January 13, 2019
James 4:1-10
4 What is the source of conflict among you? What is the source of
your disputes? Don’t they come from your cravings that are at war in your own
lives? 2 You long for
something you don’t have, so you commit murder. You are jealous for something
you can’t get, so you struggle and fight. You don’t have because you don’t ask. 3 You ask and don’t have because you ask with
evil intentions, to waste it on your own cravings.
4 You unfaithful people! Don’t you know that friendship with the
world means hostility toward God? So whoever wants to be the world's friend
becomes God's enemy. 5 Or
do you suppose that scripture is meaningless? Doesn’t God long for our
faithfulness in the life he has given to us? 6 But
he gives us more grace. This is why it says, God stands against the
proud, but favors the humble. 7 Therefore,
submit to God. Resist the devil, and he will run away from you. 8 Come near to God, and He will come near to
you. Wash your hands, you sinners. Purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Cry out in sorrow, mourn, and weep! Let
your laughter become mourning and your joy become sadness.10 Humble
yourselves before the Lord, and He will lift you up.
PRAYER:
Father, no
matter how long we have been Christians, there are times when we recognize we
have a need to go back to basics, to reaffirm in our own minds and hearts what
we have committed to You, and what You have committed to us. So we thank You this morning for this
lesson. May we search our own
situations, being honest with You, and re-commit where we stand, and whom we
worship. Thank You, Father, for each one
here, we ask Your blessings on our studies, and we pray for those unable to be
with us this morning, asking that You lift them up in strength and in their
faith. For we ask these things in Jesus’
name. Amen.
So let’s jump right into the book of James this morning. First, we want to know who wrote this, and
second, to whom was he writing?
The author identifies himself as “James, a slave of God and of the Lord
Jesus Christ. He doesn’t claim anywhere
to be the brother of Jesus Christ, but he shows a knowledge of Judaism and
Christianity. His writing reflects
Jesus’ teaching, especially the Sermon on the Mount. The content of his letter reflects no church structure of
offices or titles, which suggests that it was written before such things
developed, while the Christian community was still a messianic movement within
Judaism in the early days.
The Jewish historian
Josephus wrote that James, “brother of the Lord,” died in AD 62, so his
lifetime fits the timeframe suggested by the letter. There was another James in proximity to Jesus
– an apostle, brother of John – but he was martyred early on (we find that in
Acts 12:2), and so he probably didn’t survive long enough into the church era
to author this letter.
So to whom was James
writing? James 1:1 indicates the
audience consisted of “the twelve tribes who are scattered outside the land of
Israel.” That scattering had begun some
seven centuries earlier w hen the northern Hebrew kingdom, Israel, had been
overrun by the Assyri8ans and its
citizens were forcibly moved into other lands under Assyrian control.
That scattering continue
into the sixth century BC when the southern Hebrew kingdom, Judah, was
conquered by the Babylonians, who marched many of the Judahites into exile in
Babylon. Although some of that latter
group was eventually allowed to return to their homeland, many did not.
These dispersed Jews
were collectively referred to as the “diaspora.” That term usually refers to the scattered
members of a religious community separated from their homeland, often but not
always due to circumstances not of their own choosing.
Since James was clearly
writing from a Christian perspective, however, he was addressing not all Jews
in general, but those throughout the Jewish world who had accepted Christ. And there were likely quite a few of such
persons during the Disaspora.
You may recall that on
the day of Pentecost, those who heard the gospel message included Jews of whom
Acts 2:9-11 identifies as Parthians, Medes, and Elamites; as well as residents
of Mesopotamia, Judea, and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt
and the regions of Libya bordering Cyrene; and visitors from Rome (both Jews
and converts to Judaism), Cretans and Arabs”.
Remember, that day, 3,000 Jews accepted Christ, according to Acts 2:41,
and many, no doubt, took the gospel message home with them and spread it to
others.
So brother James had the
possibility of having a vast audience across the then-known world.
From the beginning, the
church taught that the doorway to salvation is labeled “Faith,” and, of course,
that is correct; but here James is concerned with how Christians live after
they walk through that door. Faith
alone, James insists, is dead if it does not spur us to positive actio9ns for
the good of others and for our own spiritual well-being.
The pairing together of
faith and works, James insists, is the dynamic that drives a living and
involved faith, one that seeks to change the world. In shorthand, we might describe the Book of
James as teaching the practical wisdom of right behavior.
So as we take a look at
James’ writing, verses one through five, and eight, imagine for a moment you
come to church, you walk in, smile at friends,
you set down, and the pastor begins calling out members of the
congregation, pronouncing them murderers, adulterers, coveters, you contentious
people “you’re worldly enemies of God, and two-faced!”
And notice how James
uses these terms: In verse 2 he says
“You long for something you don’t have, so you commit murder…” Also in verse 2, “You are jealous for
something you can’t get, so you struggle and fight.”
