SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of things I would like to say this morning.
SPEAKER_00: The first and perhaps the most significant thing that I could say, you're already familiar with.
SPEAKER_00: Today is Sunday, the 5th of June 2016, and God is still on the throne.
SPEAKER_00: He was all week long.
SPEAKER_00: He is today, and he will be in the week to come.
SPEAKER_00: I have no idea what your week was like.
SPEAKER_00: I barely know what my week was like.
SPEAKER_00: But I know that God is on the throne.
SPEAKER_00: He is good.
SPEAKER_00: He is faithful.
SPEAKER_00: He's trustworthy, and he's involved in our lives, even when we don't sense it or feel it.
SPEAKER_00: Today, he reigns, he rules, he's gracious, he's kind, he's patient, he's trustworthy.
SPEAKER_00: The week ahead, we have no idea what this week will bring, and we don't need to know.
SPEAKER_00: All we really need to know is who God is and his goodness and his sufficiency for you and me.
SPEAKER_00: Nothing I enjoy sharing more than that thought.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray together, shall we?
SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we are a needy people.
SPEAKER_00: Whether we realize it or not, whether we feel like our life is out of control or under control, we need you.
SPEAKER_00: And when it's out of control, we're more aware of the fact that we need you.
SPEAKER_00: When we're keenly aware of brokenness on the inside, our inability, our messing things up, our utter weakness, then we are more aware of our need for you.
SPEAKER_00: But we're also aware of who you are.
SPEAKER_00: Father, as we turn to a passage of Scripture that is a difficult one, that speaks clearly, does not stutter in analyzing who we are, I pray that we would flee to our Savior, that we would find in you that which we need, that we would humble ourselves, that we would be small, vulnerable, and open to what you're saying.
SPEAKER_00: Father, I pray, give us hearts that will respond, not to my words, but to your word.
SPEAKER_00: We pray for this in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Turn with me, please, to James chapter 4.
SPEAKER_00: We are ever so slowly working our way through verse by verse the book of James.
SPEAKER_00: And we are in the middle of a passage that, well, in many ways it's like the whole rest of the book.
SPEAKER_00: It's pointed, it's practical, it pushes in on us, it causes us, if we will listen, to ask ourselves some pretty serious questions.
SPEAKER_00: Much of James, I would like to keep at a distance.
SPEAKER_00: That's why I refuse to read it in the first few years I was a believer in all my great maturity and wisdom.
SPEAKER_00: Because I didn't like what it said.
SPEAKER_00: And yet we so desperately need it.
SPEAKER_00: Our goal is to understand what God has said.
SPEAKER_00: It's really simple, to understand what God has said, and to do something with it.
SPEAKER_00: There is no point in hearing without doing.
SPEAKER_00: That's clear in the book of James.
SPEAKER_00: That's almost the way he began.
SPEAKER_00: Don't just be hearers only of the word, but be doers.
SPEAKER_00: So if you come this morning and sit under the teaching of God's Word, and the Holy Spirit is in our midst and is working, and if if we don't go away changed in some meaningful way, the problem is not with God.
SPEAKER_00: Now, it may not be visible, it may be a hard attitude, but what we really desire is to hear from God and to do something real with what he says to us.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna begin in a way that's a little bit different from how I usually begin.
SPEAKER_00: I want to begin with a couple of cartoons.
SPEAKER_00: Now that's not my normal pattern, I realize, but there is a point with this.
SPEAKER_00: I'm a calendar uh word-a-day guy.
SPEAKER_00: I'm a do you like do you like these tear-off calendars that has a page for every day?
SPEAKER_00: I do.
SPEAKER_00: I usually have word-a-day calendars.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, Jane and I have uh wherever we are, uh in our apartment here in town, we've got prominently placed next to the coffee pot.
SPEAKER_00: So we see it first thing in the morning is a word-of-the-day calendar.
SPEAKER_00: I used to get the word-a-day calendar not only there in front of me, I used to get it emailed to me.
SPEAKER_00: So the first thing, wow, a new word today.
SPEAKER_00: Just kind of shows I'm a little weird, but uh uh someone gave me a church chuckle calendar.
SPEAKER_00: And uh so I have gone through this and enjoyed it.
