James 4 Sermon | Avoiding The Traps of The World and Holding Yourself Accountable

A sermon on James 4.  Confronting the shadows of our world, we find silver linings threaded throughout. In the throes of discussing advancements in medicine birthed from the ashes of war, we uncover a tapestry of divine grace amid adversity. The episode becomes a sanctuary for gratitude and a reminder of the eternal over the temporal. Biblical teachings on the pitfalls of envy and the peace found in surrendering worldly desires guide our conversation towards a life rich in purpose and aligned with God's intentions.

As we gather around the table of communion, this episode extends an invitation to baptized believers for a moment of introspection and renewal. Together, we acknowledge the profound sacrifice of Jesus, embrace the call to forgiveness, and recommit to the embodiment of Christian ideals. In this shared space, we petition for divine guidance and unity, both within our hearts and across our nation. Tune in for a heartfelt journey that seeks to fortify your spirit and inspire a collective hope for repentance and harmony under God's embrace.

Christian Warrior Talk is Sponsored by Trident Shield, your trusted ally in violence preparedness. Trident Shield helps safeguard your loved ones with expert training and consulting. Trident Shield, defending faith through empowered preparedness because together, we save lives."

Chapters

• 0:00 Farm Updates and Mission Announcements
• 14:36 War and Medicine
• 20:26 Friendship With the World vs God
• 32:50 Living in Alignment With God
• 42:07 Renewal and Repentance Through Communion

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:39

All right, happy Lord's Day to you and welcome to Christian Warrior Mission. I hope you guys had an amazing week post-Easter weekend. I know that this week has brought with it so many blessings and many challenges for us this week, but, if you remember, we were right smack in the middle of James, right before the Palm Sunday, easter break, and today we're back in one of my favorite books in the Bible as James. I call him a doer. He's not a talker, he's a doer. Now he's got one of the shortest books in the Bible. He's only got five chapters, so we've only got one more in there, but he's got some of the most impactful words we have and we'll get into that. I hope you guys have been catching us online. We have had incredible traction on Twitter and we're so thankful for that as well. On Rumble, we are growing on there by leaps and bounds, so it's amazing when we get off the devil's platforms of Facebook and YouTube and everybody who hates us. We tend to you know, when we're not being squashed, we tend to you know. People tend to hear us and you know, and they like what we're saying and they're being convicted by what God is saying. So that's all good things. Some announcements for today we still have eggs but our egg production is about to drop, so we'll let you know on that. We still have milk or herd shares for the raw milk if you, if you wanted I know lauren recently had another one person come on for that. We have butter, raw butter by um, whether cultured or regular um, on by order, and then ice cream and custard by. We're coming in the summer and you know this place is about to be like ben and jerry's if it was like last year, so, except not satanic. So we have no more lard, we still have a little sausage um, and that might change soon. We are in the process of trying to reorganize, like our five or six freezers, whatever we have in this house, and to make room to see if we can finally process my boy bacon. I was back there rubbing his back and belly yesterday. I'm going to be sad to process him but I can't afford an 800-pound pig pet. So he's got a lot of lard on him. We could cook probably for years just off of him alone. So, um.

Speaker 1: 3:28

So again that some other news on the farm peg did have her babies. 11 were born and up until yesterday we had 11, but I had to put one down yesterday. What so happens so frequently with pigs? If you don't, I don't really like the farrowing pens. It kind of pins the mom to the ground. They have no comfort. It's kind of miserable. Instead, we let Peg make her own natural farrow, which she's done great. But I think throughout the movement around she popped one yesterday. Great, but I think throughout the movement around she popped one yesterday. And what happens is they sit on them or they step on them and um, and it injures them terribly. So I had to put one down yesterday, which is always very sad.

Speaker 1: 4:15

There are days that it's amazing and coming out there to see 11 new, 11 new, fresh baby piglets out there is always one of the happiest days on the farm, just like when a cow is born or chickens hatch or whatever should be the case. Those are always glorious days on the homestead. And the days you have to kill animals are always the saddest for me, particularly when it's one that's not going to serve any purpose, right, meaning that we can't really do anything with that piglet. So it was three days old, so you know, just a waste. But that's why they have so many, right? God knows better and he's not like us where we typically have one kid. They have 8 to 16 or 20 sometimes, 20-plus sometimes. So we're blessed but we're sad we're down to 10. And all 10 of those are already sold. We had an order for 12, and now we're down to 10. But the other good news is that Oink has a litter coming in the next two weeks, so they are really close to one another. She's starting to bag up with milk and we expect her in the next two weeks. So we're gonna have you know, probably you know close to 20 little piglets running around this place with all said and done, which is pretty darn cute.

