Breaking the Grip of Worldliness (James 4:4-10)

Open your Bibles to the 4th chapter of James, James chapter 4, and let's begin with a word of prayer. Our great God and Father, we thank you for the privilege again this week to gather together as the people of God, to unite our hearts in worship, to be edified, to be confronted, to be encouraged, to be admonished.

The truth of your word, to be washed with it, Father. And we pray that you would do just that with us this morning by your Spirit, as we look again into what James had for a people 2 ,000 years ago that is every bit as relevant for us today.

We pray for clarity in all of this, and Father, that when we finish together, our hearts would be lifted up in praise and glory to the Lord Jesus Christ, for He alone is the perfect one who has given His life for us.

And it's in His name we pray, amen. Alright, well, last week we introduced the topic of worldliness, and we looked in the early part of James chapter 4, verses 1 through 3, and we looked at discord and disunity within the church.

James there identified quarrelsomeness and carnality and prayerlessness as the three marks of a worldly church. This morning, as we return to the text, beginning in verse 4 and running all the way to verse 10, He's going to give us the only solution to worldliness, and it's a very painful solution to hear.

So this is a painful message. It's a painful message to read. It's a painful message to hear, to prepare, and to teach. So we can all be wounded this morning, but know this, that the God who wounds is the God who heals.

And the path of healing lies through the path of repentance, actually. But let's read. I'm going to pick it up in verse 1 of chapter 4, and we'll read all the way down to verse 10. What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you?

Is not the source your pleasures that wage war in your members? 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.

You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures. 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.

Or do you think that the scripture speaks to no purpose, he who jealously desires the spirit which he has made to dwell in us, but he gives a greater grace? For it says, God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.

Submit, therefore, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be miserable, and mourn, and weep.

Let your laughter be turned into mourning, and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and he will exalt you. I've entitled this morning's message, Breaking the Grip of Worldliness.

Breaking the Grip of Worldliness. Proverbs chapter 27 and verse 6, we read,. Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but deceitful are the kisses of an enemy. But faithful are the wounds of a friend. And we have no greater friend than Jesus, do we?

We read in Hebrews chapter 12 and verse 11,. All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful. Yet to those who have been trained by it afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.

Wisdom tells us that it is good for us to be directly and sharply confronted by God with regard to our sin. It is a good thing. Because it is the path to righteousness. So, may God grant his grace and abundance to us this morning to humble our hearts, open our ears, hear and believe what he has to say to us this morning.

We're looking in particular verses 4 through 10. And in it I find a three-part battle plan to combat worldliness when it arises in our lives. A three-part battle plan to combat worldliness when, not if, when it arises in our lives.

The first is in verses 4 through 5 and it is this, we are to recognize our predicament. Recognize our predicament. Verse 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. Now, seven times in this letter leading up to this section, James refers to his readers as brethren. Be reminded of this.

Chapter 1, verse 2,. Consider it all joy, my brethren. Verse 16, Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren. Verse 19, This you know, my brethren. Chapter 2, verse 1,. My brethren. Verse 14, What use is it, my brethren?

Chapter 3, verse 1,. Let not many of you become teachers, my brethren. And verse 10 of chapter 3,. From the same mouth come both blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things should not be this way.

So, over and over and over he has spoken with the terms of affection. Brethren, brothers, sisters, beloved brethren. Even more in an intimate way. And now look, here in verse 4 he calls them adulteresses.

I mean, this is shocking. You talk about a U-turn kind of a situation. A bat-turn, we might even say. Brethren, brethren, brethren, adulteresses.

Shocking.

It's absolutely shocking that he would speak with this kind of language to the believers. And why? Why would he use such a strong term to speak to them with? And in what sense were they guilty of adultery?

To be called adulteresses. They're obviously guilty in his mind of a very serious offense. I think it's highly unlikely, highly unlikely, that in the context we are in here, that James is accusing his brothers and sisters of illicit sexual activity.

I think it's highly unlikely. Far more certain that we need to look to the Old Testament to try to understand this expression where he calls them adulteresses. And in fact, the Old Testament prophets themselves frequently compared Israel's relationship to Yahweh to a marriage, don't they?

They used the motif of a marriage to refer to the relationship of the ancient people of Israel to Yahweh. And thus their unfaithfulness to the Mosaic covenant as the equivalent of a spiritual adultery.

