James: Don't Trade Grace for Pleasure, Prosperity or Pride (4:1-12)

Hello, I'm Pastor Creighton, and thank you for tuning in to New Sun Churches Podcast.

We're a gospel center church in Port Perry, Ontario, proclaiming the true and life-giving word of Jesus as we love and serve our neighbors.

May God bless you today through his life-giving word.

Our next reading will be from James chapter 4.

James 4 · chapter mention

What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you?

Is it not this that your passions are at war within you?

You desire and do not have, so you murder.

You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel.

You do not have, because you do not ask.

You adulterous people, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?

Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the scripture says he yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us?

But he gives more grace.

Therefore, it says, God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.

Submit yourselves therefore to God.

Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.

Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.

Be wretched and mourn and weep.

Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.

Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.

Do not speak evil against one another, brothers and sisters.

The one who speaks against a brother or sister, or judges his brother or sister, speaks evil against the law and judges the law.

But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law, but a judge.

There is only one lawgiver and judge.

He who is able to save and to destroy.

But who are you to judge your neighbor?

The word of the Lord.

Lord gives more grace.

So let's pray.

Gracious Lord Jesus, we uh come to you not with an abundance of righteousness, but with a poverty.

We come to you, Lord, not with great riches to offer, Lord, but with burdens.

And Lord, we need you to lift them.

We need your grace.

So I pray for grace that we would humble ourselves, submit ourselves to your word, that we would discover that true life that you have to offer us through it.

Illumine your word to our understanding by your Holy Spirit, and let the words of my mouth and the meditation of all of our hearts be always pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our Redeemer.

Amen.

Please be seated.

So we've been journeying through this letter written by James, the chief pastor in Jerusalem.

It's about 8042, 44, something like that.

And he's writing to Christians spread all around the region, Christians as they gather in little communities, little churches.

And he's writing to these gathered Christians to explain to them how to put God's wisdom into action.

God's wisdom leads to life.

God's wisdom is not just hearing the word, but doing the word.

God's wisdom shapes our lives in the communities that we live in, guards us against partiality, inclines us to love God and our neighbor.

James wants these communities to not mistake God's heavenly wisdom for our best idea of earthly wisdom.

And last week our brother Rob so wonderfully exposited to us a portion of James chapter 3 where James is outlining for us the difference between wisdom from above, that is heavenly wisdom, and wisdom from below, our best idea of how to run our life on our terms, so to speak.

James 3 · chapter mention

The difference between the two is considerable, and we figure out the difference in the fruit that they bear.

That was part of James's point.

Heavenly wisdom leads to a life and a community characterized by peace, by grace, and earthly wisdom, pardon me, wisdom from below, yeah, earthly wisdom, sure, is characterized by selfish ambition, pride, division.

They show themselves out and how they bear themselves out in community.

And if these Christian communities, whom James is writing, displayed nothing but heavenly wisdom, probably he wouldn't have a reason to write.

But it becomes pretty quickly, or it becomes obvious pretty quickly, what kind of wisdom is bearing itself out in the life of these congregations, right?

Let's look at our uh let's look at our passage, James chapter 4, verse 1.

James 4:1

James is not asking a rhetorical question here.

What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you?

That's plural, right?

Is it not this that your passions are at war within you?

What's causing quarrels?

What's causing this breakdown in the community, this Christian community that you're supposed to belong to?

James says, isn't it this?

Isn't it obvious?

It's your self-centered desires, your passions that are at war within you.

Be careful, this word passions and translate it properly.

It's okay to be passionate about something like art or music or what have you, but this idea, this um in translation, this word passion, well, it comes from the Greek hedone.

We get our word hedonism from it, right?

It's this idea of uh aspiring to nothing else but what gives us, what centers life in us.

It's living life on our terms, it's our self-centered desires.

It's something like that.

What causes quarrels, what causes unfaithfulness, what causes all kinds of breakdown in your community, isn't it this?

It's your self-centered desires playing themselves out in your shared life together.

See, this is not what James desires for the church.

This is not what our Lord desires for his church.

In fact, how is it that we bear witness that we're his disciples?

By our love for one another.

See, Christians must surrender self-centered desires to be the community of grace which we are called to be.

Christians must surrender self-centered desires to be a community of grace.