SPEAKER_00: Uh this, you're not gonna be able to read probably the uh thing that goes with it, but this one says, now for crying out loud, Harry, relax.
SPEAKER_00: Uh here's a pastor who doesn't know how to relax.
SPEAKER_00: He goes on the beach, and instead of making a sand castle, he makes a sand pulpit and is obsessive compulsive.
SPEAKER_00: Many, many of us uh in this room are obsessive-compulsive.
SPEAKER_00: We just can't stop.
SPEAKER_00: Uh somehow or another, we're driven to do and do and do, and pastors are among the worst.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, maybe because the things we care about most are intangible and it's never done.
SPEAKER_00: Never ever done.
SPEAKER_00: So that was just to speak to me more than anybody else.
SPEAKER_00: I like this one.
SPEAKER_00: Here's a young gal obviously helping out uh doing the cleaning in the office, and and she's on the phone and she says, it was awesome, Pastor Bob, right after you left.
SPEAKER_00: You know, everyone else on staff came down with this really gnarly kind of flu.
SPEAKER_00: So anyway, that left me to MC the Crankshaw funeral last Saturday.
SPEAKER_00: Pastor Bob.
SPEAKER_00: Um, this is one of my favorites.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, the youth pastor's greatest nightmare.
SPEAKER_00: Hello, we're the Martins.
SPEAKER_00: We left our son Nick here at a pizza party a few years ago.
SPEAKER_00: How many of you would long to have the opportunity to leave your kid for a few years?
SPEAKER_00: Um how many of you kids would be long to be left for a few years?
SPEAKER_00: Uh here's the one, however, that struck me, and that as I got meditating on today's passage, uh I somehow or another spoke to me, and it may seem strange at the beginning, and I hope if we persevere to the end, we'll understand.
SPEAKER_00: But this is a rather dour, surly, um, difficult pastor who is deeply concerned that people might take God frivolously.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and so um he says, God loves you, but don't let it go to your head.
SPEAKER_00: God loves you, but don't let it go to your head.
SPEAKER_00: And I got thinking about that.
SPEAKER_00: I wonder why the person who drew this cartoon, why he approached it that way and and what he was saying.
SPEAKER_00: At first I chuckled, and then I said, I'm not sure, that's so funny.
SPEAKER_00: And then I was reflecting, I wonder how God would feel about a statement like that.
SPEAKER_00: God loves you.
SPEAKER_00: Matt, God loves you.
SPEAKER_00: Just don't let it go to your head.
SPEAKER_00: But thank you for sharing.
SPEAKER_00: Um, I want to just hold that aside and we're going to come back to that.
SPEAKER_00: Uh the focus of this passage is on spiritual adultery.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, verses four through six, we'll probably only get to verses four and five, and six is kind of a transition to the rest of it, so you know, whatever.
SPEAKER_00: But let me read the context, and that is James chapter four, verses one through ten.
SPEAKER_00: We saw the first part last week.
SPEAKER_00: I'm surprised you came back this week.
SPEAKER_00: What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you?
SPEAKER_00: Is it not that your passions, your desires, are at war within you?
SPEAKER_00: You desire and do not have, so you murder, you covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel.
SPEAKER_00: You do not have because you do not ask, you ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly and spend it on your passions.
SPEAKER_00: Adulterous people! That's our passage this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Aren't you glad you came to church?
SPEAKER_00: Adulterous people.
SPEAKER_00: Don't you know that friendship with the world is enity with God?
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
SPEAKER_00: Or do you suppose that it is to no purpose that the scripture says he yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us?
SPEAKER_00: But he gives more grace.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore it says, God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.
SPEAKER_00: Submit yourselves, therefore, to God.
SPEAKER_00: Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
SPEAKER_00: Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.
SPEAKER_00: Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
SPEAKER_00: Be wretched and mourn and weep.
SPEAKER_00: Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.
SPEAKER_00: Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.
SPEAKER_00: This is a difficult passage.
SPEAKER_00: This is James in our face.
SPEAKER_00: This is James saying things that are not meant to be just casually heard, but are to cause us to go away and reflect.
SPEAKER_00: And it's really a passage that is calling God's people to confession and repentance.
