We are continuing in the letter of James. So open your Bibles to James chapter four. And what I'm preaching is gonna be a little bit different than what's in your bulletin. So it is not Irene's mistake, it's the fact that when I gave her my sermon title and the passage, I was overly ambitious as to what I thought I could accomplish in the time I have to preach. I will not be preaching all the way to verse six. Otherwise, we would be here till probably this afternoon. And I didn't wanna do that to you, beloved. So our sermon this morning is from James chapter four, verses one through three. We're just gonna cover the first three verses, and there's a lot there. The title of this sermon is, The Cause of Your Trouble. The Cause of Your Trouble. So I'm gonna read our passage. I ask that you follow along with me, and as usual, I'm reading from the English Standard Version. So here's James 4, one through three. What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and you do not receive because you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions. So just to reiterate, if you had not heard this, I want you to understand that James is writing to the church at large here. He's not writing to one individual. And so we need to take it in that context. It's not just one person he's singling out. good commentators do believe that when James mentions some of these things that to us are extremely sinful and hard to believe that happen in a church, that James is referring to actual occurrences that did happen in churches in the first century. And you think about that, first century, it's like that old adage, it's like the closer you are to the source of a river, the purer the water is. So we think about that with the early church, don't we? And we're not off target by thinking this, but they are close to the time of our Lord's preaching on the earth, and they're getting information directly from the Lord's faithful disciples, the apostles who are sending this message out. So we would expect that There would not be the issues in the church that we see now. That there had not yet been time for the divisions that have occurred over the centuries and various heresies. In the first century had not really arisen. But yet, what are we dealing with? What is James talking about? He is talking about our sinful nature, isn't he? And that has not changed from the time of the garden until the Lord returns, we're going to be dealing with that. Excuse me. So James' issue here is the impact of sin upon us and what it is and why it is. This is not as reassuring as some of the modern messages preached from some pulpits that draw upon pop psychology, how to feel better about yourself, how to kind of deflect responsibility for the things that occur in your life. Now obviously, just from these first three verses, what is James doing? James is pointing the finger right at Christians, like, you've got these problems? Well, brother or sister, you need to look in your own heart. This is where these problems are coming from. He doesn't offer excuses, which is a difficult thing. It's an unpopular thing in our day and age, isn't it? So, as I mentioned, He's dealing with mankind's natural state. After the fall of the garden, of course, we know it's one of sin. We see this in the second generation of man, the first to be born out of the garden. that generation that was the first to be born in a state of sin, what we call theologically original sin, that's when these issues that James is talking about, the experiences of quarrels and fights, start, excuse me, start, and eventually this leads to the greater conflict of war, war between large groups of people, which we read about that, you know, so Genesis chapter four, we see the first conflict between brothers, a murder occurs, and then shortly after that, After the time of Abram, we see the first world war described in Genesis. And of course, by world war, I'm referring to the area in the world that the Bible in the Old Testament is concerned with. So this proneness to conflict in our natural state, in man's natural state, was recognized also by observers of human nature, of course, and not just in the Bible. Important writers, important thinkers dwelt on this and tried to figure out why this was. And As a means of illustration, one I'm going to draw on right now is Thomas Hobbes, who lived in the 17th century. He was an English writer, thinker, philosopher, and he wrote probably the greatest political treatise of all times. It's still being taught today, and he wrote at this book I'm referring to, Leviathan. He wrote it near the end of the English Civil War. So this was about 1651 that he writes this book. Now, the English Civil War, just as means of explanation, was a conflict between the King of England, Charles I, and his parliament. The parliament at this time had quite a few very devout Christian men as members, men that were called despairingly Puritans, men that we respect and we read many of their writings. Well, they accused Charles of treason. And I think rightfully so. And they tried to bring correction to the English throne and to the English government. Charles refused and war broke out. Now interestingly, Hobbes was a monarchist. He was a royalist. He was on the side of King Charles and he thought these Puritans he referred to them as Judas's. So he was accusing them of being rebellious as Judas Iscariot was. And so he writes this book about, basically about what's going on around him and what he's seeing in Leviathan. And he points the finger at man's what he calls the natural state of war that man, he sees mankind as