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| > Sermon Archive > Sermons by Author > Dr. Wes Bredenhof > God warns us that friends of the world are his enemies | Previous Next Print |
| Order Of Worship (Liturgy) Psalm 47 Hymn 11:9 (after the Law of God) Psalm 25:1,7 Hymn 35:1,2 Hymn 76 Scripture readings: Hosea 2:1-13, James 3:13-4:12 Text: James 4:4 |
Beloved congregation of Christ,
In Psalm 19:10-11 we learn that God wants us to experience his Word as absolutely delightful. For a believer, God’s Word is supposed to be 4 Ps: precious, pleasurable, protective, and profitable. That third “P,” protective, is about the warnings God gives us in the Bible, “by them is your servant warned.” Many of the Bible’s warnings come from the book of Proverbs.
There are similarities between the Old Testament book of Proverbs and the New Testament book of James. Both are concerned with wisdom. Both are extremely practical writings. And both contain many warnings. Our text for this morning is one of those many wise practical warnings in James.
Before we get into the warning of our text, it’s important to note the overarching theme of this book. The overarching theme is the importance of believers striving for wholeness. God doesn’t want us to be double-minded people, but single-minded. God doesn’t want us to be divided in our devotion, but committed entirely to him. This is why chapter 1 famously tells us to be “doers of the word, and not hearers only.” Do and hear – integrate those two into your life, don’t divide them. This is why the beginning of chapter 3 has this section about the tongue. With the tongue we praise God, but with the same tongue we curse people made in his image. That’s duplicity, double-mindedness. “These things ought not to be so.” The same tongue which praises God should also build up people made in his image – that would be wisdom, that would be wholeness.
The call to wholeness is something Christians in every age need to hear. We need to hear it too. There’s always a temptation to be double-minded, to live a double-life. For example, it’s so easy to fall into the trap of being one way at church and another way at work. At church you look like a good godly person, but at work it’s like you’ve lost your religion or perhaps never had it. Or being one way when you’re with Christians and another way when you’re with unbelievers, so those unbelievers never even suspect you’re a Christian. We have to be consistently one way throughout our life – living as Christians all the time. That’s what’s behind the warning in our text from James 4:4 this morning. So I preach to you God’s Word, God warns us that friends of the world are his enemies.
We’ll look at:
- How to be a friend of the world
- How to be a friend of God
Our passage starts off in a rather confronting and uncomplimentary way: “You adulterous people!” When James writes that, he’s drawing on the Old Testament. In the Old Testament, just like today, God had a special relationship with his people. That relationship is called the covenant of grace. In the Old Testament, the covenant of grace is often compared to a marriage. It’s like God is the husband and his people are the wife. In a marriage, husband and wife are supposed to be exclusively committed to one another. That’s the way it’s supposed to be in the covenant of grace. From God’s side it’s always that way. But from the human side, sin often gets in the way and creates unfaithfulness. When that happened in the Old Testament, God would send his prophets to call it out. Inspired by the Holy Spirit, the prophets called it adultery.
You can see it in our reading from Hosea 2. The Jews, God’s Old Testament people, they were compared to an unfaithful wife. They were compared to a woman who had acted shamefully and gone after other men. When that happens, the husband becomes jealous. God is a jealous God and he wants the exclusive love of his people. You can see that James was thinking of all this Old Testament background by the fact that the next verse mentions God’s jealousy, “He yearns jealously over the Spirit that he has made to dwell in us.”
In verse 4, adultery is connected to friendship with the world. Now we have to unpack that concept. What is “friendship with the world”?
Let me first talk about what it isn’t. “Friendship with the world” isn’t having friends who are unbelievers. According to Luke 7:34, our Lord Jesus was known as a friend of sinners. He was friendly with people who didn’t believe in him. We too can have friends who are not Christians. Those are the kinds of relationships God often uses most to spread the gospel and make more Christians. However, passages like Psalm 1 would warn us that if our closest and best friends are people who aren’t Christians, there’s danger in that. It can be hugely problematic if the people we have the most in common with don’t share our greatest love, the love we have for God, the love we have for Jesus. If we’re Christians, our closest friends should be fellow Christians.
The idea of “friendship with the world” really hinges on what we understand by “the world.” The New Testament often speaks about “the world” and when it does it’s referring to everything in the world of human beings that’s opposed to God. It’s referring to culture, values, principles, and structures which disregard God. In 1 John 2:16, we learn that the world includes “the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life.” These things are not from God. The world not only ignores God, but is hostile to him.
Now how can you be friends with that? We use the word “friend” rather casually in our day. Some of us might have “friends” on Facebook we’ve never met in real life. But in the original context of James, friendship carried a lot more weight. The word for “friendship” is related to another Greek word that is usually translated as “love.” For example, in John 4:20, “For the Father loves the Son…” Same root word. Friends love one another dearly. The biblical notion of friendship involves two people intimately sharing their lives with one another – a real closeness. So when you have friendship with the world, you love the world and you give yourself to the world. You love the world that’s opposed to God. You give yourself to the world that hates him.
