Welcome to The Daily Platform from Bob Jones University in Greenville, SC. Today on The Daily Platform, evangelist Steve Pettit is continuing a study series called Wisdom from Above, which is a study from the book of James. Today, Steve will guide us through the problem of worldliness from James chapter 4. Let me ask you to take your Bibles this morning and turn with me to James 4.
I'd like to encourage you, if you are taking notes, I would encourage you that during these times or use your notebook, which is probably the booklet that you received, is probably the best way is to follow along in really taking good, solid notes. And I really want you to be engaged this morning in today's message because I think this is going to be one of the most challenging messages that I give in our series on Wisdom from Above, and it comes from James chapter 4 in verse 4. And just by way of introduction, I'd like us to realize that I believe that we're coming now to the very heart and the core of the central struggle that God's people have that is revealed in the book of James, and that struggle is the struggle with worldliness. Worldliness is a subject that we have to address, we have to talk about, because it affects us, it affects Bob Jones University, it affects you as a student, it affects us as Christians living in this world. And so, James has been actually, I believe, alluding to the problem of worldliness in various points of this letter, and just a little background to remind you of a few things. First of all, James has declared the believer's struggle with double-mindedness.
We saw that back in James 1 in verse 8. When he said a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways, and a double-minded person is a Christian who is conflicted in their heart over their own desires, their selfish desires, and their allegiance, their dedication to God. And the struggle with being double-minded is the reluctance to let go of the pleasures of the world for the self-denying demands of being a disciple of Jesus. To follow Jesus, you have to say no to yourself, you have to say yes to God. And then, a verse that we really haven't looked at very carefully is James 1 in verse 27, where he says that Christians are to guard themselves from worldly spots or worldly stains. Because he says that pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction and to keep himself unspotted from the world. It's a very interesting verse. It's the idea if you want to know real, genuine, authentic Christianity, you have two sides that almost seem in contrast to each other. You've got compassion, love, care for the widows and for those who are in need. And I'd be frank, I think your generation actually is very strong in that attitude of compassion for others. But then on the other side, James says you keep yourself unspotted from the world.
So not only is there compassion, but there also has to have the idea of holiness or being distinct in this world. We're to avoid the stains of this world. Yesterday we were traveling up to Niagara Falls, New York for a morning service there and I looked down at my tie and I went, oh man, I got spots all over my tie. I hate spots on my tie. But I had tied to go. And I pulled it out of my little bag and I worked on it and I got rid of the spots so that I had a spotless tie. I hate spots.
I hate eating the dining hall and getting ketchup on my shirt. You know what I mean. We do that all the time.
Or we touch this and we get spots and we get it clean. This is the idea of a Christian. He lives not only compassionately, but he also is very strong about living clean in this world. Then we come to the third chapter where James talks about wisdom from below and he says that a wisdom from below is one who is driven by their own selfish desires and decision making. So he says they're earthly and they're sensual and they're devilish. So he's talking about worldliness. Then we come to chapter four and he speaks of the conflicts that exist among Christians who have not embraced self-denial as a way of life. He talks about the fact that there are conflicts because Christians are spiritually weak and they're shallow in their prayer life and they lack spiritual passion for God. All of these I think are coming up to the point of James chapter four to really expose to us the real struggle in the life of a believer and that is the struggle with worldliness. So let's look at James four and verse four where he presents this incredibly jarring statement.
Notice. He says, you adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that friendship of the world is enmity with God? Whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God. That's kind of almost like a whoa.
I mean it's been strong so far but here you almost got punched in the nose. You adulterers, you adulteresses, you friends of the world, now you're the enemy of God. This is incredibly strong language. So let's try to unfold this verse and try to get into the mind of James which is getting into understanding God's mind of what worldliness is all about. And so a few questions this morning. First of all, what do we mean when we speak of the world? What is the world? Let me first of all say obviously this is not a reference to the created order of things, the created world. Because the world is God's creation. And so obviously God's not going to be an enemy of something that he made.
And whenever God creates anything he always says it's good. So we're not talking about the physical creation of this world. So what then does the Bible mean when it speaks about the world? First of all, the world refers to unbelievers and the way they live their lives, their lifestyles.
Paul writes about it in Ephesians 2. He says wherein in time past you walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now works in the children of disobedience. He's saying that before you're saved you follow after the world and you actually follow after Satan. So the world refers to those whose lives are under the control of Satan. They're not believers.
