Pastor Nate continues our study through the book of James.
[00:00:00] The book of James, we've been away from it for a couple of weeks in the Psalms, but now we're back in James. James chapter 4. We're going to look at verse 1-12 this morning.
[00:00:11] Last week I was at Target with my wife Christina and with Violet because Violet's getting ready to go off to college for the first time.
[00:00:19] So we were doing like a school supply run, you know, and we were just kind of having a night out.
[00:00:25] And we were in the parking lot, Manny was walking out to his car and he didn't see me.
[00:00:30] And I love messing with Manny and like playing jokes on him and stuff.
[00:00:36] But I just couldn't think fast enough because I was like, all I could think of was running up behind him and like grabbing him.
[00:00:42] And then I just thought of dying right after that. So I couldn't think of what to do.
[00:00:48] And then he saw me, he spotted me and the joke was over.
[00:00:53] All right, James chapter 4. James chapter 4. Let's ask the Lord to bless our time in his word.
[00:00:59] Lord, thank you for your word.
[00:01:02] And today this really in a lot of ways a more intense passage of scripture.
[00:01:07] We pray that you'd really minister to our hearts, that you'd speak to us, do the surgical kind of things that you need to do within us.
[00:01:15] Lord, not just individually, but we pray, Lord, that our church would collectively reflect a passage like this really well.
[00:01:23] Thank you, Lord. We praise you in Jesus name.
[00:01:26] We pray together. Amen. Amen.
[00:01:30] Well, for the passage that we're about to read this morning, and there's a memory in my mind, or I should probably better say memories in my mind of being a little child and going on family vacations.
[00:01:45] I have one sibling. She's younger than me, three years younger than me.
[00:01:50] She lives here in the area. She's probably working in the kids ministry this morning, taking care of some of your kids.
[00:01:58] And I'm a second generation pastor.
[00:02:00] And so we would go on these really cheap, inexpensive, like whatever we could find family vacations together.
[00:02:09] And my dad would take us to off to distant states to go visit friends of his pastoral friends of his.
[00:02:17] We'd be staying in like spare bedrooms and, you know, we'd go camping, like whatever we could to just like scratch together a little vacation.
[00:02:25] But for whatever reason, it was always, at least it felt like to me, a like massive drive to get wherever we were going.
[00:02:34] And I don't know what year they invented air conditioning inside of cars, but our cars definitely were older than that.
[00:02:43] Like, so we would go on these long journeys with all this heat taking forever.
[00:02:48] And I don't know, like the way that they made like upholstery back in the day, it was like, let's make the stickiest substance possible, you know.
[00:02:56] And so my sister and I would be back there.
[00:02:58] And I have like what we discovered was there's there's nothing like a long family trip to strain a sibling relationship in the backseat.
[00:03:11] I mean, it just it never brought the best out of our relationship, you know, like eventually like legalism creeps in big time, you know, like there's the line.
[00:03:20] You cannot cross this line if you even do over the line with your arm like you're violating the plane that that line creates, you know, like I just remember so many arguments and fights that we would have together.
[00:03:36] And I'm sure many of you parents, you can relate to this, you know, just like, man, I can't drive 20 minutes without my kids in the backseat.
[00:03:42] It's like Royal Rumble back there, you know, just this massive argument that breaks out.
[00:03:47] That concept to me illustrates the passage we're about to get into so perfectly.
[00:03:54] The people that James was writing to were a persecuted people.
[00:03:58] They were in the very early stages of Christianity, almost probably exclusively Jewish at this point.
[00:04:05] The gospel not yet having broken out to the Gentile world.
[00:04:09] Pressure had hit the church in Jerusalem where James pastored and ministered.
[00:04:15] And so many believers had to flee.
[00:04:17] Probably these believers fled to the east of Jerusalem.
[00:04:22] And there they were forming their new churches in these new Jewish communities.
[00:04:27] And they began to experience pressure.
[00:04:30] There are hints throughout the passage that they experienced some kind of economic persecution.
[00:04:36] Because they were Christians, they weren't getting the jobs they would normally get, weren't getting hired like they would normally be hired.
[00:04:44] And as they were dealing with that pressure, because they couldn't do anything to their persecutors,
[00:04:51] and because they couldn't do anything to change their situation, they began to turn on each other.
[00:04:58] These siblings were there experiencing pressure, but because they couldn't change the pressure,
[00:05:04] they began tearing each other's lives apart.
[00:05:09] And James wants to write to this group of believers.
[00:05:11] He wants to correct them about their perspective.
[00:05:14] And I think in a way, this is the story so often with God's people.
[00:05:19] So often as we read through Scripture, you see trials and difficulties and persecution and pressure
[00:05:27] that the church or the people of Israel in ancient Scriptures could do nothing about.
[00:05:32] They then turn against each other in the midst of that pressure.
[00:05:36] And James saw that tearing apart the church that he ministered to, and he wanted to correct the issues within.
