Transcript
WEBVTT
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Podcast.
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I'm your host, pastor Plekken.
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Joining me in studio is none other than Holland Gregg.
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How are you, holland?
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Holland is a pastor at Eastside Community Church and a longtime listener and often cited guest on our amazing and incredible podcast, and also with me is none other than Jordan Smith Excited to be here.
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Jordan, we're glad you're here, and really we've learned something today.
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At least Holland learned something is that there's a lot of people who can do work and get paid for it, but not have to show up to the office but maybe like once a week, and that has been very discouraging, I think.
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Or is that very hopeful?
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Which?
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one is that very hopeful, which one is very happy for you that you have so many people who can get paid to work for you, um, by their jobs.
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It's wonderful, it's a blessing for the kingdom it's a good, it's a very kingdom oriented thing.
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So do you not have that at east side?
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I do not have that okay, well, we'll work on that.
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Yet we'll work on that technique for east side community church and pray for that.
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We'll work on that technique for Eastside Community Church.
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We'll pray for that.
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Yeah, we'll pray for that.
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Thoughts and prayers from Jordan.
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All right.
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So here's what we're going to talk about today is we're going to be talking about pride, and really it gets into James's writing.
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You know he's a practical author and doesn't do a lot of fluff.
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There's not like an ending.
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There's a really short intro hey, fluff.
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There's not like an ending.
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There's a really short intro hey, it's james here.
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In the end it just ends.
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There's no like hey, greetings from everybody, love you guys.
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Later.
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It just ends.
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And so we all appreciate james, especially if you're not a small talker and you're in, especially if you don't like people who long talk.
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You ever had a long talker?
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all the talkers are the worst.
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They are the worst.
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They get in your face, they get in your grill and you're just them and you're trying to escape.
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But ultimately you want to love them in the moment and minister to them, but sometimes they don't let you.
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A conversation usually is two-way and when you are a long talker you don't let the other person in Anyway, so that might be a bit of pride on that person's part when they do that.
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So let's talk about a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.
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And Holland, in James, chapter three, it said those very few should be teachers and aspire to be teachers because they will be held to a stricter judgment.
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But when you have a good teacher, he's a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.
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Have you seen a quality preaching trains to change, change the dynamic of your church?
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Have you seen quality preaching change the dynamic of your church?
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Have you seen where quality preaching gets people's life changed?
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Yeah, of course, I think I mean talking about that in my church and my preaching, and how that, yeah, or at our church with your preaching?
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Yeah, because I think you recently had someone come up to you and say that your sermon changed their life.
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That's true.
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Or at your church, with your preaching.
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I mean, I can think of ways that you've changed my life and brought peace into my life through bringing the word, and I you know there's a few churches that I've been a part of since becoming a Christian.
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Uh, at each one they were memorable, life-changing sermons that someone made the word come alive for me in a way that, yeah, brought about peace, righteousness, life change in my life.
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And, uh, thankfully, I mean, god uses preaching.
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Praise the Lord, jordan.
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Does that apply to you?
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Like a pastor changing my life.
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Yeah, no, not just a pastor.
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The preaching of the word, have you experienced?
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Or when you hear a sermon, are you like?
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eh, I've heard that before.
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Oh, I mean I've heard that a lot or have that thought a lot.
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But sure, like you know, if anyone says they're not changed by the preaching of the word, then you might want to be concerned, right?
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Yeah, that'd be scary yeah, I'm just curious of where you were on that.
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You know you do all right sometimes okay name the last time chris's preaching changed your life you know.
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See, this is the question.
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So here's the thing that we I challenge everybody.
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I said whenever someone comes up say, hey, that was a great sermon, oh, what'd you like about it?
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Then they go blank, stare and have you ever had that happen?
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absolutely I it's, it's almost.
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It makes you not want to ask.
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And, uh, you know, someone said oh man, I really love this part of the sermon where you said to do this.
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And then you know, I'm like that, you want to ask the question well, did you do it?
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But you're almost like sure that they didn't do it and it's just going to like totally kill the moment of everyone just being happy, um.
