God doesn’t want to share us with anyone, most of all Satan. This devotion looks at what God thinks when we compromise with the worldview and what we are really doing when we compromise.
Nuggets
- Our disobedience by prioritizing the world over God makes us His enemy.
- Picking the world over God makes Him jealous.
Devotions in Living Out Our Faith series
We just don’t get what it means to choose the worldview over God. James tried to tell us what would happen when we choose friendship with the world.
Hopefully, we will get it before it is too late.
Let's Put It into Context
Here is a running list of nuggets for the series.
Choosing the World Separates Us from God
“You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God” (Jas. 4: 4 ESV)
Our disobedience by prioritizing the world over God makes us His enemy.
Ooo, baby, James. Call it like you see it.
“You adulterous people! …” (Jas. 4: 4 ESV). That is pretty strong language.
Someone who is in an adulterous relationship is being unfaithful to one to which they have committed to be faithful. That person has chosen to break their vow of fidelity.
We have to remember who we are talking to here. There are opposite references that we don’t want to get confused.
The world is used to identify any who has not been regenerated — in other words, has not ABCDed.
- Regeneration is being changed from spiritually dead to spiritually alive and the internal new birth and requickening that God brings about through the work of the Holy Spirit.
- Spiritual death is the separation from God that occurred as a consequence of Adam and Eve’s original sin.
- The spiritually alive are those who have ABCDed, so they are no longer separated from God.
- Spiritual death is the separation from God that occurred as a consequence of Adam and Eve’s original sin.
The ABCDs of Salvation
If you have not become a believer in Christ, please read through the
Plan of Salvation and prayerfully consider what God is asking you to do.
A – admit our sins
B – believe His Son Jesus is our Redeemer
C – confess God as Sovereign Lord
D – demonstrate that commitment by making any changes needed in our lives to live the way in which God has called us
The Disciple’s Job Description
Glossary
But the adulterous people are disciples. They had committed to be faithful to God — and then broke their vow.
Dawes argued that we need to clarify our definition of the world. He wrote, “‘The world’ is often put to signify the wicked men of the world, whether unbelievers or believers, of evil and profligate lives (1 Corinthians 11:32).”
Resource
Hmmm. We don’t like to think of that, do we?
Oh, we know there are disciples who are not living like disciples. But we don’t want them lumped with non-believers. Non-believers aren’t going to fare very well on Judgment Day.
But didn’t Jesus warn us that some believers wouldn’t either? “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven” (Mt. 7: 21 ESV).
God lumps those who have not genuinely ABCDed with those who haven’t ever come forward.
That tells us that just saying the words I-believe-in-You isn’t enough. We have to live them God’s way. We have to be faithful to our commitment. We can’t break our vow.
That leads us back to our job description. “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Rom. 12: 2 ESV).???
The Disciple’s Job Description
Complete Job Description
Individual Description
Job Duty #1
Be a Living Sacrifice (Romans 12: 1-2)
James already had talked about this. “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world” (Jas. 1: 27 ESV emphasis added).
That was what James was talking about here, too. “… Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? …” (Jas. 4: 4 ESV).
There are many — disciples and non-believers alike who think the worldview shouldn’t be in opposition of God because God is supposed to be love. His opposition to the worldview, from their viewpoint, means God is not love.
They are so wrong!
Why are they in opposition to God? They refuse to follow His laws and commandments or want to rewrite them to eliminate what is considered sinful.
They refuse to listen to the promptings of the Holy Spirit.
However, God, as our Creator and Sovereign God, gets to decide what is love, what is pure, what is right — and what is tolerance, what is impure, and what is wrong.
Yes, that means God does not have to condone our behavior. It doesn’t mean He doesn’t love non-believers.
Disciples cannot compromise with the worldview. If we are following the world — Satan — we are not following God.
We can’t do both. “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money” (Mt. 6: 24 ESV).
I would think that it would be very scary being an enemy of God’s. It would be bad enough being the opposite of love, goodness, and truth.
But to be God’s enemy. Ouch!
We would really be miserable.
The last part, “… Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God” (Jas. 4: 4 ESV), puts it in plain English. We need that.
We can delude ourselves to thinking that we don’t serve Satan. We don’t go to a specific building and sings songs to praise him.
But we do serve Satan whenever we do something contrary to God’s laws and commandments.
