Passions At War Within You

[Music] you have called me higher you have called me [Music] me [Music] [Music] me you've [Music] my my [Music] oh [Music] [Music] me [Music] you will leave [Music] deeper and i'll go [Music] you feel me [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] i is i saw the glorious oh is of the life oh you conquered the grave oh so [Music] hi can i scare you [Music] it's pretty good [Music] [Music] peace thank you thank you we'll go ahead and start people coming who here out of the five of us loves fall me too not paul fall the changing of the leaves the beautiful colors all around us

the sun sets there's just so many beautiful things that are happening during fall listen to psalm 8 oh lord our lord how majestic is your name in all the earth you have set your glory above the heavens out of the mouth of babies and infants you have established strength because of your foes to still the enemy and the avenger when i look at your heavens the work of your fingers the moon and the stars which you have set in place god who created all of this all of creation and all the beauty in it for his glory and our joy yet as we keep reading

psalm david not only reflects on his creation but also the reality that we as children of god listen to the question that he asks what is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you care for him the god who created all the beautiful colors of fall is also mindful of us and so this morning we just want to bring praise back to our god so would you stand with us this morning in worship [Music] everlasting while earthly ages fade in mercy i got your kingdom brains poured over everything you are needs [Music] all of the universe had your feet

[Music] in the savior injustice brought to right for your glory that your name be lifted lord over everything [Music] all of the universe [Music] lord over everything you wanna need [Music] all of the universe [Music] [Music] found the dead will live and you are god forever [Music] the dead will live in you forever [Music] lord over everything all of the universe had your feet [Music] lord over everything you wanna need [Music] the lame will walk we're dead we'll live and you are god forever [Music] and you are gone forever [Music] [Music] you are good you are good when there's nothing good in me you are

love you are love on display for all to see you are light you are light when the darkness closes in you are hope you are hope you have covered all my seeds [Music] you are peace you are peace when my fear is crippling you are true you are true even in my wandering you are joy you are joy you're the reason that i sing you are life you are life in you death is lost at sea [Music] hello i'm [Music] will always be enough nothing compares to your embrace light of the world forever [Music] i'm running to your arms the riches of your love will

always be enough nothing compares to your embrace [Music] are more and my words will ever say you are lord you are lord all creation will proclaim you are here you are here in your presence i made hope you are god you are god [Music] [Laughter] [Music] will always be [Music] [Music] the riches of your love will always be enough nothing compares to your embrace [Music] my heart will sing no other name jesus jesus my heart will see know the name jesus [Music] jesus my heart will sing no other name jesus jesus my heart will sing no other name jesus [Music] jesus [Music] [Music] the riches

of your love will always be enough nothing compares to your embrace [Music] nothing compares to your [Music] embrace light of the world forever [Music] [Music] all my days [Music] of the goodness god [Music] [Music] i will see [Music] you [Music] i i've know you as afraid [Music] [Music] [Music] i is [Music] is [Music] you is your goodness [Music] been is and all my life you have been so so [Music] good with every breath that i [Music] is [Music] with every breath that i of the goodness of god you guys can be seated for a time of confession [Music] have you ever thought to yourself where

our frustrations in life come from what the root of that is whether that's not getting a job or not just anything not getting what you hoped you're not getting what you expected have you considered that some of your frustrations actually come from those mismanaged and unmet expectations that we create expectations are not in themselves inherently wrong or sinful and in some cases you know expecting things of god expecting good things from god is what we're called to they can be very healthy and good but we do have those moments where we have expectations that are rooted in things of this world or sinful desires that

can lead us to respond in anger or bitterness or resentment or jealousy they can be manifested in a need to control things and need to try to work things out so that the result matches our expectations and what we want and this can reveal where our hearts have made idols out of something that we're holding on to too tightly there could be expectations that we hold on for two for ourselves for others for our family even for god and yeah this reveals where our heart is at and what we're hoping for and what we're desiring most but when we understand that the effects of the

fall are coming into place in some of the expectations that we set our expectations can change and our perspective about life in general can just be more clear and more holistic it doesn't mean that we should definitely seek out hardship or expect all of our dreams to fail and all of our expectations to be unrealistic but it doesn't mean that or shouldn't call them that we should not be surprised when struggles come when relationships or jobs or parenting or anything gets hard when we face the reality of the broken world it becomes clear that we need help outside of ourselves something more sure to hope

