Good morning, Calvary Chapel. Amen.
It's good to see everybody this morning.
Please turn in your Bibles with us, please to chapter James,
chapter 4 and we are going to be reading from that area.
Just want to welcome everybody that's here this morning,
everybody who's here for the first time.
Those of you who can just continue to come and be a
blessing in the house. We thank God for all of you and
of course those who are listening on any platform and
those behind prison walls, we thank God for you always.
Thank God for all of you. I do want to mention really
quick though, before we do get into the word, yesterday we had
a blessed time in a session with the Gideons that is led by our
brother here. Fred.
I don't see it. Fred, you here, right There he
is. There he is.
Wave your hand again, Fred, so everybody can see you.
He's a tall brother so he can. He's got a tall reach, but
really blessed us yesterday with a session on conversations.
And basically it's about how do you start a conversation to talk
about the gospel with someone, which is really important.
A lot of people, I hear a lot of people always say, you know
what, I'd love to go out and talk about the gospel.
I'd love to talk about, you know, run the people, talk to
people about the gospel. I just don't know how to start
it. You know, how do you how do you
get that conversation started so I don't feel awkward.
And yesterday we got a lot of really good information on why
we do it and a good bit of ideas about how to start those
conversations and how to do a testimony.
I mean, it's, it's one thing to just give your testimony, but
it's another thing that it's given in a way where people are
really impacted by. Sometimes you only have a few
minutes to give a testimony. Sometimes you have pretty much
all day. But how do you do it?
How do you frame it? They did a really good job
yesterday talking about those things.
So the next time that comes, comes up, if you will, the next
time that comes up, if our brother would be gracious enough
to do it again. I would highly recommend that if
you're able to get there to sign up and come to that.
I think you, I think you really enjoy it and I think you'll get
a lot from it. OK, OK, so let's pray and go
into the Word of God. Amen.
Father, once again, we are so gracious to be in your presence,
and we know that we're in your presence because you said we're
two or three gather in your name, that you'll be in the
midst of us. There's a lot more than two or
three people here today that's gathering in your name.
So we thank you, Lord, for being among us, being with us, and
even more important, those of us who are believers.
We thank you for being in US. I pray, God, that you would
speak words that would resonate with all of us today, that you
would help us to understand your heart concerning these passages.
Lord, open up our eyes and open our hearts in the seed that goes
forth. I pray that You would plant it
deep in our hearts that we won't forget what we hear, but that
that seed would bring forth fruit and that fruit would be
evident in our lives and that it would have impact on others who
see our lives. Father, we love You and we so
need and want to hear from You today.
Holy Spirit, fill us afresh, give us wisdom, give us
knowledge, cover us with your grace.
In Jesus name we pray, Amen. So our, our, our passage today
that we're going to focus on is going to be chapter 4 before we
go there. We finished last week at verse
17 and we got through just one or two of those of the items or
the attributes of what would be considered godly wisdom.
We talked about the worldly wisdom as being, you know, that
which is self seeking and bitter envy.
But now we're going to go into talking about in verse 17 he
talks about, and this is 1st 17 of chapter 3.
I'm sorry to make that clear. He talks about the attributes of
what would be considered godly wisdom.
And before I do that, I just want to mention because when you
read James, and we talked about this a number of times, but when
you read James, it's almost like you can come away feeling like
you just got spanked. OK, let me speak for myself.
When I read James, I come away feeling like I just got spanked,
like I just got corrected. You know, I'm sure part, I'm
sure a lot of that's true and it is true.
I mean, definitely for myself, I had to do a lot of repent and
reading James. But I want to say this, we
started out, if you remember when we talked about chapter, we
went back to chapter 1 and before we even started James, we
went back to Exodus chapter 34 and we talked about the
attributes of God, the way he introduced himself to Moses.
And he used words like merciful, gracious, patient, forgiving,
kindness and goodness. He used words like that to
describe who he is. And I think that's important
that we just remember that because as we go through these
scriptures, and though it may sound like it's a, a, a, a, a
strap or a belt coming to meet you to spank you, God is not
standing. He's not this God that just sits
in heaven on a throne and points down to all of us and say, yeah,
I got you for that. I'ma get you.
