From Worldliness to Godliness
Notes
Transcript
One place where we have failed as a nation, in my opinion is how we now respect others. We have gone from a generation where we respected our elders, we respected those in authority, and we respected one another to a generation who doesn’t even respect themselves and certainly do not respect others. I often wonder if part of that is the way a generation has been raised - they never received any punishment, correction, or guidance. We find that children raised with little to no discipline often develop certain traits that can impact their behavior and interactions as adults. These traits include a lack of accountability, a dislike for authority, difficulty with self-discipline, cravings of instant gratification, challenges handling criticism, and struggles with established boundaries. In other words, our desire to be friends with our children have led us to have ungrateful adults instead.
Now, let us look at this parallel. Does God desire to be our best friend, or does He seek to be a positive influence? Leading, guiding, directing, disciplining and correcting when needed? Throughout the Bible we read of times where God disciplined, and speaks of discipline as a way God shows His love towards us as followers.
11 My son, do not despise the Lord’s discipline or be weary of his reproof,
12 for the Lord reproves him whom he loves, as a father the son in whom he delights.
6 For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.”
God is a loving Father, who corrects His children when they disobey Him and His commands. Yet, He still points out the rewards and blessings of God for submitting and obeying His will. And just like our worldly children, we should not despise God’s discipline but instead should accept discipline when God deems it necessary.
Now, if God loves us enough to discipline us, it has to be for a reason, correct? The reasons we are given for correction include because God loves us. He doesn’t punish us for no reason. We are corrected, because as the Good Father, we are His children and correction is lovingly applied to help us. If we are willing to accept this correction, He will also keep His end of the bargain too. As we face hard times, trials, difficulties in life, God proves Himself faithful to believers.
8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Why?
15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
James now goes into a discussion of how to protect ourselves from the worldliness we discussed last week, and how we are to approach God in His leading and guiding of us through this life. Through correction, and discipline through love and care for His children.
Submit to God
Submit to God
7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
Submit. This is probably one of the strongest words that could be used in describing the relationship with God and with one another. This word means we are to yield our own desires and wants so that we focus on what is truly important. Subdue self, and obey authority.
This goes completely against what society today is teaching, screaming, yelling, and demanding. They are focused on what feels good, what they desire or think in the moment, and have no worry of repercussions if something goes wrong.
In the thoughts of our faith, God asks us to submit to Him so that we can overcome sin which is directly from Satan. How do we overcome Satan and sin? Submit yourself to God and resist the devil.
The word “submit” (hupotagete) means to put yourself under God, under His care, power, and strength; to yield to God, to His will, command, instructions, laws, behavior, and Word; to surrender yourself to God for Him to strengthen you so that you can do exactly what He says.
The word “resist” (antistete) means to take a stand against the devil; to exert the energy and effort to oppose and defeat the devil and his temptation; to keep your mind and energy focused upon counteracting and conquering the temptation of the devil.
Both of these words are military words; therefore, they are urgent and they are imperatives. They are from our military commander, God Himself. When temptation strikes, submit yourself to God. Do exactly what your military commander says. He has the overall plan and all the armament and fire power at His disposal. His grace and power can defeat the enemy.
Submit yourself to God and His Word of command. What this means is to focus your mind upon God and His Word immediately when temptation strikes. Turn away from the temptation, push it out of your mind and begin to think about God and go over and over His Word in your mind. Just begin to resist the devil by focusing your mind upon God and His Word. Persevere in following God’s command and in resisting the devil. When you do, the most wonderful thing will happen. The devil will flee and the temptation will be gone.
But it is hard! Resisting temptations are hard! True, but Jesus set it as an example for us to show how resisting Satan causes Him to flee. Notice, Satan didn’t take the first no as an answer.
4 And Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone.’ ”
8 And Jesus answered him, “It is written, “ ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.’ ”
12 And Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’ ”
Now, note the critical point: we must both surrender to God and resist the devil. Both acts are required. When the devil or temptation confronts us, we can never defeat him and his hoards of evil …
• by standing and fighting alone
• by going our own way
• by giving in a little
• by refusing to listen to our Commander’s Word.
We cannot even listen to the enemy’s tempting offer—not even for a moment.
The only way to conquer temptation is to immediately submit ourselves to God and to immediately resist the devil and his temptation. We may have to struggle, but we can overcome.
8 Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
Part of drawing close to God is to repent. I believe today, many of us view submission and repentance as weakness. I believe many today struggle and fight against conviction because we view submission, repentance, and salvation as weakness. I believe many today are searching for peace of mind, without laying down our sins and burdens at the cross.
But yielding to the urging conviction of God is one of the greatest privileges we are given in this world. Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you.
You see, many of us struggle with feeling like God is distant, like God doesn’t listen or even care about our problems while we are miles and miles away from Him. But hallelujah, the door to God’s presence is NEVER closed! We are encouraged to draw near to God! How do we know when we are getting nearer to God? Have you ever been on a trip, and you are returning home and all the sudden you start to see familiar landmarks, familiar sites, familiar trees until soon, you smile and see your house and there is a peace and comfort knowing you are home. I equate that feeling to knowing when we are drawing near to God. The closer we get, the more familiar things become until soon...we see Him and we find peace and comfort in His presence. But in doing so, we have to repent.
Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Drawing near God is conditional. There is a person who God does not allow to draw near Him. Who? The person with unclean, sinful hands and an impure, wavering heart.
The person must clean his hands. Some had unclean, sinful hands and James pulled no punches. He called them just what they were: sinners.
The person must purify his heart and quit wavering between God and temptation. A person cannot have a divided loyalty between God and the world. God does not allow a divided loyalty. God demands total allegiance or nothing. A person who is double-minded, who tries to follow God some of the time and the world at other times, cannot draw near God.
Therefore, a person must repent, turn away from all sin and draw near God. If he will, then God will draw near him and make Himself available to the person at all times.
9 Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.
Temptation presents an opportunity to sin. Oftentimes, the sin looks good from the outside, but more often than not it has undesired consequences. When we are faced with temptation, it is time to be disciplined and to control the comforts and joys of life. Temptation is a time for rigorous warfare—for battle and the discipline and endurance of battle.
Our hearts must mourn and weep under the heaviness of the temptation and its attack, mourn and weep before God, asking and begging for strength and deliverance, ask and beg lest we disappoint and cut the heart of Christ.
10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.
My oh my, here is another word that we don’t like. Humility. It means we must move ourselves to a position lower that those requiring and deserving to be lifted up. Oh goodness, when we face temptation, it is often easy to try to elevate ourselves, specifically our mind, our thoughts, our desires, above God. We reason with ourselves, we justify potential actions, we bring ourselves to the point we make sin okay. In our own mind. How is it, then, that we overcome temptation? We must humble ourselves and keep our eyes on God, remembering that we are always under the watchful eye of God.
If we claim to be a Christian, we cannot continue in our sinful activities, the things of the world, the temporary joy and comfort. We cannot continue being self-sufficient in spirit - a spirit that overlooks Him and His majesty and power. We cannot overlook His Word, we cannot overlook the spirit that faces temptations alone and without Him, instead we must humbly come into His presence seeking Him will, His strength, His wisdom to overcome temptation.
We cannot allow ourselves to be fooled into thinking an ungodly temptation is attractive and enticing. Instead, we again must focus on God.
We must always remember that the spiritual warfare is fought in the spirit and mind, at the very core of the heart and mind. We must commit our hearts and minds to focus totally upon Christ and things that are true, honest, just, pure, lovely, of good report, virtuous, and praiseworthy.
The point is this: when a person is tempted, if he humbles himself in the sight of God, God will lift him up. God will meet his need, give him whatever he needs, and deliver him from the temptation.
11 Do not speak evil against one another, brothers. The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother, speaks evil against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge.
Now we get into one of the hardest temptations to overcome, not speaking evil against one another. When we are in temptation and facing trials, we should be looking to God for strength and deliverance. We should NOT be blaming everyone else for our own shortcomings by criticizing, judging, backbiting, gossiping, condemning and grumbling against everyone else. What this does is tears down the other person, lowering their image and reputation in the eyes of others.
Note that the brother has sinned. He has broken the law of God, He has failed and his failure is known. It is public knowledge, and he is being judged and criticized for his failure. He is being talked about. What he has done is being buzzed and gossiped about, and it is hurting and cutting him, damaging him more and more in the eyes of the world. Now, if we are forbidden to speak evil of a person who is really guilty of sin, how much more are we forbidden to speak against a person just because we dislike or disagree with him?
Note what the Scripture says: this is evil speaking. Christian believers are not to judge and speak evil of one another.
Think about something else as well: there is never a spirit of evil speaking in the humble and loving person. There is only a loving compassion for others, especially for those who have come short and fallen.
Why do we criticize others?
It makes us look better (for a little while), human nature enjoys criticism, it often makes us feel better about ourselves, and it gives us a false sense of strength.
What it really does is hurts others and gives us the heart of revenge. This isn’t the heart or the will of God. When a person talks about and condemns others, he is violating the greatest of all laws, the royal law of love: the law that plainly declares that we are to love our neighbors as ourselves.
12 There is only one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor?
James is blunt in his description of those who judge others - we are trying to take God’s right and authority away from Him. God alone is the great Lawgiver, and Scripture declares: “There is [only] one lawgiver.” He and He alone has given the laws that are to judge and condemn our neighbors.
No person, not one of us, has the right to sit upon the throne of God’s judgment. Judgment and condemnation—criticizing, talking about, and picking out the shortcomings and failures of any brother—is God’s right and His alone. No one has the right to judge but God Himself.
Who are YOU to judge your neighbor?
We often do not know all the circumstances. My granddaddy used to say, there are two different stories and the truth usually lies somewhere in the middle.
All people—religious as well as non-religious—come short, fail, and fall. And we all sin often. No one is ever exempt from sin. When we criticize and judge, we have a problem: we forget that we are sinners too. God help us.
Closing
Closing
One thing is for certain. None of us are without sin. None of us have arrived. All of us are in need of a Savior. But in doing so, we must repent, submit ourselves to God, and draw near to Him. Maybe as important, we must remember that once we are saved, we still are just sinners saved by grace. It doesn’t give us the authority to condemn others, but instead we should extend the same grace and mercy to others as God has to us.
Leadership Ministries Worldwide, Hebrews-James, The Preacher’s Outline & Sermon Bible (Chattanooga, TN: Leadership Ministries Worldwide, 1996), 284.