In verse 3 he writes,
“You ask and don’t have because you ask with evil intentions, to waste it on
your own cravings.” The Greek word
rendered here as “cravings” can also be translated as “lusts.”
In verse 4, our Common
English Bible translation in this lesson uses the phrase “You unfaithful people!”,
but the underlying Greek actually says “adulterers.”
In fact, Bible scholars
tell us James was actually using these uncomplimentary labels
metaphorically. He was talking about
areas of life where Christians need to grow up into Christ; and he used strong
words to make his point, which, as the student lesson says, is that “receiving
Christ doesn’t automatically instill in Christians attitudes from above.”
Take “murderers” for
example, James employed that word with much the same intention Jesus did in the
Sermon on the Mount when He said, “You have heard that it was said to those who
lived long ago, “Don’t commit murder,” and all who commit murder will be in
danger of judgment. But I say to you
that everyone who is angry with their brother or sister will be in danger of
judgment. We find that in Matthew
5:21-22.
The upshot of all this
is not that James’ readers were terrible people, but that their religious
conversions were not complete.
Your student book
section “Many Conversions” quotes theologian Luke Timothy Johnson who said that
James was “addressing members of the Christian community who gather in the name
of Jesus and profess the faith of the glorious Lord Jesus Christ, but whose
attitudes and actions are not yet fully in friendship with God.
Which is to say,
receiving Christ is not the end of the spiritual journey, but the
beginning. As Johnson wrote, “James sees
that conversion is never complete. There
is always doublemindedness, even among those w ho truly want to be friends of
God.”
Even with you, even with
me.
In James last four
verses, six through 10, we see that James did not toss these disparaging labels
at his readers to put them down, but to call them to “submit to God”, and
“resist the devil”, as he says in verse seven.
James wanted them to press on in the way of Christ, to grow in faith and
righteousness.
“Come near to God,”
James said in verse 8, “and He will come near to you.” And then in verse 10, “Humble yourselves
before the Lord, and He will lift you up.”
A friend recounted an
incident when he was first assigned to pastor a church. It seems an evangelist came to their county
to hold a crusade. There was an
effective organization that plastered the county with advertisements, and met
with pastors of the county churches to enlist their involvement. He says when the week of the crusade came,
many hundreds of people from the area flocked to hear the evangelist. Since many from his church were attending, he
went also so as to be familiar with what was said.
He enjoyed the
enthusiastic music and the rousing preaching, all aimed at a point of
decision. After spelling out the need
for salvation, the evangelist gave an invitation to “receive Christ.” He says a lot of people, many from his own
church, accepted by going forward, moving to the front where prayer teams
waited to counsel and pray with them.
Well, the crusade ended
and the evangelist and his team moved on to another area. And a couple of weeks later, the
participating pastors each received in the mail the names and addresses of
people from their churches and the surrounding area who had responded to the
invitation. Those lists were sent so the
pastors could follow up with these people who had, in the language of the
crusade, “made a decision for Christ,” and, it was to be hoped, get them
involved in the local churches.
The author’s list
primarily contained people he already knew, most of whom already attended his
church. There were a couple who did not
attend but lived nearby. In any case, he
took the list seriously and made an effort to contact each person on the list
to follow up.
What he discovered,
however, was that in most cases, these people were now embarrassed by the whole
business. In the cold light of day,
their trip down front at the crusade now seem to them as an emotional
over-reaction to the mood of the crowd.
His showing up to talk with them about it brought back their
embarrassment. Some were now
backpedaling as to any commitments made at the crusade.
He recalls that he wasn’t
surprised, for decisions made under heavy emotional pressure sometimes don’t
fare well in the face of everyday life.
Even so, what the
crusade was trying to do by sending pastors those lists was right. For the evangelistic team knew that what they
were doing was focusing on one entry point into the Christian life – dramatic
conversion. That’s not the only entry
point by any means; and in any case, it is only a beginning in the Christian
life, not the whole story.
Like life itself,
Christianity is a journey, not merely a destination. And people who gather in church on a Sunday
morning are likely to be at different points along the way. Some may not even have begun. Others may be flush with the excitement of a
newly found faith. Others may be some
distance along the road but stuck in one place.
Still others may be moving well on the spiritual journey.
It’s the work of the
evangelist to introduce people to that journey.
Pastors must look at how to help people travel the Christian road, no
matter how they got started.
Our acceptance of the
faith doesn’t mean we have “arrived,” it means we are on the right road. For a pattern of what the Christian journey
can look like, consider the spiritual odyssey of Jesus’ 12 disciples.
Before they met Jesus,
the Twelve were part of the mass of Jewish humanity for whom faith meant going
to the synagogue and keep the commandments.
But when they encountered Jesus, they were called to follow Him, and
they did. In doing so, they came apart
from the crowd and, in a beginning act of newfound faith, went with Him. We could say with some justification that
their positive response to Jesus’ call was the equivalent of people at an
evangelistic rally “going down front” to receive Jesus.