Speaker 1: 5:45

I mean, you know, you can say pigs are ugly when they get older. I don't think they are. I think they're really cool animals. I really developed a lot of respect for them that I never understood when I was eating my sausage and bacon in the morning. They're incredibly robust, incredibly hardy, intelligent and funny. I mean we probably are more like them than anything else. You know, on a hot day they're laying in the pool, literally laying in the mud. I have a picture of a pig where I was playing dead pig or sleeping pig, and it's one of our pigs. It was uh, it was boink, I think, who's lying in the water both his ears out, but still, as can be, and half of it was underwater in the mud and everything and I didn't know. But then I came up on close and of course he was just a sleeping pig. So, um, but they're out there in the mud having a great time. They're always foraging for food and they're a lot of fun. They're a lot of fun and they're really tasty, so that's always good.

Speaker 1: 6:50

I mean, we have not had bacon in like a week and a half and we're gonna have to get on, lauren, after this to start doing our other. You know, curing our last few bagons Curing is the pain in the butt part right, you got to season it and get the right ingredients to cure it. I don't know, it's not my world. And then it sits and sits and you just want it to be bacon, but it's not bacon yet. It's not there. So that whole patience thing that we were praying on this morning, that's part of it. So I know that's more of the farm than you ever wanted to hear, but it's a big part of what we do. We're also hoping my mom is going to Canada for some personal business and when she comes back we're going to start our garden, which Dexter helped us till up, and all that.

Speaker 1: 7:47

And then I would like to do some corn now. I've never done corn, started doing some research on corn, on how wide they're supposed to be, apart and all this stuff. It's never simple, right, it's never simple, like you saw. I've read today you're supposed to put drip tape down and if you put drip tape down, it's tape that you connect to a water source and it just ekes out water so you don't have to spray them. I don't know, we'll see. I'll talk to Dexter. I'm sure he's grown more corn than I have, but I'm hoping to grow enough, not for us to eat. We're like the old people I don't care about.

Speaker 1: 8:22

Corn here on the farm is the one thing that feeds every animal we have here. Cows will eat corn, chickens will eat corn, turkeys will eat corn, pigs will eat corn. So if you're going to grow one thing, grow the universal feed group right. So I was doing potatoes because I can feed potatoes to the pigs and this, and we love potatoes and it's a great prepper food, but corn is pretty much. I mean, it makes popcorn. It isn't like Lauren's homemade popcorn, right. So again, so that's what we do, and we get a corn crib. The person who owned this before had a corn crib over there, which is where you put it to dry out, where animals can't get to it. So you know, we're pretty much set up for it. I just don't know how much like an acre of corn. What does an acre of corn grow for food? I don't know. Is that enough for like three bags of feed? If it's only enough for like three bags of corn feed, well, that's only $33. That's not really all that much. So again, we'll see, live and learn right, live and learn, so all right. So just a reminder the Christian Warrior Talk is still on from Monday through Thursday from 9 to 10 pm, and we've been getting a lot of people tuning into that and we're so blessed for that.

Speaker 1: 9:36

That's where we start, with a humble and grateful heart aligned onto the Lord. We start with a prayer to check all of our pity party. We all got reasons to complain, we all got reasons to gripe and if you ask, I would say Americans on a whole are professional complainers, nevermind that we are the most prosperous, comfortable nation in the history of the world. We find a way to complain all day long, everywhere. Now, soldiers and cops and first responders are the best complainers in the world. They professionalize it. But the rest of us complain far too much. So we come in there, we check our gripes and our complaining at the door and we just get. Get grateful. We get grateful for all the blessings we have, which are so numerous.

