17th May

Week 9 Study

during the Coronavirus pandemic


Prayer of Praise

Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, saying:
“To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever!”

Songs

Reading

Submit yourselves to God
1 What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? 2 You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so 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 means enmity against God? Therefore, 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 he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us? 6 But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says:

‘God opposes the proud
but shows favour 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 and sisters, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against a brother or sister or judges them 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 neighbour?



New International Version - UK (NIVUK)
Holy Bible, New International Version® Anglicised, NIV® Copyright © 1979, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Shared Study

  1. Read verses 1-3. What might these verses have to tell us about unanswered prayer?
  2. In verse 4 James refers the Christians as an ‘adulterous people’, picturing them as a wife who abandons her husband. The Jewish Christians would have been familiar with this image from Old Testament passages, like Jeremiah chapters 2-5 and Ezekiel chapter 16.

    What does it say about the God that he describes the church as being in this marital relationship with Him?

    James calls the churches to submit to Christ (vs 7) in the same way that women were expected to submit to their husbands completely in the culture of the time.

    In Ephesians 5: 25-27 we read about the husband’s end of the bargain. Jesus, the faithful husband to the church, does not use their submission like a tyrant. He submits himself to death. Through this, he makes his bride ‘radiant . . . without stain or wrinkle . . . holy and blameless’

  3. The call of James 4 is for the church to run away from all that is wrong. They should return to Christ, their faithful husband and once again be forgiven, and made new. 

    What things does James list that they should run away from in this passage?

    What things do we sometimes give our hearts to when we should be giving them to God?

Prayers

Dear Lord,

Show us please the things which we have given our hearts to, instead of to you. We want to be your church, a faithful bride of Christ. We come near to you now and ask that you would come near to us, cleansing us again. Forgive us we pray when we quarrel and judge others. Forgive us when we desire evil things and when the things the world loves take our eyes off of you. We’re sorry Lord. We love you! But help us to love you more.

Amen.

 

Offer to God your own:

  • TSP (teaspoon prayers!) for yourself - Thank you, Sorry, Please

Prayers for other people

Blessing

Bless one another as you finish – for example ‘I bless you now, in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirt.

Amen.

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