For the last several weeks, we've been attending
God's University in our study of the book
of James.
As we enter the classroom today, we come
to our first exam.
It's only one question, but the answer may
not be as clear as you might think.
Our teacher, Dr. J.
Vernon McGee, will administer the test, asking the
question, what is worldliness?
Dr. McGee first gave this sermon sometime in
the 1960s during his 21-year ministry as
the pastor of the historic Church of the
Open Door in downtown Los Angeles.
Let's pray.
Heavenly Father, teach us to live a life
that is pleasing to you.
In Jesus' name we pray, amen.
When we began this series, we likened the
epistle to God's University, and James was the
dean of God's University.
Now this metaphor holds good through the entire
epistle.
And as you well know, there are exams
and quizzes in every university, and there happens
to be in God's University.
The difference is that James hands out the
questions to study and even gives you the
answers to the questions.
You won't have to buy them or steal
these questions and get the answers.
You can just turn to the epistle of
James, you can read the questions, and you
can get the answers.
But in spite of the fact that all
of this information is given out, these are
hard quizzes and they are stiff examinations.
They must be wrought out on the anvil
of life.
They are an experiment to be made in
the laboratory of life to see whether they
work or not.
Now there are some big questions in this
epistle.
Who is a wise man imbued with knowledge
among you?
And then he asks other questions.
What is your life?
That's not my question, it's James' question.
So he asks some big questions and one
of them is, what is worldliness?
That's our quiz for today.
Now I ask you that question this morning
and I can see that there are hands
up all over this auditorium because you know
the answer.
You say we're a fundamental church and we
certainly know what worldliness is and we can
define it.
And so I think maybe we ought to
get your answers today.
And I see back yonder in the balcony
and I'd like to ask you for your
answer.
Well you say it's the kind of amusements
that you attend, like going to movies or
dances or drinking and smoking.
That's worldliness.
Well we thank you.
And does somebody else want to say what
worldliness is?
And I see back yonder and under the
balcony a hand and that's part of saying,
well it's the kind of a crowd that
you run with.
It's the gang you hang around with.
After all, birds of a feather flock together.
Well that's clever, but let's see if we
can get another answer.
And I see that over here that somebody's
saying, yes, it's the way that you dress
and you reveal whether you're a worldly Christian
by the way you dress.
I heard this one that one woman said,
the trouble with being a woman these days
is that you've got to look like a
girl, dress like a boy, think like a
man, work like a dog.
Well we accept that answer, but we pass
on because there may be some other ideas
and I see somebody down front here.
They have an answer for it.
It's a person, they say, that engages in
business and the making of money to the
exclusion of all else.
The one who neglects the church, all right,
and we will accept that.
And then I see we have another answer
over here.
It's the person who does not go to
church, but he spends his time on the
golf course.
Well, you're meddling now, but fishing and boating
and you go to Dodger Stadium instead of
to the church.
Well, these are some of the answers and
it may be that where you're sitting this
morning you'd like to add something else to
it.
But if you this morning have put down
one of these that I have mentioned or
even all of them, I want to say
to you, you flunked the exam, you failed
the subject, you busted the course because I
have here the epistle of James.
I have the question that he asks and
I have the answers that he gives to
this most important question, what is worldliness?
And none of these are right, but I
hasten to say this, these things you've mentioned
are merely symptoms of a disease and the
disease is worldliness.
But after all, you don't treat symptoms.
Now this morning, let me pass on to
you the statement of two men, two outstanding
Christians of the past, brilliant men who got
at the heart of the matter.
One was William Thackeray, who was a novelist.
He was a Christian.
He wrote a novel called Vanity Fair, that's
the world.
All that takes place in that novel is
on the background of the wars of Napoleon.
The characters there are filled with weakness and
littleness and meanness and pettiness and jealousy and
envy and discord.
And someone said to William Thackeray one time,
why is it that your heroes are not
heroes and your heroines are not heroine?
He says, my business is to hold a
mirror of nature up to life.
That's all that I do.
And in life, I see no heroes or
heroine.
And his novel Vanity Fair does not end.
They lived happily ever after.
It ends like this.
