Good morning everyone. My name is Josh, and I am one of the leaders here at Beginnings. We are really glad you decided to hang out with us this morning. Let’s pray as we move on this morning.
Maybe you are able to relate to that clip. Many of us want to make a difference in our world. We want to interact with our culture, we want to talk with our friends about God, but we don’t know how.
Here is the dilemma, on the one hand we have most Christians saying we need to stay out the world. I grew up in a church that said the world and everything in it is bad. A very doom and gloom outlook. There are verses, like what we will look at today that say if you are friends with the world, you are an enemy of God.
Then we have verses that say, “Be in the world, but not of it.” Jesus even prays before he dies, not that we would leave the world, but that we would stay in it.
While growing up in church, I was taught that the world in which I lived was this horrible place. A place that was by some opinions, beyond saving. The ironic thing about that position, is that the people who held it and taught it to me, were saved from the world. Go figure. Within the church, you have two extremes when it comes to culture and how we interact with it. Build bubbles to keep it out and keep our kids from it, or immerse ourselves so we relate to culture and then there is nothing different about us. Most churches today have perfected both of these.
I saw a poll a few weeks ago where they asked people this question, “What groups of people do you dislike the most?” Here were the top 3 answers: One, serial killers, which isn’t a surprise. Not many people like them. Two, child molesters. Again, not a surprise. Three, evangelical Christians. Why? I think it is because we have perfected the bubble, and nothing being different about us.
For the past few weeks, we have been in a series called A search for what is real, that has taken us through the book of James. James wrote his short letter to Christians who were not acting like Christians.
It is the same today as it was in the 1st century when James wrote his letter. The church he was writing to, was struggling with the same problem: how do you interact with the world around you, that is why James spends time talking about it. How do followers of Jesus interact with the world around them? That is the question.
If you have your bibles, you can open them to James chapter 4, which is on p. 870 if you grabbed a bible from the lobby.
Last week, we looked at chapter 3, which talks about different kinds of wisdom. Wisdom from God and wisdom from the world we live in. James now continues that discussion on how we interact with the world around us.
This is what it says in James 4, verse 1: 1What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? 2You desire and 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. 3You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. 4You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. 5Or 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"? 6But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble." 7Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.
This is one of the most action packed verses in the entire book of James. In fact, many historians say this is the pivotal and most important part of the whole letter. One even said, “The whole book hinges on this one passage.”
Often, when we think about the culture around us, we see it as something very different from the church. Which in many ways it is, but our culture has become incredibly spiritual, with many people open to asking questions about God and having conversations about “spiritual” things. The next time you are in Barnes & Noble, go look at the spirituality section. You can also check out the self-help section, which one author said is really just another way of saying, “I am looking for God.”
This poses kind of a problem for us though. Most of us want to make a difference in the world around us, but we don’t feel adequate to take Jesus into our world.
In his book Too Christian, Too Pagan, Dick Staub said this, “In my observation most Christians are either too Christian or too pagan. The Christians who are “too Christian” are very comfortable with the Christian subculture but are ill at ease when in the world. On the other hand, Christians who are too pagan are at ease with the world but fail to integrate their faith into their everyday life.”
Taking Jesus into our world requires fully engaging both our faith and the world, yet few of us have learned to live a fully integrated life of faith in the world. Which leads us to where we need to be. Staub says, “The call of following Jesus will lead us to be too Christian for our pagan friends and too pagan for our Christians friends.” That is what we are going to unpack today.
So let’s pick up what James says, verse 1 of chapter 4: 1What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? 2You desire and 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. 3You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.
James starts this section by asking what causes fights and quarrels among us and in us. These wars come from our desires for pleasure, which are constantly fighting within us. Last week, we talked about envy, jealousy and selfish ambition. He picks up with this again. He says, you want something, you can’t have it, so you fight. It almost sounds like the church he was writing for was filled with a bunch of little kids. Good thing, we have learned our lesson and don’t do those things anymore, right?
In verse 2 he says we don’t have things because we don’t ask. Then he says in verse 3, you ask but don’t get it, because you ask wrongly. We ask for things that will satisfy our pleasures, which is the equivalent of earthly wisdom.
James is connecting the fights that we experience within our relationships and within ourselves to wisdom and whether we have wisdom from God or from the culture around us. At the end of chapter 3, as he is talking about envy and selfish ambition, he is now showing what leads to those things. Rivalry, pride, strife, things James would say are things of the world around us.
Let’s talk about desires for a second. Desires are not always bad. A lot of times instead of saying desire we say, “I hope, I wish.” Every parent has hopes and dreams, desires for their kids. Not always a bad thing.
