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Now, few of us have the ruthless drive and vicious immorality of a Tony Montana, but to a lesser sense, all of us here have struggled and do struggle at times with the big three battles in this world, the battles with the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, mentioned in scripture.
And many of us have felt very driven toward money, pride, power, a pride of life similar in some ways to a Tony Montana. Today we’re talking about this battle with something called coveting.
And I want to suggest to you today a different mindset for our journey through this world, (next slide) that of Etienne de Grellet, a Quaker missionary who said:
“I shall pass this way but once; any good that I can do or any kindness I can show to any human being; let me do it now. Let me not defer nor neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.”
-Etienne de Grellet, Quaker missionary
Most of us are not either Tony Montana or Etienne de Grellet, but somewhere in between. So today we will examine this struggle, of being on the fence, and how to find our place with both feet in the kingdom of God. We may never be to the level of a Quaker missionary, but, we can be firmly planted in God.
Starting in James Chapter 4, verses 1-2: “What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? 2 You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight.”
What causes us to be upset within ourselves? What causes us to then get into fights and cause drama with others? Ultimately, James tells us that it’s from our desires within us that have gotten out of control. And yes, this is talking to Christians. So for Christians, we can struggle with desires that get out of control.
This makes sense, this world offers many allurements, things that we want. Our desires get so out of control that we even kill to satiate them. This is an extreme example. But here in Gary we hear about it sometimes, someone killed someone else. And it’s sad. It all has it’s source in coveting.
What is coveting? It’s a desire that has gotten out of whack. It’s become abnormal, too powerful. Or, it’s desiring something God doesn’t want us to have.
We’ve all experienced this as well. Whether it’s with drinking, or gambling, or lust, or love for money, or anger or hatred, or just cutting ourselves off from the world. A desire within us, has gotten us too big, and is messing with our ability to live right.
It continues, verses 2-3: “ You do not have because you do not ask God. 3 When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.”
As our desires get out of whack, we naturally become less and less spiritual. We aren’t asking God, we’re just chasing what feels good. We don’t receive, because we don’t ask. But, even if we do ask, we’re asking for the wrong things, we’re asking God for more money, or to send us pleasure, but, it never is enough, and God doesn’t answer prayers centered on our selfish pleasures.
Next: 4 You adulterous people,[a] don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.
The idea of being adulterous here, points back to the Old Testament, when Israel was supposed to be devoted to the one God Yahweh, but instead, they kept worshipping other gods along with Yahweh, which is obviously adulterous.
This scripture we all need to remember, if you choose to be a friend of the world, you become an enemy of God.
What does this mean? It’s been much debated. But in general, to be a friend of the world, which is something we want to avoid at all costs, is to be in love with the things of this world. It goes back to verses 1-3, allowing all of our desires to get out of control, where we are coveting everything in this world around us.
Instead, we should be heavenly minded. We should hold things of this life loosely in our hands. And this will make it easy to let them go when we must.
As Billy Graham said, “My home is in heaven. I’m just traveling through this world.”
This life is temporary. The New Jerusalem is eternal.
Verses 5-6 expand on this: 5 Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us? 6 But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says:
‘God opposes the proud
but shows favor to the humble.’”
I think verse 5 is better translated, His spirit within us jealously longs for our affection.” You’ll see in the margin of your Bible that it gives several alternative translations for that phrase because it’s somewhat unclear in the original Greek.
God is jealous for our affections, is the key here. Which is stated in the Old Testament. God is jealous for our hearts and God will not accept divided affections within us. He’s jealous for our entire heart, as He should be, He made us, and He wants our affections. It’s a holy attribute of God, His desire for our heart. Just like a husband or wife should jealously desire the affection of their own wife or husband. The romantic love belongs to only them. Our heart passion belongs to God not the world.
Yet we also see in verse 6, Yet God gives more grace. God is patient and forgiving of us in this process.
There is a solution to all these uncontrolled coveting desires within us. And it starts with the end of verse 6:
"God opposes the proud, but shows favor the humble.”
