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Northview Church in Kodak, TN exists to point people to the love of Jesus Christ and help people fall in love with Jesus and love others.
Hope everybody had a great Fourth of July and hope you're ready to dig in to the word today. We're continuing our walk through the book of James. I know it seems like we're never going to get through this book, does it? We still got a few weeks left. James has so much stuff in here and I've been thoroughly enjoying this look at James while also hating every second of it because he beats you up through this whole thing.
Pastor Greg:Twenty six years ago, a pastor by the name of John Piper. Have you all heard of John Piper before? Some of you have heard of John Piper before. He's a pretty famous pastor. Twenty six years ago, he preached what would become probably his most famous sermon.
Pastor Greg:If you've been with me long enough coming to Northview Church, you've heard me talk about this message before because he left a mark on me when I heard it the first time but it's worth coming back to it again because it has so much to say. It was in the spring twenty six years ago. John Piper stood in front of thousands of college students. Kinda like what today, you would know of as the passion conference. As a matter of fact, I believe this was the seed of the passion conference.
Pastor Greg:One of the very first times they met. They were in Memphis, Tennessee and he's standing before these college students and just a few weeks before Piper presented this message, in his church, he had learned just briefly a few weeks earlier that two missionaries from his church had died. Now, he tells this story. He says, Ruby Eliason, she was a nurse and she was over 80 years old. She'd never married.
Pastor Greg:She spent her whole life doing one thing, serving Jesus and making him known among the sick and the poor. Focus mainly in Cameroon and West Africa. Laura Edwards was a widow and she had come to serve alongside Ruby in Cameroon. She was a medical doctor and herself, she was almost 80 years old. Serving right alongside each other and they're driving down a rough road on the hillside in Cameroon one day and the brakes on their vehicle fell.
Pastor Greg:And they drive off the side of a cliff and die instantly. Piper asks this question. Was that a tragedy? As he reads that and shares that story, he holds up a reader's digest. Now, I know it's 2026 and if you're under much under my age, you don't know what a reader's digest is.
Pastor Greg:They were these little magazines back in the day that your grandmother had sitting in the bathroom for you to read while you took care of business and they just had stories in them and he holds up this reader's digest and he tells the story of a couple named Bob and Penny. Now, Bob and Penny had done everything that America says you should do. They had had saved well, put towards their retirement, and Bob and Penny were able to take an early retirement in their fifties. And they bought a boat. They spent their days playing softball, collecting seashells, and John Piper said that is the tragedy Says Ruby and Laura wasn't a tragedy.
Pastor Greg:It was a life well lived. Bob and Penny was a tragedy. Two women poured out their last years on dangerous roads driving around Africa. For people who had never heard the name of Jesus Christ. And they gave everything so that those people had an opportunity to hear the only thing that matters and that's the gospel of Christ and then he compares it to a couple who spent their best years when they were well off, still in good health, collecting seashells.
Pastor Greg:The question for us as we dig into this book of James Which one do you want your life to look like? It's just another way of asking a a question that James presents us in this text today. What is your life? What is the significance of what you are doing with it? Hold on to that question as we go through this.
Pastor Greg:Don't even answer it yet. Just kind of hold on to that in the back of your mind. James, he's not going to answer it for you either at least not until the end of this. He makes us sit with this a while. Because he knows something about you and me.
Pastor Greg:He knows something about the audience he's writing to. We don't actually know what our life is. We we think we know. We think we've got it figured out. We think we understand what it's all about but James is about to hold up this mirror just like he's done through this whole letter.
Pastor Greg:Hold up this mirror to us and as we sit with this today, let's let him expose in us the truth. So, let's pick it up. James chapter four, we are picking up in verse seven this morning. Scripture will also be on the screen or the Bibles are not spread out under the rose. So, if you need a Bible and you don't want to read off the screen, hold up your hand and someone from back there will bring you one.
Pastor Greg:I apologize for that. That was Craig's job. Sorry. You're on the front row. I had to throw somebody under the bus.
Pastor Greg:Verse seven, so humble yourselves before god. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Come close to god and god will come close to you. Now, that's one of my favorite verses in scripture. Come close to god and god will come close to you.
