Title: The Jig Is Up
Text: James 1:13-17
Thesis: We own our own desires, actions and outcomes… It is God’s will that our lives be characterized by good desires that lead us to do good deeds that benefit ourselves and others and please God.
Introduction
One of my favorite stories is The Songcatcher. The Songcatcher is set in a secluded area of the Appalachian Mountains where some of the immigrant families have lived since the 1600s. It is 1907 and a very prim musicologist travels to visit her sister who runs a school in that remote area of West Virginia. The musicologist is amazed when she hears the local musicians playing traditional Scots-Irish folk music. What she hears is a virtual treasure trove of ancient folk tunes and ballads that had been passed down from generation to generation. The music she heard was like what we enjoy as Irish folk music and one of the dances associated with that music is the jig.
A “jig” is a lively, springy, irregular dance for one or more persons, usually in triple meter. If you have ever witnessed someone dancing a jig it is done with kind of a jerky or bobbing up and down with a to and fro motion. Sometimes it just looks like hopping from one foot to the other in time with a lively tune. But some of the more sophisticated jigs are all of those things plus amazing foot moves, toe-tapping and kicking.
Somewhere along the line they began to say, “Well, the jig is up!” By that it could simply mean the dance is over or the dance is over and it’s time to pay the piper.
Over time however, the phrase “the jig is up” has come to mean the game or the trick or the deception is over and has been exposed. Our text today is a “the jig is up” text.
Bart Simpson is big into deception and denial. One of his favorite sayings is, “I didn’t do it, no one saw me do it, there’s no way you can prove anything.” However, James is pretty perceptive. James knows that most of us are prone to deny personal responsibility for our actions and blame others for our bad behavior.
It began in the Garden of Eden Adam blamed Eve and Eve blamed the serpent. As part of his act on The Flip Wilson Show, Flip Wilson used to say, “The devil made me do it.” We may blame our ethnicity for our Irish tempers, Swedish or German stubbornness, Italian amorousness, or our Scotch cheapskate ways. We may even blame God for our behavior.
Blaming God seems to be the issue of the hour in our text. Apparently some of the people were suggesting that God made everything and if God made everything – God must have made evil too. They may have been saying that God made me and inside me is a good me and a bad me. So if God made me this way, God is in a way is responsible for my actions.
In response to that James says, “The jig is up!”
God is not responsible for the evil we do. So no more denying the truth and no more blaming God for what you do.
I. God is never tempted to do wrong and never tempts us to do wrong.
No one should ever say, “God is tempting me.” God is never tempted to do wrong and he never tempts anyone else either. Temptation comes from the lure of our own evil desires. These evil desires lead to evil actions, an evil actions lead to death. James 1:13-15
A. Evil desires originate within us.
James uses the term “lure” which means to be drawn out. The idea is that a hunter uses a lure or bait to entice his prey to come out of hiding. Or a fisherman uses a lure or bait to get a fish to come out of the weeds to take the bait.
One of the unusual (and in my mind unsportsmanlike) phenomena I encountered when I first began taking vacation time in the UP, was the sale of bait prior to deer season. It seemed that at every service station, apples and ear corn were for sale for the purpose of baiting deer. The idea is that a hunter goes into the thick woods and finds a good spot to begin leaving ear corn and apples. The deer find it and get used to an easy meal and return every day to gobble up the bait. Then one chilly day the hunter lies in wait for the unsuspecting deer and boom… the hunter has a freezer full of fresh venison.
What James is attempting to do is help us determine if the lure is set to entice us or if it is our own desires that entice us to find what we are desiring. Is the corn or the apple the problem for the deer or is it the hunger of the deer and the willingness of the deer to cast all caution to the wind that causes its demise?
The lunker bass or the monster catfish or the twelve-point buck do not get to be a lunker or a monster or a twelve-pointer by whimsically caving to every opportunity to grab a bite… the stomach may be growling but caution prevails and a trip to the taxidermist is averted.
The easiest thing we can do is externalize every temptation to sin and say it originates outside of us.
I would never have gossiped if you had not asked. I would never have lied if I had not been put in an awkward position. I would never have lost my temper if that person had not ticked me off. I would never have thought those thoughts if she hadn’t been dressed as she was. I would not have gotten intoxicated if they did not have alcohol at that party. I would never have been jealous and envious if they hadn’t bought that new car. I would never have been greedy if the opportunity to “cut-a-fat-hog” had not presented itself. You see where I am going here.
