James Part 10

James 4 exposes the spiritual roots of conflict, calling believers to examine their desires, allegiances, and assumptions. Through prophetic language and wisdom teaching, James calls the community back to humility, repentance, and trust in God’s sovereignty. Give a listen!

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SPEAKER_00 0:19

Welcome to the Messiah in Life podcast. This series on the Epistle of James is taught by Bishop Justin D. Elwell of Restoration Fellowship International, who also serves as the Messianic Rabbi of Messiah Congregation in Washington Mills, New York. From our congregational home, we invite you into a rich and practical study of one of the most direct and challenging writings in the New Testament. Over the coming months, each episode will carefully examine James's call to a living faith. Thank you for joining us. Now pour yourself a tea or coffee, and may the word we hear shape the lives we live.

SPEAKER_01 1:29

James chapter 4, beginning in verse 11. Today might be the amen or ouch. And the why did I choose today to come to study over all other days. There's only one judge, or excuse me, one lawgiver and judge. But who is able to save, or he who is able to save and destroy? But who are you to judge your neighbor? This is God's word. Amen. Father, we just thank you for today and pray that you would be with us, the Holy Spirit would lead us, guide us, and that we would be edified by the teaching, by the word that you have prepared today through the Apostle James. We thank you and praise you in Yeshua's name. So over the last several weeks, we've dealt again with the inner reality of faith. What does faith do inside of us? How is it transformative? How should it be transforming us? How should it lead us to not only believe in him, but take an active role in doing, doing by faith? Again, this is not in conflict to the Apostle Paul. They're just uh announcing the same truth, but in slightly different ways. So we considered last week in verse one, why are there quarrels and what causes fightings? What causes fights among you? Your passions are at war. So again, the inner reality of who we are, what we're what we're doing, what our expectation is, what we believe or perceive about the human other, our brothers and sisters in the Lord, and so on. See said, you desire and you do not have, so you murder. Again, that may not necessarily be actual physical murder, but murder with the tongue, how we address, how we speak, the sharpness of our tongue. You covet and do and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. So you covet. There's the tenth commandment. Don't cover any of your neighbor's goods, any of his household. That is a disposition of the heart. When we look out at the blessings of others and we desire to take them. So if someone else desired your house, desired your wife, if they could come and take it from you by killing you, they were able to uh take it. They were able to have it. It was theirs now. So it's changing that innate nature of man. Of course, as we are born again, the Holy Spirit dwells in us, that that uh what we call the process of sanctification, progressive sanctification, as he changes our nature. And we walk in a new nature. We put on Messiah, and we walk in the new nature that is consistent with the character of the Lord and not the character of natural man. So this changes how we view, how we experience, what we um hold on to, and how we draw close to the Lord. Verse 7 Submit yourselves, therefore, to God. Submit. Resist the devil. So you submit to the Lord, but you resist the devil, resist him. It doesn't say, you know, use your colorful language to insult him. Resist him. Just pull away. Turn away from him and submit to the Lord. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. He will flee, not you will flee. He will flee from you. Why? Because you have turned to the Lord and not to him. You've trusted the word of the Lord, the presence of God, over the enemy. Draw near, that's sacrificial language, the carbon of draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Be a living sacrifice, as the apostle Paul says in Romans 12 and 1. Again, that is drawing near to the altar where we die upon that altar, where our life is, our natural life of our natural man is dying day by day, as we're being conformed to the image and likeness of Messiah. And he continues that language. Cleanse your hands, that language of the temple, the tabernacle. Cleanse your hands, you sinners. Purify your hearts, you double-minded. Cleanse your hands, wash them, get the impurity off them of how you have reached out in an attempt to take for yourself, to take what is not yours. Purify your hearts. Lord, give me a lift, give me a pure heart. You sinners, you sinners. Oh my goodness, doesn't he know that that's not very, you know, that's not very pleasant language, that's not seeker-friendly. You double-minded, you double-souled, as I've said before. You can't have a dual nature that is constantly um warring against itself. The stronger nature