James | Am I Worldly? (July 7th, 2019) - Mike Armstrong

Listen, if you would grab your Bibles and uh turn them open to James chapter four with me.

Now, um you kind of think about uh your life and maybe even just the last week.

Uh do you ever feel that that urge?

It's it's like that push and that pull towards uh with the world values, right?

You ever feel that?

The the world's value system includes lots of different things, but things like you know, putting all of your energy, all of your blood, sweat, and tears into uh something like accumulating wealth, right?

Accumulating riches and just going after and stockpiling material things, right?

That's certainly one worldly value.

Um it also promotes, we know this, uh a sexual paradigm that's uh flat out about you know, no strings attached, you know, consequence free, do whatever uh whatever makes you happy, pursuit of pleasure.

The world values uh something like using people, right?

Just using them to get what you want, or getting ahead and not really loving them well.

I mean, the list goes on, does it not, in terms of what the world values?

Now, as Christians, we know that the Bible, the gospel, uh makes it real clear that Jesus calls us to something uh different, right?

Something better.

But even as Christ followers, which I know many of us here would be, uh don't we still kind of feel that urge towards those things?

I think we do if we're being honest.

We we we we feel that you know that that desire to just kind of give in and and and pursue and go after and just become like the world uh around us.

And again, I kind of think of it as a push and a pull.

I think there's a pull in the sense of the world just kind of kind of drawing us in.

You know, go after these things, and it shows them to be so so tantalizing, and these things will fulfill you, and and these will uh add value to your life and and give you true meaning.

Lose yourself in these approaches.

We sense the pull towards that, and certainly the enemy is involved drawing us towards that.

I think we also, though, feel feel a push uh from within, right?

Our our own fallen flesh, which is is being redeemed as as Christ followers, it's it's being sanctified, and it's still got remnants of our of the old way in us, and we feel that, like I want to go after those things.

I I want to pursue pleasure at all costs.

I want to go after it, I don't I don't even care about the consequences, I don't care how this might affect other people around me, I don't care about how this might affect the Lord.

I I want that, and at times uh we we go for it.

And so worldliness is is something that that you and I as individuals and as the church, we we must be diligent to guard against.

Right?

Because we're to we're to live and and we're to function uh really against the grain of all of that, are we not?

Right?

That that's what God has has called us to, and it and it's to his glory, not to our glory, our wants, our desires.

Okay, so as you kind of just assess your life, as you assess, you know, and just kind of think about you know how how are we doing as a church with all of this?

Uh really great question to ask, and you see it up there on the screen.

Uh am I worldly?

Right?

Am I worldly?

Or or am I, or we, are we on our on our way there?

Right?

Are we on the path that will lead us towards that place?

Now you might be thinking, well, how do I know this?

You know, how do I know where I'm at with all this?

Well, uh, the verses uh here today uh give us uh some good clues, right?

And they and they show us exactly what uh happens when we go down this path and become worldly.

So I want to read it right now.

Uh you can join with me.

Uh James chapter 4, reading the first 12 verses.

James 4 · chapter mention

Here's what he has to say.

He says, uh, 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.

And you ask because and do not receive because you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions.

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 that it is of 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 hearts, 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.

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

But if you judge the law, you're 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?

Father, as we think about these verses that we just read, Lord, I pray that you would give us, grant us humility.

Lord, I pray that you would help us to be brutally honest with ourselves about how we're doing when it comes to worldliness.

Lord, do we just flat out look more like the unsaved world than we do look like Christ?

Or it's a foundational question that we must ask.

Lord, are there compromises that we're making right now in small ways that maybe most people can't even see, can't even tell, but Lord, you see it.

And these things lead us towards a path of destruction.

That is the ultimate end.

And so, Lord, I pray that you would halt us in our tracks here today.

Lord, I pray that if there is any wayward way within us as a church or as a leadership, as individuals, as families, as parents, as husbands and wives, Lord, I pray that you would bring conviction.

Lord, I pray that your Holy Spirit would move and work.

Lord, I pray that you would purify for yourself your bride, Lord.

And so, God, as we come before you today, we ask for you to do all of these things, Lord.

We ask that you would do it to the glory of Jesus Christ.

We pray that you would honor, uh, you would be honored in all of this.

We pray it all in Christ's name.

Amen.

Amen.

All right, well, here's the first question then, or the first thing, anyways.

I know that I've become worldly when my self-indulgent passions put me at odds with both God and man.

Okay, we see this uh rolling out here in verse one.

James says here, he asks the question, what what causes quarrels and fights among you?