in besides just our ability to make life go according to what we hope or what we plan so our responsibility is that we have to fight every day to see hope in the person of christ to see the power that he has and the control and the sovereignty he has over our lives and that the solutions that he's working out for our lives are the most of the most important so peter reminds us of this hope in first peter 1 3-9 so i'm going to read that passage and there's going to be an underlined section up on the screen that you can read along with

when we get there so it says blessed be the god and father of our lord jesus christ according to his great mercy he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of jesus christ from the dead to an inheritance that is imperishable undefiled and unfading kept in heaven for you who by god's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time in this you rejoice though now for a little while if necessary you have been grieved by various trials so that the tested genuineness of your faith more precious than gold that

perishes though it is tested by fire may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of jesus christ though you have not seen him you love him though you do not now see him you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory obtaining the outcome of your faith the salvation of your souls like we said before the this hope doesn't eliminate the hard things in life but it drastically changes our perspective when we believe in the promises of god and that one day all that is wrong will be made right all the injustices will

be made just and that we will get to dwell with god where there is no more pain or death or sin or unmet expectations so this morning in our time of confession let's go before the lord and confess where those unmet expectations in our life have led to bitterness or frustration and anger and resentment in our own sin where we are trying to control or where we are not resting in the lord and it's leading to just continual frustration and disappointment whatever it may be let's bring that to him and confess our sin to him and as we confess let us proclaim to ourselves the

identity we've been given in christ and the hope that he has given to us all let's pray [Music] would we come before you this morning acknowledging our sin and acknowledging all of the areas in our life that have been affected by the fall and how that has skewed our perception of you excuse our perception of ourselves and our relationships and our jobs and our responsibilities and our desires lord we confess the areas where our expectations are out of selfish motives wrong desires a need for control and a lack of trust that you're sovereign and that you are that you are in control so this morning

we are thankful for and we continue to ask for your forgiveness we pray that you would help us to submit every single one of our expectations to you and only receive back the ones that are good and right and that we would continue to assess and analyze where in our life we are expecting the wrong result or expecting the right thing but going about it in a wrong way so we ask that you would help to continue to sanctify what we are hoping for in life and what we are striving for in life and expectation as we said is the root of so many other

sins that only you know that we carry and so we thank you that you are the one that we can trust and that we know is sovereign and we just yeah we just ask that that truth would saturate our hearts and our minds this morning and that it would continue to make us more into the image of christ we thank you that we can come to you humbly in confession knowing that you are glad to hear our confession and you are glad to make us new we pray for our time this morning we pray that you would just bless us and speak to our hearts

and we love you in jesus name amen um and what we mean by that is that we are constantly reforming back to what scripture is teaching about god and what scripture is teaching god is doing with our world um and that's what we want to get to we don't want to add to that we don't want to take away from that we're constantly reforming back to what is scripture teaching when it comes to those things so with that happy reformation day um that is what today represents now getting to our series we're in james and so if you're in uh james if you've got a

bible turn it on open it up whatever it looks like we're gonna be in james chapter four today james chapter four and so we just got a few more weeks left in our series and it's been a good one looking at just this idea of wisdom and the steadfast faith that comes from us having good wisdom and wisdom that is coming from above the lord instructing us on what faith truly is a faith that is active a faith that is not passive a faith that is accompanied with good works not works that save you but works that prove that you are saved being doers of

the word not just hearers of the word and so james is is kind of known as the the proverbs of the new testament where he's just getting down to the nitty-gritty and just being real with these jewish christians who have been dispersed throughout the region he's getting real with them and saying if you are saying you are a christian then these are going to be the things that flow out in your life this is going to be how you act how you conduct yourself how you live your life how you speak with your words how you pray with your heart how you communicate both with

god and with others this is what james is instructing he's he's getting down to just practical daily living which really is the the idea of wisdom like having knowledge that is not being applied or lived out means that you are foolish you're not an actual wise person but being able to take the knowledge that we are learning and that we are growing in and the knowledge of christ and the knowledge of god and theology and all those things but then actually living them out and applying them to our lives is what makes a person wise it's what makes them wise and so this wisdom is

what's coming down and and this one takes a little bit of a of a turn or just kind of an interesting shift based on what was taught last week as we looked at james 3 17-18 and i don't think i thought you taught that one right you preached last week james 3 17-18 james says this but the wisdom from above is first pure and then it's peaceable gentle it's open to reason it's full of mercy and good fruits it's impartial and sincere and a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace and so what what a nice gentle scripture there that

