In this week’s podcast Pastor KRE admonished us fro James to be mindful of our motivations and remember to be humble people of grace, as God gives grace to the humble.
Harvest Detroit West
Treasures in the Field - James 4:1-10
(upbeat music) - Good afternoon and welcome to Treasures in the Field. This is our midweek podcast here at Harvest Bible Church in Westland, Michigan. I am joined here by our administrative pastor, Pastor Kenneth. Good to have you, sir. - Thank you. - And in case you've missed it, Pastor Kenneth gave us a rousing message this Sunday. Probably stepped on a few toes, mine included, but hey, it's the word of God, and that's what it does. It's sharpening in a two-edged sword is what they say. - Absolutely, James is a difficult book to go through without having some conviction for sure. - Yes, yes. So for those of you who might have missed it, if you can give us just a quick review, what you preached on this Sunday? - Sure. This is a two-part series. This past Sunday was part one. This coming Sunday will be part two out of the book of James chapter four, which starts off with what causes quarrels and fights among you. And then it just goes through some of these thoughts that James is expressing here of what causes those quarrels and fights. - Yeah, so it was a good message, it was a good message. And I think it started off right, let the people have the opportunity to bail out if they wanted to. I think that was the first comment who wanted to say. (laughing) But after that, it does bring with the conviction. You noted that it ends in three, talking about the wisdom of peace. And he rolls right into forward with a very different question from the way he ended. As a matter of fact, you noted that which is not surprising in our day with all the instant stuff that we have and all this instant gratification that we can get a little frustrated. And you had this great quote, let me quote it from Mortier, I think that's his name. It says, "We are inwardly like an armed camp, "ready for the bugle call that will send us into battle. "All our desires and passions are like an armed camp within us, "ready at a moment's notice to declare a war against anyone "who stands in the way of some personal gratification "on which we have set our hearts." - Which is a bold statement. But my question is, I think as Christians, we often can point this out about the world. But is this really true for us in the church? - Well, James says it is right in chapter four, verse two. Verse one asks the question, "What causes these quarrels and fights?" And verse two says, "Is it not this, "that your passions are at war within you? "You desire and you do not have, so you murder." And I discuss the whole concept of the word murder, whether he's being literal or figurative, but the whole purpose right there is he saying, "What's causing these quarrels and these fights? "What's the fact that you are desiring things "that you don't have and so you go after them?" And there's another quote that I had given that talks about those passions could be things that you actually want of somebody's position for their possessions. And I think that's a really huge point. As soon as we have envy for somebody else's things, we get into fights and quarrels. - Yeah, it's sad. I do see it happen sometimes, even in churches. - Oh, absolutely, it happens. Unfortunately, it happens in the church. We live in a fallen world. We are in the world just as much as anybody else. And so our sinful nature is susceptible to falling into these same traps. And I think it's something that the devil certainly uses to get a grip on us, to be able to find his own wedge to try to get into us to cause division amongst us, is to recognize that we have desires. And desires are not a bad thing. We actually talked about that on Sunday. Desires themselves are not a bad thing. But it's when we have desires and passions for things that we don't have. And then because of that, we take action against somebody else. - That reminds me of just some training that I had in counseling. I think it was based really upon James, is that God should be upon the throne in our lives. And what happens is we get desires which, like you said, are not always bad. But what becomes bad is when we put them in the throne. And so now we do like James says, and we compromise or we sin to get our desires met. So yeah, that's really sad. That's really sad. But what I also like is one of your sticky points that I liked is you were talking about, there's no neutral ground. That you can't be half saved and half worldly. There's no friend with God and friend with the world. You got to pick one. - Yeah, verse four makes that very, very clear. It starts quite harshly. He says, you adulterous people. Well, what's adultery? Adultery is being married to somebody and then going behind their back to have a relationship with somebody else. And so he's saying, you 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. You can't be married to God and be going out after the world. You can't have both. You have to be completely, solely married to God. Otherwise, he's calling you an adulterous people. - Yeah, I think that's a great conversation to have, especially in this season, particular in our country. 'Cause there is, so I know it, want to make sure that we're not having people think that we're saying, okay, you got to be separated from the world and don't vote or don't do anything concerning the world and just worry about church stuff. - Right. Well, the common phrase that you often hear amongst the churches were in the world, but not of the world. And I think that's a great reality that we live in this world that God has placed us. He has placed us to be ambassadors of him. And I think that's a good imagery to have as this image of an ambassador. You think of our American ambassadors throughout the world. They are American citizens who are representing America in whatever country they happen to be living in. And so that's us, we are ambassadors for Christ. We are ambassadors in this world for Christ. And so we have to live in the world, but we have to recognize who our belonging is to and that is to God. And I actually used that reference at one point in verse seven. He says, submit to God. And that word, submit is the word in list. Just like somebody who enlists into the army, they now belong to the army. And so we are to submit to God and then live out as a Christian in this world that God has placed us. - Yeah, yeah, that's paramount. That's paramount. So I think it's important for us to hear, hey, yeah, you wanna vote and do the thing. - Absolutely. - But you wanna not put your Christianity to the side and say, do some pragmatic stuff and say, okay, that's what we do at church. And this is what we do in the world. And it's like, no, we are, like you said, ambassadors. And ambassadors, I carry myself as an American no matter where