Come now, let us put the puppets up.
The show is over.
My beloved, he is at the nub of
what worldliness is.
Dr. Griffith Thomas, one of the great men
of the past, you'll see his name listed
among the editors in the Schofield Reference Bible,
a person very disturbed, came to him one
time and said, Dr. Thomas, don't you think
that the world is really becoming Christian?
Well, he says, I'll agree to this, that
the world is becoming just a little churchy,
but the church is becoming tremendously worldly.
May I say to you that these two
men are getting at the nub and the
very heart of what worldliness really is.
Now, since World War II, there's been a
total breakdown of the wall of separation between
the church and the world.
The wall that was put up, however, was
a legalistic, and I believe an unscriptural wall
in many respects.
The church was sort of like the little
Dutch boy who kept his finger in the
dike to keep the water out.
But then we had the aftermath of war.
Then we had the entrance of that idiot
box TV.
Then there was the rise of lawlessness and
immorality.
And then among the eggheads, existentialism, the futility
of life.
And then juvenile delinquency and the beatniks and
dope and marijuana.
Then the tidal waves swept over the dikes
of separation, and even the little Dutch boy
got washed away.
So today, the wall of separation is gone
in this hour in which we are living.
What is worldliness?
Will you follow today very closely?
James will give you actually here no simple
answer.
But let him give to us today a
definitive explanation of what it is.
And I'd like this morning to read from
the Amplified, a translation that's quite helpful as
we've seen in the epistle of James.
I want to read verse 13.
Who is there among you who is wise
and intelligent?
Then let him by his noble living show
forth his good works with the humility of
true wisdom.
Now if you follow in your translation, you
will notice that the emphasis here is upon
the fact that James never loses sight of
it in the entire epistle, that faith is
the major in the university of God all
the way through.
His theme is faith from beginning to end.
And all the elective courses are related to
faith.
And when he mentions works, as we saw
last Lord's Day, they're the works of faith.
And one of the works of faith is
meekness he mentions here.
Meekness is humility.
Someone has said knowledge is proud that she's
learned so much.
Wisdom is humble that she knows so little.
And so here, the thing that he's saying
is this, that this wisdom that he talks
about that is going to come down from
above as he'll make it very clear to
us, that this kind of wisdom is first
of all humble.
It is that which is submissive and it's
submissive to the will of God.
Then he goes on to say here in
verse 14, but if you have bitter jealousy,
envy, and contention, that is rivalry in your
hearts, do not pride yourself on it and
thus be in defiance of and false to
the truth.
Now he's talking here about that which is
the thing that is the wisdom of the
world and it is characterized by envy and
by jealousy.
The word for envy here is zealous.
We get our word zeal from that.
And it is a very interesting word, by
the way, it means actually jealousy, it means
factions, it means divisions, it means this business
today and it's in the church of dividing
up, taking sides around personalities, around issues today
and dividing the body of Christ because of
it.
A wife came home from a missionary meeting
and she said to her husband, she said,
did you know that the Shekel Grubers are
having a quarrel, they're having a lot of
trouble and that everybody in the church is
taking sides, some are on her side and
some are on his side, and he interrupted
her and he says, I suppose there are
a few odd characters in the church that
are minding their own business.
May I say to you today, my beloved,
this business of dividing up and taking sides
is the thing that he is talking about
here.
I keep on reading, this wisdom, it's superficial,
is not such as comes down from above
but it's earthy, unspiritual, even devilish.
Now he describes and defines this wisdom of
the world.
It's earthy, he says.
That is, it's confined to the earth, it's
limited to the world.
It's what our Lord, when he was talking
to Nicodemus, he says, if I have told
you earthly things how shall you believe if
I tell you heavenly things?
It's the same word, the wisdom of the
world, Christ said to Nicodemus, honestly I've just
been talking to you like I talk to
any unsaved person, though you're a religious man.
I've talked to you about earthly things, how
are you going to believe if I do
tell you about heavenly things?
Now there's a great deal that passes for
that which is spiritual in the church that's
nothing in the world but earthly, just earthly
wisdom, that is all.