[00:05:44] And I think that's part of the big reason why James wrote this letter about Christian maturity.
[00:05:48] There was some immaturity running rampant in the church.
[00:05:51] It was dividing the church.
[00:05:53] And so he wanted to nudge them towards a Christ-likeness, a pursuit of maturity.
[00:05:59] And so this morning, we're going to think about how a mature person will pursue God in order to help solve the broken relationships that sometimes exist because of our selfishness.
[00:06:12] So we're just going to think about this text in two movements.
[00:06:15] Number one, immaturity breaks relationships.
[00:06:18] And number two, maturity pursues God.
[00:06:22] And therefore, there's a better chance that it will fix relationships.
[00:06:26] So let's start out reading our first four verses where I think we learn that immaturity breaks relationships, starting out, like I said, in verse one.
[00:06:36] James writes and says,
[00:06:37] What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you?
[00:06:44] Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you?
[00:06:50] You desire and do not have, so you murder.
[00:06:54] You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel.
[00:06:57] You do not have because you do not ask.
[00:06:59] You ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions.
[00:07:05] You, verse four, adulterous people, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?
[00:07:13] Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
[00:07:21] That's where we're going to pause this morning.
[00:07:23] Let me just say a little side comment at this point.
[00:07:27] I think a passage like this speaks to us of the beauty of taking an expositional approach to Bible study as a congregation or as a church.
[00:07:36] I am fairly confident that I would never choose a text like this if I was just randomly picking Bible passages.
[00:07:45] And if I did choose a text like this, you'd be like, oh man, Pastor Nate is really mad at us right now.
[00:07:51] And he wants to give us a spanking, and so he's chosen a passage like this.
[00:07:56] But we're just moving through these books of the Bible, and God has something that he wants to say to us.
[00:08:03] Now, others of you, you might be reading that passage, and you might think to yourself, James is sounding rather harsh with this group of believers.
[00:08:11] I mean, probably none of these four verses are verses that when your friend is in need of encouragement,
[00:08:18] and you want to text them something uplifting, probably you're not lifting it from these four verses.
[00:08:24] You know, you adulterous people, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?
[00:08:30] They're very straightforward, confrontational in many ways.
[00:08:33] But please remember the context of all of this.
[00:08:36] First of all, James is in deep relationship with the people that he is writing to.
[00:08:42] Many of these Jewish people probably owed their salvation to James and his faithful ministry there in Jerusalem.
[00:08:50] He would have known many of these people by name.
[00:08:53] He knew their situation.
[00:08:55] So this isn't him speaking to people from afar.
[00:08:58] These are people that he more than likely knows and is in connection to.
[00:09:04] Also, consider this.
[00:09:05] James is looking at this group of believers, and James knows what the church is for.
[00:09:12] You know, last year when we were going through Exodus, in the beginning of this year, we came to Exodus chapter 17.
[00:09:18] It's actually become a little bit of a thematic grid for me in looking at Scripture.
[00:09:24] Some people think of it as the theological center of the Old Testament.
[00:09:28] And in Exodus 17, just to remind you in case you're like, I just totally forgot what Exodus 17 said.
[00:09:34] In Exodus 17, after God set them free from their captivity in Egypt and brought them out to Mount Sinai,
[00:09:42] God told Moses to ask the people,
[00:09:45] Do you want to be a kingdom of priests?
[00:09:48] Do you want to be my holy nation?
[00:09:52] In other words, do you want to be the people who broadcast my light to the world around you?
[00:09:58] Do you want to be that?
[00:10:00] Because if you say yes to that, then there's a certain manner of life that I'm going to instill in you as my people, my precious possession.
[00:10:09] And they said yes, and God gave them the commandments.
[00:10:12] He gave them the ceremonial law.
[00:10:14] He told them how to govern their people, the people of Israel.
[00:10:18] And that commission or invitation is repeated in the New Testament.
[00:10:22] Jesus said in Matthew chapter 5,
[00:10:24] You're the salt of the earth.
[00:10:25] You're the light of the world.
[00:10:27] And Peter, when he wrote 1 Peter, which we studied a few years ago,
[00:10:31] He told us in 1 Peter chapter 2 verse 10 that we're called to be a kingdom of priests, a holy nation.
[00:10:37] We're called to be the ones communicating God to the world in which we live.
[00:10:44] And James had that understanding or that grid of who these people were scattered throughout the world.
[00:10:50] And what he saw was that their disunity,
[00:10:53] their arguing and brokenness and getting at each other's throats,
[00:10:58] their sibling rivalries were harming the mission of God.
[00:11:05] And so James, seeing that salvation for the world is on the line,
[00:11:11] seeks to, like a surgeon, cut out the cancer that he observed in this early group of believers.
[00:11:19] Now, I told you that I think in these first four verses,
[00:11:23] we're learning that immaturity breaks relationships.
[00:11:26] And I want to show you how.
[00:11:27] First of all, it breaks relationships with others.
