10 January 2010

James 3:18, 4:1-12

18Peacemakers who sow in peace raise a harvest of righteousness.

1What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? 2You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. 3When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.

4You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. 5Or do you think Scripture says without reason that the spirit he caused to live in us envies intensely? 6But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says:

“God opposes the proud

but gives grace to the humble.”

7Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.

11Brothers, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against his brother or judges him speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it. 12There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you—who are you to judge your neighbor?

A Counter Culture of Grace - Dr. Keller - East Side Morning Service

6th Sermon in Series : The Gospel in Community - The Book of James

• We are all products of culture and our surroundings
• Romans 12:9 - stop being fake

Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good

• John 17:20-26 - complete oneness

²⁰"My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, ²¹that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. ²²I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: ²³I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. ²⁴"Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.²⁵"Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. ²⁶I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them."

• Verse 2 - self pleasing---hedonism; cause of selfishness is pride
• Pride makes us more aware of others faults as opposed as to our own
• This leads to contempt
• Pride leads to separation from others
• Pride is overly dogmatic and not nuanced
• A humble person confronts necesarily
• Proud people are full of self pit
• Humility is focusing on yourself less because we are already confident of our worth.
• Humble people don't often care what is said about them because God has taken care of it and given them a sort of confidence
• Romans 15:1

We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves.