counseling techniques, Christian counseling techniques, where one party is encouraged to yell at and curse the other party in order to let them know how they really feel.

Somehow this is considered a good first step in the path towards reconciliation. As you would expect, nothing good comes from fleshly passions not being bridled. Examples of the fruit of such passions James gives us in the extreme would be murder and coveting. It’s hard to imagine that our passions can so control our minds that we believe that murder is the acceptable response. It speaks to how powerful our passions are to warp our thinking and cause us to enter into sin. Often we’re blinded to the sin in our actions because it feels so right to satisfy the passion and perhaps you’ve been in conversations with people who are just really wound up And their fleshly passion is taking control, and their thinking is right out the window.

And it’s very hard to get them to come back around and start thinking properly. In the case of covetousness, we attempt to be spiritual and ask God for what we want. We’re pretty clever in our minds, aren’t we? We’re coveting something, but we at least think that we’re going to ask God for it and be Godly in that regard. But we end up deceiving ourselves, believing that our motives for asking are pure, when when in fact we just want to serve our own pleasures. And James takes shots at that. You ask and you don’t receive because you want to spend it on your own pleasures.

I kind of wonder if those who follow the prosperity gospel movement fall into this trap. If you believe that God always wants you to have nice stuff, it would be easy to believe you’re asking in faith when in fact you’re just feeding your flesh whatever it wants. In verse 4, James then starts to amp up his rebuke. He says, you adulterous people, do you know that friendship of the world is enmity with God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. I don’t know about you, but when I read through that chapter, and boy, he just slams you now. First he just accused himself of murder and being covetous, and all of a sudden now Now you adulterers, you know, it’s like, where’s the kind and gentle James here?

This is a pretty serious charge. You adulterers, would you agree that’s a pretty serious charge? Giving into the passions of our flesh is tantamount to adultery. Adultery occurs when someone is wedded to one person but then engages in affair with someone else. So how is yielding to our pleasures then adultery?

James makes the connection for us satisfying our fleshly passion is the same as being a friend of the world. The idea here is that there are two sides you have to choose between. You can choose the world side and follow its recipe for happiness or you can choose God’s side and follow his recipe. One or the other you can’t choose both just like you have to choose one person to be married to. The reason you can’t choose both is because the world and God are at enmity with each other. Now I should point out that James uses the term world here to describe that aspect of creation that’s opposed to God and offers men a type of salvation that’s apart from God. James is not calling for us to become isolationists. Some might read that verse and say, well, I don’t want to be friends with the world, so I’m just going to go live on a pole in the middle about Kansas Wheatfield. He’s not calling us to be isolationists. The problem is spiritual, not geographical. In 1 John 2.16, John sums up the world’s life system this way. He says,

all that’s in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, that is what James is thinking of when he’s thinking of the world that he’s telling us that we cannot be friends with. It’s when our passions crave those things that were becoming friends with the world, and then by default becoming adulterers in the eyes of God. Being friends with the world as we are describing it, not only makes us an adulterer, it makes us an enemy of God. Now James isn’t pulling any punches here. Murder, adulterer, enemy.

Some might say, hey, you’re a little guilty of using some hyperbole here, buddy. Tone it down. Or is he really? Is that really the way God sees things when we indulge our fleshly passion. Does God see us as an adulterer when we yield into those fleshly impulses? Verse five indicates that God takes our commitment to him very seriously. James says, where do you suppose it is to no purpose that the scripture says he yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us? Now James actually turns out, isn’t actually quoting any known scripture there. Theologians like to define these things and debate what the possible explanation is.

There is no verse in the Bible that actually says that. Various theories of what James was doing or what he was thinking include that he was quoting some unknown apocryphal work, some other writing that was common being passed around but never made into the canon of scriptures. Some say he was quoting something that he heard Jesus say, but it was never written down. Others say he’s just referring to some of the other New Testament passages. And then there are places where other apostles refer to others as scripture. Or he was just simply expressing a truth embodied in scripture, a general life principle, that was true, of how God feels about us and his jealousy regarding us.