I'm at. I respect the culture, but I recognize that I'm an American citizen. So there's certain inalienable rights and respects that I expect as an American citizen. - And we also have to recognize that the world is not our home and that we can't be surprised when the world acts in worldly ways. And we see that continually, just recently in the news or in the pop culture, we see that with the world doing things that are very anti-Christian. We can't get distracted by that. We need to stand up for our faith. But at the same time, we can't be surprised that the world is acting worldly. Because when we're living in a world that's not our home, they are going to do things that go against our values and our morals. - It's like the old saying, don't be surprised when it's snake bites 'cause that's what snakes do. - Exactly. - Exactly. - Yeah. And so, I mean, this is, like you said, James comes hard. He tells us, you know, stop being ready to fight fellow believers over silly stuff and don't be friends with the world. So the question comes to, 'cause people say, well, you know, you become the Debbie Downer, you preach this message. But I like that you didn't just leave it there with just here with some harsh commands and you guys need to go away and think about how horrible you are, but you left us with some hope. So what is the hope that we can take away? - Well, again, the cause of these quarrels and fights are our own inner stresses and our own inner passions, which is pride. And so he says then, in verse six, but God gives more grace. Therefore he says, God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. And that phrase that we started with, we talked about how that phrase is a greater grace, that it's grace upon grace, that he gives more grace. Now, recognizing he opposes the proud. He goes against the proud, he battles the proud as the translation of that. God battles the proud, but he gives grace to the humble. And so how do we fight these quarrels? How do we stop these fights? We do it by showing grace and by being humble before God. The easy answer is, well, I mean, I've gone so far, I struggle with so much, how can I do that? And then Paul gives a great answer to that in Romans chapter seven. He says, but where sin has increased, grace has abounded all the more. And that's just the picture of who God is, that he does oppose the proud. God opposes the proud, but he gives grace to the humble. And so I openly recognize this is a struggle. It's so hard to be humbled before God. It's so hard to be humbled before man, especially in our world that we live in, where pride is just pushed and we are expected to be confident and proud in everything that we do. And yet God has said, you know what? We need to step ourselves back into exalt God. And in doing that, where our humility comes into play, God will give us a greater grace. - Oh yeah, that's paramount to just humble ourselves before the Lord. Yeah, I'm just fully convinced that as James is pointing out, is that humility is the key. And if God is gonna battle against arrogance and against pride, then we have to be humble. And I think that the crazy part is, we have to be willing to ask and to ask ourselves and examine ourselves to say, what is my motives? - Oh, absolutely. And in this passage, as I said on Sunday, is convicting to us all, including myself. As I'm going through this, I'm recognizing where I need to be addressing my own struggles with pride or my own struggles with whatever it may be and recognize that I need to be humble, we all struggle with this. It's the nature of who we are and the devil wants to use that to cause these fights. He wants to use that to cause these quarrels so that he can cause division in the world and division in our church. And as believers, we need to submit to God. We need to resist the devil, as James says. We need to draw near to God and he will draw near to us. And by doing that, he'll provide grace and we can have grace with each other and in theory, the quarrels and fights will cease. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. My hope is that we would have that grace and that we would, I think when you were talking about it, thinking of David and after he'd been ericantly sending with Beth Sheba and then had Uriah killed and after Nathan confronts him, he has that. I'm always amazed 'cause he has two choices. He's the king. You already had a man killed. So here comes another guy, wouldn't be bad. You know, what is it? It's not hard to have another one killed but instead he recognizes his arrogance and he pleeks with God with grace. - Yeah, absolutely. And that's the attitude we all need to take. And we need to have grace with each other. We need to show forgiveness and grace to each other, especially recognizing that we all struggle with this. - Mm-hmm, yeah. So yeah, great message. And so, ah, you're gonna bless us again with James this week. Maybe you can give us a preview of what we can expect. - Well, it picks right back up where it left off. The very next line is do not speak evil against one another brother. And so he picks back up in that, but then this passage does conclude with an idea of how we should live, that we should live trusting in the Lord that God will provide. - Oh, okay. See, there's always a helpful message of how we can live in this fallen world. - Absolutely. - So we're gonna look forward to it. So I would advise y'all to come back this Sunday, especially if you missed last Sunday, you can still catch it on our YouTube channel. So you can go look that up right quick after you finish this podcast and check it out. And then come back here, meet us this Sunday from 9 a.m. or 11 a.m. for the follow-up message so we can just be encouraged on, you know, how we can encourage one another. I love the one another. (laughs) I love the one another's and it's right there. And so it was a great, great, great message coming up this Sunday. I look forward to seeing you there and hopefully you'll be there. Would you mind praying us out? - Absolutely. Heavenly Father, we recognize that living faithfully in this fallen world is a challenge. We understand that the devil is doing everything he can to divide us and specifically this area of pride in causing division in quarrels and fights is an area that he can get a foothold on. So Lord, we pray that we will be humble people. We pray that we will recognize our own weaknesses and before you be humble that you will provide the grace that we need to be able to live in this fallen world as faithful people. Lord, we put our trust in you. We pray for our week that we will continue to go on glorifying you in your name we pray. Amen. - Amen. Thank you, sir. - Absolutely. - Thank you for this word from the Lord. (laughs) - Oh God. - Thank you. - Thank you guys for tuning in. You have a great rest of your week. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (gentle music)