Are You Serious?
Review the last few weeks of the series...
Tonight we start chapter 4 of James. James gets really in-your-face intense here! He’s calling them out on some serious issues and challenging them to make it right or they will miss out on their destiny.
Have you heard a story that makes you ask, “Are You Serious?”
Illustrations: Are You Serious
Dynamite dog
High-Rise Window Tester
Flying Lawnchair
TONIGHT you will be forced to answer the question, Are You Serious? – serious about life, serious about this Christianity thing, serious about your future?
Read James 4:1-17
1What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? 2You 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. 3When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.
4You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. 5Or do you think Scripture says without reason that the spirit he caused to live in us envies intensely? 6But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says:
"God opposes the proud
but gives grace to the humble.”
7Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.
11Brothers, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against his brother or judges him speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it. 12There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you—who are you to judge your neighbor?
13Now listen, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money." 14Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. 15Instead, you ought to say, "If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that." 16As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil. 17Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins.
PRAY
Fighting, hatred, coveting
Unanswered prayers
Friendship with the world
Are you serious? Is the church really having these problems? Are God’s chosen people really struggling through these sins? Why? What’s the problem?
These various sins that James points out here all deal with one underlying condition. Just like a runny nose, watery eyes, sore throat, coughing, and sneezing are symptoms of one condition – the common cold. These sins of quarreling, slander, hatred, coveting, spiritual adultery – the all are symptoms of one condition: PRIDE.
We know that this is Satan’s #1 weapon. In fact it was exactly the condition that got him thrown out of heaven. Pride is what has sealed his fate in hell and we are not serious about our relationship with Christ it will be our fate as well.
I can hear the frustration in James’ voice as I read this passage. It’s kind of like the feeling we have toward that idiot who tested that high-rise window, or the moron that was playing with that dynamite. Or maybe it’s the feeling you get when you see one of your friends messing around with drugs, or playing around with sex. We can see the stupidity of it all and we question “are You Serious?”
Tonight I want to echo what I feel James is asking his church. Are You Serious? Are you serious about your eternity? Are you serious about your relationship w/ Christ? Are you serious about your destiny?
Get Serious!
1. Submit to God
Submit is a military term that means “to get into your proper rank”.
Submission is not the same as obedience. Instead, it is the surrender of ones will, which leads to obedience.
In other words, James is telling us, “Look, you have all these symptoms of pride. You have positioned yourself as an enemy of God. Are you serious? You know that God opposes the proud. What are thinking? Submit yourself to God. Get back into your proper rank. Get serious and surrender you life to Him so that He can give you grace.”
2. Resist the Devil
Resist means to exert oneself so as to counteract or defeat.
Often time in wars or government restructuring, you have a “resistance movement” – a group of individuals banning together to do whatever they can to counteract, defeat and stop their enemy. That’s what James is asking us to do.
Satan doesn’t want you to get serious about life, destiny, or your relationship with Christ. He wants you to do whatever feels good. He wants you to think that you can set your own standards and time-line for life. That’s what got him thrown out of heaven. That’s what he convinced Eve of in the garden. That’s what he wants you to believe. He’s a liar! (The father of lies)
He doesn’t want you to succeed. He doesn’t want what’s best for you. He doesn’t want you to achieve your destiny. All he wants from you is to steal from your life, kill your body, and destroy your soul! That’s serious!
Resistance is the opposite of Submission. You can’t truly submit to God without resisting the devil. Surrender and selfishness can’t coexist.
Some of us here tonight may need to take a hard look at our lives and get serious about resisting the devil. Some of us here tonight may need to join the resistance, say no to the devil, and get rid of our pride.
Getting serious involves submitting to God, resisting the devil, and then we must…
3. Come Near to God
God wants us to chase after him. He desires a close intimate relationship with us. If we will make an attempt to come near (chase after) Him, he will in return come near (chase after) us.
Illustration: Sometimes I don’t want my dog to come near me. He’s dirty, he stinks, he slobbers…
“Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled” (Mt. 5:6).
In order for us to chase after God and get closer to Him, we must accomplish two things.
a. Wash our hands – clean up our act
b. Purify our hearts – clean up our thoughts & motives (Rm. 12:2 be transformed)
What we need to get close to God is to get clean and get the stink off us. That is only possible through His forgiveness. Once we receive forgiveness we then have the opportunity to get closer to Him. Our hunger builds, we get thirty for more and we begin to chase after Him.
Getting serious also includes repentance.
4. Repent
Repentance is not forgiveness. Forgiveness comes when we confess our sin and ask God not to heap on us the punishment we deserve. Repentance is something we do after forgiveness has already been given to us.
James gives us four imperatives here describing what true repentance is.
a. Grieve – “to be miserable”
b. Mourn – passionate grief that cannot be hidden
c. Wail – outward grief, to express audible sorrow
d. Change – to make different, altar, transform
Repentance is when we truly are ashamed of and sorry for our sin and then we make an attempt to change that part of us by not doing it again.
5. Seek His Will
Fulfillment of your destiny depends on your willingness to do God’s will, His way, and in His time.
Why do we need to be serious about seeking God’s will?
a. Life is to complicated for me to make sense of it
School, family, money, relationships, career, ministry
We need to be serious about asking Him to make sense of it all for us.
b. Life is to uncertain for me to predict
Proverbs 27:1 “Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day will bring forth.”
Only God knows what tomorrow will bring. Why not get serious about asking Him for direction in your future?
c. Life is to short to waist it on anything less
Last week Ashley Burns, a 14 yr old girl in MA, died unexpectantly after a cheerleading stunt.
Psalms 39:4-7
4 "Show me, O LORD, my life’s end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting is my life. 5 You have made my days a mere handbreadth; the span of my years is as nothing before you. Each man’s life is but a breath. Selah. 6 Man is a mere phantom as he goes to and fro: He bustles about, but only in vain; he heaps up wealth, not knowing who will get it. 7 "But now, Lord, what do I look for? My hope is in you.
We don’t know what tomorrow will bring but we can get serious about seeking His will and living the life he intended for us – living out our destiny.
We will never reach our destiny by living for ourselves, doing things our own way, in our own time.
We have to be serious about seeking His will!
Closing Altar
Are you serious…serious about life, your eternity, your relationship with Christ, your destiny?
Maybe you need to get serious about submitting your life and surrendering to God.
Maybe you need to get serious about resisting the devil and his temptation for you to live life any way you want.
Maybe you need to get serious about getting closer to God by receiving His forgiveness and hungering for more.
Maybe you need to get serious about repentance, true sorrow for your sin and a desire to change.
Maybe you need to get serious about seeking His will and living out your life destiny.