I'm judging you for this and I'm judging you for that's not who
our God is. He is not an angry God who is
just constantly looking for ways to condemn you or judge you.
That is not who He is. That's not who He is.
And sometimes even the world would try to describe him that
way. But that's not who He is.
He really isn't. He showed us who He is by
sending His Son die for us. He loves us, so He gives us this
truth, all of this truth between Genesis and Revelations.
He gives us this truth to show us how much He loves us.
This is truth in love because He's a loving God.
So I want you to see Him that way and I want you to experience
Him that way. So as he gives us these
commandments or these instructions, and as he talks to
us about things in our hearts, please no, it's not from a place
of anger or condemnation, but it's a place of love.
His heart breaks for us. He describes himself as being
like a like a hen, a mother hen that covers her children, that
covers her chicks. His word covers us.
It's our protection, our direction.
So I just want to put that out there first.
So as we go through these things, please sense his love in
this truth. So in verse 17, he says, but the
wisdom of God, the wisdom that is from above is first pure.
We talked about pure means without being tainted is without
defilement. He said it's not only pure, but
it's peace loving, peace loving. It's gentle.
God's love is gentle. His wisdom is gentle.
It's not harsh, it's not abrasive.
It's not coming, coming about, you know, coming towards someone
attacking or coming with brutal force.
He's gentle, He's gentle as I was thinking about that word
gentle. And you know, the Lord tells us,
he said let your gentleness be known to all men.
So we are to be gentle. And it's the way that we we
relate to each other, particularly those who are in
the House of faith. We relate to each other with a
gentle spirit. Even when someone falls into
sin, the Bible tells us in Galatians one that we restore
such a one with a heart of meekness, gentleness.
We don't come out of attacking, We don't come out and come
deniming, pointing fingers. We come with a heart of
meekness, gentleness. Now something came across my
mind as I was looking at that word gentle and it was the some
of you want to remember it. It's probably going to tell our
age, but back in 1989, I know, I know as soon as I said that,
there's a lot of people that say, OK, that's not me.
Back in 1989, there was another commercial that Charles Barkley
did and the commercial was about, it was Nike commercial.
And this Nike commercial was about rebounding.
And Charles was, you know, the, the, the pitcher was Charles
rebounding the ball. I mean, throwing the ball up,
rebounding at Duncan. I mean, all these aggressive,
aggressive moves because Charles was trying to convey to
everybody that, yeah, you got to be relentless.
And Charles was a very good rebounder.
He was on, he was, he was undersized.
He was only 65. And he was rebounded against
guys that were like 68697 foot. And he was a very, very good
rebounder. But the commercial was a mockery
of the scripture in Matthew 5. It was in Matthew 5 there was a
scripture that says blessed are the meek or the gentle, for they
shall inherit the world. And Charles said, well those who
are meek may inherit the earth, but they won't get the rebound.
Charles, you're wrong. The meek does inherit the earth
and it rebounds all the blessings and all the favor of
God because it's the commandment that tells us that it's the meat
that won't inherit the earth. Then that's who will overcome.
But it was a mockery. But he also goes on in the same
verse. It says willing to yield.
It's not about in other words, you know, being stubborn, even
if you think you're being stubborn about, you know, the
will of God or or something that is godly, not being able to to
to yield. It's basically just can come
some from from somewhere else in your heart.
And it's just about being stubborn.
But the Bible says be willing to yield.
Be willing to yield to hear someone else's viewpoint, be
willing to hear to hear someone else's ideas or strategies.
And as long as it lines up with the word of God, it doesn't have
to be my way, doesn't have to be your way, but to be willing to
yield to these things. And then of course, over and in
the next line it says have full of mercy and good fruits.
Well, God tells us that we are to be merciful, are to be
merciful. And again, you know, he, I
believe that James gets a lot of these things from the Sermon on
the Mount because the Bible says that it's the merciful, you
know, that will obtain mercy. Those who are merciful will
obtain mercy. So here he says the spirit or
the wisdom of God is to be full of mercy and good fruits.
And and that's true because it's wise to be merciful because
that's the heart of God. It's for us to be merciful.