[00:11:31] Look in verse 1.
[00:11:32] He says there's quarrels in this church.
[00:11:35] So they're fighting, arguing quite often.
[00:11:38] There's fights, he also says there in verse 1.
[00:11:42] We're hoping that that's not literal fistfights,
[00:11:46] but that they're just sort of like rivalries or arguments that they're having together.
[00:11:51] And then in verse 2, he says that it actually gets to the point where they murder each other.
[00:11:58] And most scholars think that this is metaphorical,
[00:12:02] but there are a handful of scholars who think that it was not metaphorical,
[00:12:06] that there was actually physical harm that was being done to other believers in the body of Christ
[00:12:11] due to whatever quarrels were breaking out in their midst.
[00:12:15] So immaturity breaks relationships with others,
[00:12:19] but also James seems to show us it breaks our relationship with God.
[00:12:24] He says in verse 4, he calls them an adulterous people,
[00:12:28] probably the strongest exhortation that James gives to them.
[00:12:32] When he says that phrase, he is in the Greek language saying it in the feminine,
[00:12:38] which gives the picture that the Old Testament gives of God as husband,
[00:12:43] his people as bride.
[00:12:45] And here James is saying you're being a rebellious bride.
[00:12:48] You're not being faithful to the covenant that God has made with you.
[00:12:54] He also says there in verse 4 that they used to be friends with God,
[00:12:59] but now friendship with the world has made them at enmity with God.
[00:13:04] And then notice in verse 3, their whole prayer life was disrupted.
[00:13:08] He said you ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions.
[00:13:15] They went into prayer and their relationship with God was disrupted because of immaturity within.
[00:13:24] But not only does immaturity break relationship with others and with God,
[00:13:28] I also want you to see that James seems to think it breaks your relationship with yourself.
[00:13:34] He says there that in verse 1, there are passions at war within.
[00:13:41] And then in verse 3, he says there are wrong desires within and passions within.
[00:13:47] I find this so interesting because so often we're told that desires within and passions within must be obeyed.
[00:13:54] But James says, no, actually, in this setting, in this congregation, whatever they were going through,
[00:14:00] it was the source or the root of so many of their issues, so many of their problems.
[00:14:06] And basically for this church that James was writing to, immaturity driven by their passions and desires
[00:14:13] had strained every relationship and had dimmed their light to the world.
[00:14:21] And so what is James going to do?
[00:14:23] James is going to throw them a line of rescue so that they can come out of the bondage that they're in
[00:14:30] and reignite the light that they are meant to be to the world.
[00:14:37] So I hope that by reading this, because these are some intense verses,
[00:14:41] I hope that by reading this, at least one thing that happens to you,
[00:14:44] if you are one of those people who's had a, like a Pollyannish or like a,
[00:14:53] not a detailed or truthful vision of what the first century church was like,
[00:14:59] like maybe for you, you're like, oh man, if I could just go back in time to that first century church,
[00:15:04] they were probably just like every night sitting around the campfire,
[00:15:07] singing songs to Jesus, just giving all their stuff to each other,
[00:15:12] just like totally just like without sin.
[00:15:15] And Eric James was like, you guys are killing each other.
[00:15:17] All right.
[00:15:18] So maybe for those of you who are like, yeah, I just wish I was in that era.
[00:15:22] That's when the church was good.
[00:15:24] You need to like read a little bit more of the New Testament.
[00:15:27] The book of Acts, read it a little more detailed.
[00:15:30] Read Revelation 2 and 3.
[00:15:31] We looked at Revelation 2, 1 to 7 a couple of weeks ago as a church.
[00:15:35] Jesus was rebuking seven churches that were in existence during the first century.
[00:15:40] There were issues right off the bat is all I'm trying to say.
[00:15:43] I guess this is just my little plug for saying if you're looking for a perfect church,
[00:15:47] you haven't found it today.
[00:15:48] I'll tell you that much.
[00:15:49] And you probably won't ever actually find one because we are people who are plagued by sin,
[00:15:57] yes, forgiven by the precious blood of Jesus Christ.
[00:16:00] But we carry a lot of baggage into whatever body of believers we come into.
[00:16:05] Christina and I were just talking about this yesterday, just sitting there having breakfast
[00:16:09] together.
[00:16:09] And we were just talking about that word mixture and how, you know, even the best of us as
[00:16:16] we're growing in Christ, there's still a mixture.
[00:16:19] There's still stuff that is seen or unseen that we don't even know about that God is trying
[00:16:26] to work out in our lives.
[00:16:27] But we bring that into our relationships.
[00:16:29] We bring those sins and imperfections and drives into our relationships.
[00:16:34] And James has seen that and seeking to rescue the church from it.
[00:16:39] But what I want to say this morning before I move on to verse 5 is that I think James would
[00:16:44] say it like this, maturity is mission critical.
[00:16:49] Maturity is mission critical.
