Rev. David Holwick Z Book of James series
First Baptist Church
Ledgewood, New Jersey
July 17, 1994
James 4:4-10
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I. Do Christians have to change?
A. Notorious testimonies: Mickey Cohen, "Christian gangster."
35 years ago a notorious gangster Mickey Cohen attended a
meeting in Beverly Hills which was being led by Billy Graham.
Billy Graham was just starting out in evangelism and no one
had really heard of him.
Mickey Cohen was much better known.
Cohen liked what he was hearing.
Graham and some of the others talked to him about salvation,
but he made no commitment at that time.
A while later a Christian friend read Revelation 3:20 to him-
"Behold, I stand at the door and knock...."
This friend asked him to receive Jesus into his life.
And so Mickey Cohen did.
The news of his conversion made quite a sensation, and the
ministry of Billy Graham became known across the nation.
There was only one small problem - nothing in Mickey Cohen's
life really changed.
When his Christian friend confronted him, Mickey complained:
"You didn't tell me I would have to give up my work!" [Mafia]
"You didn't tell me I would have to give up my friends!"
Mickey had heard that so-and-so was a Christian athlete, and
so-and-so was a Christian actress, and he thought he could
be a Christian gangster.
#1062
B. Modern Christianity is missing repentance.
1) We want to make our faith attractive and easy.
2) We don't want to offend people, or drive them away.
3) It makes it easy for us, too.
II. Our God is a jealous God.
A. Church adulteresses. 4:4
1) Few events endanger a relationship more than adultery.
2) Relationship to God is a marriage, not slavery. (OT)
3) Sin breaks God's heart, just as adultery does ours.
4) All sin is sin against love.
B. We cannot be friends of the world. 4:4
1) "World" here stands for world's standards, as opposed
to standards of God's Kingdom.
a) We cannot love everything.
b) Some choices have to be made, and some are difficult.
2) God demands much, but there is a reason.
The captain of the ship looked into the dark night and saw
faint lights in the distance.
Immediately he told his signal man to send a message:
"Alter your course 10 degrees south."
Promptly a return message was received: "Alter your course 10
degrees north."
The captain was furious; his command had been ignored.
So he sent a second message:
"Alter your course 10 degrees south - I am the captain!"
Soon another message was received:
"Alter your course 10 degrees north -
I am seaman third class Jones."
Immediately the captain sent a third message, knowing the fear
it would evoke:
"Alter your course 10 degrees south - I am a battleship."
Then the reply came: "Alter your course 10 degrees north -
I am a lighthouse."
In the midst of our dark foggy times, all sorts of voices are
shouting orders into the night, telling us what to do, how
to adjust our lives.
Out of the darkness, one voice signals something quite
opposite to the rest - something almost absurd.
But the voice happens to be the Light of the World, and we
ignore it at our peril.
#2072
C. God longs for us. 4:5
1) Verse 5 is most difficult in book.
a) KJV, NIV: "our spirit tends toward envy (sin)."
b) Better: "God longs for our spirit."
2) God is jealous, and longs for our love (O.T.).
a) "He gives more grace" is a new sentence. 4:6
b) God make great demands, but gives great grace.
c) The greater the demand, the greater the help.
1> We can never be tempted beyond our limit. 1 Cor 10:13
III. Certain attitudes follow those who wish to be close to God.
A. Movement. "Come near/resist." 4:7-8
1) Toward God.
The story is told about a young man who applied for a job
with the Penn. Department of Transportation.
His application was accepted and he was given the job of
painting the white lines on a nearby roadway by hand
because all the machines were temporarily out of order.
The first day he painted eight miles.
The second day he painted four miles.
The third day he painted two miles.
The fourth day he only painted one mile.
In the beginning, his supervisor was very pleased with his
performance.
As the production level began to slide, he got curious.
The young man replied, "I am getting slower and slower
because the paint can is getting further and further away."
#2237
a) Spiritually, are you where you should be?
b) When we come near, he meets us.
2) Away from the devil. 4:7
a) It's not enough to do the right things.
b) You have to stop doing the wrong things.
B. Desire for purity: "Wash hands." 4:8
1) From ritual to morality.
When Henry David Thoreau wrote his classic wilderness book,
WALDEN (1854), he told of a powerful custom among the
Mucclasse Indians.
Once a year they had a village-cleanup called a "busk."
First, they would make new clothes for themselves, and new
furniture, and pots and pans, and all the other
necessities of life.
They would keep all of these new things in a new building
just outside of the village.
When everything was ready, they would begin the annual spring
cleaning.
Every corner of every house was scrubbed.
Every stick of furniture was thrown out.
Every child's toy went on the garbage heap.
The dirt paths were swept, and the weeds were plucked up.
Even the food that was left over from the winter was thrown
out the door.
Now all the refuse was gathered together.
They piled it high in the center of the village.