will be that of the Lord in the mind of Christ that we are putting on. But that old man will remain there enough to give us some trouble. So let's move on to verse 11. He again is returning to speech. He's covered this extensively in chapter three. We all know the troubles that our tongues can get in. You know, you were told to watch your mouth, and if you were truly um, you know, true, truly rebellious, you would say, I can't see it. You know what I mean? So watch your mouth or hold your tongue, bite your tongue. The tongue can get us into trouble, tremendous trouble for sure. And it can also inflict a great deal of damage, but not only on others, but on ourselves. So he returns to this language, but also what our speech within covenant community can do. He's speaking within the covenant family. Well, those of us who gather together in celebration of the Lord, worship the Lord, uh Christian fellowship, we might say, as well. What can evil speech do in a fellowship? What does it do? It doesn't bring us together, so it will indeed fracture it. Why do you speak evil against one another, brothers? And that's the imperative here. Not that we should speak evil of those outside of the covenant family, but why do you look at the one that Christ has died for and hold to an evil opinion? That is part of what we'll be drawing on here. Because there is only one judge, one lawgiver. So, what is the law that we are, of course, um fighting against or judging? Love your neighbor as yourself. So the that we say it, it's the, as Messiah said, the second is like unto the first. So, how do we demonstrate our love for God? How do we demonstrate our love for God? So we say we have this vertical love for the Lord. How do I know that? How do I know that it's not just a theory, not just a philosophy you have? It's how we love the human others, how we love those horizontally, those here with us. But love your neighbor as yourself. What do you do? Now, this, you know, people get caught up in this. It's not an infatuation with yourself, it's not a romantic love for yourself, it's not even, you know, like a love that is um ego-driven in any way. It's the care that we give ourselves. Because uh uh Ahava is a concrete love, it's an action. So, how do you demonstrate that you love yourself? Well, as some of the brothers here took part in beforehand, they they went to a buffet and they loved themselves by multiple plates of food, I imagine. I'll edit that out in post, I promise. Right. So it's the care that we give each other or give ourselves. We wake up in the morning, we take care of ourselves, we feed ourselves, we clothe ourselves, and so on and so forth. And that is when we love our neighbor as ourself, how can we help them if they're in need of that? How can we demonstrate to them a desire to be of service to them if they need that? Certainly, it's not speaking evil of the person. You know, the first person I'm gonna turn to is the one who was gossiping about me. Probably not. So, what we want to do is demonstrate our love for the Lord by our love for our brethren so that when they fall into a circumstance where they need help and need assistance, they know they can turn to us, they know that they will be provided for or helped along the way. But the war within, anybody have this little war within that the battle between the ears, the internal dialogue, the chatter that comes up, that we're not good enough, the Lord hasn't forgiven us, he doesn't love us, nobody loves us, we're not wanted, you know, uh, you're always gonna fail. Why are you always like that? However, it might manifest in you. Or maybe you're uber blessed and you don't have that. Maybe you just have sunshine and rainbows inhabiting your inner dialogue. But I know for some of us it's a real battle. And we judge ourselves harshly. We there is no worse judge than ourselves. So that inner war can change how we view anyone. If we're not good enough, certainly you're not good enough. If I'm not good enough, you're not good enough. So, how I allow that inner monologue to happen, because that's all it is, it's a monologue. How that monologue develops and matures and grows over the centuries of life, how that develops is certainly going to have change how I see you. No matter how goodly I try to behave towards you, this will become my driving reality. So that's the battle. Again, where is the greatest warfare battlefront front line of spiritual warfare? Right between your ears. It's right in there. So we talk about having you know rose-colored glasses, you know, everything just looks like beautiful things in the world to you, right? Um, quite often how we dial those lenses in is based on what our internal dialogue is like or monologue is like. And that will change how we speak to others, how we interact with them, how we respond. And not that you're always going to be in the best mood. All right. That's we're not talking about your because you can control your mood, or at least how other people are interacting with it. I'm gonna talk about, and it's funny how this message, I