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but I think it's really good to say, well, did you do it?
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And do the-up, you know, because a lot of the preaching, you know the work of preaching is like sowing the seed, but it still needs to be tended and cultivated, and the work happens all throughout the week, not just on Sundays, that's for sure.
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All right.
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So this gets into what actually causes quarrels and fights among you, is it not?
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This is what James writes that your passions are at war within you, and we found out that the word passions is Hedonon, which is where we get the word hedonism from.
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So it's even though you have a harvest of righteousness being sown, people getting saved and then being fully transformed.
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Uh, uh, I heard this from, uh, tim Keller not long ago there.
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Um, jonathan Edwards wrote a book called Thoughts on Revival, and Tim talked about it being a really poorly titled book because nobody read it, but he said it was really good because he said whenever the churches in New England were experiencing revival, the revival would end when the arguments started.
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And I think that was sort of a wild thought that as long as you could keep a harvest of righteousness and peace sown by those in peace, then you wouldn't have.
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But what happens is and I think this is where our heart is wicked deceitful above all things is that you take you into the church and then your newly converted you hasn't been fully converted, and so your heart is not mature and you still battle and do wicked things, pursuing your passions.
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Have you seen any of that in your experience?
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yes well, I assume that's why paul talks about giving some people the spiritual milk versus solid food, right yeah?
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Yeah, and I've been that person, yeah.
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I think I've caused quarrels and early on in my walk as a Christian, you know I had I got very passionate about certain things.
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You know that I didn't really a zeal without knowledge, right, and I would start arguments and debates with people in my church or my roommates or in the college ministry that I joined and things like that, at very passionate about them.
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But you know, didn't know what I was talking about and, um, uh, not always was.
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You know, not just theological topics, but sometimes, you know, when it says like your passions are at war within you, it's, you know your desires, the things that I think they would include, like you.
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Just, you have idols, you have things that you're chasing and desiring, um, that you want more than God and more than unity with other brothers and sisters and causes you to fight with others, and I was guilty of a ton of that.
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Uh me too.
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I think my favorite memory and I've shared this a bunch is I'm at, I'm in seminary, going to you know taking whatever 16 credit hours or something, going you know, taking whatever 16 credit hours or something, and then I would go to church on Sunday and then I would go to the Bible study and I remember saying to the pastor you know, I'm just not really getting fed here.
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And the guy goes do you mean you're telling me that you're going to eight hours of class a day and you are not getting fed?
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There's something wrong with you.
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And I was like dang it.
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Uh, and so I, I think, you know, I, yeah, I think that that changed your life.
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Yeah, I mean, obviously, I mean I still remember it.
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So, uh, and then at our church, whenever somebody would say, you know, I'm not just not getting fed, I would just be like, ah, there, it is what I said came back to haunt me, you know.
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And I'm like, okay, well, at least I know where you're coming from, you're you know, I had a genuine heart about it.
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It was like I wanted the church to do what I wanted it to do, you know, and and anything that you you just call it not getting fed, whatever you're not liking, what is your answer to that?
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You need to go read your Bible more on your own.
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Stop whining.
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That's a good point.
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Yeah, I mean, if you're not getting fed, it's on you, right, because if the word of God is being preached, yeah, that's what I was going to say.
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I was like there are some churches where they don't preach the word.
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They do TED talks and they do.
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Okay, fair enough and they do.
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Okay, fair enough.
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I can't tell you how many people have come and you know I've talked to that, has visited our church or something and and been like man this is the sixth church we've tried and you know every single one.
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It's like they didn't even teach the bible.
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It was like an inspiring message and story, but it wasn't the word and right.
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If that's the situation, then yeah, you're not being fed.
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But if the book is open and the word is being preached, you are being fed.
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Right?
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That what you need.
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And I think maybe that's the part where exposition of scripture is is a huge part of what our church does, and knowing that that's not the case at all churches, that makes you go.
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Well, at some point you go.
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There's a lot of people who are being fed.
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So either this isn't the church for you or you're got some issue going on.
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But I remember when I first became a Christian, I was excited and hungry for the word.
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I remember going to cruddy path not cruddy cruddy like small churches that the word was.
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They didn't work on it, but they read the Bible and I was like, wow, that was great.
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I didn't know that.
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You know, I was excited about that.
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What you know, like it wasn't, they weren't, that wasn't what they were spending their whole life doing.
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It was, it was good, it was true.
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And I still got something from it.
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And only when my own heart got dark did it turn from uh, uh, a God's word to like, ah, cruddy little, whatever.
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Does that make sense?
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I think that's where my own heart got in the way of that.
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What were you gonna say?
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Yeah, I was just going to say like the context of this is that you are, you want to be friends with the world.
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Um, you want, and so the passions at war within you are, like you know, worldly passions mixed with.
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You know, you want God, but you also want the world.
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You're one foot in, one foot out and um, and you know, I think sometimes when people say, oh, I'm not being fed, I'm not content, I'm not this, I'm not that, it's really that like you're trying to get the world and you know that's your number one priority even is like I want to have these kind of worldly things and they're not making me happy and then I blame the church.
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Yeah, yeah, and because I love the Ed Stetzer quote.
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Like, the church is where we get our religious goods and services.
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And whenever you feel like you're not as a consumer, your, your needs aren't being met or your, your desires aren't being met, then you quarrel and fight and find a place for your voice to be heard, as opposed to become part of the solution I love.
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In verse two it says you desire and don't have, so you murder.
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And the desire here is the word epithumeo, which epi is like ultimate or over, like ultimate thing.
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Thumeo is passion, like the ultimate desire, the ultimate want.
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And so that becomes like, you know, when Jesus says unless you, you know, love me more than your own, father, mother, wife, all the things you can't, you don't have any part of me.
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It's like when you have a desire that's greater than God, even though you want God, you don't want God.
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And that's where the you know you can't serve two masters.
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And when you start serving two masters, that's where, on the one hand, you're trying to serve Jesus, on the other hand, you're serving you and you can't do both.
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Right, yeah, so the big one is here in verse four you adulterous people.
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And I thought this was funny because it's second person plural just adulterous is, or probably.
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What if?
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If it were, you know old Testament writing and be like whores?
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You whores.
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Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?
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Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
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And I think this is where I think some people have taken this verse to mean let's circle the wagons and put our weapons facing out and make sure we are safe on the inside of the church, and the bad guys are out there.
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And the thing I want to point out is that the bad people were the ones inside the church that are quarreling and fighting.
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But how can it be, how could you be a friend of the world but still be talking about how Christians interact with each other?
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What do you think?
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Friend of the world, but how Christians interact with each other.
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So he's not saying circle the wagons right.
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I don't even know how anyone gets that from that.
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Oh man like can't be a friend of the world, and I think that's because they don't understand how people are geared and wired.
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I I say because, and then they.
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And then the thing for me it's like james is writing to a particular group of people who are proud christians, calling their behavior defending, defending the truth.
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Like you know, in my days of like I'm just not getting fed, I'd be like we need to defend the truth, we need to have the Bible read and proclaimed, and you're not doing it right, as opposed to my preference of them not doing it my way, or at the right time, or at the right whatever.
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I think that's the immaturity of it, and so that was my pride creeping in there, and I think that's.
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It wasn't circle the wagons, it was fixed the get your house in order on the inside.
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Well, I assume, even like Christians unrepentant maybe at this point, like that would be enmity with God at that point, right, they'd be in that same category.
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Yeah, category, yeah, oh for sure.
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Yeah, that's how I always read that.
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Yeah, well, that's good, because I think a lot of times this verse gets taken out context of like um, you know, you don't drink custard chew or go with girls who do, you know, it's like that sort of mentality that's a great one.
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I've never heard that.
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It's a classic.
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Uh, and that's not what it's meaning.
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And I.
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What I also love is you know when you can contrast this with first corinthians five, five, nine, where Paul wrote I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with the sexually immoral people, not all meaning the sexual immoral of this world, or the greedy and the swindlers, or a dollar.