For example, in Jeremiah chapter 30 and verse 20, I'm using the NIV here because I think it just makes it super clear. But Jeremiah 3 .20 says,. But like a woman unfaithful to her husband, so you have been unfaithful to me, O house of Israel, declares the Lord.

That's just one illustration of many that could be found. The prophets use this motif repeatedly to speak about spiritual unfaithfulness. Even Jesus himself spoke as a prophet in the same kind of way, using the same kind of terminology when he writes in Matthew 16 .4,.

An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and a sign will not be given it except the sign of Jonah. He left them and went away. So Jesus himself refers to his generation of Israel because of their unfaithfulness as adulterous, an adulterous generation or as adulterers.

Now, in light of the relationship of the bride of Christ with the church, it's understandable that in the mind of James and thus in the mind of the Spirit who inspired him, that the seeking of the friendship with the world, again, look at the verse, therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world, the idea of friendship with the world is really a sin of enormous proportions.

It's a sin of enormous proportions equivalent to spiritual adultery. It's a big deal. Now this expression, do you not know, again, verse 4, do you not know, expects an affirmative answer, expects the affirmative answer.

Yes, actually, when we think about it, we do know. We do know because it's a basic reality of Christian discipleship that we cannot hold on to both God and the things of this world. We cannot hold both simultaneously.

For ultimately, Jesus tells us in Matthew 6, 24, in the Sermon on the Mount, right, that we will ultimately love one and hate the other. We cannot hang on to both. We become like a person with one foot in the boat and the other on the pier.

We need to make a decision, and pretty quick, and pretty quick. The one who knows and believes that Jesus died in their place on the cross, rose to life as their Savior and Lord, the decision should be obvious, right?

Do you not know? You can't have both. Friendship with the world is hostility toward God. Notice, James, he doesn't say friendship with the world leads to hostility with God. The verb is, is, it's a statement of a present activity.

To be a friend of the world is to be hostile towards God. The very act of friendship with the things of the world makes one hostile toward God. Again, Jesus, you can't love both God and mammon, for his illustration.

Now, unlike the Facebook world that you and I occupy, in which we have many, many casual acquaintances, it always amazes me, so-and-so has 1 ,000 friends, 2 ,000 friends, are you serious? Man, if I had one good friend, well, maybe I do, but yeah, 1 ,000 friends.

No, it's casual acquaintances. That's what we become habituated to. But in the ancient world, that's not what friendship meant. To be a friend in the ancient world denoted the attitude of an affection for this person, of a very kindly regard toward this person, of a relationship, a real relationship, an intimate relationship with a person.

And so for James, to be a friend of the world implies conformity to its principles and its aims, to be affectionate towards the things of the world. Now, you remember last week we defined worldliness for you, just to remind you.

We defined it as fundamentally, worldliness is fundamentally adopting as our own the values and interests of a world in rebellion against its creator. So it's adopting what is not ours as ours and its values and its interests.

And what is it? It's a system that's fundamentally in rebellion against God. This is the world, and worldliness is the adoption of it. And the logical result of that kind of a close relationship with rebellion is to put oneself in the place of being an enemy of God.

Notice again, verse 4,. Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. James is writing in the most black and white terms imaginable. You wish to embrace a rebellious system, then you are an enemy of God.

And that, for a believer, should shock us and actually justify the terminology of adulteresses. Why? Because God tolerates no rivals. God will tolerate no rivals. And that reality is vividly displayed throughout the Old Testament in the history of God's ancient and chosen special people, Israel.

You read the Old Testament, and what do you see? You see a pattern of a people who always are attempting to live in both worlds, and God will not permit it. He will not tolerate it. Verse 5,. Do you not think the Scripture speaks to no purpose?

He jealously desires the spirit which he has made to dwell in us. This is the reason, by the way, this is the reason why flirtation with the world is so serious. It's because God is righteously jealous for His people.

He is righteously jealous. He demands total, unreserved, unwavering allegiance from the people whom He has rescued from their sin by the gift of His own Son, who died to take the penalty their sin deserves, willingly grants them the righteousness they need, and then seals it all, imparts it to them through His indwelling Spirit, and He's jealous.