And I think I said last week that there is no time that we
are more like Christ than when we are merciful because he is so
merciful. He is so merciful when he shows
it all the time. And then the next one, he says
without partiality. Well, James talked about that
back in chapter 2. He talks about that we should
do, we should have our ministry or, or the ministry of the Lord,
our faith in the Lord without partiality, without showing
favoritism to anybody, to one versus the other, but to love.
And then also says without hypocrisy, that means without
pretense, without pretending to be somebody else, without
pretending to be something else, but to be genuine in our faith,
to be genuine in our walk with Jesus.
Sometimes people can have pretense where they are one way
in front of one crowd of people, but then when they come to the
church family, they're another way and either one don't
recognize the other sometime because it's pretense.
And he says we should, we should be without hypocrisy.
And then verse 18 says that now the fruit of righteousness is
sown in peace by those who make peace.
And again, now someone's really upset.
And again in the in the sermon on the mound, Matthew 5 and 9,
he says that it's the peacemakers that blessed are the
peacemakers for they are the children of God, the
peacemakers, those who make peace.
And it's almost like in this particular verse here is almost
like a picture of one who is sowing seeds of peace.
Wherever they go, they're sowing seeds of peace.
It's not creating confusion, it's not creating a conflict.
It's not creating fights. It's showing sowing seeds of
peace wherever we go, wherever we go.
And we talked last week that we're not talking about peace at
any cost when I tell my peace that any cause, in other words,
we're not going to cover up sin. We're not going to cover up
unrighteousness. We're not going to, you know,
we're not going to put things under the carpet in order to try
to have peace. That's not godly peace.
We desire purity and holiness
over fake peace. So we sow peace wherever we go.
So now we come here to verse to chapter 4 and verse one.
And he says here, where do wars come from?
Where do wars and fights come from among you?
Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war
and your members? So he's saying that when we have
these fights, where do these fights in the church come from?
Something to think about. When we have fights in the
church, where does that come from?
Why are people fighting in the church?
People fighting bars, people fight on street corners, people
fight in the world. But in church, these fights
coming from, and James says they're coming from that place
in your heart that desires pleasure, that place in your
heart that's warring against the Holy Spirit.
So that's like our natural man, our sinful man in our hearts is
warring against the Holy Spirit. I want what I want.
I mean that isn't that what envious, envious.
I want that and selfish ambition says I will do whatever it takes
to get that. So these fights that is first
start in our hearts begin to spill out and we now fight with
other people. And James is saying when we have
this selfish ambition in our hearts or we have this envy in
our hearts, that's where wars come from in the church.
People who don't want to yield, not willing to yield, people who
are not full of mercy, A heart that's not full of mercy, a
heart that's not full of good fruits, a heart that's not
gentle, a heart that's not peaceable, a heart that's not
pure. That's where these fights come
from, these arguments and these conflicts.
He, he mentions the word pleasures here.
And these pleasures mean selfish, worldly desires and
gratification that cause conflict that are contrary to
God's will. So you see our our fights in the
church or even the fights in our families, those fights are less
about the issues that we agree or disagree with and it's more
about what's going on in their hearts.
It's more about that operating in the flesh and not in the
spirit. It's our it's, it's being
carnal. It's being carnal and it's
dealing with someone else out of a heart of carnality as opposed
to by the Spirit of God. If I have a disagreement with
you, we're both believers. Should we not be able to, with
love, sit down and talk this thing out?
Can I not share my heart with you?
And can we not disagree on, on, on, on on the direction that we
may be going or the way that we may want to do this?
But but what? Shouldn't we be about the same
thing? And that is pleasing God, and
that is being true to the word of God.
Shouldn't we be about the same thing?
And if that's true, then fights should not divide us.
If that's true, fights should not divide us.
But if I am so, if I'm so dug in about just having it my way, my
selfish ambition, just having it my way, and you not getting your
way because of my envy towards you, then that's when things
blow up into a fight. A discussion now becomes a
fight. And fights eventually will
divide because one person got people they want to run to and
get on their side, The other person got somebody they want to
run to and get on their side. Now you got splits, James said
That should not be going on. That should not be happening, He
said. You lust.
And you do not have you murder and you covet and cannot obtain.