All right, so this has been a common theme that we've been looking at already throughout the book of James.

And and this is obviously there there's battles going on among themselves within the church.

There's all kinds of strife.

And as he asks this question, he actually answers it for them right here.

He says, Is it not this?

He says that your your passions, okay?

Now that word passion, if you want to pause it right there for a second, is is literally the word, if you're you know into Greek, it's it's hedonae.

It's from from which we get the word hedonism from.

All right, so it's the the sinful, selfish, self-indulgent desire for pleasure.

So he asked the question, he says that your passions, okay, hedonistic passions, are at war within you, in inside you, in your heart, and with each other.

Okay, so a lot of battle imagery here, which again gives us more insight into how healthy uh the relationships were among these believers in these churches that he writes to.

But in verse 2 here, he unpacks it even further.

He says, You desire, that word desire means that you've set your heart upon something.

Maybe there's even, as you're thinking about yourself right now, there's something, you know, a purchase that you still want to make this summer.

Something for the backyard, it's it's something to wear, it's clothing, it's whatever, and and you've set your heart on it.

You're like, I want that, I'm I'm driven towards that, and you've got plans to save up for it, or what have you.

That's kind of what he means here.

You desire, you've set your heart on something, you desire and do not have.

So what does he say?

You murder.

Now, I suppose there's like a very remote possibility that James meant that literally.

I mean, I I I guess, right?

We we know that there were you know a lot of, you know, there's a lot of political strife going on uh in this day when this letter was written and around uh to these people, and there were uh certainly you know zealots uh in that area.

And I mean think think Antifa, right?

Think that.

There were zealous people, uh, zealots who were belonging to these political parties and waging war, and there would have been violence and all of that.

And and just imagine that some of these folks would have gotten saved, right?

They would they would have given their lives over to Jesus Christ, they would have repented of their sin and put their faith in him and joined the church.

And so Paul is writing to them, and perhaps there were zealots in the church, but listen, it's unlikely that he meant this this word murder uh literally, and unlikely that Christians were actually killing each other in this way, because you know, even if there were zealots in the church and you know, and they were they were saved, it's not very typical that like-minded zealots would would kill each other.

Okay, so again, it's it's kind of doubtful that he means it uh literally here.

Okay, far more likely the word uh murder is is being used metaphorically, right?

It's being used to describe the death of their relationships with each other because their uncontrolled passions, their desire for you know for pleasure and all of it, it was just going haywire and it was affecting them.

You know, keep going.

He says, You you covet, that's another word, right?

That's longing for something that is not yours.

You ever covet something?

I mean, it's a tenth commandment in Exodus chapter 20, right?

Exodus 20 · chapter mention

That you shall not covet your neighbor's wife or its belongings and all that.

We we often want something that we that is not ours and should not be ours, but he's telling them here, you covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel.

And so these verses, they're really describing the the results of envy, right?

And and we looked at earlier in you know last week in chapter three, you know, bitter jealousy and selfish ambition.

This is another way this was kind of all coming out.

And so James is telling the people, and this is a word for us as well, it says that you know, you have these pent-up, selfish desires within you where you want something that is not right for you to have.

And and and those desires are frustrated because you're not actually getting them.

Your your flesh is not getting what it wants, and and you lack the, remember last week, you lack the godly wisdom, right, necessary to handle yourself in a mature way.

And so what's happening, you're lashing out in relationally destructive ways.

Right?

You fight and quarrel, he says.

And so he's exposing here, because their fruit is showing it.

Just how their spiritual immaturity is causing significant problems between themselves and and others in the church.

But again, he continues in verse 3, take a look.

He says, You do not have because you do not ask.

You ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions.

Now, what exactly were they asking for?

Like, what did they want?

Well, James doesn't exactly spell it out for us, but again, if you look at the context, if you look at the verses all around, right, everything is connected together, it would seem that they, you know, wanted, you know, a kind of a type of earthly, earthly, you know, wisdom.

Remember, we looked at that last Sunday, right?

That that would cause others to think that they're real, real sharp, right?

That they've got understanding and and and it would cause other people to think highly of them.

I mean, earlier, back in chapter one, verse five, he says, if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God.

And now here he's he's saying that there, you know, you're not asking for that.

Or if you are asking, you're asking for self-indulgent reasons, right?

To spend it on your passions.

You're asking selfishly.

Remember how in chapter 3, verse 1, he said that not many of them should become teachers because of the standard that teachers are held to by God.

Well, later in chapter 3, he he contrasts godly wisdom with earthly wisdom.

