Transcript

Alright, let’s go to James 3, alright? I’m sorry, we finished chapter 3, chapter 4. James 4 and, um, boy, I’m gonna have to be brief tonight, alright? I’m not gonna keep you after the time. It’s, um, yeah, did y’all, y’all didn’t have teachers lesson preview tonight, did you? You didn’t have it, okay.

James 4, James is this local church pastor and, again, what’s, what’s pretty fascinating about the book of James is he’s writing to people who are physically suffering for the faith in ways you and I can’t comprehend. Um, now, now every faithful man of God, every faithful Christian will suffer some for their faith. It’s just gonna happen. You’re gonna have friends that won’t hang with you long-term, and by the way, if you’re a younger person, that, now for me today that’s 35 or 40 and under, if you’re a younger person, um, and you hadn’t had some friendship bust up because of your commitment to Christ and truth, I mean, from people whom you thought were Christians, then you’re the rare exception. You gonna face stuff like that. That’s just normal stuff. The Apostle Paul goes, comes to the end of his ministry and said, “Everybody’s forsaken me but Luke.” It’s just part. Now don’t try to make it happen, you just love Jesus, stand on the truth, and it’ll happen.

So there’s difficult stuff in every person’s life that honors the Lord in this God-forsaken, ah, world that’s full of hypocrisy and compromise and apostasy even, but James is writing to people who are literally on the run for their lives, many of them, living much of a vagabond-type life, um, hoping to find a little group of Christians in the next town they go into that’ll feed them and let them get a good night’s sleep or something. So a tough environment but he also has to deal with some of the most ungodly stuff. So sometimes people say, “Boy, when you’re, when you’re really suffering for Jesus, that, that, that’s when you’re real godly.” Not necessarily. Sometimes some folks in the most difficult of circumstances have the deepest compromises and that seems to be what James is having to contend with as he says in James 4:1,

1 What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? Is not the source your pleasures that wage war in your members? 2 You lust and do not have; so you commit murder.

Now he’s speaking hypothetically, he’s not saying you’ve actually murdered. Could’ve happened but that’s not necessarily where James is coming from.

2 You lust and do not have; so you commit murder. You are envious and cannot obtain; so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures. 4 You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

So I want to talk about pleasures just for a moment, pleasures being that desire for fulfillments that come out of a base, fleshly craving. It means, ah, when, when you are just being driven for the shallow, hallow and temporal pleasures of this life with not a higher pursuit or a greater pursuit, I should say, of the higher pleasures that we find in God and God alone. So he says, “When you get on that level where you professing Christians,” and I think he’s talking to lost church members primarily here, “but when you get on that level where you’re being driven along like the average Joe and Jane in the world that don’t know God, then you’re gonna have lots of troubles. There’s just a lot of things in your life because you profess to be a Christian and you’re living like you love the world.”

I. He talks about the pursuit of these pleasures and in our world, it’s been going on for generations, you hear it all the time, a shorter work week, more break times, more holidays, more vacations, earlier retirement, though that’s kinda reversing with Social Security, isn’t it? It’s getting later now, but nevertheless we hear that from people all the time, and I think that’s because the people of the world are left in what they have, and that is they see the pursuit of worldly pleasures as the only purpose for life.

Now we’re not stick-in-the-muds, we do enjoy the common graces God has given us, it’s just that he’s given us higher pleasures, higher pursuits than just what our friends in the world know and understand and James is basically saying, “Don’t go back there and function there because you’ve been released, you’ve been liberated from that low base pursuit of pleasures only the world understands, to higher pleasures that only true Christians can grasp and understand.” I guess balance is a good word here.

I sort of outlined these pleasures this way, it seems there’s a, there’s a desire for rest, base entertainments, sexual fulfillment, materialism. And isn’t it, um, an indictment on our present culture and how everything is driven by the base pursuits of pleasure, and it’s shown in this one fact: everything is becoming defined by a person’s sex drive. What are we, beasts? Now the sex drive is a wonderful God-given gift, but it doesn’t define who I am. It’s a gift from God. It’s to be enjoyed in marriage to the glory of God. But now everything is about sex drive like we are nothing more than physical, base beings that function on some sort of animalistic beastly instinct of drive for sexual fulfillment. What a terrible and, and, and, and dishonoring of what God’s made us to be. We are made in the image of God, not in the image of dogs and cats who are driven and owned by their sex drives and their appetites. James is basically saying when you get down there, when you begin to function with worldly pleasures as your primary goal and your primary pursuit, you’re gonna have lots of troubles.