Because it is all too easy to trade grace, or wisdom from above, we might say, for selfish desire or wisdom from below.

Which I think for James works itself out in at least three ways.

Our selfish desires work out for a desire, a self-centered desire for pleasure, a self-centered desire for prosperity, and a self-centered desire for pride.

Pleasure, prosperity, and pride are like the three big offenders here for our own selfish desires that break down Christian community and break down a community of grace.

And I know what you're thinking.

You're thinking, gosh, I'm so glad we have, we've never had any quarrels, we've never had any fights, we've got this all figured out.

This is all hypothetical, we've, this is first century stuff.

I mean, we know that that's not true.

We know that because if we're honest enough with ourselves and with others, we're sinners.

We're sinners trying to do life together as a family.

How about that?

Quarrels, fights.

We might say conflict is something that's unavoidable, but I wonder if there's a distinction to be made between conflict, which is sometimes necessary, something needs to be dealt with, and quarrels, which is like the outworking of our own self-centered desires, and it's really easy to mistake the two, isn't it?

There's a 17th-century Jewish philosopher named Baruch Spinoza.

He's reflecting on this theme.

He says, I have often wondered that persons who make boast at professing the Christian religion, namely love, joy, peace, temperance, and charity to all men, should quarrel with such rancorous animosity and display daily toward one another such bitter hatred that this, rather than the virtues that they profess, is the readiest criteria of their faith.

Ouch.

Right?

But maybe you and I have seen that happen.

Maybe whether or not we'd like to admit it, we've participated in that.

We know that it's all too easy to lapse into self-centered desires and see that breakdown Christian community.

James is going to help us diagnose that.

James is going to help us work through that if we have the courage to be honest with ourselves and with God.

And if we're honest, we need a community of grace, don't we?

We need a place where we belong.

We need a place where we are accepted.

We need a place where we know we can come freely and receive abundantly.

We need that community of grace.

And not only that, the world needs communities of grace.

The world needs congregations like New Song that bear witness in our life together to God's generous heart towards us, God's forgiving heart towards us, God's great love for us.

We need to bear that out in how we love one another and so bear witness to this community that God has placed us in.

That his grace is real and it works and it transforms.

But if we're going to figure this out, we need to begin on the inside and work outwards, not the other way around.

That's James's challenge to us this morning.

Christians must surrender self-centered desires to be a community of grace.

So would you turn with me to James chapter 4?

James 4 · chapter mention

Open up your Bibles.

Always helpful to have your Bible, of course.

You see what's going on before and after, and you can be making notes in the margin if you're that kind of person, I'm that kind of person.

Or pull out your order of service, and we're going to work through this as best we can together.

As best as I can kind of parse this out, there's at least sort of four units to this text.

There's sort of the three ways that self-centered desires work themselves out, and then there's this there's this great uh analysis of the difference that grace makes.

So we're gonna be taking this just a little bit in order that makes sense to me, which isn't necessarily in the order that James presents here.

Uh, we're gonna look at the first unit, verses one to three, and then four to five, and then we're gonna skip to 11 to 12, because I think verses six to ten kind of tie things all together.

And so if I'm if I if I do a good job, then hopefully we'll see that a little more clearly.

Anyway, let's start with verses one to three.

What breaks down a community of grace, a self-centered desire for pleasure, first and foremost?

What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you, James has asked.

Is it not this that your passions, hidonae, are at war within you?

You desire and you do not have.

So you murder, you covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel.

You do not have, because you do not ask.

You ask and you do not receive because you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions, on your hidone, which some translations, if you have open in front of you, say, pleasures.

Your self-centered desire for pleasures is motivating your actions towards your fellow brothers and sisters.

That's what James is saying, and that's cause for all sorts of fights, all sorts of quarrels between you.

It's breaking down relationships.

What's the aim here?

The aim of these passions, the aim for pleasure is I want what I want, and I want it on my terms.

That's the idea here.

Nobody ever brings that into the church with them, right?

I want what I want.

I want it the way I want it, when I want it.

This self-centered desire for pleasure works its way out in a couple of ways.

One, it works itself out in unobtained wants.

Did you notice that in the first couple verses?

You desire and you do not have, so what do you do about it?

You murder.

Whoa.

You covet, you cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel.

Now, the debate rages whether or not James is addressing Christians who've actually murdered one another.