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Since then you would have to need to go out of the world, um, and then he wrote later I've become all things, all people that might save some.
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In other words, I feel like sometimes people pit James and Paul against each other.
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Like you're a friend of the world, and that was James was calling out proud Christians, calling their behavior defending the truth, and then Paul was calling out Christians calling the behavior showing grace.
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So you can have like this legalistic sense of like this, there's a right way to do church and you're doing it wrong, that's legalism.
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And then licent this legalistic sense of like there's a right way to do church and you're doing it wrong, that's legalism.
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And then licentiousness is like, no, we just want to show people grace and love and peace, and look how welcoming we are.
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That, honestly, I think you know.
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The first Corinthians 5 motif is the kind of the heartbeat of the church right now.
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Well, now a lot of progressive churches have sort of leaned that direction and haven't been able to um sort of pull back on the darkness that they've been espousing anyway so you know in the first corinthians one.
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He says I wrote to you because you're basically saying you know, some people think what.
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What James is saying is don't be, don't be friends with anyone in the world, right.
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He says go be Amish, yeah, don't.
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Don't.
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You know, uh, associate with non-Christians at all, right, um?
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And but then Paul says, uh, I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people, not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, since then you would need to go out of the world, right.
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But then verse 11, he says but now I'm writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of a brother, yep, if he's guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard or swindler.
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Not even to eat with such a one.
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I think that's what friendship with the world means.
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It means that calling yourself a Christian while still living in the ways of the world and saying, yeah, it's fine, there's grace, I'm a Christian, I can, you know, sleep around and worship idols and get drunk, and it's all fine because of grace.
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That's being friends with the world.
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So it's not saying don't relate, don't have friendships with people in the world, right.
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It's saying don't call yourself a Christian and live like the world.
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Yeah, that's it and I think that's yeah.
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That's where I feel like the proud Christians calling their behavior.
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I'm just showing grace to those people or being those people like God, just you know, giving me grace.
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Then there's a part where you shouldn't be so secure in your salvation when you have unrepentant sin, where you're like, oh, no, like I don't, it's got the classic I don't need to go to church to be a Christian.
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It's like, yeah, but then are you like, yeah, that should.
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Should be like like, don't neglect the meeting with one another, as some are in the habit of doing, but all the more as you say, the day drawing near, as we get closer to end times, your desire should be hey, I, and it is, we are in the end times, as you are, the closer we get to the end times, we should have a deeper desire to fellowship, be closer with christians.
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Um, that sometimes can harm our evangelistic outreach, because then we get to the end times.
00:17:05.809 --> 00:17:06.686
We should have a deeper desire to fellowship, be closer with Christians.
00:17:06.686 --> 00:17:09.074
Um, that sometimes can harm our evangelistic outreach because then we get so inward focus.
00:17:09.074 --> 00:17:18.904
But, uh, I do think that's a part of the Christian life is, uh, mediating those two of like being more like surrounding yourself with believers and then having a heart to reach the lost.
00:17:18.904 --> 00:17:26.902
Yep, um, okay, the next thing that, uh, um, okay, the next thing that, uh.
00:17:26.922 --> 00:17:27.825
I thought and I want to ask you about Han.
00:17:27.825 --> 00:17:28.307
He yearns, verse five.
00:17:28.307 --> 00:17:31.076
He yearns jealously over the spirit that he's made to dwell in us.
00:17:31.076 --> 00:17:36.609
Uh, in Exodus we find out that God calls himself a jealous God, and that's a good thing.
00:17:36.609 --> 00:17:42.910
Uh, in fact, you would say, like we, we probably need to check more into the word of jealousy versus envy.
00:17:42.910 --> 00:17:56.836
Maybe it might be a good way to put that Jealousy being like I'm affectionate for, I'm protective of the things that are mine, versus I want and I desire the things that are yours.
00:17:56.836 --> 00:18:05.230
And so God says that we are his and he's jealous for us, in the same way that a husband is jealous over his wife, you know, in a positive way.