He's jealous of that reality, that relationship that He has brought about where His family, in other words, and as His family, He insists that we display the family resemblance. He insists. Now, beloved, worldliness comes in all shapes and sizes, doesn't it?

It comes in all shapes and sizes. It comes in the shape of the mindless quest for entertainment and sensual gratification. It comes in the importation into church leadership of politics and personal kingdom building and strife and division.

That was last week in verses 1 to 3. God will have no part of any of it. No part of any of it. He will not share it. He will not bless it. And He will require an accounting of it someday at the judgment.

The first step in the battle plan to break the grip of worldliness is to recognize your predicament. Let's personalize it. To recognize your predicament. Where are you? Where are you? Second is to receive God's grace.

That's the second part of the battle plan. First, recognize your predicament. Second, receive God's grace. Verse 6. Man, we need... Boy, thank you, James. We need a break, huh? A little respite here in the middle.

Right? Receive God's grace. But He gives a greater grace. You see that? Verse 6. But He gives a greater grace. Therefore it says God is opposed to the proud but gives grace to the humble. There is a way back.

Again, to the book of Hebrews, chapter 12 and verse 29, we read our God is a consuming fire. Chapter 10, verse 31, is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God. In light of the message about the jealousy of God and our adultery with that regard, it would be easy to become discouraged.

It would be easy to be overwhelmed, easy to be even terrified because of His demands for total allegiance. We would be undone. But our God doesn't leave us in our sin. You notice, but He gives a greater grace.

There is a release valve here for us. He doesn't leave us in our sin. He is merciful. He is loving. He is willingly generous with all the grace we need to overcome our sin and enable us to come back to Him.

God is just like the Father in Luke 15. Do you remember Him? The Father of Luke 15. Oh, on the first glimpse of His returning Son, He drops all pretense of dignity, hoists up His robe between His knees, and bustles off to greet His returning Son.

He restores Him to the family. That's our God. That is exactly our God. In a similar way, our God will supply the grace necessary to sever our love for the world if we will humble our hearts and seek it.

If, like that prodigal, we will turn to receive it. You want to draw the favorable gaze of God? If you want to draw the favorable gaze of God this morning, we find in Isaiah 66, too. But to this one I will look, he says, to Him who is humble and contrite of spirit and trembles at my word.

That's how we draw the favorable gaze of God. But if we remain proud, if we remain unyielding, then we will find ourselves openly and actively opposed by God. Do you see it? Verse 6. God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.

Beloved, if you are engaged in an adulterous affair with worldliness, God will act. He will act. He will not leave you there. He will frustrate your ambitions. He will trouble your conscience. He will deprive you of the pleasure that you think sin will provide you.

In a word, He will undo you. He will undo you. And He will do it because He loves you. And He is not willing to lose you and to allow you to walk away from His family. He is opposed, actively opposed.

The Apostle Paul writes in Romans chapter 5 and verse 20, where sin increased, grace abounded all the more. Where sin increased, grace superabounded, we could say, so that no one is beyond the reach of God.

No one is beyond the reach of God. Perhaps this morning you're finding yourself trapped in sin. It has closed in around you. You're finding that you are a slave of unrighteousness. You are helpless, hopeless, and sinking fast.

Then I urge you. I urge you to humble your heart and call out to the Lord Jesus Christ. Believe on Him. His arms are wide open to any who will turn in repentant faith. Receive the forgiveness He freely offers.

And know the peace and joy of a life that has been reconciled to God our Father and Creator. Cling to Him by faith. No one is beyond His reach. Recognize your predicament. Receive God's grace. And the third part of the battle plan, rectify your situation.

Rectify your situation. Verses 7 through 10. If God gives grace to overcome worldliness only to those who are humble, verse 6, suppose the prophet gives grace to the humble. If it is humility that is the means by which that grace is mediated to us, then obviously we have to pursue it.

We must pursue humility. But how? But how? How do we pursue humility? And what does humility look like anyway? Well, we're glad we asked, aren't we? Because James is going to answer that. James will frame the answer to these questions by what commentators call an inclusio.

An inclusio. What's an inclusio? An inclusio is a couple of bookends, basically. Think of a bookend at either end of the shelf and then there's the books between them. The two bookends that he has for us are in verse 7.