Surprisingly enough, that's not beyond the pale for this text.

I wonder if James is working out the logical conclusion to what they're how they're treating one another, right?

Because we know our Lord has taught us that if we're angry with one another, it's like holding, holding bitterness, holding resentment, it's like holding murder in our heart towards someone.

I think it's a little bit like James is working out, well, this is where the logic will take you here if you work this out completely.

You desire things you don't have, you're competing with one another to get what you want on your terms, or get what you want at someone else's expense, and so that's cause for all sorts of fights and quarrels.

It's breaking down your relationships with one another.

These selfish, self-centered desires for pleasure is a cause for a breakdown of all sorts of horizontal relationships, but it's also a cause for a breakdown in our vertical relationship.

Did you notice that?

Second half of verse 2.

You do not have because you don't ask.

You ask and you don't receive because you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions.

What's James talking about asking here?

He's talking about prayer.

He's talking about when we get on our knees and we ask for God, ask God to do for us the things that we want done, right?

Why isn't it that you're not receiving, James says?

It's because you are so occupied with your own self-centered desires.

You're coming to God on your knees.

You might be praying your kingdom come, but really we're praying my will be done.

I feel like I fall into that category far too often, if I'm honest with myself.

Prayers can degenerate into my wish list, right?

And if someone else gets what they want and I don't get what I want, well, how do I feel about it?

Not particularly happy, I can tell you that.

Probably we all feel some version of that.

And that's working itself out in this community here.

Taken to its logical conclusion, if we live there, if we choose to live with that bitterness and resentment, we will degenerate into all sorts of quarreling, into all sorts of fighting, and forfeit that community of grace that we're supposed to be for a community characterized by quarreling and fighting.

So notice that James is not making a list here of all sorts of hedonistic immoral pleasures that, you know, we're not supposed to be wanting, but we want anyway.

James doesn't offer us a list like that.

Maybe we can want good things, but for wrong reasons.

We can want good things for the life of our church.

We can want good outreach programs, we can want good Sunday school programs, we can want uh effective preaching, whatever it is, we can want good things, but if we have an idea of this is how it needs to be, it needs to be my way, and I want what I want, we can want good things with a self-centered heart, can't we?

And that can be cause for all sorts of breakdown, all sorts of quarrels.

We can want good things for wrong reasons.

I've seen this happen.

I've probably shared before a church I was involved in back in Chicago, in the suburbs of Chicago.

I had an internship all lined up.

I had an idea that I was going to get hired after I graduated there.

I had, you know, wonderful plans for my life that involved that church.

And somewhere between May, when I left for summer break back to Ottawa, and when I arrived back in late August to start my next semester, the church had just completely broken down into factions.

Elders against pastors, pastors against congregants, congregants against elders, and it was just this soup.

And I'm not trying to make a commentary who's right, who's wrong here, but boy, it seemed like no side was willing to take the initiative to say, here's how my self-centered desires are working themselves out here.

Here's how I'm being selfish.

Can we approach one another on the basis of we're both sinners in need of forgiveness, trying to do life together?

Can we approach one another on that basis?

Because a little bit of humility there, I think, goes a long, long way.

Otherwise, it all just breaks apart.

And the world looks at us like, well, what difference does Jesus make?

Self-centered desire for pleasure breaks down a community of grace, but so does a self-centered desire for prosperity break down a community of grace.

Let's look at verse 4 here.

Some strong words if you didn't notice.

You adulterous people, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?

Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God?

Or do you suppose it's to no purpose that the scripture says he yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us?

What's the aim here?

The aim is not just what I want, what I want on my terms, it's I want a good life on the world's terms.

That's what I expect my Christian faith, my Christian community to deliver.

We measure status or success or security wholly on the basis of what the world defines as status and security and success.

And that's what I expect out of life.

That's what I want for my life.

And so that's my priority.

So what's James saying?

It's like you're pursuing friendship with the world.

It's like you're cozying up to all the world's priorities and all the world's definitions and ideas of what the good life is.

You're cozying yourself up over the world and you're distancing yourself from the life that Christ has called you to.

A life of humility, a life of grace, a life shared together, a life where we submit ourselves to God and to one another.

We're cozying up with friendship with the world, and we are prioritizing the world's idea of what a prosperous life looks like, over what a Christian idea of what a truly prosperous life looks like.

