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JAMES 4
H. Dealing with Pleasures,
the World, and the Devil
  1. Where do wars and fightings among you come from? Are they not from this, from your pleasures that war in your members?
  2. You lust and do not have; you murder and are jealous and are not able to obtain; you fight and make war. You do not have because you do not ask;
  3. You ask and do not receive because you ask evilly that you may spend it on your pleasures.
  4. Adulteresses, do you not know that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever determines to be a friend of the world is constituted an enemy of God.
  5. Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain: The Spirit, whom He has caused to dwell in us, longs to envy?
  6. But He gives greater grace; therefore it says, God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble.
  7. Be subject therefore to God; but withstand the devil, and he will flee from you.
  8. Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-souled!
  9. Endure misery and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned into mourning, and your joy into dejection.
  10. Be humbled before the Lord, and He will exalt you.
I. Not Speaking against the Brothers
  1. Do not speak against one another, brothers. He who speaks against a brother or judges his brother speaks against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge.
  2. One is Lawgiver and Judge, who is able to save and destroy. But who are you who judge your neighbor?
J. Confiding Not in Self-will
but in the Lord
  1. Come now, you who say, Today or tomorrow we will go into this or that city and spend a year there and do business and make a profit;
  2. Whereas you do not know the matter of tomorrow, what your life will be; for you are a vapor, which appears for a little while and then disappears.
  3. Instead you ought to say, If the Lord wills, we will both live and do this or that.
  4. But now you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil.
  5. Therefore to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin.

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