SPEAKER_00: It's not the kind of passage that you came to church for this morning.
SPEAKER_00: But maybe it's the passage that God intended for you and for me this morning.
SPEAKER_00: James is pretty severe.
SPEAKER_00: And he starts out in verse 4 in a really pleasant way.
SPEAKER_00: Adulterers! Yikes.
SPEAKER_00: He's addressing believers.
SPEAKER_00: This book was written to believers, believers with a from a Jewish background who had found their Messiah, Jesus Christ, a largely Jewish Christian series of churches scattered around parts of the Mediterranean.
SPEAKER_00: And he says to them, and he addresses them as adulterers.
SPEAKER_00: In our day, adultery is is really not all that big of a deal in our culture today.
SPEAKER_00: It was in James' day, and it is to God.
SPEAKER_00: Adultery, make no mistake about it.
SPEAKER_00: Adultery is very simply having sexual relations with someone who is not your covenant life partner in marriage.
SPEAKER_00: Sexual intimacy with someone who is not your life partner with whom you have made a covenant of commitments to death do us part.
SPEAKER_00: So he's talking about adultery.
SPEAKER_00: It says, you adulterous people.
SPEAKER_00: That actually is a little bit softer than the way it comes across in the original.
SPEAKER_00: It's a good translation, but basically the word is a pretty offensive one that would be equivalent to the old-fashioned word whoremongers.
SPEAKER_00: And it's not, he's not saying he's talking and he's in their face, he's in our face, and he says, whoremongers.
SPEAKER_00: Whoremongers are people who give themselves to prostitutes.
SPEAKER_00: Who traffic in giving themselves to prostitution.
SPEAKER_00: And what he's talking about here is spiritual adultery.
SPEAKER_00: He's not talking in this passage.
SPEAKER_00: Excuse me.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Mike.
SPEAKER_00: Sorry, my throat is pretty dry.
SPEAKER_00: He is not talking about physical adultery.
SPEAKER_00: He's taking that picture which is all throughout the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: And these people knew their Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: And he says, You are spiritual whoremongers.
SPEAKER_00: This idea of spiritual adultery was very, very common.
SPEAKER_00: These people knew their Old Testament far better than we know our Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: And for example, in Isaiah 54, verse 5, God speaking to his chosen people, the people on whom he has placed his affection and his love, and has promised faithfulness to them and brought them into an intimate relationship.
SPEAKER_00: He says to Israel, his bride, Your Maker is your husband.
SPEAKER_00: I, God, your maker, am your husband.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord of hosts is his name.
SPEAKER_00: Now that really is the theme behind it.
SPEAKER_00: What we have is a picture of God who has chosen a bride and set his affections and his love on his bride, and his bride has gone a whorring.
SPEAKER_00: That's really what it's talking about, chasing after other lovers.
SPEAKER_00: Whereas he himself is the lover of their soul.
SPEAKER_00: That's the picture behind all of this.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Mike.
SPEAKER_00: Gentleman and a scholar, or just a gentleman?
SPEAKER_00: This thought we find uh throughout the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: I'll just take some examples from Jeremiah.
SPEAKER_00: You might want to turn to Jeremiah chapter 3 and kind of follow along to get a flavor of what was behind this.
SPEAKER_00: This is a foreign thought to us.
SPEAKER_00: We think of God as our friend, we think of God as our helper.
SPEAKER_00: Um we rarely think of him as our husband or our spouse.
SPEAKER_00: But that's what this is talking about.
SPEAKER_00: So Jeremiah chapter 3, verses 1 and 2.
SPEAKER_00: This is in the beginning of the book of Jeremiah, where Jeremiah is the weeping prophet, he's saying things that are so hard, and he does it with deep concern, but great clarity.
SPEAKER_00: He says, If a man divorces his wife and she goes from him and becomes another man's wife, will he return to her?
SPEAKER_00: Would not that land be greatly polluted?
SPEAKER_00: You have played the whore with many lovers.
SPEAKER_00: So we have a picture here of a relationship of intimacy and trust and faithfulness.
SPEAKER_00: And God's people have been playing the whore.
SPEAKER_00: They've been chasing after other lovers.