Their lives are structured to gratify and glorify themselves. And their lives, they're trying to live their life in such a way that they make life work without God. Joel Beekie defined worldliness as human nature without God. So when we talk about the world we refer primarily to those that are not Christians. Secondly, the world refers to the organized structures of mankind that are being run by those that are unbelievers. For example, the word for world is the Greek word cosmos. So you've heard the word cosmopolitan. And it's a very interesting word.
It has the idea of decoration or adornment. For example, my wife is the queen of birthday parties. She loves birthday parties. I'm sort of like the Scrooge at birthday parties.
You know, bah humbug, who cares, I'm older. But my wife is totally the opposite. So therefore we always have great birthday parties. And whenever my wife does a birthday party she makes a big deal about it.
She gives all kinds of presents for which she gets the glory for it even though I pay for them. So, I mean, it kind of works that way. But as you all know, you put up decorations and you create an atmosphere. You create a spirit.
The same thing is true of what's going to be happening very soon. And that is, soon we're going to have, after Thanksgiving, the march up towards Christmas. And so you're having Christmas decorations and Christmas parties and Christmas music and Christmas apple cider and you've got the Christmas spirit, the world of Christmas. So all of this adornment and decoration creates this atmosphere, this spirit. The word for world is the idea of that decoration, that atmosphere. But the world refers to life that is being structured in such a way that God is being left out.
Do you understand that? It's life without God. It's a world view of life that God is not a part of.
So here at Bob Jones, what is our education? It's a Christian liberal arts education with a thoroughly integrated biblical world view. We're looking at life through God's perspective. In the world, God is left out of its values. What's important in the world is not necessarily important in heaven. In the world, God is left out of its morals.
The standards of behavior are not based on the nature and the character of God as it's revealed in the scriptures and revealed especially in the Ten Commandments. But it is in what man deems is right in his own measure. The world is life, is God being left out of our pursuits. What our ambitions are for. What are we giving our life to?
We're to seek first God's kingdom and his righteousness. And then let me also say the world is God being left out of public opinion. Many of the cultural conflicts that we face in the United States of America are really a conflict between a secular world view and a biblical world view. And so as Christians, we believe the scriptures and therefore our world view and therefore our opinions on all kinds of different aspects of life come from the word of God.
Well, the world includes the current corrupt culture in which we're living every day, a culture that is trying to leave God out of it. And by the way, the world is not ashamed to declare to you who they are. The world is going to advertise, they are going to publicize, they are going to market their values. We are inundated with the world's advertisement.
Why? Because we have television, we have movies, we have radio, we have internet. Every one of you every single day are actually bombarded with the world's viewpoint, its values. But then let me also say that the world, according to the Bible, is also the enemy of God. The mindset of the world towards God is either one of two things, either it's apathetic, who cares, or it's antagonistic, it's going to be reactionary. So therefore when you share the gospel, sometimes people don't really care about what you're saying, in some cases they become very hostile to what you're saying. In either case, the scripture says the world is the enemy of God, and I hope this is really clear to you, and I hope this sinks into your mind. But I do want to remind you that Jesus came into this world and gave himself for our sins that he might deliver us from this present evil world according to the will of God and our Father. That is, he came to deliver us from this world. That's why as Christians we are commanded not to be like the world, we are not to be conformed to the world, we are to be in the world, but we are not to be of the world.
Why? Because we are God's children. That leads me to my second point, and that is what is worldliness? What is worldliness? Well, when we go back to our text in James 4 and verse 4, notice to whom James is directing his charge, he says, you are ye adulterers.
No ye not. Whosoever therefore will. These charges, this direction is towards believers.
He's writing to Christians. And so the first thing I want you to understand about worldliness is only a believer can be charged with worldliness. You can't charge the world with being worldly. That's like saying to somebody who's alive, hey you're alive. It's like, yeah. It's like saying to an American, you're an American.
Yeah. You don't go up to a guy who's an unbeliever and say you're worldly. Well, what else is he going to be?
That's what he is. But a Christian is totally different. The word for church, for example, the Greek word is ekklesia. It means called out.
What does that mean? It means that a Christian is called out of the world into the body of Christ. What do you think baptism is all about?