Okay, so as you kind of think about all this, you put all of this together, it seems pretty clear that what the members of these churches really want, if you want to boil it right down, is they just want their own glory.

They want what they want.

They want to look good.

They want to be smart, they want to win arguments, they want to win battles, they want to be above somebody else, like selfish ambition.

He mentions that multiple times.

They're just taking over and they weren't going after God's glory anymore.

They weren't humbling themselves in repentance as they as they saw that these attitudes were creeping into their hearts.

They're not dealing with that properly before the Lord.

In fact, they're probably blind to it, they don't even realize this is happening.

As a result, the the church is becoming embroiled in this bitter conflict with each other.

And of course, with God.

The relationships with both God and man were at the point of uh seriously being strained.

They were no longer persevering through trials very well.

They were they were hearing the word, but but not doing what it says.

All of that is in chapter one.

They were showing favoritism towards the wealthy elite while marginalizing those who were in need, the poor and the needy.

They weren't expressing much in the way of evidence and fruit of good work that true salvation always produces and always leads to.

That's all chapter two.

We know that they were carving each other to bits, they were trashing each other with their with their tongues and what amounted to nothing more than you know a sinful display of what James calls earthly, unspiritual, demonic, quote unquote wisdom.

All of that is chapter three.

So understand, James is rightly calling these people out.

This is a this is a rebuke in the strongest terms.

Because they're self-indulgent, idolatrous, hedonistic desire, passions, right?

Where they they were they were just out of control.

They were going crazy.

It was causing all this hostility with each other, and ultimately, of course, with the Lord Himself.

So what were they doing?

Well, really, they were behaving exactly like the world around them.

They no longer appeared to be set apart and unique and and and different.

They were just giving in and and and it and it wasn't a good look.

Verse 4, James ramps it up.

Look what he says.

He says, You adulterous people.

Now you look at that and you're like, that's strong, right?

That that's a that's a strong word.

That's a little different than the typical, you know, brothers, my brothers, my my beloved brothers, which he he usually addresses them with.

Right?

We know, we can see that that James has such a heart for these people, uh, these churches, and and he loves them so so greatly.

So so when he calls them adulterers here, as he does, it just it I mean, it just grabs our attention, does it not?

He likens what they're doing here to being unfaithful in in marriage.

Which means he's literally saying, guys, you're cheating on God.

Right?

This is what your sin is doing.

This is what it is.

In the same way that Israel would do when they rejected uh worshiping God, right?

They they decided to to walk away from him and and and and they just you know gave in to their passions and and what their flesh wanted and and and and they whored after pagan nations.

Right?

They just blended with them and they wanted to worship their false gods, their their false idols.

They they they just embraced the world's values around them.

You remember that throughout the Old Testament.

And the Lord's always bringing them back and leading them to repentance and and and disciplining them.

So it was going on in the church here.

Now, Jeremiah chapter 3, verse 20, here's what God says again, speaking to Israel.

Jeremiah 3:20

He says, Surely, as a as a treacherous wife leaves her husband, so you so have you been treacherous to me, O house of Israel.

Right?

It says the commentator Douglas Mu puts it, when Israel's relationship with the Lord is threatened by her idolatry, she can be accused of committing adultery.

This is exactly what these Christians were doing.

And this spiritual adultery is what you and I commit anytime our hearts lead us astray from the Lord, towards you know, trying to satisfy our own fleshly desires, the passions of our of our flesh and our hearts.

And you and I, as very easily deceived people, we are.

We tend to minimize the danger and the foolishness of that, don't we?

We really do.

We're like, ah, it's not a big deal.

I'm just going on one bad website.

Right?

And I, you know, most of the days this week, I, you know, I behave pretty well.

Right?

I I just had one gossiping conversation at church.

I could have had more, like whatever.

Like everyone does it.

Right?

Do you do you see how we we minimize that and and we don't see the data?

We don't we don't think about where this is all going.

We don't think about the end game.

Right?

We don't think about this as ruining our relationship with the Lord primarily, and and it wrecks horizontally relationships with each other.

But look how James continues.

Verse 4 again, he just lays it out.

He says, Do you not know that friendship with the world, right?

Worldliness is enmity or hostility with God.

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

There's not a lot of teaching or instruction that I need to do with that, right?

It's it's just he just lays it out.

Now, friendship in the ancient world, uh, it meant, you know, uh uh, you know, up more, I think, something deeper than what we tend to experience uh in our world today, especially in like our social media age, right?

Where you know so much of it is, you know, so much of our relationships seem to be done online, right?

And we you know friend somebody and you know, we like their posts, their comments, we retweet them, we can instant message back, you know, and forth.