[00:16:52] Because when a group of believers says, you know what, I want to put God first in my life.
[00:16:57] And when a group is doing that together, when they're unified around a vision like that,
[00:17:04] they tend to get more accomplished in being a light to the world.
[00:17:08] There's this passage in the psalm, Psalm 133, that describes spiritual unity.
[00:17:15] In that psalm, the psalmist writes this.
[00:17:19] He says, unity among believers is like the precious oil on the head running down on the
[00:17:26] beard, on the beard of Aaron, running down the collar of his ropes.
[00:17:32] Now, be honest.
[00:17:33] Have any of you ever described spiritual unity like that?
[00:17:36] That's just a weird description, right?
[00:17:38] Like, what is spiritual unity to you?
[00:17:40] Well, you know what it's like?
[00:17:41] It's like oil running down.
[00:17:43] Like, you would never say that.
[00:17:44] But in an ancient Israelite context, that phrase was full of meaning.
[00:17:50] When the anointing oil was put on a son of Aaron and running down his head, down his beard,
[00:17:57] and onto his collar, it meant that he was being commissioned or ordained to priestly ministry.
[00:18:03] He would be ordained into priestly ministry when there were people, worshipers, who wanted
[00:18:10] to go to God's house or altar to worship the Lord.
[00:18:14] And the other priests, feeling the demand, like, man, we need help, would begin looking
[00:18:20] for other qualified descendants of Aaron that they could anoint for the task at hand.
[00:18:26] But when God's people were disunified and didn't want to worship God, didn't want to place God
[00:18:32] first, didn't want to honor God, there would be no real pressing need for these ordination
[00:18:37] ceremonies to take place.
[00:18:40] No real need to be installing lots of new priests for that particular work.
[00:18:47] And so for me, I've always thought of that psalm as a beautiful description of what happens
[00:18:55] when we come around the gospel, we come around commitment to God and say,
[00:18:59] God, we want to see you working in our lives.
[00:19:01] It creates a forward motion in the mission that God has given to us here on earth.
[00:19:09] But unfortunately, if I could just say it like this, I think if we're honest, a lot of church
[00:19:15] models in our modern day are actually built on appealing to immature passions and desires.
[00:19:25] You know, come here and we'll satisfy you.
[00:19:28] Come here, we'll meet your every need.
[00:19:31] Come here and we will affirm your view that you are the center of the universe.
[00:19:40] And because those models exist, so often we're not challenged.
[00:19:46] Rather, we should be asking questions like, where can I go to be pushed?
[00:19:51] Where can I go to be challenged?
[00:19:53] Where can I go so that I can serve?
[00:19:56] Where can I go so that I can find Christian accountability or people who will bring challenge
[00:20:02] into my life?
[00:20:03] Where can I go where I'll grow in grace and knowledge, not just be affirmed in what I already
[00:20:08] know, but continue to grow in the grace and truth of Jesus Christ?
[00:20:13] That's the kind of question that we should be asking.
[00:20:17] I read recently a book by a pastor who, in the middle of this book, he was talking about
[00:20:23] a time in his pastoral work where the church he was pastoring, they had embarked on a building
[00:20:32] project like, you know, many churches do.
[00:20:34] Our church has done this in the past right now.
[00:20:36] We're in a minor one where we're just trying to be faithful with the facility God's given
[00:20:41] us from 1996 till today.
[00:20:43] And we're trying to do some remodeling so that we can be good stewards of what God has given
[00:20:47] to us.
[00:20:48] And you're seeing some of that happening throughout the campus.
[00:20:51] But they were building, I think, a new sanctuary or something like that.
[00:20:55] And he said that there was so much energy in the church during that time.
[00:20:59] Like people were excited.
[00:21:00] The church was numerically growing.
[00:21:02] People were coming out.
[00:21:03] There was just this like momentum that was happening.
[00:21:06] And then he said the weirdest thing happened because when they got done with their new sanctuary,
[00:21:13] attendance just started going down.
[00:21:16] Week after week, month after month for like a year, attendance was just going down.
[00:21:21] And he was just a little bit concerned about it.
[00:21:23] He's like, what's going on?
[00:21:24] There was all this enthusiasm, all this momentum.
[00:21:26] And so he sought some counsel from some type of church advisor who told him, well, apparently
[00:21:33] your congregation, those people are only motivated by building projects.
[00:21:39] So you should start another building project right now.
[00:21:42] That was the counsel.
[00:21:44] Like give them something else to get excited about.
[00:21:46] And he said at that point, I just said, I'm out.
[00:21:51] That's not the way I'm going to pastor.
[00:21:52] That's not the way I'm going to lead.
[00:21:54] I can't try to feed people's fleshly ambition and excitement.
[00:22:00] We need to be excited about the living God.
[00:22:03] And if that leads to doing other things externally, great.
[00:22:06] But those aren't the things that excite us.
[00:22:09] We must be excited about the living God.