Pastor Greg:Think think about that for a minute. You draw near to god and he will draw near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners. Purify your hearts for your loyalty is divided between god and the world. As you look over those couple of verses, just look at how many commands are stacked up right through there.
Pastor Greg:He talks about humbling yourselves, cleansing yourselves, purifying. He talks about weeping over our sin. I mean, just back to back to back. There's no breathing room for what he's telling us to do, to draw near, to submit, to resist the devil. He's just over and over again.
Pastor Greg:He's he's throwing these things out there and in in the Greek, the original language, every one of them carries this sense. Do not ease into this. Don't say I'm going to to submit when I get down the road and I've got more time and more money in the bank. Don't say I'm gonna humble myself then. Don't say any of these things.
Pastor Greg:He's saying, do it now. Turn now, make the decision now, and do it decisively all at once. Don't put it off is what he's telling us. This isn't James saying, okay, this week, you claim you're a Christian, so you need to try a little harder this week. That's not what he's saying here at all.
Pastor Greg:This is James putting a line in the sand. Saying it's time for you to step over. Choose which side you're going to serve. Go on the side of Christ or stay on the side of the world. Pick one or the other but make a decision.
Pastor Greg:Here's the thing. If you're like me, I think most of us are like this. We we don't reject god outright. We just manage our god. We we give him this area of our life while we still take over this area of our life and and we may say I'm surrendering this to god but you're never even asking god to help you in that area of your life or to to give you wisdom in that area of of your life.
Pastor Greg:It is still all about you and whatever those areas may be. We do that so often with god. We do the same thing when it comes to our sin. We draw a line We say, I walk to the line but I'm not going over it but the line tends to move. It gets a little further and further away from Christ.
Pastor Greg:While it's there, it kind of feels like a victory but really, it's you trying to control it. But here's where we end up. You draw this line and you you think you're keeping your sin contained but you haven't really fought your sin in so long. You forgot it was sin. It just becomes normal.
Pastor Greg:Background noise. Just the way you're living. Don't even think about the fact that the things that we do are in opposition to the God who we say we love. I'll be transparent with you about my own life because I am not exempt from this. If I don't start my day surrendered to the Lord.
Pastor Greg:If I don't start my day opening up his word as one of the very first things that I do. If I don't start my day in prayer with God, like genuinely in prayer, not just saying, God help me through the day like, God, please help me through this day. Like genuinely broken, surrendering before God. If I don't do that, here's what I've learned about myself. The stress of the day starts to take over pretty quickly.
Pastor Greg:Without me even realizing it's happening. Quickly, just the daily things start to pop up and take over and god just gets pushed further and further to the back burner until tomorrow when I remember, oh, I didn't spend time with god yesterday. Of course, sometimes the guilt takes over at that point. So, maybe I should spend twice as much with god today Maybe or I shouldn't even bother. The numbness starts to just kind of take over and then rather than praying and rather than digging into scripture, I just, I'm worn out, I'm stressed out, so I just want to get to this mindless noise and I turn something on the television or I pop on a podcast or grab a book and don't even think about god.
Pastor Greg:As your pastor, that is even true of me so I know it's true of most of you in this room. If I don't submit first thing, I do not have the footing to resist what's coming at me for the rest of the day. I'm not prepared. I've not taken up as Ephesians teaches us. I've not taken up my armor for that day and I'm not ready for whatever Satan's going to throw at me.
Pastor Greg:Whatever the world is going to throw at me. Whatever my own temptation and my own weaknesses are going to expose me to and that's the exact order James is giving us here. He says, submit first. Then resist the devil. Submit then resist because you cannot resist if you haven't surrendered.
Pastor Greg:Look at that promise. It's buried right there in the middle of the commands that he's giving. Come close to god and he will come close to you. It's that that picture of the prodigal son returning home because the the dad didn't wait for him to get there. He ran to his son He was drawing closer to the father and the father ran to him.
Pastor Greg:That's the picture James is giving us. Draw closer to him and he will meet you there. You don't have to go all the way to him. He's coming to you. He will draw closer to you.
Pastor Greg:It's not a bargain. It's not a deal he's making. It's an invitation from the father who's already looking down the road like the father in that prodigal son story. Watching for you to come back. Every single day.
