James 4:1-3 - The Enemy Within: How The Desire For Pleasure is the Enemy

One of the things I’ve been getting into a bit lately is reading about Greek philosophy. We all know the names of Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates, but do you know the name Aristippus?

Aristippus was a student of Socrates, and he founded a branch of Greek philosophy called “Hedonism.” His basic premise should sound familiar. He said that everybody has the right to do everything in their power to achieve the greatest amount of pleasure possible to them, and that the only true good is having far more pleasure than pain. He said that pleasure is the highest good.

Hedonism is still around. There are a lot of people today who believe that the highest good is in getting and doing whatever makes you happy. Hedonism drives a lot of the pro-homosexuality stuff taking over the world today. Hedonism is behind a lot of Libertarianism. It’s this idea that if something makes someone happy, who are we to say anything about it? Hedonism is even in Declaration of Independence (“Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”). That “pursuit of happiness” part is pure hedonism.

I’m talking about hedonism tonight because hedonism comes from the Greek word “hēdonē”—a word that our King James version translates as either “pleasure” or “lusts”—and our text tonight is all about “hēdonē” It’s all about these strong desires for pleasure that all of us have.

Spoiler alert: The Bible doesn’t take the same stand on pleasure as the hedonists; not even close. In fact, the title of our message tonight is The Enemy Within: How The Desire For Pleasure is the Enemy.

Let’s read James 4:1-3 together:

”1 From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members? 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. 3 Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.” (James 4:1-3 KJV)

When I was growing up, we had this man in our church who was a dear friend named Mr. Wakim. Mr. Wakim is a smart, hard-working, faithful Christian who immigrated to the United States from Lebanon when he was a young man. He is the type of Christian who is in church three times a week and who comes to visitation. His kids went to Christian school and Christian colleges. He is a super good guy.

Anyways, Mr. Wakim spoke to us in chapel one day. I don’t know why, but he showed us a bunch of slides from his childhood in Lebanon. The slides were amazing! What a beautiful country! It has amazing beaches 30 minutes away from snow covered mountains and rich history everywhere. This is a part of the world right on top of Israel. It’s in the Bible many times, and yet they had every modern amenity you can think of. I remember sitting in that chapel, looking at those pictures, and thinking, “That is what paradise looks like.”

But towards the end of his slides, he started to show different kinds of pictures. The beautiful cities he showed us were full of rubble and bullet holes. The peaceful villages and houses were now craters. In a short period of time in the late 70s and 80s, his whole world was destroyed by war. His family had to run for their lives, and their only option was to find refuge in America. Their home was completely destroyed.

I’ll never forget the emotion. Mr. Wakim is not a super emotional guy, but he was crying as he showed us those last slides. His paradise had turned into hell on earth.

That’s what war does. War takes people’s kids away. War leaves people maimed and broken for the rest of their lives. War gives mental scars to people that they often never recover from. War dislodges people from their families and drives happy, peaceful people into poverty. War shatters dreams.

When James said, “From whence come wars and fightings among you?” he wasn’t talking about real wars and actual fistfights. He was talking about interpersonal squabbles in the church, but he picked his words very carefully. He wanted us to understand that these little fights among brothers—just like real wars—turn happy peaceful places to rubble, turn homes into bombshells, and turn friends into enemies.

Just like war, relationship troubles can make your life a living hell. Just like war, relationship troubles can ruin your dreams.

And James tells us what causes this relationship chaos…

”Come they not hence, even of your lusts.”

James says that the relationship problems we face are all caused by the same thing: Your lusts; your hēdonē; your selfish desires.

Now the word “lust” in modern English is almost always used for something sexual, but that’s not what the word means here. It can mean that, for sure, but it’s talking about any strong desire or craving. It could be the desire for pleasure, the desire for food, the desire for recognition, the desire for power, the desire for adventure, the desire for prestige, or even the desire for comfort.

The whole world system is designed to activate these desires. Every advertisement you watch is geared at one of these things. Drive a BMW and be important, experience the power. Buy a Swiffer Wet Jet and enjoy ease and comfort of having clean floors without the work. There are constant messages telling you, “You need this and you have to have that,” that we read, hear, and see hundreds of times every day.

And these ad guys aren’t stupid. They know how to hook you. They know that inside each one of you is a wanter, and if they can just turn that wanter on, they can sell whatever it is they are selling, whether it’s $80,000 cars or $8 laundry detergent.

We all have hēdonē. We all have these internal desires. I think James knew about some specific little quarrels going on in the churches he was writing about. I think the people in those churches knew about them, too. I think James was saying, “Look, see those battles that are causing all that destruction? Where are they coming from? They are coming from your own internal cravings; your own internal desires.”

