Transcript

Let’s go back to James 1 this Sunday evening and finish the exhortations this pastor of this local church gives to his congregation roughly 2,000 years ago and it’s very valuable, applicable, practical application for us and actually dovetails quite beautifully with the truth that we’ve been seeing in Luke 13 in our Sunday morning expositions there. James 1, beginning in verse 22, James writes to his church,

22 But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves. 23 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror; 24 for once he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was. 25 But one who looks intently at the perfect law, the law of liberty, and abides by it, not having become a forgetful hearer but an effectual doer, this man will be blessed in what he does. 26 If anyone thinks himself to be religious, and yet does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this man’s religion is worthless. 27 Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

Now, in review we talk, first of all, under this two part series of practicing the word, the exhortation. He commands them there in verse 22 to keep on being doers of the word. Don’t be like those that Paul warned Timothy would eventually become quite numerous in our churches and that is those who will not endure sound doctrine. The idea of enduring sound doctrine means there needs to be a mature sobriety about the way you receive the word. You receive it with an intent of doing it, not just believing that the participation in the Sunday worship service or Wednesday or whatever it may be and hearing the word preached sort of is a sacrament that satisfies your obligation to God for the week. Absolutely not. You come with the intent of receiving the word into application into your life.

So that’s the exhortation, now the exercise and we pull out three words here from our text. I’ll just mention them. I’m not going into everything about the exposition but when the word of God is brought forth to bear, whether you’re having a quiet time or in a small group Bible study, and certainly when you’re under the preaching of the word, the first thing you’re doing by the aid of the Holy Spirit is examination. There is an examination going on and it needs to be more than just a snapshot that may be taken by a smartphone, it needs to be more like an MRI machine where you try to examine deeply what is God showing me about my motives, my attitude, my viewpoint. Am I man-centered here? Is my thinking about me or truly am I thinking about the glory of God? Examination. That always dovetails with the next one, that is restoration. Christian life is a lifestyle of being a repenting one whereby you’re constantly taking out the old motives, viewpoints, attitudes, behaviors, and putting on or putting in the new ones. You’re restoring yourself back to closeness to God and back to a faithful walk to God. Examination leads to restoration which leads to the third point we talked about, transformation. Your life should gradually be different.

Now sometimes there is a significant jump, if you will, in practical sanctification. Sometimes God just shows you something. I have had a number of those. I had an episode in my life many years ago, a season of great anxiety and trouble in my soul; maybe a lot of people outwardly would not have noticed it, probably you did but in that season of time, God did an examination on the core reason of my anxiety. I kept looking at stuff that was going on around me that I didn’t think was fair but the reason I was so anxious and concerned was I was too concerned about myself and didn’t see that. It just wasn’t obvious until God did the examination, until the MRI analysis came in and I saw really what was going on down in there and I can tell you with a clear conscious, not perfectly, but that radically changed my thinking about those kinds of settings and situations or seasons that we go through that are trials and bring anxieties and concerns. So sometimes God just, boom, gives a strong or a major transformation in our hearts and lives and thinking, but more often than not, it’s the small steps that God gives us small parts of adding on new things, repenting and set apart old things and we are slowly being transformed to the image of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Now, keeping with James’s very pastoral and practical exhortations, let’s look thirdly at the evidence. The evidence of being a doer of the word or as I’m calling it “Practicing the Word.” Now, look at verse 26, he says something interesting here, “If anyone thinks himself to be religious,” then he says, “and yet does not bridle his tongue.” But let me back up to the word “religion.” I think in this context James is talking about the one who has confidence in the outward forms of religion which are not wrong or bad, they’re just not the basis for a genuine relationship and walk with God. For example, when you do the external things like coming to public worship like you have on Sunday night, that’s important and good; being faithful to all the meetings of the church as best you can. Returning tithes and offerings as the Lord blesses you and enables you. Making sure you’re faithful to partake of the Lord’s Supper when the church conducts the Lord’s Supper. Following the Lord in believer’s baptism if you’re a new believer. Attending prayer meetings and participating in work in your small group. There are lots of things we do in “our religion” that are putting on external observance, if you will, and those are good things and right things. But he has the phase there, verse 26, “If anyone thinks himself to be religious.” In other words, if you think just because you’re doing pretty good at consistently conducting yourself in the outward motions of your religious practice, you’re not really religious at all. Those things are required and every true Christian will be active in those things but it’s got to be more than those things. It is very easy to just memorize and learn the things that are expected and just put them on in the power of the flesh and have never been changed or born again by the Spirit of God. We talked about that a lot this morning.