How were the original readers of this letter from James falling into this sin of friendship with the world? To put it simply, you become a friend of the world through worldliness, through becoming like the world. It happens when you show partiality, as described in James 2. You treat rich people differently than poor people, because rich people are useful and poor people are useless. You can be a friend of the world by praising God with your tongue one moment and then using that same tongue to curse people made in God’s image – that’s in chapter 3. Chapter 3 also shows how you can be friendly with the world with “bitter jealousy and selfish ambition.” The world is often about control and reputation. When you make those your values, you’re becoming a friend of the world. The beginning of chapter 4 speaks about sinful desires and passions. The pursuit of pleasure. When you start to make that your goal in life, you’re getting really close to the world.
That bit in chapter 4 in verses 1-3 is quite relevant for our context. The world around us is all about leisure and we can fall into the same way of thinking really easily. Work is just necessary so we can play. We work five days just so we can have the weekend for ourselves. Then there are all the accessories we need to enjoy the weekend. And what about Sunday? What about worshipping God with his people? We’ll do that when it’s convenient for us. God can wait. Thomas Manton was one of the Puritans. He wrote a commentary on James and he says when we “prefer carnal satisfaction before communion with God, remember at such times this is adultery.”
Manton went on to point out how this friendliness with the world, this worldiness, is carried on “under sly pretences.” It’s easily rationalized. It seems quite plausible and reasonable to be friendly with the world. You shouldn’t go to extremes in your religion. You shouldn’t be too weird or different from the world around you. You should just use some common sense. All this is what it makes it repulsive to God.
If we take this approach to life, we make ourselves enemies of God. When you ally yourself to a way of life that is opposed to God, how could it be otherwise? You’re showing that you really don’t love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. You’re showing that you don’t have God as the top priority in your life. Instead, the world comes first. Again, it’s like the adulterous wife refusing to love her husband exclusively. She loves others alongside him. It’s not enough for her to say, “Well, I love my husband too. He should be happy that I still love him.” No, we understand that the marriage bond calls for exclusive love and commitment and it’s the same way in the covenant of grace. If we are bonded to God in that covenant, he calls us to exclusive love and commitment. When we forsake him, we are creating hostility in this relationship. We are the ones breaking it down. Worldliness has serious consequences for Christians. That’s why we need this powerful warning against it.
Rather than being an enemy of God and under his judgment in the covenant of grace, it’s far better to be his friend. Now you may hear that and think, “How can a human being be friends with God?” And yet 2 Chronicles 20:7 said that Abraham was God’s friend – and James repeats that in James 2:24. You might say Abraham was a unique case. However, we sang Psalm 25 before the sermon and it says otherwise.
Psalm 25:14 says, “The friendship of the LORD is for those who fear him, and he makes known to them his covenant.” So it is possible for us to experience “the friendship of the LORD.” It comes through fearing him.
Fearing God is not entirely about being terrified of him, though sometimes it is. In the Bible, the fear of God is mostly a great awe and respect for him. It’s the fear of saying or doing something wrong before him because you admire him so much. The fear of God is closely related to faith and obedience, both things that are called for in the covenant of grace.
The primary way we fear God is by heeding his call to believe the gospel. We have all flirted with the world and friendship with it. We have all made ourselves to be enemies of God. We’re attracted to worldliness, to worldly pleasures, to worldly thinking. And when those desires take hold, that’s enmity with God.
Loved ones, we need the forgiveness that comes through Christ’s blood shed on the cross. When Jesus hung on that cross, he became an enemy of God by taking our sins on himself. He took our friendship with the world on his shoulders. He bore it in the sight of God and paid for it completely with his death. Since Jesus became an enemy of God (even though he wasn’t in himself), we can be friends with God (even though we aren’t in ourselves). We have to look to the cross for this gospel benefit and believe in the Saviour who gave himself there.
We also need the perfect righteousness of Christ offered in his life of obedience. While he was a friend of sinners, he was never a friend of the world. He never gave in to the temptation to imitate the world and its values. Jesus never made himself an enemy of God. And all of this is his righteousness provided to those who place their trust in him. When we’re in Christ, we have a righteous standing before God. We are dearly loved by him as our Father. We’re in a friendly relationship with him.
Our obedience to God follows on from that. In the covenant of grace, God calls us to follow Christ and live as his disciples. The covenant of grace has beautiful promises from the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. But it also has an obligation. It’s first of all a call to faith in Jesus Christ. But true faith will also bear the fruit of obedience. And so our Baptism Form says, “We must not love the world, but put off our old nature and lead a God-fearing life.” Christ himself said in John 15:13, “You are my friends if you do what I command you.”