james is preaching to these jewish christians there's there's a harvest of righteousness for those who make peace who pursue peace who rely on the peace of god in their relationships and then james says this in the next verse chapter 4 verse one what causes quarrels and what causes fighting among you and so we go from peace and and not showing impartiality and and being peace makers and relying on the peace of god to then him saying what why are you fighting why are you fighting so it feels like it's this kind of like the new chapter it feels like it's this train of thought that

is going from one thing to the next thing but one thing that's important for us to know when it comes to scripture when it comes to reading the bible is that in its original written text there are no chapters and verses all right those were added by translators later so that we can navigate the scriptures and find the content easier but when it comes to the original written letters they're letters they're written like you would write a letter to someone else i mean i doubt most of you when you're writing something or you're texting someone something you're not doing chapters and verses based on your

state you're just giving a complete thought you're just writing to them and so here james is attaching a couple of things and and not only is he revealing something about the church but he's also throwing in some rhetorical questions that we're about to see that are that's going on within the church to get down to the root of why they're not actually being peaceful and why they're not making peace among themselves and what actually keeps them from being peaceful what keeps them from relying and trusting on the peace of god and so that's what we're going to look at today is again james looking at

these jewish christians and he's saying i mean you call yourselves christians you call yourselves little christ and if so then this wisdom that christ possesses and this wisdom that is pure and gentle and peaceable and this wisdom that is coming down to us that we have a harvest of righteousness before us to be able to sow and to be able to to reap and to be able to live out in our lives if we have access to that and that is who we are as christians then why are you fighting why are there fights among you and so that's the question we're praying james answers

for us today as we look at this big idea of james helping us understand what kind of troubles arise fighting and quarreling when our passions are at war within us our passions are at war within us so i'm gonna read through this and kind of break it down into a couple of points as we go through so starting in verse 1 james chapter 4 here's what he has to say what causes quarrels and what causes fights among you is this not that your passions are at war within you you desire and you do not have and so you murder you covet and you 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 wrongly to spend it on your passions so the first point i want to look at from these first three verses is that your passions are at war within you and have the ability to create war among you your passions are at war within you and they have the ability to create war among you james asks this question if you say your peaceable questions christians then why are you fighting and then he offers this answer is it not because of your passions to better

understand passions we need to dive into the original language of it the original language because we like passions i mean passions can be good passions can be bad and so what are we referring to when he's talking about this idea of passions and if you weren't aware the bible was not written in english all right so what we're reading is a translation of its original language which is both hebrew and greek with some aramaic throw in as well but it's primarily hebrew and greek in the new testament written in greek james writing this letter in greek the word for passions is hedon i'm not going

to give you the greek actual you know enunciation of it but it's hedon which is where we get the word hedonism from hedonism and the way or ethical belief of hedonism is its main goal is for your self-gratification it's your main pleasure like all of life the main goal of life is for you to be pleased that that's the idea of hedonism and so when he's talking about these passions these pleasures that are at war within us he's getting to the deepest level of what pleases you is also what's causing fights and quarreling among you this is kind of the idea of us getting into

preferential treatment if you will like we all have preferences on what songs are sung or what sermons are preached or how you know what what kind of facility we meet in or what the order of service looks like i mean these are church wars that have been gone going on for who knows how long it's like you don't sing enough hymns well you don't sing hymns at all or you sing too many hymns or i didn't like these songs one was too fast one was too slow one was whatever it looks like and so there's these kind of silly quarreling and silly fights that can

kind of creep their way into the church and at the end of the day that's that's actually not really what he's even getting at here like he's not getting about preferential pleasures he's getting at something that's way deeper than even just preferential pleasures he's getting at the difference between the identities of the pleasures of christ among you and the pleasures of your sinful nature that are within you that's the main idea that he's getting at here and that really we want to to dive into to see how he gets at applying some some things that we need to do with this information that you'll see

here in a minute but one thing i want you to see here is desires are not wrong just in general desires are not wrong there's back in tennessee there were some independent churches independent baptist churches if you will that were so fundamental in wanting to be head knowledge do the right things that they felt in this idea of hedonism doing anything for pleasure that they almost had to become like like spock like no emotions no pleasures like don't don't let any of those things ever distract you ever lead you astray because at the end of the day if you enjoy anything it has the ability

