468: The Jealousy of God | Dave Sloop

Thank you Bob. Good morning everyone. I was in here early this morning, and Joan and Yvonne McClure came in about 40 minutes early. I thought they must be here for Sunday school, but they said no—they just get here early because they drive all the way from Franklin County and never know what kind of traffic they're gonna run into. I want to say thank you for coming all the way from Franklin. But I wanted to let you know that there's someone who's come a little bit further than Franklin this morning—my uncle and aunt. Uncle Sandy is here from Portugal, so I want to say hello to you and welcome. We're so thrilled that you're here this morning.

We're excited because we're gonna be picking back up on a series that we hit pause on back when Lent began. We were walking through the book of James. Do you remember? You might have thought we were finished, but we're not. James is a very practical book. It's very direct. It can be uncomfortable at times. James is gonna say things to us like, "Don't just listen to the word or hear the word and so deceive yourselves—do what it says."

James's primary goal is that your faith isn't hollow, but it's not just a set of precepts that you prescribe to—it actually makes a difference in the way that you live. He's going to say things like this:

Faith without works is dead.

If there is no life change, if there is no transformation because of the gospel that you have received, then it shows you something about what you believe. It means you don't really believe it, because if you did, your life would change. It's a very down-to-earth, practical, direct, uncomfortable book.

In chapter three—the last chapter that we were in—Tim preached to us from the end of that chapter. This is a continuation of the conversation that James was having in chapter three. We're gonna pick it back up today in chapter four, but I want to remind you how it started. In verse one of chapter three, he said:

Not many of you should want to be teachers.

He's referring to people that would dare to open this book and tell you what it means. He says not many people should presume to do this because teachers—those of us James says who are teachers—will be judged more strictly.

You might think that what he means is the people that open this book and tell you what it means are going to be held to account because the people who listen are going to make decisions about how to order their lives because of what you say. So be careful how you handle this, or as Paul would say to Timothy, "rightly divide the word of truth." And everything I just said is true, but that's not what James was saying in this particular passage.

If you look in verse 13 of chapter three—which is where Tim preached from back in March when we hit pause—it says:

Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom.

He's talking to the teachers, and he says, "Who among you is wise? Who is understanding? Who has something to say?" And then he says: show me. Show me by your life. He's not saying, "I want to hear your words." He's saying, "I want to see your works."

James isn't primarily concerned in this passage with the content that the teacher is going to share. He's concerned with his character. Now, this is James writing to teachers, but this is true for all of us: the most important message you will ever preach is not one with your mouth, but with your life. You will say so much more by the way that you treat people, by the way that you love people. That's what James is after.

At the end of that chapter, he says this:

There are two kinds of wisdom. There's the wisdom of the world, and here's what that produces: bitter jealousy, selfish ambition. This wisdom is not wisdom that comes down from above but is earthly, unspiritual, and demonic. Where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice.

James is saying the wisdom that the world offers is, first of all, demonic, and it's going to lead to a certain kind of life. But he's saying the wisdom that comes from God—and that's the choice basically everybody has. Those are the two choices in life: wisdom from the world or wisdom from God. He says that the wisdom from God is supposed to produce humility, and if it isn't, something isn't working right in us.

The Root of Conflict

Then, continuing this conversation to the teachers, in verse one he says:

What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you?

This is not a hypothetical. He is speaking to a community of people who are steeped in conflict. He asks this question, and look at verse two—what it says:

Is it not this: that your passions are at war within you?

Do you hear what he's saying? Let me give you a hint: he's saying this is what the problem is. It's you.

It's nine times. You, you're, you're, you're, you're, it's you. What James is doing here is he's asking them to slow down, to look in the mirror, and recognize: I'm the problem. The reason for the conflict is me.

Can I tell you something that you may not know about you? You are obsessed with yourself. Did you know this? Are you in touch with that addiction that you have?

There's a word that we just saw on the screen there. It's translated "desire." The Greek word is hedone. It's "passions" up there. It's from which we get the word "hedonism"—this idea of ruthless self-pleasure, that I exist to satisfy myself. It's a completely self-focused existence, and it causes us to be obsessed with me.

A Personal Example

Now I want to tell you an embarrassing story about when this happened in my life, just an example. You might have one, but back in September of 2012, it was very late at night—September 15th, early in the morning—and I was climbing into bed at about three o'clock in the morning because some of my best friends in the world had come to visit me. I was living in Blacksburg, Virginia at the time. I get into bed, pull the covers up, and literally before I fell asleep, Melissa turns over and says, "My water just broke." And I took the covers back off, started packing a bag. We get in the car and start speeding to the hospital, and it starts to set in to me how tired I am. I don't know how long this journey is going to be.

