“Yes or No”

What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? Is the source not your pleasures that wage war in your body’s parts? You lust and do not have, so you commit murder. And you are envious and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask with the wrong motives, so that you may spend what you request on your pleasures. James 4:1-3
 
In our sermon series on the book of James, we spent time in chapter 3, and we saw there is a prayer that God will always answer with a “Yes.” Here we see in chapter 4, there is a prayer that God will answer with a “No.” When we ask God for wisdom, He will always say “Yes.” When we ask God to give us something with the wrong motives, God will say “No.” Asking God for something simply because it will satisfy our own selfish pleasures is an example of a wrong motive.
 
In the original Greek version of James 4:3, the Greek word that is used for pleasures is: hēdonais. This is where we get our English word hedonist from. Hedonists subscribe to the philosophy known as hedonism which holds that pleasure is the ultimate ideal and the pursuit of pleasure should be the primary goal in life.
 
Yet, isn’t this the American way? After all, the Declaration of Independence says:
 
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
 
However, the pursuit of happiness is different from the pursuit of pleasure. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were not hedonists. One of the signers was the Rev. John Witherspoon, a Presbyterian minister. He was the president of Princeton University which was founded by the Presbyterian Church in 1746. He was born in Scotland and was a graduate of the University of Edinburgh. He was definitely one of God’s “frozen chosen.”
 
In the book, The Bible and the Pursuit of Happiness: What the Old Testament and New Testaments Teach Us about the Good Life, the editor Brent Strawn points out that the term pursuit had a different meaning in 1776 that it does today. Today the term implies “chasing after”, even “hot pursuit”. Back then, the phrase “pursuit of happiness” expressed the idea of “practicing happiness” or “living in happiness” or “experiencing happiness”.
 
One of the essays in the book, “A Constructed Happiness: A Response from Practical Theology” was written by my former preaching professor at Princeton Theological Seminary, Dr Tom Long.
He uses the term eschatological which refers to the final destiny of the resurrected Christian in heaven, following death and the Last Judgement. Long writes:
 
This chapter highlights the eschatological dimension of biblical happiness, but notes that this dimension must be kept in constant balance with present concerns. This tensive balance means that happiness (flourishing) will be experienced by those who belong to Christ and yet, insofar as belonging to Christ means participating in the pattern of Jesus’ own life, it will sometimes take forms that those outside this faith will not recognize as “happiness.” Understanding happiness as an eschatological future that impinges on the present in real and often difficult ways should inform pastoral practices, including preaching.
 
All this is to say, asking God to fulfill our selfish pleasures in life will be answered with a “No.” Instead, let’s find out what happens when we ask God to help us experience true happiness.

In Christ,

Pastor David