Pastor Greg:Waiting for the first sign that you're going to turn from the world and go towards your father. You you see, when it comes to this sin in our life, you have to kill it. You don't manage it And when we think about that, it turns into this better behavior kind of thing but that's not what James is saying. James is saying, get to the root of the problem and the root of the problem isn't just your actions, it's your mind. He's saying, draw nearer to god.
Pastor Greg:It will trans. What does Paul say? He will transform you, make you into a new person and James is saying the same thing. Draw near to god. He will draw near to you.
Pastor Greg:You've gotta get to the root of it. It's not about the action. It's about a brand new you. So, what do you do? Number one, you cut off access to whatever those temptations are.
Pastor Greg:You've gotta just cut it out. If it's sexual sin, you cut out any temptation. If it's financial sin, you cut out any temptation. Whatever it is, you cut it out. You don't have access to it because you're not strong enough to withstand the temptation.
Pastor Greg:I have my own temptations. I'm not strong enough to withstand without cutting it out and then, letting the lord change my mind. You replace it. When that sin starts to come up or that temptation starts to come up, what do you do? You replace it with scripture and if you're in your Bible on a regular basis, it just comes in naturally.
Pastor Greg:Those scriptures you start to know them. But you gotta know your Bibles. You can't just rely on Greg to stand up here on Sundays and tell you the Bible. You've got to be in the scripture every single day if you want to prepare yourself to be able to withstand what James is talking about here. You've got to be in prayer every single day before the world gets its hooks into you.
Pastor Greg:It's not about breaking a habit. It's about changing your posture towards god and surrender to him. It takes it from managing this sin to totally transforming who you are and killing that sin. John Owen said, you must be killing sin or it will kill you. You cut off access and you replace it with the word of God, letting him transform your mind and it's not an overnight thing.
Pastor Greg:It's a slow process of him gradually transforming who you are and ten years down the road, you'll look back and say, I can't believe how much he changed me. He continues in verse 11. He says, don't speak evil against each other, dear brothers and sisters. If you criticize and judge each other, then you are criticizing and judging god's law but your job is to obey the law, not to judge whether it applies to you. God alone who gave the law is the judge.
Pastor Greg:He alone has the power to save or to destroy. So what right do you have to judge your neighbor? You know, on the surface, that starts to sound like he's talking about gossip and he is a little bit. It's not just gossip that he's talking about here. James is naming something way sharper.
Pastor Greg:The moment you speak out against a brother or a sister in Christ, you've quietly stepped into his seat. Started judging what's going on in their life and it was never yours to do. Now, I want to be careful here because scripture is clear that we are to call out a brother or sister in Christ who is caught up in sin but not in a way where we point our fingers at em and say, hey, you're you're much worse than me. It's you might want to watch your back and I'm here to help you through it. That means it doesn't become a prayer request It doesn't become a conversation you're having with people about that person.
Pastor Greg:Because you've made yourself the judge of someone else's standing before god and that is not your jurisdiction. Our job is to help each other through it and yes, we are supposed to call out sin in each other's lives but you better be ready because they got the right to call it out in yours too. There's only one law giver. It's not you. It's him.
Pastor Greg:So, where do we find ourselves with this? You find yourself where you've kept score on somebody else's sin and you've done it so long that you don't even call it judgment anymore. You say, I'm concerned. We mask it. We make it sound real churchy.
Pastor Greg:It's easier so much easier to see sin in somebody else's life and not yours. And then their failure becomes a conversation becomes a prayer request but it's not really a prayer request. And the whole time you you feel like you're drawing closer to god because at least you're not doing what they did. At least you're better off than they are. I've caught myself doing this more than I want to admit.
Pastor Greg:When I see another pastor or another ministry leader fall And we see it all the time, don't we? My first instinct isn't to grieve over that. It should be but my first instinct tends to be, I can't believe they did that. I would never do something like that. And I mean, well, when I think those things, I'm like, I really, I would not do that but if I'm honest, the only reason that I can say that is because I have guardrails in my life that keep me from doing that.
Pastor Greg:I have accountability partners who can call me out when they see me starting to stray. I have a wife who's got permission to to look at everything that I have. She's got all my passwords. She's got access to everything. She knows the conversations that I have.