So as we walk in those forms of public worship, small group ministry, a tithing, Lord’s Supper, that’s all essential but he says we need to have more; we need to have a pure and genuine heart religion. We need to have a right spirit or if we do not, these external things of our public worship are totally worthless. Look at verse 26 again, “If anyone thinks himself to be religious, and yet does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart.” Now notice, this man’s religion is worthless. Wow. You can dot all the “i’s,” cross all the “t’s,” be very impressive to most everyone who watches your lifestyle but if the heart isn’t changed, that religion, James says, is worthless.

Now, the first thing he talks about the evidence here is our language. Our tongue. Our lips. He says, “If any man does not bridle his own tongue.” Huh. Think of all the things James might could have mentioned about Christian behavior but he mentions our language, the tongue. And when he says “does not bridle his own tongue,” that word “bridle” means “put a rein on it,” it means “to whoa it.” Have you ever trained a dog or trained a horse? You teach him, “Whoa.” I remember, do y’all remember Sam C. that preached here years ago? Sam C. used to raise prize bird dogs and he said, “If I had a dog that I was having a particular problem with getting him to whoa, I would put a long heavy rope on him and let it get out about 40 or 50 feet and I would brace myself real tight and when he’d take off charging, when he got right to the end of the rope, I’d go, ‘Whoa!'” and he said, “I’d whoa him.” And he’d just come to a sudden stop. Well, that’s the picture of this word. Put a rein on your lips.

Now, would I be assuming correctly this evening that if you had to score 100 for the next three weeks on your language, you would all flunk out? I mean, it’s either perfect or you fail, you would all flunk out. But I think what James is saying when you become a child of God, you begin to realize what comes through your lips comes from the content and the nature of your heart and when you’ve had a heart transformation by the power of the Gospel and the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit, that new heart begins to put on new words that flow out of your mouth. The mouth reveals the condition of the heart. That’s what James is saying. He’s not saying get on this thing of measuring and evaluating, “Well, I had three bad attitudes this week and said five bad things to three different people.” He’s not talking about that kind of stuff. He’s talking about you will notice your words. Listen, when a man’s been humbled by the power of God, when he is grateful that Christ would save a wretch like him, I’m going to tell you, he’s sweeter to his wife, he’s more patient with his children, he’s more kind to the people at work. His words are different. Now, don’t you wish they were just perfect from then on but there is a marked difference with the words when the heart has been changed.

So James says be careful. Now, again, he’s talking to a Jewish group of believers and they are bombarded with externalism, the putting on of external works, and James says, “Yes, those external works, faithfulness to the church, tithing, are essential, the essential part of your Christian walk, but if the heart is not changed, worthless, and the lips, the language will show.” A good verse cross reference that points this out is Matthew 5:18 where Jesus is refuting the Pharisees’ dietary laws. They thought if you ate certain clean foods and did not eat certain unclean foods, you would somehow be pleasing to God but Jesus says, “But the things that proceed out of the mouth come from the heart and those defile the man.” Be as cautious as you want, Jesus says, about what you put in your mouth but that doesn’t change anything about the nature of your rotten heart that you had before you put anything in your mouth. Before the first time that you nursed at your mother’s breast as a small little baby, you had a rotten heart. What went in your mouth didn’t make your heart wicked. So he says true religion is when there’s been a changed heart that is always, not perfectly, I hope it doesn’t have to be perfectly, if so you’re going to have to get a new pastor, alright? But there ought to be a marked difference in language, the words we speak, when our hearts have been changed.

Now, so the regenerate man is made aware of his sinfulness; he is made aware of all that Christ has done and it is definitely a changed fruitfulness that flows out of his lips and out of his mouth. Another good cross reference on this is Proverbs 17:28. Wow, this is a good one. “Even a fool when he keeps silent is considered wise. When he closes his lips he is counted prudent.” He says, “You may even be a fool but if you’ll shut up people might think you’re smart. Just don’t say anything. Just keep your mouth shut.” I do better at that than I used to. Now, this is a challenge when you’re called to preach because we’re supposed to use a lot of words and when you use a lot of words, there is more possibility of getting into messes. I’ve had to come to this pulpit before and say, “Hey, I shouldn’t have said that that way,” and I’ve done that more than once. I may actually have done it more than I have done it but nevertheless there is a marked difference in a man’s words when his heart has been changed. So James says, “If you want a good test of how you’re doing in true religion, how is your language? What’s coming up out of that heart and out through those lips?”