Then the chief set the heap on fire, and while they were
watching it burn, they took off their old clothes, and
threw them into the flames.
They tended the fire carefully, and made sure every last
piece of garbage was burned.
They even waited for three days to make sure everything had
been destroyed, and no coals were still glowing.
And on the fourth morning, washed and bathed, and dressed
in their new clothes, they gathered again at the heart
of the village.
Now the chief started a new fire, by rubbing sticks together,
and from the fresh flames each family took a burning branch
home.
The old was gone. Life was beginning again!
#2439
2) Purity requires single-mindedness.
a) Not enough to be torn, must make a commitment.
1> Many take a laid-back approach to salvation.
2> Christianity becomes a part-time hobby.
b) Real salvation is shown by fruit of life committed to
God.
C. Emotional reaction. "Grieve and mourn." 4:9
1) Emotional reaction to sin.
a) (Sin must be hated??)
b) Sounds negative and morbid, but often necessary.
c) Americans treat sin lightly. (illust)
2) Do we really HATE sin, weep over it?
a) Russian Baptists - no tears, no genuine repentance.
An early missionary to Russia complained that Russian
evangelicals seemed to feel that a person must
make at least one public confession with weeping.
"This they call conversion."
"I have heard people question the reality of someone's
conversion experience if they were not sufficiently
impressed by the remorsefulness of his weeping."
Soviet Evangelicals, p. 342
#2729
b) Emotions can be faked.
3) "I'm sorry" is not enough.
In his book, "Dear God, What Religion Were The Dinosaurs?,"
David Heller gives this actual letter from a child to God:
Dear God,
What happens if you do a few bad things and say you are
sorry, but are not sure if you really are?
Does it matter if you are only 10?
Jan, age 10
#2140
4) Yet genuine change should shake us to our soul.
a) If never moved in heart, probably not converted.
b) (John Wesley and "heart strangely warmed")
IV. The way to God is through humility.
A. God doesn't help us until we see our need.
B. Humility is hard for us.
1) Associated with demeaning concepts like submission.
a) Ephesians: "Celeste, submit to David."
1> Husbands like this.
b) James: "David, submit to God." 4:7
1> None of us like this.
2> We are married to God as submissive wives.
2) Mickey Cohen thought he could get God to submit to him.
a) Genuine salvation works the other way around.
b) We must be willing to do what God wants.
1> Easy to say. Almost a cliche.
In THE ESSENTIAL CALVIN AND HOBBES by Bill Watterson,
the cartoon character Calvin says to Hobbes,
"I feel bad that I called Susie names and hurt her feelings.
I'm sorry I did it."
"Maybe you should apologize to her," Hobbes suggests.
Calvin ponders this for a moment and then replies, "I keep
hoping there's a less obvious solution."
When we want to restore our relationship with God, we need
to remember that he has a liking for the obvious solution.
#2173
C. Genuine humility.
1) Desire to glorify God.
2) Desire to serve others.
Original sermon: December 6, 1987________________________________________________
Rev. David Holwick
First Baptist Church
West Lafayette, Ohio
December 6, 1987
True Repentance
James 4:4-10, King James Version
Thirty years ago, a notorious gangster named Mickey Cohen attended a meeting in Beverly Hills which was being led by Billy Graham. Billy Graham was just starting out in evangelism and no one had really heard of him. Mickey Cohen was much better known. Mickey liked what he was hearing. Billy and some of the others talked to him about salvation, but he made no commitment at that time. A while later a Christian friend read Revelation 3:20 to him - "behold, I stand at the door..." - and asked him to receive Jesus into his life. And so he did. The news of his conversion made quite a sensation and the ministry of Billy Graham became known across the nation.
There was only one small problem - nothing in Mickey Cohen's life really changed. When his Christian friend confronted him, Mickey complained:
"You didn't tell me I would have to give up my work!" [Mafia]
"You didn't tell me I would have to give up my friends!" [gangsters]
Mickey had heard that so-and-so was a Christian athlete, and so-and-so was a Christian actress, and he thought he could be a Christian gangster.
More recently, the publisher of a dirty magazine was brought to Christ. Larry Flynt, the owner of Hustler magazine, was converted by President Carter's sister, who was a Pentecostal evangelist. All the papers carried it, and people waited to see if he would change. He did. His first editorial said he now followed the spirit of Jesus and Buddha. On one of the covers he put a picture of an Easter bunny nailed to a cross. Today he says it was all a bunch of baloney - which is a good thing, because with that kind of attitude, you don't want him on your side. In modern evangelism, one note is missing. - That note is called "repentance."
It's really a very simple word. It means to have a revolution in your attitude toward life, and to change the way you live. We are so interested in inviting people to Christ, and having them make a decision, that we often neglect this very important principle.
