Enemies of God | Faith IRL | Week 5

Enemies of God
Faith IRL • October 1, 2023
Teacher: Adam Barnett

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James 4:4 NIV

Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.

James 4:1-3 NIV

What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.

James 4:4-6 NIV

You adulteresses [disloyal sinners—flirting with the world and breaking your vow to God]! Do you not know that being the world’s friend [that is, loving the things of the world] is being God’s enemy? So whoever chooses to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us? But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: “God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.”

James 4:7-10 NIV

Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.

Resisting the devil is accomplished through submission to God.

Repentance includes remorse.

William Baker

“James is ordering us to move beyond merely correct outward actions to appropriate heart attitudes of sorrow for our willful, wicked behavior. Once we realize the grievous nature of our sins and how far away we let ourselves get from God, we ought to be upset, crying at the horror of our sins.”

James 4:11-12 NIV

Brothers and sisters, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against a brother or sister or judges them speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it. There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you—who are you to judge your neighbor?

William Brosend

“To do so is to set oneself as superior to the one spoken against, is to deny the claim of the law to love the neighbor, and is to presume a role that can be held only by God.”

James 4:13-15 NIV

Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.”

James 4:16-17 NIV

As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil. If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.