However he came up with a saying, it is certainly consistent with scripture. For example, 1 Corinthians 16, 9 says, Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own. Or Exodus 34.14, you shall not worship any other God for the Lord, whose name is jealous, is a jealous God. Numerous examples are found in the Old Testament where God’s jealousy is provoked by Israel’s idolatry. Jeremiah speaks of Israel rejecting God as their source of living water and turning to broken cisterns to quench their spiritual thirst. In that passage, God calls for the people to be shocked, and he calls it a great evil.

Sean’s got a great sermon on that passage. What was it called? Shocking off? I think you can look that up on our website. The point James is making is that this is totally in, it is so wrong, and it’s totally consistent with what James is saying here, that for us to go after these worldly passions and provokes God to great jealousy.

Now after coming down hard on his readers, James seems to then soften up a bit in verse six and reminds them that even though God is a jealous God, he’s also a patient and a gracious God who longs for his children to turn to him. He continues on in verse six, but God, but he gives more grace. Therefore it says, God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Over and over in scripture, we see where the mercy of God triumphs over his judgment and praise God for that. Isaiah 54 seven through eight is an example. Speaking to Israel, God said, for a brief moment I deserted you, but with great compassion I will gather you.

In overflowing anger for a moment, I hid my face from you. But with everlasting love, I will have compassion on you, says the Lord, your Redeemer. We see that pattern over and over. We sin, we blow it. God’s jealousy is triggered. Judgment, punishment comes, but it’s always with a view to bring about restoration, because again, he jealously wants that spirit that he’s placed within us.

Even when we sin and play the adulterer, God will forgive us and receive us back, provided we humble ourselves and repent. Now James gives in the next few verses, a roadmap for how to get back on track with fellowship with God. It isn’t complicated, but it does require resisting the fleshly impulses that wage war in us. The roadmap involves humbling ourselves, resisting the devil, drawing near to God, repenting of sin, and grieving appropriately over our sin. Humbling ourselves requires that we submit to God. We yield our will to His. We no longer yield to the demands of the flesh upon us. We say no to our fleshly urges, and yes to God.

Saying no to our flesh involves resisting the devil. Doing so then comes with a promise. We resist the devil and we’re told he will flee from you. It should encourage us to know that Satan is not some yin to God’s yin with equal but opposite power. Satan is a created being who must yield to God. We’re told the greater is he who is in us than he who is in the world. We sin not because our passions are too strong. We sin because we offer little to no resistance. James very clearly says, if we resist the devil, he will flee. Next, James says to draw near to God. Drawing near also comes with a promise. He will draw near to us.

I was speaking with a brother this week who has drifted away from the faith at the moment, and he’s super discouraged at the moment. And as we were talking, his problem is that he mistakenly thinks that he is too sinful for God to want anything to do with him. He’s just at a point that, no, he’s telling me, yes, I still believe, but I’m just so wretched and miserable. It’s just better if I just crawl under a rock and hope for the best someday when I meet him in heaven. And I’m trying to, I want to say, stop having a pity party. I’m trying to be tender hearted, but at the same time, come on, brother. You need to put that behind you.

James makes it clear that God is more than ready to receive us if we’ll just humble ourselves and repent. The next step in the road is to truly repent, or as James puts it, cleanse our hands and purify our hearts. Now technically, we can’t purify our hearts in a salvific way, but we can choose to lay aside the sins we’re fond of and to determine on our hearts to forsake them. It’s a decision, a choice we have to make. The problem, according to James, is that we are of two minds. We’re double-minded. We think somehow that we can have the best of both worlds. Yeah, I want God and a little bit of this. The problem is that God’s a jealous God that doesn’t work.

The minute you try to do God plus something, God drops out of the equation and all’s you’re left with is that something which ends up being a broken cistern. But this attempt to try to have it both ways, that’s akin to the adulterer trying to find a way for everyone to be happy with it. How happy would your spouse be if he said, you know, I really prefer you, I love you the most and I want to stay with you, but could I have the weekends to see my other person? Would that be okay with you? Obviously, that’s ridiculous, and yet that’s in essence what we’re doing with God when we yield to those passions inside of us. It can’t happen. True repentance is rejecting one thing over another. And then lastly, James instructs the man who wants to walk with God to learn to truly grieve over his sin. That’s probably a practice that’s not very common among Christians today.