I read a book recently called Ego is the Enemy, and it was all about how our ego destroys everything. I think the point of these verses is that our selfish desires—our lust—are the enemy within, and they cause all kind of mayhem and destruction.

Let me give you three things our selfish desires destroy from these verses.

The first one I’m sure you can guess:

1. Selfish desires ruin our relationships (1)

Verse 1 says:

”1 From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?”

Like I said earlier, I think James is using the language of war here to paint a picture: Relationship carnage; dream destruction; ugly, bitter infighting; jealousy.

You’ve seen it.

• Maybe it’s the family that implodes in divorce, and they can’t even speak about each other without saying something nasty.
• Maybe it’s the guy who leaves the church and harbors hate in his heart for everyone who stays.
• Maybe it’s the brothers and sisters who go to war with each other over an inheritance when mom dies.
• Maybe it’s the parent-child relationship destroyed by drunkeness or drug abuse.

This kind of relationship rubble is everywhere. I would bet that if you were to just walk down the street and look inside every house, 80% of them would have some of this relationship rubble, and it’s so destructive.

The world can make all kinds of excuses for this behavior, but God isn’t pleased with it. Its source is always some kind of sin, and that sin always has an element of “lust” in it.

• lust for a different spouse
• lust for more money
• lust for more stuff
• lust for more attention from the church
• lust for a bigger chunk of the inheritance
• lust for the high you get from some drug

And if we let these lusts run our life, then they are going to leave a trail of destruction. They are going to leave broken relationships. They are going to leave hurt children. They are going to leave imploding homes. It’s going to be ugly.

Selfish desires ruin our relationships.

Point number two is…

2. Selfish desires sabotage our satisfaction (2)

Verse 2 says:

”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.”

Selfish desires are like an itch that cannot be scratched. They cannot be satisfied. As soon as you get what you want, you move on immediately to the next thing. It never stops. The toys just get more expensive and the vacations just get more extravagant, but the desires are never satisfied.

And what James is saying here is that when we let these selfish desires rule our life, it causes us to do things we wouldn’t do otherwise. It leads us into sin. It leads us into questionable actions. It leads us to steal, to insult, to hurt, or to cheat.

Spurgeon said:

“The whole history of mankind shows the failure of evil lustings to obtain their object.”

In other words, selfish desires never satisfy. Whatever it is that you think will make you happy, it won’t.

I love to travel; I love to see new places; and I love to try awesome food. Imagine if you could do that for a living: Travel around the world; eat the best food; see awesome exotic things every day. Imagine if you could be famous for it and get paid millions for it. You’d have your own TV shows and best-selling books. Imagine that you were a cultural hero for it. Wouldn’t that be a dream life? That’s the life of Anthony Bourdain, and he committed suicide recently.

Imagine living in a $20 million apartment in New York City, with a second mansion out in the Hamptons. Imagine having an empire of people working for you and all the money you could ever need. Imagine getting up every day and doing what you’d dreamed of doing your whole life and being known for it around the world. Imagine being at the very top of an industry and having your face on magazines everywhere. That was Kate Spade, who committed suicide the same day as Anthony Bourdain.

We think riches will make us happy, and yet rich people still get divorced. Rich people take illicit drugs. Rich people steal to try to get even richer.

We think success will make us happy, and yet famously successful people self-destruct for all the world to see every day.

We think fame will make us happy, and yet Hollywood has no shortage of rehab facilities and psychologists that stay very, vey busy.

Satisfaction isn’t found in having what you want; it’s found in wanting what you have. You don’t get satisfaction by getting it all; you get satisfaction by getting control of your wanter. Actually, you get satisfaction by giving over your wanter to Jesus and trusting Him with what He gives back.

I Timothy 6:6 says ”But godliness with contentment is great gain.”

Let me be clear: God isn’t against having stuff; God isn’t against having fun; God isn’t against being successful or recognized for your work. None of that is bad, but what kills us is our desire for it. What kills us is when we turn it into an idol.

It ruins our contentment and ruins our happiness.

So this enemy within ruins our relationships, and it sabotages our satisfaction. There’s one more thing we see in the end of verse 2 and the beginning of verse 3:

”yet ye have not, because ye ask not. 3 Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.”

The third thing selfish desires do is…

3. Selfish desires impair our prayers (3)

James is saying here that because we let selfish desires have their way in our heart...

1. Selfish desires keep us from praying because we are caught up in idolatry and self-sufficiency.
2. If we did pray, we wouldn’t get our selfish desires, but we’d get our selfish desires worked out. God doesn’t give us our wants; He fixes our wanter.
3. When we do pray, our prayers are carnal and pointless, and we don’t get what we pray for.