Now, even in the earlier churches they had fights, they
had bickering. And even in the early churches,
there's a number of different examples, you know, not only in
Corinthians, but also in Galatians and Philip
Philippians, there's examples of conflict, people having
conflict. But I just want to read this
scripture from First Corinthians chapter 3 and verse 3.
It says for you are still carnal, for where there are
envy, strife and divisions among you, are you not carnal and
behaving like mere men? And what that mere men means
like the natural man, the man who's operating out of his flesh
as opposed to operating out of the spirit, mere man.
We're supposed to be spirit filled believers and in doing
that, that allows us to be able to speak and to act with the
heart and the mind of Christ. And then I want to read for you
second Timothy. I'm going to start at verse 22
verse. This is verse 2 verse start.
I'm sorry, chapter 2, verse 22, it says flee also youthful us,
but pursue righteousness, faith, love, and what peace with those
who are who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.
And then it says, but avoid foolish and ignorant disputes,
knowing that they generate strife.
And a servant of the Lord must not quarrel, but be gentle, be
gentle, able to teach patient. So Paul, so James is in
agreement with Paul that the characteristics of someone who
is walking in the Spirit should be different than someone who's
walking in their flesh. See, this is a result of walking
in the flesh. When we have these disputes and
these fights and these wars in the church, it means the heart
is not right. Galatians tells us that there's
a difference between those who are walking in the Spirit and
those who are walking in the flesh and Galatians.
Chapter 5 starting there at verse 19, he says Now the works
of the flesh are evident, which are adultery, fornication,
uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions,
jealousies, outbursts of wrath and selfish ambitions.
While that's of the flesh dissensions, heresies, envy,
murders, which we're going to talk about in a minute.
He's going to mention that in a minute.
Drunkenness, revelries and the like of which I tell you
beforehand, just as I told you in time past that those who
practice such things will not inherit the Kingdom of God.
So that's why when we walk and when I'm, when I'm walking in
any of those things, that means I'm walking in my flesh when I'm
being selfish, when I'm having these outbursts of wrath out of
frustration, when I'm, if I'm causing dissensions, if I'm, if
I'm, if I'm speaking heresies from the word of God, I'm not
walking in the spirit, but I'm walking in my flesh.
I'm doing what pleases me, not what pleases God.
But he also says that the fruit of the Spirit, now listen to the
attributes of the food of the Spirit.
I know one of you, most of you can probably recite these, but
it's love, it's joy. So instead of anger and hatred,
it's love. And it's joy.
Instead of conflict, he says peace.
Instead of not having patience, he says it's long-suffering or
patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and
self-control. Those are the attributes or the
the the fruit of the spirit. When we approach a situation in
the church and we are coming from that direction, our hearts
are filled with those things as opposed to the heresies and the
hatred. Then we know we're walking in
the spirit and we have to be able to hear that about
ourselves and to to sense that about ourselves or to love
someone enough to share it, to love someone enough to share it.
And we have to love each other enough to be honest with each
other and say, you know her brother, you know, to me it
seems like you kind of walking in your flesh a little bit.
Let's pray, let's pray, let's ask God to help us with this.
So he goes on in here, any, any, any goes on to verse.
He goes on to the bottom of verse 2 and he says, yet you do
not have because you do not ask. So we're selfish and we you
know, and we're acting out of selfish ambition and we're
coveting and we want these things that we want for
ourselves and we want them out of our, you know, to to satisfy
our own pleasures. He says you, you know, you war
and you fight for these things, but you do not have them.
He said, because you do not ask. That was interesting.
You know, now, now, so, so, so James is saying, so even like my
pleasures and the things that I'm looking for, the things that
I really desire, my desires. You mean I can have those things
if I ask, as long as those desires line up with the word of
God and the will of God. Yes, he will provide it.
He says anything you ask in my name.
And then he says also that when you pray according to my will,
you will have those things. So the question is if are you
praying first of all, And that's what he's dealing with here.
He's now dealing with prayer. So then he goes to verse 3 and
he says you do not ask. I mean you, you ask and you do
and and you do not receive because you ask amiss.
So the bottom of verse 2 says you know you, you murder and you
covet and that murder means hatred.
By the way, guys, it means hatred, a very intense hatred.