continually in war. Every human being is at war. And he describes human nature as the war of everyone against everyone. And the only Solution to this, according to Hobbes, is an overarching powerful state that controls everything. That's why it's called Leviathan, this giant. If you look at a photograph of the early manuscript, and even some of the contemporary ones we might read today have the same picture, there's this huge giant that's wearing a crown. It looks like King Charles I, And if you look closely, this giant king is made up of hundreds of little men. So that is the state. So basically he's pushing for this idea of the deep state to control everything. So this idea hasn't gone away. But Hobbes thinks that man can solve this problem. Hobbes does not see Christ as a solution. Hobbes is writing at a time where you really cannot publicly express the belief of unbelief, let's say. You cannot publicly be an atheist. You'd find yourself hauled off to prison and perhaps executed. But if you read Hobbes, I don't think he's a believer. My opinion of him is that he's an atheist, even though he writes quite a bit about the church and state relationship, about Christ's role in everything, but yet he says other things. It's at this time in our history of Western civilization where the acceptance of atheism is starting to creep in. So he's... Hobbes is seeing the same thing that James is talking about, these constant conflicts, these wars. And when we mention war, we think about state against state, normally. But both Hobbes and James are talking about wars of individuals, and James is even talking about wars within us. And this is the natural man. This is due to our sin. They are in agreement on that. As James says in verse one, this war of all against all is within us. He says the causes of quarrels and fights, which literally is wars and battles, among you is that your passions are at war within you. And when James uses passions, It's a little bit wider than we might think. And passions can be, they can be used in a positive sense, can't they? One could be passionate about art, and that's a good thing. One could be passionate about cooking, and that's a good thing. But this is not a positive sense in which James is using it. He's using this Greek term that really is referring to passions, of course, but also desires or pleasures. And again, not evil per se, but we recognize, don't we, that our sin nature can drive the good things that God has blessed us with, things that give us pleasure, the things we desire. Our sin nature can drive those to the point where they are harmful. Harmful for ourselves and harmful for others. The Greek word that underlies this is where we get the term of hedonism. And I'm sure you've heard of that. And that's a Greek philosophy. There was a school of philosophy that taught hedonism. They were called hedonists, surprisingly, not surprisingly. And so to live the good life, and see if this doesn't sound familiar. The good life for them was the avoidance of pain as much as possible and the enjoyment of pleasure as much as possible. It's a little bit more balanced than how we use the term where someone is just completely wacko for doing the things that they lust after. But the whole idea of living is that you're not uncomfortable and that you enjoy things. And there's pulpits, very popular pulpits in the United States that preach that heathenous message today, that God wants you to be completely happy, doesn't he? He doesn't want you to suffer at all. And if you're suffering, then something's wrong and it's probably within you and you need to fix it by doing these certain things. And then, you know, God will of course bless you as you pursue your passions. So James, what he's saying here, is that it's this desire for pleasure that is driving the conflicts we experience. And that takes a little bit of explaining too. Because pleasure, I mean it in a philosophical sense, something much broader than, like if I have a really good steak, I get pleasure out of that. But there's pleasures, other pleasures in life that we may not label as pleasures, but they are things we desire, things we want. Maybe it's recognition, fame, power, success. Those give the natural person pleasure. Those are things that all of us want, and they're not necessarily bad if they are balanced, if they are done with God in focus. So these passions, these pleasures cause conflicts. So I want to make sure we understand we're talking far beyond, because when you read this, what James is saying, I think it is, perfectly normal for us to think he's talking about sinful lusts. And yes, but beyond the lusts of the body, there's other things he's talking about. There are many sinful things which are desires in sight. And that's why, if you notice, perhaps you've noticed in your own life, as I have, back before I was converted to Christianity. Of course, I tried to control these desires, these things that I wanted, these passions. And I could, I could be successful for a very short period of time. And I was a very disciplined individual, but yet I was unable to remain disciplined in that sense. Eventually, my willpower would break down And this is what's happening in the church. This is why James is writing. If you recall, when we were in chapter three, verse 14 of chapter three, James points out, but you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts. Do not boast and be false to the truth. So it's the selfish ambition, excuse me, that is causing this bitter jealousy. And it's the desire and to be important, to be above others, to have attention, and to have the