According to Jim
Pt. 4
Introduction
Practical advice for practical living! Wisdom that we often fail to apply or live out and therefore we pay the price. Let’s listen and learn!
James 4:1-3
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.
(Where do you think all these appalling wars and quarrels come from? They come about because you want your own way, and fight for it deep inside yourselves. You lust for what you don't have and are willing to kill to get it. You want what isn't yours and will risk violence to get your hands on it. 2-3You wouldn't think of just asking God for it, would you? And why not? Because you know you'd be asking for what you have no right to. You're spoiled children, each wanting your own way.)
A. According to Jim motives mess with miracles.
Our motives are obstacles or doorways to blessings! Jim attacks our selfishness and states very clearly that we don’t have because when we finally expend all of our own energy and efforts to get what we want and we ask God that He refuses to bless us because we ask with the wrong motives. What is the wrong motive? He tells us. Our motive is wrong if what we ask for will be used on us. If it will be wasted on our own pleasure God says, “No.” God isn’t about blessing selfish people because He knows that we will use up the blessing on ourselves!
Have you ever met someone that just seemed to be blessed at every turn? It seems like anything they touch turns to gold. They always seem to have more than enough? I would almost guarantee you that it is someone that has learned to utilize their blessings to bless others. The tighter you hold on the less you get. The more you give away the more you get. Jim is forcing us to examine the motives of our heart. Why do you want the car? Why do you want the house? Why do you want the new job? Why do you want the cash?
We want our own way! Isn’t it funny that most of what Jim is teaching us goes back to grade school lessons? If we would have just learned the lessons we should have learned in preschool we wouldn’t get into the trouble we do. We want our own way and it gets us into trouble and it costs us miracles! Oh, and by the way . . .
B. According to Jim God would have flunked Kindergarten.
James 4:4-6
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."
(4-6You're cheating on God. If all you want is your own way, flirting with the world every chance you get, you end up enemies of God and his way. And do you suppose God doesn't care? The proverb has it that "he's a fiercely jealous lover.")
Why would God flunk kindergarten? Because He has never learned to share! God has an envy problem. God is monogamous! Multiple partners aren’t allowed. We have forgotten that God is a jealous God and doesn’t deal with our two timing very well. Have you ever dated a jealous person? They pale in comparison to the depth of God’s jealousy for you. A really important fact that you need to know is that the moment you cheat on Him He immediately goes from being a friend to being an enemy. You may not really care who your enemies are and I have taught you that having an enemy is inevitable. But let me loudly and boldly proclaim that you don’t want to have God as an enemy! He is an undefeated foe. He will not lose! And you may say, “God isn’t my enemy.” However, you determine whether this is true by how you live and if He isn’t working for you and with you He is then an enemy! I also need to tell you that if you have entered a relationship with God and now have walked away . . . God is a stalker! He will chase you down. He will pursue you and will not lose you easily. We think he just ignores our adultery. He doesn’t ignore it! He won’t allow it. This is why you can’t enjoy your sin. This is why your world is in chaos. This is why you are miserable. He is jealous and will not share you!
James 4:7-10
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.
(Quit dabbling in sin. Purify your inner life. Quit playing the field. Hit bottom, and cry your eyes out. The fun and games are over. Get serious, really serious. Get down on your knees before the Master; it's the only way you'll get on your feet.)
C. According to Jim surrender ensures victory!
That is a different mentality. We view surrender as defeat. Jim comes from a different angle and says that our victory is determined by our willingness to submit or surrender to God. I think we have missed an extremely important part of the formula. I meet countless people who are willing to resist devil, but refuse to submit to God. And so, they fight the enemy by themselves and wonder why they lose. Jim says the steps are submit and then resist. Some of you are resisting the devil and he is refusing to flee and you begin to question the power of Christ in you. Maybe God lied? Maybe God’s Word doesn’t work. I have quoted every Scripture I know, but enemy refuses to hit the road. Could it be that there is an area of your life that you have refused to submit? You know those folks that are fighting, quoting, fasting, believing, claiming, prophesying, declaring and yet they refuse to obey in another area of life (call, job, giving, attendance, faithfulness) and they wonder why all of the religious activity doesn’t work! Submit then resist and victory is guaranteed. We want to quote resist and forget that it starts with submit! God fights for us when we surrender to Him!
I also want you to notice the painful picture and the true picture Jim paints of repentance. It is more than a 2 minute stop at the altar. It requires hitting our knees and hitting the bottom! Some of what we have passed off as repentance was just a show!
James 4:11-12
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?
Shut your mouth. He hits it again. Mouth manager. Judge, but differently. Watch what you say. Leave judgment and punishment to God.
If you want commentary on this passage go back to last week’s message!
James 4:13-17
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.
(In fact, if you know the right thing to do and don't do it, that, for you, is evil.)
D. According to Jim we strut too much!
I am gonna show my age here, but do you remember the old 70’s movie (Saturday Night Fever) in which John Travolta works on and perfects his strut. How many men in the room are men enough to admit that they actually tried to mimic his strut? He made strutting cool. The problem is that we strut too much! We live our lives like we are in control. We brag about our plans. We boast about our future! Jim teaches us that our whole existence is a gift from God. From the day of our birth until the day of our death we are blessed with life!
David understood that we are all living on borrowed or loaned time.
Psalms 90:10 “Seventy years are given to us! Some may even reach eighty, but even the best of
these years are filled with pain and trouble.”
Proverbs 27:1 “Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring.”
1 Samuel 20:3, David said, “Yet as surely as the Lord lives and as you live, there is only a step between me and death.”
Planning is great, but planning without prayer is presumption.
Life is just one big “if”. Right in the middle of LIFE is IF. And the only way to live wisely is to live according to God’s will. We take too much into our own hands. I will move, I will love, I will make a living, I will choose. We make too many choices without consulting God! What is God’s will? I have a truth to share with you this morning. God can interrupt and change your plans at any moment. However, you can’t interrupt or change His. So the wise thing to do is get in lock step with His plan!
What choices or decisions have you made lately that you have failed to check with Him first? Who you date? Who you hang out with? Where you work? Where you live? What you buy?
E. According to Jim the do’s are as important as the don’ts!
What you know to do that you don’t do is a sin. We almost always deal with sin with regards to what aren’t supposed to do. Don’t drink, it is a sin. Don’t smoke, it is a sin. Don’t lie, it is a sin. Don’t steal, it is a sin. Jim flips it on us and states that if we know we are supposed to do something and don’t do it that is sin! If you know that it is right to tithe and you don’t … sin. If you know to bless the poor and you don’t … sin. If you know to attend and you don’t . . . sin. If you know to love your enemy and you don’t . . . sin! Some of you are involved in sin right now not because of something you are doing, but something you should be doing! I would rather have a list of things I shouldn’t do. Now I have to think about the sin of what I should do and am not doing! Some of us keep all the don’ts, but fail in the do's!