Submit, therefore, to God. And then verse 10, humble yourself in the presence of the Lord. Those are your bookends. Between the bookends, James spells out a life of Christian humility that will sever our infatuation with worldliness.

Let's take a look at the bookends quickly before we move to the books themselves. Submit, therefore, to God. Verse 7. Submit, the Greek word, you've heard it a million times. It means to be placed under authority, to line up under authority.

It means to accept your proper station in life because it is a command. Submit, therefore, to God. That is a command. It's something we're expected to do. Jesus is Lord of both creation and the church, which he has purchased with his own blood.

And so James is calling on them and us to recognize that reality and line up under the Lordship of Christ. That's what he wants. Line up under the Lordship of Christ. That's one bookend. The other bookend is the command, verse 10, to humble yourself in the presence of the Lord.

This also conveys the idea of a voluntary self-abasement in the sense that we realize our own utter unworthiness in the presence of Christ. We could perhaps picture it as someone lying prostrate in the presence of a king begging for mercy, which is unfortunate for us because we don't really know that much about kings.

But most of the world has and does. But that's kind of the idea. It's someone lying prostrate, face down, in the presence of the king. They're begging for his mercy. And in response, the king reaches down.

Look at the end of verse 10, right? And the Lord will exalt you. The king reaches down and he lifts the man's head from the dust and announces to the whole court, This man is my friend. This man is my friend.

Between these bookends, we'll find a very vivid description of repentance. A vivid description of repentance. First, return to God. Return to God. Verse 7, second half of 7, beginning of verse 8, resist and draw near.

You see it?

Resist the devil and he will flee from you. You draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Practically speaking, submission to the lordship of Christ means resisting or refusing to submit to Satan's lordship.

By the power of the indwelling spirit, it means believing Christ's word is true. And that means to resist the devil's purposes for us. What are those purposes? Well, I think in the context of what we're talking about here in James, it is to disrupt and destroy the local church by leading God's people into a self-centered worldly activities and attitudes.

Again, we don't want to lose sight of the major context here. This is talking about problems in a church. Even the name, devil, diabolos, the slanderer. It gives us a clue to his schemes. What was Satan's chief sin?

Pride.

Pride.

So when we resist pride, we resist the devil. When we give in to pride, we submit to his lordship. It's really a very simple proposition and yet a very sobering one, isn't it? But the negative command to resist is not enough.

We know how to just stop doing something, but we must also comply with the, we must replace the behavior with that which is righteous and godly. And so it is to draw near to God. This command comes with the promise that if we do God will draw near to us.

Worldliness had separated at least a portion of these believers from God. They're no longer living as his friends, but they're living as his enemy. Their intimate relationship has become remote, distant, cold, sterile, passionless.

Like taking a charcoal briquette and removing it from the fire and setting it off to the side, right? This is a typical campfire evangelism pitch. Take a coal out of the fire, move it to the side, and before long what happens?

It goes cold, doesn't it? It goes cold. It doesn't burn with the heat and the intensity that it once did. So I have to ask you, how is your walk with Christ this morning? How is your walk? How would you characterize your walk with Christ this morning in terms of warmth?

Are you near to him? Is he near to you? I mean, we all have periods of ups and downs, for sure. We have our dry spells. We have our times when our devotions are more duty than delight. That's true. It is true.

But they usually don't last long. And they may be attributed to many factors, and stress and fatigue should not be ruled out as one of them. God made us body and soul, and the body and the soul are connected in such a way that they influence one another.

But if it's been a long time since you've experienced intimacy with Christ, that the values and the concerns of this world occupy your heart and your mind, then you need a serious about-face. You need to run back towards Christ, and you will find him running back to you.

His arms are open wide. He welcomes all who will turn. But when you come back to Christ, you have to take a bath. You have to be washed clean. And that's the second description of repentance, to restore your purity.

Cleanse and purify. Verse 8, draw near to God, he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners. Purify your hearts, you double-minded. The world leaves us polluted, and the more we flirt with it, the more polluted we become.

And like the priests of old, we need to be purified in order to enter into the presence of God.

We need a bath.

They had elaborate ritual baths for the priesthood. James, I think, is picking up on those kinds of imagery here. Now, through the sacrifice of Christ, we are positionally sanctified, positionally clean.