And then he says it's sensual, and the
word is psychological, it's supical in the Greek.
It means human.
Knowledge you see is not limited today to
man's puny brain.
The eggheads today do not know which came
first, the egg or the chicken.
Even eggheads can't answer that one.
And we feel today that anything is not
even knowledgeable unless somebody knows it.
There's a great deal that the human race
does not know about this vast universe and
about God and about life and many things
that just do not happen to be in
the depository of human wisdom today.
He says it's sensual, and then he says
it's devilish.
And when he says that it's a terrific
word, it is actually demonic he said.
He's saying that it's demonic if you please.
And he's dealing here with something that is
quite interesting, and I read on to lay
hold of it.
For wherever there is jealousy and contention, there
will also be confusion and all sorts of
evil and vile practices.
Now again we have the same word zeal,
and it means the zeal of cults.
Have you ever noticed how zealous the cults
are in propagating themselves?
Well where does that zeal come from?
Does it come from God?
No, it comes from below.
It's satanic, it's devilish, it's demonic.
May I pass on to you this morning
the statement of Dr. Samuel Zwaymer.
I had the privilege of taking a series
of lectures under him.
He was the great missionary to the Muslim
world.
I believe frankly that he was probably one
of the brainiest missionaries that I ever listened
to.
And he was very successful working among Muslims,
he worked among the intellectuals.
Listen to this statement, you cannot explain the
wickedness of the world as merely human.
It's human plus something, and that is why
non-Christian religions are successful.
They are supernatural from beneath.
They're demonic if you please.
And so today, James is saying to you
and me that there are two kinds of
wisdom.
He's saying that there is a wisdom that
comes from above.
There is a wisdom that comes up from
beneath, and that he labels as being human
wisdom.
It's a sensual thing, it's psychological, and it's
demonic.
Now he says here that there will be
here two things, the cults if you please,
and the cliques.
It will be divisive you see.
It is that which divides, because back of
it there is envy and jealousy, and there
is this matter of factions, for that's exactly
what this word means here, divisions.
The spirit of rivalry, if you please.
Now he says there will be confusion as
a result of it, and there is confusion
today, I think in the church, I believe
you'll agree to that, unsettled, restless if you
please.
My beloved, there is in this world today
the human wisdom.
This morning the brains of the world are
engaged in the wisdom of the world, working
out the problems of the world, and in
spite of all of that, there happens to
be trouble in Vietnam, there's trouble in Selma,
Alabama, there's trouble in Washington, D.C., and
if you don't think that Los Angeles has
it, you're wrong, it's here also.
And all of that is the result of
the wisdom of the world, because the wisdom
of the world produces confusion, always brings confusion.
But where God is, for God is not
a God of confusion, but of peace, Paul
says to the Corinthians.
And then, not only that, but he says
every evil work, and that gives the wrong
impression.
Actually if you want a good Americano phrase
for it, it means good for nothing.
It's the kind of work that is trivial,
it's paltry, it's trite, it comes to naught.
You want to go back a few years
and look at the things that engage people's
attention.
You remember what the fad was back in
the 30s?
You remember what the fad was in the
40s?
You remember what the fad was in the
50s?
Well, we've even forgotten it, but it was
then in the headlines.
It was then, it occupied the attention and
thinking of man in that day.
Just good for nothing, the wisdom of the
world.
Never really come to anything at all.
It was a rainy night, and a little
boy was playing in the house, and he
was really causing trouble, and finally his mama
said to him, says, Willie, why don't you
be good?
And he says, well, I'll be good for
a nickel.
And she said, why don't you be like
your father, be good for nothing?
Well, my beloved, that's the kind of wisdom
that we're talking about, the good for nothing
kind.
And if I may say this today, and
I know I'll be criticized for this, but
this morning there's practically every state in the
union engaged in the moonshot in Apollo.
There are over 20,000 people that are
giving their time right now to that project.
The brains of the world are of this
country, and 20 billions of dollars are being
spent.
Good for nothing.
Wisdom of the world.
Good for nothing.
Come to North, if you please.
After all, what are all these shots out
in space done for us so far with
the millions that have been spent?