Baptism by immersion is being put under the water as a symbol of death, and coming out of the water as a symbol of resurrection, buried in the likeness of his death, raised in the likeness of his resurrection to walk in newness of life. When you become a believer, you're taken out of the world and you're put into Christ. People often ask me the question, do you believe in separation?
And my answer is always yes if you understand it in its right context. Here's what I believe in. I believe in the Gospel. And when I believe the Gospel, I have to believe in separation because it's rooted in the nature of the Gospel.
For example, what did Jesus do? He delivered us from this present evil world. We were rescued, taken out of the world. We are delivered from the domain of darkness. Paul says we're translated into the kingdom of his dear son. We were here, but now we're here. We were dead, but now we're alive. We were taken out of the old man, placed into the new man.
Now we're in Adam. Now we're in Christ. And at the very heart and the core of the Gospel message is being taken out of the world. So the only way you can be worldly has to do with what's happened to you after you became a Christian and how it is that you relate now to the world that you're living in. So when we talk about worldliness, we're only talking about something a Christian can be. A Christian can be worldly. But then secondly, let me say that when we talk about worldliness, we're talking about a believer going back to something or to what he was prior to his conversion. Okay, so let me give you this illustration, one that you know well. Do you know of any Old Testament group of people who had been living in a land where they were delivered from the land, they were rescued, they were brought out, and they got out of the bondage that they had been in, they received freedom, they received deliverance, they received liberty, and then when they got out of that land over a process of time, especially through trials, they wanted to go back to the land.
Who's that? The children of Israel. They lived in Egypt, they got out of Egypt, God delivered them, which is a symbol of salvation. They were rescued through the blood of the lamb, they were freed from the army of Pharaoh and the bondage of slavery, and they got out and they got into trials, and what did they do? They began to crave what they had in Egypt.
They wanted to go back. When we talk about worldliness then, James is charging believers with turning away from where they are and going back. And notice he charges believers, first of all, with having an affair.
You adulterers and adulteresses. James here is using language from the Old Testament. God calls the nation of Israel his bride. But what was the problem with the nation of Israel historically?
They went back to idols. And what James is saying is this, he's charging Jewish Christians with adultery because they are turning away from the one they've committed their life to, Christ. We are the bride of Christ.
We are married to him. When we got saved, we crucified the old life, the old flesh with its affections and lusts. We said no to the world and yes to God.
We left it. But worldliness is when Christians begin to pursue the old appetites in the old desires that they had prior to their conversion. That's why the Bible says, love not the world, neither the things of the world. For if any man loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passes away in the lust thereof.
But he that does the will of God shall abide forever. What is he saying? What is John saying? He says, don't love your lusts, you are to love your Lord. Worldliness is an affection problem. It's a heart problem.
Your heart is turning away from the one you are to love with all of your heart. But let me also say that he charges believers not only with an affair, but he charges Christians with treason. Notice what he says. Know you not that friendship of the world is enmity with God? Now in American Western culture, we don't understand friendship like they do in the Middle East. For a Middle Eastern culture, friendship is taken very seriously. For a friend, adopts the same values and loyalties of his friend. To choose to be somebody's friend is to completely identify with them. And so when we talk about worldliness, we're actually talking about two things. Number one, we're talking about an affection issue. That is, you're living for your own appetites.
And secondly, we're dealing with an identification issue. For worldly people live a certain lifestyle. And a Christian, when he is worldly, he begins to embrace their standards, their pursuits, their own lifestyles, and we begin to reflect them instead of reflecting the new life that is within our own heart. We're becoming something that we're not. Living the Christian life is being who you are, not what the world is.
So when we talk about worldliness, we have the idea of going back. Now is there anybody in the Old Testament who was influenced by a godly person but they made a decision that really was a bad choice. It's a guy named Lot. Lot and Abraham, Abraham the friend of God. And Lot and Abraham's servants had conflicts with one another and so Abraham said to Lot, Lot you choose where you want to live. And we read in Genesis 13, he lifted up his eyes, he saw the Jordan Valley, it was beautiful, it was like a garden, and so he chose to go towards the Jordan Valley and the Bible says that he moved his tent towards Sodom. And what do we discover in the life of Lot?