That's friendship with the world.

And James is not speaking in any uncertain terms here.

It is an either or.

Either we are friends with the world and enemies with God, or we make friends with God, and in some way we have to be enemies of the world's priorities and the world's idea of success, and the world's idea of security, and the world's idea of status.

It is either or.

And James is pretty unapologetic about that.

It makes me a little nervous.

Maybe it makes you nervous too.

This is why James uses such strong language here.

Notice how he addresses this congregation.

Boy, I think that would be my last Sunday if I used language this strong.

Don't worry.

You adulterous people.

That's plural.

And no, I don't think James is trying to point out the sin of adultery in any one person in particular.

I think he's using the language of the biblical prophets that so frequently invoked the language of adultery to describe idolatry, right?

You think of God's people are called into this exclusive relationship of fidelity with the Lord to their God.

A relationship that is meant to center them in grace and turn them into a people of grace, and yet so frequently they chase after all sorts of pagan ideas of status and security and success, right, symbolized by idols, which for them might have been physical idols.

And when they turn to worship these other gods to secure for themselves the success and status and security that they desire, what are they doing?

They're being unfaithful to God.

It's like a spouse being unfaithful to their spouse.

Idolatry is the biblical equivalent of adultery.

And that's what James is saying here.

When you are friends with the world, when you're over here flirting with the world's idea of what the good life is, you are being unfaithful to the life that God is calling you to, a life characterized by grace.

Or do you suppose it's for no reason that Scripture teaches us that he, God, yearns jealously over the spirit that he's made to dwell in us?

By the way, I'm not much of a Greek scholar, but the Greek scholars I trust tell me that that is one of the most notoriously difficult verses in the New Testament to translate, because that the subject could be either God doing the jealous yearning or us doing the jealous yearning.

If you've got different translations, maybe it's worded very differently.

It could be the spirit that he's talking about, it could be the Holy Spirit, it could be our spirit.

I am partial to this translation.

I think this is a solid translation in front of us in the ESV in the bulletin here.

But no matter what translation you might see in front of you, I think the bottom line is this we owe God our friendship.

Our allegiance, our loyalty, our fidelity, if for no other reason, then He has a rightful claim on us.

He has created us.

He has animated us with our Spirit.

He has given us His Holy Spirit.

However, we go about translating that verse, He has a rightful claim on us, and we have no right to pursue friendship or flirt with the world around us in a way that breaks our covenant, our fidelity with God.

See, friends, it's so easy to mistake our self-centered desires for prosperity for God's will for us, right?

Because we think, well, God wants a good life for me.

Therefore, I'm going to cozy myself up to all the ideas and what will deliver a good life for me over here in the world.

And James is saying, don't be unfaithful.

I've talked about my favorite C.S.

Lewis book, The Great Divorce, before, and I'm going to quote from it again just because I think about this a lot.

There's a uh, this is a uh the premise of the book is um it's an exploration of heaven, an imaginative exploration of heaven, uh, by way of having a busload of souls come up from hell and explore, explore heaven, really, uh, and just find it so uninhabitable, it's too glorious, it's too radiant, right?

Anyway, it's a bunch of vignettes and it's a bunch of exploring heaven from any number of angles.

In one chapter, uh, there's this buzz around all of the characters.

You know, someone is is making an approach, and we're so excited to see them arrive, you know.

And the narrator of the story is sort of thinking to himself, I wonder if this is like the Virgin Mary, because this seems to be like a really big deal.

This is a really big, you know, uh, I don't know, this person's reputation precedes them in a really big way.

But uh the person who's touring the narrator around turns to him and says this.

He says, It's someone you'll never have heard of.

Her name on earth was Sarah Smith, and she lived at Golders Green.

She seems to be, well, a person of particular importance, says the narrator.

I, says his tour, uh tour guide.

She is one of the great ones.

Ye have heard that fame in this country and fame on earth are two quite different things.

He goes on to say, it's like when you throw a stone into a pool and the concentric waves spread out further and further.

Who knows where it'll end?

He says, Redeemed humanity is still young.

It has hardly come to its full strength.

But already there is joy enough in the little finger of a great saint such as yonder lady to awaken all the dead things of the universe into life.

I just think that's an amazing moment.