And you covet and you cannot obtain.
That means you can't get satisfaction.
You're not being satisfied. No matter how much you covet, no
matter how much you lust for what someone else has, you still
can't get satisfaction from it because lust is never satisfied.
Lust is insatiable. No matter how much you lust, you
will never come to the point of being satisfied because once you
attain that, then you'll want something else.
It's never enough. You ask for a job, you say, I'll
be, you know, if I could just have a job making $100,000, you
get a job making $100,000. If I could just have a job
making $200,000, I'll be happy. I have everything I need.
You get a job making 200,000, now I need $250,000.
You're always going to be wanting more.
And I'm sorry to say this because I love, you know how you
guys know I love basketball, I love sports in general.
Be honest with you. I just think that they there's a
lot of good things about sports, but there's also some bad things
about sports. And when I'm talking about
lusting and never really being able to be fulfilled by the
things that we lust for, by the pleasures of the world will
never be fulfilled with those things.
Just recently, and many of you probably heard about it, but
there's a couple of a couple of people closely associated with
the NBA, the National Basketball Association closely associated
one as a coach and one as a player.
And they just recently were have federal indictments against
them. They're being charged federally
for illegal betting, illegal gambling.
Now you would say, wait a minute, basketball players,
coaches, they make millions. Why would they need to get
involved in illegal gambling? Because enough is never enough.
When you lost, it's never enough.
When you're looking for worldly pleasures, it's never enough.
It's never enough and it always leads to sin.
James even told us that over in chapter one, verse 15.
He says then when desire or your pleasures, your desire for
pleasures, when it conceives, it brings forth sin and sin when it
is full grown or when it's complete, it brings forth death.
And that death may not necessarily mean a physical
death. It may mean a death of your own
spirit or soul, the death of someone's career, the death of
someone's marriage, the death of a lot of different things.
It brings forth death because sin is always present with it.
That's why he says here back in chapter 3 when he said that
bitter envy and self seeking in your hearts.
He said those things will bring forth confusion.
Not only just confusion, but also every evil thing.
So here in verse three, he says you ask and you do not receive
because you ask a misk. So you don't pray.
First of all, you're not praying and you're not asking God to
give you the things that you need, but you're trying to get
them yourself to fulfill your own lust.
And you're not really praying and asking God and trusting Him
to provide for you. We're not.
We're not doing that, but instead we want what we want and
we want to get it our way. And it says here that first of
all, it says you don't pray, you don't ask God.
But then when you do pray, you pray out of your selfish motive.
You pray to spend it on your own pleasures.
You ask and do not receive because you ask amiss wrong
motives, that you may spend it on your pleasures, on your
lusts, on the things that you desire.
You know prayer. Prayer should not be about
wanting God to serve us. And that's exactly what it is
sometimes. And we just want to start
praying and just put out a bunch of requests.
This that this, that another thing.
And a lot of those things are really things that just satisfy
us. And we want God to be a Co
conspirator. We want to pray for something
out of our lusts, out of our desires, out of our wants, and
then we want God to provide it. There's a real simple
illustration of that in the Bible over in Luke.
Over in Luke, it's a story about Jesus and the disciples going
through Samaria and the Samaritans.
They didn't want Jesus to go through there.
And they told him, no, we don't want you to come through here.
And James and John got upset. They got frustrating.
They had this outburst of anger and they say, Jesus, Lord, you
want us to just call down fire and burn them up.
And of course what Jesus said was no, you don't know what
spirit you're of. But when you think about what
they were asking, I'm angry, I'm upset, I'm frustrated, and I
want you to destroy these people because I want them gone.
I want something done about them.
Jesus. You want God to be a Co
conspirator in that out of your frustration.
And we do the same thing though. We do the same thing.
We pray for our own desires, our own pleasures, to spend them on
our own pleasures. What do we pray for?
You know, prayer is such a privilege.
It's such a privilege to be able to pray and know that God hears
us. And he promises that he does
hear us because he says his ears are always open to our prayers.
It's what the righteous, the righteous, His ears are always
open to the righteous. So he know we know that he hears
us. So it's such a privilege and
such a power to have prayer at our that we can have access to
such a power to have that. But how do we use that power?