to lead you into temptation it has the ability to lead you astray and god is not about that god created emotions he created pleasure he created satisfaction he created those things the issue is is whether or not we find our pleasure or find our satisfaction in anything other than god other than god if we're looking for truest satisfaction truest pleasure in food then we become a glutton because the reality is this food is never going to ultimately satisfy you so you think you need more and you need more you need more then you get into gluttony or if we think that ultimate satisfaction is going

to be found in sex then you become lustful you become perverted you become sexually immoral because you keep going down the route of i need more i need more i need more and whenever's not satisfying lead you into ultimate perversion of it or when it comes to money you become greedy you become to the point where i need to keep going down this route and gaining more and grabbing more and acquiring more to ultimately satisfy myself but it's never going to get there because it was never meant to satisfy and everything i just described are things that god created for good for pleasure to be

stewarded rightly to see him as the greatest treasure rather than those things as treasures themselves they're good things but they're not meant to be god things and so what james is pointing us towards here is this idea that we are saints with good desires that are meant to worship god based on this new identity that we have but at the same time we are sinners with still desires and passions and pleasures within us that wage war with this new identity that we have and so it's kind of like have you ever had the desire to get in shape to be healthy and that's a good

desire that leads you to creating a a workout schedule or a meal plan and a goal of what you want to accomplish on this diet like you you want to get healthier and then there's a trunk or treat that happens on a friday night and your kids come home with buckets of candy and you're like okay there goes that diet you know because all of a sudden now i've got these other desires that are hungry for this temporary pleasure of chocolate which is great i love chocolate but all of a sudden it can kind of shipwreck the greater desire that you have and so how

do we manage how do we deal with how do we steward the fact that we are as martin luther literally says we are saints simultaneous sinners and all he really means at the end of the day is that is that we are in good stand because of the work of jesus christ because of the salvation that he has saved us with and the and the grace that he has poured over us and the forgiveness that he has offered us we are considered in god's eyes righteous saints but yet we're not yet glorified all right we have not yet arrived at the end of of life

whether jesus returns or we die and we get that new glorified body enter into that new glorified state where our minds are perfect our hearts are perfect our bodies are perfect because we are now eternal with god forever that's an inheritance that we receive but we don't have it yet and so we're in this simultaneous state right now this is why when you become a believer when you become a christian you still mess up you still sin because there's this relationship between the new passions the new creation the new identity that you have in christ and this old flesh this old member this old body

that you still have that's breaking down that's dying slowly and that is still saturated with sin it's a reality that we are facing and scripture talks about this all the time romans 7 22-25 says this for i delight in the law of god in my inner being he's getting to his soul level there his spirit in his inner being i delight in the law of god my greatest desire is the law of god my greatest desire is scripture my greatest desire is jesus anything jesus i'm about it but i see in my members my body my mind my my hands my feet my passions my

flesh and my members i see another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members wretched man that i am who will deliver me from this body of death thanks be to god through jesus christ our lord so then i myself serve the law of god with my mind but with my flesh i serve the law of sin i mean you're just hearing paul there he's like my deepest inner being is is delighting in the law of the lord i'm all about jesus and with my mind i'm i'm renewing it i'm

growing in the knowledge of the lord i'm growing in the knowledge of who he is i'm submitting it to him but at the same time i'm still finding myself having these desires to do wrong and to sin and to give myself over to the members of of what is pleasing to the temporal wretched man that i am i'm a saint but yet i still sin first peter 2 9-11 just so that it's not the apostle paul only saying this but peter also says this you are a chosen race you are a royal priesthood you are a holy nation you are a people for god's own

possession that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness and into his marvelous light that's who you are all right he's not saying that's who you will be he's saying because of jesus in you because of the abiding relationship that you have with him because he's forgiven you that's who you are once you were not a people but now you are god's people once you had not received mercy but you have now received mercy this is your current state and then he says in verse 11 beloved i urge you as sojourners in exiles to abstain from the passions of your

flesh which wage war against your soul so we've got paul preaching this we've got peter preaching this we've got james preaching this all to different audiences but all to christians who are fighting within themselves competing passions competing desires and there is a greater one over the other one but sometimes it's hard for us to see that it's hard for us to see that for the sinner they only have one desire and again that's the hedonistic desire to please self if you're not a christian if you're not a believer in jesus christ you've got one chief aim of life self pleasure selfishness seeking self gain whatever