But you gotta ask yourself the question like how how deep are these connections really?

Right?

Like, really, we might have thousands of friends on Facebook, but are we deeply connected to any of them?

Well, back then, and I mean certainly some of this still exists now.

I'm not saying that all of our relationships are you know an inch deep only, but back then, being a friend, it it really meant sharing everything.

Everything, right?

It meant unity.

Unity on physical and and and spiritual levels, levels where they shared everything that they had, lived in community in deeper ways.

Okay, so when James accuses these Christians, these idolatrous, adulterous Christians, of of being friends with the world, the intention would be that they would kind of cringe under the under the conviction of that.

Because they they would immediately know what what that meant.

Right?

It meant that they were being they were guilty of being deeply united or or in allegiance with uh a sinful world.

Okay, that's that's not to say that they or or we always consciously decide to reject God in favor of adultery or you know, or friendship with the world.

You know, I kind of would probably have a hard time believing that any of you walked into here today with like a game plan in place that you logically thought through.

You know, maybe you've got a reminder on your phone where you're like, you know, I'm gonna talk smack about that person.

I'm gonna make sure that I say some really disparaging things to seven people today at church before I I go.

Right?

I don't know that we're that conscious about that kind of stuff, right?

And if we do, God have mercy on us.

Right?

But we don't think about that.

It's just that in this church, I think the same is true with us, their fruit was making it clear that this is what's going on in their hearts.

Maybe more on a subconscious level, but our fruit always reveal what's going on in the heart, right?

Every time.

And again, what's in the heart always spills out in some way into our lives.

Right?

It does.

You can't hide all of that.

What our hearts are, they will produce.

And we have to understand, consciously or or unconsciously, we're responsible for all of it before the Lord.

Now take a look at verse 5 here.

He asks them, he says, or do you suppose that is of it is to no purpose that the scriptures says, now he doesn't give us a direct quote in terms of like where did he find this?

It could be a reference to something like Exodus 20, verse 5, but here's what he says.

Exodus 20:5

He says, He, that's God, he yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us.

Now, the the the spirit itself, the spirit that he has made to dwell in us, is best understood as the life, that the spirit, okay, that that God breathed into mankind uh when he gave Adam life.

Right?

Genesis chapter 2, verse 7.

Genesis 2:7

Okay, so when it says that God yearns jealously over this, you know, the spirit that is is in us, it's to say uh that like as a husband rightly longs for his his wife to be faithful to him in every way, right?

Like, is that too much to ask?

It's not.

So God yearns with a holy and a right jealousy, not a sinful jealousy like you and I experience jealousy, but with a with a holy jealousy, he yearns that we would be faithful to him, right?

That we would love him.

And as those who have been saved from our sin and restored to our Maker through what Christ accomplished, there's there's just such a profound union into what the Lord calls us and draws us into.

And so whenever you and I sin, no matter what the sin is, it violates that union.

Okay, and when we view it in this way, it it kind of what it does is it reinforces the the gravity, the seriousness of sin.

Which if you think about it, it it should overwhelm us a little bit to think about that, should it not?

Right?

It should, because of the fact that man, we're we're such great sinners.

But I love this.

This is why James immediately mentions verse 6.

Take a look.

But he gives more grace.

You see that?

He gives more grace, meaning that God will give us the grace necessary to carry out what he requires of us.

How awesome is that! Or as Augustine puts it uh put it, God gives what he demands.

It's amazing.

God demands that we don't violate our relationship with him by sinning, like he will give us the grace needed to help us with that.

Now, the more you and I, again, kind of realize, wow, like I sin constantly.

Right?

Like every one of us this morning has sinned in some way.

We've given into some kind of selfish desire.

We've maybe popped off at our at our kids or or or what have you, and we think about, man, we do this on a daily basis, constantly, the depth of our pride is so deep.

Right?

As we think about that, the more impressive and and the more awesome and the sweeter that God's grace is to us.

Now he finishes this thought off here with this very well-known last part.

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

That's a quote from Proverbs chapter 2, verse 34.

James challenges us here to consider our response to these things.

First part, I mean, it's just so sobering, isn't it?

If we remain proud, hard-hearted in sin, if we're worldly, God opposes us.

Think about that for a second.

When you and I're we're we're entrenched in in stubborn pride, and we allow this, you know, the the message today is just gonna pass away.

I know I'm not gonna deal with this.

Or or in conviction, we're like, no, I'm I'm gonna continue to insist on my way.

Where there's a a direct or indirect refusal to acknowledge our and see our sin for what it is.