SPEAKER_00: Go to verse 6.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord said to me in the days of King Josiah, have you seen what she did, that faithless one, faithless one, Israel?
SPEAKER_00: How she went up on every high hill and under every green tree, and there played the whore.
SPEAKER_00: Verses eight and nine, she saw that for all of the adulteries of that faithfulness, Israel, I had sent her away with a decree of divorce.
SPEAKER_00: Parenthetically, God is divorced.
SPEAKER_00: He divorced Israel.
SPEAKER_00: That's what it says.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't fit our theology very well.
SPEAKER_00: It just happens to be what he says.
SPEAKER_00: I divorced Israel because of unfaithfulness.
SPEAKER_00: You treacherous sister Judah did not fear, but she too went and played the whore.
SPEAKER_00: Because she took her whoredom lightly, she polluted the land, committing adultery with stone and tree.
SPEAKER_00: So the picture is of a faithless woman out in the open, and in another place it talks about under the trees and under the threshing floors, out in the fields, giving herself to someone other than her spouse.
SPEAKER_00: That's the picture here.
SPEAKER_00: It's an offensive, hard kind of way to speak.
SPEAKER_00: And this didn't just happen at one point in Israel's history.
SPEAKER_00: This happened all along, before they even went into the promised land.
SPEAKER_00: Just after they got into the promised land and before the law was given in Deuteronomy 31, 5, it says, These people, God telling to Moses, will soon prostitute themselves to the foreign gods of the land they are entering.
SPEAKER_00: They will forsake me and break their promise.
SPEAKER_00: Now we could go on and on and on and on because this image is repeated time and time and time again.
SPEAKER_00: But you get the picture.
SPEAKER_00: It's so offensive, so sad, that a chosen beloved people would go and give themselves to foreign gods.
SPEAKER_00: This is what underlies all of what James is saying here.
SPEAKER_00: Someone said, and I think it's true, when we sin, it breaks God's heart.
SPEAKER_00: It breaks God's heart as one partner in a marriage may be broken by the unfaithfulness and betrayal of the other.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you have experienced that.
SPEAKER_00: You have been sinned against by the unfaithfulness of a partner.
SPEAKER_00: You know what that feels like.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you have been the partner who has been unfaithful.
SPEAKER_00: And if it hasn't been physical and active in our hearts, we find times that we go chasing after partners that are not our own.
SPEAKER_00: And what James is saying is that that's what we do with God.
SPEAKER_00: And we need to see it that way.
SPEAKER_00: And when we sin, it breaks God's heart.
SPEAKER_00: And so a simple question.
SPEAKER_00: Am I cheating on God?
SPEAKER_00: That's really a question that forces itself into our consciousness if we will just listen to what God is saying.
SPEAKER_00: Are we cheating on God?
SPEAKER_00: Are we breaking his heart?
SPEAKER_00: It's a call to reflection, confession, and repentance.
SPEAKER_00: That's what this passage is all about.
SPEAKER_00: The second half of the verse, James changes the imagery a little bit from adultery to being an enemy of God.
SPEAKER_00: Let's read that, James 4, verse 4, the second half.
SPEAKER_00: Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
SPEAKER_00: So first we prostitute ourselves, and now a different image of we make ourselves enemies of God.
SPEAKER_00: Spiritual adultery is cast now in terms of friendship with the world.
SPEAKER_00: And friendship with the world is hostility towards God.
SPEAKER_00: You have to choose.
SPEAKER_00: You really have to choose.
SPEAKER_00: You can't be a friend of God and a friend of the world.
SPEAKER_00: You can't be a friend of the world and a friend of God all at the same time.
SPEAKER_00: Now we have both tendencies within us, and we find ourselves pulled in both directions.
SPEAKER_00: But James in the scripture causes us to choose who this day shall we serve?
SPEAKER_00: Who is your lover?
SPEAKER_00: Who loves you, honey?
SPEAKER_00: Who loves you, baby?
SPEAKER_00: And do you love him in return?
SPEAKER_00: And now he's talking about the world.
SPEAKER_00: And if our relationship with the world is of a certain kind, then it shows that we are have enmity or hostility between us and God.
SPEAKER_00: We need to pay a little bit of attention to this world word world.