What's C.

S.

Lewis trying to say, he's trying to say this ordinary decision to choose God's idea of the good life, God's idea of prosperity, and be faithful to that, has heavenly ramifications, has the power, as it were, to call dead things into life, and yet we so quickly settle for cheap and temporary ideas of status and security and success.

Don't mistake one for the other.

Heavenly ideas of fame and prosperity are very different than our best ideas of fame and prosperity, and we will rob ourselves of that greater prosperity with our selfish desires.

So don't mistake one for the other, says James.

Selfish desire, self-centered desire for prosperity will break down a community of grace.

But there's a third and final breakdown here.

We see it in verses 11 to 12.

Selfish, self-centered pride will break down Christian community.

Do not speak evil against one another, brothers.

And we can say brothers and sisters.

The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother speaks evil against the law and judges the law.

But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law, but a judge.

There is only one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and destroy.

But who are you to judge your neighbor?

So what's going on here?

The congregation that James is addressing is puffing themselves up pridefully and casting slanderous judgments on one another.

Speaking evil is not just I've got something difficult but true to share about, you know, my brother or my sister, and we're going to work this out, you know, pastorally or something like that.

No, it's it's casting moral burden on someone else, pointing the finger, calling someone, you know, whatever name it is that you just want to call them in your pride or resentment or whatever else.

It's claiming moral superiority to everyone else around you.

That's what's happening here.

It's pride.

It's puffing up yourself one against your brother or a sister.

And James wants to remind this congregation of a couple of things.

He wants to remind them that they who elevate themselves above a brother and sister, in doing so, are elevating themselves above God's law.

God's law is something to which we are all accountable.

Brothers and sisters, both, all of us are accountable to the commands that God gives us.

When we elevate ourselves and speak a word of slander or condemnation or defamation against someone else, as if we are occupying that space where we say, I know how to rightly swing the hammer of God's law, and it's not swinging in my direction, it's swinging in yours.

We're approaching one another, not on the basis of two sinners trying to work out grace under God's law together.

No, I'm just bringing God's law smack down on you.

That's the idea here.

It breaks down a community of grace, we can see pretty quickly.

But not only are we trying to occupy that place of swinging God's law like a hammer, we are trying to occupy God's throne ourselves and usurp his authority.

Did you notice that?

If you judge the law, God's law, you are not a doer of the law, but a judge.

And by the way, there is only one lawgiver and judge who's able to save and destroy.

Let me remind you what kind of authority this lawgiver really has.

So lest we think we can swing God's law around like a hammer, fault one another and squash one another with it.

Let's be reminded that there is only one true judge, and he occupies the throne.

And it's his law to which we are accountable one to another.

So again, it's not to say that there aren't genuine moral lapses or difficulties or conflicts that have to be worked through honestly, but there is a way to work through them that doesn't claim moral superiority.

I am a sinner, just like you are a sinner, and we are sinners together under God's law.

Can we work this out on that basis rather than one squashing the other, uh, usurping God's authority?

We relate to one another as sinners in need of grace, and that makes us the brothers and sisters and neighbors that James is describing us as being.

So we can see how community of grace breaks down pretty quickly when we give expression to our self-centered desires, whether that's a self-centered desire for pleasure or prosperity in the world terms, or pride, elevating ourselves one over the other.

We can see how this breaks down the work of grace in the community, pleasure, prosperity.

So the question is this what do we do about it?

And I wonder if the first thought that comes to your mind, it's the first thought probably comes to my mind as well, I got some work to do, don't I?

I better be trying harder.

I better be pulling up my bootstraps, I better, you know, be that much more serious about handing over my pride, my pleasure, my whatever.

And I think the answer that James is trying to lead us is not, I'll try harder this week.

It's, yeah, I can't do that.

That's beyond me.

I can't live, I can't not live on the basis of my own self-centered desires.

That's the condition of sin at work in my life.

So whether it's my desire for pleasure in verses 1 to 3, my desire for prosperity in verses 4 and 5, I have to conclude, I can't do that.

There is no amount of hard work I can do to achieve what James is asking me to do and cause a community of grace to happen.

So what do we need?

We need verse 6.

But God gives more grace.

Therefore, Scripture says, God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.

We probably recognize that verse from Proverbs chapter 3 in our study last fall, don't we?