Speaker 1: 10:26

What do you think about it? 30 trillion cells that's how many cells are in our body. 30 trillion cells had to work near perfectly for you to even be here today, and someone had to design those cells perfectly well. You think 30 trillion cells work together on their own, without a designer. They just all work perfectly. No, no. Then you have the lack of catastrophe in your life, the fact that for most of us today, we woke up and a loved one did not die in a horrible car wreck because someone was texting and crossed over the line, or a drunk driver. Now, some did go through that. But if you didn't, you're blessed. Right, you're blessed. You know, every day, people, houses, are consumed in fires, tornadoes. You know there was just a big tsunami in Japan. You're blessed, we're blessed.

Speaker 1: 11:25

So God has this divine grace right, which is the grace that we have where he chose us before. We chose him back in the beginning of time itself and wrote our name in the book of life, and that means he chose us that we're going to follow. We were going to follow him and he called us to him, and that's the best blessing you could ever have. But there's also common grace that everyone has Now. Common grace is sunrise and sunsets right. Whether you're the most evil person in the world or not, you can look and see a sunrise, and it's a blessing. The ocean, rivers, streams, lakes, mountains these are all amazing blessings. A cool breeze on a hot day, a warning fire on a cold night these are common grace.

Speaker 1: 12:19

God didn't have to make it this way. He could have said suffer, but he didn't and he didn't. I could smell a honeysuckle in my backyard. Oh, I'll never forget. I went to Orlando for work and all I could smell was tailpipes and exhaust. The first thing I did was get home and go down my road that borders my property. It's a whole length of my property and it's covered with honeysuckle, and that smell to me is home. Smell of my wife's hair yeah, like every time she leaves the bed, I get her pillow and I squeeze up on it because it smells like her, right, smell good food that tastes good food didn't have to taste good, guys. God could have made it suck, we'd all be skinnier. That's a good thing, right? God made food taste good by accident? No, by his common grace, right. So god does so. Love the world, even the sin and everything else. He still gave us these blessings. I smell the flowers, the sound of children's laughter, the touch of a loved one, those of you who love your animals, loyalty of your dogs, the comfort your cat provides. Those are common grace. But here is also common grace.

Speaker 1: 13:36

God provided an environment, these brains, for us to learn from history. Right, we recorded history. Why? Because terrible, awful things happened and our brains are possible to look at squiggly lines on a page like as coherent thoughts to learn from the past. So we don don't repeat it. That's why God gave us Holy Scripture. So Israel would stop screwing up. Right, it was a repeating cycle. They'd be in trouble. God would save them. Life would be good. They'd turn away from them. They'd get back in trouble. God would save them, life would get good and repeat. So he gave them a holy text, which is the Old Testament, which is why those stories are recorded to learn from, so that we don't follow the same mistakes.

Speaker 1: 14:36

Unfortunately we are. Unfortunately, yeah, but modern medicine is God's common grace, if he To be able to do this, and even the blessings. There are blessings in things as awful as war. In war, medicine and our ability to learn how to heal accelerates, and I don't know how many hundreds or thousands percent more, because people are learning how to, at a more rapid pace, how to save lives Right, and the counterweapons as they evolve, and so on and so forth. So you know, if there's anything that can be said of the progress that was made in medicine, it's often because of war. And so again, even in the darkest of things, there are blessings. So those are all of God's not all of them, but just some examples of God's common grace.

Speaker 1: 15:39

Today, like I said, we are going to be in James 4, but let me go to prayer. Heavenly Father, lord, we thank you, we thank you for this day, this Lord's Day, and we thank you for the victory your son won on the cross and in the empty tomb. Lord, we are so blessed, we are so alive, we are so grateful, like every day and every Sunday. Help us set our griping aside, our sore bones, our sore muscles, our cancers, everything that we have. Let's check it at the door. Think of all the blessings we had, how many days we had from birth to now.

Speaker 1: 16:21

Lord, convict us of how many days we've had. How many of them have we served you? How many of those days have we wasted serving ourselves? Help us to pour into others and to share your good news. Help us to be lights in the world for everyone else. Lord, you know that many of us are slow at speech and have thought and aren't the prettiest prayers, and you know and others are so gifted in prayer. But good news is you gave us a model to pray in your holy text when you said pray like this Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors, and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen, all right.