Salvation is a lot more than wanting to go to heaven. Who doesn't want to? (Only those who think beer and sex aren't allowed). Salvation is not based on the blessings you want to receive, but the commitments to God you are willing to make.
James knew that most people don't like to make full commitments. We like to hedge - get the best of both. We want God, and we want the pleasures of this world. But it doesn't work that way. James says that friendship with the world is hatred toward God.
In blunt terms, he says such people - and churches are filled with them are adulterers. To disobey God is like breaking the marriage vow. It means that our relationship to God is not like the distant relationship of a king and a slave. It's like the intimate relationship between husband and wife. It means that when we sin we break God's heart, just like the heart of one partner in a marriage can be broken by the other All sin is sin against love.
In our hearts we know this is true. But there's still one little problem - we love to sin. It's ingrained in us. As James puts it, the spirit that lives inside us absolutely loves to be seduced by the world.
This is an interesting verse because it can be translated several different ways. The word "lusteth" really means to long for something. It's not sexual. And "spirit" does not have to be the subject of it.
Some Bibles translate it: "God jealously longs for the spirit he has placed in us." This is possible, especially since the Bible says God is a jealous God. - He won't play second fiddle. But when the Bible says God is jealous, it always uses a special word for it. So I think the King James has it right.
Our human spirit is constantly pulled to compromise with the world. You may find so overpowering that you don't think you can ever break it. It may provide a relief for stress. Or help you forget loneliness, or failure. Whatever your reasons, for whatever you are doing, it is often not a conscious decision. We just feel drawn to it. And if God expects you to quit it, he is asking the impossible. Maybe you've already tried, and failed miserably. God does make big demands. He's entitled to it. James says that where God makes a great demand, he gives great grace to fulfill it. The greater the demand, the greater the help he provides. But God doesn't help people until they realize their need for it. So James quotes Scripture to underline his point - the way to God is through humility.
Humility is not a great American virtue. We much prefer arrogance. Because humility is associated with demeaning concepts like submission. Generally, I like the word "submit." There's a great verse in Ephesians that says, "Celeste, submit to David." James doesn't put it as good. We want to put it, "Celeste, submit yourself to God," or "these people next to me better submit themselves to God." But this verse doesn't settle for other people. If James thinks of salvation as being married to God - and he does - then Christians are put in the position of the submissive wife.
Mickey Cohen the gangster thought he could get God to submit to him. Genuine salvation always works the other way around. It means being willing to do what God wants, and to accept what he sends Our way. That's very easy to say. I suppose it qualifies as a cliche. But James is very serious about it. If people really want to get close to God, James says certain attitudes will follow them. One will be a deep desire for purity.
"Wash hands." Started as ritual, became symbolic of inner devotion to God.
"Grieve, mourn." Emotional reaction to sin. Do we really hate sin, weep over it? Russian Baptists believe if there are no tears, there is no genuine repentance.
"I'm sorry, God" is not enough. The real sign of salvation is a life that is committed to God, and shows fruit.
Outline for original sermon: December 6, 1987
I. Do Christians have to change?
A. Notorious testimonies.
1) Mickey Cohen testimony.
2) Larry Flynt testimony.
B. Modern evangelism is missing repentance.
II. Meaning of repentance.
A. Simple word, meaning change direction of life.
1) Salvation is more than wanting to go to heaven.
2) People like to hold back.
B. Spiritual adultery results.
1) Relationship to God as marriage, not slavery.
2) Sin breaks God's heart, just as adultery does ours.
3) All sin is sin against love.
III. We love to sin.
A. It is ingrained in us.
1) The spirit in us tends to be seduced by world. KJV,NIV 4:5
2) Can also be translated other ways.
a) God jealously longs for the spirit in us.
1> God is a jealous God, especially in OT.
B. We are pressured to compromise.
1) Sin provides relief for stress, loneliness, failure.
2) It seems impossible for us NOT to sin.
C. God makes big demands on us.
1) God make great demands, but gives great grace. 4:6
2) The greater the demand, the greater the help.
IV. The way to God is through humility.
A. God doesn't help us until we see our need.
B. Humility is hard for us.
1) Associated with demeaning concepts like submission.
a) Ephesians: "Celeste, submit to David."
1> Husbands like this.
b) James: "David, submit to God." 4:7
1> None of us like this.
2> We are married to God as submissive wives.
2) Mickey Cohen thought he could get God to submit to him.
a) Genuine salvation works the other way around.
b) We must be willing to do what God wants.
1> Easy to say. Almost a cliche.
V. Certain attitudes follow those who wish to be close to God.
A. Desire for purity.
1) Wash hands.
2) Grieve, mourn.
a) Emotional reaction to sin.
b) Do we really HATE sin, weep over it?
1> Russian Baptists - no tears, no genuine repentance.
3) "I'm sorry" is not enough.
a) Real salvation is shown by fruit of life committed to
God.
Copyright © 2024 by Rev. David Holwick
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