Discover biblical truths concerning the most important issue of our day: the enemies of Christianity. Our six-part sermon series, Enemies, delivers valuable insights on spiritual warfare and how Christians can be on the winning side:
Enemies, Part 1
Enemies, Part 2: The Enemies of All Righteousness
Enemies, Part 3: The Enemies of the Lord
Enemies, Part 4: Who is the Enemy?
Enemies, Part 5: Friends and Enemies
Enemies, Part 6: How to Deal with Your Enemies
Enemies, Part 5: Friends and Enemies sermon teaches us to choose if we are friends with the present world system and be enemies of God or be friends of Jesus and be treated by the world as an enemy.
Key Verses:
James 4:1-4
Turn your Bible to James chapter four. We looked at these verses just a few weeks ago and emphasized a different part of it, but tonight I want to talk to you about friends and enemies. Let’s look at the first verse:
James 4:1: “From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?”
James 4:2: “Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not.”
James 4:3: “Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.”
James 4:4: “Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.”
Notice in verse four, and right in the middle of the verse, he says, “Friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.” I want to talk to you tonight about friends and enemies.
Good Friends, Bad Friends
I am going to give you a statement that is not an original statement by any means, and I do not want to present it as such, “A good friend is one of the best things you will ever have this side of Heaven. A bad friend is one of the worse things you will have this side of Hell.” Are there such things as bad friends? Yes, and we will come back to that.
But a good friend is a very good thing and if you have friends be thankful for the friends you have. I say if you have friends because not everybody does. There are a lot of lonely people in the world, a lot of people live, and they do not have friends.
A good friend is a very good thing. The best relationship of any kind really begins with these friendships. You can be in a family and have family members you do not get along with. You need to be friends with your family.
Let’s take that same idea a step farther — you can be family and not get along and you need to get along with your family, you could be members of the same church and not get along. It is the same idea as being members of the same family. We ought to be friends with each other.
The Bible says that if a man would have friends, he should show himself friendly. If you want to have friends, be a friend. But look for folks who could use a friend. You may say, “Well, I reached out to help somebody else to be a friend, preacher, but I have so many needs myself I cannot help anybody else.”
Let me tell you a story that a pastor friend of mine told me years ago. He said that a lady came to him one day and told him she was about to have a nervous breakdown. A member of the church was about to have a nervous breakdown, what could she do?
The pastor told her what to do and said so-and-so in the church was having a hard time. She said she knew that. He told her to make some cookies and bring them to her house. He said when she was finished, that so-and-so was sick and asked her to go visit her. He gave her a whole long list of things to do for other people.
She did not speak to him for a couple of weeks although he did see her in the congregation. One day, he came down the hallway and she came around the corner and they spoke. He asked her whatever happened to that nervous breakdown. She said that she was so busy doing things for other people that she did not have time to have it. That speaks volumes, doesn’t it? It really does.
So, the truth of the matter is, a bad friend is not a friend at all. Good friends are wonderful, bad friends are not friends at all. They may spend time with you, they may have similar interests that you have. They may share experiences with you. But they do not have your best interest at heart. They will often lead you astray or even mislead you if it is in their benefit to do so.
I told this many times: When I was a student at Pensacola Christian College, we got involved in outreach ministries. One that I participated in, and I participated in more than one, the one I was in was called Boys Base. Boys Base was actually located at the Pensacola Naval Air Station, it was on the base, and it was a Florida state-run program.
Boys Base was sort of a last chance situation. It was for juveniles who were charged with major crimes. Judges had given them the opportunity that they could go through this program on the naval base operated by the state called Boys Base. If they completed the program, they went one way and if they did not, they went the other way.
Here is how it went. They would complete a program called HOME. They met certain requirements and they got an H level. If they continue to progress, they get to O level and if they continue to progress, they get to M level. If they continued and did well, they got to E level and if they got the H-O-M-E, then they got to go home. If they did not, they would go to P-R-I-S-O-N.
We would go out there and minister to these young men and maybe shoot some billiard with them and talk and before we left, we made sure to share the Word with them and share the Gospel. But talk to these young fellows and almost all said the same thing. We would ask how they ended up there. Of course, they all had different stories and circumstances. But almost everyone said the same thing, “My friends go me here.” Those are not friends. If they got them into a place like that, they are not friends.
So, that is what I mean when I say a good friend is one of the best things you will ever have this side of Heaven and a bad friend is one of the worst things you will have this side of Hell.