spotlight, which in turn causes the boasting and being false to the truth. That increases the sense of self-importance and superiority over others. And that's what James is saying. This is what's at the root of all of the stuff that's going on and why you have trouble in your life. And we're gonna see that this actually, keep in mind that it applies to our lives also outside the church. It's not just conflicts within the church, it's how we live. So there's an ethics to this, a Christian ethic that James is talking about. This is the first point I wanna make this morning as we go on. That Christians are called to obedience, not lawlessness. Christians are called to obedience, not lawlessness. So those who are practicing what James is speaking of in the second half of chapter three and now the beginning of chapter four, these people are breaking the law of Christ. And the law of Christ is two things. We know this from the gospels. Number one, love the Lord your God. And number two, love your neighbor as yourself. And when the Lord Jesus explained what the greatest commandment was, what did he say about these two things in relationship to the Mosaic administration, to the laws of the old covenant? That the law and the prophets hang upon these. So what that means is that everything in the Old Testament, all the Old Testament laws and ordinances Everything that had been prophesied by the prophets is because of these great commandments. To love the Lord your God and to love your neighbor as yourself. We do those two things and we fulfill everything that the Lord desires of us. But can you love your neighbor if you're filled with bitter jealousy towards him? No, absolutely not. Then how much more so is this in the church, loving your brother, loving your sister within the church? We're to love all people. But we call each other brothers and sisters because we are family. We are the family of God. So our relationship is thus closer than it is to people outside the church, and rightfully so. There's nothing wrong with that. We're not exclusive to others. We invite, our family's an open family. Anybody can join us if the Lord leads to us, to our little church or any other church. But it's sometimes, depending on your background, the family analogy isn't always good. Because sometimes there's not a lot of love in families, right? I mean, I experienced that growing up. We were Scots-Irish. So there was either stone silence or fights, one or the other. Either you didn't talk to them or you beat them up, one or the other. So Jesus gives us a lot of examples about this, doesn't he? If you think about the gospels, you think about his teaching. Maybe the parable of the good Samaritan comes to mind, right? That's about loving someone that is unlovable to you. You know, this Jewish fellow's on the road between Jericho and Jerusalem and he gets set upon by robbers. He gets beat up and he gets left at the side of the road. And he's a Jewish guy, right? And so along comes a Jewish Hebrew priest. And what does the priest do? Passes on the other side of the road. Then comes a Levite. And what does the Levite do? He passes on the other side of the road. What's implied here is that what happened to this man has made him unclean, and these two men are putting the rituals of the religion ahead of loving your neighbor as yourself. And so along comes this despised Samaritan. The Israelites and the Samaritans were enemies. They were opposed to each other. They weren't actually always or usually at war, but their cultures did not mesh, and they really looked down upon one another. The Samaritans thought the Israelites were unclean. The Israelites thought the Samaritans were unclean, and yet this Samaritan is the one who stops and helps Israelite far beyond, I must admit, probably anything I would think to do to someone that I assisted at the side of the road. Putting someone up in a hotel and paying for their stay and saying, here's extra money, Mr. Motel Keeper, and I'm gonna come back, and if you need to use more than that money, I will give you even beyond that. I'm good for it. Jesus also warns us, the flip side of that coin, if you will, about our lack of love. And if we call our brother a fool, which in our day and age, that's a pretty mild word, right? I mean, we hear words much worse than that all of the time. I know, you turn on your TV and it's like, If you're more than 10 years old, you're shocked at what they get away with saying on the television anymore. But the Lord warned, you call your brother fool and you are in danger of hellfire for that. It's not the profanity, it's what lies behind the profanity. The profanity is not acceptable. I'm not saying that it is, but it's something deeper. It's not, you know, we have to dive beneath the superficialities of this to understand that, of course, what is the Lord talking about? He's talking about the condition of our hearts. If we are calling our brother fool a fool, if we are at war with those that we should be closest with, if we're engaging in battles, combat, and quarrels, with those who like us are image bearers of God, then how can we love God himself if we hate his image bearers? And that's how these things are connected. If we love God, we will love his image bearers. And we can only properly love his image bearers if we love him. One simply cannot love God and hate or even dislike people. Now I know there's a lot of Christians that would have a hard time swallowing that because I know people who claim to be Christians who don't like people. They don't even want to come to church because they don't want to be around people that