James 4 - Can you be an 'enemy' of God? - Thursday Night Worship Dec 12, 2019

Unfortunately, we had some difficulty with recording the sermon that was given during the Thursday Night Service on December 12, 2019.  The scripture that was focused upon came again from the Book of James, that evening we looked at the seventeen verses that comprise Chapter Four in James Epistle.

The main thrust of the sermon was verse 4, 4 Adulterers! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.

The word in Greek that is being translated as 'an enemy of God' is Echthra.  It can also mean 'hostility' and 'alienation'.  I don't believe that God is ever our 'enemy' in the way we tend to understand the word enemy in English.  God never wishes harm or ill upon anyone, not even those who stand in opposition or wander in alienation from Him. If we feel we are an 'enemy' to God... if we 'hate' God... it is a one-way emotion, God's feeling toward us is only and always a feeling of Love. What I think James wants us to understand is that our actions can and will alienate us from God.  This not enmity is the condition that we find ourselves in when refuse to accept Christ as our Lord and Savior.

If we find ourselves alienated from the love of God it is a self-imposed alienation... please come home... repent and return to God.

Be a blessing to someone today!

In Christ,
Roy

Note: I finally retrieved the video!

James 4 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)
Friendship with the World
4 Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you? 2 You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder. And you covet[a] something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts. You do not have, because you do not ask. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures. 4 Adulterers! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. 5 Or do you suppose that it is for nothing that the scripture says, “God[b] yearns jealously for the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”? 6 But he gives all the more grace; therefore it says,

“God opposes the proud,
    but gives grace to the humble.”

7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Lament and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy into dejection. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.

Warning against Judging Another
11 Do not speak evil against one another, brothers and sisters.[c] Whoever speaks evil against another or judges another, speaks evil against the law and judges the law; but if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. 12 There is one lawgiver and judge who is able to save and to destroy. So who, then, are you to judge your neighbor?

Boasting about Tomorrow
13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there, doing business and making money.” 14 Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. 15 Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wishes, we will live and do this or that.” 16 As it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil. 17 Anyone, then, who knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, commits sin.

Footnotes:
a) James 4:2 Or you murder and you covet
b) James 4:5 Gk He
c) James 4:11 Gk brothers