For James though, desires are not good. Desire often leads to fights because they are self-centered. For example, husbands and wives easily end up fighting when resources are limited and desires are unlimited. He wants a vacation week with the family; she wants a new fridge. He says, “I work hard all year. I need some fun, something to look forward to. I deserve it.” She says, “But what you spend on your hunting trip in one week can buy a fridge for the whole family and it will last for 20 years.” Sound familiar yet?
She keeps going, “As for fun, are you forgetting about the week we have planned at the beach in July?” He says, “Yes that fridge will last 20 years, but you’ll want a new one in 5 years. And it rained every day and the kids fought constantly the last time we went to the beach, so it was hardly a vacation. Not what I would call a break.”
When a husband and wife are arguing for their own way, they use as much truth as they can to win an argument. For example, it probably did rain, and the kids probably fought at the beach. They probably had lots of fun in the process, but that is forgotten, because the husband is arguing for his hunting trip. When we try to get our way, we remember history selectively. Then, when our spouse catches us in a small distortion, that can lead to another round of animated discussions.
That is where desires lead.
Think about our desire for status. Often, we don’t want status, instead, what we want is what comes with status: a sense of wholeness, joy, and peace. James is saying, as believers we do not have what we are looking for because we have been searching for it in the wrong places. G.K. Chesterton said, “Any man who knocks on the door of a prostitute is really looking for God.” I think we could put anything in there. Whatever door you are knocking on, whatever you are looking for, you are really looking for God is what James is saying.
Verse 4: 4You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. 5Or 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"? 6But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble."
I think it is interesting at the beginning of verse 4 James calls these Christians adulterous people. James is using the imagery of a marriage. One author (Douglas Moo) said this, “James uses the marital imagery to depict the relationship between God and his people is vivid and convicting. As a jealous lover, God demands that we return to him an exclusive and unwavering love. No flirtation with the world is to be tolerated. Our allegiance to God must be wholehearted and consistent. This call for spiritual ‘oneness’ lies at the heart of James’ message. This goes against the thinking that we can be friends with the world and be committed believers at the same time.”
Throughout the bible, the relationship between God and the church is seen as a marriage. Throughout the bible, God says that we are committing adultery, spiritually speaking, because we are not truly following him. To show this, in the book of Hosea in the Old Testament, God tells the prophet Hosea to marry a prostitute to visually show what the followers of God are doing to God by following other gods.
But often we think, I am not going after other gods. For example, when you think about new year’s resolutions, when was the last time you thought, I would like to grow closer to God this year. Often we think, let’s go on that vacation, lose that weight, get that promotion. Not bad things, probably things that would be good.
Martin Luther said, “Whatever your heart clings to and confides in is really your God.” So let me ask you, what are your gods? What things does your heart cling to? What things do you lay awake at night dreaming about? What things occupy your minds on a daily basis? If we are honest, often, moving the kingdom of God forward is not in the top 5.
Rich Mullins said, “We want to live our lives the way we want and sprinkle a little Jesus on top.” We want to have our wants, our desires, do what we want to do, and then have Jesus bless them and give those things to us. I remember one of my mentors saying that when we become a Christian, God hands us a blank piece of paper, our life with him, we sign on the line without knowing what it says. As we move in our journey, we go back to God with additions and subtractions, wanting him to change and meet our expectations. It doesn’t work like that.
The audience James was writing to were worshipping God and pagan gods at the same time. What they wanted was the benefits that came from both Gods. It is like the one guy in the Mummy movies who was always wearing chains and religious symbols from every religious belief. He prayed to each God, hoping that he would get the right one. James is saying, you can’t pick both.
When James says friend with the world in verse 4, what does he mean? We have friends we haven’t talked to in 20 years. We use the word friend lightly, but we really mean acquaintance. But in the 1st century, as today, true friends shared a mindset, the same outlook on life. They shared interests, goals, and values. They saw life the same way.
Recently I saw an article by George Barna who has been doing research for several decades. In it, he describes that most Christians and non-Christians have the same values, the same wants and desires. He went on to say that many Christians believe what they want is in the Bible, even though it lines up more with what the culture says. He lists a few.
Acquisitions. Our culture defines happiness in terms of what we have: bank accounts, homes, clothes, and cars. Or, happiness is defined by experiences: fine restaurants, sporting events, skiing trips, and tours of Europe.
Merit-based. Our value and position depend in some measure upon our parents status and in great measure upon our accomplishments. This happens in the church. I remember as a student pastor, I was always asked by well meaning Christians, “When are you going to become a real pastor?”
Self-promotion. We see this in sports all the time. Terrell Owens carries a pen in his sock, so he can whip it out after catching a touchdown pass and sign the football, while millions watch. Marvin Harrison scores and quietly hands the ball to the referee. Joe Horn hides a cell phone on the field, so he can call his friends after he scores, calling them from the endzone. Tory Holt scores and quietly pats his teammates on the back.