Want Friends? Be a Friend
The Bible has a great deal to say about good friends. Let me give you just three references, all of them from Proverbs.
Proverbs 17:17: “A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.”
“A friend loveth at all times,” – that is an important statement.
Proverbs 18:24: “A man that hath friends must shew himself friendly: and there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.”
If you want to have friends, be a friend. The verse says, “and there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.” Could that be referring to a human friend? It could think of David and Jonathan. They had such a deep friendship that the Bible says that the love they had for each other was passing the love of women. Some these days try to make something perverted out of it. But there is nothing perverted about it. What it is talking about is the strength of their friendship and how they would have, and Jonathan largely did, he gave his life for David.
Jonathan was the king’s son, he knew he was next in line for the throne normally, but he was willing to step aside because he knew it was God’s will for David to be king. There is so much more you could say about that relationship.
But when Solomon writes, “there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother,” he is not just talking about a human friend like David and Jonathan, he is talking about the Lord. It is the Lord, that “sticketh closer than a brother.”
Proverbs 27:17: “Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.”
What does this mean? It means you use iron to sharpen a blade and you are a friend that helps another person, another friend to keep them sharp. What does it mean “sharp”? When you sharpen, you get rid of the rough edges. A blade with rough edges is not going to cut very well. You get rid of the rough edges, and you hone it down and get to where it can do its job. We should do that for each other’s friends. That might mean that the good friend has to point out something that is a rough edge that you need to take care of. Sometimes your friend will need to get a little rust off your blade.
Human beings are social beings, we are created to be. Remember what God said about Adam? He said that it was not good that the man should be alone. What did he do? He made a helpmate for him. So, human beings are social beings. It is normal and natural for us to desire friendship and companionship and fellowship.
We have to learn to recognize the true value of good friends and we have to learn to recognize the danger of those who choose to be the enemies of the Lord. Now all that by introduction, let’s get into the text tonight.
Where Do Wars Come From?
James 4:1: “From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?”
James chapter four verses one through three, “From whence come wars and fightings among you?” – this is what we talked about last time we looked at this passage. Where do wars come from? This is where wars come from: “come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?”
We have internal conflicts in ourselves and a lot of it, James says here, comes from our own lust. What is lust? Lust is something that cannot rightfully be yours. We have illustrated this many times. If you are walking in a shopping mall and as go through it, you pass a jewelry store and you see a piece of beautiful diamond jewelry in there and let’s say it is $3,500 and it is not the most expensive piece in the place, but it is a little bit of money, and you say that you’d like to have that. You have $3,500 that you could spend and buy it. That is not lust, there is nothing wrong with that. If you can afford it and have the money, you want it and you can buy it. There is nothing wrong. Lusting is not that.
Lusting is desiring that that cannot rightfully be yours. That diamond jewelry, if you can afford it, can rightfully be yours, can’t it? Yes. But lusting is desiring that that cannot be yours. It does not belong to you, and it isn’t supposed to belong to you, but you want it anyway.
So, James says wars come from the lusts that war in your members. He says:
James 4:2: “Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not.”
He says, “Ye lust, and have not:” – you never get full, desiring things you cannot rightfully have. You will not get filled with that; it will not happen. “Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have.” I am going to pose a thought here. What is there that you would desire so much that you would kill another person for it. I honestly cannot think of anything. You may say that if it is about war, that is not what it is talking about here. It is talking about killing somebody to get what they have. So wrong.
I am going to throw something out there; I do not think I have ever mentioned it before. I was being interviewed for a job, decades ago, long before I came here. I was being interviewed for a job and on that job, I would be required to carry a firearm. The man interviewing me for the job read through my resume and said, “Looking through your resume, I am supposing you are a Christian.” I said, “Yes, sir, that is right.” He said, “Well, I need to ask you a question. On this job, you need to carry a firearm. Could you shoot somebody if you had to?” I did not hesitate and said, “If I had to, I could, but I do not want to.” He said, “You are the guy I am looking for.” I have no desire to shoot anybody, I really do not. But that is not a matter of killing to get something. If you shot somebody it would be an entirely different situation. You would do that to defend something, an entirely different situation.
Ask God for It
Then James says, “Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain:” Once you kill somebody to get something that is not rightfully yours anyway, you will never be satisfied, you will not obtain. He says, “ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not.”
Remember in the earlier part of this year Bill Rice spoke here, do you remember the message he gave? “Your Needs, God’s Riches.” Do you know what he was teaching us in that profound but very simple message given here on a Sunday night? He was telling us that if you have a need, go to God and ask for it.