they don't like. Well bad news for people like that. Well, maybe good news. They don't have to worry about being around people in eternity, because they're not gonna be where the people of God are. Brothers, sisters, friends, if you have animosity towards these others, then you are not abiding in Christ, I would say. And I would warn you about that, that your eternal salvation, your eternal security is at risk. And those of us that are in Christ, we've been set free. We've been set free from our sin. We've been set free, as Paul writes in Galatians, in chapter five, verse one, where he talks about the liberty, the freedom that Christ has given us. He's talking primarily about the old covenant law. But he's talking about other things also, but primarily that. And we who are in Christ are led by the Holy Spirit and are free from the bondage of sin and not under the burden of the old covenant law. Now, Paul gets accused here of what's called antinomianism. that Paul is against the law. And if you recall in the book of Acts, there's times where some of the Jews in some of the Greek cities were just, they were in a rage because they accused Paul of teaching against the law of Moses. So this term means against the law. Well, Paul was obviously not against the law, and we're gonna see that. We're gonna see proof of that. At the same time, there were others who said that Paul was a legalist. that so there's two ends of the spectrum. We've got the against the law, and we've got the over-emphasis on the law, which neither of which are biblical, neither of which are how we should view scripture, nor how we should lead our lives. And it sounds complicated, but it really isn't. If you know God's word, you read God's word, you're in God's word, you're partaking of the means of grace, you're hearing the word preached, and it's being preached properly, The Lord is very clear on what we are to do and what applies to us, what doesn't apply to us, and in what way it does. It's not as difficult as you would think because Christ, who has transformed us, transformed you as a believer, has also transformed the law. It's not that the law is wiped away and we don't pay any attention to it. That's what some people think. That's what some people teach. That's not it at all. We're not under the burden of the law anymore. It's not given to us as a means, as most of you know, it's not given to us as a means of making ourselves righteous, of being justified. It is given to us as a moral code, an ethical way in which to live, and Christ He said to his disciples, I give you a new commandment. And we read this, it's like, that's not a new commandment. That's from Leviticus. That was like from a long time ago and he's just repeating it. Well, it is a new commandment because he's transformed the Mosaic law into this. And there's not all these other things that we have to do, like dietary restrictions and the material we use for our clothes and the sacrificial systems. Why? Because the Lord Jesus fulfilled all of those things. They were just shadows. types of what he was to do. It was pointing towards him. He's fulfilled that. But that doesn't mean that the moral code is wiped out, that we can do whatever we want, and we can give free reign to these passions that are setting on fire these churches that James is writing to. Remember his illustration about your tongue setting fires. It's not that these people were drawing broad swords and slashing at each other in their assemblies, but their tongues were like flamethrowers and they were burning each other up. And we know that that occurs even today. As I've said before, I just thank the Lord that we don't have that issue here, but we shouldn't rest on our laurels. It's not because we are so good. It's not because we are so dialed in. The Lord has blessed us. blessed us and we've been obedient to his word and we pay attention to his word. It's like when I was a young police officer, this just popped into my mind, where I worked was extremely violent. I was there not a short time and I realized all these guys around me that had been on more than a couple years had been in gunfights. So there was a good chance I was gonna be in a gunfight and you had to be ready for it. And we talked about this amongst the guys I worked with. It's like, man, how is it that we've not lost an officer? I mean, we were getting shot at all the time. The sniper attacks were routine. I mean, so many guys I knew were shot at by gunmen in hiding. They sniped our police station. It was wild. And we patted ourselves on our back. that like, yeah, we're just so good at what we do, it's not gonna happen to us. Well, it did happen to us. There's things we must recognize we have no control over. And there's other things that we do have control over. And one of the things we do have control over is what James is talking about, what I wanna talk about this morning, is controlling ourselves and being obedient to the Lord. Now notice he's writing this to who? The church. These are people that have been justified by Christ. These aren't people that need to be brought to salvation, at least by what they profess. James is not writing to the world at large saying this is what you need to do to get right with God and then you will go to heaven. He's saying, no, you were saying that you were in Christ, and yet you were acting like this. You were murdering one another by your speech. There's commentators, when James speaks about murder, there's commentators that very sincerely believe he's referring to an actual murder that took place in one of the churches, that this is not just metaphorical