Lesson Nine: Why don't we have peace? Pt.2

Adulterous people:

4You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of
God.

In the Old Testament, God often describes Himself as the husband of His people. And the New Testament calls the Church the Bride of Christ. (see below for specific scripture references.)

Thus, to pursue the world's pleasure is to commit adultery against our true husband. When we do, we place our focus on things that are seen, rather than what is unseen, which is lacking faith. We love our stuff more than God. But we cannot serve both God and Mammon. Therefore, James calls this spiritual adultery, or having an adulterous heart.

But Remember -- the big point is -- He is Our Husband
(Even Though We Have Adulterous Hearts)
Surely, to be prone to spiritual adultery is very Bad News. In our culture, a husband would most likely start divorce proceedings on the spot if his wife committed adultery. In the ancient Hebrew culture of the Old Testament world, an adulterous wife would be put to death by stoning.

However, the good news is that our spiritual Husband is Jesus Christ! If we trust in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, He is our "jealous husband." He continues to pursue our love even though we have very unfaithful hearts.

The Holy Spirit enables us to do battle with the sinful desires that rage within us against our grace-driven desire to love our Lord and Savior. God's grace through Christ ABOUNDS to us when we are willing to humble ourselves and submit to God's law and rule over our lives. When we do, this is when we are most satisfied and our Godly desires or pleasures are met in Him.

5 Or do you think Scripture says without reason that the spirit he caused to live in us envies intensely? 6 But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble."

7Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.

Supporting Scriptures:
OLD TESTAMENT-

Hosea 3:1

1 The LORD said to me, "Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another and is an adulteress. Love her as the LORD loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods."

Isaiah 62

Ezekiel 16

Jeremiah 31:32 It will not be like the covenant
I made with their forefathers
when I took them by the hand
to lead them out of Egypt,
because they broke my covenant,
though I was a husband to them, "
declares the LORD.

NEW TESTAMENT

Eph 5:25 "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, 27a nd to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.

Rev 19:7 "Let us rejoice and be glad
and give him glory!
For the wedding of the Lamb has come,
and his bride has made herself ready."

Rev 21:2 "I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband."


For More Help on How to Have Peace with God, Peace with Others, and Peace Within, Visit Peacemaker Ministries:
Getting to the Heart of the Conflict
Peacemaking Principles

Lesson Five, Part 2: The Royal Law

James 2: 8 If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, "Love your
neighbor as yourself,"you are doing right. 9 But if you show favoritism, you sin
and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers. 10 For whoever keeps the whole law
and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it. 11 For he
who said, "Do not commit adultery," also said, "Do not murder." If you do not
commit adultery but do commit murder, you have become a lawbreaker.

12 Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that
gives freedom, 13 because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has
not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment!

The Royal Law
To love our neighbors as ourselves. When we break this law, we break the heart of the law of God toward others. If we show favoritism to the powerful or wealthy, we are sinning against the very heart of God.

Study Guide note (page 57)
"Christ's law offers us the power to obey it, so it frees us from guaranteed condemnation ( Romans 8:1-13). When we stand before Christ's judgment seat, we cannot plead that we are unable to obey the royal law. By commiting ourselves to Christ we freely pledge to obey Him, so we cannot claim that His law is a harsh burden imposed on us. Our freedom as God's children and friends means more responsibility than when we were slaves to sin.

Law and grace are not contradictory. God gave Israel the Ten Commandments after He graciously liberated the people from slavery in Egypt. The laws were a gift to show how the redeemed should live. Likewise, after God frees us by grace from slavery to sin and death, He gives us commandments by which we may live our lives in true freedom. If we ignore these laws, eventually we will fall back into slavery to sin.

Illustration
In March 2007, Muskegon, Michigan residents Christine Bouwkamp and Kyle Kramer got married. The ceremony was traditional, but their reception was something else. Instead of hosting a formal reception, the couple took the money they would have spent on a reception for 150 wedding guests and bought 5,000 pounds of food. Then they put their 150 guests to work and had them unload the food from a truck to help feed 120 neighborhood families.

"We decided the first thing we wanted to do as husband and wife is to serve others," said Christine. "We thought about not just feeding our guests, but also the neighborhood."
Immediately after they exchanged their vows, Bouwkamp and Kramer put on aprons marked "Bride" and "Groom" and worked with their guests.

The couple met a year earlier while working on a committee for a ministry that conducts outreach to the neighborhood. Christine was a single mother of two daughters. Kyle had battled drug addiction and graduated from the Muskegon Rescue Mission's discipleship program.

"Both of their lives have radically changed," said Pastor Gary Sherwood. "People who haven't seen them for a while will recognize them by the way they look on the outside, but they won't recognize them on the inside."

When asked about the charitable act, the happy couple simply said they wanted to "bless God for blessing us with each other."
(reference: Devotional Email by Peter Kennedy)


Meditation and Application
Why is it personally important to you that "mercy triumphs over judgment" (verse 2:13)?
How can we begin this week to take the truth of James 2:1-13 to heart and put it into practice?

When we are demonstating love toward others, people see the glory of the Jesus Christ. Today in prayer, praise the Lord for His love towards you and love others.

Intro Part 2

More introduction material from our study guide:

On purpose:
Most of the epistles deal with solving problems and amending errors among early Christians/Churches. "James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ" (1:1) wrote this letter as a message to Christians to correct a distortion of the gospel: the idea that spiritual rebirth meant we could remain babies forever. He exhorted Christians to maturity.

More on authorship:
As mentioned previously, there were a number of Jameses around the early church. However, most scholars, including the ones who wrote our study guide, attribute the letter to James, the Lord's brother, who is mentioned in Galations 1:19. He was also known as "James the Just" or "the Righteous" by both Christians and non-Christians.

Faith Vs. Works?
Many modern Christians have tried to set up a dichotomy between James and Paul, with the misunderstanding that James was written as a response to Paul's "justification by faith alone." However, this view fails several tests. First, James died in 62AD and most likely would never have had the opportunity to read Paul, who wrote the book of Romans about 57AD. In addition, tradition has James' letter dated at around 45AD. Even with a later dating of the letter, it is highly unlikely that Paul's writings would have been available for James to study. Furthermore, James never addresses any of Paul's teachings nor does he quote Paul at all.

Instead, James's epistle is an exhortation to live what we believe and not to disregard God's moral law - a distortion that Paul also fought against in Romans 6.

The Gospel
Nonetheless, James is as much about the gospel as is the book of Matthew. In fact, when we look at Chapter 2, we will see the parallels with the Sermon on the Mount.

Do you often feel like a "practical atheist"? Maybe you don't think so. I sure don't think this way on my own, but in light of God's Word, I can see that I really do fall short of treating people as God would have me to, of loving others, of bridling the tongue, of a whole host of words and deeds. In truth, if I really believed consistently and perfectly in a holy and just God, my life would look differently. James will challenge us to leave our roles of the "practical atheist" behind.

While James does not discuss the doctrines of Christ, he does focus on the character of God and who we are called to be as his children/new creations. James takes for granted that the audience is rooted in the gospel, in our union with Christ in His death and His resurrection. He goes straight to the practical: Here is precisely how to live in light of the gospel.

James's letter is a vigorous call to a tested, mature faith to which we may say, Amen!

Read the book through one time and take a look at the overview Chapter, if you have time. I will post up some of the questions next week.