BP18KeepingUpJames4
Sermon: “Keeping Up With the Jones’”
Scripture: James 4: 1-8a
Theme: We want and do not have because we think we deserve it. Grace doesn’t
jive with Prosperity theology!
On any given day you turn on the television and watch one preacher tell you that if you love God, you will send him $100 and you’ll get back $1,000.
Go back to that same t.v. set later in the afternoon and a different preacher will on begging you to send $100 into his ministry. Doesn’t promise financial windfall in return, you’ll just be blessed by showing God you love him so much because you gave. The more you give, the more blessings you’ll receive.
Another preacher will tell you if you just have enough faith, you’ll be healed and if you aren’t then you must be in sin or just not have enough faith.
Which one is right? NONE!
But we are living in such a society that we want, and want, and want, and try so hard to keep up with the Jones’ that this type of theology sounds good to young believers. Many of the newer evangelical churches today promote this type of prosperity theology. If you lack, in anything, you just ask God and you will receive whatever it is that you want. And these preachers back up their teachings with scripture – although it is scripture taken out of context. Our scripture for today, from the book of James, contradicts that type of teaching. Let’s read:
James 4: 1-8a
The book of James was written to the Jewish Christian Church in Jerusalem. The subject matter of the letter is simple, practical, and almost a moral challenge to society as a whole – both Christians of the time and non-Christians. Much of the teachings found in James are similar to the teachings of Jesus as recorded in the Gospels. So, I ask this question – does the scripture we read today support what is called Prosperity theology in our world today?
Here’s how Prosperity doctrine is sold: God wants you to be rich (and/or healthy), but He can not bless you unless you first send money (also known as a “seed-faith offering”) to whichever televangelist or teacher you are listening to.
They teach that you must confess aloud what it is you need – Name it and Claim it. They say that we can get what we want from God by our faith filled words! Each person predestines his own future by what he says verbally and by how well he uses/follows spiritual laws. If you are sick, then God wants you to be well, but you must first confess it positively, believing in the power of your own thoughts and wishes. If you are not healed, then you must not have believed enough. If you are poor, then you must be living outside of God’s will for your life. If you are rich and healthy, then you must be doing what God wants.
They teach that God’s preferential treatment should be showed to believers by everyone! Joel Osteen tells a story about being pulled over after speeding. Once the officer saw that his last name was Osteen, he let him go! Osteen teaches that this is the kind of preferential treatment that all God’s children will receive if you just wake up each morning declaring that you are favored by God! This favor will then become visible in all that we do – we’ll get the best seats on a plane or the best parking spaces, we’ll win the lottery, or have our sicknesses removed.
The problem with this way of thinking:
1. All of your money and wealth and health becomes a sign of God’s favor to you.
a. If you are blessed financially, God must really like you. WRONG.
b. If you have low or median resources, God must not really like you? Wrong!
2. When you believe that God favor’s YOU, then you begin to serve God with wrong motives.
a. Serving God for the blessing you will receive.
b. Give to God so you can get something back.
c. You begin to really believe that I give to God, so he owes me something. (He doesn’t)!
d. It’s not because you did not ask, but you have asked out of selfish desires!
3. This way of thinking also Produces Guilt & Divides the body
a. If you’re serving God you’ll be prosperous or healthy.
b. Then the Poor..must not be serving God? – This lady sends $70 of her $800 disability check in each month to TBN. Is she not serving God in the way that she can right now?
c. Is it that she has a Lack of faith? No.
d. We often Pray for healing and didn’t get healed, lack of faith? No. Healing just did not happen in this world at this time.
Religious faith becomes based on personal gain rather than on social justice—your religion is first and foremost about me, myself, and I, rather than on building the Kingdom of God by helping others and by building a better world for all to share in.
You begin to believe that those who do the right thing will inevitably be rewarded in this life. Bad things do happen to good people, and it is self-delusion to think otherwise. We manifest our love for God not by hoping to grab a bigger piece of the pie for ourselves but by loving others and by building a more just society.
This personal gain based faith is not something new! The people in the time of James were experiencing a similar problem among those in their congregation. They wanted and wanted to keep up with those of higher status and believed that because they were God’s children they deserved it!
They were jealous of one another, committing murder to get what they thought they deserved, and when they prayed, their prayers were selfish and self centered. Sure, God does answer prayer but God does not grant every petition – certainly not of those who ask for means to continue and multiply in their sin! And also not for those who seek only self-indulgence in their pleasures. James calls them ADULTERERS – those who are disloyal and unfaithful to the vows they have taken as God’s children.
And then he goes so far to say that those who are friends with the world are enemies of God! Is it wrong then to enjoy this world that God has provided for us to live in? Is it wrong to have pleasure and joy? NO! What is wrong is that we succumb to sinful pleasure, to evil desires, to worldly definitions of success and power and riches.
James wants his congregation to understand that they cannot serve both God and the world! They must make a choice. But he also tells them that God yearns jealously for the spirit within each of them! God wants to be the source of pleasure and joy in your life. You don’t need what the world has to offer that will not last. God wants you and because you are so loved and valued by God, he pours out his grace.
Pours out MORE GRACE on those fitted to receive it by their humility, those who have submitted to God’s Kingdom, God’s ways. God helps the humble, but the proud – those who love themselves more than God and those who love the evil of the world above God, are God’s enemies. They must seek the Kingdom of God and HIS righteousness instead of all the things that the world says to seek.
Many, many young people today believe that they must have the new cars or the big house to be happy. Keeping up with the Jones’ becomes a way of life! Credit cards get maxed out, they work all the time and have little time left for God or family. They become dependent on their prosperity and not on God.
Folks, we must seek God first. We must humbly submit all of our lives to living for God and serving him by serving others. This should be our first priority in life! And we must have the right motives. We must not give because we think we’ll get back or that we are owed something! God gives all that we have and God can take away.
We should demonstrate our gratitude for what we have, not storing it up or hording it but sharing it with others who may not have as much as we do.
At the same time, we should not feel guilty about having money or being prosperous but instead meditate on why God allowed us to have and then be anxious to share it.
The scripture we read today is about God’s grace theology – God giving us what we don’t deserve! God’s UNMERITED FAVOR! You don’t have to DO anything, give any money, pray the right way, be anyone special or of status! That just doesn’t jive with what some teach as Prosperity theology!
The great playwright Eugene O’Neill once said:
If the human race is so stupid that in two thousand years it hasn’t had brains enough to appreciate that the secret of happiness is contained in one simple sentence which you’d think any school kid could understand and apply, then it’s time we dumped it down the nearest drain and let the ants have a chance. That simple sentence is: For what shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul? (From the 1957 Interpreter’s Bible – Vol. 12, pg. 53).
Where is our focus today? You have a choice – God’s grace and true happiness, joy, comfort, love, just because He loves you, eternally…or the world’s prosperity which is only temporary.
It does seem simple doesn’t it?