SPEAKER_00: Cosmos?
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it refers to the physical world around us, but perhaps the best simple, if four lines are simple, definition of cosmos is the present evil world system, the values, the behaviors, the inclinations that are under the enemy's control and hostile to God, to God's purposes and God's people.
SPEAKER_00: Those things within us.
SPEAKER_00: There is a world system out there.
SPEAKER_00: And this is worldliness.
SPEAKER_00: Worldliness is not just external behavior.
SPEAKER_00: It's not, you know, I don't smoke, drink, or chew, or go with girls who do.
SPEAKER_00: As though that's what worldliness is.
SPEAKER_00: Worldliness is not the behavioral things.
SPEAKER_00: Worldliness is the attitudes in our heart that follows after a world system that has values, that has inclinations and behaviors that go along with it, and we allow ourselves to be influenced by the world around us instead of influencing the world around us.
SPEAKER_00: That's worldliness.
SPEAKER_00: And it's far more profound than we think it is.
SPEAKER_00: It has to do with how we spend our time, has to do with how what we do with our mind, what images we bring across the screens of our mind, how we handle our finances, how we think about other people, how we respond to other people in all kinds of ways, what we value, do we chase after fame and big reputation and getting our way and being seen to be impressive kinds of people?
SPEAKER_00: Do we chase after entertainment?
SPEAKER_00: We live in an entertainment-addicted society.
SPEAKER_00: We live in a society that is all about me and what I get and what I can do and my way and what I and the question is to what extent does that resonate so deeply within us that we begin to think that way and value things that way?
SPEAKER_00: It's frightening for me.
SPEAKER_00: How much of my longing and desires and how I spend my time and the things that I laugh about and the things that I enjoy, how much of those are as close to being like the world as I can get?
SPEAKER_00: Whereas God calls us not to get as close as we can get without quite going over the edge.
SPEAKER_00: No, he says we're that's what the Sermon on the Mount is all about.
SPEAKER_00: We're to be different.
SPEAKER_00: We're not to be like the world around us.
SPEAKER_00: And it's not just behavior, and it's not just the way we look, and it's not just how we dress or whatever.
SPEAKER_00: It's the attitudes of our heart.
SPEAKER_00: What are we imbibing?
SPEAKER_00: What value system is really ours?
SPEAKER_00: How different from those around us are we?
SPEAKER_00: How different from those in the cubicle next to us are we really?
SPEAKER_00: What is there that is fundamentally different about us other than the fact that we have a Bible, we read it occasionally, we go to church and we sing praise hymns?
SPEAKER_00: Praise hymns?
SPEAKER_00: Praise songs.
SPEAKER_00: And hymns occasionally.
SPEAKER_00: Hymns and praises.
SPEAKER_00: Andy, forgive me.
SPEAKER_00: I want to talk with you afterwards, by the way.
SPEAKER_00: I really do.
SPEAKER_00: The question really is, are we as like the world as we can be and still be Christian, or are we as different from the world?
SPEAKER_00: Not just because we wear weird clothes, uh, black hats, don't have buttons, you know, the like the Amish or something.
SPEAKER_00: So they've separated themselves from the world.
SPEAKER_00: That's not what it's all about.
SPEAKER_00: It's hard attitudes.
SPEAKER_00: Um what he's saying is you can't fraternize with the enemy.
SPEAKER_00: The world is an enemy, and the forces of the world, the the the values of the world are not God focused, they're ultimately under the control of the enemy.
SPEAKER_00: And we have an enemy.
SPEAKER_00: And do we fraternize with the enemy?
SPEAKER_00: Um, I have a vivid picture, and I can't remember for sure what movie it was from.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, it had to do with post-World War II Europe, where the occupying forces had come in.
SPEAKER_00: It may have been Banda Brothers or something like that.
SPEAKER_00: But in Belgium and Holland, of course I'm partial to Belgium, that's a special spot in our hearts.
SPEAKER_00: But uh when the occupying forces took over, there were people, there were people in society who just kind of went along.
SPEAKER_00: And in particular, uh there were people who fraternized, who went along with and played with and gave themselves to the enemy.