Speaker 1: 17:44

So today, james 4, and I'm going to be reading out of the ESV. Now I want you to think of common grace on the good and the evil, and then we have our divine grace. Now, too many of us focus on the temporary grace, which is worldliness. We get lost in our possessions, we get lost in ourliness. We get lost in our possessions, we get lost in our stuff, we get lost in our comforts. We want to find value in things and all these other things, and it's a blessing, but it's not the blessing. The blessing is eternity with God and our loved ones. That is the true blessing. It's when we get out of alignment and we start worshiping the common grace, which is the creation instead of the creator, and the relationship and the true blessing with him, where we get into trouble and that's what James is going to tackle here and um and the first part of his chapter four.

Speaker 1: 18:58

So what causes core? Sorry, so warring against worldliness? Those are the uninspired words that try to tell you what this is going to be about. Now let's get into God's Word. What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this? That your passions are at war within you? Okay, so what he's saying is that fights are caused by our worshiping of things other than the Lord, because the Lord tells us to turn the other cheek right, which is not not defend yourself, just means if you're insulted, it doesn't matter. Turn the other cheek, forgive If you notice. And again, this is one of the most misquoted things. It didn't say if you get stabbed once, let him stab you again. That's nowhere in the Bible.

Speaker 1: 19:53

What causes quarrels and causes fights among you, is it not that your passions are at war with you? And I'm going to finish that and go down a little bit further. You desire and do not have, so you murder, covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask, wrongly, to spend it on your passions. Worldly things, worldly things, I hope.

Speaker 1: 20:27

You adulterous people, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? I hope, I hope. I hope 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. Or do you suppose it means no purpose that the scripture says he yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made and dwell in us. He gives more grace. Therefore. It says God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Submit yourselves, therefore, to God. Resist the devil and he will free. Flee from you. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners. Purify your heart, you double-minded, be wretched, mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you. Stop there Now. There's a lot, so much to unpack in there.

Speaker 1: 21:31

So again, if you notice, the first chunk of this is all about them fighting because they all. What happens when somebody gets something that we don't we didn't earn it, but somebody else does we get jealous. We get jealous. And why are they? Why do they have this and I don't? Well, you didn't earn it right, or you know they've been blessed in other ways than you have. You know, I remember a horrible time that I had where, um, one of my family members his son didn't has autism and mine did. I was so jealous of him because his son was playing hockey and sports and had a normal thing and mine didn't. Well, he died of cancer very young and now his son doesn't have that father. So how out of line was I. I know how out of line was I, but we all covet and we all go after things that we shouldn't. We should all be grateful for what we have and work to acquire more and to provide, because remember, there's a fine line the Bible doesn't preach poverty.

Speaker 1: 22:50

The primary teachings of the Bible is he who cannot provide for his family is worse than an infidel. Break that down. If you can't provide for your family and you're a Christian, you are worse than somebody who does not believe in God. Where do people go that don't believe in God? Hell. Believe in God. Where do people go that don't believe in God? Hell. You are worse than them if you do not provide for your family.

Speaker 1: 23:17

So again, a lot of sometimes people with bad intentions will read James as we go further on and when he's cussing out the rich in there and think, oh, oh, we're not meant to be successful. That's not true. We all have war chests that we are blessed with, which is how much we earn and how much what we. Some of us blow our finances right, some of us make very bad, ungodly decisions and we have a price to pay that it's not God saying that money is bad. It's people who make it an idol. It's people who have enough still choose to spend time away from their family. It's spending on Ferraris and excess instead of helping changing lives with it in ways that would glorify God. That is what James talks about Now, what he's talking also about here when he says you adulterous people that you can't be friends with the world.

Speaker 1: 24:19

If you haven't figured this out today, maybe when I grew up, you might have been able to get away with being a Christian and not be persecuted by the world. You're a Christian now who teaches that life is life right from conception and to kill the unborn is murder. You say that you're a domestic terrorist to our government. Okay, you're a religious zealot and a terrorist to our government. If you say there are two genders and marriage is between one man and one woman, you're now saying hate speech according to our government. In Canada, you cannot preach that. It is a crime. Canada, our neighbors to the north, cannot preach parts of the Bible. It's a crime to preach it's hate speech, improsecutable in Canada. It's a crime to preach it's hate speech and prosecutable in Canada. You cannot be 100% for God and be a friend of the world, because guess what Forces of darkness.

