FRIENDISHIP,
GRACE & HUMILITY
Preached August 4th, 2013 - Iglesia Maranatha, Aruba
James
4:4-12
4 You
adulterous people,
don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the
world becomes an enemy of God.
5 Or do
you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the
spirit
he has caused to dwell in us?
6 But He gives us more grace. That is
why Scripture says:
“God opposes the proud but shows favor to the
humble.”
7 Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
8 Come
near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
9 Grieve,
mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom.
10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he
will lift you up.
11 Brothers and sisters, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against a brother or sister or
judges them speaks against the law and
judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in
judgment on it.
12 There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one
who is able to save and destroy. But
you—who are you to judge your neighbor?
Expressions that got my attention:
1)
FRIENDSHIP
Friend of
the world, friend of God (enemy of God)
James
2:20-23
You
foolish person, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless?
21 Was not our father Abraham considered righteous for what he
did when he
offered his son Isaac on the altar?
22 You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his
faith was made complete by what he did.
23 And the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed
God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,” and he was called God’s friend.
24 You see that a person is considered righteous by what they do
and not by faith alone.
João 15:13-14
13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for
one’s friends.
14 You are
my friends if you do what I command.
Philippians 2:5-11
5 In your
relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
6 Who,
being in very nature God,
did not
consider equality with God something
to be used to his own advantage;
7 rather, he made himself nothing
by
taking the very nature of a servant,
being
made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
9 Therefore
God exalted him to the
highest place
and
gave him the name that is above every name,
10 that at
the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in
heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and
every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the
glory of God the Father.
2) GRACE
6 But He gives us more grace.
Hebrews 12
14 Make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to
be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord.
15 See to it that no one
falls short of the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble
and defile many (to corrupt the purity).
16 See that no one is
sexually immoral, or is godless like Esau, who for a single meal sold his
inheritance rights as the oldest son.
17 Afterward, as you know, when he wanted to inherit this
blessing, he was rejected. Even though he sought the blessing with tears, he
could not change what he had done.
Revelation 2:18-23
These are the words of
the Son of God, whose
eyes are like blazing fire and whose feet are like burnished bronze.
19 I know
your deeds, your
love and faith, your service and perseverance, and that you are now doing more
than you did at first.
20 Nevertheless, I have this against you: You tolerate that woman
Jezebel, who calls
herself a prophet. By her teaching she misleads my servants into sexual
immorality and the eating of food sacrificed to idols.
21 I have
given her time to
repent of her immorality, but she is unwilling.
22 So I
will cast her on a bed of suffering, and I will make those who commit adultery with her suffer intensely, unless they repent of her ways. 23 I will
strike her children dead. Then all the churches will know that I am he who
searches hearts and minds, and I
will repay each of you according to your deeds.
3)
BEING HUMBLE
Rather, he made himself nothing
by
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
“God opposes the proud but shows favor to the
humble.”
7 Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the
devil, and he will flee from you
Being humble is not trying to show less than you are. It's just being who
God created you to be and do what He enabled you to do.
11 Brothers and sisters, do not slander one another
Slander: calumniate, defame
Defame: to harm the reputation by libel or slander
Libel: oral defamatory statement or
representation that leads an unjustly
unfavorable impression
How
many pastors, preachers, brothers and friends have you killed with your tongue?
Romans
8:29
29 For those God foreknew he also
predestined to be conformed to the
image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among
many brothers and sisters.
I John
3:1-3
See
what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called
children of God!
And
that is who we are!
The
reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.
Dear
friends, now we are children of God, and
what we will be has not yet been made known.
But we
know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we
shall see
him as he is.
All who
have this hope in him purify themselves, just as
he is pure.