But I was prepared because, you see, Sydney was born about 15 months earlier, and I was deluded into believing that the accommodations at the hospital would be comfortable for the husband and for the wife. But that was not the case. There was a chair that was supposed to fold into a bed—it was the worst night of sleep I had ever had in my life. So the moment that Melissa got pregnant with Libby, I went to Walmart and I got an air mattress, a memory foam mattress pad, and a white noise machine, and I put it all in my trunk weeks in advance of this birth that was going to take place. I didn't know when we were going, but I am committed to my comfort, okay?

So we start heading to the hospital, we get there, get out of the car, Melissa's having contractions, and I'm like, "Here, could you hold this mattress? Thank you." And we start walking in. We get checked into the room, and the nurses come in and they're trying to talk to Melissa, but all you can hear in the background is "heee" because I'm blowing up this air mattress.

I didn't mention that the size air mattress that I got was a queen size. Because who can sleep on a twin mattress, okay? I'm a grown man. So what I didn't remember—I mean, you see a queen size mattress in a normal bedroom and it doesn't look that big. Hospital rooms are a little smaller, and I start moving furniture out of the way, and it takes up literally half of this room—my mattress. And I am so tired, and Melissa is breathing through contractions while I'm laying on this mattress. Nurses are coming in. It was one of the worst moments of my life. We laugh about it, though.

But here's the point: I was so committed to my own comfort. I was so aware, as my wife is going through what is some of the worst pain you can experience, I was like, "But I'm tired. I'm tired. We're both kind of in this together, right now?" That's an embarrassing example for me. But the truth is, you and I both know I'm not alone. We all are afflicted with the same problem of being addicted to me.

That is why James, in this passage, uses the plural form. Every single "you, you're, you're, you're, you're, it's you"—it's plural. He is not mediating a conflict between two sides and saying it's not their fault, it's your fault. What he's saying is: What is the cause of all the problems you're experiencing? It's you. It's all of you. It's all of us. We are obsessed. We are obsessed with ourselves. Is anybody else hearing this?

The Heart of the Matter

You are obsessed with yourself. And here's what he says next, and I want you to notice this: He's going to say you are the problem, but the problem is that you can't see it.

Let me read to you verse two again:

"Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you?" — James 4:1-2

You see, he wants them to look in the mirror, but he knows that they need to look deeper. Because the problem is not out here—it's in here. It's in your heart. That's what he's saying.

And the problem with our heart is that whatever is going on in here is eventually going to find its way out. This is what the Bible teaches. You're trying to hold a beach ball underwater. It's not staying down there forever. It is going to come up, and the longer and deeper you hold it down, the more force with which it is going to come out.

Have you ever been in a conversation with someone and they get offended and they just erupt? And you think, "Where did that come from?" It came from here. Because here's the pattern: What's happening in here will eventually happen out here. And this is exactly what James says. Listen to—

He says you desire and you do not have, so you murder. The desire is happening in here, murder happening out there. Now chances are he's speaking metaphorically, but even if he wasn't, it still stands. Everything Jesus says: it's not what goes into a man that makes him unclean, it's what comes out of a man that makes him unclean. And it's from the heart comes every kind of evil.

James goes on: you covet and you cannot obtain, so you fight and you quarrel. This is the pattern—your inside is coming out.

Above all else guard your heart for everything you do flows from it — Proverbs 4:23

Solomon says above everything else you could possibly do with your time and your attention and your energy, guard that heart. You better understand what makes it tick because the truth is, if you don't have that thing in check, there's going to be some behaviors that come out of your heart that you can't control and that you never would choose for yourself.

Two Things About Our Heart

The first one is in verse 2: you desire and you do not have. Skip ahead: you covet and you cannot obtain. What's the lesson? Your heart, my heart, is unsatisfied.

When I was a speaker at Young Life camp, we used to do this illustration. You take a cup and you take a picture and you'd say every single one of us is trying to get this thing filled up. This is a cup, this is our heart. You'd start to pour in there. You'd say we go to relationships, or if we just feel pain, we try to numb it with alcohol, or you fill in the blank—all the different things, the usual suspects that we go to try to fill our life up. But here's the deal: we would have a hole in that cup and it would just drain out. That's like our heart. Our heart is leaky. It doesn't stay full for long. So we're constantly—because of that leaky heart—perpetuating this need to focus on myself, to get my needs met. And we're fixated and addicted and obsessed with me. Why? Because my heart is unsatisfied and leaky.