What the bible says is that the gossipy spirit is in here, not out there; the deception is in here, not out there; the anger is in here, not out there; the lust is in here, not out there; the addiction is in here, not out there; the envy is in here, not out there; the greed is in here, not out there; self-righteousness is in here, not out there…
Near Richmond, Vermont is the Huntington River Gorge. It is an astoundingly beautiful place but also an amazingly deadly place. In the last forty years at least twenty people – usually in their 20s or 30s have drowned in the gorge and hundreds have been injured.
It is one of those “on the surface” places that look nice and calm but beneath the surface are swift and errant currents that carry people over waterfalls and into treacherous whirlpools. Officials have designated the gorge as the single most deadly place in the state of Vermont.
However in the interim, there rages a debate between those who want to educate the public to the dangers of the gorge and those who wish to ban the public from being in the gorge. One student from the University of Vermont argued, “We know how dangerous it is so we just go swimming in the shallow part. You can’t change the water, and you can’t stop people from going in.” And that’s the truth about just about everything.
The Huntington River Gorge is not the problem… the problem is the desire to swim in it regardless of the danger.
Interestingly, James changes his metaphor from that of a lure or bait to the analogy of giving birth… desire leads to getting pregnant which leads to a birth. There is part of me that doesn’t like this analogy but in its context it does help us understand that just as love and the passionate expression of that love may lead to the birth of a baby – similarly an evil desire can lead to an evil action and an unfortunate outcome.
Evil desires lead to evil actions.
B. Evil desires lead to evil actions
A Time Magazine writer asked long-time marriage counselor Mira Kirshenbaum, “Is there a pattern in the way that affairs begin?” This is what Ms. Kirshenbaum said, People say, "I never meant for this to happen." They’re being honest when they say that. Typically, they’re in a committed relationship, but they aren’t perfectly happy. No one who was perfectly happy in their primary relationship gets into a second one. They’re a lot unhappy, or maybe just a little. Maybe they have no plans to cheat. And then the other person somehow floats onto their radar screen. The image that I have is like someone who has been wandering around with a couple of empty wine glasses who suddenly meets someone with a bottle of wine. And so they want a little taste. It starts very innocently. Very slowly they get to know each other. It’s often an emotional affair to begin with. Maybe they have long conversations, whatever. However it happens, eventually they realize that they’ve crossed some sort of line. But they realize it after they’ve crossed it. And it feels wonderful because it was a line they were hungry to cross. (Andrea Sachs, Time Magazine, “Why We Have Affairs – And Why Not To Tell,” July 8, 2008)
Did you note that last statement? “It feels wonderful because it was a line they were hungry to cross.” Good desire leads to good action and evil desire leads to evil action.
The intent of the text is to argue that our desires are our own… we own them. And those desires, left unchecked, lead to actions which are ours as well. We own our desires and we own our actions. There is no one else to blame.
We’ve learned that:
• God is never tempted to do wrong and God never tempts us to do wrong.
• Evil desires originate within us.
• Evil desires leads to evil actions.
And now in keeping with the birthing analogy, evil actions or sin then give birth to death.
C. Evil actions lead to death
The intent of the text is not to infer that every time you act upon a desire and sin that you die spiritually and are separated from God for all eternity. The intent is to simply remind us of how easily we can be drawn away and fall into a lifestyle that does not reflect Christ like living. The intent is to remind us that what begins as an unchecked desire can result in sin that results in very unfortunate and hurtful circumstances that we call consequences.
Paul wrote of these consequences in Galatians 6. “We are each responsible for our own conduct. Don’t be misled. Remember that you can’t ignore God and get away with it. You will always reap what you sow! Those who live only to satisfy their own sinful desires will harvest the consequences of decay and death. But those who live to please the Spirit will harvest everlasting life. So don’t get tired of doing what is good.” Galatians 6:5-9
In 1999, for the first time in 47 years, local fishermen discovered that tuna were running only thirty miles off Cape Cod, Massachusetts. The fish were biting and word was out that Japanese buyers were willing to pay up to $50,000 for a large blue-fin. As a result, many ignored Coast Guard warnings and headed out to sea in small, unequipped boats. The problem was not in catching the tuna, the problem lie in landing the tuna. In one day the 19-foot Christi Anne, the 27-foot Basic Instinct and the 28-foot Official Business were all capsized while trying to land a giant tuna. The 28-foot boat was literally swamped when a 600-pound tuna simply pulled it underwater. (Harold Myra and Marshall Shelley, The Leadership Secrets of Billy Graham (Zondervan, 2005), pp. 59-60)
Like those fishermen we can so naively underestimate the power of the fish we are trying to catch, but it is only after we have hooked into the temptation that we discover how powerful the pull and the destructive consequences of what we’ve caught.