SPEAKER_00: And as the the Allied forces came through and freed up that part of Europe, there was a strong reaction on the part of townspeople to those in their midst who had given themselves to the enemy.
SPEAKER_00: And there's a vivid picture, I think it's uh Banda Brothers, where in Holland, the southern part of Holland, there's a group of women who were being hounded by the mobs, their heads were being shaved, uh, they were being mocked, they were being abused, and they had prostituted themselves to the occupying forces.
SPEAKER_00: And there was a great antitophy towards that.
SPEAKER_00: There was a great emotional response.
SPEAKER_00: Well, that reflects in a small way God's response to us when we are fraternizing with the enemy.
SPEAKER_00: A question for this as well.
SPEAKER_00: In what friendship are you growing?
SPEAKER_00: Are you a better friend of God today than you were a year ago?
SPEAKER_00: I'm not even talking about 20 years ago when you came to faith or at some experience at a conference or a camp.
SPEAKER_00: I'm talking about just in daily life, over the last, let's just say the last year, are you increasingly a friend of God and decreasingly a friend of the world?
SPEAKER_00: And I don't know how you exactly evaluate that, but he's saying, look at folks, you've got to choose.
SPEAKER_00: And there is both within us, but what is gaining the ascendancy?
SPEAKER_00: Are we growing so that it would become evident that we are more and more friends of God?
SPEAKER_00: There's a chorus, I don't know if we've sung it in this church.
SPEAKER_00: I'm a friend of God, I'm a friend of God, I'm a friend of God, he calls me friend.
SPEAKER_00: It's a wonderful, perplexing kind of a chorus.
SPEAKER_00: The first time I heard it, I didn't know quite what to do about it because it sounded somehow a little bit arrogant.
SPEAKER_00: Well, I think the problem was me, not so much the concept, because he does call us friend.
SPEAKER_00: And the question, am I more of a friend of God now than I was 11 months ago when we came here to this church?
SPEAKER_00: That's a real question.
SPEAKER_00: What about you?
SPEAKER_00: See, that's what James wants us uh to wrestle with.
SPEAKER_00: One more thought here.
SPEAKER_00: Uh verse 5, I don't think we're even going to touch verse 6 this morning, um, where uh he says in the ESV, it's translated, or do you suppose that it is to no purpose that the scripture says he yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell within us?
SPEAKER_00: That is a strange sentence.
SPEAKER_00: This is actually, arguably, one of the more difficult verses in the New Testament to know how to translate.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if we've got any of the SIL people here this morning, but uh this is really a challenge for various reasons to know how to translate it.
SPEAKER_00: Without giving you all of the gory details of my exegesis, I would simply say, I believe it says, and this is in effect what the New American Standard Bible says, the Spirit which He has made to dwell in us jealously desires us.
SPEAKER_00: The Spirit of God is jealous for you.
SPEAKER_00: Jealous.
SPEAKER_00: God, our God, is a jealous God.
SPEAKER_00: He begins with a question why do you suppose that God says to us, My the Spirit which I have made to dwell in you, jealously desires you.
SPEAKER_00: Why would God have said that?
SPEAKER_00: God loves us so much that he doesn't want to share us with other lovers.
SPEAKER_00: That's what that verse is saying.
SPEAKER_00: He is we are his chosen grace-blessed, love-drenched people, not because of who we are, but because of who God is.
SPEAKER_00: And he loves us so much, he doesn't want to share you with anyone else.
SPEAKER_00: He wants you to have no other lovers.
SPEAKER_00: Now, these aren't the ways we normally think.
SPEAKER_00: This is the way James talks and thinks.
SPEAKER_00: God says, My name is jealous.
SPEAKER_00: Now there's 625 different names that somebody found in the scriptures of God and alphabetized according to the English alphabet.
SPEAKER_00: Jealous is number 290.
SPEAKER_00: He says explicitly and clearly, I am Jehovah Jirah, I am Yahweh, I am El Shaddai, and I am jealous.
SPEAKER_00: That's my name.
SPEAKER_00: Are we able to embrace a God who loves us so much that he doesn't want to share us with anyone else?
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't want to have us going and giving ourselves to other gods and other values.
SPEAKER_00: Jealousy is a love word.
SPEAKER_00: In the scriptures, jealousy is a love word.
