I Shall Not Want
-
Greg Waybright
- James 3:18 & James 4:6
- Examining Our Ways
- 36 mins 43 secs
- Views: 1611
Pastor's Letter
I Shall Not Want - Week 5
One church practice I experienced when I lived in Germany and England was called "the passing of the peace." In the course of the worship services, the pastor would call us to turn to those around us and say, "May the peace of Christ be with you." Then the other person responds, "And also with you."
One church practice I experienced when I lived in Germany and England was called "the passing of the peace." In the course of the worship services, the pastor would call us to turn to those around us and say, "May the peace of Christ be with you." Then the other person responds, "And also with you." Even though I know that such a thing can become ritualistic, I usually found it to be good.
Annie Dillard, in her wonderful book Teaching a Stone to Talk, recounted the story of how this usually beautiful practice became a major problem in one New York church. A new pastor called to serve the church soon recognized the strife that existed among his people. Early on, he insisted on passing the peace each week. However, some of the people in that congregation held long-standing grudges against others. The combatants had learned over the years to sit in the same worship services together but to ignore one another. When the new pastor constantly called them to pass the peace of Christ to all the people around them, they could not endure the thought of wishing peace to people they could not tolerate. So, what were they to do? Dillard told us that they chose to fire the pastor and find one who wouldn't make them do it anymore.
I hope that no one at Lake Avenue Church will resort to that "solution." I enjoy being a part of this congregation way, way too much. Instead, I think that Pastor James of the 1st Church of Jerusalem teaches a better way forward for churches today. It's quite clear that some of those who had sat under James' ministry were having a tough time getting along. He asked in James 4:1, "What is the source of the wars and battles among you?"
Then, James told them to look within their own hearts. It's there, he said, that we will find the cause of the problems that lead to quarreling and strife. So, this biblical passage is a call to an introspective evaluation of our hearts. Doing this can be discouraging, I know. When we look at our own hearts in the presence of a holy God, we will always see things that need to be made right. We will be humbled before the Lord.
But, when we make a faith commitment or recommitment to God, the Bible will not leave us without hope. As we will read today in James 3:6, although God does oppose the proud, he lifts up the humble. Indeed, "he gives more grace!"
Dr. Greg Waybright
Senior Pastor
Study Notes
I Shall Not Want - Week 5 - Study Notes
I Shall not want
James 3:18 to 4:1-6
In CS Lewis' book, That Hideous Strength, Lewis told the story of a young couple, Mark and Jane Studdock, whose marriage was in trouble and whose lives were being tugged in two different directions – Jane toward the heavenly community of St. Anne's and Mark to its adversary community, Belbury. The Belbury leadership sought to persuade Mark to write newspaper articles about events that would deceive the populace and turn people against those who opposed them. Mark knew this was wrong and resisted it. But, eventually, so that he could gain more influence and prestige in Belbury, he gave in and wrote his first deceitful article, a decision that led to much more deception. This is how Lewis describes it:
This was the something Mark had been asked to do which he himself, before he did it, clearly knew to be wrong. But the moment of his consent almost escaped his notice. Certainly, there was no struggle, no sense of turning a corner. There may be times in the world's history when such moments reveal their gravity... But for Mark, it all simply slipped past..." This one step took him down a path of ever-increasing deception. The step seemed so small. But, it was a turning point that took him away from everything that was good.
On this 5th weekend of Lent, I want us to think about decisions like those. Can you think of decisions that you have made that, now when you look back on them, changed the whole course of your life? I can think of many. The Bible talks about the many decisions we make that are a lot like Mark Studdock's was, i.e., either to go our own ways or to choose God's. Making choices to obey God and allow him to direct the whole of our lives is an essential part of what it means to follow Jesus.
The NT consistently talks about following Jesus as being a complete turnaround of our lives. It's a conversion from living a life walking down a self-directed path with no sense of surrender to God -- to surrendering the entirety of our lives to God. The Apostle Paul puts it this clearly in 1 Cor. 12:3, i.e., the one sure identifying mark of genuine brothers and sisters in Christ is that we declare by our words and lives, "Jesus is Lord!" Or, as Paul put it in 2 Cor. 5, "We live no longer for ourselves but for him who died and rose again." That means that we can know that we truly believe in Jesus when our "wants" are turned from "I want what I want" to "I want what Jesus wants."