That is what James is saying here, “ye have not, because ye ask not.” If there is anything in your life that you need and did not have? You may say that you prayed for it and did not get it. Did you pray for anything that you did get? I have had answered prayer recently. I am not going to tell you because it might involve some of you. I do not want to share that out loud. But, yes, I have had answered prayer recently. You may say that you have asked for things that you did not get. He covered that in the next verse:
James 4:3: “Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.”
What does that verse mean? It means God is not going to answer your prayer if you act selfishly that is if you ask for things that cannot be rightfully yours, or ask selfishly. To be honest with you, I have had answered prayers. There have been times in my life when God did not give me what I asked for and it turned out to be good that He did not. I have certainly seen that. There are reasons why God does not answer your prayer, sometimes because you ask selfishly, sometimes you ask for the wrong thing, sometimes because God knows things that you do not and if He gave you what you ask for, it would not have turned out as well as you think.
Sometimes the Lord is answering but answering not as quickly as we like or in the way we like. I will give you an example. Sometimes we pray for somebody to be healed and they get healed. We pray that many times. Sometimes we pray for somebody to be healed and they do not. Does that mean God is not listening? No, it means God knows something you probably do not and maybe it is that person’s time. So, we trust the Lord. But go back to the end of verse two, “ye have not, because ye ask not.” Ask. Jesus says ask and cease not. Ask and keep on asking.
Spiritual Adultery
Verse four:
James 4:4: “Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.”
James says, “Ye adulterers and adulteresses,” – that is pretty rough language. There is physical adultery, and it is taught against in the Old and New Testaments. One of the ten commandments is, “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” But here, I am sure James has in mind physical adultery, the physical acts of adultery but I think he has something else in mind. Why do I think so? Because of the rest of the verse, I think he is talking about spiritual adultery.
What he says here, “Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God?” Friendship with the world – here is what he is not saying about friendship with the world, follow me carefully on this. He is not saying do not be friends with as many people as you can, it is not what he is saying. He is not saying to not try to make new friends. He is not saying any of that. What he is saying is do not make a friend of the evil intent of this world, that is James’ writing. Paul gives us another example of what James is talking about:
Philemon 24: “Marcus, Aristarchus, Demas, Lucas, my fellowlabourers.”
Paul refers to some men who are with him including, Marcus, or Mark who wrote the gospel of Mark. Lucas, or Luke, author of the gospel of Luke and the book of Acts. He calls them his fellow laborers; he is saying they are coworkers in the ministry. They are all serving together, working for the Lord, helping churches to grow, winning people for the Lord, they are Paul’s coworkers in the ministry.
Colossians 4:14: “Luke, the beloved physician, and Demas, greet you.”
Paul mentions two of these brethren again, Luke the beloved physician, and Demas. When Paul writes in Philemon, we writes Demas and when he writes in Colossians, he writes Demas. So, twice this fellow Demas is listed by Paul as a brother and fellow laborer and somebody who is actively in the ministry with him.
In II Timothy, the last book that Paul wrote before he died, we find these words:
II Timothy 4:10: “For Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world, and is departed unto Thessalonica; Crescens to Galatia, Titus unto Dalmatia.”
“Demas hath forsaken me” – what a sad statement. Demas who was with him, Demas who had traveled with him just like Mark and Luke and Aristarchus, yes, that Demas. “Demas hath forsaken me” – Demas who worked beside Paul. Demas left Paul. When? When Paul was in prison in Rome. He was with him when he was writing to the Colossians, he was with him traveling in the ministry. Now that Paul is not only in prison in Rome but with a death sentence, we know that because of the context in the last chapter of II Timothy, “Demas hath forsaken me.” How do we know the context? Because in the same passage that says, “Demas hath forsaken me,” it says:
II Timothy 4:6: “For I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand.”
He had an execution date; he knew it was coming. I think that is where Demas bailed out. He might have thought that it was getting too rough for him. Paul being in prison is bad enough but being decapitated, he did not want any part of that. But that is not all. Paul says, “Demas hath forsaken me,” – do not miss it, “having loved this present world.” Demas did not just run away out of fear, kind of like Peter when Jesus was arrested. You know, Peter came back.
Demas went back after the world, “For Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world.” Demas loved the things of the here and now more than he loved the things of eternity. James said that friends with the world is enmity with God. Demas loved the comfort and the pleasures of this world more than the ministry of Jesus Christ.