We live in a culture that has totally, if not abolished the notion of sin, they have dumbed it down to where sin is just simply a mistake. I made a mistake. We’re not even willing to call it sin anymore. But it is. It’s an affront to a holy God. It’s an affair of the heart with another person. It worships something other than God. it nailed Christ to the cross. We need to have that sense of our sin and it ought to cause some grief and grieving in us. Now we don’t need to flagellate ourselves like the ancient monks used to do, but we do need to be less cavalier about our sin like it was just some minor infraction.

A proper understanding of who God is and how jealous he is for us should evoke a keen sense of shame and sorrow in us when we sin. You would think at this point in James’ road map restoration that we’d be lucky to come crawling back and hope in time that we could somehow face God. And some people like this brother I’m referring to, he has this attitude that I have to come crawling back. That’s not the case. James tells us that if we humble ourselves before God, he will more than simply take us back, He will actually exalt us. Scripture clearly teaches that God views the church as the bride of Christ. What would you, go back to your, for those of you who are married, go back to your wedding day.

What was your attitude towards your bride? I can barely look at you. You know, what was that? You know, husbands? No, you were enthralled with her. The same picture we get with God’s attitude towards the bride of Christ. His desire is he wants to show off that bride. He loves the bride. He doesn’t want to hide her. He wants to show her off to the world. That’s the picture that we need to understand as we consider how God views us. That’s why it’s so important that we resist the fleshly impulses in us that blemish that bride. But when we do sin and when we do blow it, repent, follow the roadmap back to repentance, and then recognize that God, again, not just begrudgingly lets you back in, but He actually brings you back in.

He exalts you. he seeks to restore you back to that position where as a member of the body of Christ, we once again, he can show us off to the world. It just speaks again of what a tremendous God that we’ve got. Let’s move on to the second example he gives us. And this is again, by way of a negative, the example of ungodly judging. The text starts in verse 11. Do not speak evil against one another, brothers. The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother speaks evil against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law, but a judge. There is only one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy.

But who are you to judge your neighbor? In this next example from James, we’re warned against improperly judging others. Now the biblical understanding of person to person judging is so confused today that many believe that it’s wrong to ever judge another person. Many will often quote the first part of Matthew 7 where it says, judge not lest you be judged. You’ve all probably heard that many, many times used when somebody thought you were judging. Now taken out of context, that seems pretty straightforward. Pretty straightforward prohibition against judging anyone. But if we were to actually read a few more verses in Matthew 7, the warning is not against judging sin, but rather don’t be a hypocrite when you’re doing it.

The passage tells us to first remove the log from our own eye and then go help your brother take the speck out of his eye. And in 1 Corinthians 5.12, Sean just covered this a few weeks ago. Paul rebukes the Corinthian believers because they were not judging the sin of a man in their fellowship. And he said, for what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? So then the scriptures do not make a blanket statement against judging one another. What then does judging according to James mean? When does it become wrong? The judging that James is referring to is related to slander or evil speaking of others.

It is saying things that are either untrue, unkind, or tear down. Unlike proper judging which seeks to restore a person caught in a fault, this type of judging actually only harms a person. It’s only a tent is to vent oneself and does not seek the betterment of the other person. James says this type of speaking is particularly evil because it’s tantamount to speaking evil of the law and judging it. Now why does James make that comparison that when we judge others in this wrong way that we are actually judging the law? When you think of the law, what one word comes to mind that you would use to sum up the purpose of the law?

What’s the intent? Do you think rules, standards, limits on my freedom? How do you think of the law and what its purpose is? Well, Galatians 5.14, Paul gives us an explanation. He says, for the whole law is fulfilled in one word. you shall love your neighbors as yourself. The law instructs us to love our neighbor. That is the purpose of the law. When we speak evil of others and judge them according to our own standards, we are in essence saying that the law is lower than our own standard. If the law’s not good enough and we have some external standard we’re applying to that person and thus judging them, We in essence are diminishing the law.