Proverbs 3 · chapter mention

Grace alone builds up a community of grace.

I suppose that's in the name.

That was profound when I was writing it in, but it's a little redundant now that I say it out loud.

But grace is what it's all about.

It's the center of our community.

If we are meant to be the community that James is talking about, that the Lord wants us to realize, grace and not self-centered desire has to be in the middle of everything.

It has to be the thing around which everything orbits.

Because if it orbits anything else, it will be selfish desire and it will break down that grace that God wants to be at work in our lives as individuals and our life as a Christian family together.

So the question we probably want to ask at this point is what is grace?

When James says he gives more grace, what's he talking about?

And he's not saying at least two things.

Grace is not a substance, it's not something separate and apart from God that deals out like currency, you know, and I do a little good thing and I get 25 points of grace, and I do a really good thing and I get a thousand points of grace or something like that.

Grace is not a substance that gets dealt out by God as if it's something distinct from God's own self and God's own character.

Neither is grace a supplement, right?

We might have heard the phrase, try your best and God does the rest.

That's an idea of grace that, well, it's it's up to me.

Grace is conditional.

I gotta do my best, even if my best is 70%, 80%, 60%, whatever, then you know, God will see that I'm trying my hardest and he'll supplement what's lacking in my efforts.

And James is saying grace is neither of those things.

It's not the substance that he deals out, it's not a supplement that he gives us.

God's grace is his kindness and compassion towards us in Christ.

God's grace is his kindness and compassion towards us in Christ.

And it's his power to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves on the basis of his kindness and compassion.

I can no more divorce grace from God's character, from who he is, than I can divorce kindness and compassion that Rachel shows me from Rachel.

Do you see what I mean?

It's like Rachel does not deal out this separate thing called kindness and compassion to me.

That just flows and emanates from her person.

And probably if you know Rachel, you've experienced that for yourself.

She's a kind and compassionate person.

And that's who God is.

When he shows us grace, he is showing us his kindness and compassion that is not separate and apart from him.

He is showing us his very heart for us, his character, who he is at work transforming our life, forming us in grace.

If that's true, that grace is God's kindness and compassion, then we can see that there's no room for pride, right?

There's no room for this self-centered desire for pride, because what's pride?

Pride is living on the basis of my achievements over your achievements, and grace says, no way.

Whatever you have is a loss.

We're both sinners in need of grace.

We come to each other on that basis.

On the basis of our need, not on the basis of one over the other.

So what's our response to grace?

What are we supposed to do with grace?

One, submit yourselves, James says in verse 7.

And then he says, humble yourselves before the Lord in verse 10.

And I think these two things are this, are two sides of the same coin, right?

Allegiance to God's lordship and penitence and purification, recognizing that I'm always in need of his forgiveness.

It's turning away from selfish desires and turning toward God and pledging my loyalty to him.

That's submitting ourselves and humbling ourselves before him.

And when we take this humble posture, this low road, God has a way of elevating us to experience the kind of pleasure and prosperity and pride that we are always looking for, but now finding it in Christ and not in our selfish desires.

When we humble ourselves, he exalts us in Christ so that we find our true fulfillment in him and live out a community of grace together, centered in him.

So if we desire grace and peace, if we desire to be that community, then we have to humble ourselves.

We have to submit ourselves to God's word.

But recognizing that we don't have what it takes to achieve that, we have to be assured in his grace, his kindness and his compassion, because only his kindness and compassion can transform us into the kind and compassionate people that fulfill his law and treat one another as we ought to be treated.

So, friends, he shows more grace.

And if we can be that community of grace here at New Song, we can not only preach the gospel as we live life together to one another, we can show the gospel to this community in Port Perry that needs it so desperately.

We can be the community of grace if we humble ourselves.

And he gives more grace.

Amen.

We hope that you've been blessed by God's word today.

If you live in the Port Perry area, we hope that you'll come and worship with us in person on Sunday at 10 a.m.

If you'd like to learn more about Newsong Church, we'd love to connect with you.

Please find our contact information at newsongportperry.ca and reach out to us.

Newsong's ministry is entirely funded by the generous giving of those who worship and journey with us.

If you feel called to support our ministry with a financial gift, please go to newsongportperry.ca slash giving to make your contribution.

Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.