SPEAKER_00: It's talking about a love relationship, intimacy, and special, precious, intimate love, of which physical intimacy is but one expression.
SPEAKER_00: Jealousy is a love word.
SPEAKER_00: When we hear jealousy, we think of nothing but negative.
SPEAKER_00: In the scriptures, it has to do with God's awesome love for us.
SPEAKER_00: God loves us so much that he doesn't want to share us with others.
SPEAKER_00: Do not treat lightly the love of God that he has for you.
SPEAKER_00: May I not treat it lightly, take it flippantly the love of God.
SPEAKER_00: God loves us so much, he doesn't want to share our affections with anyone else, with no other gods, with no other values.
SPEAKER_00: And all of the loving relationships in this life are but a foretaste and a poor expression of God's love for us and our love for God.
SPEAKER_00: As much as I love Jane and she loves me and is incredibly patient with me, that's but a tiny little fragment of the reality of God's love for me, and God's patience with me, and God's grace for me and for you.
SPEAKER_00: And so we have to ask ourselves: do I treat that so lightly that I provoke God to righteous jealousy against me?
SPEAKER_00: There is such a thing as righteous jealousy.
SPEAKER_00: All of the actions and emotions of God are righteous.
SPEAKER_00: There is a righteous anger.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we think we're righteously angry.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe sometimes, one-tenth of one percent, my anger is righteous.
SPEAKER_00: Mostly it's just unrighteous anger.
SPEAKER_00: But there is a righteous anger and there's a righteous jealousy.
SPEAKER_00: And God is jealous for you.
SPEAKER_00: He loves us.
SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna leave verse 6.
SPEAKER_00: So what does what do we say with this idea?
SPEAKER_00: God loves you, but don't let it go to your head.
SPEAKER_00: What would Jane say?
SPEAKER_00: Would he agree?
SPEAKER_00: Disagree.
SPEAKER_00: I don't have time to take a poll.
SPEAKER_00: I believe, based on what this passage is saying, is that that is an absolutely incorrect approach.
SPEAKER_00: How great is the love that the Father has lavished upon us that we are called children of God.
SPEAKER_00: We don't take God's love too too too seriously.
SPEAKER_00: We don't take it seriously enough.
SPEAKER_00: If we had had to the extent that we have the slightest sense of God's love for us.
SPEAKER_00: There's three questions here.
SPEAKER_00: I've mentioned them.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna go back over them, just mention them.
SPEAKER_00: Are we cheating on God and breaking his heart?
SPEAKER_00: Are you?
SPEAKER_00: I'm not asking you to look around, I'm asking you to look within.
SPEAKER_00: Cheating on God and breaking his heart.
SPEAKER_00: Whose friendships am I cultivating?
SPEAKER_00: The worlds or gods?
SPEAKER_00: Whose friendships are you cultivating?
SPEAKER_00: The worlds or gods?
SPEAKER_00: And then is there something in my life that would cause God to conclude that I expect him to share me with another lover?
SPEAKER_00: Let me say that again.
SPEAKER_00: Is there something in our lives, in my life, and in yours, that might cause God to conclude that we kind of think he'll be content to share us with another lover?
SPEAKER_00: This is hard stuff, my friends.
SPEAKER_00: All I can do is pray.
SPEAKER_00: Would you join me?
SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, I don't like confronting my own soul with this stuff.
SPEAKER_00: I would rather, I would rather avoid it.
SPEAKER_00: But I would rather have truth and build it into my life than foolishly push it aside.
SPEAKER_00: Father, I am prone to wander.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, I feel it.
SPEAKER_00: Prone to leave the God I love.
SPEAKER_00: Here's my heart, O take and seal it.
SPEAKER_00: Seal it for thy courts above.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, to grace, how great a debtor.
SPEAKER_00: Daily I'm constrained to be.
SPEAKER_00: May your goodness like a fetter bind my wandering heart to thee.
SPEAKER_00: Oh Father, help us not only sing this hymn as we shall do now, but help us have it be the attitude of our heart.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: We didn't get to the good part, which is grace.
SPEAKER_00: Come back next week.
SPEAKER_00: All right, we are gonna sing that uh hymn?