The Danger of Being a Friend of the World

I listened to a sermon at work today by John F. MacArthur entitled "The Danger of Being a Friend of the World" based on James 4:2-6.

In this sermon, MacArthur says that "man reacts against the God who is revealed in nature and conscience and creates a God who is more tolerable to him and that God is okay but the true God he hates...the true God he hates. That's the nature of man, he hates God."

The following paragraph answered quite a few questions that I've had in the past about passages such as Romans 3:11(ESV), which says "no one understands; no one seeks for God." I remember very distinctly before God in His mercy saved me that I sought God almost every night when I went to bed. I realize now that I wanted a "god" who would solve all my problems (my way), quiet my horrendous fear of Hell, and give me a chance to say "God be merciful to me a sinner" before I died.

"Now someone comes along and says, "Now wait a minute, I know some people who are searching for God." Sometimes you'll talk to somebody and you'll tell them about Christ and they'll not respond and you'll go away and say to a friend, "You know, I know they didn't respond but they're searching...they're searching." Let me tell you something, the Bible says in Romans chapter 3..."No man seeks after God." Now that's scriptural...no man seeks after God. You say, "Well wait a minute, I meet people who are searching all the time." Listen, people are not searching for God, they are searching for all that God can give, but not for God. They're searching for everything God offers...love, joy, peace, forgiveness, security, hope, while at the same time they are rebelling against, running from and hiding from God. They don't want God, they want the goods God gives. And the only God they want is a God of their own making who will tolerate their sin and it's not until that is broken in them and in meekness they cry out in their sin for salvation that they begin to seek the true God and that only by the sovereign working of the Spirit of God. The true God with His absolute holy standards, men reject. The God of their own making they accept but men would like to have what God gives without God."

Towards the end of the sermon MacArthur asks the question: "Do you love the world? If you love the world, you're in conflict with it, you're in conflict with yourself and worse than that, you're in conflict with God. He is your enemy. You have disregarded His scriptural diagnosis of your condition and you go on blissfully fulfilling your own lust and you forfeit grace because grace comes only to the humble...only to the humble."

MacArthur read something that was written many years ago by a man named F.F. Trench that talks about a worm who was blown out of a green tree where he was feeding, the worm ends up on the ground and finds a pole that was painted green, and he climbs all the way to the top, but finds nothing juicy up there at all.

Here is what F. F. Trench wrote: "I've seen a poor blind worm on the top of a slender pole stretching every ring of its fragile form and groping all around in vacant space tingling with impatience to climb higher but doomed to stop at the top of the pole. It was a caterpillar whom a rough wind had shaken from the green tree where it was quietly feeding, and when it found itself on the hard ground it wandered about in dry places seeking rest and finding none till it reached the bottom of this wall, the foot of this pole and then it climbed. But, you see, it has made nothing of it. The green painted pole has a very different thing...is a very different thing from the leafy tree it used to live in. Poor creature. It's hungry and the reason why it runs along and stretches upward so anxiously is if happily it might find the juicy foliage it once fed on. It will never find it there. Up among the branches of the tree of life man once had his home, his resting place. And there he fed sweetly. But a rough storm of temptation shook him down, the fall of man, and now he runs about among the dry places seeking rest and finding none. And you will sometimes find him, poor groveling worm, poor fallen man, trying to better himself by climbing up some painted pole and once he gains its top you will see him exploring blindly around in emptiness, feeling for some higher object on which to rest, some green thing for his hungry soul to feed on, pivoting and balancing himself and stretching outward and stretching upward. But the tree of life is not there until it comes to live on God Himself, the hungry soul of man will never be satisfied."

Jesus said in Luke 16:13 (ESV) "No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money." Are we absolutely sure that we are serving the right Master? We had better perform some tests on our selves to see if we really are in the faith.