shouldn't forewarn you because you won't show up for Shabbat if I do. This message dovetails very quickly or very uh very surely with the message on Shabbat. I know where you live, kinda sorta. You're gonna be here. I'm looking for anybody who might try to abstain. I remember uh there there's one Yiddish expression that I that I that I use in the message this week that that ties into this chapter. Before you say it, you control it. But after you say it, it controls you. Have you ever noticed that? The most important place to arrest that thing that's in here floating around is this right here, that mouth, controlling it. You don't have to say everything that is in your mind. Even if you are desperate to be proven right, desperate to show how brilliant you are, once you say it, those words control you. But you have the power to arrest it, take every thought captive, to arrest it before you say it, and to not let it control you. Right? We take that thought captive, we take it to the Lord, and it changes how we interact with others. So Lashankara, I don't know if that's in the text or in your sheets, Lashankara, the uh the evil tongue, the bad tongue, is uh seen as one of the greatest sins or slander, gossip. That's the subject of the Shabbat message this week. So it's capable of destroying communities, it's capable of destroying marriages, it's capable of destroying friendships, this little thing that's driven by this big thing, right? The heart, the mind. So he insists that humility, James insists that humility expresses itself not only before God, but before others. Again, how we love one another, how we care for one another, how we honor God in the midst of our relationships with each other. Your relationship with the Lord is not just your alone time over in your prayer closet. It's it's demonstrated through every interaction throughout the day, and also every bit of that inner chatter. You should have, you know, a protection in your, you know, I I can be very, very, very hard on myself, very hard to the point of blasphemy, honestly. And I have to stop myself and say, Lord, I repent of that. I'm sorry that I said, and I'm not saying it to anyone, it's it never leaves this. But does he not hear this? Now, unlike the devil who can't read your mind, he knows your patterns, but he can't read your mind. The Lord's hearing this as if I'm saying it right to him. So I have to stop and repent of that dialogue that's destructive. What is it doing for me? Nothing. All it is doing is destroying the work that he has done. So we have to live this through humility. We have to be humble before him. We have to recognize our lack before him. We have to recognize our poverty before him. All of us are impoverished before the Lord. All of us receive of his good by grace. Not one of us is on the payroll of heaven. None of us are expecting a wage from the Lord for works that we've done. Each and every one of us are receiving by grace. So this is important to the dynamic of the community because we're to be a culture of grace. We're actually to be a witness. You want, you know, we talk about the 60s as the countercultural movement and all these, you know, tremendous. There's certainly a lot of truth to that. But the greatest countercultural movement throughout history has been messianic faith, faith and messiah. Because the broader community is not informing our faith, should not. Unfortunately, today, in many settings, it does. But if you want to be counter-cultural, be a Christian, be a follower of Christ. That is the that is how you are counter-cultural in this world. You don't have to adopt any of these um absurdities in our culture. Just follow Messiah. Trust me, you'll be countercultural enough. No one will stand you, right? So Messiah says this judge not lest ye be judged yourself, right? Matthew 7 and 1. But then he tells us to judge righteously. So is is he contradicting himself? No. This should be this would be better understood as prejudice. Don't prejudice anyone. When you see them walk in, go, yeah, that's a sinner who needs Jesus. Right? Don't prejudice anyone. Don't prejudge them. Anyone. It doesn't matter who they are, what they look like, what they smell like, what they act like, don't do it. Why? Because that's the very thing that you don't want to happen to you. Right? We don't want to be prejudiced. We don't want someone to prejudge us and say, I know exactly who this person is. So we're called by Messiah to not do that. Because that will certainly impact how we see and receive others. And that's why gossip is so dangerous. Even if you find out that the gossip you heard about somebody was completely untrue, you will never not see them in light of that gossip. That's why gossip is held to in such damning terms in scripture. Because you cannot undo the damage of gossip. And we have to be mindful that, yes, while someone may be in desperate need of the gospel, they're in no more desperate need than you are or were. Especially if we are prejudicing them. So are we the judge? Last time I checked, praise the Lord.

