Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] All right, let's get our Bible and go to the book of James, chapter four.
[00:00:07] James, chapter four.
[00:00:21] James, chapter four is a rough chapter.
[00:00:26] You might say that brother James just. And he's writing to believers now. He's writing to believers of the twelve tribes of Israel, that is, the jewish people that have received Christ.
[00:00:39] And a lot of people think, and I tend to agree with them, although there's no proof of it, that James was likely one of the first books in the New Testament actually pinned down. And I know that doesn't make a whole lot of sense when we look at our New Testament, but it makes a lot of sense in the history of the church because he is writing it to jewish people. And of course, the church was almost entirely jewish for the first eight or nine chapters of acts. And so James is like a John the Baptist.
[00:01:12] He's a hard nosed, rip your face off kind of preacher. And he doesn't, he does not care. He is nothing. He's not trying to spare the sensibilities of the people of God. And of course, he does it in love. Of course.
[00:01:31] No, but he. But we'll just read it because I just want to give you a sense of it as we get down to our verses, which is going to start in verse number six. The Bible says in verse one, from whence come wars and fightings among you come they not hints even of your lusts that war in your members? Ye lust and have not. Ye kill and desire to have and cannot obtain. Ye fight and war yet ye have not because ye ask not. Ye ask and receive not because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts, ye adulterers and adulteresses? No, they're speaking to the people of God. Now that's strong. That's strong stuff.
[00:02:11] Know ye not that the friendship of the world is in. Is enmity with goddess? Whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.
[00:02:21] Do ye think that the scripture saith in vain the spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy? And so we get down to our verse, verse six.
[00:02:31] But he giveth more grace. So he wasn't all hard preacher, was he?
[00:02:38] When it came down, it came down to the question of sin. Brother James was a hard preacher who nailed it. And I want to be that kind of preacher, and I also want to be that kind of listener. Right? That's not afraid to speak it, but also not afraid to hear it when it comes my turn for it to be served to me.
[00:02:58] But he is not a preacher without grace, obviously. And so he reminds them, he says, but he giveth more grace. Wherefore he saithe, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble.
[00:03:14] Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
[00:03:21] Draw nigh to God and he will draw nigh to you.
[00:03:27] Cleanse your hands, ye sinners, and purify your hearts, ye double minded.
[00:03:34] Be afflicted and mourn and weep.
[00:03:38] Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to heaviness. Now, verse nine doesn't exactly line up with the modern version of Christianity that is promoted, the one where God has a wonderful plan for your life and he just wants you to be happy. Well, there are times, and we'll see in a minute. Well, there are times when affliction and mourning and weeping are proper.
[00:04:08] Verse number ten says, this is our final verse. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord and he shall lift you up.
[00:04:19] Let's pray together, our Lord, as we come together once again to look into your word.
[00:04:26] Please, Lord, don't let your people go away empty.
[00:04:30] I pray that you would, even if it's not through the words that I say, but through your word that you would use your word to help your people.
[00:04:39] As we're reminded of these things again, Lord, we know these things, but, Lord, help us to live by them and act upon them by faith. And, Lord, help these things to just profit your people. Especially as we look forward to this meeting next Sunday. Lord, we ask your blessing upon that as well, especially as we try to prepare our hearts and humble ourselves.
[00:05:04] Help us to do that. Give us grace to do that in Jesus name. Amen.
[00:05:12] So what we just read in James chapter four, verses six through ten, is the New Testament answer, or the New Testament equivalent to what we studied this morning. I don't know if you picked up on it. So a little bit or rather a lot that we're going to look at tonight briefly, is very similar to what we looked at this morning. But I wanted you to see it from the perspective of the New Testament, the Book of James, first of all, so that you can kind of compare the two. But also I wanted you to, I wanted to cover the ground again from maybe a different angle or an angle that's similar but slightly different as well. Look at verse number six, if you would.