language. Anyway, let me get back on track here. Second point that I want to make this morning. James and Paul are united on the cause of your trouble. James and Paul are united on the cause of your trouble. I think this is important because as we've mentioned from the pulpit many times, This idea that James and Paul are teaching something different is erroneous, it's wrong. James and Paul are not teaching a different gospel. They're not teaching a different means of salvation or justification. Listen to what Paul says here in this excerpt I'm gonna read you from Galatians. Does it sound different than what we read from James chapter four this morning? So Galatians 5, 17, this is what Paul says. For the desires of the flesh are against the spirit, and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh. For these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. James and Paul are tracking. It's the same thing. Not surprising because they have the same teacher, the Lord Jesus Christ. James, it was his half-brother whom he ignored until his brother was resurrected and appeared to him. Paul also ignored this Jesus. Didn't believe him. Knew he existed because he was persecuting his followers, Paul was. until he also was brought to faith by the appearance of the resurrected Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus. So in this verse from Galatians, when Paul uses the word flesh, we understand that he's referring to the natural nature, to the sin man. And sinful passions are not only at war within you, they are at war with the Holy Spirit who indwells you, Christian. This is the cause of this internal war that's going on. And all of us experience this during this life, until the Lord returns or until we go to be with Him. There's a conflict between our sinful self, our sinful nature, which remains. at this time, and the Holy Spirit, which indwells us. We experience that conflict, and when you're a new Christian, if you're a new Christian, you're new to faith in Christ, this conflict is probably gonna be very extreme. It was for me, it was very, very difficult. And then later, as we mature in faith, we go through this process that the Bible calls sanctification. Then that conflict eases. and you wonder how it was that it was so hard to do what the Lord wanted of you at once upon a time. And then how now it's like, man, that's, regardless of what the Lord wants, it's what I want now. Where before it was like, this is what Jesus wants. I really don't want that. I want this over here. It's a blessing how the Lord transforms us. In the reprobate, though, he doesn't have this internal struggle. And yes, we think back on our lives before Christ, and we may struggle with these things that we don't wanna do, and we do it because of morality, perhaps, or ethics, or the avoidance of pain. Right? Like the heatheness. We don't want to suffer pain. And some of these passions can take us into a world of pain where we can run afoul of the law. We can damage our family. We can ruin our marriages. And if you're a normal human being, none of those things are enjoyable. They're painful. but without being transformed into a new creation, a new creature by the act of God, it's a losing struggle for humans to fight against that. The natural man, imagine a garden hose. Modern garden hose with the nozzle at the end. You have the nozzle turned off and you stretch your hose out, you're going to wash your car, whatever, and you turn the hose on, full blast, the phone rings or something happens, you go inside the house. And there's all this pressure building up in that hose. Well, the natural man, his passions that he's trying to control on his own is the nozzle that he shut off. But he's still got all this pressure coming in, because there's nothing that's taking these desires away from him. He's trying to control them. And then he loses sight of what's going on. what he's controlling. He's diverted or it just becomes exhausting, whatever. And what happens to our garden hoses when we leave them unattended? The water, that pressure is going to find a weakness someplace, right? And you come out and you've got a burst water hose and it's squirting water. That's what it's like when we were in our natural state. At some point in time, your hose was gonna burst and that passion was gonna be let loose, you know, even if you didn't want it. Paul says that these works of the flesh, these passions are evident. And when he says this, what he means is, by evidence, you don't really need to be told this, is what he's telling the recipients of his letter. You don't need to be told this, it's evident, you know it. But I'm gonna point it out to you anyway, is what Paul's saying. Even though you know what they are. And in Galatians, again, in Galatians, it's such a great book when it comes to such a great letter dealing with this, just like James is dealing with this. Galatians 5, 19 through 21, he lays these things out. These are the works of the flesh, sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. As I went down, went through that list of Paul's, you heard the very things that James is talking about, right? The issues. So when Paul ends things like these, this list is not inclusive. He's saying there's more. There's much more. But you're supposed to get the idea here. And this list is not inclusive, but it's representative. So what it means is that we can't look at this and go, OK, can't do that, can't do that. Wait a minute, he didn't mention this. I can do this. No, that's not it. If we think that, we're missing the point. He's just covering this range, and it's like, and