In today’s episode, we delve into James chapter 4, exploring themes such as worldliness, quarrels, resisting the devil, and the dangers of boasting about tomorrow. Speaker Alan J. Huth shares insights from decades of personal Bible reading, providing listeners with practical applications and reflections that resonate deeply with everyday life challenges. By drawing near to God and resisting the devil, we learn how to navigate life’s quarrels with humility and grace.
Welcome to Add Bible, an audio daily devotion from the Ezra Project. Allen J. Huth shares a Bible passage with comments from over 35 years of his personal Bible reading journals and applies the Word of God to our daily lives.
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Today we reach James chapter 4. We’re going to learn about worldliness, quarrels, resisting the devil, and boasting about tomorrow. Let’s listen in to Faith Comes By Hearing’s recording of James chapter 4.
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James 4 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 ask 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 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. 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 to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor? Come now, you who say, today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit. Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, if the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that. As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So, whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.
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In 1990, when I read James chapter 4, I wrote, Seeking pleasure with wrong motives can cause quarrels and conflict and unanswered prayers. Submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. God is sovereign and will create our futures. Seek God’s will. And then I wrote, Definition of sin, not doing what I know is right. In the year 2000, after I read James chapter 4, I wrote in my personal Bible reading journal, underlining nearly the whole chapter, James is such a good and practical book. And then I quoted, you do not have because you do not ask. And that was verse 2. Then we ask, with wrong motives, are pleasures not God’s good? I continue to write, be friends with God, not with the world. Be humble, not proud. Submit to God. Resist the devil. Both take action on our part. And then I finish with this, for what is life but a vapor? I learned that this year with Sarah. Live if the Lord wills. Do good. Avoid sin. By the way, in reference to that journal in 2000, Sarah was Terry’s mom and she’d passed away. In 2015, I read James chapters 3 and 4 on the same day. Concerning James 4, I wrote, What causes fights? Selfish ambition and bitter jealousy, desires and coveting. Friendship with the world is enmity with God. They are opposites, double-minded, can’t have it both ways. Choose whom you will serve, God or man. I continued to write, Submit yourselves to God. Draw near to God. Resist the devil. I finished with, Is God against planning? And I was referring to verses 13 through 17. And I quoted, You do not know what tomorrow will bring. And then I wrote, no, plan as if it is if the Lord wills. That ends my journal entries for James chapter 4, so let’s take a look at this exciting chapter. Are you fighting with anybody? Do you have quarrels right now going on in your life? What causes these kind of things? James gives us some insight. How about when our passions and our desires go unfulfilled or unmet? James gives us an answer. He says at the end of verse 2, we’re focused on the wrong place to get those desires and those passions fulfilled. He says it this way, 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. He’s saying we need to check our passions and our desires, see what the motives are behind them, and if they’re pure motives, ask of the Lord. Don’t look to others. Don’t hold others responsible for fulfilling your passions and your desires. Look to God. To check our passions, he goes on with the next couple of verses. 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. So what’s the root of our passion, our desire? Is it to keep up with the world or keep up with the Lord? There’s a practical application right here in James 4. Check who your friends are. Is it the world or is it the Lord? Who do you look to to fulfill your passions and your desires? If your friendship is misplaced, praise God, verse 6 says, he gives more grace. God opposes the proud, but he gives grace to the humble. So switch your allegiance today. Switch it from the world to the Lord. 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. That’s our challenge, isn’t it? Who are we friends with? The world or or the Lord. James gives us powerful instructions here. Submit to God. Have you done it? Can you do it? Can you live a life of submission to God Almighty? I hope so. It’s a great place to live. The next powerful instruction is to resist the devil. Can you do it? Can you resist the temptations of your own desires and your own passions? James gives us a guarantee. If we resist the devil, the devil will flee from us. Oh, let that be so in our lives. But I wrote in one of my journals, it’s an action step. It takes action to resist the devil and his temptations. The next powerful instruction is to draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Can you do it? Can you draw closer and closer to the Lord? How? How about daily Bible reading and prayer? So let’s review these things. Submit yourselves to God. Resist the devil. Draw near to God. Those are the answers to quarreling and fighting among each other. James gets stronger. 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. All these are action steps we need to take. Practical applications of how to live life in our world today. He goes on to say, do not speak evil against one another, brothers. That too will eliminate quarrels and fighting among us. James reminds us, who are we to judge our neighbors? And he closes by putting life in perspective. He says in verse 14, what is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Oh, we make a big deal out of life, don’t we? To God, it’s a mist. We’re a vapor. On the scale of eternity, our sojourn on the earth is minimal. I pray our practical application from this is to focus on the afterlife more than this life. The things we do here determine how we’re going to spend those years of eternity. So James finishes with this instruction. Instead, you ought to say, if the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that. Yes, we ought to get in tune with what God wants out of our sojourn on the earth. What is His will for our lives? Have you ever asked? Have you ever taken time to seek the Lord and ask Him what He wills for your life? He created us. He wove us together in our mother’s wombs. He says in Psalm 37 verses 3 and 4, Trust in the Lord and do good. Dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness. Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord. Trust in Him and He will act. Yes, we ought to discover the Lord’s will. We ought to live like James instructs us. If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that. And if we trust in him, he will give us the desires of our heart. Those passions and those desires we started this chapter with. Praise the Lord for the practical applications to life we find here in James chapter 4. Reduce quarrels and fighting by seeking the Lord’s will for our lives. Trade our friendship with the world for friendship with the Lord. Submit ourselves to God. Resist the devil. Draw near to God. And seek His will for our lives. Father, we thank you that the words we read today are just as alive as when you instructed James to write them down. These instructions are worth incorporating into our lives. Holy Spirit, help us submit to God, resist the devil, draw near to you, and seek your will for our lives. Then when we ask, you will answer because we’ll have the right motives. Praise God, from whom all blessings flow. Praise him, all creatures here below. Praise him among ye heavenly hosts. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen. Thanks for listening to AdBible today. We started on radio on October 1st, 2024. I hope you noticed some differences in AdBible from other programs. For example, we are fully committed to the Word of God. That’s why we play full chapters on the air, not sound bites. It takes a lot of our program time, but it’s my belief it’s more important for you to hear the Word of God than me. You may also have figured out by now I’m not a pastor, just a layman like most of you. So these recordings are not based on sermons. They’re based on my personal walk through the Bible over several decades of my life. Therefore, AdBible is a unique perspective of how the Bible impacts life, not a teaching series you get at your church. I share personal Bible reading journal entries from my life, from my journals, I’ve never thought would ever be shared with anybody. What I share are raw, authentic notes from Bible intersections of my own life. My life is no different from yours, so I hope the stories and applications I share are relevant to your life as well. I hope you are enjoying this unique radio program and therefore will help us stay on the air. We have so much more to share. Visit EzraProject.net and donate today. Or send a check to the Ezra Project 1399 South Havana Street, Suite 201E, Aurora, Colorado, 80012. That’s Ezra Project 1399 South Havana Street, Suite 201E, Aurora, Colorado, 80012. When you do, I will send you your first copy of A Day by Day Through the Bible book. There are 11 books in the series, so I will surprise you with one of my choosing. 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