Pastor James of the 1st Church of Jerusalem will be our teacher again today. In a clear and powerful passage, James talks to us about what is in our hearts – about what we long for, what we set our minds on and what we choose to pursue. He saw that a lot of people who claimed to have placed their faith in Jesus were continuing to live as everyone else in the world lives, i.e., following their own cravings. They claimed to be Christians but were still "selfians". And this reality was destroying their lives and their church.
The Outworking of the Problem: Deep Disturbances of the Peace (3:18-4:1)
There are "wars and battles among you (4:1a)."
In James 3:13-18, James had made the point that following God's wisdom will lead to peace, to shalom – but following our own self-centered ways will lead to chaos and evil. Now Pastor James brings this point home directly to his church people with this penetrating question: What causes wars and battles among you?
Some people treat these verses as a kind of general lesson drawn from human society at large thinking that James is saying, "Look at the media clips, at the newspapers. Look at the world around! All these wars and conflicts ‑‑ what causes them? Why is the world out there so messed up?"
That way of looking at the text is missing something. It's clear from v.1 that James is not just citing violent conflict in the world as something the church should criticize or complain about. He was describing what was actually going on inside the church. He says, "What causes quarrels and fights among you." And it's strong language – the language of war. You see, the real situation was that there was civil war within the congregation. People were sticking their knives, if not literally and physically into one another, then certainly verbally and emotionally. I know that people often think, "We've got to get back and be just as they were back in Bible times. But, it's clear that people in Bible times had a hard time getting along too.
And the same thing has been true often in history. 17th C. Jewish philosopher, Benedict de Spinoza was one of many drawn to Jesus and his teaching but alarmed by the battles he saw among people in the church. He wrote: I have often wondered, that persons who make a boast of professing the Christian faith, namely, love, joy, peace, temperance, and charity to all men, should quarrel with such rancorous animosity, and display daily towards one another such bitter hatred, that this, rather than the virtues they claim, is the readiest criterion of their faith.
Pastor James knew well what his half-brother Jesus had taught: He knew that the world will know that we are genuine Christians by our love for one another (Jn 13:34-35). Nothing draws people to Jesus more powerfully than a group of people from many nationalities, ethnicities, generations and backgrounds worshipping together, serving alongside one another because we are knit together by the love of Jesus. On the other side, nothing will demean the name of Jesus and damage our witness than when we live in conflict.
Pastor James knew this. He took it seriously. So do I. He would not simply pass over something so essential to Christian testimony – and neither can I.
The Cause of the Problem: Proudly Pursuing Our Own Desires (4:1b-3)
Is not the source of conflict your cravings for your own pleasure that wage war in your members (4:1b)?
It might be comfortable for us to apply this just to the world outside the church. We easily could say, "Why, pastor, you're right. The problem in our world is frustrated human desire. People want something that's not theirs. They find they can't get it by peaceful means so they resort to violence. That's what we see in places like Russia with Putin wanting to take over Ukraine. That's what we see with people wanting sexual pleasure with anyone they're drawn toward. That's the problem with our world!" And, we would not be wrong in saying those things. But again, James is talking to the church – and I must as well.
"Why is this happening among those supposedly committed to Jesus?" asks James. "It's for precisely the same reason that people in the world fight, i.e., because you can't get what you want." Vv.1‑2a. Literally, in v.1 when James speaks of the desires that battle within you, he's saying, "Desires that battle within your members." By that, he could be referring to the kind of conflict inside our inner beings that we all experience when we find contradictory passions and drives competing inside us.
But that word, "members", could refer to our bodies or it could refer to the church body. I think James is speaking not only of the inner conflict you experience when you know that there is one thing that God wants you to do but you keep doing something else. He's also thinking about church families like our own here at LAC who often face strong temptation to quarrel with one another. Why do church bodies committed to the humble Christ have conflicts and quarrels? The problem: You want something but you don't get it!
All of us with any experience in local churches know what James is talking about. We see the problem in our own hearts! All of us have our ideas about what should be going on in the church. All of us have our own preferences. We all have our own likes and dislikes. We all know how we would feel most comfortable. The trouble comes when we don't all share quite the same opinion, the same vision, and the same preferences. That's where the trouble comes ‑‑ when things don't go our way.
James speaks of us craving our own "pleasure". The word he used is the word that is the root for our word "hedonism" – the philosophy that the chief good in life is pleasure. In a church setting, it would be the sense that I have to feel good about whatever happens. I have to enjoy what's going on or it's not worship. But, the problem is that if we all come to church with that spirit, it will breeds intense strife among us.