[00:06:00] But he starts out this portion when he kind of pivots from the reproving, kind of harsh, you might say, but justifiably so tone that he has in the first five verses, and he pivots to grace in verse six. And he says, he, God giveth more grace. Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble. Now, we know that we look at the definition of humble this morning, the definition of humble. Just as a reminder. It means to have a lowest estimate of one's own importance and worthiness or merit. So you could add to that righteousness or faithfulness or whatever. It's having a low estimation of oneself. Sometimes people are a little bit uncomfortable with the definition of humble being having a low estimation of oneself, because that kind of flies in the face of the whole concept of self esteem that's so popular today. Listen, we have no problem thinking highly of ourselves. It is not. We are not as a society. Now, there might be people that have problems with, like, depression that are unusually down on themselves, and there's causes for that and that kind of thing. But as a general rule, as a matter of human nature, we are not lacking in self esteem.
[00:07:28] Everybody kind of agree in that, right? Self esteem is something we have an abundance of, which is why verse six is there a.
[00:07:37] So pride is the polar opposite, is the exact opposite to humility? Of course. And if humility is having a low estimate of one's importance, worthiness and merits and righteousness and faithfulness, etcetera, then pride means to have a high esteem of oneself, one's importance, one's worthiness, one's righteousness, one's merits, one's faithfulness.
[00:08:02] But the Bible says, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble. And just as a. You know, you know these verses. This is nothing new. Just as a reminder, psalm 138, verse six. Though the Lord be high, yet hath he respect unto the lowly but the proud. Notice what it says. He knoweth the proud. He knoweth a father.
[00:08:28] Now I want you to pay attention to that. Okay? Proverbs, 33. Proverbs. There's not 33 chapters. Proverbs, chapter three, verse 34, says this. Surely he scorneth the scorners, but he giveth grace unto the lowly. Here it says humblest. Same idea. Same idea.
[00:08:46] So let me just make this statement, and then I want to show you something from this verse. Is this whatever that thing is that pride prevents us from doing, or whatever that thing is which pride motivates us to do, both will be causes for God to resist us.
[00:09:14] Sometimes our pride is the thing that stops us from doing the thing that we need to do, the thing that the Lord wants us to do. Maybe often. I know in my personal experience, that comes out of the fear of the humiliation of whatever that thing is. And so pride prevents us from doing that.
[00:09:37] And sometimes pride is what urges us to do things that we shouldn't do. Also, pride is a great motivator, a negative, of course, negative motivator. But in either case, here's what I want you to see in verse six. In either case, whether it stops us from doing something we should do that is good or prevents us from doing something that is evil, or something that.
[00:09:59] I'm sorry. Or motivates us to do something that is evil, in both cases, God will resist us. Now, in the context of our meeting starting next Sunday, do we really want to be in a position where our Lord.
[00:10:17] Listen now, remember this morning where our Lord resists our advances toward him because of our pride, where we're trying to remember, to cast up, right, to cast up, to clear the way of the sin in our life or clear the way in the weights of our life, be they outward or be they inward, or whatever the case might be, whatever is hindering, so that remember, it's not the Lord coming to us, but it's our going to him. That's what we saw this morning in Isaiah 57.
[00:10:51] But if we're trying to go in God's direction and pride is in our heart, as we move toward the Lord, he withdraws from us.
[00:11:07] Now, you certainly don't remember it, and I probably wouldn't have remembered it, except I wrote it down in October, about a year ago, actually, October 25.
[00:11:17] I preached a message here about.
[00:11:20] I called it the distance principle. I don't know if anybody remembers that, but it's in the scriptural context of our relationship to the Lord. Distance, closeness, you know, distance from the Lord.
[00:11:32] Pride is something that will bring us, will cause the Lord to withdraw from us. Notice. I'll read this verse I read a minute ago. Notice the distance words.