things like these. So, you know, there's no wiggle room in this for our Christian life. We are not to be doing sinful things. We're not to be doing things that are contrary to loving God and loving one's neighbor as yourself. You think of any of the commandments, and if you were to break them, you would either or also be sinning against God or sinning against your neighbor. And when we sin against God or our neighbors, we are not loving them. Then Paul closed verse 21 of Galatians 5 with this warning that we need to pay attention to. He says, I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things, on this list, will not inherit the kingdom of God. Not inherit the kingdom of God. If we are adopted into God's family, we are his children, and as his children, we are going to inherit his wealth. God's not gonna die and give us this stuff. God set it up where we get to inherit his wealth, which is his kingdom, with him, and enjoy it with him, which is so much better than inheritance on this earth, isn't it? You love your dad, your mom, a relative, and you get an inheritance perhaps when they die, but you don't get to enjoy that inheritance with them. The kingdom of God is so much fuller than that. Everything that God has for us is better than even the best that we have in our life here. So Paul gives this clear warning of judgment. That's what it is. Not inheriting the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven, same thing, is a warning of judgment. You will be judged. And we know none of us will fare well if we are judged on our own merits. There's not a human being alive that can stand before the Lord and be judged on what they did and be declared righteous. It just is not possible. Now Paul obviously is not preaching antinomianism, as I explained that. I'm not preaching that either. No good, but I've never heard it preached from this pulpit. You're not gonna hear it from a Reformed Baptist church, a Reformed Baptist preacher, or any of our brothers who share the word with us. You're not gonna hear antinomianism as we do here in some churches. But again, Paul is not preaching works righteousness. So refraining from these desires of the flesh is not the way to bring justification. That's not it. He's not saying, don't do these things and you will be justified before God. No, he's saying, if you're in Christ, you shouldn't be doing these things. The Lord has justified you. And as one who is now in Christ, you should not do these things. Just like the example, we have Christ within us. Do we unite our bodies, which are now temples of the living God, do we unite Christ with these sins that are on this list or any like them? No, we're not to do that. So we've been justified. We obtain justification from God alone. And then, as has been explained many times, but it always bears repeating, we need to learn these things, God justifies us, then comes sanctification. And sanctification is the Holy Spirit working with us. We take part in that. And these two things together, justification and sanctification, equal salvation. That's what salvation is, it's these two things. So if one declares themselves, yeah, I'm justified, I'm in Christ, but yet is not involved in sanctification, there's been no change in this person's life. They do the same things they were doing before that are sins against God and sins against their neighbor, and there's no repentance, there's no remorse over it, there's no change in the behavior, then you have that equal sign, but with the slash on it, does not equal. That does not equal salvation. No sanctification, no salvation. As Paul says in Galatians 5, 24 through 26, and those who belong to Christ Jesus, that's us, right? have crucified the flesh with his passions and desires. Who's doing the crucifixion of the passions and desires in the flesh here? Paul is saying we're doing it, right? Of course, we're not doing it alone. The Holy Spirit is carrying the heavy end of that, obviously, but this is something we are to do. It's pointed out to us. Then he goes on to say, if we live by the Spirit, Okay, that also implies that we are doing something right if we live by the Spirit. Paul does not say the Spirit's just gonna take over your life and you're gonna be living like a holy robot, no. He says, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. If you've been in the military or anything like that, you've had to learn how to march. And when we march, that's when we have to keep in step. You don't keep in step, some drill instructors will very politely point that out to you. But to keep in step, you have to pay attention. You have to listen to the cadence that is being called. You're obedient to the cadence, and you're aware of what's going on around you. You're aware of the man or person next to you, and are they on their left or on their right, and am I in time with them? So there's an involvement again there, keeping in step. Then he ends this passage, he says, let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another. We're all equal in Christ, aren't we? Paul points that out. There's none that are more supreme in Christ. There's no Jew, nor Gentile, nor male, nor female, because we're equal in our salvation, of course. That's not the same as what our culture is saying, that there's no differences between, there is differences, of course, there's major differences, but in the plan of salvation, no, none of us are above each other. Back to James. Second verse, first part of it. He says, you desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. So both Paul and James, we should see, are laying the provocations, the