that looks like but for the christian we have two desires the desire to please god and also this desire to please self still and so what james is doing is he's getting to the heart of our desires our pleasures our passions he's getting to the motives behind what we do because the motives reveal what we want to do and so he throws out some some more rhetorical situations here and he's wondering what he's wanting to do for these jewish christians is help them see that just because they're forgiven and just because they're considered saints they're still giving themselves over to these sinful passions and these

sinful desires and at the end of the day that's not okay that's not okay it's something just like martin luther protestant reformation rebuking the church james here is rebuking the church he's rebuking these jewish christians who are doing something that they should not be doing because it's it's out of step with being a saint it's out of step with what they believe about jesus so here's some of the rhetorical situations that he gives to them he says you desire and you do not have and so you murder you covet and you cannot obtain it and so you fight and you quarrel you do not have

because you do not ask you you ask and you do not receive because you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions self-pleasure so at the end of the day your passions the way that we need to understand them and the way that we need to steward them and manage them is your passions are either this is point number two your passions are either righteous or unrighteous and we need to categorize them we need to always bring our passions before the lord to say is this desire that i have is this good and holy and right and in step of the spirit or is this

not good is this unholy is this wrong and it's out of step with the spirit rather it's in step with my flesh the members of my body that are waging war against me and what james's goal is and what honestly any of the bible's author's goal are is for you to understand that the greatest pleasure in life is not anything found in this world but it's ultimately god himself like that's the first question if you've ever written uh read the westminster confession is this what is the chief end of man what is the chief end of man and the answer is for us to glorify

god and to enjoy him forever like that that's why god created us all right there's some theological beliefs out there that god created us for community as if god was bored and lacking and that's just not true like god was not just hanging out for eternity and it was like man you know what would be great is if we had someone to talk to and so let's just create humans and let's let's have conversations with them let's interact with them no what god did and this is not prideful even though if anyone can be prideful it's god but what he did was he said you

know what and this is you know this is paraphrasing all right don't quote me on this from a scriptural verse but what he's doing amongst the trinity as the father and the son the holy spirit are interacting and communing with one another for eternity they're saying we're so awesome that let's create people to enjoy us forever like in them honoring us in them worshiping us and them glorifying us they're getting to enjoy us because we're so amazing we're so amazing that's why god created us at the end of the day and so our chief end our chief aim of life is to get to the

place where we're glorifying god and in that process we are enjoying him this is why john piper and his famous quote from his book desiring god says and this is he takes hedonism and he adds christian to it he kind of redeems it to this idea of christian hedonism because at the end of the day we are created to enjoy we are we are created for pleasure but he's saying the only way for us to truly experience pleasure and enjoyment is god is most glorified in you when we are most satisfied in him that's his quote god is most glorified in us he's most worshiped

when we are enjoying him above anything and everything else we are finding more pleasure in him than we are finding pleasure in anything else and that's why james then harshly rebukes these jewish christians sometimes we we need friends to rebuke us right like if our christian friends are only ever sin coddlers then we may go on sinning because we don't think it's a big deal but it is a big deal it is a big deal true joy and true pleasure is at stake here but more than that the glory of god is at stake here that's why habakkuk 2 14 says for the earth and

if you were to ever sum up the entire mission and vision of god in one verse this is it habakkuk 2 14 for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the lord as the waters cover the sea that's god's mission get his glory to cover all of the earth wherever there's water in the sea and if you've been in the sea there's not a place where there's not water it's the sea all right it's kind of a weird play on words here he's going to get his glory to cover everything because at the end of the day that's why he

created it to see his glory to experience his glory and in that place find the greatest treasure and pleasure possible so again james knowing that these jewish christians who should be making peace but instead are fighting among one another he knows that that is a result of misguided sinful desires and he's going to rebuke them for it listen to this in verse four you adulterous people james it's just an argument man like we're just fighting you adulterous people do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with god therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of

god or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the scripture says he yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us but he gives more grace therefore it says god opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble here james is drawing a line with his rebuke you adulterous people you say you are in relationship with the lord yet you have a love affair with the world that's what he's getting at you adulterous people you say as jewish you say you love the lord yet you are revealing the fact that you love the world more and you are taking

that world out and you're having an affair with it believing that it is going to provide more pleasure than what god has to offer and then he takes it a step further to say that those who wish to be a friend of the world make themselves an enemy of god now listen this is very important to see here this is not james saying that those who are saints simultaneously sinners are now only sinners that's not what he's saying here he's not saying that you can be a saint and then no longer a saint what he's revealing is like what he's revealed earlier when we were