Refusal to yield to the Lord in heartfelt repentance.

This verse is telling us that God actively resists you.

Like there's a lot to process there, isn't there?

There's a lot to think about there.

And so begin to do that.

I mean, I mean, think carefully, think, think honestly uh about the self-indulgent passions that might be at war within you in your own heart or even in your own relationships.

You know, what are the ones that that you struggle with personally?

Right?

It doesn't matter what your neighbor struggles with or how you're seeing it in their life, how are you seeing it in your own?

You know, in in what ways is is is this stuff starting to kind of like slowly leak out of you?

Maybe you're you're trying to pretend and you're and you're wearing the mask and you're trying to act like you've got it all together.

Man, that's exhausting.

Right?

It really is.

Just be honest about it.

We're all there, right?

No one's above anyone here.

Right?

Well, what are the ways though that might be leaking out of you?

Maybe there it it's it's not a it's not a slow trickle, it's a gush.

Right?

It's it's infecting your relationships, it's revealing that you look way more like the world than you do like Jesus.

How is this affecting you?

How is it affecting our church?

Think deeply about this.

How how how's this affecting your home life?

Maybe you're you know you've got roommates, maybe it's in your your marriage or with your children.

How's this affecting your you know the culture at your workplace?

Of course, over and above all of this.

How's this affecting your relationship with the Lord?

At the root of these desires and those passions is a deeply depraved urge to just pursue the you know what I want.

The pleasures of the flesh.

And again, going down that pathway is just flat out incompatible with the salvation that that Christ has graciously given us.

It's worldliness.

It's not what we're to resemble as the church.

We're just not to be at odds with God and man.

Now this leads us right into our next thing here, and we're gonna be moving a little more quickly here, picking up the pace.

But here it is.

I know that I've become worldly when my approach to repentance is merely a shell of what it must be.

Okay, so if God gives grace to the humble, right, we just read that, then I think the pretty obvious move uh that we're to make is to humble ourselves, right?

Humble, get low before the Lord.

Look at verse 7.

It says, submit yourself, therefore, to God.

Submit yourself, right?

We love that word, right?

We love the idea of submission these days.

Submission literally means to put yourself underneath.

Right?

Put yourself underneath, like the protective awning or roof or umbrella of the Lord and the loving guardrails that he has given us.

Right?

Submit yourself to God, put yourself underneath him.

That's that's safety, that's true joy and happiness.

Submit yourself to him.

Resist the devil, he says.

Resist is actually the opposite of submit.

It's it's to it's it's to stand against.

Okay, so we're supposed to submit to the Lord and stand against the devil, the opposite of submission.

And it says there that when we do that, he, the devil, will flee from you.

That's an awesome promise.

Draw near to God, he says.

So return to him, stop straying from him, stop walking towards the world.

And it says that he will draw near, he will he'll return to you.

Cleanse your, notice how he says, hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts.

Okay, so hands and and hearts there signifying the importance of both both uh the actions, right, of our of our hands and and the and the way we live, and and also the attitudes of our hearts.

Both of those need to be holy.

It's not good enough that you would just behave outwardly in a way that looks like it looks very Christian.

Your heart needs to be right in this as well.

The Lord is constantly going after the heart.

We're gonna see this as we go forward.

Okay, so he says, Purify your hearts, you double-minded.

Double-minded again reminds us of what he says in chapter 1, verse 8.

It literally means double-souled, right?

Where you're constantly wavering between two positions.

I'm gonna follow the Lord on Sundays throughout the week, though, I'm just gonna do whatever I want.

Right?

That man is unstable, right?

Double-minded.

Look what he says: be wretched and mourn and weep.

There's strength to this again, right?

But what about just be happy, Pastor?

I thought God exists just to like, you know, fluff up my life and make me happy and and and and and allow me to have all kinds of pleasure.

No.

The Bible is not about you, God doesn't exist to serve you, you exist to serve the Lord.

And if there's something not right in you, you need to be broken about that.

You need to weep and mourn.

He says, let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.

Feel the weight of this.

He says, humble yourself before the Lord, and he will exalt you.

Listen, this is arguably the strongest call to repentance in the entire Bible.

And I think, I think that should be a wake-up call to any church, but I don't care about any church, I care about us as a church, that if our relationships are starting to teeter, if we're starting to harbor bitterness towards somebody, if we're getting lazy in growing our relationships and taking care of each other and and and loving the Lord, we must repent.

We must turn from this.

We have to take this seriously.

We really do.

James leans on them so heavily here, and there comes this strong rebuke because obviously they weren't doing this.