Now subpoint under the pursuit of pleasure, A. would be, the possessive power of pleasure. Once you get in this, it begins to own you. There’s a strong hold in this and it just don’t wanna let you go. Ah, in verse 1 he talks about, ” Is not the source your pleasures that wage war in your members?” So this waging of war inside, it’s a consuming fire inside. It’s an endless pursuit that is never satisfied. What’s the Proverbs say that a fire is never satisfied. You can throw a log on a fire, you can throw gasoline on a fire, you can throw whatever you want on a fire, a fire never says, “That’s enough. Don’t give me any more.” It wants more and more and more, and there is a, a possessive power to pleasure that just keeps building it on. Unless God intervenes, men will destroy himself in these base pursuits of pleasure, primarily sexual pleasures and, ah, as he gives himself over to worship his sexual desire, that’s a wicked form of rebellion and idolatry and it begins to become perverse and unnatural and, and perverted and that’s our culture today. It has a possessive nature to it.

That’s why Proverbs 21:17 says, “He who loves pleasure will become a poor man.” Did you hear that? It’ll ruin you eventually. Now you may actually die with a big bank account but you’re still bankrupt in what really matters. You die with a big bank account but you are bankrupt of people who respect you and really loved you. You die with a big bank account but you’re bankrupt of children and grandchildren that respect you and honor you. So there’s a lot of different kinds of poverty out there. Nothing wrong with dying with a big bank account, not necessarily, that’s between you and God on those things, but did it become the pursuit of your life? And not just that, any worldly pleasure.

The unbridled pursuit for pleasure will lead to ruin. Romans 7 is that chapter where Paul talks about the fact that he can’t control his old nature, that he wants to do good and he ends up not doing it; he wants to honor God’s law and he ends up violating God’s law. Then he gets to the end of chapter 7 and he says, “Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of this death?” And he says, “Thanks be to God, Jesus Christ our Lord.” One day we’re gonna be free from all of this passion to drag us away from what we really need.

So there’s a possessive element to this and when you get into it, it just gets stronger and stronger, it’s a deeper and deeper stronghold on our lives. Now notice not only the possessive power of pleasure but the painful price of pleasure. Once again, he talks about waging war in your members. That’s not a desirable or happy place to be. Then look at verse 2, it sloshes over to where we have lots of trouble with those around us in our social circles, “You lust.” Now that word “lust” doesn’t always have to be evil, that’s just a Greek word that could be a strong desire for anything. In this context, though, it’s a lust, a strong desire for things that you’ve made an idol, the pleasures of this world. So in this context, it is an evil thing.

“You lust and do not have; so,” what? “You commit murder.” We have a culture where millions and millions and millions of women so lust for position, possessions, wealth, that they will kill their babies. You lust and do not have so you commit murder. How accurate the Bible is. Is that not what they’re doing? If you talk to an ardent feminist and said, “Why would you do that? Why would you choose to kill your unborn child? Why would you choose to promote it and celebrate it and commend it and defend it?” Because we want to have what men have. We don’t want to lose that job. I know of a woman personally who simply was not in her career where she wanted to be so killed that baby. You lust and feel I’m not gonna get it, so you commit murder. Don’t think this is some culture out there we don’t know about, we’re living this reality. It’s a giving over. A giving over to the base desires, pleasures if you will, fulfillments of the world that actually are all lies.

Quarrels and conflicts. When one is dominated by his flesh and fleshly pleasures, he will begin if left there long enough to walk on anyone else to gain that pleasure. We’ve dealt more than a few times in our church with alcoholics and drug addicted folks and how they will, I mean to the most, the dearest loved ones in their families they will lie, deceive, use and abuse them for their next fix. The one who’s controlled by the flesh is just destined for quarrels and conflicts.