Pastor Greg:I put up the guardrails. That's why if you're a woman and you've asked to meet with me, I'm Christy and I say, hey, I'm meeting with so and so just so you know and then I call her when you've left. Guardrails. I make sure those are in place. But the moment I don't I become exposed I become exactly what James is describing sitting in a seat that isn't mine, judging somebody else for what they've done when I have the tendency, I could do it just as easily.
Pastor Greg:So, what should we do the next time we catch ourselves saying, I can't believe they did that. I would never do that. Maybe we say this, if I don't live in god's grace that could be me too. If I don't have the guardrails, that could be me. If I don't let the lord speak into my life every single day, if I push him to the back burner, that could be me.
Pastor Greg:I'll tell you from the ministry perspective, I've seen pastors fall who I know are godly men and they let the guardrails fall down. It can happen to every single one of us. That's not false humility saying this. It's just the truth. It's where obedience comes from because it's not your strength that holds you up.
Pastor Greg:It is the grace of God that lets you get through the issues. It is when you have those guardrails and you lean in to your fellow believers. It's the only way you get through but then he continues You get down to verse 13. Look here you who say today or tomorrow, we're going to a certain town and we'll stay there a year. We will do business there and make a profit.
Pastor Greg:How do you know what your life will be like tomorrow? Your life is like the morning fog. It's here a little while and then it's gone. Your version may say, what is your life? It's what James is driving towards through this.
Pastor Greg:James isn't condemning ambition. Ambition is not an inherently bad thing. He's not telling you, don't make plans. He's not saying don't build a career, don't start a business. What he's exposing in this is something that's underneath all of the planning, all of the ambition, and it's a life that we map out our own while we keep God silent in the corner.
Pastor Greg:Well, we don't let god have a say in where we're going next and James calls it arrogance Boasting in your own confidence like tomorrow belongs to you. There was an old Puritan named Thomas Manton and he called this practical atheism. Not the kind of atheism that denies that god exists, the kind that just quietly stops including him in the plan. Manton says, that the confident man in this passage has forgotten his own mortality and effectively stolen tomorrow out of god's hand. Stolen tomorrow out of God's hand.
Pastor Greg:Sit with that for just a second. Are you stealing tomorrow out of God's hand? Do you give him any say so And what your next steps are in your life? It's not just a guy chasing profit in another town who James is talking about. It's every single one of us.
Pastor Greg:Every time we run our calendar like tomorrow's guaranteed, that's us. Every time we approach our future like I've got it all figured out, that's us. And we just sleepwalk through all of it. Here's what James is saying. You've been sleepwalking towards comfort so long and you forgot eternity was even the goal.
Pastor Greg:Y'all probably heard of a pastor named by the name of Francis Chan. Have you all heard of Francis Chan? I wish that I had the rope to do this illustration. I've shared it with y'all before but he, when he's preaching through a text like this, he he get takes a rope out and on the rope, he'll have at the end for a couple inches, just a piece of tape. So, just kind of imagine, a bright piece of colored tape on a rope and then he pulls out the rope and the rope, he keeps pulling and pulling and pulling and pulling and pulling.
Pastor Greg:He says, this piece of tape is what you focus on. This is your time on Earth but that rope never ends and that's your eternity. Why are you so focused on the tape? Why are we so focused on this inch getting to this inch getting to this inch when there's all eternity out there for us? I want to be honest, it's not just a warning for people clocking in and out of a job who have no eternal focus though.
Pastor Greg:My job is kingdom work. I'm here. This is what I do full time and if I'm not careful, I can get caught up in this. Just this week, My son's football team did a fundraiser at Fireworks Store. So, I had to go work it.
Pastor Greg:Oh, that was fun. Fireworks store the week of July 4. So, I go and I work that then then I help a minute. One of our ministry partners, Street Hope. I'd help them with the project that they're working on and then at at the same time, I'm watching my wife carry this weight of of her mother's health issue that's really starting to to degrade and and I see how it's affecting her.