We’ve learned that:
• God is never tempted to do wrong and God never tempts us to do wrong.
• Evil desires originate within us.
• Evil desires leads to evil actions.
• Evil actions give birth to death.
Now James shifts gears and completes his argument as to why it is that God does not tempt us to do evil.
There is one huge reason why God cannot and does not tempt us sin.
II. All and only good comes from God.
Whatever is good and perfect comes to us from God above, who created all heaven’s lights. Unlike them, he never changes or casts shifting shadows. James 1:17
First of all, James says, “the jig is up” on this business of blaming God for your behavior because everyone is responsible for his own behavior.
And second, “the jig is up” on blaming God for your behavior because God only give us good.
One commentator wrote, “The concept of goodness rules out the possibility that God would send an influence as destructive as temptation. God’s gifts are marked by kindness and helpfulness, not destructiveness. They are ‘perfect’ which in this context excludes any possibility of moral evil, such as tempting his people to commit sin.” (David W. Burdick, The Expositor’s Bible Commentary (Zondervan 1981), pp. 172-173)
While teaching on the subject of prayer In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus asked a rhetorical question, “You parents – if your children ask for a loaf of bread, do you give them a stone instead? Or if they ask for a fish, do you give them a snake? Of course not! If you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask him?” Matthew 7:9-11
The very thought that God might be vengeful or mean-spirited seems foreign to me. But I read this week that one of the top-selling video game applications for Apple’s iPhone is called Pocket God. The premise in playing the game is to see what kind of god the player would be. If you were god would you be benevolent or vengeful? When you play Pocket God you may be on a remote island where you are the all-powerful god that rules over the primitive peoples of the island. You have the power of life and death.
The game options include throwing islanders into volcanoes, using islanders as shark bait, bowling for islanders with a large rock, or creating earthquakes to destroy the villages on the island. The designers of the game seem to think that players will want to play the role of a vengeful god. (Brian Lowery, Managing Editor, PreachingToday.com; http://apple.com/i[phone/(Pocket God entry)
Seemingly the creators of Pocket God presuppose God must be a vengeful kind of god. It would seem that having observed what happens when human have absolute power, i.e., absolute power absolutely corrupts, that if God is absolutely powerful then God must be absolutely mean-spirited. But that is not the God of James 1:17.
Conclusion:
Several years ago, well known author Philip Yancey underwent surgery on his foot. Writing of that experience he related his experience with the subsequent period of rehabilitation and recovery.
He had to do many exercises necessary for regaining the use of his foot but he noticed that none of the exercises were fun. He could not bike or climb or run or any of the other fun stuff that might endanger the healing process. Every time he asked his doctor if he could do something, his physician would routinely veto the idea.
On one occasion toward the end of the recovery process Yancey asked his surgeon if he could play a round of golf with his buddies, if he used his upper body strength and kept his legs and hips still.
Without a flicker of hesitation, his doctor replied, "It would make me very unhappy if you played golf within the next two months."
Yancey argued, “I thought you were a golfer,” trying to appeal to the sensitivities of his doctor.
“I am. That’s how I know you can’t swing without rolling that foot inward and putting weight on the parts that are trying to heal,” his doctor countered.
The point was obvious. There would be no golf. While his surgeon sympathized with him he also had Yancey’s best interests at heart. It would make the doctor very unhappy if he did something prematurely that might damage his long-term recovery. His surgeon wanted him to play golf next year, and the next, and the rest of my life, and for that reason he could not sanction a match too soon after my surgery.
The role of a doctor may be the most revealing image in thinking about God and sin. What a doctor does for us physically is intended to guide us to physical health. What God does for us spiritually is intended to guide us to spiritual health. God’s desire is to bless our lives with good things and in good ways. There are some restrictions in life but they are not drawn up by a cranky, mean-spirited God to keep us from having fun. God’s ultimate desire is our own good. (Philip Yancey, "Doctor’s Orders,"Christianity Today, 12-6-99)
The jig is up…
“The jig is up!” We own our own desires, actions and outcomes… It is God’s will that our lives be characterized by good desires that lead us to do good deeds that benefit ourselves and others and please God.