But that's not all. Listen to what he says next.

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. — James 4:4

James is setting up a pretty strange binary. He's saying if you are a friend of the world, you are an enemy of God. You make yourself into an enemy of God the moment you become a friend with the world. He's not talking about being friends with people who live in the world. What he's saying is that there is an ideology in the world, there is the wisdom of the world that he talked about at the end of chapter 3, that leads to selfish ambition. He's saying the moment that you partner with that ideology—worldly wisdom—is the moment you make yourself an enemy of God.

Is God being petty? Did he get his feelings hurt and say, "Now you're my enemy"? That's not what's happening here. This is why he starts the sentence by saying: you adulterous people. Adulterous is the actual Greek word there. You know what James is saying? You don't just have an unsatisfied heart. You have an unfaithful heart.

And the fact that God is using this language here is going to teach us something about how he sees our sin. But it's also going to teach us something about how he sees us. Do you know how God sees our sin? I think for many of us, we might even subconsciously think: why does he care so much? Why does he care that I do this or that?

For the same reason that a husband doesn't want to share his wife. Is a husband being petty when he suggests: "Hey, you and I have something sacred here. We're not going to share this with anyone else"?

You see what we don't understand about our sin is that God sees it in the same way as adultery. It is spiritual adultery. Have you heard the story of Hosea and Gomer? Hosea is a prophet in the Old Testament, and God came to him and he said, "I want you to go take to yourself a wife of harlotry. Go marry a prostitute." Can you believe this is in the Bible? God said go marry a prostitute. And here's why: "I want my people to see how I view their sin."

You don't just have an unsatisfied heart. You and I have an unfaithful heart. A cheating heart. You see, when we sin against God, we're not just breaking his rules. We're breaking his heart.

And that's the second point. It teaches us something about how we see our sin, but it also teaches us something about how God sees you. He sees you as his bride. He wants to be in a relationship with you that is intimate and close, where there is a give and an exchange of love and depth and joy and fulfillment. That's why we get married to begin with—to experience that kind of self-giving and receiving love and all the benefits that come along with it.

That is the kind of relationship that God desires. And when we go somewhere else, it's as if we're getting into bed with someone else. You see, our heart can only love. Our heart is designed to only worship one thing. This is why Jesus would put it this way: you cannot serve...

Two masters—you will love the one and hate the other. You will be devoted to one and despise the other. Your heart is made for one, and if you're not looking at him, you will be unsatisfied.

It might be best to say it this way: we're unsatisfied. Our heart is unsatisfied because we have been unfaithful in our hearts.

My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and they have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water. — Jeremiah 2:13

That's exactly what James is saying here. You have an unfaithful heart, and as a result, you have an unsatisfied heart.

God's Jealousy for Us

This is why the next verse says this:

Or do you suppose that is to no purpose that the Scripture says he yearns jealously for the spirit that he has made to dwell in us? — James 4:5

When was the last time you thought about God in this way—that he is jealous? That he loves you? That he yearns for you, longs for you, for your heart, for your fidelity?

Usually we think of jealousy as a negative emotion, but this is good jealousy. He knows what's best. He created life. He longs for you and wants what's best for you. That's the emotion that God has.

James is taking this metaphor to its logical conclusion. If God is our husband and we are unfaithful, he is jealously longing for our hearts. But it's a cycle that we just keep falling back into.

And thankfully, the next verse says this: But he gives more grace.

The Diagnosis and the Antidote

The first five verses—James is diagnosing the problem. Dr. James is telling us what is wrong with our heart. And in verse six and following, he's going to tell us what the antidote is, what is the medicine.

But he gives more grace. God opposes the proud but he gives grace to the humble. — James 4:6

The candidates for this grace are humble—they are people who have gotten to the point where they recognize: I can't do this. I cannot figure it out.

It's the tax collector. God opposes the proud—that's the Pharisee, that's saying, "God, thank you that I'm not like other people." Here's who he receives: the sinner that knows he's a sinner, that beats his chest and says, "God, forgive me. I see how bad I am." He says, "I'll take that one. That's who he wants. That's who he's after."

The rest of this passage is going to teach us how to receive that grace that we so desperately need—like medicine—the only cure for this sick heart that we have.

Four Commands for Receiving Grace

Submit yourselves therefore to God. — James 4:7

That word "submit" means put yourself under, place yourself under. The fact that he says that is evidence that we have put ourselves above. We've got things out of whack. He's saying: take yourself out of the center of your universe and throne him on your heart where he belongs. The author of life—read what this book says and do it. Make him your king. Bend the knee.