We are now becoming a judge of the law. The law is insufficient, it’s incomplete. There’s yet another bar that this person needs to meet. In doing so then, we’re speaking evil of the law, saying that it is not enough. And we elevate ourselves above the law and act as its judge.

Speaking evil of others puts us in direct violation the law and we are no longer than a doer of the law, but rather make ourselves out to be better than the law. A doer of the law is subordinate to it as opposed to one who judges the law and then adds to it. James Bluntly reminds us that there is only one lawgiver and judge or as Dave Light’s t-shirt says, there is only one, there is a God and you’re not him. He reinforces God’s position as the only lawgiver and points out he’s the one that has the power to save and to destroy. You don’t. Speaking evil of others and judging them makes a person look foolish and then James puts such a person in their place by demanding who are you to judge your neighbor. The third example, the example of of ungodly self-reliance.

Verse 13, come now you who say today or tomorrow we shall go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit. Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say if the Lord wills we will live and do this or that. As it is you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it for him, it is sin. In this third example, James takes on those who act like their own destiny is in their own hands. This reminds us of the parable of the rich fool who had no regard for God and he decided to build bigger barns to hold his abundant crops. You remember that parable?

His fault was that he was proud, and he did not acknowledge God as the source of his blessing. But yet he did not know that that very night his life would be required of him. He thought, hey, I’ve got the world by the tail in a downward spool. I’ve got so much stuff. I don’t know where to put it all. I’m going to build bigger barns. And he had no regard, no thought to God. He totally presumed upon his future. And God’s response was, you fool, do you not know tonight? your very life will be required of you. Now the point of the parable is not that requiring wealth is bad, but doing so in a presumptive way without any consideration of God is foolish.

James echoes the same point in citing the man who made plans to travel far away in search of a prophet as if the entire outcome was up to his own ability. In his arrogance, he sins by presuming on the future when in truth he had no idea what tomorrow was going to bring. The rich man failed to keep Proverbs 1921 in mind, which says, many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand. Thomas A. Kempis turned this proverb into a saying that you may have heard. He said, man proposes, but God disposes. We like to have all these plans, But the reality is that if it’s not God’s will, it ain’t going to happen.

And for us to not consider God’s will, we’re just being foolish and arrogant. In preparing for this message, I came across in one of the commentaries on James this poem by William Ernest Henley, titled Invictus. I’m sure many of you know the poem well. And it describes exactly the kind of attitude that James is condemning. The poem reads this, out of the night that covers me, black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be for my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced or cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance my head is bloody, but unbowed. Beyond this place of wrath and tears looms but the horror of the shade, and yet the menace of the years finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how straight the gate, how charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul.” Now that poem is very famous, and it’s very well loved by people everywhere for its self-reliance. But that’s exactly the opposite of how we should be thinking about our lives. James puts the rich man in his place by reminding him that his life is like a mist that appears for a brief moment and then is gone. This analogy to the uncertainty of life was echoed in chapter one earlier when James said that the rich man should boast in his humiliation because like a flower of the grass, he will pass away.

Pick your favorite analogy, the point’s the same. Men must humble themselves and recognize that there is nothing under the sun they can do without God’s providential blessing. We were talking about this a little bit at the Iron Sharpens Iron over at Philip’s house. And even for businessmen, I know there’s several businessmen here and making plans which is good and necessary, but it’s important in business as well as all areas of life that again, we really be thinking if the Lord wills that we don’t just head off without any consideration, without bathing our plans in prayer and relying on God. Sean once famously made this point to a youth group by telling them, you think you’re hot snot on a gold platter, but you’re really a cold booger on a paper plate.

It’s worth pointing out that James says this kind of boasting is not just foolish, but it in fact is evil. Perhaps this is because prideful self-reliance is what caused Satan’s fall from grace. that this particular sin of self-reliance is going right back to the heart of what caused the fall.

