Intentional Living • James 4:11-17
35:08 Teaching begins
Notes
Question: How do you know God loves you?
Answer: Because He disciplines you to share His holiness.
And you know that discipline is painful at the start, and in the end it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness.
James today continues discipling us. His point is that we would live day to day with God.
We are used to thinking like people who are not born again. We’ve been seeing that our default mode of thinking and living is backwards to God’s life.
When we live day to day with God we know who we are, who God is, and we live lives that please Him.
I’m reading in James 4 from verse 11.
1. James takes two common practices that everyone does, and shows how they are offensive to God and unreasonable.
2. The first common practice is to speak against one another.
A. The word he uses comes from a noun that means backbiter. That’s someone who complains about someone else when they’re not there. You say mean, spiteful things.
B. This is something that everyone does. And with polarization increasing in society we see that people do this more and more nowadays.
C. James says stop doing that brethren.
D. His reason is that it’s arrogant against God, it’s taking the place of God, and you have left your proper place.
1. Your proper place is to be a doer of the word. And that word of God is that you are to love your neighbour as yourself. Jesus said you are to love your enemies, you are to be perfect like your Father in heaven is perfect.
2. When you criticise and complain about another believer in Jesus you no longer love that person. You have stopped being longsuffering and patient and kind. You have begun to be rude, to seek your own things, to keep a record of wrongs. You are doing all those things that love does not do. You are no longer a doer of the word.
3. Now you are a judge of the word. You criticise God’s command that you should love your neighbour as yourself. Well, that’s a stupid idea, because this guy is so mean to me! Why should I treat him better than he is treating me? He deserves to go to hell! God makes stupid laws. I say, judge that person, judge the law of God. Down with them all!
E. James shows how that is offensive to God and unreasonable.
1. There is only one Lawgiver and Judge. The language emphasises one and one only.
2. He is the Lawgiver and Judge because He created everything. He is the Author, therefore He has the Authority. So He can save and destroy. We think directly about destroy! We can do that. But only God can save, and that’s what He prefers to do!
3. So James asks, who do you think you are? You are taking the position of God, you tear down His law, you are not loving. Now who does that look like?
4. That’s what the devil does. This is the wisdom that is from below, not above. Here there is selfish ambition and bitter jealousy, disorder and every evil thing.
F. This happens in churches so often as to be pandemic.
1. What should happen is that the one offended should go to the offender and speak the truth in love. You go to your brother and tell him of his sin, with a view to winning him. If he is not persuaded you bring two or three witnesses who can testify in love that this is wrong. If he doesn’t listen you tell the church and if he doesn’t listen to the church, you kick him out, looking for repentance. Or, as you comminicate you learn you need to ask forgiveness because you find out you are wrong, not the other person! Communicate!
2. But what happens often is people build up bitterness, the one offended doesn’t speak to the one who offended. No communication. Just backbiting, complaining. Then the offended person leaves the church and finds another church and the same thing happens all over again. The problem that is not addressed is that the offended person has stopped being a doer of the law of love, he has taken the position of God, and he speaks against God’s will and against God Himself.
3. The other practice James mentions is making plans in life without respect to God.
A. Again, everybody does this naturally.
1. It’s natural to say, okay, we’re going to take time, go there, do this, and work hard for profit.
2. Profit means I support my family, I can get food, housing, clothing, gas, electricity, broadband! Then you have a little disposable income to get some Netflix, get some Amazon. What’s the matter with that?
B. You forget who you are, you forget about God.
1. You forget that you are a vapour. You are temporary, you only have a limited amount of time in this life. Anything can happen. Life is not guaranteed, and you are not in charge of your times. Are you ready to face your Maker and give account of your life?
2. Jesus told a parable about a farmer who had such a great harvest that he planned to tear down his barns and build bigger ones, and then he’d be set for life. And God says to him, you fool! Tonight your soul is required of you. All this stuff you have prepared for yourself — whose will it be? You are rich toward men, but not toward God.
C. What you should do is live with the purpose of pleasing God.
1. You say, “I have a limited time here. Am I doing what God wants me to do? Is God going to tell me, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant!’, or will He shake His head and say, ‘What in the world was that?’?
2. We don’t always get a detailed road map from God. We make our plans and we say, if the Lord wills, we’ll do this. But if He does something else we go along with what He has, trusting in His wisdom and guidance. We submit to Him without always understanding Him. That’s trusting Him.
D. But when you forget that you’re a vapour and you are going to do this and that, that’s boasting. It’s arrogant, and it’s ignorant of God. Ignorance and arrogance always go together, and they are evil.
4. Then James greatly increases the tension: we know we aren’t doing what we ought to do.
A. When he says, “therefore” he is drawing a conclusion from what he has just said. And it doesn’t sound connected, but it is.
B. We know what is right to do, but we don’t do it. In other words, we live in a disconnect. Our life does not agree with what we say about ourselves.
1. We know we should love everyone.
2. We know we are only here for a short time.
3. But we complain about people and we make no thought about doing what God wants us to do. We are doing our own thing and we are contrary to God. We live in a disconnect.
C. This means we are living a lifestyle of sin.
1. We think, I’m not sinning. I am not stealing, I am not lying, I am not disobedient to my parents, well, not that often. I’m pretty good.
2. Righteousness is more than not doing evil. Righteousness is doing good to others.
3. So you can ask, where is the fruit? Jesus went to look at a fig tree for fruit. He had a right to expect fruit because with this kind of tree the fruit comes before the leaves. The tree is saying I have fruit. But Jesus didn’t find any fruit. What the tree says does not agree with its life. So Jesus curses the tree. May no one eat fruit from you ever again. And the tree withers. It is very easy to live in a disconnect, we say one thing but we live in the opposite direction.
5. So where do we get fruit?
A. How do I live a life when I’m a vapour? How do I please God?
B. Part of the answer is, you can’t please God on your own. You don’t care enough. You don’t have the strength. You are a vapour. You are finite. You cannot please God when you live naturally in default mode, when you forget about Him and who you are, and just do your own thing.
C. God has a plan with a goal, that you live an intentional life with Him. Intentional means, done by thought out plan or design. It’s the design thought up by your Father who is in heaven. You will find it in Colossians 1:9-12.
For this reason also, since the day we heard of it, we have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience; joyously giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in Light.
1. Filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding. God’s plan is for you to continually grow in knowing God and His ways. You get to be an intelligent participator in God’s plan, not His plastic action figure. You learn from the Bible, New & Old Testament, every part.
2. The purpose of knowing God’s will is to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects. The more you learn, the better you will walk.
3. Strengthened with all might. You learn how the Lord is your strength and how that works in your life.
4. And you will especially learn how to persevere and endure in following Jesus by His strength of character.
5. Joyously giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. Your Father in heaven wants you to experience joy that is not affected by what happens in the world. That’s part of your strength, the joy of the Lord.
D. The end of God’s plan for you to live intentionally is that you will be made like Christ. You are being made like Him inside you right now. The end is that you will be revealed with Christ in glory. The end of God’s plan is living with Him is eternity doing what pleases Him. Good plans! Great purpose!
E. So here’s the question: are you living according to this purpose? Or are you living according to your purpose, which is close to no purpose at all? You have to think about what you are doing. When you think, then you say, “Yes, Father in heaven. I choose to go Your way. Teach me Your paths, show me Your ways, lead me in Your truth and teach me.”
Live intentionally with your Father who is in heaven.
Let’s pray.