You see, those who are friends with God through Jesus Christ, they’re not only loved by God, they also love God. That’s what this friendship in the covenant involves. It’s a two-way street. God loves us and we love him. And if we love God, we’re to show it by striving for wholeness in our lives. A whole life commitment to him. Not being double-minded, but being single-minded in our devotion to him.
If you have friendship with God through Christ, you are at enmity with the world. Loved ones, you must recognize this. Being an enemy of the world really means being hostile towards sin. Rather than embracing or coddling sinfulness, you hate it and long to see it destroyed in your life. Being an enemy of the world means you harbour no affection for the rebellion which has the potential to destroy you and other human beings. This is the way it ought to be for those redeemed by Christ.
Friendship with God is a two-way street, a bilateral relationship, and so is enmity with the world. When you’re a Christian and the world is your enemy, you are also the world’s enemy. It’s both ways: you hate the world and its sinful rebellion, but the world also hates you and seeks to destroy you. Satan is the world’s greatest strategist and cheerleader. First Peter 5:8 reminds us: “Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour.” Satan hates you and has a terrible plan for your life. Similarly, because of your association with Christ the world hates you and wants to undo you. Jesus spoke about that in John 15:19, “…but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.” So if you want to be a real Christian and live single-mindedly, be aware that you’re going to face hostility. It’s not going to be easy, although it will certainly be worth it. At the end you’ll have no regrets.
Let me finish this morning with a few words about how to put this all into practice.
We have to begin where we always begin: prayer. Later in the book of James, we learn about the great power of prayer. Prayer is an important part of living as single-minded Christians. We don’t have the strength in ourselves to fight double-mindedness. By ourselves, we’re powerless to face the world and its tempting call to friendship. Pray. Pray for God to give you strength with his Holy Spirit to stay away from friendship with the world. Pray for God to help you to see more and more every day that friendship with the world is enmity with him, that it’s a form of spiritual adultery. Ask God with his Holy Spirit to help you love him more and hate worldliness in your life more.
Second, spend time in God’s Word. Particularly, spend time in studying your Lord and Saviour. You’re his disciple. Aim to be like him. Aim to have his friendship with God be your friendship with God. Aim to have his enmity with the world to be your enmity with the world.
Finally, remember your baptism. Baptism is a means of grace for all of us. As we watch someone else getting baptized, we’re reminded of how we too were baptized. It’s sort of like reliving your own baptism – except you’re now watching it and you can remember it. Our baptism reminds us of these important truths: we don’t belong to ourselves and we don’t belong to the world. Instead, we belong to God and we’re in the covenant of grace with him. He is the one who has a rightful claim on us. He’s the one who has made rich and beautiful promises to us. The world has no rightful claim on us and while the world may make promises, they’re cheap and unfulfilling, often a deceptive lie. And, as our Form puts it so beautifully, “And if we sometimes through weakness fall into sins, we must not despair of God’s mercy nor continue in sin, for baptism is a seal and trustworthy testimony that we have an eternal covenant with God.” Through Christ and his work as our Mediator in the covenant, there is always forgiveness and mercy for those who have succumbed to friendship with the world. Repent, turn away from that sin, ask your heavenly Father to forgive you, and the gospel assures you that he will.
I was in Albany, Western Australia some time ago and went to a place called the Gap. If you’ve been to Albany, you’ve probably been there. The Gap has these super high sea cliffs and you can watch the ocean crashing into this, well, gap. There are all these signs. Some of them say, “Stay on the path. People have died here.” It’s a good idea to listen to these warnings. Your life could depend on it. Well, it’s the same with the warnings of Scripture, including this one we’ve been looking at this morning. God warns us against friendship with the world because he doesn’t want us to be his enemies. We shouldn’t want that either. To want to be a friend of the world is spiritually suicidal and self-destructive. Why would you do it? Listen to God’s warning and unfriend the world and keep it unfriended. AMEN.
PRAYER
Heavenly Father,
Thank you for the warnings of your Word. We want to listen to the warning you’ve given us in James 4:4. Please help us with your Holy Spirit not to have friendship with the world. Help us to see that friendship with the world places us at odds with you. We pray for you to help us to be whole people – people who are wholly committed to you in every aspect of our lives. Father, we confess that there have been times where we have befriended the world and imitated it. Please look upon us in the perfect righteousness of Christ who never did this. Please forgive us through what he did for us on the cross. We thank you for Jesus who became sin for us so that we might become righteousness in your eyes. Please help us to live in him and as his disciples each day. Help us to prayerfully depend on you and your strength. Help us to study your Word. Help us always to remember what you have said to us in our baptism.
* As a matter of courtesy please advise Dr. Wes Bredenhof, if you plan to use this sermon in a worship service. Thank-you.
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