talking about faith and works we were talking about the tree that produces fruit and the tree that doesn't produce fruit they're both trees they're both saying that they're trees but the only one that produces the fruit is the one who is the true believer the one who does not produce fruit who does not produce works is a false believer one who just says it with his mouth but does not actually live it with his life because there's no true salvation there what he's getting at here is those who ultimately go the route of finding pleasure in the world alone are only revealing the fact that

they were never a saint to begin with they are revealing the fact making themselves an enemy of god because that's truly who they are it's truly who they are they're sinners only they're enemies of god only and that would be although that may sound like bad news to some it's really good news it's only bad news if you only ever hear that you're an enemy of god that's why i love verses like romans 5 8 when it says but god shows his love for us and that while we were still sinners later he says enemies christ died for us christ died for us that's the

entire message of the gospel while we were sinners christ paid our penalty of death in order for us to receive his reward of forgiveness and life we don't get a reward because of anything we did but only because of what jesus did for us that's why again james says god approach god opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble i guess it's important for us to know because again it's good for us to rebuke the person who's constantly pursuing pleasures from the world rather than seeking pleasure from christ from god only it's good for us to rebuke that because we have these truths we

have these beautiful truths in scripture to be able to draw them back to what's actually going to be the thing that they're looking for satisfaction one of my sons because of their loving grandfather his favorite song is i can't get no satisfaction and he goes around seeing it all the time but that's what our world is living in they're looking for the satisfaction but they just can't get it and the good rebuke would be us to tell them because you're wrong you're wrong you're looking forward in all the wrong places christ is the only thing that will ultimately satisfy us so what do we do

what do we do there are these competing desires within us one for worshiping god and enjoying him and the other for sin and self one is true pleasure and the other is counterfeit pleasure what do we do james is going to tell us to bring our passions before the lord and submit them there this is number three submit your passions before the lord maybe even going with this idea of the war theme these battles among us these fights among us surrender your passions before the lord verse 7 submit yourselves 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 wretched and mourn and weep let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom humble yourselves before the lord and he will exalt you now that doesn't sound like it's very pleasurable it doesn't sound like um if you were to go to a non-believer and you were to say hey here's here's what you need to do all those wrong things that you need that you're doing that you're living that's out of step with with god's design for life like those are called sins you need

to stop doing those things you need to come and you need to mourn and you need to weep and you need to just be wretched like that sounds counter gospel that sounds counter joyful right like that doesn't sound like hey you're seeking satisfaction come be miserable and that's going to be more satisfying than what you're going after but that's not really what james is getting at here what he's getting at is is these two passions that we have when we are walking in the passions of the flesh what we need to do is we need to come and bring those things before the lord but

that does something to you when when you bring your imperfections in front of perfection that's humbling right like that's humbling i mean it's humbling enough when when you know you've wronged someone who's right all right for for those of you who have been in arguments with somebody before and in the argument you thought you were right the whole time and then eventually you get to this place where you're like man i was really wrong and they were right and i have to go to them and tell them that hey i just want you know i'm i'm wrong no one is coming saying i'm wrong with

a happy smile on their face hey i am enjoying the fact that i was wrong no it's a humbling experience to be able to come and submit yourself to someone else and say i was wrong be wretched is not be sinful all right i know wretched in the bible oftentimes is referred to as being sinful here in the original language it's referring to the idea of being miserable being miserable because of what we've done that's wrong mourning and grieving the sin that we've committed getting to this place where as we're growing in our right affections it is leading us to hate the other affections like

that's huge in our battle with our passions that are at war within us because every every relationship you're walking through every decision that you have to make in life every career path that you're walking down literally as you're walking through life and you're presented with a situation you have passions within you that are leading you one way or the other literally everything could be a fork in the road do i worship god or do i worship self and what he's saying is is as we bring these things to the lord and submit ourselves to him we will get to this place to where where as

we're coming to the fork in the road we will hate to go this route and we will love and be pleasured pleasurable and satisfied if we go this route in worshiping the lord in it that's what he's getting at here get to this place where you hate sin and you're killing it so that as we worship god and we trust him and we rely on him in his grace and his mercy we are we are experiencing life and life abundant as jesus says in john 10. so be wretched and mourn and weep let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom it's

