Good Morning! 2010.06.16 - James 4:4 - Friendship With the World and God

Good Morning!

 

Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship

 

of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a

 

friend of the world is the enemy of God.  (James 4:4)

 

This is a tough saying. The immediate focus here is not sexual sin. The text takes the stained image of men and women who habitually practice sex outside of marriage and use that corrupt practice to describe a much bigger and broader area that offends God. James is saying that they have broken their marriage covenant with God by loving the world more than the living God.  He goes to root of the problem in saying that life has to be lived with allegiance to God or allegiance to the world. Straddling a barbed wire fence will make you a loser in a hurry. Get on one side of the fence or the other.

 

Jesus said: No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. (Matthew 6:24)

 

I have spent a half-century listening to and talking to people that are trying to fix something in their miserable lives. A few people enter into counseling with an honest and humble heart. But most do not. A majority of the troubled couples who have come to me are there to get me to endorse their way of thinking that got them into trouble in the first place.  Their primary allegiance is not to God even though they can sing Amazing Grace like a pro. Living in the real world is best done in the light of God's word.

 

I wasted many hours sitting with people who would not be bound by the Word of God. After about ten years of that, I began to agree with Jay Adams whose approach to counseling was to give people the Word of God and if they did not want to embrace the Bible as their blueprint, there was no need to waste their time and my time.

 

Few people can honestly pray: Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.  (Psalm 139:23-24)

 

This generation is just like the generation before it: "Pastor, will you please tell me how to be a good Christian and be accepted by all my friends at school?" We don't like: Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil….(Exodus 23:2)

 

Serving God is not a chore but great blessing.  Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.  (Psalm 16:11)

 

In the New Testament we read: For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous.  (1John 5:3)

 

Among Christians, the greatest issue is whether or not Christ is going to be Lord. I think Joshua said it well in his day:

 

And if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.  (Joshua 24:15)

 

This article can also be viewed at www.bibleliving.blogspot.com

 

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