unknown 21:40

No.

SPEAKER_01 21:41

We're not the judge. But if you judge the law, that'd be Leviticus 19 18, you are not a doer of the law, but a judge of it. It means you're sitting in evaluation of it and you're not applying it. If you were applying, love your neighbor as yourself, you wouldn't have time to sit. In the judgment seat. Because you would be too busy doing and being about your father's business. Amen? Or ouch. There you go. So the condemnation that often comes when we are prejudicing those that are unfamiliar to us, or maybe those who are all too familiar to us, we violate covenant love. We violate the love that He has commanded us to walk in, to demonstrate, to exercise. And again, it sets us in the Lord's judgment seat. Last time I checked, we were not we were not invited to his seat of judgment. I know you'd like to, but you weren't permitted there. It's not where we go. So again, you know, the wonderful thing about the Word of God and how it has lived in Covenant Community is that even with the struggles one person might be having, they're surrounded with people who will help them come alongside of them. So in our weakness, we're strengthened by not only an abstract idea of faith, but also the living faith of others who are in community with us. So how we treat others, how we view others, how we witness, and what is the love that exists between brethren and Messiah is evidence that the Lord sent him. That's what he prayed in John 17. So there's only one judge or one lawgiver, one judge. Only one lawgiver. And you know what? He doesn't ask us for our input. He doesn't elect us to an executive body. He says, How would you like to improve on my revelation of scripture? How would you, how would you like to improve upon my normative standard that I've given to you, that I've that I have incarnated in the person of my son? How would you like to improve on this? So he who is able to save and destroy, he is the one, the judge, the one judge and the lawgiver. But who are you to judge your neighbor? Again, that's to prejudice them. That is to look at them and reach a conclusion before you have an understanding of who they are, what they are dealing with. You know, giving them grace, the same grace that you've received, that we all rely on. I know I receive grace every day because I don't think any of you would be able to stand me otherwise, right? There you go. I got a rather quiet amen on that one. I think a little bit too reflective. Oh, yeah, and a couple hallelujahs. There we go. All right, so let's read on and we'll we'll uh tie this together. Excuse me. Come now, you who say today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit. That sounds like a great plan. That's amplified, that's not in the text. Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are 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. All such boasting is good. Is that what he said? What did he say? Evil. Hmm. Do not speak evil, do not plan evil, do not boast. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it for him, it is sin. What is he talking about? This is gonna be a little a bit of a sting, but you can be you can be a theist, you can believe in God, but in your heart and your mind, and be an atheist in your action. That's what he's saying. You plan thus and such, you're gonna do this, you're gonna do that. What are you doing? You're setting yourself over the will of God. There's nothing in it that he's saying, you went before the Lord, you said, Lord, we want to go to this town, to this town, we want to make a profit to glorify you, or however it might be. No, he says you make your plans, but you don't take into account the Lord. But then he says, Um, instead, you ought. There's the ethical ought. In other words, this informs our action. If conditionally, the Lord wills, if he permits it, if it is permissible to him. So we can act as an atheist. So we can we'll look out at the world and say, you wicked atheist, how dare you? And then practically we can ourselves be atheists when we fail to take into account, we fail to take into account our vocation, our calling, the boundaries, the limitations of that, and so on. So he's bringing this to a conclusion by confronting arrogant self-confidence. You can be a very self-confident person and then have your health fail you. I can do everything through Justin who strengthenes me, right? And then your knees fail, your thyroid fails, and you know, all of a sudden that self-confidence shrinks away. Merchants who plan their future without reference to God embody a worldview shaped by self-reliance rather than trust. That is atheism. I don't need anyone else. I decide where I go, where I come, what I do, when I stand, when I sit. I am the decider. And James says, oh, nay, nay, that is not the case. Self-reliance. We talk, you know, there's a lot of uh popularity, especially on the YouTubes, about being self-reliant, living off-grid. We've lived off-grid 30 years, and I can tell you, not one of those 30 years, days of 30 years, was ever self-reliant. We can call it that, but we still have you know solar panels made in China, a gas generator made in the USA, glory to God. Gasoline from somewhere on the other side of the world. Uh that's not self-reliant. Cars, well, jeep, jeep got to be made in America, right? Uh, probably not, I don't know. Uh, so we have cars that we didn't make, we have solar panels we didn't make, we have a house that we we harvested the raw material for about a quarter of it. Um uh property we didn't make, we purchased. I mean, so the idea of self-reliance, as far as that is concerned, is is really a myth. And then, of course, self-reliance before the Lord is also a myth. It's a nice idea, but it doesn't hold up. So you don't know what tomorrow will bring. Have you ever noticed that? Have you ever had a day that you woke up feeling I'm on top of the world? And then the world rolled over you. Something didn't go quite as well as you had expected. I think we we've all had those times, those moments. You're a mist. I was driving through the densest fog on the way to the building this morning. Like, why? Why is it so so foggy? It's so foggy. I turned my fog lights on for a little bit, and then I went over the top of a of a hill, came out the other side, and it was blue skies, and I'm like, wow, that was quick. Right? So the same idea, you know, when you're 35 for the 17th time, you know, you notice that time goes by really kind of quickly. That's why I'm still stuck at that age. But anyway, so how we view the future also must be countercultural. If you plan well, if you plan well, I remember talking to a brother heavily invested in the stock market, looking toward retirement, and in like a two-day period, he lost a hundred thousand dollars. Little old Justin can't fathom that. I can't fathom that. Now, it's not that it's bad to plan, but we have to have an eternal view. We have to take a an eternal view of the future. And how do we do that? Well, we're trusting in the Lord, we're not trusting in ourselves. We have a hope that is greater than death. We have a hope that the Messiah will come in order to bring us to the place that He has prepared for us for eternity. We're talking about this in the men's group this morning. Anything that is anything that is not eternal is eternally failing. It's in decay. I love you all, but you're all in decay. Have you noticed that?