[00:22:11] And James here, I think, is pointing out to these people.
[00:22:14] He's saying there are passions amiss inside of you.
[00:22:19] And they are breaking your relationships with others, with God, and even within yourself.
[00:22:27] So that's the first thing.
[00:22:28] Immaturity breaks relationships.
[00:22:30] So this is like a real bummer sermon up to this point, right?
[00:22:33] So I'm sorry, but it's just the passage I got.
[00:22:36] But let's move on to the next thing.
[00:22:38] I want to show you how maturity pursues God.
[00:22:41] Maturity pursues God.
[00:22:43] Let's read verse 5 to verse 12 together.
[00:22:47] James says,
[00:22:59] But verse 6,
[00:23:03] He gives more grace.
[00:23:05] Therefore, it says,
[00:23:07] God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.
[00:23:11] Submit yourselves, therefore, to God.
[00:23:13] Resist the devil and he will flee from you.
[00:23:15] Draw near to God and he will draw near to you.
[00:23:18] Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
[00:23:22] Be wretched and mourn and weep.
[00:23:24] Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.
[00:23:28] Humble, verse 10, yourselves before the Lord.
[00:23:31] And he will exalt you.
[00:23:34] Do not speak evil against one another, brothers.
[00:23:36] The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother speaks evil against the law and judges the law.
[00:23:43] But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law, but a judge.
[00:23:48] There is only one lawgiver and judge.
[00:23:51] He who is able to save and to destroy.
[00:23:55] But who are you to judge your neighbor?
[00:23:59] Now, what I want to do with this passage, because I think the overarching theme from James is that,
[00:24:05] hey, we want to be a people who pursue God.
[00:24:08] And in pursuing God, it will have an effect on our relationships.
[00:24:13] I'm going to talk about that.
[00:24:14] But before we think about that, I want you to see a frame that James uses for this whole passage.
[00:24:21] It's the word humility.
[00:24:22] You probably noticed it near the beginning and near the end of this whole passage.
[00:24:27] In verse 6, he said,
[00:24:29] God opposes the proud but gives grace to who?
[00:24:34] The humble.
[00:24:35] And then in verse 10, he said,
[00:24:38] Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you.
[00:24:45] There's a lot of exhortations throughout this passage.
[00:24:48] Seek God.
[00:24:49] Submit to God.
[00:24:51] Resist the devil.
[00:24:53] Don't speak evil against others.
[00:24:54] There's a lot of great exhortations in this passage.
[00:24:57] But the way I want you to think about it is like this.
[00:24:59] You guys ever seen a suspension bridge where you've got like two big pillars that are holding up the rest of the bridge?
[00:25:09] I want you to think of humility that way.
[00:25:11] If humility does not exist, then all those exhortations, you know, not speaking evil towards others, pursuing God, seeking him, submitting to him, resisting the devil,
[00:25:24] they more than likely will not occur in your life without the support system or the drive of a humble heart before God.
[00:25:35] This is the path of Jesus to lower the self so that the father will exalt.
[00:25:43] Look at what Andrew Murray said about humility in this way.
[00:25:47] He said,
[00:26:06] Humility is the bloom and the beauty of holiness.
[00:26:12] Humility is that thing within you that says, I need God.
[00:26:17] I need his help.
[00:26:18] I need his strength.
[00:26:20] I need his wisdom.
[00:26:22] I need his truth.
[00:26:23] I need his perspective.
[00:26:25] I need his knowledge.
[00:26:26] I need his understanding.
[00:26:27] I need his vision.
[00:26:29] I need his correction.
[00:26:31] I need his discipline.
[00:26:32] I need his chastening.
[00:26:34] I need his help.
[00:26:35] I need his aid.
[00:26:36] I need his guidance.
[00:26:38] I need his guarding over my life.
[00:26:40] I need his provision.
[00:26:41] I need his providence.
[00:26:43] It's humility that drives you to have that understanding or that view of who God is.
[00:26:49] And humility is very hard for us because it's not something that God bestows upon us, like a spiritual gift or something like that.
[00:26:58] Someone doesn't have the gift of humility.
[00:27:01] It's not something God bestows.
[00:27:03] It's also not something that we receive.
[00:27:08] I've just received it.
[00:27:09] No, humility is something that we cultivate.
[00:27:13] Something that we cultivate.
[00:27:15] Humility, it produces something beautiful in our lives.
[00:27:22] What James tells us is that when humility is present, God's grace flows.
[00:27:27] He said God exalts the humble.
[00:27:31] God gives grace to the humble.
[00:27:35] In other words, the Godward direction is towards humility.
[00:27:41] You know, in my house, we have in our kitchen, we have like probably many of you do.
[00:27:46] We have a little like there's the faucet and then there's this extra little teeny faucet that you can get filtered water out of.
[00:27:54] And, you know, whenever you want to fill up your water bottle or whatever, we go over there when you kind of fill it up.
