Fins
James 4:7-10
If
you’ve been a Christian for any length of time, you probably know
the feeling of being surrounded by temptation like a swimmer
surrounded by a school of sharks.
Can’t
you see them circling? Can
you see them schooling around?
All
those sins you struggled with seem to surround you, beaconing you to
shuck your faith and give into their lure. From the small ones, such as
the temptation to yell at your children because they are taking their
time getting ready for church rather than treating them like God’s
precious children to the large ones such as exaggerating something on
your taxes—not a lie really just an expansion of the truth, suddenly
it seems like you have more temptation to sin than ever before! Lust, criticism, gossip,
gluttony, racism, drunkenness, laziness . . . you name your own sinful
tendency . . . suddenly
every social gathering, every TV show, every thought seems to find a
way of calling you to ignore God’s teaching and enter back into sin.
What’s
a Christian to do?
The
Letter of James has some advice for us:
7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the
devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Draw near to God,
and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and
purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Lament and mourn and weep. Let your laughter
be turned into mourning and your joy into dejection. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he
will exalt you.
What’s
a Christian to do about temptation?
Well, according to James, we should submit ourselves to God by
drawing near to God. We should resist the devil. Finally, we should
cleanse our hands and purify our hearts.
Today we will explore what that might look like in our daily
lives.
First,
submit yourself to God. This is the first and most
important step because it is the step on which the other two depend.
The
problem is that we live in a broken world. Most everyone, even those who
don’t believe in God or any sort of higher power, will agree on this
point. Christians call
this original sin.
You
know the story, God creates humankind and places them in the garden.
Everything is given to them and the only command is that they don’t
eat the fruit from the tree of good and evil. All is well, until the day Adam
and Eve take a bite, then everything falls apart. To make matters worse, the
problem isn’t just that all those years ago Adam and Eve chose
badly, but that every person in every generation since then has
continued to make wrong choices. The end result is a broken,
hurting world where temptation abounds and all of us participate.
We
know things are wrong and we long for the world to be set right. We know that God must be
displeased, so we strive to make it right—to save the world and
ourselves.
Herein
lies one of the greatest and most dangerous temptations for religious
folks—the temptation to think that we can live a life pleasing to
God by our own efforts. The
history of both Judaism and Christianity point to temptation to think
that we can earn our salvation by following rules and avoiding the
appearance of sin.
I
say avoid the appearance of sin because the only way an honest
person can convince themselves that they are without sin is if they
limit their understanding of a holy life to a life lived by following
the rules and sin to the willful breaking of the rules. However, sin is much bigger and
more complicated than that simple understanding. Moreover, a life of holiness is
much more demanding than simply following rules. The command is demanding: love God with all your
heart, mind, soul and strength and your neighbor as yourself. Anything less than that0 is
sin. So again and again
and again, we humans fall into sin until we despair of any hope for
salvation.
The
Apostle Paul puts it this way in the book of Romans:
14We
know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave
to sin. 15I do not understand what I do. For what I want to
do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16And if I do what I
do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17As it
is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18I
know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature.
For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it
out. 19For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the
evil I do not want to do--this I keep on doing. 20Now if I
do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is
sin living in me that does it. Romans 7:14-20
Paul
often uses the image of slavery to talk about the relationship between
humans and sin. By our
nature, we are enslaved to sin. And by ourselves, we will never be
able to break free of its grip no matter how hard we try to follow the
rules and get it right.
But
thanks be to God, that isn’t the end of the story!
The
good news is that because of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus
Christ, sin, death and evil have been defeated. The chains of slavery
are broken and sin no longer controls us!
Not
that sin, death and evil cease to exist or to impact us, but they no
longer have control over us—as long as we abide in God. Thanks to the work of God
within us through the power of the Holy Spirit, we can resist
temptation.
That’s
why when Methodist ministers are ordained and we are asked the
historic Wesleyan questions related to living a holy and upright lives
that we do not answer simply, “We will” but rather we answer “We
will with the help of God!”
The
answer to temptation is not to try harder but to pray harder. Jesus
himself taught us to pray “lead us not into temptation, but deliver
us from evil.”
When
surrounded by sharks, we need to admit we can’t defeat them on our
own! We need the power of
God.
Resist
the Devil
Here
is where some folks think Paul in Romans and James in his letter
disagree. Paul says we can’t resist the devil on our own and James
calls on us to resist the devil and temptation. However, they are making
different (but very important) points.
Paul wants us to recognize that we can’t save ourselves and
James wants us to realize that once we are saved we have to take
responsibility for our actions.
Once
the waters of baptism touch your head, no longer can you simply excuse
yourself by saying , “the devil made me do it!” because the devil
no longer has control of you. With God on your side and the Holy
Spirit at work in your life, you can make good choices. What’s more you should know
better than to swim with sharks. But amazingly, some folks jump back
in the pool again and again.