This is the key. If we are struggling with uncontrolled desires, we need to humble ourselves before God.
Next, verses 7-10 expand on how to humble yourself, if you find within yourself out of control desires:
“7 Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.”
Let’s walk through this process...
First, we want to submit to God. Get quiet, and go into prayer with God. Father, I admit I’ve allowed my desires to control me. That’s idolatry, and I want to ask your forgiveness. I humble myself before you God, Lord, have mercy on me. I turn these desires over to you, please take them from me, in Jesus name, amen.
Next, we’ll want to address the spiritual warfare aspect of this battle. Resist the devil, and the devil will flee from you. Often times our desires our disturbed because the enemy is whispering to us and tempting us toward evil. So you’ve got to speak the name of Jesus, and tell the enemy to be gone!
Come near to God, and God will come near to you. Again, this is seeking God honestly, returning to your Father with all your heart, not just words, but really getting in deep in prayer and turning over your heart to Him.
Wash your hands you sinners, it says. And purify your heart. This is the key: Repentance. When we’ve got desires that are out of control… we want to humble ourselves, pray, seek God’s face, yes, resist the devil yes, but ultimately in all this we are finding a place of repentance.
That is a power word in the Christian faith, repentance. Lord, I repent. It pictures one who is facing toward sin, and they turn 180 degrees away from it, turn their back on sin, and turn their face toward God. They are forgiven. And the sin is now behind their back, they don’t see it anymore, they are focused on God. The sin is gone, and the affections are back where they should be, on God himself. That is true repentance. It’s not just turning from sin, it’s turning toward God.
The desire, or affection that was once focused on the sin, is now off the sin, and onto God. Thus the sin is defeated, because it’s lost it’s place of love in our hearts.
Notice also the scripture today says to change our emotions, to grieve and mourn when we’re caught in the sin of coveting. Change our happiness to grieving and crying. That’s wisdom too. There is a time for joy, yes. But there is also a time for sorrow and grieving, and expressing our sadness to God.
In all this, as we humble ourselves and repent, God will lift us up from that place of mourning, and restore our joy, and the sin of coveting will be defeated. And that is cause for celebration.
If during this message, God brings something up in your heart, I want you to pray and repent. If God brings it up, repent of it, Lord I turn away from that sin and I turn toward you. Lord please forgive me by Jesus’ blood. It’s real and powerful. And that’s how many revivals have started in Christian history, a small group of Christians repenting honestly before God.
James is going to bring us to two more key topics before the end of chapter 4, but remember again, as we dive into these topics, let God speak a word to you right now, and be quick to grieve, humble yourself, turn and repent and get that sin under the blood of Jesus.
Next, verses 11-12: "Brothers and sisters, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against a brother or sister[d] or judges them speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it. 12 There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you – who are you to judge your neighbour?”
Do not slander others. And do not judge others. Think right now about someone who has harmed you recently. Your feelings of pain are valid. Your confusion and frustration is valid. The wrong they did to you matters before God. All of that is true. However, you must not slander them to others, or judge them in a way that you sit on the throne to declare them worthy of condemnation.
This is so common for us, when someone hurts us, we slander them, and then we judge them by condemning them.
Now, it’s valid for you to go to a friend, after someone hurt you, and say, this is what they did, and it hurt. That’s not slander, you are speaking truth. But, if you take it further and declare they are bad, or you begin spreading rumors, now you are sinning.
If we slander or judge, we are in fact judging and slandering the law of Jesus, which is the golden law, to love your neighbor as yourself. If we slander and judge, we are actually slandering and judging Jesus’ perfect law of love. Who are you… to judge your neighbor? There is only one judge, and it’s God, not me, not you.
Lastly, verse 13-17 “Now listen, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.’ 14 Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. 15 Instead, you ought to say, ‘If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.’ 16 As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil. 17 If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.”
James hits on a completely different topic to conclude the chapter.
What we really see here, is James is addressing the key issues that make war with our souls.
