Yesterday we started our discussion on “friendship with the world” from James chapter 4 using the song “Mr. In Between” by Johnny Mercer.

If you missed that you can catch up

HERE

Now let’s talk about keeping away from Mr. In Between.

You know there’s actually a whole In Between family you should avoid if at all possible…They are a real problem for just about all of us.

You know who Mr In Between is don’t you? Oh sure you’ve met him. James talks about Him when he says, What is causing the quarrels and fights among you? Don’t they come from the evil desires at war within you? James 4:1

Mr. In Between is the guy who goes to church on Sundays, but who fights all the way to church with the family. He’s the guy who puts on his plastic grin and walks into service. Then the worship leader starts Mr. In Between’s favorite worship song. Suddenly his hands are raised and  he’s praising God. Mr. In Between shakes hands  with everyone on the way out. Then, he gets in the car to go home and he gives the family the silent treatment for the rest of the day.

You know who Mrs. In Between is don’t you. James identifies her when he says, “You want what you don’t have, so you scheme and kill to get it. You are jealous of what others have, but you can’t get it, so you fight and wage war to take it away from them. Yet you don’t have what you want because you don’t ask God for it. ³ And even when you ask, you don’t get it because your motives are all wrong—you want only what will give you pleasure.” James 4:2,3

Mrs. In Between is the lady who is trying to keep up with the Jones’. She’s the lady who gets jealous and pouty every time she’s invited to THAT friend’s house, because THAT friend has things Mrs. In Between wants that Mr. In Between can’t provide. So Mrs. I.B. goes out and spends money she doesn’t have to look good for people she doesn’t like and all the time she forgets to check with God to find out what HE thinks she should have.

And of course Mr and Mrs. have darling little Kid Betweens too. Of them James says, “Don’t you realize that friendship with the world makes you an enemy of God? I say it again: If you want to be a friend of the world, you make yourself an enemy of God. ⁵ Do you think the Scriptures have no meaning?” James 4:4,5

You can always tell a Kid Between. He has his thumbs wrapped around the latest I Phone tech. He can tell you almost anything about anyone on Facebook in a New York minute but can’t find Genesis in the Bible without first going to the Table of Contents to find out what page it’s on.

Last week we learned that Jesus loves us and passionately wants a relationship with us. Isn’t that just a kick in the pants? The God of the universe wants a personal relationship with you. If you were the only person on Earth Jesus would have died to restore relationship with you! You can have a personal relationship with God, a relationship where you can talk to Him daily and where He will talk back! This is  relationship where you will pray for things and God will do them because He loves you. You can have a relationship in which you are powerfully aware of God’s presence guiding you through even the darkest of life’s circumstances.

The problem is  most of us can’t get out of our own way when it comes to having a relationship with God, simply because we won’t take Johnny Mercer’s advice. When it comes right down to it, many of us struggle in our relationship with God because we keep messin’ around with Mr. In Between, or as James would put it we have a friendship with the world that makes us an enemy of God.

What do you think it means to be a friend of the world?

My lead Pastor started home from Canada this weekend; so yesterday I got to take the pulpit and address the congregation at Cornerstone Church one last time. The title of the message was “Don’t Be Mr. In Between.” Here for discussion is pt. 1

Today our study together from the Word of God is taken from the Book of James Chapter 4. Let’s begin in Verse 1

What is causing the quarrels and fights among you? Don’t they come from the evil desires at war within you? ² You want what you don’t have, so you scheme and kill to get it. You are jealous of what others have, but you can’t get it, so you fight and wage war to take it away from them. Yet you don’t have what you want because you don’t ask God for it. ³ And even when you ask, you don’t get it because your motives are all wrong—you want only what will give you pleasure.

You adulterers!^[a] Don’t you realize that friendship with the world makes you an enemy of God? I say it again: If you want to be a friend of the world, you make yourself an enemy of God. ⁵ Do you think the Scriptures have no meaning? They say that God is passionate that the spirit he has placed within us should be faithful to him.^[b] 6 And he gives grace generously. As the Scriptures say,

⁷ So humble yourselves before God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.⁸ Come close to God, and God will come close to you. Wash your hands, you sinners; purify your hearts, for your loyalty is divided between God and the world.

Today we are talking about friendship with the world and what it does to us.

In 1944 Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen wrote a song that went like this:

As Johnny says, I feel a sermon comin’ on.

We have been discussing the heart that is acceptable to God over the last several days.

If you have missed any of the conversation you can find it…

HERE

HERE

HERE

AND HERE

Yesterday we discussed the heart that was unacceptable to God and worship that was unacceptable to God by using an illustration from I Samuel 15

This is an example of Saulish worship. God gave a command. That command was, “Destroy everything.”

Saul reinterpreted that to mean “Destroy everything but those things you find useful.”

Then he compromised and said, “Well I won’t do what the Lord said to do but I will worship just after my own fashion. That will be good enough. God’s way costs too much. God’s way is too hard. So I have a better way. I am still going to worship God but I am going to do it in a way that makes me comfortable, a way that benefits me as well as God. God gets some of His way and I get some of mine.”