Right?

The gravity of their idolatry and their sin and their spiritual adultery, it appeared to be lost on them.

Right?

They didn't really get it.

The repulsive effects that this was having on their relationships, both with the Lord and with each other, it just wasn't taken seriously enough at all.

It appears that they were they were quite happy, just you know, kind of traipsing along through life, having a harsh conversation about somebody over here, you know, ignoring the poor and the needy, showing favoritism, acting like Christians optically, but heart straying all over the place without really dressing any of it adequately.

That's that was the church.

And honestly, don't we live in that same kind of place far too often?

Right?

When churches split, when marriages crumble, when individuals' sinful habits just spill out into the open for all to see.

Listen, it's it's simply the natural result of what's likely many previous hidden moments of compromise and sin.

It was just simply not taken seriously enough.

You know, like how many of us have you know read something online about a pastor who had a moral failure, right?

A pastor, you know, how how could he fall like that?

You know, or we we hear the story of a of a couple who seem to have it all together.

And how could this end in divorce in the way that it did?

It's so messy.

And we ask these questions.

Listen, it it doesn't just happen like that.

It happens because of many, many moments of compromise.

A pattern of a lack of genuine repentance along the way.

And I and I give in bit by bit over here, and it and it doesn't seem like that big of a deal.

And I'll just try and live extra holy in this other area of life that comes more easily to me.

And as this heart happens, our our heart gets harder and harder.

We become more and more deceived and become more and more blind to our sin and in these other areas without us even realizing it sometimes, fester and fester and get worse and worse and worse.

Listen, church, if if any of us are sitting here today and and and your gut instinct is to think, you know, regarding some of the examples I just gave, man, that that was that would never happen to me.

Right?

That would never happen in in my marriage.

Those sideways relationships that were so toxic, that would never happen in in my small group.

That would never happen in our church.

Listen, if that's what you think, it it's it's time to wake up.

Okay, it is.

Because you might already be on the worldly path that leads to that type of bomb going off.

Okay, so so what am I really getting at here?

Fear the Lord.

Fear the Lord.

Lord, in your mercy, please, Lord, give us a healthy sense of awe and fear as to what can happen if we let our sin and our nonsense and our garbage go on without dealing with it properly.

Lord, help us to care to not sin against you and to sin against people that are made in your image and bring shame to Jesus and the gospel.

Listen, it is time for real heartfelt repentance, no more apathy over something that is so consequential.

If God is so serious about these things, that he would rather give up the innocent life of his son than to see you and I be subjected to his holy wrath, which we deserve, by the way, for eternity in hell, where it's just suffering for all time.

Listen, if he is willing to do that, listen, we better be serious too.

If he takes it seriously, we better take it seriously.

Now, hey, maybe you are.

Hey, praise God.

I I I hope that you are.

Or maybe, man, I kind of I kind of assumed I was, but man, now I'm not so sure.

How exactly do I know what if my repentance is real and if it's if it's effective and it's biblical?

Well, let's take a quick look at this.

You can write these things down, what inadequate repentance looks like.

We've talked about these kinds of things before, but I think it's really, really crucial that you and I learn to spot the counterfeits.

Right?

We need to see what's what's fake so that if this pops up and it's happening in our lives, then we can deal with it.

Here's the first one inadequate repentance, behavior modification instead of heart transformation.

Right?

This one is huge.

Honestly, this one is killing Christian culture in so many churches, in so many Christian schools, in so many families, right?

Where we're really just concerned about the outward behavior that comes out.

And so you think about you think about pornography, for example, you know, and you might come and you might hear a sermon like this, and you start to feel you know a little bit guilty about how you handled yourself online this week.

And so, and so what you do out of that guilt, you're like, you know what, I'm not I'm not gonna do that this week.

I'm I'm gonna behave better, I'm I'm not gonna go to that junk.

And so you you you make this decision and this commitment, and and I'm gonna do that, and I'm gonna delete apps that off my phone that lead me in that direction.

I'm gonna get some software on my computer that kind of helped protect me, and those things can be really great, and those might be necessary steps.

But if all you're focused on is the behavior of actually going and doing that, what's gonna happen?

And so many of us have have experienced this already.

Over time, that that guilt that we felt in a sermon, or that guilt that we, you know, is just plaguing us, that that goes away.

Right?

That guilt doesn't continue, and pretty soon we're like, nah, I don't really care as much as I cared a week ago.

And so what's gonna happen?

You're gonna fall back into it.

Why?

Because you haven't dealt with the heart.

Right?