The big three mentioned in 1 John 2:16: “For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world.”
The lust of the flesh is our internal coveting getting out of control. The lust of the eyes are what can cause us to be in love with this world. And the pride of life is what James is getting into lastly here.
The pride of life is all about achieving things in this world and taking pleasure in the accomplishments of this life before love for God.
I actually asked AI what the pride of life was, and it said, “In a Christian context, "the pride of life" refers to a strong desire for self-exaltation and self-gratification, often associated with seeking recognition, status, and material possessions. It involves finding pleasure in worldly achievements and possessions, rather than acknowledging God's grace and seeking his glory.”
Often times I’ve found AI answers to be deceptive and misleading, but in this case, I think the AI is correct.
And this fits with our scripture for today, it pictures someone boasting about moving to a new area and doing business for a year and making money. But again, humility is the key. We should always keep God first in the plans we make. And when we speak, we should phrase it as, if it’s God’s will, we will go and see these plans succeed. Submit your plans to God. Keep God at the center.
Boasting in our arrogant schemes is sinful. So if you battle with boasting, again, repent and seek God’s forgiveness. Boasting in our plans is a symptom of the pride of life. Instead, recognize you are temporary, we are just a cloud of vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Like a flower that grows, blooms, then fades and dies.
Then at the very end we get this tidbit from James “If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.”
This is a scripture I try to live by. I’ll often sense that God is leading me to do something, could be simple, go talk to one of my staff members, or even go take a nap, these I call “nudges from God.” And I think many of us just naturally follow these nudges. But, we also get this scripture, that if we know the good we’re called to do, and we don’t do it, it becomes sin for us.
Now, every nudging from God is not a sin issue. God gives us free will for a reason. Yet I do believe there are certain nudgings that are critical, and if we refuse the leading of the Holy Spirit, it’s sin. And we’ll need to repent and ask God’s forgiveness in that circumstance.
In conclusion today, we put it all together… the challenge in living as a Christian is that we still battle the sinful nature within us, though we also have the Holy Spirit within us helping us to choose the right.
Nevertheless, at times the desires of this life can cause us to lose control of our desires and become covetous. The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life can take over. Slowly we start to drift toward being more in love with the world than we are in love with God. We become double-minded. One foot in the world, one foot in the Kingdom of God. This double-minded situation leaves us miserable, constantly torn between God and this world. Our lusts and desires control us, and we end up in fights and quarrels and drama. We want God but we want the world too. So we’re divided, and this divided state puts us in danger of being regarded as an enemy of God.
The solution to this miserable situation is to humble ourselves, seek God honestly, mourn and grieve over our divided heart, resist the devil who is leading us astray, and at the proper moment, we repent, we submit to God, and we give Him our whole heart. And God moves in and suddenly, he’s all in all to us. We jump off the fence, with both feet in the kingdom of God.
We fall in love so much with Jesus Christ, that our love for the world’s pleasures fades away. And it’s suddenly all about Jesus Christ.
And then, the Lord lifts us up in honor. Because we belong to Him. And we’ve crucified the desires of the flesh.
Additionally, at the end of the chapter we also discussed not judging or slandering others, but allowing God to be the only judge. And we also addressed avoiding the pride of life, and instead submitting our plans to God’s leading, and obeying the nudgings of the Holy Spirit.
Amen. So that is the challenge from God before us. We’re going to pray, and repent, and offer our hearts to God afresh today. We are going to renounce any adulterous love for worldly pleasures, and turn to Jesus.
Prayer: Father, we mourn and grieve over putting things in the world, pleasures before you. We know this is wrong, yet we did it anyway. We’ve allowed pleasures and desires to take control. And we want that to stop. Father please forgive us for embracing the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. Forgive us please for slandering others, and judging others. Forgive us for taking pride in our own plans. We renounce these past ways. We offer you our hearts and ask you to consecrate them. Set us apart from the world, for holy sacred use. We repent of our sins. We repent of coveting. We turn toward you Father, in Jesus name, amen.