Speaker 1: 25:20

When you're a bright light and you burn bright, when you declare I am God's and I serve God, a couple things are going to happen. Other people are going to notice Hi buddy Wow, he can't see me. He's over there facing the wrong way. But two things are going to happen. Other people are going to be inspired by your light and they're going to come to you and be like man. You have a peace about you. You have a joy not silly, you know I'm getting tanked selfish joy but you have a peace and a joy because you're serving, you're pouring into other people. When you pour into other people, you're a part of something greater that fills your soul.

Speaker 1: 26:05

Everything I've ever done for myself is ashes. I don't remember it, I don't care about it. It was destructive. Everything I've done and sacrificed is something else. That's been the true value of my life and it's the same with all of us. Everything selfish you do, you go down, sink a little bit further into hell. Everything of sacrifice and service, you do. Rise a little bit more.

Speaker 1: 26:32

Now I'm not preaching works. People who are Christian will be doing service because they are saved, not saved because they are in service. Selfish people who are not saved or who even think they are and they're not. Selfish people who are not saved or who even think they are and they're not, will constantly serve self in sync. Now, when it says, here you covet and cannot obtain, oh sorry, let's go.

Speaker 1: 27:07

Even before that, is it not this that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. Okay, now there is split opinions on this in the church and scholars. Some believe that there was actually murder going on in the church when people were going on. Others because the Zealots, who were an Israeli religious group that did assassinations, political and religious assassinations. Simon the Zealot was a reformed one of those.

Speaker 1: 27:42

If you've seen the Chosen, you probably have a little better understanding of it all. Others say that James is talking about. James is the brother of Jesus. He's talking about Jesus. He who hates has already committed murder. So if we hate something, we've already committed murder. Because if we had the chance we'd put, your intent would be to murder. If you can get away with it, you covenant cannot obtain, so you fight and quar quarrel.

Speaker 1: 28:10

Let's break down three and four. You ask and do not receive, because you ask, wrongly, to spend it on your passions. This is god. I really want to. I really want to corvette. Why are you not answering my prayers? What a waste, a selfish, selfish waste of the creator of the universe's time. I want stuff instead of please cure cancer from this child. Can you see the difference in that, like one is for your comfort, pleasure and your vanity, your sin. One is asking to glorify your sin. The other is spending your time interceding and fighting for someone else. Like, please realize that God answers one of those prayers, and it's not always. If you're spending your whole time praying about yourself, you're doing it wrong. Yes, you should pray for yourself, pray to be closer to God, pray for more faith, pray for him to give you the strength to walk this hard path, the narrow path. Pray for it all, because it's so easy to take the off-ramp, it's so easy to get off the path and get on the super highway to hell.

Speaker 1: 29:34

I'll remember one of the most disturbing things I've ever seen that let me know that this world is the enemy of God. There's a big European thing where all these musicians. They got I don't know thousands of musicians together, maybe tens of thousands, I don't know. They filled the stadium and they had hundreds of drummers over here in perfect sync and hundreds of electric guitars over here and hundreds of this bass guitars over here, and this whole stadium sang in unison. And what do you think? The song they sang was highway to hell. Highway to hell by ACDC. I can't even fathom that now as a Christian. How somebody didn't say are you out of your mind? You have this moment where you have all these talented, gifted musicians. You chose to glorify the devil. With that time. They declared their allegiance right there. And if you don't remember the words to that song no stoplights, speed limits, nobody's going to slow me down, I can't remember a lot of it.

Speaker 1: 31:00

I'm on my way to the promised land. I'm on the highway to hell. I don't think they're going to find the promised land to be hell. That's the great deception. That's the great deception. That's the serpent in the garden telling Eve that God is trying to rob them of an experience. Play it forward 2,000 years. Hell is where all the fun people are going to be. That's where you want to be. You don't want to be up in the clouds playing a harp. That's how modern society says. You know we're going to be in diapers playing on a harp. Right, that's heaven. No, that's not what heaven is. I hope, I hope, I hope, I hope, I hope. And he calls them an adulterous people. But aren't we, I hope, I hope, aren people? But aren't we, aren't we? Isn't our nation? Now, when he talks here, at the end it gets really hardcore, right and it's really striking. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Pursue God.