Well, another one, not only just language but notice love. Love. Look at verse 27, if you will, James just being so very practical talks about, verse 27, “Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress.” Now, so he said there’s an evidence of how you love and care for each other in the body of Christ that is the mark of genuine and true heart possessed religion. Now, this idea of visiting is a word that they would commonly use to visit those who were sick. It has the idea of go and care for them. Go and look after them. Just this past week, one of our staff had been checking on one of the senior adult couples in our church, been out of church a good while, and they are struggling with some serious medical issues, and almost immediately they said, “Hey, tell Brother Jeff that our Sunday school class has cared for us, called us, brought us meals. We are so loved and so taken care of.” James says that’s a mark of true religion. That’s a mark that there’s been a heart change and a heart transformation.

Now he uses orphans and widows, not that they’re the only people we care for but you have to understand this is a day when there were not social welfare programs pointed at these particular people and whatever community you were in had to care for you and once you became a Christian, you were rejected by the Jewish community at large and even the Gentile or Roman Greek communities and so the church became your new family. The community, and when there’s persecution going on and when James wrote this the church was under great persecution, the first folks to suffer are orphans and widows so he says, you look at the church and you see those in need, this is just very obvious who needs caring for and those who have true heart religion, those that the Gospel has changed, are those who want to see to it that people are loved and taken care of when they have hurts and when they have needs.

A good cross reference is 1 John 3. Would you turn there just for a second? 1 John 3, just over to the right just a few pages. 1 John 3 and look at 16 and 17. We talk about this quite a bit but it’s in the Bible quite a bit. He says, John writing, you know, he writes this epistle of love, if you will, and he writes in 1 John 3:16 and 17, “We know love by this, that He,” that’s Christ, “laid down His life for us.” So he lay down his life for his children, “and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.” I don’t know how you feel about particular redemption but you lose the whole meaning of that text if you believe Jesus died exactly the same way for every single person. I’m not going to go into all the theology of that but I hold to particular redemption that Jesus died in a special effectual way for those who would believe. Now, there’s a sense in which he died for all men but he died effectually for those who would believe. So he says since Jesus showed a special devoted love for those he knows that will believe, so the children, those Christians, also have him living in their hearts and they have a special love for those who will believer. He said that’s how you know love. He has changed your heart. He lives in your heart and you have the kind of love that he had. Now, he loves all men but he has a unique and special love for his elect children.

Now look at verse 17, “But whoever has the world’s goods, and sees his brother,” not just another person in mankind in general, not just another person in humanity but a Christian brother, “and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him? Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth.” So there we have James saying, again, an evidence of genuine conversion and true religion is not the external things of ritual and religion, though some of those are important and good, it’s the changed heart where love is an effervescent thing, it bubbles over, it splashes over. You know, yes, there are times when we do loving things because it’s right but for the child of God, there is a heart that desires to love one another. You say, “I love those people. I want to be counted as one who looks after my brothers and sisters in Christ.”

Galatians 6:10, “So then, while we have opportunity,” you could say when we have the opportunity, “let us do good to all men.” As you run across someone out in the world, we’re always Christians to be marked as a caring, giving, compassionate people. But he continues in Galatians 6:10, “while we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, and especially to those who are of the household of the faith.” Now, as James writes and says real religion is those who take care of orphans and widows, again, he’s not saying we have special crusades to care for all the orphans and widows in the community at large. Now, we ought to do that as much as we can but that’s not the context here. He’s talking about in the family of faith when we see the most vulnerable and most dependent suffering, we go after them with a heart of love and care and concern. That is an evidence, he says, of genuine and true religion. That’s practicing the word.