It makes it harder to rationalize when we say we are Satan’s friend. We are, however, when we enjoy and prioritize the customs of the worldview over what God says.
We have to be careful, though. Dawes said it isn’t just loving something more than we love God. He said it was loving something more than it deserved to be loved.
Watson noted that this would fit the definition of being a lukewarm Christian.
God Is a Jealous God
“Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, ‘He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us’?” (Jas. 4: 5 ESV)
Picking the world over God makes Him jealous.
Okay. This verse is totally understandable on first read — not.
Hmmmm. And only two sermons to try to make it make sense (and one didn’t really give me anything).
Part of the problem is that what looks like is a Scripture verse isn’t. So, we can’t go one place and figure it out.
Coghlan contended that James was giving us a sense of Scriptures. I would say he was probably putting two and two together.
We know that an attribute of God is His jealousy. “You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me (Ex. 20: 5 ESV).
To read a related devotion, click the button below.
God doesn’t want us to serve two master. (Yes, we are back to that.)
Whenever we turn away from Him, God feels jealous. Coghlan interpreted the verse that way. He wrote, “The meaning of the text will then be, ‘Do you suppose that the Scriptures mean nothing when they speak of the Spirit of God dwelling in you as requiring absolute rule in your hearts, and longing eagerly after you, even to something like envy of any other influence which is gaining the mastery over your hearts?’”
Resource
If we hook it together with verse 4, we find God’s strong reaction when we set up a friendship with the world. We give God reason to be jealous.
So, Elaine-speak on verse 5. Do you think Scripture is lying when it says God is jealous when we choose the world over His Holy Spirit?
Remember what we are called to do. “And he said to all, ‘If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me’” (Lk. 9: 23 ESV).
Notice, Jesus said that to all. He didn’t just say it to Tom but not Sally and Elaine.
Everyone of us is called to make a decision to follow Jesus.
God wants us to choose Jesus as our Savior and Redeemer. He wants us to follow Him.
Oh, yes. God will test our sincerity in coming, denying, taking, and following.
I loved what Coghlan had to say. He wrote, “The design of the gospel is not to set us free on the earth to do as we please; but to place us in our true position as adopted children of God — to turn the heart wholly to Him so that we should not merely have His law written for us as something outside us and hostile to us — as a set of rules for slaves and bondsmen — but written by His Holy Spirit in the fleshy tables of our hearts, as the directions to which our renewed affections would turn with delight.”
Resource
God doesn’t save us and turn us loose to do whatever we want. He calls us to be His children — His people. He wants us to delight in His ways, for they are higher than our own (Isa. 55: 8-9).
Making the Connections
How do we know we are loving something more than God. Dawes gave us several signs for which to look.
- What are our thoughts focusing on most of the time?
- What holds most of our affections?
- What are our hearts set upon?
- What keeps us from doing what avid would have us do?
- How do the answers to those questions impact our decisions, especially in difficult times?
Resource
Roche put it all into perspective. He wrote, “Godliness has not only the promise of the world that now is, it has whatever is excellent in that world. Lovely as this earth may appear to the believer, his controlling impulse is not love of the world, but love of God. If, on the other hand, our desires turn away from the great Father, they must rest on something He has made. It may be a person, it may be wealth, art, pleasure, fame; in any case the result is the same. We have wrecked the universal order; we have assailed the symmetry and [splendor] of the cosmos. We have turned things upside down. We have put the less in the place of the greater.”
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So, what is that saying? What this world has to offer doesn’t hold a candle to what God has to offer. When we are focusing on the world, we are settling for second best.
That wasn’t why we were created. We were created to worship God.
When we do anything else, we upset the apple cart. We settle for second best.
How Do We Apply This?
- Don’t rely on ourselves or our intellect.
- Seek God.
- Watch the company we keep.
- Do not conform to non-believers’ inclinations, rules, and customs.
- Be different from the world.
Resource
Searching for and Seeking God
Hearing His Word (Rom. 10: 17).
Reading His Word (Rev. 1: 3).
Praying to Him (Heb. 4: 16).
Studying His Word (Ac. 17: 11).
Meditating on His Word (Ps. 1: 1-2).
Memorizing His Word (Ps. 119: 11).
Father God. We choose You. We want to follow Your Will instead of the world. Help us to grow in Your grace and knowledge. Amen.
What do you think?
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