An Antidote for Selfishness James 4:1-12
1What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? 2You want something but don't get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. 3When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. 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. 5Or do you think Scripture says without reason that the spirit he caused to live in us envies intensely?
6But 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. 11Brothers, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against his brother or judges him speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it. 12There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you—who are you to judge your neighbor?
This week there was utter chaos as an angry Virginia Tech student laid siege on his fellow classmates and then turned the gun on himself. Some sixty three students were either killed or wounded in this senseless slaughter of human life by a young man who lived his life thinking he’d been despised by the world. His final act of hate caused me to think about the terrible battle that this young man was fighting inside his soul.
I am reminded that in hundreds to thousands of other places hearts were broken, dreams were crushed, lives were drastically altered, other people were physically wounded and many other lives were lost.
Why? Because of jealousy, greed and hatred that was developed from the seed of selfishness in the heart of Satan as he rebelled against God almighty and fell to his doom with on third of the angels. He said,"I will be like the Most High!" He found out, just as all of us should, that we cannot replace the Living God with ourselves.
James has something to say about that:
1. The cause is our own selfish desires.
A. We want something that we cannot have.
B. We quarrel and fight (at times with ourselves)
C. We do not receive.
2. The reason we do not receive:
A. We don’t ask God
B. We ask for the wrong reasons
C. We become so earthly minded that we become of no heavenly good.
Question: What is adultery in our relationship with God?
Answer: It is any time we let anything or anyone take the central significant place in our lives.
I read somewhere that a man had built a huge business. He had an entrepreneurs spirit. When he was a just a young boy he had a lemonade stand. He would give the first glass to every customer free and then sell the antidote to them for five dollars a glass.
Here’s the antidote for selfishness from James and it won’t cost you anything.
1. Submit to God.
2. Resist the devil.
3. Come near to God.
4. Wash your hands of sin (outward remedy).
5. Purify your heart of double-mindedness (inward remedy).
6. Grieve and mourn: Instead of laughing about your sin be sad and remorseful about it.
7. Humble yourselves before God.
8. Do not slander one another (some people have forgotten what slander is).