And this morning, if a war should break
out, there are enough missiles in Cuba to
knock out every great city on the eastern
seaboard.
And coming over the top of the world,
the West Coast would go.
We've paid so much attention to get to
the moon that we've forgotten we have problems
right down here.
My beloved, the wisdom of the world, if
you please.
Now will you notice as we move on
into this, and that's what we must do,
but the wisdom, now listen to James here,
the dean of God's university, but the wisdom
from above is first of all pure, then
it's peace-loving, courteous, it's willing to yield
to reason, full of compassion and good fruits,
it's wholehearted, straightforward, impartial, and unfain, free from
doubts, wavering and insincerity.
Now that enlarges upon it, but it brings
out exactly what James is saying here.
Now he says the wisdom which is from
above, two places that wisdom comes from, from
above and from beneath.
And what he's saying is the point of
origin.
Don't be ridiculous here, as a man said
to me, which direction is heaven?
Well if you mean that it's a 90
degree angle of a line drawn horizontal to
the earth, that that's the direction God is,
then you're wrong, because on the other side
of the earth in India this morning you'd
be pointing in the opposite direction.
A philosopher once asked a very humble Christian,
he says, where is God?
And this very humble Christian said, well pardon
me sir, but let me ask you a
question first, where is he not?
My beloved, that question has to be answered
first before you answer the question, where is
God?
A skeptic saw a little boy going to
Sunday school and he said to him, son,
he says, how many gods are they?
The little fellow thought a minute, he says
there's one, there's only room for one, you
couldn't have room for another because he just
occupies heaven and earth.
So don't point in a direction and say
God is in that direction.
This is not a directional question.
Why does James speak of the wisdom that's
from above?
Because it speaks of the condescension of God,
he who is so high has stooped so
low in order that he might, as he
says, if any man lack wisdom, what kind
of wisdom?
Heavenly wisdom, not wisdom to put over some
kind of a business deal that God could
not approve of, but my beloved, heavenly wisdom.
If any man lacks it, he's to ask
of God and our heavenly Father says he'll
stoop to do that.
A king once was sitting with his counselors,
they were planning the strategy of their war
they were carrying on, very busy.
They'd worked into the evening and as he
was sitting there with his counselors, he heard
his own child who'd come down the steps,
he heard that child cry because the little
fellow had fallen.
The king immediately pushed his chair away from
the council table and rushed to his little
boy that he might pick him up.
And my friend, when he did that, he
wasn't any less kingly when he did it.
He was just as much a king as
he was when he was sitting there planning
the strategy of the war.
And our great heavenly Father, the king of
this universe, he has come down in order
that he might bring salvation and redemption and
that he might help his children down here,
especially when they stumble and when they fall.
Then we're told something else that's from above.
The tense that's used here means it just
keeps on coming down.
God just keeps on coming down to be
what his children needs, if you please.
Whatever a child has needs.
Some of you heard us on the radio
this week when we were talking about that
mixed multitude that came with the children of
Israel out of Egypt.
They got out in the desert, that mixed
multitude, where they didn't know which way to
go to begin with.
And they were very unsettled, disturbed folk.
And they began to yearn for the leeks,
onions, and garlic.
And they said, we want to go back
to Egypt and get the leeks, onions, and
garlic.
Now I got to thinking about that.
Do you know, I'm of the opinion that
there was probably some pious Israelites who'd been
raised down in Egypt on leeks, and onions,
and garlic.
They liked it all, so.
And I have a notion that one of
these Israelites, he received the manna with thanksgiving
and yielded to the will of God.
And I think he was amazed when he
ate the garlic, it was garlic-tasted manna.
God had just sprinkled a little garlic on
it for him.
God is what his children need, my beloved.
And these things that he mentioned here are
a divine endowment.
You couldn't work them up down here to
save your life.
They are not a human acquisition at all,
because he says that these things are first
pure.
Well, you notice that.
Our Lord, the first beatitude he ever gave
was, blessed are the pure in heart, for
they shall see God.
We fundamentalists are getting away from a great
many things today.
We think we can toy with the impure,
and because our doctrine is right, that somehow
or another we can go on with God.