fights and quarrels at this door of sin that's crouching, ready to pounce upon you. This is the exact same analogy that the Lord God explained to Cain in Genesis 4, when he's angry, right? He's angry at God and he's angry at his brother. He's not loving God, he's not loving his neighbor. His neighbor who is as close as close can be, his own blood brother. And like Cain, your sin desires you. Your sin is your sin nature. As hard as it is for us to understand, and as unpopular as this is in our culture, Your inner self does have this desire to destroy you, to destroy you in ways that you might think are pleasurable. I remember an interview I saw not long ago of this very well-known actor, an extremely smart man. and a good actor, and this, he was being interviewed, and the interviewer was asking him about happiness. What is happiness? And he was pausing and thinking, and of course this interviewer had to keep talking, and so he's explaining the interviewer's version of happiness, and this actor says, no, you're describing pleasure. That's not, what you're describing is not happiness. He says, my pleasures are killing me. The things I take pleasure in, this actor said, I overdo them to the point where they're ready to kill me. I like eating certain foods. I overindulge and it's unhealthy for me. I love the taste of alcohol. I'm a fallen down drunk some of the times. I love the high I get from drugs. These are my pleasures and they're killing me. That's not, and I'm not happy about it. Well, unfortunately, this man died of a drug overdose. But he points out something very important here, doesn't he? That pleasure and happiness, or joy, as the Bible says, are two different things. And in our sinful state, we put them together, we intermesh them, and they should not be so. You pursue that which gives you pleasure, you will not end up at the door of happiness. What James is saying in this first part of verse two, this is what he's saying. I'm gonna take the language, the Greek, and make it very literal, because then it's like, well, it just smacks you in the face what he's saying. James is saying this to us. You lust for something, but don't get it. So in frustration, you kill. and you hotly desire, but you cannot have what you want and so are frustrated. And in frustration, you quarrel and fight. Boy, if that's not human nature right there, the natural man, I don't know what is. But some would look at this and go, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. He's writing to the church, right? That's what you said, preacher, didn't you? Yes, yes, he's writing to the church. Killing, murder amongst those who call themselves God's people, that doesn't sound right. Surely, surely James is using this metaphorically. That there's an underlying spiritual message that, And what the person's getting at, isn't it, is that they want to reduce the impact of this. I want to make it less bad for me. Let's spiritualize it so it really doesn't apply. I'll ask you this, though, and I want you to wrestle with this. This issue is James speaking metaphorically. Let me ask you if Christ is speaking metaphorically here in Matthew 5, 21 through 22. Our Lord says, you have heard it was said to those of old, you shall not murder. And whoever murders will be liable to judgment. But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment. Whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council. And whoever says, you fool, will be liable to the hell Is Christ's reference to judgment metaphorical here? Yeah, he used the word metaphorical, or excuse me, judgment, but he didn't mean judgment. Judgment, he meant judgment whatever. Do you see how that argument goes? It just doesn't hold water, does it? Is Christ's reference to the hell of fire metaphorical? I'm gonna answer that one because there are many in the church, unfortunately, even pastors who will say this is metaphorical. It is not metaphorical. The fires of hell are real. And if you're not in Christ, you are at risk of eternal fire of hell. Now I know that sounds really old fashioned. That's like fire and brimstone scary stuff. It's what God's told us. He's warned us. He's given us these warnings. You've probably noticed God does not judge anyone, even going back into the Old Testament. There's no judgment given that there is not a warning. Often many warnings before the judgment. God warns before he judges. How fair is that? I mean, I think of instances that I know of where people have attacked and there's no warning, suddenly there's just an attack and there's harm, there's injury, sometimes there's death and destruction. Okay, well how about the Apostle John? His first letter, 1 John 3 through 15. Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. Is John's denial of eternal life a metaphor? No, it's a warning. People want to weaken these warnings by reducing them to literary metaphors and so pay them little attention. I've known several men in my life, some in my family, others fairly close to me, that enjoyed certain well-known preachers like Joel Osteen, because Joel Osteen made them feel good. They didn't feel bad about themselves. And one of these men said, you know, I don't like going to church because the preachers, they make me feel bad. I don't want to feel bad. I want to feel good about myself. That's what I love about Joel Osteen. He makes me feel good. And that the power of positive speaking, positive thinking, that's all I need. That's very common, though, isn't it? It's sad. To make these statements metaphorical is to miss the point of the message. That's changing the word of God to a different