God's Friend (James 4)

GOD’S FRIEND (JAMES 4:1-10)

A clergyman once met an old schoolmate of whose activities he had long been ignorant, and finding him a judge of good standing congratulated him upon his success in life. As they were parting, the clergyman said to him, “And best of all, Judge, I find you are a member of our church.”

“Well,” said the judge, “that’s more a matter of chance than anything else. You see, when I was getting established in my profession, my wife and I thought we ought to join a church— it was the respectable thing to do. So, after mature deliberation, we settled down with a certain denomination and got on very well for a time; but they kept harping on faith, till we pretty soon discovered that they required more faith than we had; so it became necessary to make a change. We turned the matter over considerably and at last, for various reasons, made up our minds to join another denomination. Here we found the demand was work, work incessantly; and it was presently apparent that they demanded more work than we were able to perform. It was with great reluctance that we concluded that we must change again, and we cast about with much caution, that this move might be final. At last we decided to connect ourselves with your church, sir, and have gotten along famously ever since without either faith or works.” (Illustrations of Bible Truths # 544)

The book of James famously asserted three times, “Faith without works is dead” (Jas 2:17, 20, 26). In chapter three James warns of an external threat: the tongue. In chapter four he warns of an internal threat. What threat rivals or even surpasses the tongue as a destructive force? What is so dominant and dangerous that it can lead to fights and quarrels (v 1), lust/want (v 2a), even killing and coveting (v 2b) to obtain it? How can we contain, correct and even conquer it?

Exercise Control Over Your Longings

1 What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? 2 You want something but don't get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. 3 When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. (James 4:1-3)

Hong Kong people are familiar with the name of Tony Chan. The lawsuit he filed is known as the Lawsuit of the Century. In 2007 Tony Chan producing a different will to seize the US$4.2 billion fortune, as estimated by Forbes in 2007, left by Asia’s richest woman, Nina Wang, the month she died, the money which she left to charity. Details of Tony Chan quickly emerged in the media. Born in 1959, 20-23 years younger than Nina Wang, the geomancer and a father of three claimed to be Nina Wang’s lover for 15 years and the sole beneficiary to her riches. One newspaper calls him “the one-time bartender, salesman, waiter and market researcher.” More than one witness testified that Tony Chan boasted about a medical degree obtained in Canada.

New York Times reported that Mr. Chan admitted that he had received $258 million from her, his two brothers helping him cart away more than $1.5 million cash from her offices at night in cash-stuffed bags carried out in several trips.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/15/world/asia/15hongkong.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

After more than two years of trial, the court ruled that Wang's signature on the 2006 will produced by Tony Chan to be a forgery. Mr. Chan was arrested on the next day but later released on bail. The Inland Revenue of Hong Kong demanded (more than) HK$300 million (US$38.46 million) in back taxes on the money for services he received from Ms. Wang, which he claimed were gifts.

This week a newspaper captures the latest photo of the bucktooth man returning to court minus his “$40, 000” smile. http://news.china.com.cn/rollnews/2010-06/11/content_2633161.htm

James chapter4 gets right to the source of readers’ fights and quarrels, employing a favorite literary device called “chiasm” in Jewish literature, with verses 1 and 4 end with same word in Greek: translated as desires in verse 1 and pleasures in verse 3, plural form in both verses, or hedone in Greek, from where we get the English word “hedonism,” the pleasure principle or the playboy lifestyle. What is the word hedone? It is our impulse, itch, indulgence working overtime. It is insatiable, indecent and immoral. Vine’s describes this “desire” as “the gratification of the natural desire or sinful desires.” This word occurs only five times in the New Testament, two of which are in James (vv 1, 3), but its most vivid description is in 2 Peter 2:13-14: “Their idea of PLEASURE is to carouse in broad daylight. They are blots and blemishes, reveling in their pleasures while they feast with you. With eyes full of adultery, they never stop sinning; they seduce the unstable; they are experts in greed — an accursed brood!”