only then and there that we begin to find true peace and the truest of pleasure i've never met a christian who has said i regret following my desire to pray i've just never met a christian who said that i regret going this route i've always and constantly i think we have these conversations almost every community group i regret going this way i regret saying this i regret choosing this making this decision saying this in a conversation with somebody we want to get to the place where we stop regretting and we start battling and making war within our souls at the fork in the road to

where we're killing the flesh because of the power of jesus that lives within us and we're putting it to death we're casting off our old self and putting on the new self of christ and walking in step with the spirit and so what they do with these jewish christians have done is what james does kind of get surgical here with this last little part what they do regret is following the sinful desire to be greedy or as james says next to criticize others verses 11 through 12 this is the last point verse or point four is criticism as he says there's a kind of trouble

that arises when we don't submit our passions to the lord do not speak evil against one another brothers the one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother speaks evil against the law and judges the law but if you judge the law and you are not a doer of the law but a judge there is only one lawgiver and judge he who is able to save and to destroy but who are you to judge your neighbor so one thing to point out here rebuking and judging are two different things all right christianity has gotten into this weird place where it's not okay to rebuke

others because people have dubbed that judging and that's just not true like if i call out somebody for sin or what usually happens is people call me out for sin i can't just stamp on there hey who are you to judge you can't judge me only god can judge me and what if they know their bible what they can say is yeah god is judging you through me i mean that's true that's what scripture has called us to that's what accountability is it's good and right now yes there is as we saw earlier in james a way to do it where it's removing the plank

out of your eye as you're seeing the speck in another person's eye it's making sure that you're that you're bringing your sins before the lord before you bring someone else's sins before the lord or say there's a good right and holy way to go about it we're not just rebuking sin police going around just trying to figure it out because that's kind of what they're getting at here in james with these jewish christians is they're going around criticizing others to make themselves feel better they're judging others according to the law without judging themselves according to the same law and what he's getting at is there's

a judge who's doing that and he does it pretty good all right the lord's good he doesn't need any help when it comes to judging who's ultimately a believer and who's not a believer leave that work up to the lord they're going around saying you're not a believer you're a believer you're not a believer you're a believer can you believe what susie did on tuesday maybe i shouldn't say this but someone's you know like that's what's going on within this church is is just constant criticism of one another that is not healthy rebuking it's just judging and what james is saying here is is we

need to be able to categorize the two different things we need to be able to practice wisdom that is from above and how this works itself out we are all saints and sinners and what we need is a safe place among ourselves to hold each other accountable to our passions of our flesh while reminding ourselves who we are in christ that's the safest rebuke that you can give somebody hey i see like i love you i love you i know that you are walking with the lord and i know that you've maybe uh as you're walking through a stressful situation or as you're walking through

life whatever it might look like i know that that maybe i've perceived some things i've seen some things that seem to be out of step with the spirit of the lord and this isn't how you normally are usually you are encouraging loving kindful person because of the grace and work of jesus in your life that's usually how you are but i've seen you be a little short and i've seen you snap at people or i've seen you not follow through on your word when it comes to volunteering whatever it might look like and so i just want to remind you who you are in christ

like if you were to come to me with that type of rebuke i mean i'm probably going to enter into that phase of like oh like wretched you're right i'm i'm i'm terrible in doing that i'm sorry like i i need to come back to this fork in the road and trust jesus in this moment and put that to death thank you thank you and that happens that happens i mean josh is great at doing that for me like it's and i know i've called that out a couple of times but but it's true all right my wife's great at doing that and i can

see it coming the more we practice that this faithful rebuke like james is doing with these christians here the more we normalize it among ourselves in a loving christ-centered way you know what that creates among this church christians who are truly satisfied i mean let's just we talk about like one of my roles in in the church is to just cast a vision and who knows what that even really means but at the end of the day what it does mean is who do we want to be what do we want to look like five years from now 15 years from now and what we're

really doing behind the scenes is is who is this church going to be 30 40 years from now what's the community around it going to look like 30 40 years from now because of the faithful presence of what the believers today are doing with the gospel and this would be one of those vision things how would people experience the district church if we were constantly going to one another and pushing each other to worship the lord in every decision we make with the affections that we have versus gratifying the sinful desires of our flesh and i can tell you right now what that would be

is a group of people who are marked by satisfaction pleasure worship and that's i mean that's something that's contagious i mean that's something that is you talk about being like salt of the world i mean like have you ever just eaten one chip and stopped maybe that's one of those like maybe that's this lane of the sinful desires but being able to taste and experience a christian who is satisfied in christ versus anything that the world has to offer for someone who is spinning their wills trying to be satisfied with the world and they meet someone who's not satisfied with the world but satisfied in