I don't believe it.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they
shall see God.
Gurdie, the great German, said, great thoughts and
a pure heart, these we should ask of
God.
And if we've been born anew, as our
Lord said yonder to this man Nicodemus, it
means as Paul wrote to a young preacher
and says, it's not by works of righteousness
which we've done.
It's according to his mercy he saved us.
But it's by the washing of regeneration and
renewing of the Holy Spirit.
And when our Lord said you must be
born of water and of the Spirit, he's
not talking about a baptism.
He's talking about the water of the word
of God to cleanse your heart.
And my beloved, if he doesn't cleanse your
heart, you haven't been born again.
Let's face up to Scripture.
You have to be cleansed.
Yes, but going through this world you get
dirty, and you certainly do, and every child
of God will get dirty if he's honest
about it.
But he'll go immediately and he'll confess if
we confess our sins.
He's faithful and just to forgive us our
sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
We need more emphasis upon this business of
having the Spirit of God cleanse our hearts
and lives today as we read the word
of God.
This is still the best bar of soap
that there is, all these cleansing agencies that
are advertised today on TV.
Have you ever noticed TV advertisements come in
two categories?
One category says how to get dirty, drink
beer and smoke cigarettes.
And then the other category is how to
get clean after you got dirty.
The soaps and the cleanses and the sprays
and all that sort of thing, and you
can buy some of it in the economy
size, pour it in your bathtub and bathe
in the stuff today.
May I say to you, and that seems
to be important as far as the world
is concerned, but a child of God needs
to recognize that he must be pure.
We need that today.
The word of God out cleans them all.
It is still God's method of cleansing, my
beloved.
Then the second that he mentions here that
this wisdom from above, it not only brings
purity, but it's peaceable.
And the word is tranquility here.
It's peace of mind.
Every Jew knew about that.
Their word of greeting was shalom, peace.
They'd known so little of it, by the
way, down through the centuries, but that was
their word of greeting.
The Lord Jesus brought peace by the blood
of his cross of sins forgiven, but he
also brought a peace, which he said, my
peace I leave with you.
My peace I give unto you, not as
the world give I unto you.
And my friends, that is a peace that
many Christians need today.
I was very much interested in going across
the street this week, the Lincoln Savings over
here had a display of the presidents of
the United States, pictures of them, and then
a personal letter that each one had written.
It was a very unusual collection.
And I went down just to read what
the presidents of the United States from the
very beginning said.
Quite interesting.
I got to the one of Woodrow Wilson.
Somebody had written him about the League of
Nations, and he said, and I was very
much interested in this, because I had a
different impression of Woodrow Wilson.
He says, society cannot be made good as
such.
Only individuals can be made right, and then
you can have a right society.
I wish our president and the great society
he's building today would recognize that.
You've got to have individuals born anew, my
beloved, before you can have a new society.
And this morning, the UN is trying to
bring peace, and they're fighting for it.
The great society is talking about it today,
and they're going to do it with money.
But that's not the way peace will come,
that peace that must come to the human
heart.
And my beloved, until it's in our hearts,
it can never be around us today.
St. Francis of Assisi wrote a prayer for
peace.
Will you listen to it?
Many, many years ago.
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love.
Where there is injury, pardon.
Where there is doubt, faith.
Where there is despair, hope.
Where there is darkness, light.
Where there is sadness, joy.
O divine master, grant that I may not
so much seek to be consoled as to
console, to be understood as to understand, to
be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive.
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned.
It is in dying that we are born
to eternal life.
Great truth, my beloved, for a child of
God that is there.
And this business of strife today, well, someone
has said it takes two to make a
quarrel.
And the Spanish have it like this, there's
a cunning little proverb from the sunny land
of Spain.
But in Northland or in Southland is its
meaning true and plain.
Write it deep within your heart, neither lose
or lend it.
Two it takes to make a quarrel, one
can always mend it.
Interesting, is it not?
He's talking now about envy and about that
thing that is destroying and will destroy the
individual and mankind.
That's the spirit.
Now we've come to where we can answer
our question.
We've just now got to it.
What is worldliness?
What is it?