So God may give us the opportunity to do good to many others among mankind in general but while God may give that opportunity, listen, it is my responsibility to do good to those who are members of my local church family. So the point is a regenerate heart will be a heart like Jesus and Jesus has a special heart love for those who believe on him. Use the biblical word you want, they believe; they are those who have faith; they are those who are called, chosen or elected or predestined. All those are biblical words for the same people. You say, “Well, I don’t know if I can stomach this thing that Jesus doesn’t love everybody the same.” Well, friend, how are you going to deal with eternity where God is showering his true believers with ever increasing overwhelming love and pleasures and he’s present in hell but only in his wrath and judgment? How are you going to deal with that? He is dealing with people differently, amen? So there is a clear distinction of how Christ has a heart for his children and how we also if we’re genuine Christians will have a heart for those same children of God.

So he talks about this love. In Romans 14:15 and in 1 Corinthians 8:11, Paul is talking about the same kind of subject. He’s dealing with those Christians whom he would call “are weaker in the faith,” and being weaker in the faith means they’re still struggling with external laws and they’re putting too much emphasis on those external laws and one particular area of law that was an area a lot of these younger believers struggled with was dietary laws. But Paul says this, in effect, he says, “You know, if I’ve got a brother and he’s not grown enough to understand that the dietary laws do not make you righteous or unrighteous before God, but it violates his conscience to eat,” he said, “I’ll not eat food nor drink wine if it hurts my brother.” He said, “I have the freedom to do it, you understand.” He says, “I have the liberty. I know it doesn’t make me righteous or unrighteous but my brother still struggles there so I will deny myself so that I’ll not encourage him to violate his conscience. Even though he’s wrong, he doesn’t need to learn to go against his conscience. So I don’t need to be a factor in doing that.” What is that, friend? That’s what you call l-o-v-e, giving up a right, giving up a liberty, giving up a privilege.

Now, look, when I say these things it just fills my mind with all the examples of unbiblical excess that comes up where people are actually judgmental legalists or is going around pronouncing their laws on everybody about everything from movie theaters to women can’t wear pants to you’ve got to breastfeed and dress like “Little House on the Prairie” and raise your own chickens if you’re going to heaven. You think I’m being silly, no, there’s a lot of that out there. As a matter of fact, we’ve had some that have float through here and thank God it floated in and then it floated right back out and I said, “Love you. See you in heaven, hopefully.” But my point is you can’t, that’s not what Paul, he’s talking about a brother that’s got a sincere struggle, not one that’s one a tangent of external, arrogant, elitist, self-exhausting legalism, okay? But in those cases we are to deny ourselves and love one another. John 13:35, “all men will know that you are My disciples, by the love you have for one another.” So James says in your language there is a new tone, there is a new sweetness, there is a new graciousness, there is a new kindness. Oh, I wish it was that way all the time, amen? But I can tell you this: there was a radical change in Jeff Noblit’s language at 19 years of age driving my car back to Middle Tennessee State University when I was listening to a Presbyterian preacher over the radio and I was converted. My language changed and he keeps changing it. But do you know what? There’s been also a difference in my love. I went from loving the world, people who were in the world, people who would help me sin, people who would sin with me, and I began loving new kinds of folks. I began loving church kind of people and Christian kind of people and people who wanted to study the Bible and people who wanted to grow in Christ and it wasn’t just a love of let’s find what rules we can put on though I’ve had my own journey through legalism, but I began to really love those people. I wanted to care for them.

It’s funny how sometimes you might be misguided. I remember having been converted maybe a year and I saw one of these television evangelists come on and he was talking about how their minister was struggling and I sent him $20, and, hey, it might as well have been $20,000 back then. I mean, I’m a college student and didn’t have anything and I just…but there was something in my heart that said I want to help this brother. He sounded like a brother and I wanted to help him and so that change happens in our hearts. That’s true religion, not just looking at the external observances as important as some of them are.

Now, thirdly, let me talk about lifestyle. He said, “If you’re a practicing one of the word, you’ll be a loving one. You’ll have a new language on your lips but, secondly, your lifestyle is going to be different.” Look at verse 27 at the very last phrase, he said, “to visit orphans and widows in their distress and to keep one’s self unstained by the world.” Now, again, this is a present tense verb which means a continuing action or in this case, a continuing exhortation. In other words, you got saved, you became a repenting one, you became one, now listen to me, you became one that began to be repulsed by and grieved by what you formerly lusted and longed for. Now, there was still some lusting and longing because the old flesh package, the old unredeemed humanity is still there so there’s some of that still there but you hate what you see there. You know, the things that your flesh loves, now you hate. Are you with me on this? There’s something that’s different about you and all of a sudden you begin this lifestyle practice of striving to be unstained by the world. Interesting use of words that James uses here.