christ and therefore nothing that the world throws at them affects them i mean that's that's like apostle paul type stuff where he gets tortured he gets beaten he gets shackled and chained and he gets thrown into a prison and what does he do he doesn't sit back and complain he doesn't sit back and worry he doesn't sit back and criticize well if so and so would have been here if timothy if timothy was here this wouldn't have happened no he's he's singing and praising the lord he's worshiping in the worst of conditions and circumstances why because he's he's not looking for satisfaction from the world

he's not he's not worried about his 401k he's not worried about retirement he's not worried about he's satisfied in the lord and pleased in that place to where that same guard who's torturing him and imprisoning him gets freed from the own shackles that he's experiencing by witnessing the apostle paul worshiping the lord and sharing that good news with him and then that guy becomes one of the leaders in the church of philippi to help plant it that's vision that's what we want to see in our neighborhood in our community is people who are able to do what james is calling us to do here categorize

our affections be able to know yourself and and again one of the best ways to do that is help have others help you identify yourself and know yourself to be able to know which passions are going towards the lord and which passions are going towards your flesh and then say no to them because of jesus in you who was able to say no to them when he lived on the earth and to say yes to jesus because of his yes to submitting to his father and living a perfect life that is at your fingertips that's at the deepest level of your soul and that's where

we got to train ourselves in righteousness to be able to do what he's calling us to do here so submit yourselves before god this morning bring your affections your desires your passions and pleasures before him and the rest will fall into place as it should let's pray together father we thank you so much for your goodness this morning we thank you for your word we thank you god that you expose us that you reveal the motives of of our hearts whether good or bad and you're giving us scriptures like this one your half-brother james allowing us to see that that that we we struggle with

these passions that are at war within us and these passions are causing wars among us father help us to bring those to you and submit them to you and honestly just to nail them to the cross that jesus hung on and they were put to death they have they have no bearing over our souls anymore they have no power over us anymore we have another option we have a greater desire now the desire to honor you and glorify you and enjoy you forever and father that is where we want to rest because no longer are we fighting our flesh anymore no longer are we longing

for satisfaction that we cannot attain anymore we have found it in christ and we can rest we love you lord we thank you for the work that you have done in us it's in your name we pray amen as we come to this time of communion as i even just reiterated in the prayer is that the best thing to do when we are facing these passions these pleasures that are at war within us these these pleasures that are that are not geared towards honoring christ but are geared towards self-satisfaction or self-gratification whatever it might look like we just go the cross we should go to

the cross in your mind we should go to the cross and we see jesus at the cross and we know why he's there he's there to defeat those desires like he's he's robbed death of its power he's robbed sin of its hold on you and he's given us another option to be raised to a new life to be raised to a new way of doing things of living out our lives that are being satisfied in him and him alone and so we thank him by going to the cross we're seeing him break his body and him shed his blood so that there as he's doing

war against sin death and the enemy he has brought home the victory for us and that's one of the most beautiful things that this is where it's restful to do this work it's restful to do this battle is we know that because of him raising from the grave he was victorious over sin death and evil and therefore as we enter into these battles on a daily basis we're going in already with a w we're already victorious as we go into it we just do the work of humbling ourselves and submitting to him and bringing these affections to him and saying these are out of step

with you put them on the cross you already paid the price for them you already killed them you already put them in the grave they're there give me this new renewal of my mind you've already given me the new heart that has affections for you stir that up within me and let me worship you in this moment rather than giving myself over to sin thank you for the work that you've done at the cross and so let's go ahead and stand if you don't have the elements go ahead and grab them and we're going to worship jesus in what he has accomplished for us and

the power that he has now given us because of his blood that has been shed [Music] [Music] for i received from the lord but i also delivered to you that the lord jesus on the night when he was betrayed he took bread and when he had given thanks he broke it and he said this is my body broken for you do this in remembrance of me and in the same way also he took the cup after supper saying this cup is the new covenant in my blood do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me for as often as you eat this

bread and you drink the cup you proclaim the lord's death until he comes let's proclaim his death that has given us life [Music] the morning [Music] [Music] of is curse [Music] is [Music] is [Music] is [Music] has [Music] is [Music] is [Music] is [Music] [Music] we see [Music] is [Music] is [Music] is [Music] is [Music] jesus we thank you