The heart has not been addressed.

You haven't dealt with the sinful desire that is raging around in you.

Right?

You you you haven't.

That's the problem.

And that's what the gospel addresses, right?

The gospel addresses the heart.

The gospel goes after this.

God, Christ, he's going after the heart entirely.

He doesn't care about how you act if it's a bunch of garbage and it doesn't actually reflect what Christ wants your heart to look like.

Your heart needs to be redeemed, it needs to be transformed.

Changing a few outward behaviors doesn't get to the heart of your problem.

What's the heart of your problem?

The problem of your heart.

Right?

Proverbs chapter 4, verse 23 says, Keep your heart with all vigilance, watch for it, for from it flow the springs of life.

Proverbs 4:23

From your heart flows everything, every behavior that you've engaged in this week comes from some kind of heart belief.

Is your heart healthy?

Is your heart in submission to Christ?

Is it being renewed?

Is it being restored?

Behavior modification.

So done with that.

Right?

It's nothing, it's inadequate.

It's not repentance.

How about this one?

Thinking that I have the innate ability to repent.

That's another huge one that people are very mistaken about.

You know, I get it.

As a pastor, I'm constantly urging as we look at the scriptures, I'm constantly urging us to repentance.

Hey, turn from sin, repent of sin.

And we need to.

But do you understand that on your own you can't do it?

Even that.

Well, if I just like, you know, say some magic words and I, you know, pray my apology to the Lord, then I'm all good.

I've repented.

But have you ever found that like five minutes later you go right back to what you so-called supposedly repented of?

Again, some of that is because the heart isn't changed.

But it's also that we need the Lord to lead us to repentance.

Right?

Romans chapter 2, verse 4 says, God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance.

Romans 2:4

See how the Lord leads us there?

It's the kindness of the gospel.

We're such wretched fools.

And yet Christ is like, you know what, I'm gonna sacrifice myself for you.

You don't deserve this.

You've done nothing but spit on me, and yet I love you, anyways.

There's so much kindness in that.

Do you see that?

That is meant to lead us towards repentance.

It's his work, what he has done.

2 Timothy 2, verse 25.

2 Timothy 2:25

God may perhaps grant them repentance.

The Lord grants it.

How incredible is that.

He's getting his heart to the right place by grace after he had uh had uh committed adultery with with Bathsheba and had her husband killed.

I mean, it was a disaster, it was a mess, right?

And he says, he says this create in me a clean heart, oh God.

Lord, would you create the clean heart?

I can't do it.

My heart's a cesspool.

I'm at I'm at your mercy.

Right?

Two verses later, he says, renew a right spirit within me.

He actually says that in verse 10.

Renew a right spirit in me.

You give, Lord, would you give me the desire?

A right spirit that wants to follow you, that wants to obey you, that wants to live for you, that wants to love you more than I love myself and my sin.

Would you renew that in me?

Here's the two verses later part, verse 12b.

He says, Uphold me with a willing spirit.

Lord, I need you to lift me up with a with a willing spirit that wants to follow you.

You see how the Lord is active in repentance and grants it and leads us there.

Listen, we need his mercy.

If you're feeling like, man, I don't even feel like repenting and I can't do it.

That's perfect.

You need to understand that.

So what's my move?

Fall at his feet.

Cry out to him.

Some pathetic, casual.

I'm sorry, God, I know that wasn't a great week.

It's not great.

It's not real repentance, that's for sure.

How about this?

Third one worldly sorrow instead of godly sorrow.

A lot of our so-called repentance looks like this.

Here's what 2 Corinthians 7 verse 10 says, for godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret.

2 Corinthians 7:10

I want that.

But then it says this whereas worldly grief produces death.

Often what we call repentance is just straight up, I'm sorry that I got caught.

Right?

Something came out in my life, and now it's affecting the people around me, my loved ones, and they're hurt and they're upset, which causes me to be upset.

And Lord, sorry for it's it's weeping, it's tears, all the optical things that you that that true repentance should be, but it it's it's caring far more about the consequences to you.

And how this has made your life more complicated and difficult, as opposed to the godly sorrow of what this does to your relationship with Christ.

Fourth one.

Unwillingness to come totally clean.

This is where you know so-called repentance just goes part way.

You know, I'm I'm willing to say, you know, some of what's wrong with me.

I'm willing to talk to somebody, but maybe not the right person.

I'm still hiding that part that I'm particularly ashamed of, that part that I haven't even quite processed very well myself.

So in this, there's a lack of transparency.

It's hiding some of the sin.