Remember, Jesus says in the upper room, he who has been washed needs only to have his feet clean. He doesn't need a bath again. He's talking about a different thing. James here is speaking about those who have dabbled in the world and become defiled, and that defilement cannot be ignored.

It must be washed away. Cleanse your hands, you sinners. Purify your hearts, you double-minded. The word sinners and double-minded reminds us of how serious God is about personal holiness, our personal holiness.

The hands are symbolic of ethical conduct. The heart of the inner life, the double-mindedness, reproves them for a divided affection. Psalm 24, 3 and 4 says, Who may ascend into the hill of the Lord?

And who may stand in his holy presence? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who has not lifted up his soul to falsehood and has not sworn deceitfully. We must be washed. We must restore our purity.

God will not welcome us back into the intimacy of the fellowship with him if we come and try to bring along our two friends debauched and defiled with us. If we're coming back, we need to leave debauched and defiled behind and come back on our own.

We, like the prodigal son, need to let the pigs eat the pods and return empty-handed to the Father's house.

That's the way back.

And third, reject the world's frivolity. Reject the world's frivolity. Verse 9, be miserable and mourn. Be miserable and mourn. Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy into gloom. Again, he is consciously reflecting the language and the imagery of the Old Testament prophets.

And James is calling upon his readers, by extension, you and I, right, to recognize our wretchedness and mourn over our sin. Joel 2, verse 12, the prophet writes, Even now, yet even now, declares the Lord, return to me with all your heart and with fasting, weeping, and mourning.

The apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 5, 2, you have become arrogant and have not mourned instead in order that the one who has done this deed might be removed from your midst. This is hard language for us.

This is very hard language for us because we live in a culture of frivolity and self-assuredness. We are not generally a sober-minded generation. And probably among the American church, it's perhaps worse than in other places.

We are infected with easy believism and shallow repentance. And so the kinds of language of the Old Testament prophets is shocking to us. Be miserable, mourn, let your laughter be turned to joy. Who wants to come to a church like that?

I want to come to a place with a kicking band and a good coffee bar. I mean, that's so much of the world. Much of the world. We find it very, very hard to identify with this kind of language. With the tax collector himself in Luke 18, 13, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven but was beating his breast saying, God be merciful to me, the sinner.

The sinner.

Now, lest I leave us in an entire state of gloom, let me say this. God is not advocating that Christians go around looking like they have been baptized in pickle juice.

Okay?

He is not advocating that. But he is exhorting us in the strongest possible language to take the influence of worldliness in our lives as a very serious breach. A breach of the relationship with Christ and thus not something to be trifled with.

Worldliness is not something to be trifled with. We could say that worldliness is like the thistles that spring up in my backyard. After the rain comes, they seem to pop up everywhere. But they're small, and they're easy to ignore.

And when ignored, the roots go deeper, the thistles grow taller, the thorns get thornier, and they become enormous. They become troublesome, they inflict painful wounds on those who encounter them, particularly with bare feet.

Even mowing them doesn't really resolve the issue. That's kind of the way worldliness is. The best thing to do is to spray those thistles with some sort of a weed killer when they're very young and tender, and not ignore it.

And we could say that the sin of worldliness is the same. Deal with it when it's small before it consumes us, before it consumes you. Well, may God grant us the grace to energetically and regularly spray these spiritual weeds in our lives.

May the sin of worldliness not be named among us. By the grace of God, this will be true.

Let's pray.

Father, I feel like one of those times when a father has to call his children into the back bedroom to have a discussion with them. It's not fun on either end, to be the one giving the correction or to be the one receiving it.

And yet we do know that in it lies the path of joy. The Proverbs are clear. There are only two paths. There's the path of folly and the path of wisdom. And the path of folly can look appealing early on, but it is the path of wisdom in which true joy is found.

I thank you, our Father, that you love us so much that you will not leave us on a path of folly, that you come to us through your scriptures, you plead with us, you threaten us, you promise us that if we will turn, that we will find a merciful heavenly Father who is waiting to embrace us.

May you help each and every one of us, our Father, even now if needed, or if not in this moment, certainly in this week, when we are tempted to flirt with worldliness, when we are tempted to substitute the values and ambitions and affections of this rebellious world.

For the love of Christ. May you call us home.

Call us back to the family. Remind us of what you have said and enable us to walk into the light. We pray for Jesus' sake, amen.