All right, will you listen to James now?
He'll give it to us very quickly.
What leads to strife and how do conflicts
originate among you?
He's talking to believers.
Do they not arise from your sensual desires
that are ever warring in your bodily members?
What is worldliness?
We can put it in a nutshell.
Worldliness is when the spirit of the world
gets into the church, my beloved.
That's worldliness.
This spirit that's out yonder in the world
that he's been talking about, listen to him.
But if ye have bitter envying and strife
in your hearts, glory not and lie not
against the truth.
This wisdom descendeth not from above, but is
earthly, sensual, and devilish.
Now you think it's bad in Vietnam this
morning?
You ought to see the inside of some
churches today.
It's just as bad.
You ought to see the hearts of some
professing Christians today.
Oh my beloved, that spirit that's out yonder
in the world, it gets in our hearts
and then gets into the church.
There's competition in the business world.
Dog eat dog is the motto.
There is today among political parties the split.
Even in the parties today, there's a split.
One group pitted against another group.
Capital and labor this morning.
Rivalry.
One trying to out bargain the other and
out do the other.
And you move into the social world today.
The social climbers are on social ladders today,
stepping on the hands of those beneath them
and bowing and obsequious to those above them
as they try to get up the ladder.
And then there's not a neighborhood in Southern
California where you do not find one family
that's not speaking to another family.
And then there inside the family there are
the quarrels, brother sent against brother.
What is this?
It's the spirit of the world, if you
please.
And he says, you are jealous and covet
and your desires go unfulfilled.
You become murderers.
The hate is to murder.
You burn with envy and anger, not able
to obtain.
So you fight in war.
You do not have because you do not
ask.
And so you have two groups that are
in the world today, and they tell us
that's the fundamental problem in the world today.
Those that are the haves and those that
are the have nots.
And one of the reasons today that the
white race is hated throughout the world, they
are the haves today.
And the colored races are those that are
the have nots, and they are hating the
white races.
There is the war, the internecine war going
on everywhere today.
My beloved, that is the spirit of the
world.
Listen to this man as he speaks here
to us when he says, ye adulterers, know
ye not that the friendship of the world
is enmity with God, whosoever therefore will be
a friend of the world is the enemy
of God.
Now the way of the world is to
take by force what you want.
If you are a have not, you take
it by force.
And there are a great many people in
the church today, as they're juggling for position,
wanting something, striving for something, they use the
same methods that the world uses today.
And my friend, that is worldliness, according to
James.
Disturbed and distraught people running about today like
ants.
How can we keep worldliness out of the
church?
Is it possible today to keep worldliness out
of the church?
Briefly, let me mention what James mentions here,
because he says it can be kept out.
Listen to him.
Ye lust and have not.
Ye kill and desire to have and cannot
obtain.
Ye fight and war, yet ye have not
because ye ask not.
Ye ask and receive not because ye ask
amiss, that ye may consume it upon your
own lusts.
There must be more prayer to keep the
world out of the church.
Now the world today has only one recourse,
and I'm not criticizing them at all.
They have one method, go and get it,
brother.
Man said to me the other day in
the business world, and he's been successful.
He says, I found out early in this
game, you have to go get it.
That's the law of the business world, and
I'll not criticize it today.
But God help us when that gets into
the church today.
That's worldliness.
That's the spirit of the world.
And the only answer is more prayer.
We should make this a matter of prayer
today.
And there must be real prayer.
We must pray as this man James prayed.
You know, he was known in the early
church as Old Camel Knees.
And the reason they gave him that name
was when he died, they tried to coffin
him, and they got all the rest of
him in the coffin except those big old
bony, corny knees that he had.
He'd spent so much time on them.
When this man said we need more prayer,
he knew exactly what he was talking about.
You know, we have today, instead of hard
knees, we have hard heads and hard hearts.
And we need to pray today that God
will give us more hard knees and less
hard heads and less hard hearts.
There needs to be more prayer today to
keep worldliness out.
We need something else that James mentioned.
We need more grace, but he giveth more
grace.
Wherefore, he saith, God resisteth the proud, but
giveth grace unto the humble.