But notice at the
beginning of their journey together, Jesus did not cross-examine the Twelve
about their beliefs. He simply said,
“Follow me.”
Their misunderstandings
of Jesus’ mission soon became plain enough.
In Luke 9 we read that on one occasion, when a Samaritan village refused
hospitality to Jesus and the Twelve, some of them asked Jesus if He wanted them
to call fire down from heaven to consume the villagers. They had no doubt He could do it, just
whether or not He wanted to do it. They
were committed to following Jesus, but at that point they still didn’t “get
it.”
Perhaps you recall in
Mark 10 when James and John asked Jesus to seat them at His right and left when
He came into His glory.
And when Jesus spoke in
parables, the disciples sometimes had to come to Him afterward and say, “Uh,
Rabbi, what did that parable mean?; such as happened in Matthew 13. And when Jesus told them of His impending
death, they tried to shush him up, for in Mark 8 we read, they still did not
understand.
But even in this
beginning stage of their Christian journey, Jesus was able to use t hem. He sent them out on healing and preaching
missions, and they were able to spread the gospel and help people, as we read
in Mark 6.
And yet there were some
remarkable failures. For example,
Peter’s heart-rending denial of Jesus, Judas’s betrayal, and the desertion of
most of the disciples following Jesus’ arrest.
They hid out.
The Twelve, in
responding to Jesus’ call, had begun traveling the spiritual road, but they had
not gotten far along it.
Fortunately, God was not
through with them. After Jesus’
ascension into heaven, the disciples, following Jesus’ instructions, gathered
in a room in Jerusalem. There, on the
day of Pentecost, the Spirit of God came upon them in a mighty way. And after that, there was – as far as we know
– no repeat of their old failures. At
Pentecost, they took a spiritual giant step forward in the life of faith. They were men transformed.
For you and I, spiritual
growth is likely to happen gradually, but we can look at the disciples’ pattern
and ask ourselves how we are progressing on the journey of faith.
Hopefully you don’t see
yourself at this point in your life as being like the disciples before meeting
Jesus. Or do we think that being a
Christian means only trying to keep some moral rules and going to church?
Perhaps we are like the
disciples after responding to Jesus’ call, but before Pentecost? We may be able to recall a specific time when
we actually committed ourselves to Christ, or we may have pretty well accepted
Christianity as it was presented to us as we grew up. That’s great, but has our faith stalled at
that stage? Have we continue to grow up
in Christ, or do our prayers still sound like a wish list? Is our faith real but immature? God is still able to use us, but are we
missing out on the power and peace of a more mature faith?
Or are we, like the
disciples after Pentecost, where we have confidence in God despite the
difficulties of our lives, where we have room in our faith to let our questions
survive without destroying our spiritual peace.
The Greek mathematician
Archimedes, in speaking of the important of the lever, said, “Give me a place
to stand and I shall move the earth.”
I tell you God often
gives men and women a place to stand that will allow them to move pillars and
mountains of society, but they mistake what happens to them for a bad thing and
allow it to knock them out of the saddle.
But God is forever good, and in such instances He will take our hand and
lead us back into His love.
The witness of Scripture
from James 4 and elsewhere should teach us that we can grow in faith. We can grow beyond the beginning stage of
commitment to Christ to a vital faith that is more adequate for the bumps and
potholes on the road of life.
And you don’t need this
old Pastor to convince you that in growing older there are more bumps and
potholes on that road of life than ever before.
Hold tight to His hand. It’s there
for you.
So as we wind down here,
let me ask you, did any of you find you needed additional “conversions” after
your initial commitment to Christ? And if
you did, did it come from within, or from someone else?
I want to end by sharing
a quote from C. S. Lewis’ book, “Mere Christianity” that begins, “Imagine
yourself as a living house. God comes in
to rebuild that house. At first,
perhaps, you can understand what He is doing.
He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so
on….. But presently He starts knocking
the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make
sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite
a different house from the one you thought of – throwing out a new wing here,
putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a
decent little cottage; but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.” …..I hope you will think about that.
James 10 tells us,
“Humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will lift you up.” Perhaps after reading the entire passage, we
understand the need to continue to say yes as God reveals new things to us that
need to be converted to maintain that friendship.
Let us close with prayer … O God, help
us to repent of and change the attitudes and behaviors that keep us mired in
conflicts and disputes, so that we may be in friendship with You; in Jesus’
name we pray. Amen.
In closing I would want
you to know that in my house, there is a large red fence board, tacked up to
the door leading to the garage. In big yellow, fading letters, it reads:
“You’re pretty much my most favorite of all time in the history of forever.”
My re-conversions have
been many, and my wife Merilyn’s love was at the center of those. Over 54 years this coming February, she never
left me, God never left me, and they both taught me a love beyond what I can
understand or explain. I just needed to
share with you how undeservedly blessed I am.
Thank you.
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