I am going a step farther and I think I am OK in doing so, Demas loved the things of this world more than he loved Jesus Christ.
The World Hates Jesus
Again, Paul wrote:
Romans 5:10: “For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.”
Do you know what that is saying? It is our own self-centered rebellion that has made us enemies of God. But God can forgive us. “When we were enemies,” Paul said, “we were reconciled to God.” How? “To God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.” That is why James says, “friendship of the world is enmity with God.” Jesus put it this way:
John 15:18: “If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you.”
John 15:19: “If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.”
Why is that? Again, Jesus explains it to us:
John 15:22: “If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin: but now they have no cloke for their sin.”
Do you know why the world hates Jesus? Because he points out their sins. Do you know why the world hates God? Because God says, “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” and the world wants to commit adultery. Because God says, “Thou shalt not steal,” and the world wants to steal. Because God does not want you to kill, and the world wants to kill. How do you know that? Because James said:
James 4:2: “Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not.”
Jesus went on, he says:
John 15:23: “He that hateth me hateth my Father also.”
You cannot love God and hate Jesus. There are people who claim to do that. Have you heard any? I have. There are people who say they love God, but Jesus is a fake, a phony, He is not God, He is not who He said He was. They say they love God, believe God but not in Jesus. He says, “He that hateth me hateth my Father also.”
John 15:24: “If I had not done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin: but now have they both seen and hated both me and my Father.”
Think about the works Jesus did that no other man did. Jesus did works among men that no one has ever done, nobody before and nobody since has done what Jesus did, nor are they ever going to. You may say that the antichrist is going to come, and he is going to do lying wonders. He is not going to do what Jesus did. Jesus said:
John 15:24: “If I had not done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin: but now have they both seen and hated both me and my Father.”
John gives us another picture of why friendship with the world places us with the enemies of God.
I John 2:15: “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.”
This is not talking about not loving the people of the world. It is not contradicting John 3:16. But he says, “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” Why is that? John tells us:
I John 2:16: “For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.”
John is telling us here, the lust of the flesh – the desire to satisfy the fleshly appetites, the lust of the eyes – the desire to have everything you see, and the pride of life – really a matter of arrogance.
So many people I have known over the years are so focused on themselves, they do not have any room for God. I believe selfishness or self-centeredness is the root of all evil. You may say no, that I am wrong, that it is money. That is not what the Bible says. The Bible says the love of money is the root of all evil, selfishness, greed.
I John 2:15: “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.”
I John 2:16: For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.”
I John 2:17: “And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.”
Jesus, Our True Friend
I am going to say it again that a good friend is a true friend and a wonderful blessing. No greater friend will you have than the Lord Jesus himself.
Johnson Oatman, Jr., wrote these words, you can find them in your hymnal:
Jesus knows all about our struggles,
He will guide till the day is done;
There’s not a friend like the lowly Jesus–
No, not one! no, not one!
And again:
Proverbs 18:24: “A man that hath friends must shew himself friendly: and there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.”
So, you and I need to learn how to discern among friends, who is a true friend and who is not. You need to discern in being a friend of the Lord or the friend of the world. We are going to be one or the other. If you choose to be friends with the world, this world system, we choose to be enemies of God. You may think that when you reconcile with God you are no longer of this world. That is exactly right.
But you know, a believer in Christ can walk with the world. Where do I get that idea? You find it many times in scripture. Let’s reiterate one thing, “Demas hath forsaken me,” having done what? Love this present world. You and I will choose if we are friends with the present world system and be enemies of God or be friends of Jesus and be treated by the world as an enemy. Which one are we going to choose?
Watch the prerecorded live version of the entire service and sermon, Enemies, Part 5: Friends and Enemies on Facebook.
Enemies, Part 5: Friends and Enemies — Related Sermons
Discover biblical truths concerning the most important issue of our day: the enemies of Christianity. Our six-part sermon series, Enemies, delivers valuable insights on spiritual warfare and how Christians can be on the winning side:
Enemies, Part 1
Enemies, Part 2: The Enemies of All Righteousness
Enemies, Part 3: The Enemies of the Lord
Enemies, Part 4: Who is the Enemy?
Enemies, Part 5: Friends and Enemies
Enemies, Part 6: How to Deal with Your Enemies
You may also want to listen to or view these sermons:
About the Speaker
Dr. Michael L. McClure
Senior Pastor
Dr. Michael L. McClure, our lead pastor, is known for his in-depth knowledge and effective teaching style of biblical truths applicable to everyday living.