Our culture loves Terrell & Joe because they are entertaining. Yet the other two are the better players and will end up the hall of fame. Marvin and Tory are still with the teams that drafted them, while Joe & Terrell are not. Marvin & Tory have super bowl rings, Joe & Terrell do not. Some of you may not even know who Marvin or Tory are.
James hits on this in verse 6, when he discusses grace and pride. He says: 6Therefore it says, "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble."
As a student pastor, I got a common question from a lot of students, “If I do this, will I still be a Christian?” Once, a student asked me if he cheated would I still be a Christian, and with a horrified look I said, “Oh my gosh, no. God will no longer love you.” Freaked him out. I called him up a week later and told him I was kidding. I’m kidding, I didn’t wait that long.
When we think about our relationship to the world around us, we are always looking for the line. I would get asked by students one question more than anything else, “How far can I go and still be a virgin?” Questions like these are the wrong questions, and that is why James brings in grace. When you truly understand grace, and truly understand how big your need for God is, why would you want to see how close to the line you can get.
One author (Daniel Doriani) said, “When people see their sin and their inability to reform themselves, when they stand before a holy God, they are guilty and they often feel hopeless and ashamed. When our sin humbles us, when we plead for mercy, God grants the grace of forgiveness.”
Verse 7: 7Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.
James is calling us to stop living double lives. To live with oneness.
James links submission to God with resistance to the devil. That, to submit to God’s authority is to resist the devil’s authority. To submit to God is to order our lives under his authority. To resist the devil means we oppose, we fight back, we take a stand against the devil’s authority.
In verse 9, James reinforces the need to take sin seriously by adding change your laughter into mourning and your joy into gloom. Which seems backwards. In the scriptures, laughter is often the mark of a fool, the person who goes against the way of God. These people live with the hedonistic view of life, “eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die.” James wants us to see the seriousness of sin, how those things can come between us and God.
The joy that James warns against is fleeting and superficial joy that comes when we indulge in sin. True joy can never be ours if we ignore or tolerate sin; it comes only when we have squarely faced the reality of our sin, brought it before God and let him cleanse us.
PAUSE
So it begs the question: how do we interact with the world around us? How do we live lives that are too Christian for our pagan friends and too pagan for our Christian friends? The Christian who is too Christian doesn’t love the world enough to fully enter into it, and the Christian who is too pagan doesn’t love Jesus enough to make a difference while there.
To really do this, we must look at the world around us, interact with it, critique it, learn from it, and ultimately make it better.
As I said before, our culture is incredibly spiritual. Look at music. Bands like Creed, Live, Tori Amos, Kanye West, Jewel, Madonna, the list goes on write songs asking questions about God. Trying to figure this out. What happens often is that we don’t really listen.
After I build a relationship with a friend who doesn’t know God, we will often talk about music. We will talk about bands and songs. Often I will ask them, what do you think that band is saying about a subject. Several years ago, when Creed came out and got popular, I would often ask friends what they thought Creed was saying in My own prison. Because, we get our theology and learn about spiritual things through music and movies.
Most movies actually have spiritual messages in them. That is why in August we are doing a series called God @ the movies, to help us see where God is. Think about Star Wars, the movies are about the fight between good and evil, as well as Darth Vader’s journey to the dark side. If you want to see a few examples of this, you can go to our discussion blog and there are some examples about how to interact with movies.
Growing up, when I was watching a movie with my dad, he would pause it and ask me questions. He would say, “What does that character saying about women, or God, or whatever?” We would sit there and talk about it. What that did was not make me afraid of the world around me, it taught me how to interact with it. This is what our culture is looking for, they don’t want to hear that we are right and they are wrong. They are wanting us to dialogue with them, to acknowledge the places they live.
Over the summer, we were at the pool one day. There were these guys sitting on a bench talking and I overheard them. The one guy was a Christian and he was doing his best to share his faith. one of the guys was genuinely interested and was asking questions, but the Christian didn’t hear any of the questions. He came prepared with his sheet, things he needed to say, things he was supposed to say. And he missed a great opportunity. I thought, that is the problem, we have the answers to questions no one is asking.
Most Christians are content to live their lives and not get to worked up about much. We live lives that are pretty much the same as everyone else, and we only protest when someone is infringing on my rights.
If you read history books about the early church, the church James was writing to, do you know what you will not find? Protests. Ask most people about Christians, and protests will come up. They will say, they are against this and that.
Jesus was known for being too Christian for the pagans, which is what attracted everyone to him and he was too pagan for the Christians, which got him killed.
Shane Claiborne said, “You don’t get crucified for being cool; you get crucified for living radically different from the norms of all that is cool in the world. And it’s usually the cool people who get the most ticked off, since you are disturbing their order, for it was indeed the cool religious leaders and the cool politicians who killed Jesus.”