Do we pray for each other? Do we pray for our country?
Do we pray for our leaders? Do we pray for our children?
Do we pray for people that we're not getting along with?
Do we pray for them? Do we pray for God's will, His
absolute will in our life? Do we pray for that or do we
just ask him to do the things that we want him to do?
Do we repent for our sins in our in our time of prayer?
Do we repent for the sins of the nation as some of the old
prophets used to do? But James says that every good
gift comes from above. So that's why we pray and we ask
God because we want his good gifts.
And sometimes the things that we ask him for, even though we may
want him, doesn't necessarily mean that it's a good thing.
And because of God's foreknowledge, because God knows
everything about everything, He knows what's good for us and
what's not. So the question then becomes, do
we trust him enough that when we do pray and ask for these
things, do we trust him enough? And do we believe on him enough
that if he's denies us those things, can we trust him enough
to believe that it's for our good to say, Dad, you know best,
Father, you know best, you know what's best for me and can we
accept it? You don't have to acknowledge
it, but how many times has someone in here prayed for a
relationship that you wanted to have continued but God said no,
it's done, you ain't got to wait.
Don't put your hands up. Don't put your hands up someone
that you just couldn't live without in your life and you
pray God, please give me this relationship.
Meanwhile, it was the worst thing possible for you and God
knew it. Even when we didn't.
And that's just one example of ways that we want what we want,
but we need to trust God that what he gives us is going to be
the best for us. And then in verse 4, adulterers
and adulteresses and he and he, he's basically saying, you know,
those of you who are spiritually unfaithful, he used to use that
word adulteresses or, or, or adulterers to refer to Israel
back in the time when they were, you know, going after other gods
and going after idols and, and doing the things that the
nations were doing. God would say, you committing
adultery, you're playing to harlot.
We are to be married to him. We're married to Christ.
We are Christ's bride and when we begin to go after worldly
things world and have worldly idols go after worldly gods, he
says it's being a it's, it's Daughtry.
It's a it's Daughtry. And he feels that that's the
that's the sensitivity of God to feel like that betrayal, to feel
that betrayal of us going after a God who provides everything
for us, that's done everything for us.
And then we go after worldly things.
And he even takes us a step further.
He says, do you not know that friendship with the world is
enmity, meaning hostility? I'll will with God.
Do we not understand that, that when we go after or want to be
friends with the world now, friends, we're not talking about
just knowing somebody. Remember, friendship is someone
who had we share values, we have an understanding, we have the
same interests and all those things.
That's friendship. Acquaintances is I know who you
are. And every now and then we may be
in contact with each other. We may come across each other,
we may see each other out in the streets somewhere, and we
acknowledge each other when we see each other.
I know you, but that's acquaintance, he says.
If you're a friend, that means you're sharing values and you're
sharing desires of the world, then you're an enemy against
God. We can't serve 2 masters.
We can't serve the world and God too.
You can't do it, he says. We either love the one and hate
the other, or we hold to the one and despise the other.
But we cannot serve God and Mammon.
We can't serve God and the world and the riches of the world.
We can't, we can't do that. God said.
That's not what we are called to do.
So he said if you're friends with the world, then you're
you're hostile against me when you're friends with the world.
And then he goes on here. He says whoever therefore wants
to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
We make ourselves an enemy of God.
God doesn't call us an enemy of who he is, but we make ourselves
an enemy of God first. John over in chapter first, John
chapter 2 talked about the fact that, you know, he says love not
the world nor the things that are in the world, because all
that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes
and the pride of life. Those things are not of the
Father, but they are of the world.
And we talked about last week how the world is passing away.
Those things are going to be gone.
It's only the things of God that lasts forever.
He says, My word will last forever, heaven and earth shall
pass away, but my word shall stand forever. 5 Or do you think
that the Scripture says in vain the Spirit who dwells in US
yearns jealousy, yearns jealousy, longs for jealousy.
In other words, what he's saying here in the Spirit dwells in
you. That means the Holy Spirit.
God said I put his heart, put a Holy Spirit in you, my spirit, I
put my spirit in you. And when you give your love,
your affection, your obedience to your flesh as opposed to the
Holy Spirit that I put in you, I'm jealous.