Speaker 1: 32:00

I was feeling different from God and my wife, who I would want to take a moment to recognize right now. If you don't have a spouse that'll fight for you, you do not know how love is. I was feeling different, separate from God. I was struggling, you know, not with sin patterns or anything whatever. I'm just feeling different, separated from God, struggling in my faith, in my walk. And my wife literally almost flogged me up the hill to go spend time at the cross. There was no option Get go, don't get go. Stop delaying, stop her. Go, go, go go. If she could have kicked me out the door, she would have kicked me out the door to go spend time with my creator.

Speaker 1: 32:51

That time was not spent in vain. Did I go up there and boom, revelation. No, I went up there, I spent the time and he honored it in the morning. The following morning, I immediately felt that connection again to the Holy Spirit. If you've ever felt it, it's this warmth. It's this warmth, it's this feeling of I am right where I'm supposed to be, I am serving him, I am doing what I am supposed to be doing for God and not myself.

Speaker 1: 33:19

And when that happens, you're blessed and you want to hold on to it and bear hug it. But just like Israelites, just like us, wander out of it, we wander away, we take the off ramp, we get comfortable and selfish. I can't have more, more, more, more. I hope you're lucky. I hope is not the word. If you're blessed, you get people in your life that'll fight for you, and that's what I want this church to be. I want this church to be that we love you so much that we'll fight you for you. If you're making mistakes, we'll knock on your door, we'll find you. You can't be doing this to yourself. Man, woman, you're the son of the living God. Act like it.

Speaker 1: 34:17

So what he's talking about here now is cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts. You double minded. Since we all do this stuff, since we're all this. He's saying confess, I go to God, repent and you'll be good. I hope I know those of us who are walking the Christian life. What is he talking about here? I hope I go, you wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laugh to be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you. What he's talking about is confessing your sins and getting right with the Lord and repenting for what you've done wrong, with tears and mourning, so that you're not doing that when God comes to judge and you're being. Your tears and mourning are because of the judgment for what you did. You are self-repenting, self-reporting, you are feeling and turning away from your sinful self and God will exalt you Like he's going to come down and discipline you. I got discipline as final.

Speaker 1: 35:30

Now here is the big challenge. James remember, is the one who talks about the tongue almost more than anyone else how evil our tongue is and what we speak. Do not speak evil against one another, brothers. The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother 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. What he's talking about there, many believe, is love your neighbor as yourself. Right, love your neighbor as yourself, not to speak evil of your neighbor. There is only one lawgiver and one judge. He was able to save and destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor? Now, let's take it out of context, and I've got to clean up on aisle 12, right here we are.

Speaker 1: 36:21

Here, we are called to judge everything. There is judging whether something's good and right, and then there's passing judgment. Right, so I can come to the street, look and see any cars and I have to make a judgment. Is it safe to go across the street? I make that judgment across the street. Someone on the street can come up and ask me if I want some drugs. I have to make a judgment. Do I want some drugs? What is good, what is evil? We're called to judge everything, whether it's godly, to God's standard, or godless, which is of the world, and evil.

Speaker 1: 36:58

What you do not say is you're going to hell. You don't have that authority. Only Jesus has that authority. Now we may believe they're going to hell. You don't have that authority. Only Jesus has that authority. Now we may believe they're going to hell. We may believe they're going to hell, but we have no idea they could be living the most sinful life and then tomorrow, be saved. Their lifestyle is leading them to hell and we are called to speak truth to them when the opportunity arises. But we don't say damn you to hell. Only God does that. Only God does that. We know we're not to gossip. We're either to build up or confront. We either take it to their face or we let it go. There is no in between.

Speaker 1: 37:53

Now, this is a confusing little bit here. And then I'm still doing my math, boasting about tomorrow. Come now, you who say today or tomorrow we will go to such and such town and spend a year there and trade and make profit. Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? Are you a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes? Instead, you ought to say, if the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that. As it is, you boast in your arrogance. Now the last, the most condemning statement there is verse 17. We'll talk about that. That's going to be 10 sermons in itself. Boasting about tomorrow. Basically, this is be 10 sermons in itself. Posting about tomorrow. Basically, this is all teaching about to bring God into your plans If you're planning which I am guilty of that I had a because I was saved. Later in life I have a whole bad habit I have to break of making plans without bringing God into the center of them.