Not a person who's not a Christian, he's definitely a Christian. But the difference between Lot and Abraham is Lot made a decision based on his desires, not based on his dedication to God. He was motivated by a prophet motive, he saw the potential, and his whole desire was not towards God, it was towards what he wanted. And then he came under the influence of the corruption of Sodom and Gomorrah.
And what did it do? We can read the story. He identified himself with that corrupt culture and soon he lost his testimony and not long after that he lost his family. May I say to you this morning that one of the great problems with worldliness among believers is that it affects the next generation. I've watched it over the years as parents compromise and they become more worldly and their lifestyles, it definitely affects their children and their children's dedication to Jesus Christ. We learn in Lot that the way a believer influences fallen humanity is not by being like them but by being different from them. You don't reach the world by being like the world. You reach the world by loving the world. You John 3 16 people, For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. The way that we change, if you could say it this way, the way God uses us to affect the world is that though we are different from them, we're not isolated from them. We're just distinct from them. And we serve them and we love them and we give ourselves to them.
That's the way it's always been done. So when we talk about worldliness, we talk about the whole concept of going back to the world and living a lifestyle distinctly different from what God has done in our heart through salvation. Now very quickly, how does then somebody become worldly?
How does this actually happen? I do want to say this that to charge somebody with being worldly is a very serious charge. I mean I think it's pretty serious to call somebody an adulterer. Or to call somebody an enemy. So I'm not prone to walk up to a person and say, you're a worldly. You know, I'm not going to walk up to you and say, you know, that's like saying you're an adulterer.
I'm very careful about that. But the Bible does speak very clearly about it. How is it that somebody becomes worldly? Well James I think reveals it.
Notice what he says. Whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God. The word will there is the idea of an intentional choice that is based upon a desire to experience something with the implication of some clear, reasoned out planning. Just to keep it simple, worldliness can be broken down into some clarifying stages. Number one, it starts with desire. The desires that we all have, the sinful desires that are in our heart.
Dr. Minnich preached well on it when he preached on the theme of the flesh. Secondly, there's a deliberation. You say, what do you mean by that? I think it's a struggle period. I think it's a period in your life of indecision. Maybe I could say it this way, a period of your life where you were once very dedicated to the Lord and then there's this cooling off that's going on in your life.
You're not hot, you're not cold, you're just sort of lukewarm. The passion you once had for God and serving Him has cooled off. You haven't gone completely into the world, but it's affecting you. It's sort of like you're wobbling back and forth and you haven't really come to an intentional decision. And then thirdly, there's the decision. This is a conscious decision to be the friend of the world. A person doesn't commit adultery right away.
They may start with a desire, they may be drawn in that direction, but you have to make a decision to commit adultery. You have to make a decision to be a traitor. In this case, it's a conscious decision to be the friend to the world. To make a choice, to take a stand, to shift your allegiance, to change your friends, to go in a different direction. And then fourth, the last one is a distance. That is, the moment you choose to go in this direction, you depart from the godly influences that you are under and you become different in your actions and your behavior.
You start to change. Is there anybody in the Bible like that? Well, Paul sadly announces somebody like that. 2 Timothy 4, Paul writes of a fellow laborer named Demas. It says, he's forsaken me having loved this present world and he has departed unto Thessalonica.
What happened to Demas? We don't really know. But Paul says it was a heartbreak. He forsook Paul because he loved the world. What it was about the world, we don't know.
But somewhere in the process, desires, deliberation, decision, and then distance. Paul saw it as embracing the world. But just a few sentences later, in 2 Timothy, he talks about another fellow who also deserted him. His name was Mark. It was Mark on Paul's first journey, for whatever reason, left Paul and Barnabas. And it became such an issue that even later on, Barnabas wanted to work with Mark and Paul said no because he deserted me. You have Demas and Mark, but what happened in the end?
In the end, Demas didn't come back, but in the end, Mark came back and ended up writing the second gospel, the gospel according to Mark. Here's what my concern is. My concern is this, that there are many of you who are either cooled off spiritually or you're in that deliberating stage that is dealing with your own self-centered desires and you're not really there about a commitment to God. My concern is this drift into the world that will inevitably happen if you don't make a decision to take a stand for God. May God help us to not be worldly. You've been listening to a sermon from the Book of James by evangelist Dr. Steve Pettit. Thanks for listening and join us again tomorrow as we continue the study in the Book of James from Bob Jones University Chapel Services in Greenville, South Carolina.