This cannot be attained by self-effort.
Striving today to overcome is still striving, if
you please.
We need faith, the kind of faith that
this man Joshua had when he marched around
Jericho.
Jericho's the world, friends.
By faith, the walls of Jericho fell down
when they were compassed about seven days.
And this is the victory that overcometh the
world, even our faith.
We need today more grace today, not the
spirit of competition in the church, not this
business of going after and driving through, but
we need today, my beloved, this spirit of
more grace in our hearts to look in
faith to him.
And that's the only way to overcome the
world.
That's the way Joshua did.
He did the most absurd thing any man
could do, to walk around that city.
But that man knew what it was to
walk by faith.
And then finally, we need more consecration and
communion today.
Will you listen to him?
Submit yourselves, therefore, to God.
Resist the devil, he'll flee from you.
Draw nigh to God, he'll draw nigh to
you.
Cleanse your hands, ye sinners, and purify your
hearts, ye double-minded.
It means coming to God with empty hands
today.
Our problem today is we bring our plans
to God.
We say, Lord, here's the blueprint.
We've already worked them out and they're pretty
good and we don't want you to change
them, but we would like to have you
bless them.
And as a result in the church today,
we do have worldliness, my beloved.
Worldliness is manifested in divisions, in cliques, in
groups, in individuals.
It's not the parties you go to, but
it's the party spirit you manifest.
It's not the funny hat you wear, but
the hot head that's under it.
It's not the painted face today, but the
war paint that you have on.
And it's not, my beloved, the makeup that's
put on the lips today, buddy, it's that
gossipy tongue today.
It's not the latest fashion that makes you
whirly, but it's the last fight that you
were in.
It's not what you go to see, it's
the method that you use in getting what
you want.
May I say to you today, that's worldliness.
Maybe you've come in here, I'm through now.
I guess some of you think I should
have been through 30 minutes ago.
That's a strong medicine.
Some people are finding James' verse strong medicine.
And I advise you to miss church while
we're in this epistle because he's rough on
us.
My beloved, may I say this in closing,
you may have come in here today, I'm
talking to believers today.
But you may have come in here today
out of a disturbed world, and it is
a disturbed world this morning.
And you may be this morning an unsaved
person, and you know what I'm talking about.
When God says, there is no peace, he
says, my God, to the wicked, the wicked
are like the troubled sea.
And you know what that is today.
I hope that when you came in here,
that you did sense the fact that there
are people in this place, and they are,
that know what the peace of God is
in their hearts.
They know what it is to rest in
him.
May I say that that can be your
portion today?
On one condition, in one condition alone, we're
told in scripture he made peace by the
blood of his cross.
That's the peace that your sins are forgiven,
and God's not against you today, but he
wants to be on your side, and he's
condescended, he's come down, that he might redeem
you.
He loves you.
And this morning he wants to save you,
and you say, my, but I'm so disturbed
in here.
So much anxiety.
I feel that guilt complex.
That makes no difference.
That's the reason Jesus died for you, because
he knows you, and he can remove it.
He can remove it by that one formula.
Come now, let us reason together, saith the
Lord.
Though your sins be as scarlet, though they
be red like crimson, they shall be white
as snow, and he alone can wash you
today, and he can give you that peace.
Not the peace he said that the world
giveth give I unto you, but his peace.
It's yours.
Yours for the asking.
Shall we pray?
Do you want that peace this morning?
Are you here today probably disturbed, anxious, wondering?
Maybe you're saying I have so many problems
within that I am disturbed.
Are you here with heads bowed, eyes closed?
I'm wondering right where you're sitting if you'd
like to say, preacher, pray for me.
I want that peace that you're talking about
today.
I need that peace.
Pray for me.
Today, if you're disturbed and anxious, and don't
have peace in your heart, then God wants
to give you peace.
The Bible says, he made peace by the
blood of his cross.
So when you receive Christ, you will have
peace because your sins have been forgiven.
To find out more about God's plan of
salvation for your life, you may call us
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This is Steve Schuetz for the Through the
Bible Radio Network with the prayer that God
will fill you with His grace, mercy, and
peace.
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