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Family Triple Threat
James 4:1-12
July 18, 1999

This sermon comes out of Wednesday's noontime prayer meeting. Towards the end of our prayer time we were praying for the families of our church. As we prayed I believe that God spoke to my heart and gave me insight, a word of knowledge if you will, on the three greatest threats to families in our local church (and probably for many other local churches). This triple threat is:

• The Feminist Worldview

• The Invasion of Pornography into Christian Homes

• The Spirit of Selfishness

The Scripture in James speaks directly to these issues. James is speaking to a Christian community that has begun to compromise with the world. Evidently he is speaking to a Church that was threatened by materialistic desires just like us. He spoke to a Church that had begun to lose its distinctiveness from the culture around it. In other words the Christian Church was adopting the worldview of the secular culture in such a way that there was very little difference between that community and the godless society in which it existed.

Doesn't this speak to us today? I think it does. So I want to take the Scriptures here and see if we can combat the threats we face through feminism, pornography, and selfishness.

Feminism
We are not talking about "equity feminism" which is a basic issue of justice that demands equal treatment under the law for men and women and equal pay for equal work. Rather, what is at issue here is radical feminism or "gender" feminism. This type of feminism is a world view that sees social structures in general and the Church in particular as an arrangement in which men are oppressive rulers over women. The Christian community is seen as a bastion of patriarchy: male domination over women. In this worldview men are seen as actively dehumanizing women, stripping them of their dignity as human beings, as autonomous individuals, and perpetrating a long history of violence against women. The traditional family of a father and mother united in marriage caring for dependent children is actually a mechanism of the oppressor class (men) for dominating the victim class (women). Ultimately this type of feminism has much in common – indeed is derived from – Marxist ideology.

(For an excellent article on the Feminist attack on traditional religion in general and Christianity in particular see the essay "Redeeming Religion: A Feminist Testament" by Camille S. Williams in The World and I Magazine, June 1999, pp. 297-317. Internet readers may want to check out the July 24, 1999 issue of World Magazine online for the article on the National Organization for Women. Also see, "Gotterdamerung: Radical Feminist Worship Substitutes Self for God" by Donna F. G. Hailson and Karelynne Gerber)

Why is this a bad thing? Why is this something that is associated with what James calls "the world". This type of feminism is OVERTLY anti-Christian and anti-family and it has infiltrated the Church!

Attack on the Christian Faith It is anti-Christian because it is suspicious of or even rejects the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus is handicapped as the Savior of women because he is male and thus a member of the oppressor class.

"FEMINISTS ARE COOKING UP GOTTERDAMERUNG. The feminist movement in Western culture is engaged in the slow execution of Christ and Yahweh ... God is going to change ... We women are going to bring an end to God ... We will change the world so much that He won't fit in anymore."

Thus opens Naomi Goldenberg's Changing of the Gods.. Feminism and the End of Traditional Religions. In this bold manifesto, published in 1979, Goldenberg expresses the mood and views of many radical spiritual feminists, eco-feminists and liberationists. She charges that men created the God of Christianity in the image of a male authority figure, an omnipotent lawgiver and judge. This figure of fantasy, she avers, has legitimated patriarchal domination; generated scorn for the female body and supported the assertion that women are not made in the image of God and are thus inferior. ("Gotterdamerung: Radical Feminist Worship Substitutes Self for God" by Donna F. G. Hailson and Karelynne Gerber)

Along with rejecting Jesus, feminism rejects the Bible as the revelation of God because it is a tool used to suppress women. Ultimately feminism is about the rejection of ALL AUTHORITY except that of the self.

This is a hellish attack on the Christian faith, because it goes right back to Satan's rebellion against God and Adam and Eve's rebellion against God. You see, feminism rejects authority of any kind because all authority ultimately is dependent on and derives from God! It goes straight to the heart of the problem of human sinfulness. It shakes its fist in the face of God and screams: "YOU CAN'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO!"

Attack on the Family. This type of feminism is destroying the family. It denies the goodness of the order that God created in the universe. Before God men and women have equal value.

You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Galatians 3:26-28

Yet men and women are assigned different roles by the Creator. Feminism rejects God's design and order for His creation. It rejects the traditional family that we find in the Creation accounts (father/mother/children).

• It promotes disrespect for men in general and husbands/fathers in particular. Men are seen as useless drones at best (only to be used in conceiving a child) and detrimental to family life at worst. I hear this all the time now from women who are conceiving children out of wedlock but have no intention of marrying the father. They want a child, and the man is only used to contribute the necessary genetic material.

• It despises the traditional vocations of motherhood, childbearing, and child rearing as somehow demeaning to women. Christian women who cherish these vocations are seen as ignorant and naive at best; cowardly and traitorous to women at worst. So women who see their work in the home as a calling from God and as service to God are made to feel as if they are somehow defective or socially retarded.

• It sees children basically as an inconvenience that stands between women and their self-fulfillment as powerful people who can make it in their chosen career field. As a result it promotes WAREHOUSING children in institutional childcare facilities so that women are free to persue a course of self-actualization. If the child is an inconvenience before birth then it promotes restriction free access to elective abortion.