Let’s look at it just a little bit. Now, when he says “world” he means the society that does not know God and so when we look out there at our culture and, my goodness, hasn’t our country journeyed from what was once, at least I think in a degree we would say was a Christian nation. You could take Christian moral values and basic Christian orthodox doctrine and generally it was embraced. Even nonbelievers were of what I’d call a Christian consensus at one time. They would agree with the Ten Commandments. They would agree with the laws on marriage and, by the way, the definition of marriage. But now we’ve moved into an era where it is so anti-Christ, our culture is, and so we look at the values of this world, we look at the patterns, we look at what they joy in, we look at what they long for, we look at what they value and while we may can participate in some of that, we don’t want to be marked by that. We might have some of the same joys other folks have.

I told you I went to a basketball game this weekend and I bought a bag of popcorn that said it was Texas sized popcorn. I’m serious. It was this tall. I had to wrestle, fight and get her in a headlock but I finally got it away from Pam and I ate that and I thought this is, I just love popcorn. Diet Coke and I enjoy that but do you know what? The lost guy who doesn’t know Jesus just sitting a few seats away from me, he enjoyed it the same way and that’s okay. I enjoyed the popcorn, he enjoyed the popcorn. Hopefully, I don’t remember to be honest, but hopefully I had some thought in there, “God, this is just another token of common grace, popcorn.” Amen? All of that is common grace. Popcorn is good for a man that ought to be in hell. Amen? It’s all grace. So we can enjoy some of the things the world enjoys but the end of my life is not the same as the man who enjoyed that popcorn but who doesn’t know Christ. The end of my joy, the foundation of my purpose is not like his. I don’t want the stain set in of having worldly principles and worldly values and worldly priorities.

I read in the paper, was it two days ago, did you read that? Do you know what I’m thinking about? It’s the new bar church, b-a-r church. I’m not talking about an iron bar or a steel bar, I mean a whiskey bar. How can I say this and stay benevolent in my tone? These guys, I’m going to tell you what a lot of it is. Is it just us in here tonight? Are we on the internet? Some of these young guys need to be kicked in the seat of the pants and it’s a shame before God that some God-called elders and some established sound churches aren’t yanking these guys up by the collar and saying, “That’s not the way you serve God and that’s not where you start a church in the bar where everybody’s drinking.” But do you know why we’ve got young bucks running amock out there? It’s just like the story I heard about the elephants in Kruger Park. I’ve been to Kruger Park several times and it’s a fascinating place. If you ever get to go to some place like that you ought to go. And they had problem several years ago in that the young bull elephants were doing things elephants never did. They began trampling over the tribal villages and killing animals they didn’t used to kill, and the biologists got to looking at this thing and studying this thing and what happened, the young bulls had gotten separated from the older bulls and they rounded them all up and got the older bull elephants in with the younger bulls and they said every bit of that stuff stopped. The elephants started going to eat where they were supposed to go eat and they started to go to drink where they were supposed to go drink and then what elephants are supposed to do. I’m not sure what they do all day long but they got in line, but the older bulls were necessary to keep the younger bulls in line. I think we’re seeing a lot of that in church today, but do you know why we’re seeing a lot of that? Are you listening to me? Because the younger bulls looked at the older bulls and said this, “You guys are not real. You’re not genuine. You’re compromisers and you’re worldly so we’re just going to stake out own path.” That’s what’s happened in the church and do you know what? They’re right. They’re right.

So this guy has started a bar church movement and his claim is that’s what Jesus did. Jesus went to sinners and to prostitutes where they were. Listen to me: there is a mountain of difference between Jesus running across a prostitute showing her unconditional love but calling her to repentance. There’s a great difference between that one episode and setting up the church of the Lord Jesus Christ in a liquor sipping bar setting. That’s a radically different thing. The Bible says to keep one’s self unstained by the world, not go out and dive in the filth of the world and call yourself reaching people for Jesus.