00:18:05.230 --> 00:18:10.211
And maybe this is this is this is my theory, and so I would love to hear your take on this.
00:18:10.211 --> 00:18:31.507
My theory is is because the jealous husband um caricature has become so extreme that men have felt like emasculated in their ability to um lead their wife or to be protective protective of their wives have you seen that at all?
00:18:32.028 --> 00:19:03.895
Yeah, I, you don't want to be so like if you're, I think if you're a very jealous person, um, in general it's like, okay, you're insecure, You're not confident in who you are, and so you're jealous and worried and anxious always you know, checking your wife's phone and stuff like that and so I think you're like, okay, I don't want to be that, Right, but you know, maybe swung all the way to the other side of like, yeah, I love that my wife has like a bunch of dude friends and hangs out one-on-one with them and like I'm so confident, like that's weird too, now we've gotten a bit far right, yeah.
00:19:03.997 --> 00:19:13.269
And so, like you know I think you asked the question, okay is it good for your wife's eyes and heart and mind to be for you alone?
00:19:13.269 --> 00:19:13.470
Yeah, yes.
00:19:13.470 --> 00:19:15.376
Should you want what is best for your wife?
00:19:15.376 --> 00:19:15.817
Yes.
00:19:15.817 --> 00:19:20.210
So, therefore, should you want your wife's eyes and heart and mind to be for you alone?
00:19:20.210 --> 00:19:20.932
Yes, you should.
00:19:20.932 --> 00:19:28.403
I think that's yearning jealously for your wife's affection, because that is ultimately what's best for her and what's best for your marriage.
00:19:28.403 --> 00:19:35.268
It's not coming from a place of insecurity, it's coming from what is best for the souls to wander away from God.
00:19:35.268 --> 00:19:39.351
And so his yearning jealously for us is because he desires our good.
00:19:39.351 --> 00:19:59.487
I just see us, lewis, you know, defined love as a steady desire for the beloved person's good, and so God has a steady desire for our good.
00:19:59.487 --> 00:20:07.890
That means, when we drift from him, he's jealous for us to come back, because you know he yearns for us to come back, because he loves us, and that's what's best for us.
00:20:07.950 --> 00:20:24.529
Yeah, I love how verse six which you don't expect it to come from James, where he goes, but he gives more grace, which is exactly what you expect a Christian pastor to say that God is jealously yearning for you and so therefore gives you more grace.
00:20:24.529 --> 00:20:25.266
And so, because he gives you grace, he opposes for you and so therefore gives you more grace.
00:20:25.266 --> 00:20:29.050
And so, because he gives you grace, he opposes the proud.
00:20:29.050 --> 00:20:36.487
And so if you're a proud person, he is not just like nah, you're right, whatever you do you, he's like no, I'm going to oppose you.
00:20:36.487 --> 00:20:46.073
And this is like the classic parenting move, right, like if I, when I see other kids doing things that I would not approve of, I don't go and discipline them.
00:20:46.073 --> 00:20:50.392
They're not my kid, I'm like not that, I'm like ah, whatever, but like that's not my role.
00:20:50.392 --> 00:21:02.866
And so for Christians, god's role is to discipline, to say no, to oppose you, and then gives grace to those who are humble in the opposition, saying oh, you're right, my bad, I've sinned.
00:21:02.866 --> 00:21:04.211
And then he restores you.
00:21:04.211 --> 00:21:06.925
Oh, you're right, my bad, uh, I've sinned, and then he restores you.
00:21:06.925 --> 00:21:09.700
I think that's the beauty of what we're talking about here, and I think the struggle for a lot of this is we don't see.
00:21:09.700 --> 00:21:15.932
We see when people say no or when anyone says no, that that's them being mean or controlling.
00:21:15.932 --> 00:21:20.009
Uh, especially I think in our culture, sexually is where that usually goes.
00:21:20.009 --> 00:21:31.571
But with your money, with your time, anytime someone says no to you, it's like oh, that's so controlling, right, I think also, yeah, I think that's just appreciated that.