[00:11:44] Though the Lord be high, yet hath he respect unto the lowly. So listen, the Lord is high. There's already a great distance between God and us, right? There's already a distance. But the problem is not that distance of God's glories versus our lowliness in our natural state. That's never been the problem.
[00:12:07] The problem is a distance that is spiritual in nature.
[00:12:12] It says, yet he hath respect unto the lowly, but the proud, he knoweth afar off. You see that? Afar off. That's the distance principle.
[00:12:21] And so the Lord just look at verse eight. We'll get ahead of ourselves a little bit. Look at verse eight. Draw nigh to God and he will draw nigh to you. What does the word nigh mean? Everybody know what nigh means, right? Just means near. It's a distance word.
[00:12:36] But if we have pride in us and we act in pride, then the Lord will resist our advances toward him.
[00:12:48] And in a meeting like we are preparing to have next week, what effect do you think that would have upon our Lord's blessing upon it? On our Lord's work in our hearts? We've already seen this morning, and I'll reiterate in just a minute, that we have a responsibility of heart preparation to do ourselves. The Lord tells us, too, we've already seen who it is that he revives in Isaiah 50 715.
[00:13:21] So do we want to be in a position where the Lord resists our advances toward him, our drawing nigh to him? Or the Lord gives grace. Verse six. But he giveth more grace. Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble. Remember this, any, any and every spiritual thing that is accomplished in us, no matter how big or small, is all done and accomplished because of God's grace to us, God's favor to us. In other words, God is inclined to have goodwill toward us. That's kind of the idea of grace.
[00:14:03] And the only reason anything good happens if we have this meeting and the Lord works in our hearts and stirs us up and refreshes us like we hope he does, it will be because God responded to us in his grace.
[00:14:15] But he only does that when pride is put aside of look at verse number seven.
[00:14:22] Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. We'll quickly go through this. Verse seven. I'll just say this one thing. To submit to the Lord means that we yield to his leadership. That's all that means. To yield to him. It means to run up the white flag and cease our resistance to what God is doing in us. That's the, you know, the wonderful thing about the christian life is that it's not. The Lord doesn't say, do all of these things, and he's going to stand by and watch you struggle to do it. No, that's not what he does at all. He is inside of us and he is working in us to enable us, the Bible says, to will and to do of his good pleasure. What does that mean? That means he not only not only strengthens us to do it, but he gives us the very desire to do it. So it is God working in us to accomplish his will. So what do we have the glory of? Is him doing it in us? Right.
[00:15:22] So that's why submission to the Lord. Verse seven is so important. Again, in the context of our meeting.
[00:15:28] Should there be anything in our lives? Should there be anything in our lives that we are saying to the Lord? No.
[00:15:37] No.
[00:15:39] Should there be anything in our lives? To which about that thing that we say, no, submit yourselves, therefore, to God. Verse eight.
[00:15:53] Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you.
[00:15:59] Now, this is directly related to Isaiah 57.
[00:16:04] Again, Isaiah 57. The principle is not the Lord coming to us, but our closing the distance between ourself and the Lord, clearing that path so that we can go to him. That's the same principle is here.
[00:16:18] But notice, the Lord responds to our movement toward him. The Lord responds to our movement toward him, but our movement toward him is our responsibility to do. That's why this is written in the imperative. It's a command. Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. The Lord says, draw nigh. So between now and Sunday, next Sunday, are you. Am I going to intentionally draw nigh to the Lord? Are we going to try to clear the path and close the distance between ourselves and our God? Now, that reminds us, you know, just to reiterate a little bit about that message I preached about a year ago, is that that reminds us that there is some distance. It doesn't matter how close we get to the Lord. There's always some distance. That's this world. That's this flesh we live in. Now, one day, there will be no distance. But right now, there's some distance. In other words, every one of us has some way that we can get closer to the Lord.
[00:17:25] And what you'll find, and I think. I think many, many of you would bear witness to this, is the closer you get to the Lord, the more you see, it seems like the distance is even greater.