[00:28:01] And it pivots and turns so that if you want to, you can take your water bottle and you can put it on the countertop and just pivot the thing and it'll just pour in there.
[00:28:12] But it's a very quiet, gentle little stream.
[00:28:15] It takes a while because it's filtered water.
[00:28:17] It takes a little while to pour in there.
[00:28:18] So it's very silent and it takes a while to fill up.
[00:28:22] So a lot of times in our family, what will happen is someone will go over there with a big old, you know, 32 ounce water bottle.
[00:28:28] They'll start filling it up and they're like, man, this is taking a while.
[00:28:31] I'm going to go do a couple of other things.
[00:28:33] And then, you know how we are.
[00:28:34] You just kind of forget what you were doing.
[00:28:37] And then pretty soon you start hearing water, the sound of water falling.
[00:28:41] And what it's doing is it's running off the back countertop of the kitchen and pouring down into our little living room area.
[00:28:49] And it is destroying our home.
[00:28:51] I'm telling you that right now.
[00:28:52] Water damage and all that is destroying our home.
[00:28:54] But it's just like, but you know what never happens?
[00:28:57] We never hear that sound of water and look up wondering if it's coming from up.
[00:29:03] We always know that water flows down.
[00:29:07] It seeks the lowest point.
[00:29:09] That's how God's grace and exaltation works.
[00:29:13] He's looking for the lowly of heart.
[00:29:15] He's looking for the humble person.
[00:29:18] But this is something we must cultivate constantly before God.
[00:29:23] We must be constantly maintaining our souls and our spirits to try to more and more move in that humble direction.
[00:29:32] Near my house recently, I noticed a bunch of yard work, not yard work, but road work happening.
[00:29:37] And I live near Jack's Peak and I walk back there a lot of mornings.
[00:29:43] And so I noticed that what was happening was there's a little creek or stream that runs down from Jack's Peak along the side of the road.
[00:29:53] And then it comes down to the bottom and it goes underneath Olmstead Road.
[00:29:58] And then the creek continues on.
[00:30:00] And apparently over the years, that little underpass or that place for the stream to go under the road, it had become clogged up.
[00:30:08] You know, the mud and rocks and debris had gotten in there.
[00:30:13] And so what they did is a big project, which took a few weeks for them, where they went in and they dug it all out.
[00:30:19] And they threw some concrete down so that when the winter rains come, that water is going to be flowing rather nicely underneath the road.
[00:30:28] And I think that in the same way, that's what we must do as God's people.
[00:30:33] There's always going to be something that where we have to cultivate that humility before him.
[00:30:40] But it just takes work.
[00:30:41] It takes energy.
[00:30:43] It takes, you know, real determination.
[00:30:46] And sometimes it'll happen even to us during times of worship, right?
[00:30:50] You know, you like have a, I don't know what you guys are like.
[00:30:53] I don't know if you come to church and the second you get like in these seats, there's like a spiritual thing that happens where all of your, like your brain just shuts off and you're like only able to think about God.
[00:31:05] But for me, like, I think it's like a little bit of ADHD.
[00:31:08] And I'm just kind of like, you know, there's a lot going on for me.
[00:31:11] Like the other, a couple of weeks ago, we were, I told my family, I'm like, I don't know what's wrong with me.
[00:31:17] We're literally singing these beautiful songs to Jesus.
[00:31:21] And in my mind, I started like imagining what would happen if in the middle of the sermon, someone like tried to rush the stage to attack me.
[00:31:30] Like we, we have a great security team and you can sign up for that if you'd like to, if you're big and strong, you know, and all that.
[00:31:36] But like, we, we got people watching over our church.
[00:31:39] We're good to go.
[00:31:39] There's plenty of people here that can handle themselves.
[00:31:41] But I just like for about three minutes, I was just was like thinking about that.
[00:31:45] And I was like, I know what I would do.
[00:31:46] And I'll tell you what I would do.
[00:31:48] I was like, I'm going to say, I would take my microphone and I would throw it at them first.
[00:31:53] And then I would jump off the stage with my knee going towards them.
[00:31:56] I'm like, I don't, I probably wouldn't like connect.
[00:31:59] You know, I don't have a black belt like Pastor Manny.
[00:32:01] But, you know, I was like, but I'm 230 pounds.
[00:32:04] It would be very difficult for them.
[00:32:05] I would just, my goal is to land on them, you know, kind of thing.
[00:32:09] And I'm, I probably am like having these thoughts.
[00:32:12] Well, my hands are raised and I'm like singing this song to Jesus, you know.
[00:32:18] And I just was like this moment of like, no, that's not what I'm doing right now.
[00:32:23] I got to cultivate my heart.
[00:32:27] I got to rethink about what we're saying to God.
[00:32:30] I got to reconfess to him my commitment and my dependence upon him.
[00:32:35] This is something we've got to do it a hundred times a day.
[00:32:38] That cultivation of a humble spirit before him.