I believe this is the mindset that those on the day of judgment in Matthew 7 will hold (see Saulish Worship Pt. 1). They will worship God according to their way. Jesus says they do not do the will of the father even though they worship and serve. They are like Saul worshipping God but only in the way that makes them comfortable.

In contrast there is another story from 2 Samuel 24 of How David, the King after Saul, worshipped.

 ^“David was conscience-stricken after he had counted the fighting men, and he said to the Lord, “I have sinned greatly in what I have done. Now, Lord, I beg you, take away the guilt of your servant. I have done a very foolish thing.”

¹¹ Before David got up the next morning, the word of the Lord had come to Gad the prophet, David’s seer: ¹² “Go and tell David, ‘This is what the Lord says: I am giving you three options. Choose one of them for me to carry out against you.’”

¹³ So Gad went to David and said to him, “Shall there come on you three^[b] years of famine in your land? Or three months of fleeing from your enemies while they pursue you? Or three days of plague in your land? Now then, think it over and decide how I should answer the one who sent me.”

¹⁴ David said to Gad, “I am in deep distress. Let us fall into the hands of the Lord, for his mercy is great; but do not let me fall into human hands.”

¹⁵ So the Lord sent a plague on Israel from that morning until the end of the time designated, and seventy thousand of the people from Dan to Beersheba died. ¹⁶ When the angel stretched out his hand to destroy Jerusalem, the Lord relented concerning the disaster and said to the angel who was afflicting the people, “Enough! Withdraw your hand.” The angel of the Lord was then at the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.

¹⁷ When David saw the angel who was striking down the people, he said to the Lord, “I have sinned; I, the shepherd,^[c] have done wrong. These are but sheep. What have they done? Let your hand fall on me and my family.”

¹⁸ On that day Gad went to David and said to him, “Go up and build an altar to the Lord on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.” ¹⁹ So David went up, as the Lord had commanded through Gad. ²⁰ When Araunah looked and saw the king and his officials coming toward him, he went out and bowed down before the king with his face to the ground.

²¹ Araunah said, “Why has my lord the king come to his servant?”

“To buy your threshing floor,” David answered, “so I can build an altar to the Lord, that the plague on the people may be stopped.”

²² Araunah said to David, “Let my lord the king take whatever he wishes and offer it up. Here are oxen for the burnt offering, and here are threshing sledges and ox yokes for the wood. ²³ Your Majesty, Araunah^[d] gives all this to the king.” Araunah also said to him, “May the Lord your God accept you.”

²⁴ But the king replied to Araunah, “No, I insist on paying you for it. I will not sacrifice to the Lord my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing.”

So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen and paid fifty shekels^[e] of silver for them. ²⁵ David built an altar to the Lord there and sacrificed burnt offerings and fellowship offerings. Then the Lord answered his prayer in behalf of the land, and the plague on Israel was stopped.”. 2 Samuel 24:10-25

What differences do you see between David and Saul?

Over the last few days we have been holding a discussion on holiness here at Lillie-Put. If you have missed any part of that discussion you can find it

HERE

OR HERE

Now let’s continue with today’s discussion.

We brought up the idea yesterday that there will be a group of people who are ejected from Heaven on judgment day because they are not known by God and because they broke God’s laws and refused to do His will…

Some of you are probably saying, “Pastor J that smacks of legalism. It sounds like you are saying that we are saved by our works and if we don’t do works we can’t get into Heaven.”

I am not saying that at all. In fact the people who Jesus is talking about in Matthew 7 have lots of good works. In fact it is those very works they fall back on when Jesus tells them to depart. Look at it,

Matthew 7:21-23New Living Translation (NLT)

²¹ “Not everyone who calls out to me, ‘Lord! Lord!’ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Only those who actually do the will of my Father in heaven will enter. ²² On judgment day many will say to me, ‘Lord! Lord! We prophesied in your name and cast out demons in your name and performed many miracles in your name.’ ²³ But I will reply, ‘I never knew you. Get away from me, you who break God’s laws.’

The Bible is very clear, your good works in or out of church will not save you. It is the grace of God which comes into your lives through faith which saves you.

Once you were dead because of your disobedience and your many sins. …But God is so rich in mercy, and he loved us so much, ⁵ that even though we were dead because of our sins, he gave us life when he raised Christ from the dead. (It is only by God’s grace that you have been saved!… God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. ⁹ Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. Eph. 2:1,4,5,8,9

Salvation, eternal life, forgiveness come to us only because of grace. That said, I am convinced that many people even in the church will miss salvation, eternal life, and forgiveness by inches because they have bought into a faulty definition of grace.

You see we have come to define grace as forgiveness of sins, and it is that. When we ask for God’s grace we get forgiven of all the wrong we have ever done. The Bible tells us that God actually overlooks our transgressions, but Grace doesn’t just forgive us. It’s more than just  super soap to wash away super sins. Grace is a power that once we receive it begins to change us. It actually turns us from one thing into another.

Paul says it this way in 2 Cor. 5:17

This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!

I went to see a worship team in Manchester NH the other night called Rend Collective. In his opening remarks the lead guitarist of the band said, “If our Christianity doesn’t change us. If it doesn’t make us better. If it doesn’t make us love the world like Jesus did then maybe we didn’t really get Christianity the first time around.”

What do you think is there any such thing as Christianity without change?