[00:17:40] The more sin that we get rid of, that we forsake, that we turn from. It seems like the more that we see, the closer we get to the light. It seems that every imperfection, you know, the ladies, they like to have one of those. I remember when I was growing up, my grandmother had one of those magnifying concave mirrors. You know, the old kind, you know, like, you get in, like, the early eighties and had the little buttons and the lights would shine on the sides. It was square. You know what I'm talking about, right? And it flips. Oh, yeah. I love that thing, man. I don't know how many hours I spent in front of that thing because it magnified every little dimple and mole and every, you know, every. Every part of your face when you turned it on with the light, the closer you got to it, the more you saw. It was there the whole time, but the more you saw, and that's the way it is. We get closer to the Lord. What happens? It seems like the more we see, and sometimes how many of you have felt some frustration in that way? But that's just the way it is.
[00:18:36] But the Lord tells us, get closer to him. You even think about, you know, magnets. You know, when magnets are far apart, even very strong, what they call Neomdez, neomidium. David, you gotta know it. No. Anyway, it's a real strong. Joseph or David have to know this. He's gonna look it up. Watch. No, those really strong magnets that, you know, even if they're just this far apart, it's almost like they have no attraction. But the closer they come together, the stronger the pull becomes. And so when we close that distance, like the Lord says, draw nigh to God and he will draw an eye to you, that attraction gets stronger and stronger and stronger. That's why when we draw nigh to God, we want to draw nigh more and more and more and more.
[00:19:23] And what are the effects of drawing nigh to God?
[00:19:27] The effects of drawing nigh to God are, number one, it gets even easier to draw ever nearer to the Lord as you draw nigh to him. You know, the hard part is when you're at a distance, right? I don't know if anybody in here has ever been in a place in your life when you were far from the Lord, when you were living in rebellion, out of fellowship with God. It's hard to turn and go back. Now, technically, it's very easy, right? I mean, because it's just a matter of humiliation, confession. Right. See, that's easy. But it's hard on the. On the human nature.
[00:20:14] That's because those magnets are so far apart. But as you get closer, it gets ever easier to draw ever nearer.
[00:20:23] Another effect of drawing nigh to God is as we draw nigh to God, we create distance between ourself and sin, which is a good thing, because those things that once tempted us no longer have an appeal to us as we get closer to the Lord.
[00:20:38] But here's the thing I want you to see, and I listen, I copied and pasted this from the other message, this particular, these three points, as we draw nigh to God, and this is related to our meeting coming up next Sunday.
[00:20:53] His voice gets louder and more distinct to us.
[00:20:59] You know, just in the physical world, if someone is at a distance and they speak at a normal volume, you might be able to understand them. But as you get closer, it gets easier and easier and easier. And so it is with the Lord. So this is the point. In our meeting, we don't wait until the meeting. We draw nigh to the Lord now, so that when we have our meeting and we're asking the Lord to speak to us, guide us, teach us, show us his ways, to love him, to grow, whatever the case might be, his voice is clear because we're closer.
[00:21:42] So we need to now we need to close that distance. This is what James is saying, and God will respond by drawing nigh to us.
[00:21:58] Now, notice in verse number, verse number eight, again, it says, cleanse your hands, ye sinners. Purify your hearts, ye double minded. Speaking of the hands, the works, the outward things, the heart, the inward things, sins of the hands that defile the life, iniquities of the heart that defile the inward man before God to the Lord is the same, right? It's defiling either way, but both are mentioned, so it's not good enough. I'll just quote Albert Barnes. He said this in his commentary. He said, do not rest satisfied with a mere external reformation, with putting away of your outward transgressions. There must be a deeper work than that, a work which shall reach to the heart and which shall purify the affections.
[00:22:47] So the Lord tells us again, we're trying to close the distance. He says, clean up your life. Search your heart. What's in your life that is displeasing to the Lord.
[00:23:01] That's exactly what we saw in Isaiah. Right? Cast up, cast ye up. Clear the path. Get rid of the things that are displeasing to the Lord.