I'm jealous because I want that affection to be towards me.
I want that love to be towards me.
I want that obedience to be towards me, not this flesh that
eventually is going to ruin you. And he's saying, he's saying to
us that yes, he actually gets jealous.
We've heard that before, the scriptures that, you know, he
talks about being jealous. We've heard those scriptures
before. And in Exodus 20 and five, you
shall not bow down to them, meaning, you know, other gods or
idols, nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a
jealous God. And then in Exodus 34 and 14, he
said, you shall worship no other God.
For the Lord whose name is jealous is a jealous God.
Deuteronomy 4 and 24. For the Lord your God is a
consuming fire, a jealous God. Praise and worship team.
You can come forth, please. He's a jealous God.
So we know that he's a jealous God and the Spirit that's in US,
God said we yearn for you to, or we long for you to show your
affection and give you love and affection, obedience to the
Spirit that's in you, the Holy Spirit that's in you, and not
the Spirit that is of the flesh. But the good thing is that God
has more grace. He gives us more grace that even
when we have done these things, even when we have allowed
ourselves to allow our flesh to have dominance over us over the
things that we think, things that we do.
Even when we do that, when we humble ourselves and we turn to
the Lord, His grace is there for us to cover us.
His grace is there to say, come on back home.
Our humility to admit and confess and repent allows us to
be restored to the fellowship of God.
He never walks away or leaves us.
I thank God that His grace is always there because from time
to time we all will go back and do things out of our flesh.
We all do it and then we acknowledge it and confess it
before God and He forgives us. How wonderful it is to serve a
God that loves us. He's not looking for our ruin.
He's not looking to destroy us. He's looking to build us up.
He's looking to love us. He's looking to cause us to be
overcomers of the things that will destroy us.
He wants to protect us. That's why he gives us His word.
He wants to protect us. And of course, we all know this
scripture, right? God resists the proud but gives
grace to the humble. I'm so glad that we don't have
to worry about running from him. We can run to him in those times
when we feel or when we know that we have blown it, we can
run to him. We don't have to ever feel that
reproach and that shame that's so deep and the enemy will try
to make it. It's so bad to make you feel
that you would be. You should be ashamed to even go
to God. You should be ashamed to even
pray. You should be ashamed to even
talk to him or even look towards heaven.
The enemy would want to do that to you.
But God is saying no, come to me, I love you.
I love you. In fact, I loved you so much I
sent my son to die for you, to take what was meant for you.
I loved you that much. I pray that as we go into a
communion, I pray that our sensitivity to the Spirit would
be so that we know when we are beginning to move in our flesh
and walk outside of the will of God.
The way I talk to my wife, the way I talk to my children, the
way I talk to family members or community people or friends or
my church brothers and sisters, the way I talk to them.
What's in my heart? What's in my heart?
If I get to a point where I can't have agreement with you,
does that mean that I have to slander you?
Does that mean that I have to gossip?
Does that mean that I have to destroy your reputation and your
character because we don't see things eye to eye?
No, no, I want the Holy Spirit to be in us so much that we will
come to a point when, when we sense these things, instead of
running from God, we run to Him and repent.
Jesus came and died for that Father.
We thank you for your word. We thank you that sometimes
these truths can be hard, but yet they sanctify us.
They purify us. They mowed us.
Helps to scrape off the things that are contrary to your divine
nature. We want to please you and what
we do. We're so grateful for your grace
and your mercy that you extend to us even when we don't deserve
it. And usually we don't.
None of us do. But yet you bless us by giving
us more grace and more mercy. I thank you for the sacrifice
that you sent through your Son Jesus Christ, that we would even
have the Holy Spirit in us, that we can obey the Holy Spirit and
do what pleases you. In the night in which Jesus was
betrayed, he took the bread, and after he gave thanks He broke
it. And he said, Take and eat.
This is my body which is broken for you.
Eat this in remembrance of me. In the same manner He also took
the cup, and after supper he said, This cup is a new covenant
in my blood, which was shed for the forgiveness of sins for
many. That's all of us, and also those
who are to come. It was shed for theirs too.
Drink this and as often as you drink it, drinking in
remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this
bread and drink this cup, we do show His death until he come.
Amen.