unknown 31:49

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 31:53

Each and every one of us are in decay of some sort. And you know what? They they can't fix all of it. We can slow it down here and there, give new knees. My wonderful titanium, they're not titanium, they're something else, but they're not titanium. They're not steel, that would have killed me by now. Um, whatever they are, you know, uh they're they're they're decaying, but very slowly. They will outlive the Justin who's carrying them. But to view the future, they kind of will, especially the rate I'm going. Um, but how we view the future is countercultural. We recognize that it's in the hands of a sovereign Lord. So when we say, tomorrow we'll do this, we'll bring this, we'll do this, yeah, if the Lord wills. So we never know what tomorrow will bring, what will come, what will happen. How in the moment our entire life can shift on a dime. But we know the Lord who's already there, who meets us in that tragic moment or that happy moment, and who will be at the end of it. So this echoes what what he is echoing here, of course, we can, or what we're reading here echoes back into the Hebrew Bible, Psalm 39, 5, Ecclesiastes 1, 2. And think about the words of Messiah. He warns us about anxiety. Don't worry. Don't worry about tomorrow. Troubles of today, plenty. You got them. We're all full up, right? My wife and I say that all the time. Uh, we're all full up with whatever bad news. We're all full up with this or that. We don't need it anymore. You know, we're all full up with it. So the anxiety, have you ever have you ever found that worry or anxiety has fixed the problem that you've yet to encounter? I don't think so. It gives you an illusion of control as somehow you would might be able to control it or take care of it. The reality is that you're just wearing your heart, your mind, your stomach out. And we need to be we need to be at peace and at rest in him. I I I know there's there's memes that circulate around circle circulate around social media that the Lord gave us, you know, 365, 365 verses about don't worry or not worrying. One for every day. And I said, no, it's actually 366 because of Leap Year. So he get every day he reminds us to not worry. Why? Because there's nothing we can do about it. We go into life as prepared as we can. You get up, we, you know, that's what we do when we go to school. We're preparing, we're learning, we're learning how to function in life, but we trust, we trust today, tomorrow, and eternity into his hands. And you know what? That also changes how we view our brothers and our sisters. If we see ourselves as part of the Lord's eternal plan, we don't view them in a light that is dependent on the urgency of the moment or whatever it might be. The momentary, you know, blip on the radar, the bad day we might be having right now. Heaven forbid we turn that heavy moment into something far more profoundly destructive. So we need to arrest every thought, we need to take every thought captive, we need to think before we speak, and sometimes just thinking it is enough. Just just just don't do it. Don't let it out. If it's gonna be destructive, if it's gonna be destructive speech, you can probably rest assured that the Lord would not approve of it. Amen? Or ouch. Yeah, ouches are the hard part, aren't they? So James's final statement, and we'll go back a little bit over some of this. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is commendation. Sin. You know the right thing to do, but you don't do it. Sin the sin here is not ignorance. The sin is neglect. We know what to do, but we don't do it. It's a sin of omission. Sin of omission. We omit doing what we ought to do, whatever the reason might be. So failure to act faithfully in light of known truth, that's what he is speaking of here. We know what to do. What is what is it in this specific context that he's talking about? Just go back a few verses. The law that we are judging, love your neighbor as yourself. Because that is the heart of our relationship, or our relating to each other. How we relate to each other is based on that simple verse. So he knows to do the right, but he fails to do it. For him, it is sin. If you don't know to do it, it's not measured the same way. But for the one who knows, for the one who knows. And again, you can go back and see the just how how care how coherent his argument has been, even from the beginning. Uh, and get back to chapter three, not many of you should be become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. What am I talking about? We know what we should do, and we fail to do it. For us, that is sin. For we all stumble in many ways. And if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man. That's that's hard for me to uh you know to admit before all of you that I'm telling I'm teasing. I can't do it, I can't do it. Um we'll be judged with greater strictness. Why? Because we've studied, we know, and we should do. So as you're taught and as you learn, as you know you do. And that's you know, again, this goes to just how he's he is underscoring the importance of how we how we view the Lord, how we view ourselves, what our identity is in him, and how we view others, and how we respond