Now, we must get this right. The Bible is not saying that pleasure is wrong – far from it. God is the one who created pleasure. Pleasure is a part of God's gifts in creation.CS Lewis also wrote about this is his remarkable book, Screwtape Letters. In the 9th Letter, the senior devil Screwtape advises a junior devil named Wormwood about how a devil ought (or ought not) to handle pleasure. "Never forget that when we are dealing with any pleasure in its healthy and normal and satisfying form, we are, in a sense, on the Enemy's ground. I know we (devils) have won many a soul through pleasure. All the same, it is His invention, not ours. He made the pleasures: all our research so far has not enabled us to produce one. All we can do is to encourage the humans to take the pleasures which our Enemy has produced, at times, or in ways, or in degrees, which He has forbidden... We must foster an ever-increasing craving for an ever-diminishing pleasure... We must get the man's soul and give him nothing in return..."
When we become Christians and then begin putting our own pleasure in God's place, whether in our church experience or in our daily choices, we will head into inner conflict. The word James used in v. 2, epithymeia, is a word referring to the thing we set our hearts on in order to find satisfaction in our lives. So, James said, "You long deeply for something that you cannot have. When you cannot have it, you are ready to hurt others – to cut off relationships, to leave the church, etc. – in order to get it the way you want it. I will simply tell you this right now: If we will find life, our deepest longing must be for God. He must be our epithymeia! When it is anything else, it will not satisfy.
Pastor Jeff Liou helped me to see how fervently James sought wake up his people to the seriousness of this self-centered problem. Vv. 2-3 read like a loving parent pointing the finger in his child's chest and saying, "You – you – you! Don't you see what you are doing!" Look at James emotional appeal:
· You long deeply for things and do not get them; you commit murder.
· You passionately desire things and cannot obtain them; you fight and quarrel.
· You do not have because you do not ask.
· And when you do ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives,
· You ask only so that you may spend whatever you get on your pleasures.
Do you see it? Prayer is supposed to be a time of falling before our Lord in worship and adoration but even prayer can become pleasure-seeking. "You do not have because you do not ask." But, what are you asking for? Not for divine wisdom. Not for God to reveal his will. This is the problem: wanting what we want – not what God wants. So I ask you: Is pleasing God the deepest desire of your inner being?
The Result: At War with God (4:4-5)
You adulteresses, whoever chooses to love the world makes himself an enemy of God (4:4).
The language in v.4 is strong, isn't it? James usually called his church people, "brothers and sisters". Here, he called them "adulteresses". What's going on? With this word "adulteresses", James is drawing upon something that filled the messages of the OT prophets to their people. You see it in Isaiah and Jeremiah. It is the central theme of Hosea. The point is that God makes a covenant with his people that is like the commitment of a husband to his bride. God takes us to be his people and promises to be faithful to us. But, consistently people show a devotion to something or someone else other than God. God calls it "adultery". Jeremiah 3:20 puts it clearly and succinctly: "Like a woman unfaithful to her husband,so you have been unfaithful to me," declares the Lord.
James was proclaiming that church people were putting someone into God's place and being unfaithful to God. Who is he talking about? Who is competing with God for our hearts' affections? It's us! It's our own cravings that we love more than we love God. That's what James is preaching. We are insisting more on what we want than longing to live the way God would have us live. We have no fear of God. Self has taken God's place.
Let me say again that James is speaking to the church – not to the world here. I'm sure we quickly think, "Yes, this giving in to their own lusts and cravings is what the world out there does." And that's true. But, we should never be surprised by that. If people don't know God and how good God is, then people cannot know that it's better to live his way than to follow their own desires. When we go to church, we need to be aware of the patterns of conduct in the world. But, we gather to hear from God – not to criticize the world for not obeying God. Have you noticed how the Apostle Paul spoke of this in 1 Cor. 5:12? We are not to live like the world lives for we are alive to God. But, Paul said, "What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside?"
When we have experienced God's salvation through faith in Jesus, our heart's longing should be to please him. So, the starting point each day of our lives should be, "Jesus is Lord. I will obey him no matter what he asks of me. I choose no longer to want the way I used to want. I shall not choose any longer what I want but I choose what God wants."
V.5 is a very difficult verse to translate but, in my mind, not so difficult to understand. God has given us life and, when we receive Jesus as savior, God gives us his Spirit too. The Bible says God is a jealous husband. He loves us. He holds on to us. As a loving husband goes after his wife when she walks away from him, so God comes after us and calls us back. I like how Eugene Peterson translates v.5: God is a fiercely jealous lover.