gospel. It's stripping the word of God of the power that God has placed in his word, and it's turning it into what we call theologically liberal theology. which is just a means of living morally and ethically as Jesus, as our example, and the good teacher. Not that he's come to rescue us from the fires of hell, because that's not, that's metaphorical, that's symbolic, that's not really what it means, according to the liberal theologians. That's evil, to change the word of God. So when you give free reign to your desires, lusts, and passions, like James is talking about, you're no longer obeying the commandment to not covet your coveting. Just like King David, out on the rooftop enjoying the night air in Jerusalem on his palace. And he sees this beautiful woman bathing on her rooftop. And he desires her, he desires her to the point where he commits adultery with her, commands her to be brought to him. An act of adultery ensues. She winds up conceiving. Well, now, gotta cover that up, right? He tries all these ploys and none of them work. He's gonna be discovered. So her husband is one of his top generals. He's out in the field at war. It's where David should have been. At that time, the kings were to lead their armies, not sit, you know, at the seat of power like politicians do today and send others out to do the fighting. So James conspires to have this general of his, the husband of this woman, murdered. not just die in battle, there's a plan where they're going to, where his troops are gonna be withdrawn and he's gonna be left out and be killed by the enemy. So this is murder on the part of David. And by doing this, David brought death upon his own house. and the repercussions of that sin, even though David was a man after God's own heart, even though David is now with our Lord eternally in heaven. David was saved, but he sinned in this manner. And those of us that are in Christ, if we sin likewise, we're not gonna lose our salvation by that if we're in Christ. But the ramifications of our sin will be very hard, very hard. And they'll impact us and those around us, those we love, could destroy our families, could destroy our church. These are the things we need to think about when we're tempted by our sinful desires. Point number three. Do not follow your own heart. And I'm going to wrap up. I've gone kind of long here. The world will tell you to follow your own heart. That's the worst advice that can be given. The Lord God told the prophet Jeremiah to warn Israel about this, to warn them that they have engraved sin with a diamond point iron pin upon the tablet of their heart. That's how deeply sin is engraved upon us. And those who turn their heart from the Lord and trust in man and the strength of their own flesh, God says, are cursed because, you've heard this, Many times before, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. We're not to trust it. We can't even understand it. It's beyond our understanding, the wickedness that's in our own hearts. But the Lord, he says, he can search the heart and test the mind. And this is chilling. If you understand the message of the Bible as a whole. The Lord says he will give every person what they deserve. Now, if you're not familiar with the whole Bible, it's like, whoa, that sounds pretty good. I'll get what I deserve. I'm a pretty good person. I know I'm better than him, better than her. But we know that that's not the case. We know what we deserve is condemnation for our sin. Last point as I close. Point four, godly desire is to receive that which glorifies the Lord. Godly desire is to receive that which glorifies the Lord. The last verse that we're covering this morning is verse three. James says you ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions. We're not to pray for these things that are harmful, right? When we're told to pray, the Lord Jesus told us how to pray, right? He gave us a model, the Lord's Prayer. And we are to pray in faith, in faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. And we are to pray for those things that glorify God the Father and the Son. that we are to pray in accordance with God's will. So praying for your passions, God doesn't even hear that sort of prayer. He just ignores that or it could even anger him. The problem we have in the church is many do not even pray. And if they do, they call on God with selfish motives. They lack faith. And Paul tells us in Romans 4.23, whatever does not proceed from faith is sin. And we're going to continue on in James' letter, and we'll see he has much more to say about this, but the important thing that I want you to take away from this is notice both Paul and James are in accord here. There is no blame shifting for what's going on for the troubles in our life or troubles in the church. And what he's talked, what James has talked about what's going on in the church can apply just as equally to what goes on in our lives. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, may we always be in accordance with what you desire of us. Father, lead us and guide us through your Holy Spirit, that we may be obedient, that we not prize ourselves above all others. Father, help us to love you as we should and help us to love one another as we love ourselves. I ask for blessings upon my brothers and sisters here and the friends that have heard this. Father, I ask that you draw those to you that do not yet know you, if that is your will. Father, I pray for the safety of all of the people in Southern California and beyond due to these weather conditions. Father, I ask for blessings upon this congregation. In Jesus' name, amen.