to others. So the this aligns with the overarching theme that James has in this uh well, the entire epistle actually. Faith must be embodied in obedient action. How do we know you believe? Because our lifestyle displays it. You know, there's the I don't know who who uh came up with it, but it's been parroted by all of us at some point. You know, if we were to ask the the people you you worked with if they knew you were a Christian, would they be surprised? Would it be surprising to them? So our our lifestyle demonstrates the nature of our faith. Whether we are still working on thinking less of ourselves, or thinking I shouldn't thinking of ourselves less. Remember that definition of humility from last week that came to us from Lewis? Uh, humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less. Are we still working that dynamic out? Are we still working at putting him first? And because we put him first, we will put others first. And of course, we have that ministerial perspective that my first and principal love is to the Lord, my second uh will be the love of my family, and then works out from there. And so this is, you know, this is where the rubber meets the road, as they say. This is the the depth of the faith, the and uh the real concrete, the meat of the faith. Um the meat of the word is not, and I've said this when I've taught Hebrews before, the meat of the word is not the secret things that nobody else knew. You're getting into the the intricacies of the language and the conjugation. That's that's not the meat of the word. The meat of the word is the doing. It's doing the word. This is where you need to chew on it. You know, there's a there's a beautiful reality in Hebrew about the um the word good news. Bissar. So the word good news is from the root basar, meaning meat. So good news and meat are connected. Why? Well, when you had meat, there was usually good news. Because you didn't have, you know, you didn't slaughter the the fatted calf unless you had some really good reason. When the in this in the parable of the prodigal son, what does the father do? What did he do? Killed the cat, fatted calf. Why? Because the son came home. So was there good news or bad news with that? It was good news. So when we when we rightly and properly understand the nature of how all of this connects together, the news, the trans how it transforms us, how it changes us, and what we are to do as a result of that. The doing of the word is the meat of the word. Not that you know some mysterious thing tucked away under some verse somewhere. It's that you're doing it. Provided you're doing something with it. You're doing something with it. So to kind of wrap up chapter four, he exposes, James exposes the spiritual root of conflict. What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? You desire and you don't have. He's speaking to men and women here, beloved friends. He's speaking to men and women, and he calls us all adulteresses. Why? Because of who we are and the Lord as his betrothed. So calling believers to examine their desires, their allegiances, their assumptions. I hope that people don't make an assumption about me based on their first interaction with me, because that would be a Real bummer. I mean that would be a real bummer. But this does cause us to reflect on this chapter causes us to reflect on how we're walking, how we are approaching life and faith. As he says in verse 9, be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned into mourning your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you. So patience, or excuse me, through prophetic language, well, patience is a prophetic language in my world. I have yet to master that. Prophetic language that James is using, the wisdom that he's using, calls the covenant community back to humility, back to a mindfulness of being impoverished before the Lord. Yes, there's a reality of all of you know being joint heirs before the or with the Messiah, but we also have to be mindful of the fact that we are humbled before him, recognizing our poverty, recognizing who we are, and that everything we have comes from him. Not because we've earned it, not because we deserve it, but because of his grace, his gracious action towards us. You're walking that way, turn 180 degrees. Don't go 360, you're gonna end up in the wrong place. End up right where you started. But repentance. Every day should be one of repentance. Every day our life should be one of repentance. Because trust me, we haven't completely turned. We still have areas in our life that we need to yield to him, to have transformed by him, and so on. And trust in the Lord's sovereignty. I know sovereignty here in the Western Church is still naughty language. The idea of a sovereign Lord, King. We are sons and daughters of a sovereign. We are the servants of a sovereign. We were bought by a sovereign. Do you see that triad of who we are? You know, it's it's remarkable. We're slaves of the king, we're servants of the king, we're sons and daughters of the king. Actually, it's uh quadrilateral here, um, because we're also betrothed to the king. That's who you are. But don't let one part of it become inflamed to the point where that's the only thing you're focusing on. Ah, I'm the