I WANT TO HEAR SOMEONE TELL ME THAT THIS IS NOT DESTRUCTIVE TO FAMILIES! IT IS TEARING THE CHRISTIAN FAMILY APART AND DESTROYING THE VERY BASIS OF HUMAN CIVILIZATION AS ORDAINED BY GOD!

We need to resist this worldview. If we accommodate and compromise with the radical feminist worldview we will have become the enemies of God.

Pornography
Pornography is the single biggest money maker on the Internet today. Pornography is a $12-$13 billion-a-year industry--more than the combined annual revenues of the Coca-Cola and McDonnell Douglas corporations.

Once this evil was limited to shady bookstores or kept in back rooms or under the counter. Now nearly 900,000 pornographic images are available free on the Internet. It comes directly into our homes via cable and satellite TV.

Although it is a snare to both men and women, men are the main users of pornography. Twenty-one percent of committed Promise Keepers in April 1996 reported that purity in this area was the most difficult to commitment to keep. In my experience as a pastor I have found that the majority of Christian men have struggled with the issue of pornography at one time or another.

What's more I have found that it is destroying men's walk with God and the very fabric of the Christian home.

Men involved in pornography flee from God. It ruins the relationship with God. There is a constant sense of guilt as the man involved in pornography is torn between his love of God and his lust.

The viewing of pornography creates desire for a person other than one's spouse and is a direct violation of God's word. Jesus said in Matthew 5:27-28 You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery.' But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

It ruins the relationship with the family. The National Center for Fathering found in a sophisticated analysis that men who had "purchased pornographic materials in the past year" had significantly lower marital, fathering and family-life satisfaction when compared to those who had not purchased pornographic materials in the past year.

Pornography creates a warped view of sexuality that cannot be fulfilled in a faithful marital relationship. It turns people into objects to be used for sexual gratification rather than beings made in the very image of God. It exploits women and children.

It destroys the trust in the marriage and is a direct assault on the wife's sense of self-worth.

Involvement in pornography, like alcoholism leads to a downward spiral of depravity that will eventually destroy the family and the man who is addicted to pornography.

Sexual expression is a good gift that God has given to those in the covenant of marriage. It serves to bring forth children and to create unity between the husband and wife. Pornography is destructive to both these purposes for sexuality.

As the person continues to be involved in pornography they wander further and further from God and eventually wind up on the broad way that leads to everlasting damnation.

The words of James are especially appropriate here:

Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up. James 4:7-10

Selfishness
If there is one great evil in our culture today it is that of selfishness. We are a culture absorbed with self-satisfaction. The idea of sacrifice is alien to us. Fulfillment in our culture is wrapped up in the pursuit of pleasure, entertainment and material possessions.

We carry these attitudes into our marriages and families. I have acquaintances who have children basically because they see them as just another possession to acquire. They don't even treat the kids like pets, but rather as furniture, as accessories.

The generation coming of age today has an entitlement mentality that believes it deserves and has a divine right to material wealth. We are a culture on the verge of dying from "affluenza"!

I have seen husbands let their families go without needed food and clothing just so they can have a new set of golf clubs, or a pick-up truck, or a new shot-gun. Men and women both have turned shopping into the new American religion. Gene Edward Veith writes:

Many Americans are blending their abiding interest in "spirituality" with the new materialism. The result is a new religion in which Mammon takes the place of God.

A book by James Twitchell with the rather blasphemous title Lead Us Into Temptation (Columbia University Press) argues that America's true religion is shopping. And this is a good thing. Shopping, he says, is the way Americans make meaning. The accumulation of possessions is the way we find fulfillment. The brands we buy establish our sense of belonging with a particular social group. Our possessions define our identity.

"Getting and spending," Mr. Twitchell says, "has been the most passionate and often the most imaginative endeavor of modern life." He attacks time-honored notions such as "money can't buy happiness." Sure it can, he insists. (World Magazine July 24, 1999; Volume 14, Number 28, Money mysticism: America's real religion is shopping", By Gene Edward Veith)

We have forgotten Paul's warning: People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs. 1 Timothy 6:9-10

You want to know why so many marriages are actually battlefields? Why are so many families at each other's throats? Again the voice of James speaks clearly to us today.

What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don't get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. James 4:1-3

CONCLUSION: Brothers and sisters we need to come to the Lord's Table this morning to seek a renewing of our minds. We need to ask God for protection from these forces that assail our families. We need to draw near to God in humility and seek the friendship of God for the preservation of our families, our children and our very souls.

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James 4:1-12

4:1 What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? 2 You want something but don't get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. 3 When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.

4 You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. 5 Or do you think Scripture says without reason that the spirit he caused to live in us envies intensely? 6 But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says:

"God opposes the proud
but gives grace to the humble."

7 Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.

11 Brothers, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against his brother or judges him speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it. 12 There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you — who are you to judge your neighbor?
NIV

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