Speaker 1: 39:02

But there are some people who say, like this phrase, the Lord wills if the Lord wills, to the point of insanity. This is one teaching in the Bible. You don't see Paul saying this all the time. You don't see Peter saying this all the time. You don't see John saying this all the time. You don't see anyone else but James really saying this. Okay, it is sound advice. Bring God into it and if he wills, it'll bless, you know.

Speaker 1: 39:34

So you say you're making some great plans. Let's say my son, we pray. My son is a doctor, whatever. Can't think of anything less. I'd rather him to be than a doctor. But we'll say he's going to be a pastor, right, he's going to be a great man of God. Get the Lord Wills. I can't make him that. We're only just now getting to see who he is. Everyone's soul is so different. You take my three children and if you were just to look at their souls. They're not even related, they're nothing alike. Bea is her own amazing, beautiful child. So is Yaya and now Magnus, all very different children from the same two parents, proof that God puts different souls in all of us. So again, bring the Lord into your plans. Now.

Speaker 1: 40:30

Here is the hardest thing to do, the thing we all need to repent of most. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him is sin. How many times have we known the right thing to do and didn't do it? Have is sin. How many times have we known the right thing to do and we didn't do it? Have we repented of that? How many times were there people you should have helped, a kind word you should have spoken, and you didn't Like that's a sin before God because you knew you should. Unrepentant sin is death. To not change that, say I'm not going to, I'm going to do what I'm supposed to do when I know I'm supposed to do it. I'm going to do it because to not is to turn against God and to be a traitor and to crucify Christ again. This is so earth-shattering. I've read this multiple times and it didn't really hit me that way.

Speaker 1: 41:36

As I'm going through the commentary, I came across a brilliant commentary that really broke down these. What? 15, 16 words. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, him and his sin. Well, that just raises the standard in all of our lives, doesn't it? It's no longer what you do, it's what you don't do. All right, let's go to the Lord's Supper.

Speaker 1: 42:07

This is for baptized believers. Go ahead and close your eyes. Today we are honoring the standard that was raised today. Today we repent for the sins that we've committed, the sins we committed because we om for the sins that we've committed, the sins we committed because we omitted the action, we failed to act, kindness. We should have shown in our lives the forgiveness we are commanded to give. So now I want us to remember what Jesus did, what he paid for us, how he suffered, how he lived, how he died, how he rose again from the cross victorious. Now I want you to bring all your sin the last time you've done communion, repent and now look back with fresh eyes after hearing the message today, being convicted by the word and the Holy Spirit, the things you didn't do, repent to those and bring them to his feet. Renew your commitment to Christ. Next time I will act. Next time I will, lord, send me. Now.

Speaker 1: 43:29

As they were eating, jesus took bread and, after blessing him, broke it and gave it to his disciples and said take, eat, this is my body. Go ahead and eat. And he took a cup. When he had given thanks, he gave it to them saying drink of it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. Go ahead and drink.

Speaker 1: 43:57

Heavenly Father. Lord, we love you. We thank you for your Son, jesus, your Holy Spirit For you. Heavenly Father, I thank you for your creation. Guide us, lord, to worship you and not your creation. Lord, help us to not be like our forefather Adam. Worship your creation instead of you. Lord, convict us in our hearts. Lead us to act when we should. Lord, help us to not chase after and envy and hate and murder our brothers in our hearts and sisters in our hearts when things don't matter. Help us to always put you first in our life.

Speaker 1: 44:53

Lord, I pray a prayer of protection over this congregation, this fellowship, over the persecuted church all around the world, over our troops overseas, our first responders at home, our veterans of yesteryear. Lord, I pray for your protection against World War III and civil war here in America and I pray that America would turn from her sin, hit her knees, repent and seek your face, that you would see her and heal her. Repent and seek your face that you would see her and heal her and make her once again one nation under God, indivisible liberty, justice. In Jesus name, we pray amen. May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. May the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. God bless.