I
used to feel sorry for the young girl in our song. Here she is moving from place
to place looking for peace and quiet, but wherever she goes she is
stalked by the sharks. In
fact, when Rocky recommended adding this song to the sermon series, I
thought what a wonderful idea! I
know that feeling! Then
I began to pay attention to the words and I noticed something very
important! This girl’s problem is that she is continually jumping
into pools of sharks! They
aren’t following her. She is finding them!
Sadly,
I find this is very true for many people. Again and again, they place
themselves in the midst of temptation and then wonder why they fall!
But
we humans are so good at rationalizing why it is okay to jump in the
shark pool! From the
mistaken belief that we are somehow protected from sharks to the
mistaken idea that we can somehow transform the sharks, we convince
ourselves that it is okay to walk straight into temptation because of
some greater good.
She
was 17, attractive and smart. At
our youth group on Sunday evenings, she would often relate the events
of the weekend to me. All
too often, they involved her being in a place she shouldn’t be with
a group of stoned and drunk friends.
She assured me that she didn’t participate in their
activities. And when I
asked why she was present, she would say to the effect of “They need
a designated driver. And besides I try to talk then out of doing those
things.” When I tried to
convince her that she was swimming with sharks, she refused to admit
the danger. Like the young
girl in the song, she continued to move from shark pool to shark pool
never realizing the danger.
He
sat in my office and confessed his attraction to her. Both of them
were married and both were struggling in their marriages. At first, everything was very
innocent. They simply
shared their problems with a kindred soul. They talked when they found
time alone. But mainly
since they were always surrounded by other church members, they
e-mailed. They shared
their frustrations and their pain. They supported each other. Their friendship turned into an
emotional intimacy that drew both of them to each other and was
dangerously close to turning into a physical relationship. When I suggested that he was
swimming with sharks and that he needed to get out of the pool, he
told me how much she needed someone to support her. I told him he was correct, but
that he could not be the one to support her. After all, he was circling
around her looking awfully hungry! Thankfully, both saw the sharks
circling around and they jumped out of the pool.
He
was in ICU after a drug overdose.
At one point the night before, we hadn’t been sure he would
make it through the night. He’d
been at a party and took a dangerous combination of drugs. He said he was ready to change
his life and I had to share a hard truth that I’m sure he heard
again and again in rehab. If
he wanted to change his life, he had to find a new group of friends. He couldn’t keep hanging out
with folks who took drugs if he wanted to stay off the drugs himself. As soon as he left the
hospital, the sharks would start circling and he had to make a choice
whether to swim with them or not.
When
we find ourselves in a pool surrounded by sharks and temptation, the
wisest course of action is to avoid that place in the future!
I’m
reminded of a skit from the TV Show “Hee Haw.” A patient goes to the doctor
and informs the doctor that he has broken his arm in two places and
the doctor responds, “Well
then, stay out of them places!”
We
can’t pray for God not to lead us from temptation and to deliver us
from evil and then jump right back into those places! As James reminds us, we must
resist the temptation to do wrong.
Cleanse our hands and purify our
hearts
Finally,
God calls us to have clean hands and pure hearts. By our baptism, we are washed
clean. Our hands are cleansed and our hearts are purified as a result
of God’s steadfast love and unmerited grace. So why would we want to
jump back in the pool and sully what God has made clean?
Truthfully,
while we may want to blame the devil or demons for our temptations,
all too often we find ourselves tempted by the very things we choose
to dwell on—to think and fantasize about.
This
weekend our youth spent a lot of time reflecting on what it means to
dwell on God. The theme
verse for this weekend was Philippians 4:8:
Finally,
beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just,
whatever is pure , whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if
there is excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think
about these things.
One
of the best ways to avoid temptation and avoid the sharks is to dwell
on the things of God rather than on things that are false,
dishonorable, unjust, impure, unpleasant and unworthy of praise. We often remind children and
youth of this truth, but how often do we actually apply it to our
daily lives. How often do
you use this rule to determine what you watch on TV and the movies,
which events and parties you attend, or how you spend your money and
your time? When you
have a few moments alone, where does you allow your mind to wander?
Do
you dwell on the things of God? Or
do you dwell on those things which dirty your hands and pollute your
soul?
Be
honest with yourself and with God and ask yourself do you prefer the
company of the sharks to the company of God?
Which
do you choose?
I
realize that many of you were raised in Christian traditions that
teach once saved always saved. That’s
not a teaching of the Methodist church and it is surely not something
that I believe. Scripture
shows and experience proves that God does allow us to make choices. We can chose to follow God or
we can chose to follow something or someone else. We can choose to dwell in God
or we can chose to dwell on the temporary things of this world. We get to chose. That is why swimming with
sharks is dangerous business, because the sharks can eat you up—if
you chose to rely on your own resources and hang out with the sharks.
But
the good news is that for those who give their lives to God, the
chains are broken. As
long as we submit our lives to God, the Holy Spirit dwells within us
and gives us the power to say no to temptation when it comes our way
and the wisdom to dwell on things of God.
So
which do you choose? Do
you choose to dwell in the shark pool? Or do you choose to dwell with
our gracious and loving God?
God
is calling you to choose life by dwelling in God’s presence.
But
the choice is yours!
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