The Cycle of Sinful Pleasure | Sermon 05/29/2022

James 4:1-6

It is obvious that these early Jewish Christians were not always practicing the wisdom from above and enjoying the peace God gives but James says warring with one another because the pleasures of the flesh we’re being sought higher than pleasing God. They enter into a series of frustrations. They desire and do not have, are envious of each other and do not have, they don’t pray to God and so they do not have, and they ask God with sinful motives so they do not have. So they murder with the heart, fight because they want what others have, they neglect petitioning God, and even ask Him for these contrary to His will with the wrong heart. They are not getting what they want because of their sinful inclinations and desire to repeat a cycle of pleasure.

All it takes is submitting to God in one chains of the pleasure cycle and it can be broken. He calls them a harsh name, something we have never seen used to rebuke Christians in the New Testament. But it should bring their minds back to the infidelity of the harlot Israel. Christ is our Bridegroom and he will share his Church Bride with no one, including the world. God wants all of us and the world wants all of us; we must stop acting like both can be our masters. A friend to both or a friend to the world, are both enemies of God. The spirit that God breathed into us, after the fall, had become corrupted and prone to envy.

But He gives grace through the Lord Jesus Christ so that spirit and flesh will both be redeemed. For now, the spirit is able to please God but the flesh must humble itself before the Lord. Grace then, is what we must ask for. Grace is what we must seek.