Then he tells us something about the contamination and condemnation of the world. Look, jump down to, um, verse 4, “You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility before God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself the enemy of God.” When a person gets involved as their primary pursuit the pleasures of this world, he, he, he actually comes at it slowly. First there is the friendship of the world. He stays in it, he begins to love the world and its pleasures, and then finally he experiences the condemnation of those who are of this world, and that’s why I think this is primarily speaking to unsaved church members.

He uses the phrase in verse 4, you spiritual adulterers, and the point is before you were saved your husband was the law of God and he was not a good husband. The law of God condemned you, the law of God constrained you, the law of God could do nothing to free you but to show you as a fallen and worthy of divine retribution and condemnation, and that was your husband. But then in grace upon grace, goodness upon goodness, love upon love, mercy upon mercy, God rescued you through Jesus Christ, he bought you away, he divorced your relationship with the law. No, better than that, he didn’t divorce you, the law has died and therefore you are free because your old husband is dead and your new husband is Jesus Christ. He’s my spouse. He’s my provider. He’s my lover. He’s my friend. Here’s what he’s saying: you’ve got something so glorious and for you to go out as the pursuit of your life now and make this world and its pleasures your main goal, that’s nothing but spiritual adultery. You’ve been given something far better, far far better.

The Old Testament prophets used that term often with Israel when she would become, um, a, or, or, or rather walk in a craving after and want to be like the nations of the world around her, and would adopt the gods of the Egyptians or the gods of the Babylonians or the gods of the Assyrians, and it also would seem to be some sort of Baal worship and the prophets would say, “You’re spiritual adulterers. You have one husband and that’s Jehovah God and you’ve begun to embrace the gods of this world.”

You see, he jealousy guards what is God’s and that’s the Holy Spirit that jealously guards just as a husband and wife have a holy loving jealousy for one another. Ah, God the Holy Spirit is grieved when we sin against God’s love by pursuing this world’s pleasures and not the infinite, lasting, solid pleasures of God.

He says it another way back up in verse 4, the last part, that you are if you’re a friend of the world, last phrase, you make yourself an enemy of God. You see, the world is the enemy of the Father just as the flesh is the enemy of the Spirit. This whole world system, this structure, this world and all of its general pursuits and desires is anti-God, it’s contrary to God the Father, and God the Holy Spirit comes in us at conversion and he begins to change our desires and lead us to new pursuits, and the old fallen flesh man that we’re still encased in, he’s the enemy of the Holy Spirit. And so we’re to be in the pattern, if you will, of learning to embrace the higher pleasures. Not denying that they’re not good pleasures down here but they’re just hollow pleasures.

And I mean this sincerely, I hope when your team beat up on my team last night, by the way, one or two plays. Come on. One, one or two ref flags. What about sacking this boy when you get up you push him down. Throw out the flag. We’ve turned football into a little sissy game. No, Alabama’s a better team. There’s no doubt about that, but one or two plays. But here’s what I want to say and I mean this seriously, I hope at the end of those games you say, “That was fun.” It’s always fun to beat Tennessee. Not as much fun as beating Auburn but it’s fun to beat Tennessee. But I hope after it happens something in you says, “That’s fun but, man, that’s not my greatest joy. That’s fun, but that’s not my deepest pleasure.” I think, see, that’s normal Christian thinking. It’s not rob you of that fun, it’s just the, the greatness of saying, “But if Alabama something happens and we don’t win much anymore for a decade, then I still got my chief joy.” Isn’t that a good way to live? You don’t lose the other, you just got something else and something else that’s infinitely better. Infinitely better.

Well, let’s talk just briefly about proper pleasure. Though James doesn’t point it out in this particular text, in the balance of biblical truth I want to point it out, and that is that God does not call us to be monks in a monastery. You remember the old monk, it’s an old old illustration, ah, but the old monk decided he was gonna get rid of the world and the lust of the world, so he went to a faraway remote cave and put himself in there with only bread and water just to pray and read the Bible and seek God, and he stayed in there a week or two and realized it’s something, I brought the entire world in here with me. You can’t punish yourself into holiness.