[00:32:43] So let's wrap up today by looking at some ways that James thinks the mature person pursues God in this passage.
[00:32:52] One way that the mature person pursues God is by recognizing God's pursuit of them.
[00:32:58] Look at verse five.
[00:32:59] He says, the scripture says that God yearns jealously over the spirit that he's made to dwell in us.
[00:33:08] God's heart or desire or the word James uses here, jealousy for his people is a pure and holy and right jealousy.
[00:33:17] It's part of his nature.
[00:33:19] This is not some peripheral attitude of God.
[00:33:22] When he gives the 10 commandments, he says, I am a jealous God.
[00:33:27] It's not because there's anything wrong with him.
[00:33:30] It's because he's made us.
[00:33:32] He's designed us.
[00:33:33] And so he knows that when we're in right relationship with him, walking with him, it is the very best for us.
[00:33:44] Then he says that the mature person who pursues God, maturity will, in that pursuit of God, will accept God's rule.
[00:33:54] Look at verse seven.
[00:33:55] He says, submit yourselves, therefore, to God.
[00:34:00] This person is not just saying, I'm going to read my Bible.
[00:34:04] I'm going to journal.
[00:34:05] I'm going to do the external things.
[00:34:07] This person is saying, whatever I find and whatever God says, whatever his word gives to me, I'm going to submit myself to that.
[00:34:14] I'm not going to be a self-willed person doing my own thing, but I'll come under the leadership and rule of God.
[00:34:21] And I just want to praise for a moment this morning the many of you who I've known over the years who this is your general pattern of life.
[00:34:31] Have you done it perfectly?
[00:34:32] Have I done it perfectly?
[00:34:33] Absolutely not.
[00:34:34] But you've made that commitment.
[00:34:35] I want to follow God's will and word for my life.
[00:34:40] He accepts his rule.
[00:34:42] A pursuit of God resists opposition.
[00:34:46] Look at what James said in verse seven.
[00:34:49] He said, resist the devil and he will flee from you.
[00:34:54] I think what I want to say here is that so often we just give in way too easily, way too quickly.
[00:35:01] But James says there's a resistance effort that occurs.
[00:35:05] One way that I like to try to resist is by thinking through what is the opposite of the pressure that I'm feeling right now in this moment.
[00:35:17] So for example, let's say I'm experiencing discouragement.
[00:35:22] And I'm starting to go down that spiral of discouragement.
[00:35:27] It's grabbing a hold of my heart.
[00:35:29] It's causing me to think things or even say things or do things that are not the true in Christ me.
[00:35:36] What I would try to do in that environment, maybe one way to resist is to say, okay, right now what I'm going to do,
[00:35:43] I'm not just going to concentrate on not being discouraged.
[00:35:47] But maybe one thing I'll do is I'll try to reach out to encourage someone else.
[00:35:54] If the enemy doesn't want me to be encouraged, then he doesn't want you to be encouraged.
[00:35:59] So if I were to reach out to you to encourage you, then it's a way for me to resist the enemy's work in our lives.
[00:36:08] Or perhaps a fear is coming upon me.
[00:36:15] You know, a fear.
[00:36:16] A fear about the future.
[00:36:18] A fear about, you know, this or that.
[00:36:20] Like what if this?
[00:36:21] Why, you ever play that game?
[00:36:22] You know, like what if this happens?
[00:36:24] What if that happens?
[00:36:24] And you're kind of just fearful.
[00:36:26] But then maybe a way to resist is to go backwards and to say, but here's all the ways that God has been faithful.
[00:36:33] And to just do that active work of resistance of the powers of darkness.
[00:36:41] But the pursuit of God not only resists opposition, but it engages God.
[00:36:46] Look at what he says in verse 8.
[00:36:47] He says, draw near to God and he will draw near to you.
[00:36:54] This is very Old Testament language, which the audience James was writing to would have been very familiar with.
[00:37:01] They had that concept.
[00:37:02] Like we are going to draw near to God.
[00:37:05] He's up there at the temple in Jerusalem.
[00:37:08] And we are going to draw near to his house in order to seek his face.
[00:37:13] And James, who probably grew up with Mary and Joseph as his parents, if he really is the half brother of Jesus, like most scholars believe he is.
[00:37:23] Mary and Joseph were godly people.
[00:37:25] They went to the temple each year.
[00:37:27] They honored God.
[00:37:28] So James grew up with that understanding, like I am going to seek the Lord.
[00:37:35] Our family is going to seek the Lord.
[00:37:37] But as a Christian now, he takes that same phrasing and applies it to the Christian life.
[00:37:43] I want to draw near to God, he said.
[00:37:47] And God will draw near to me.
[00:37:49] But another thing that the pursuit of God does is it deals with sin.
[00:37:58] It deals with sin.
[00:37:59] Look at what he said at the middle of verse 8 on into verse 9.
[00:38:02] It's rather intense.
[00:38:03] He says, cleanse your hands, you sinners.