Maybe it's isolating yourself from accountability, where people, you know, God has given us the church to help us, lead us towards restoration.

I want to just, I want to be on my own.

I can do this myself.

That's not true repentance.

Psalm 32, verse 3 says, For when I kept silent in regards to sin, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.

Psalms 32:3

Ugh, right?

That sounds bad.

But again, we we we've done that.

No, I I can still manage this.

I don't need to tell anybody, I don't need to come clean.

And then over time, you just feel your heart getting harder and more awful, and there's a lack of peace and a lack of joy, and and I don't I don't even want the things of Christ like I used to, but because again, we're so deceived, we tend to blame other people for it.

No, it's because there's something wrong with you know that person in the church or the church or the leadership or whatever.

But maybe it's your unwillingness to come totally clean about what's going on in your heart.

Fifth one, final one.

Here's what inadequate repentance looks like.

No biblical fruit produced over time.

Okay, this is the person who has their theology dialed in.

They know the Bible inside and out.

I know the scriptures, I know the Psalm 51s, I've I know the Psalm 32s, I know the epistles, I know all of it, I can recite theology, I can wow you with all of it, and I know how to say the right things, and and I can appear repentant, and I can, you know, I'll go get help, and it's all of that, but but it's still over time, there's no real fruit being produced.

There's no fruit bearing fruit in keeping with repentance, which is Luke 3, 8.

Now again, I say that produced over time.

Transformation and repentance and growth and all of those things, it is a lifelong process.

But if listen, if you know how to say the right words, and the more you understand your Bible, the longer you've been in church, the more conversations you have with people, the know you're the more you're gonna know the Christianese.

The more you could pull the wool over people's eyes and make it look like you're super godly and all of that.

But if there's no actual fruit being produced, it's nothing.

It's nothing.

It's not real repentance.

So much of what passes for repentance these days is merely a shadow, right?

It's a shell of what it must be.

God have mercy on us.

God, do the work necessary in our hearts.

Overcome our pride, overcome our arrogance, overcome our blindness.

Final thing.

I know I've become worldly when my judgmental attitude reveals a significant failure to love.

Okay, verse 11, going quickly, do not speak evil, he says, against one another, brothers.

Okay, so he's back into call, like brothers, right?

Now, speaking evil, you know, talking slander and harmful speech towards others.

He says, the one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother speaks evil against the law and judges the law.

What's that about?

Well, you remember the royal law that we we talked about, we discussed, we saw it back in uh chapter two, verse eight.

The royal law, you know, essentially is to love your neighbor as yourself.

Okay, so if you have a harsh and condemning and you know judgmental attitude towards your neighbor, towards your brother, your your words and and your actions have automatically vaulted you into this position of being arrogantly above your neighbor.

I'm above my brother instead of loving them.

Right?

And it says that you're actually in the position of judging the law, right?

You're you're judging the Bible itself, which at its very heart says to love your neighbor.

Right?

And continues.

He says, but if but if you judge the law, you're not a doer of the law, but a judge.

Makes sense.

You're not obeying it.

You're you're acting like you're above it, and not just the law, but by extension, God himself.

Verse 12, there is only one lawgiver and judge.

Yeah, guess who?

It says, He who is able to save and to destroy.

But who are you to judge your neighbor?

He's like, You're not you're not the Lord, man.

This God complex that you have that's that's what you have when you're tearing people down.

You're judging other people and thinking you're superior to them and they're below you.

You're not the Lord.

Like you're you're not better than anyone else.

You need forgiveness and transformation as much, maybe more than the person that you're being judgmental towards.

So again, it's fear of the Lord and the repent, in the humility of repentance.

A judgmental, you know, high and mighty, looking down your nose at other people, while you know, self-righteously designed, you know, denying your own need for Christ type attitude.

There's just no room for that in the church.

There's no place for it in a genuine Christian's heart.

We of all people should know again just how wretched and depraved we all are.

And again, appreciate what Jesus went through on the cross to cleanse us from that.

And not just us, and not just for us, but for the very people that we're prone to judge.

The playing field is it's flat, it's level.

We're all we're all there.

None is righteous, no, not one.

Stop thinking you are.

Like, who are we to think that we're better than the person sitting next to us?

The presence of that judgmental attitude, which again is a sign of worldliness, it transforms as we press more deeply into the cross.

As we stop and we consider and we meditate and we think and we pray through and just express our gratitude for what Jesus has done.

I want to pray for us right now.

And as I do that, I want to be reminded, you know, not just our minds, but uh, but our hearts too of of the Lord, of the gospel, and that that would lead us to repentance.