So that we understand that. Pleasure can be a good thing, pleasure defined maybe as rest or recreation or relaxation in appropriate measure to the benefit of making us effective servants for God. The point is we seek God and God’s will, not pleasure as our ultimate aim. Pleasure is a tool used in our pursuit of God and our service to God and even our pleasures in God. I hope you’ve grown to where you learned that sometimes you’re exhausted and you have to get away from the stuff that demands so much of your emotional and physical energies, and when you get away from it, you can rejoice and say, “God, I have to rest because You never have to rest. I have to rest because I’m weak but You’re strong and You take me just like I am.” And God I think rejoices in the godly attitude of proper rest and proper pleasures in its proper balance. In other words, pleasure is not an end in itself unless it’s the pleasure of God. The worldly pleasures, I mean those things that aren’t necessarily evil, are good to the end that they serve us in our high pursuit of finding pleasure in God.

My goodness, I just commend you again. I, and all of these many many years, if you have not released me from the typical defined, ah, structure of pastoral work, if you’d kept me under the thumb of the kind of things most pastors face, I would’ve, I would’ve been gone a long time. Couldn’t have made it. Just couldn’t have made it. And I hope, as I’ve said many times, I hope your gracious and godly understanding of how I need to balance my time and energies has been a benefit to you from what I’ve been able to do from this pulpit for these 38+ years.

So pleasure is good and kept in balance but it can be wrong either by the amount of time we spend in it, or the amount of value we place on it. It is God who gave the Sabbath rest, ah, and there is a, a, a, a cycle of work and rest God has built into our physical and emotional being and that’s why I think we have God resting on the seventh day. Ecclesiastes says there is a time for rest but God never meant for man to look at his base, fallen lust and pleasures and make them the pursuit of his life. He is to be the pursuit of our lives and when we have those pleasures that lost men also enjoy, going fishing, having a good meal, taking a good vacation with family, whatever it is, when we have those pleasures, we fully enjoy them but in a different way than, than men do who do not know God.

So it’s a fatal flaw to make it your ultimate goal. You see, when pleasure becomes your god, it takes both the reward out of your work and the fulfillment out of your pleasure. The god of pleasure is deceptive and he’s impotent and he cannot deliver what we demand of him. Here’s a key thought: you can love pleasure and have pleasure as your idol and purpose, although you never have much of it. Some people who get envious and they see another brother or sister and, man, they just happen to have the kind of job, they have some time off, they have leisure that others don’t have and they make money that other people don’t make and they buy nice things maybe the other people can’t buy, and they’re kind of envious of that and they say, “They must not be godly. They might not be spiritual.” No, you may be more ungodly because you lust for it even though you don’t have it. But be careful, be careful how you define these things.

And when we lust for it and we don’t have it, we get what James says, quarrels and conflicts and troubles in our lives. You know why? Because we expect our pleasures to give us something God only, let me say it this way, we, we, we expect our pleasures to give us something that only God can give us. That’s why we keep having these unending, vile, perverse notions of sexual fulfillment in our culture. It just goes deeper and more strange and more weird and more perverse because it doesn’t give what we thought it could give. Again, these things are wonderful gifts from God, not the perversion of it, but these gifts of sexuality but only in balance with finding our great pleasures in God who created us and made us and gave us these desires.

So don’t live for pleasure. Make your pleasure living for the Lord. Take time for pleasure only as needed to keep yourself effective for the Lord. People who live for pleasure are always looking for that magic something that will somehow change their lives when the real problem is within their own hearts. “There’s something else out there. If I get that next whatever.” No, the whatever you need is him and he’s right there if you’ll look to him. Come and dine, the Master calleth. Come and dine, you can feast at Jesus’ table anytime. On your sickbed. On your deathbed. When you’re in your greatest days of earning and satisfaction and accomplishment. Just anytime. He can be your endless supply of pleasure and joy. He who fed the multitude, turned the water into wine. Come and dine, the Master calleth. Come and dine. He does. He does but the problem is within us. The heart of the human problem is the problem of the human heart. It’s focused on the wrong stuff.

So can I charge you tonight, oh dear friend, can I charge you tonight: look to Jesus, look to him. Young person, some of you are not yet saved, look to Jesus. Tell him you’re a sinner and cry out to him. This world will rob you. It will not give you what you think it’s gonna give you. Only Jesus can do that.