Well, that’s what James says here and, by the way, I think it’s 1 Peter where he tells new believers that not to be one who associates in drinking parties. There is only one reason to go to the bar and that’s to drink. But anyway, that’s the kind of nonsense we’re seeing out there and these guys feel legitimacy because they can point to their local Baptist churches that they grew up in and said there are homosexuals in it, there are adulterers in it, there are fornicators in it, men who get drunk every Saturday night and come teach my Sunday school class. I heard that report recently from a big church in our town. And so they’re saying, “How can they judge us? How can they guide us? How can they correct us?” And do you know what? They’re right. They’re right. We need revival and reformation in the local church.

Well, James says if you’re going to live out true Christianity, true religion is your lips change. Your word changes because your heart changes. There’s a new love in your heart and it always starts with the most defenseless and most vulnerable and most needy and that’s orphans and widows. Now we take care of everybody, but in this setting in this day, orphans and widows really suffered, especially when the church was being persecuted. Then lastly it says your lifestyle has got to be different. You’re not one that’s stained by the world any longer. Now listen: we live in a world of dirt. There is dirt swirling all around us. It’s always all around us. It’s going to get on us, but if it gets on us, we quickly wash it off and we don’t let the stain set in. Are you with me? You find it, you catch it, you see it and say, “O God, I don’t want that to be in my life!” and you repent of it and you go on. That’s not something you did before, before you wanted to walk, live and indulge in that sin and then find you some Christian pastor somewhere that would tell you that’s okay and there are plenty that will do that but when you’re truly saved, that’s not your attitude. You’re broken, you’re humbled, the dirt that got on, it’s your fault. You don’t blame somebody else but you don’t just wallow in it and let the stain set in. Unstained, James says, by the world.

Now, if you are one who is not walking in this, then he says in verse 27, you deceive your own heart. You deceive your own heart. He said this is pure and undefiled religion in the view of God to do these things, to have this kind of heart and he says if you don’t have this, then what you do have, here’s James’s word, is actually worthless. Now, a real quick practical application on being unstained by the world, 1. keep renewing your mind. We’ve been talking about that in the earlier sessions. Keep renewing your mind to be in agreement with the word of God. Secondly, let God pick your friends. Let God pick your friends. You have biblical convictions. You have biblical values about your lifestyle and anybody that’s not comfortable with that is a person that God doesn’t want you to hang with. Now, you’re not arrogant or haughty or elitist about it, but you just walk with God and God will draw those who are drawn to that and he’ll move out of your life those who are not comfortable with that. Let God pick your friends. Then avoid dirty places and dirty things. Just decide there are some things we’re not going to do. Now look, your list might not be just like my list but you ought to have a list. There are some movies you ought not go to.

I’m going to tell you about mine and Pam’s experience. I’m not going to tell you what movie it was but we foolishly did not look at the rating and I thought because of what it said it was okay. We sat down in that movie theater and God is our witness, literally in five minutes we walked out the door embarrassed and ashamed. And, you know, I was shocked at the people who could sit in there. There ought to be some things you’re just not going to do. Now listen, if somebody says to you, “Well, you know, you ought to be stronger than that,” and do you know what? That may be true. Well look, you have your standards about the places and the settings and the things you’ll not be involved in, not because you’re strong but because you’re weak. It’s because you’re weak. Your sinful old heart doesn’t need any help. You’ve got to be wise enough to protect yourself where you’re most vulnerable. The recovering repentant alcoholic doesn’t need to be hanging around where there’s some alcohol where another man might can go in a restaurant with a bar right there and it never bothered him. You’ve got to know where you need to be and where you don’t need to be.

Keep renewing your mind. Examination, restoration, transformation. We preached about that. Let God pick your friends and then avoid dirty places and dirty things. Remember that friendship with the world can lead to a deeper loving of the world. Even if you’re a regenerate child of God, you can go down this path. Friendship with the world and you’ll start loving the world, then you’ll start being conformed to this world and then you will have the condemnation of this world. Some of the very consequences worldly people suffer, you will begin to suffer as a child of God. Now, I’m convinced God will call you to repentance somewhere in that process too but that’s the path you can get on. Lot pitched his tent toward Sodom. Lot moved into Sodom. Sodom moved into Lot. Lot lost his testimony, even his family, even everything.

James says pure and undefiled religion, genuine practicing the word, your heart’s changed so your language changes. Your love for Christians begins to grow. That’s a change in your life. And your lifestyle changes. You’re no longer one who wants any of the stain of the world setting in on your life. Amen?

Let’s stand together in prayer.