[00:38:04] Purify your hearts, you double-minded.
[00:38:07] Be wretched and mourn and weep.
[00:38:08] Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.
[00:38:13] This is, again, very Old Testament terminology.
[00:38:16] Cleansing.
[00:38:18] Washing.
[00:38:18] Dealing with unclean hands and being purified in heart.
[00:38:25] This is James' way of saying, man, we want to still pursue God so that he can, practically speaking, work powerfully to change and transform our lives.
[00:38:36] But I've found quite often when we should repent, we defend ourselves.
[00:38:42] When we should be fasting and mourning before God, we're feasting and celebrating.
[00:38:48] When we should be praying, we're arguing with him.
[00:38:52] When we should be confessing, we're hiding from him.
[00:38:56] When we should be lamenting, we're excusing ourselves.
[00:39:00] When we should be honest, we're lying to others and to ourselves.
[00:39:04] When we should accept our consequences, we're often resisting our consequences.
[00:39:10] And when we should be surrounding ourselves with people who would challenge us, we surround ourselves with people who only affirm what we already think and do.
[00:39:20] But James is saying, no.
[00:39:22] The person who is pursuing God, they recognize that sin exists.
[00:39:27] They're thankful that they're positionally forgiven of it by the precious blood of Jesus Christ.
[00:39:32] But they want to be free of it in their everyday experience in life.
[00:39:37] They know what is at stake.
[00:39:39] And so they want to deal with sin.
[00:39:42] And lastly, this pursuit of God, it inevitably will pass a very specific test.
[00:39:51] You guys might have wondered why verse 11 and 12, why it's here in this section.
[00:39:56] James is like, there's disunity.
[00:39:58] You guys are tearing apart each other's lives.
[00:40:01] James is like, oh, God, I don't know.
[00:40:31] He's saying, don't come at me saying, I'm pursuing God.
[00:40:35] I'm walking with God and talking trash about my brothers and sisters in Christ.
[00:40:42] He's saying there is a test of the legitimacy of our interactions with the living God.
[00:40:51] And this is a huge one for us in the body of Christ.
[00:40:56] That commitment to say, God, I want you to confront me through and through so that the words that I speak about my brothers and sisters in Christ are pure and right and holy.
[00:41:09] Now, we're not always going to get all of these things.
[00:41:12] But James is saying to us, this is the commitment that I want you generally to make before me.
[00:41:19] Now, as I wrap this up this morning, this is like an intense passage of scripture, right?
[00:41:25] But you guys can read ahead and just decide whether you're going to come to church that day.
[00:41:29] So I'm very thankful that you guys said, yes, we're going to be there for that one.
[00:41:34] And the question that we might ask in conclusion is, you know, like, what should I do?
[00:41:39] You know, what should I do about this?
[00:41:42] And I'm sure if you're anything like me, like a passage like this is like a searchlight on your individual heart.
[00:41:48] And you're just wondering, like, OK, are there some things God is trying to address in me?
[00:41:54] Maybe you're one of those people that like you don't ask that question.
[00:41:57] But the question you ask is, like, how does this impact everybody else?
[00:42:00] I hope they figure it out.
[00:42:01] You know, maybe you're one of those people.
[00:42:03] But the thing that I want to do today is rather than asking the big question, what does this mean for me?
[00:42:10] I want to ask the question, what does this mean for us?
[00:42:16] And what is a commitment that we can make to God as a result of this passage?
[00:42:23] And the way I want to do this is I just want to pray a prayer that if you're down with this passage and you're saying, yeah, I want I want that kind of like real good unity.
[00:42:36] Not a bad unity.
[00:42:37] Like I've got pastor friends who have gone to churches that are like dying and they say that they want to be revitalized and change and transformed and all that.
[00:42:46] And very clearly, like that's not their desire.
[00:42:49] Within months of getting there, they realize actually this group is unified in their desire to not change anything.
[00:42:56] They just have a direction they want to go in.
[00:42:58] It's not godly or holy or biblical.
[00:43:00] It's just personal preferences that they're holding on to.
[00:43:03] I'm not talking about that kind of unity.
[00:43:05] I'm talking about like we want to love God together.
[00:43:08] We want to prefer each other.
[00:43:09] If you're down for that, then I've found a prayer from A.W. Tozer's book, The Pursuit of God.
[00:43:18] And I've altered it a little bit to make it corporate rather than personal.
[00:43:23] And I'm just going to read it slash pray it to wrap up our time together.
[00:43:27] And if you would like to pray this way, you can pray along with this prayer.
[00:43:31] He says,
[00:44:03] We thirst to be made more thirsty still.
[00:44:07] So show us your glory, we pray, so that we may know you indeed.
[00:44:16] Begin in mercy a new work of love within us.
[00:44:21] Say to our souls, rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.
[00:44:27] Then give us the grace to rise and follow you up from this misty lowland where we have wandered so long.
[00:44:37] In Jesus' name, amen.