Pastor Greg:And I'm just trying to keep up with with what's going on, keeping up with the basics, getting the yard mowed, hauling off all our garbage, and everyone of those things, they gotta be done. They're important. They're legitimate things. None of them are wrong. But this week, I got to Wednesday and I realized, I've not even read the text for the sermon.
Pastor Greg:I've not even opened up what god wants me to share with you this week Not because I didn't care about it. It was on my mind. It was on on my heart. I just let everything else get in the way. Not because I didn't care because I'm sleepwalking through 100 good things.
Pastor Greg:100 necessary things and I never looked up to say, why am I doing this? We've gotta stop sleepwalking. If you want to live in god's will for your life, you can't just sleepwalk through your life. You've gotta be focused on eternity and that doesn't mean that all of those other things get pushed to the side and you don't do em, that's the trap that we fall into. It doesn't look like sin It just looks like busyness Sometimes, it looks like ministry.
Pastor Greg:You're actually doing the work for god but you forgot why you're doing the work. I've been there. When eternity never crosses your mind, it's just sleepwalking through without relying on the lord, without saying, if the lord wills, I'll do this. It's in your will, not mine. And whatever you're doing this week, Whether it's your job or Maybe you're stuck doing a fundraiser for your kids.
Pastor Greg:I'm sorry if you are because it's terrible. Or whatever project you've got that you're working on. Maybe it's when you gotta mow your yard or the meetings that you've got scheduled this week. Live with that question in the back of your mind. Is this what I'm called by the lord to do?
Pastor Greg:Or is this just what I've chosen for myself? Why are we doing it? Are we doing it with eternity in mind? Paul says in first Corinthians, so whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of god. Paul saying, even in the mundane things, do it for god.
Pastor Greg:When you're mowing your yard this week, I don't know how you mow your yard for god but figure out a way and then let me know. Actually, I do know. This is how I do it. I actually put on a podcast and I do sermon prep while I'm mowing. Listen to a podcast, listen to other sermons on the same text, all those kind of things.
Pastor Greg:Give it a purpose. Use it for whatever god's called you to do for him in this world. It's not a call to do less. It's a call to wake up to why you're doing what you're already doing. Why was I working in a fireworks store this week?
Pastor Greg:Not because I had to go raise money for a football team but because I love my son and he loves football and I want to support him and what he's doing and I want to raise him in a way that he knows he's loved and he knows he's got a dad who supports him. That's why I was there. Not because I want to work in a fireworks store. Trust me. James closes the whole passage with a sentence that we really need to hang on to because here's what he says in verse 17.
Pastor Greg:Remember, it is sin to know what you ought to do and then not do it. What's god calling you to do? What does he have for you in this life? Because some of you know and you know this ain't it. But you make every excuse and James says, it is sin when you know and you still don't do it.
Pastor Greg:What's he calling you to do? Let me be clear about what that verse is not saying. James isn't saying if you fail to obey, then you lose your salvation. He's not saying that. It's not what the rest of scripture teaches.
Pastor Greg:I firmly believe that if you belong to Christ, you belong to Christ. Scripture says, nothing can snatch you out of his hand and if nothing can, that means you can't either. If you're in Christ, you're in Christ. But here's what's true. When you know the right thing to do and you know what god's wanting you to do and you don't do it, you are living outside of god's will.
Pastor Greg:Are you living outside of god's will? That doesn't mean you're living outside of his grace means you've drawn away from his purpose It means you can't experience the abundant life he's called you to have Sin doesn't cost you your salvation but it costs you something because there's consequences and it cost you the life that he had laid out for you. So let me ask you this. What do you already know you need to do? And just haven't said yes to it.
Pastor Greg:For some of you, it's a big step. For some of you, god is calling you into vocational ministry where god is calling you to step up into a leadership role or to step out as a missionary or on a mission trip. For some of you, it's a big deal and it requires a ton of sacrifice and you keep saying maybe later. James says, if you know what to do and don't do it, it's sin. For some of you, it's maybe not quite as big a thing Maybe he's just calling you to to to change something in your life that can help you focus on him.
Pastor Greg:James says, if you don't know, do what you know you're supposed to do, it is sin And I have a feeling most of you know what it is. You knew it before I even said the question. James says, if you fail to do it, it's sin. So, what is your life? Is it only building toward the American dream?