That's the first thing that he says. And now he's going to show you what that looks like when you do it.

Submit yourselves therefore to God, and... resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. — James 4:7-8

I want you to listen closely. The first and the third correlate with one another, and the second and the fourth correlate with one another.

Resist the devil and he will flee from you. James is saying there's something you got to do, and it's correlated to that third thing: cleanse your hands, you sinners. There's some stuff that you're doing. There's some dirt on your hands that you have the ability to clean off. There's some habits that you have been comfortable with that you can stop doing. And the promise that he gives you is that the devil will flee from you. He does not have power over you. The moment that you resist him, he flees. You can stop now.

I was confused when I first started reading this because it sounds like there's a bunch of things that we do and then there's a bunch of things that he does, and that's true. But something that it sounds like we're supposed to do is purify your hearts—and that doesn't sound right because I can't purify my heart. But this is why it's correlated to draw near to God. Draw near to God and purify your hearts. I can clean my hands. I can put them under the faucet. I can't clean my heart. I need to draw near to God. I need surgery. And that's precisely what happens—he puts something new inside of you.

Listen to what he says next:

Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. — James 4:9

What if we said that at the doors? People showed up to church and we said, "Be wretched and mourning. Weep. Welcome. Have a seat. Thanks for being here. Let your laughter be turned to gloom."

But here's what I think James is saying: he's saying, "Stop. Stop distracting."

Would you sit with the reality of your sick heart for just a minute? Would you allow yourself to feel the consequences of there being no solution to this thing—your addiction to yourself and everything that it leads to, this incessant need for more and more and more, never satisfied, constantly unfaithful? He's inviting you to sit with that truth until it brings you to the end of yourself. Because it's only people who get to the end of themselves who are willing to come to the only place they can see, feel, and experience true healing.

Which is why he says next: "Humble yourself in the sight of the Lord and he will exalt you."

See, the thing we fear most is sitting with the reality of how broken we are, and we are very good at ignoring it—endlessly distracting ourselves. We're so good at it. The irony is the very thing that will set us free is by bringing our whole true selves before Christ and experiencing his unconditional love.

I want to show you a clip—it's just about three minutes. It's from The Chosen, and it's from John chapter 4 where Jesus meets the woman at the well. He has just finished telling her: "Yeah, you're right when you say you have no husband. You actually have had five, and the one you're with now isn't your husband." At first she's uncomfortable. In this passage we're about to watch, he has just said to her that the kind of worshiper that the Father is seeking is people who worship in spirit and truth. You don't need to go to a specific place. You don't need to be in the temple. You don't need to follow certain customs. You can worship him wherever you are. And then he says this: "No matter what you've done." And at that point I want to pick the clip up.

[Video plays]

---

It's hard for me to watch that without getting choked up every single time. And here's why: you can see that tough, hard exterior. If you watch the full clip it would be even more impactful. But the moment that she allows herself to be fully known, and he starts giving the details—not just things done to her, but things she's done to other people—and he looks at her with those kind, loving eyes. He's not surprised. He's not intimidated. He's not repelled by her worst mistakes in life. He chose her to be the first to tell, "I'm the Messiah."

Do you see what happened? It was like a moment. She goes, "She's free." Why was she free? Because she allowed herself to be fully known in front of a Messiah. She stopped hiding. She humbled herself, and he exalted her.

Can I tell you something? There is something about following Christ that requires a certain kind of death. We have to humble ourselves. We have to die to who everyone else thinks that we are, to who we think that we are, and we have to come before him and let him look at us and say, "I know. I love you anyway." And at that moment we experience freedom.

The irony is we're looking everywhere else for that kind of satisfaction and freedom. We're trying to avoid that kind of exposure. But it is that exposure that sets us free.

We were on a men's weekend last weekend, and our speaker Pat Goodman said this: "We change to the degree that we know that we're loved. And you can't really know that you're loved until you're exposed, until the person that claims to love you actually sees who it is that they love."

At the end of that scene, she leaves her water jar—it's rolling there. You catch the significance of that? What she used to go to to satisfy her thirst didn't need it, because she had a greater satisfaction. And I hope that some of you would experience that today. Some of you that have been following Christ for a long, long time, and some of you that have never known or tasted or experienced what he promises to give.

those who come let's pray.

Father, thank you for this incredible reminder of our great need and of your greater grace. Lord, I pray that you would give us the freedom to humble ourselves, to let go of our need to keep our defenses up, our walls up, our mask on. Lord, that we would just allow you to tell us that you love us. Because we really do believe that we change to the degree that we know that love.

It's in Christ's name that we pray. Amen.