Clearly God does not take kindly to his creation ignoring him. James goes on to say that the rich man should rather have said, if God wills, I shall do such and such. Preference in our plans with if God wills forces us to acknowledge his lordship over everything, including our own lives. It requires the proper attitude of humility and submission to whatever his plans are, regardless of what we want. This principle of submitting our plans to the will of God applies to every area of life, including family, and in James’ example, business ventures. The sad reality is that most of us go through our days often without really little regard for God.

It’s only when things go wrong that we stop and remember that we did not bring our plans to him in prayer. And it is shameful if we think about it in Verona as how much of life we do without really considering God and his will and his purposes. Often we can tell that simple test is what’s your response when your plans go awry. Is it, well, the Lord, must be the Lord’s will, or is it a little bit of irritation? We should mention Proverbs 3, 5-7 as yet another admonition to not lean on our own understanding when making our decisions. you know well, trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your understanding.

In all your ways acknowledge him and he will make straight your paths. Be not wise in your own eyes, fear the Lord and turn away from evil. It will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones. And another one of my personal favorites is in 2 Chronicles 16.9 where it says, and just picture this, the eyes of the Lord run to and fro over the whole earth to give strong on support to those whose heart is blameless towards him. Man, you want to talk about having an advocate? The eyes of the Lord are just scanning to and fro over the earth, looking for that person whose heart has completely stayed on him so that he can strongly support him.

Wow. That’s powerful. When you consider how much God is for those who humbly rely upon him and obey him, it’s a wonder that anyone would prefer to try and live an independent life from him. Well, James finishes his exhortation against boasting himself by saying, so whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him, it is sin. It’s not entirely clear if James in that sentence meant that he’s giving a final warning to this rich man example, or if, in fact, he had all of his previous examples in mind when he said that. If he meant the former, then he was saying something like, so whoever knows, he should have regard for the will of God in his planning and fails to do so his sinning.

But in either case, if the statement was a blanket statement for all that he said so far, in either case, knowing what one should do but not do it is a greater sin than the sin of unknowing omission. Sometimes we sin by omission. We may not necessarily have meant to, but it’s still the sin versus the sins of commission where we are, know what we’re supposed to do and we choose not to do it. And that’s what James is reminding us that. If you commit that sin of commission where you know what you’re trying to do and don’t do it, it is sin. Seems like a does statement, but worth emphasizing.

Well, you may have noticed that the sin that is common To all of these examples in chapter four is really self exaltation, which is just another word for pride. In all three of these examples, we saw the sin of pride at work. In fact, I think these three examples pretty much embody that passage we just read earlier in First John 2, where John is describing all that’s in the world, the desires of the flesh and the desires, or like the NAS, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life. I think that embodies what James has just been speaking against.

None of that is from the Father, but it’s from the world, and the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever. The sins of quarreling, judging, and presumptuous living all stem from the fleshly desires and the human pride of life. And the only antidote to all of this is a humble admission that apart from God, we are nothing but a vapor that comes and goes. If we’re going to boast, we should boast only in the Lord because it’s only by him and through him that we are anything and can do anything or in any sense of note. And so to him belongs all the glory. Let’s pray.

Well, Father, as we have been taken to the figurative woodshed by James here and confronted with the many ways that we so often foolishly go our own way, that our own pride steps in. We want to feed our flesh. We want to give into those fleshly impulses. We try to lift ourselves up by putting other people down and judging them. Or we just go off willy-nilly, doing life on our own without any consideration for you and your will and what your plans are. We ask that you would forgive us for the times even this week that we were guilty of any of these things and that you would help us to put aside these things, to humble ourselves, to submit ourselves to your plans, to your will, that we would do the hard work of battling the flesh and we’d resist the devil, that he may flee away, that we would draw near to you, that you might draw near to us, and that we would allow you then to exalt us and find your joy and your delight in us as obedient children to you.

Pray for us as we head out this week that you would keep us wise and safe in all that we do. And we just thank you again for all your tender mercies, which are new every morning. We pray in Jesus’ name, amen.