Pastor Greg:Or is it building towards full surrender like the missionaries we read about or heard about at the beginning. Is it proud or is it humble? Because a proud life will protect itself but a humbled life spins itself on the things of god. What's he calling you to do? I can't tell you.
Pastor Greg:You know. And James says, if you know what it is and don't do it. It is sin. A humble life kills the sin. It doesn't try to manage it.
Pastor Greg:A humbled life walks with a brother instead of judging him. A humble life spends the job, the money, the years god gave it, not hoarding them, not sleepwalking through it but using everything for the kingdom or something that outlast them. So, here's the question underneath every other question in this text. What is your life? Does it die with you in the grave or does it carry on to eternity with Christ?
Pastor Greg:We're all going to die. Your life has an expiration date on it. Your kingdom work does not. I heard a story this week from a pastor that I follow and his his his father-in-law had died. When he was just, this guy was early in ministry.
Pastor Greg:His father-in-law passed away and asked this pastor to go preach the funeral. Scared him to death. He said he barely, he'd never preached a funeral before, barely knew what he's supposed to do and here's his father-in-law who'd been a pastor for like forty something years. But his father-in-law had never pastored a big church. It always been really kind of a church this size, 100 to 150 people.
Pastor Greg:It's what he pastored for forty years. So, this guy said, I went to preach his his funeral assuming 50 people might show up. He said, thousands of people came People who said, he said, I was walking by the casket at the receiving of friends and there was a man and his child standing there who didn't even live there. He, they were from a different state. He sort of heard the man say, that man right there is why we follow Jesus.
Pastor Greg:He had led that man to Christ as a young man who had since led his son to Christ He'd made a kingdom impact. Are you focusing on that little end of the rope? Are you focusing on what really matters? Listen, I'm not telling you go quit your job unless he's calling you into vocational ministry. Then, you quit your job and you go do it.
Pastor Greg:But I am telling you, find a way to use it for the kingdom What is your life? Let's pray. Did you bow your heads this morning? The band can make their way back up. Some of you hear that question and say, what is my life?
Pastor Greg:I don't even know and it's because you don't have that relationship with Christ. The scriptures clear, you can have a relationship with Christ right now. If you really believe he is who he says he is and if you confess that you are in need of a savior, you confess Jesus as lord, believe he died on the cross for your sin and that he rose again defeating death. If you give him your life and say, Jesus, you're my lord. It's all about you now.
Pastor Greg:You will be saved. If you've never done that, you can this morning. If you've never done that, you can come. We're going to sing in just a minute. We won't parade you up here and embarrass you but you need someone to walk through this with you.
Pastor Greg:So, come and grab me or grab a friend who you know is a Christian and say, how do I do this? But some of you in this room, you've been a Christian a long time but you're living for today and you know god's calling you to something greater and for some of you, it is surrender to ministry. For some of you, is surrender to missions. For some of you, it is. I'm gonna take my resources and pour them into the kingdom.
Pastor Greg:Whatever that looks like and you know god's already told you this is what you gotta do. James says, if you don't do it, it's sin. Some of you need to be up here as we sing with your face on the altar in confession and surrender. What is he telling you to do? What is your life?
Pastor Greg:Father in heaven, we close this morning, I pray for those in this room. I beg you lord for anyone in this room who doesn't know you as their savior. God, draw them to yourself. Show them the brokenness that lives within them and the need for a savior that nobody can cover that except Christ. And then it's not just a feel good thing, it is actually walking them from your enemy to your child.
Pastor Greg:Moving from your wrath into your grace and your love. God draw them to yourself. Give them the courage to just say right now, Lord, will you be my savior? I believe you are who you say you are. I give you my life.
Pastor Greg:God, I pray for those in this room, those who are joining us online who are followers of Christ, they're living for this world. They've got unconfessed sin in their life. Maybe they're caught up in judging their their brother or their sister in Christ and not even realizing it. God, I pray conviction would lay heavy on us right now and god, I pray that we would move, that we would come to the altar, that we would surrender it to you and god, whatever you're calling us, each of us in this place to do, that we would do it starting today. God, would you move in this place?
Pastor Greg:In Jesus name. Amen.