bride of Christ, hallelujah. And then begin to act as if everyone else is not. No, you have to keep it all in balance. So echoing the Sermon on the Mount, James insists that the kingdom of God belongs not to the self-assertive or the divided-hearted, a bit cumbersome there, but it worked. But to those who submit themselves fully to the Lord. You're not going to get anywhere further in the kingdom of God by being self-assertive. I must assert myself. No, he can only go as far as his commissioning. He will recommission, he will shift you, he will change you, he will put you in a different place. But again, that's all according to his will. And pray that he does not put you in a position that you're not yet ready for, that you have not been prepared for, that you don't have the maturity to sit in. That that is that'll be a mess. True faith is marked by humility before the Lord. By restraint in speech. That's what he said at the beginning of chapter three. Restraint in speech. And if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man. He's mature, able to bridle his whole body. So there it is. Fix this, everything else will fall into place. But praise be to the Lord, none of us are gonna fix this completely while we're yet here. So restraint in speech and confidence that doesn't rest in human planning. It's not don't be atheistic in your walk. I will plan what I'm going to do today and tomorrow. Thank you very much. You know, I I I try to make sure in my in my day planner, this schedule is subject subject to change without notice. Restraint in speech and confidence that rests not in human planning, but in divine faithfulness and sovereignty. You can't plan your way into the kingdom of God. You can't plan your way through serving him. We serve as he leads us, as he guides us, as he equips us, as he prepares us. We, you know, the beautiful thing is that the majority of the time as we're walking with him and we think we're preparing for something out there on the horizon, he's prepared us exactly for the moment that we're in. He's given us exactly what we need for this moment so that we can walk through it faithfully. If we are looking, if we're too busy looking out there at the horizon when we'll be more perfect, we're gonna mess up what we are capable of doing right now. Why? Because he's faithful. He's faithful. So it's easy. We should we we we cannot speak evil against one another. We can't. That is a place where we need to be repentant, that is a place that we need to be um self-control, the fruit of the spirit working through us. And I know I always go, go, go, go, self-control right at the end. That's an area that all of us are still working in. So let's be about our father's business. Let's recognize that every one of us is a work in progress. None of us have yet to achieve. We have not. Unless you've graduated and you didn't tell me, we're all still here in training, right? If you have graduated, you need to tell me. So we don't, we, we, you know, when we look at, and remember, quite often the frustration that we might be speaking or the judgment that we might be speaking is something that we've already spoken or judged against ourselves. So the Lord might be showing, giving you grace to arrest that thought and say, have I been overly critical of me? Have I blasphemed against what he has done in my life? If you want to know that you're not perfect, I'm gonna help you. You're not. Doesn't that make you feel better? Yeah? You're welcome. You're not perfect, none of us are. I know it's hard to believe, but not even I have achieved such. No, but that takes how much pressure does that take off you? To know that you're not perfect, we don't expect you to be perfect. And unfortunately, I'm still working with people here in this wonderful congregation I love so dearly, that when they stumble, they disappear for a little time while they sit and have a judgment party. So when they have those judgment parties where they don't they're the only one that's invited, that's the problem. That's the problem. So when they have those little, you know, some people call them pity parties, but I don't think they're pity parties, they're judgment parties. When they have those little alone time moments where they have to, they forget that, yes, I knew that they were gonna screw up. And how did I know that? Because I'm clairvoyant? No, because we're all works in progress. Right? So isn't it better to know that you're coming to a place where the rabbi knows that you're gonna mess up and he'll show you grace? I'm anticipating, I'm already there. No, we we're and that I think is again, we don't try to screw up, we don't try to stumble, we don't try to fall. But when we have those moments and those times, we know that we have grace and forgiveness of the Lord, and he's just asking us to turn to him, even in that. Amen. So was today quite an ouchy. Uh-oh. Ouch. All right, for those of you listening online, we're going to actually know if those who listen on the podcast. We'll see you next week. Those online, get your questions ready if you want to ask a question.

SPEAKER_00 53:33

Amen. Amen. Thank you for joining us. And until our next episode, may the Lord bless and keep you in the name of Messiah Jesus. Amen.