So how does this work? G.K. Chesterton said, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and not tried.”
If you read the stories in the New Testament who met Jesus and followed him, you will find two things in common. Jesus ruined their lives by showing them a better life. He ruined their plans in a good way by showing them a better way. That is what attracted so many people to the early church and to Jesus. What did people see? They saw a church where people loved one another, honored one another, esteemed one another, were likeminded with one another, bore each other’s burdens, were kind toward one another, submitted to one another, encouraged each other, comforted when needed and admonished when needed, edified one another, confessed faults to each other, didn’t keep grudges toward others, showed compassion, were hospitable, and the list goes on. What I just described is what a church is supposed to look like and what the world has been looking for and hoping is out there.
But how does it ruin your life? It ruins it because you care about different things. When you truly follow Jesus you stop caring about the things everyone else cares about. You worry about different things, because your sole purpose in life is to follow God and do what he wants you to do. It becomes a completely unplanned adventure. You don’t know where tomorrow will take you and you don’t know what you will do when you get there. But Jesus describes this life in John 10: as a life of abundance, a life so full. That is the life I want, not some imitation.
That is what Christianity is supposed to be. It is supposed to be on offense instead of defense. The church is usually playing defense, trying to keep the world out. In Matthew 16:18 Jesus says: I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
Jesus is using offensive terminology, not defensive. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to play defense, I want to be on offense. I have always looked at this verse like this, as Christians we are supposed to storming the gates of hell loaded up with squirt guns. That is what I think it supposed to be like. Super soakers in hand storming hell.
But this is hard. I was talking with some people this past week who have been really challenged by the book of James and making some changes in their life. One person said, “As a Christian, you think are doing pretty well, and then you read James and think, nope.” Another said, “Josh, you have to tell everyone how hard this is.” Following in the ways of Jesus is really hard.
The day before the shooting at Columbine High School, where she died, Cassie Bernall wrote these words in her diary.
Now I have given up on everything else
I have found it to be the only way
To really know Christ and to experience
They mighty power that brought
Him back to life again, and to find
Out what it means to suffer and to
Die with him. So, whatever it takes
I will be one who lives in the fresh
Newness of life of those who are
Alive from the dead.
It is easier to stay home, to stay in our bubbles and not venture into the world. But our culture is where God calls us to be. Not on the sidelines watching the parade go by. He calls us to be in the parade, impacting where it goes and what it does. He calls us to pick up our squirt guns and take on hell. Not sit on our clouds playing harps, that is not the plan.
When you do this, you will become too pagan for your Christian friends, because they won’t understand it. It won’t make sense to them, because you are leaving the comfort of the Christian bubble to make the world different. While there, you will be too Christian for your pagan friends, mostly because they don’t know what a Christian is really supposed to be like, but they will find it so attractive that they will want to know what you have and what makes you different.
Let me close with this story. I became a Christian in college, and I started going to a bible college because I wanted to be a pastor. While I was there, I still had all the friends I had before, and none of them attended church. I loved these friends and wanted them to experience what I had experienced. The bible college had the typical rules of a bible college, not going to movies, not hanging out with people who smoke, drink, play cards, and certainly not dating the girls who do.
One night, I was out to eat with several of these friends, I was 20. everyone at the table, but me was enjoying an “adult” beverage. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw several people from my school. The next morning, I got a call that the dean and president wanted to meet me. I had arrived, right, the dean and president. They looked at me and told me that it was against the rules to do what I did, which was eat with friends.
They didn’t get it. They didn’t get the fact that over those years, I built the trust so that when one of those friends died in a car accident, who did those friends ask about life and death? Me. When the one girl was raped, who did she ask about why that happened? Me.
When you get this right, your Christian friends will be so uncomfortable that they will not understand, but the world around you will be so intrigued, they will want to know what is different. That is the challenge, be too Christian for your pagan friends and too pagan for your Christian friends.
Let’s pray.
God, I pray that we would become a church that is too Christian and too pagan. That we would live lives like that. Lives that are so attractive people want to know what is different. Give us the courage to take a stand and play offense, but also give us the grace to listen to the world around us, to really listen and not give answers to questions no one is asking. Amen.
I know that we have painted with a broad brush this morning. I would encourage you this week to check out our discussion blog. There are a lot of links with more information on how to interact with our culture. Things you can do as a family and personally.
As we move on in our gathering, you can use these next few moments as you need to. We do communion as a community, so feel free to come up and take communion when you are ready. I would challenge you to think of the friends you have that need to know what you have. Tomorrow we will hang out with a lot of them, I would challenge you to see their faces and ask God for the courage and opportunity to have a conversation with them about spiritual things.
The band will be leading us in some songs, so feel free to stand, sit, come and take communion, what ever you need to do during this time.