[00:23:12] And then in verse number nine, be afflicted and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to heaviness.
[00:23:25] You've probably heard this verse before. I'll just kind of step right into the passage that you've no doubt heard before. Ecclesiastes three, four. Listen to this.
[00:23:36] A time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance. Now, everybody loves the laughter part. Everybody loves the dancing part, right? Everybody loves the happy and the joyous part. This verse says, and this is a, in a book of wisdom, it is a wise observation of real life. And ecclesiastes says, there's a time to weep and a time to laugh. Time to mourn and a time to dance. And this context in verse number nine is the time not to dance and not to laugh, but a time to mourn.
[00:24:10] Our hands are defiled.
[00:24:12] Our hearts are impure. You see, that's the context. That is not the time to be happy. That is the time to be sorrowful.
[00:24:24] This is the equivalent in our study this morning to contrition.
[00:24:29] You see, when we find. When we search our hearts in preparation to meet with the Lord, in preparation to go toward the Lord, what we do is when we discover sin, when we discover something wrong, something that's not right, something that is displeasing to the Lord, the effect of that should be brokenness.
[00:24:50] And this is. Listen, this is not. Listen, this is not revival. We haven't even gotten to revival yet. This is preparation.
[00:24:59] Preparation.
[00:25:00] And this is part of the meaning of verse ten. Humble yourselves.
[00:25:08] Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord.
[00:25:13] All this is included in that.
[00:25:16] But our affections towards sin, we should be moved with contrition because we recognize the evil of our sin, and it's affecting us. It's not just a matter of, oh, yeah, I did wrong. It's I did wrong, and I'm brokenhearted about it. That's psalm 51. That's when David was, you know, thou art the man. David was called out by Nathan the prophet. He wasn't just like, yeah, I did it. No, it affected his affections. He was broken hearted. That's the difference between knowing that something in your life, in my life is displeasing to God and contrition. That's the difference. The difference is its effect on our affections.
[00:26:02] But this, the contrition from Isaiah 57 and this contrition in verse number nine is required because it sets our heart right toward the Lord and toward that thing that displeases him.
[00:26:19] Laughing and fun is, of course, perfectly fine, but in the context of that which displeases goddess, laughing is grossly misplaced.
[00:26:33] It should. Sin should always be handled with sorrow and gravity.
[00:26:41] And so what are we trying to get to? We're trying to get to verse number ten in our soul refresh meeting next Sunday.
[00:26:47] What are we trying to get to?
[00:26:50] Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up. You see that you don't get the second part of the verse until the first part of the verse.
[00:27:05] Notice verse number eight. Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. You don't get the second part of that sentence before the first part of that sentence, you see that you don't get God drawing nigh to you till you draw nigh to him. Look at verse number six. God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto them. You don't get the grace until there's humility.
[00:27:32] So what the Lord is telling us to do both this morning and tonight is this.
[00:27:38] The things that we should be doing to prepare our hearts must precede the Lord's response to us.
[00:27:47] We need to do it now to prepare ourselves that he might draw nigh to us, that he might give his grace, that he might lift us up.
[00:28:02] So to close, all the elements of Isaiah 57, verses 14 and 15 are present in these verses, the New Testament equivalent. You have the idea, the concept of moving toward God is here.
[00:28:15] The concept of humbling oneself before the Lord is here.
[00:28:21] The concept of confession and forsaking all known sin that's here.
[00:28:28] The idea of showing brokenness over our sin is also here.
[00:28:35] But you also have the idea of this is what it means to prepare ourselves for the Lord to meet with him. Because remember, Isaiah 50 715 says, who does the Lord revive?
[00:28:51] Whose spirit? Whose heart does he revive?
[00:28:55] The lowly, the humble, the meek.
[00:28:59] So that's where we have to get ourselves.
[00:29:02] And this is the way we are able to do that.