Let's bring this down to our daily lives now. You and I constantly face choices between our own desires and what we know God asks us to do – between how we crave to live and how God commands us to live. V.4 says that when we choose our own cravings or the world's ways, it puts us at odds with God. In fact, James used a word for our wishes or choices in v.4 that was often used for a person who had to make a choice between one philosophy and another. "Do you choose self or God?" I'm sure you can think of times each day when you have to decide, "Am I going to do what I crave or will I be faithful to God?
It is the way of our culture to say that if we have a passion for something, we should go after our craving. People say, "If you really want to live the way I want to live, then it must be OK with God." But God says that this is not necessarily so. Jesus always said, "Count the cost. When you follow me, you are all in. When you follow me, some things in your life that you crave for deeply will have to be crucified."
Once again, I tell you that pleasure was made by God. But, I also tell you that it's only when we follow him that we find real and lasting pleasure. When you find yourself craving anything that seems like it's the thing that will make you happy but, at the same time, you know that it goes against what God teaches, you must make a choice. When you have to choose between God's way and your own inner craving, which one do you choose? This is what the Bible is forcing you to come to grips with today.
The Hope: God's Grace (4:6)
God gives a greater grace... (4:6a).
I want you to know that both Pastor James and Pastor Greg know this: Each person in any church in the world will wrestle every day with choices that feel like this: "I want what I want. I do not want what God wants." I'm quite sure that the Apostle Paul was writing about his own struggle in Romans 7 when he said those very things. And, we will sometimes fail. We all come to church knowing that we need mercy again and again. So, I must ask you, "Is it your hearts' commitment to be faithful to God? Is it your deepest longing to follow Jesus and to obey him?" Then hear what James says in v.6: God gives grace greater than our failure.
If my understanding of v. 6 is right, then God's grace is more than sufficient enough to continue in relationship with you as you grow in your walk with him. He is more than gracious enough to walk with you as you find the daily strength to meet the demands of living as he made you to live. The "greater grace" of v. 6 is a declaration from God that he has the ability and the desire to empower you to overcome sinfulness and wrong desires of every kind. When you do, you find not wars and battles -- but shalom.
What you must do is what James wrote about in v.2 – "You do not have because you do not ask." You must ask God. But this asking, as you surely now see, is an asking for God's will to be seen in your life. Prayer is not a proud demand that God give you what you want. It is a humble plea of one who knows that true pleasure and true life is to be found in God. It's as James said in v. 6 when he quoted Prov. 3:34:
God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.
Do you know the lyrics of a newer song by Audrey Assad?
From the love of my own comfort; from the fear of having nothing;
From a life of worldly passions -- Deliver me, O God.
From the need to be understood; From the need to be accepted;
From the fear of being lonely -- Deliver me, O God.
And I shall not want. No, I shall not want.
When I taste Your goodness, I shall not want.
To His glory,
Dr. Greg Waybright
Senior Pastor
Greg Waybright • Copyright 2014, Lake Avenue Church
Study Guide
I Shall Not Want - Week 5 - Study Guide
Read 3:17–18. Pastor Waybright translates v.18, “Fruit pleasing to God is sown in peace by those who make peace.” What do you think this meant in a church experiencing “disorder,” according to 3:16?
I Shall Not Want
James 3:18 to 4:6
- Read 3:17–18. Pastor Waybright translates v.18, “Fruit pleasing to God is sown in peace by those who make peace.” What do you think this meant in a church experiencing “disorder,” according to 3:16?
- James talked in 4:1 about “wars and battles” among them in the church. What kinds of behavior do you envision are happening among his church people?
- Read vv.1–3, and then put into your own words what he says about the causes of conflicts.
- Why do praying Christians sometimes not receive what they want? What condition of prayer does James speak about? Give examples of prayers that displease God in this way.
- The charge of being “adulteresses” in v.4 evokes many memories of the OT (e.g., Hosea & Jer. 2) in which unfaithfulness to God is compared to unfaithfulness in a marriage vow. What sin is described in this verse, and what consequence does it produce?
- James constantly calls Christians to establish relationships with people in the world. What then does he mean when he criticizes friendship with the world in contrast to friendship with God?
- V.5 is very difficult to translate. Bottom line: James is saying that just as loving spouses jealously hold on to one another, so God jealously loves his people. We may be unfaithful to him, but he keeps coming after us. Have you ever experienced this to be true?
- V.6 summarizes the passage. Discuss what it means that “God gives more grace” while at the same time opposes the proud? What is God’s response to pride and to humility?
2013 Study Series • Copyright © 2013, Lake Avenue Church