Study of James week 8
Notes
Transcript
Draw Near to God
Draw Near to God
Last week we looked at Passion or Pride, the cause of the fighting within the church.
When we allow the world to influence us, we become hostile towards God.
Worldly influence allows fighting and disunity in the church.
This morning we are going to talk about how to over come the influences of the world.
We are continuing in James chapter four picking up in verse six, as we look at drawing near to God.
6 But he gives greater grace. Therefore he says:
God resists the proud
but gives grace to the humble.
The antidote to the influence of the world is to draw near to God.
James’ readers needed the gracious cure of God because He will oppose those who oppose Him.
James is reminding his fellow believers that their spiritual sins could be overcome by God’s grace.
This is similar to what Paul says in Romans 5:20
20 The law came along to multiply the trespass. But where sin multiplied, grace multiplied even more
God wills the correction of His people through the continuing application of His favor.
James uses the word “us” here which ties back to James 3:2
2 For we all stumble in many ways. If anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is mature, able also to control the whole body.
These many ways may even include deep descent into worldliness.
But God remains generous with His gifts.
Unlike envy with its rivalry toward all, God maintains a favorable disposition toward believing sinners.
James recalls for his readers that God is determined to resist the proud, by referencing Proverbs 3:34
34 He mocks those who mock
but gives grace to the humble.
Those who wrap up their selfishness and self-sufficiency in arrogance will receive the full measure of divine rejection.
Pride stirs up the desires of all those who have succumbed to various temptations of the heart.
Pride leads to boasting.
Arrogance totally obscures the faith that trusts in things unseen, hidden in God.
On the other hand, God shows favor to those who humble themselves.
All of James’ readers were invited to join the ranks of the humble who trust in God.
The term here for the humble is rooted in the condition of lowliness and poverty.
God is always ready to accept those who accept Him and to give them more grace.
Should we sin that grace might increase?
No!
But grace does more than meet the challenge of our sinful desires.
Exercising for Humility
Exercising for Humility
The next four verses outline a format for spiritual exercise, in a sense a how to for repentance.
7 Therefore, submit to God. Resist 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-minded. 9 Be miserable and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.
Lapse in the corporate and personal Christian faith of James’ readers now had rectified in these steps of spiritual self-discipline.
James’ readers were to convert in and through direct communion with God.
James understood repentance to be a lifelong practice for every believer.
All fall into sin that undermine faith and relationship to God.
23 For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God;
Therefore, all must return to Him for the restoration of whole-hearted commitment.
Repentance begins with the exhortation to submit to God.
The Greek word for submit, is the opposite of the word, oppose.
Like the imperative to humble oneself to the Lord, the call is to stop resisting God in all things.
This call implies that James’ readers knew the will and truth of God and what it was to do it.
John gave similar directives in 1 John 2:21
21 I have not written to you because you don’t know the truth, but because you do know it, and because no lie comes from the truth.
This beginning of restoration compares with the imperative to seek wisdom from God, rather than relying on one’s own ability.
There were conflicts within the community to whom James was writing that needed immediate resolution, he appealed to them to turn to God first.
His approach implies that in real submission to God there is contained the necessary mutual submission to reconcile with one another.
All conflict resolution should begin by a renewed submission to God by the internal act of submission to Him.
Next we are told to put up active resistance to the devil and his influence.
We are told to resist the devil and he will flee.
The Greek word for resist, is different from the word for appose, in the previous verse that described God’s activity toward the proud.
Against the devil resistance is the effective attack for believers
The devil is the embodiment of all that resists God and is at enmity with God.
The devil is the active opponent of God and His people, but the devil resorts to his lying, deceptive capacities.
Humans who believe these lies contribute their physical and mental strengths to the devils cause of influencing humanity for their destruction and his glory.
If the devil is consciously resisted, in submission to God, the devil cannot fight back and must flee the attack that is our resistance to him.
Verse 8 gives us the next step in James’ spiritual exercise.
8 Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
This exercise begins with a positive exhortation and concludes with a promise: draw near to God and He will draw near to you.
Nearness to God is a basic call and claim of biblical faith.
The language of approach conveys the sense of reconciling action performed by God and us.
The exhortations of this verse is a means of entering into intimate relation with God.
A progression is detectable here from submitting to God, to a mutual drawing near, then washing the hands, and finally purifying the heart.
Believers come near to God by focusing attention on Him in the devout uttering of His name in the knowledge of God and His promises to be with them.
The believer goes to God in prayer ready to hear the will of God for service and made ready to go away from the encounter to perform that service.
Cleaning the hands and purifying the heart both recall first the ritual purity required of worshipers and second the prophetic call to the purification of the heart.
Cleansing is to allow God to cleanse us.
8 “You will never wash my feet,” Peter said.
Jesus replied, “If I don’t wash you, you have no part with me.”
The hand and the heart, must move together in a purified relation of deeds and commitment before God.
Morality that flows from sincere faith requires an inner life that has been purified and thus corresponds with the character of God.
The heart being the center of the self, of its feeling and willing, has purity as one of its chief virtues.
God and the heart of the believer have come together in close relation, and the one should mirror the other.
The imperatives that follow in the next verse call for a deep transformation of attitude toward God.
9 Be miserable and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.
Nothing short of an attack upon the inner self and its hypocritical attitude will do.
The exhortation to attack one’s own heart begins with the call to grieve its wretchedness.
The heart is wretched because of its rebelliousness against God.
God uses trials to weed out rebelliousness from the heart of the believer.
When evil desires within the believer’s heart is acknowledged and attacked, then its condition can be truly mourned.
The grief that results is expressed through active mourning over sin.
This exhortation is an expression of humbling one’s self before the Lord.
Mourning is more than an internal movement of the heart; it is external as well.
Mourning is a cognitive process that reacts against evil desire and sin.
James did not stop with mourning, but exhorted the people to express their mourning bodily through weeping.
The spiritual exercise is completed when the person weeps.
The sin was so deeply rooted and so destructive that the readers needed to release the torment of the conscience in repentance toward God.
Weeping then is the full measure of the expression of sorrow over human sin.
James then clarifies what he meant by the imperatives, miserable, mourn, and weep: believers should transform their laughter into sorrowful weeping and their joy into gloom.
What had caused James’ readers to laugh should have actually caused them to cry.
What had caused them to rejoice should have brought them remorse.
We now come to James’ summary of the spiritual exercises he commended.
10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.
Through humility God elevates the believer.
James’ calling to spiritual exercise in the previous three verses is what he meant by humbling the self.
As we seen in verse six of this chapter, the Lord shows favor to those who humble themselves.
The implication here is to humble yourselves now rather than fall into the Lord’s humbling of the proud.
Believers are to live their lives in response not primarily to God’s Word but to the presence of the Lord in their midst.
These believers to whom James wrote had believed the words of the prophets and the apostles, but they had not believed in the God who provides for them and who should receive their voluntary trust.
Humbling the self then is not at all a matter of convincing fellow believers of one’s own sincerity or contribution.
It is only a matter of relating whole-heartedly to God in recognition of His total claim upon one’s life.
Jesus states in Matthew 23:12
12 Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.
We must come before God in humility.
