Warnings, Exaltations, & Instructions – The Church in Jerusalem
James 4:7 - 10
Did you ever read the Bible and become jealous of the relationship between God and the people you read about in it? Let me give you a few examples. Think about Adam and Eve. Not only did God provide a garden paradise for them, but He blessed them with His Presence. In Genesis 3, they hear the sound of the Lord walking in the garden. Then, He calls to them and wishes to talk to them like one person talks to another. Or, take Moses for example. The Lord called to Him through a burning bush, and Moses saw Him work as He led his people out of Egypt. But, the greatest thing about this to me is the fact that Moses talked to the Lord face to face as a man talks to another man. Or, think about the disciples and especially John. They all got to spend 3 and a half years with Jesus up close, and John was so close to the Lord that he got the tag of the one whom Jesus loved the most.
When I look at these examples, I can’t help but feeling jealous of their closeness to the Lord. After all, it would be amazing to have the kind of relationship they had with God. After all, sometimes it feels like God is a million miles away, and yet they got to be up close and personal to Him on a daily basis. It just doesn’t seem to be fair, does it? But, I have one question that God laid on my heart this week. Why don’t I get that close?
At first, I was taken aback by this statement. I started to think of all sorts of things. I know I have prayed to become closer to Him. I know I desire to know Him more intimately. I just assumed that God only picked these individuals to get close to. Then, I came across a Scripture I have read many times, and I took it as a challenge. Turn with me to James 4:7-10 or follow along in your sermon notes.
Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and He will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord and He will lift you up.
“Come near to God, and He will come near to you.” That is quite a statement and a promise. But, can it really be the truth? Can we really have the type of closeness in our Christian life that Moses, David, John, Paul and the others that we read about had? I believe we can. Join me in prayer as we seek the Holy Spirit’s guidance and wisdom this morning.
Can We Really Get Close to God?
The first area we must address this morning is whether we can truly get close to God. After all, He is God and we are not. He is completely holy and cannot even look upon sin, and we are far from holy and struggle with sin daily. I haven’t even mentioned the small fact that God is in heaven and we are on earth. We are told to come near to Him, but we can’t even get to where He is until after we die. This seems to be quite a problem.
The first thing we must do is to look back at how God created us in the beginning. We all know the story of creation. God made the land and sky and sea and animals, and then, He got around to making man. Now, it does not say how God made all of these other living things from the plants to the fish to the birds to the animals. It just states that God said, “Let there be” and there was. That was all He had to do. But, when it came to making man, He did something subtly different. God did not poof man into existence. God took His time and formed Adam out of the dust of the earth. Then, God does something that you have probably passed over a hundred times and never thought twice about. Genesis 2:7 tells us that, “The Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and the man became a living being.” Why is this important? How many of you have ever taken a CPR course or had to do CPR on somebody? Well, before they came out with a mask you could use to perform this operation, you had to get mouth to mouth with the person you were performing this on. In order to breathe life into the other, you had to be up close and personal. Now, when we look at how God breathed life into us as opposed to the beast of the field and the birds of the air, we begin to understand how intimately He created us.
God could have just zapped us into existence like he did with the rest of creation, but He took the time to form us out of the dust and then breathed His life into our nostrils. From the time we were created, God wanted to have an intimate relationship with us. After all, He didn’t stop with this life-giving, up close and personal, breath. He went on to fellowship with Adam and Eve in the garden. He continued the closeness by abiding with them. God meant there to be a closeness between He and man from the very beginning.
God still desires that we have an intimate and up-close relationship with Him. That’s why He sent Jesus. As I said, God is completely holy and cannot even look upon sin. And, if you are like me, you are in a daily fight against sin. You win some of these battles, but you lose some as well. We fail and we sin, and that sin creates an even bigger chasm between us and God. But, He still desires that close relationship. He sent His only Son to the earth to die the most horrible death imaginable so that we could once again have intimate fellowship with Him. Even when we screwed things up by sinning in the first place, God still made a way for us to be close to Him. Can we be close to God? God has done his part, but it is up to us to take the first step.
What Keeps Us From Getting Closer to God?
I love the comic strip Peanuts – especially the ones in which Charlie Brown and Lucy were playing football. We all know the situation – I have shared it before. Lucy says she will hold the football for Charlie Brown to kick. Every time he approaches the ball to kick it, she pulls it away and he falls flat on his back.
Well, in this particular comic strip, Lucy went up to Charlie Brown and offered once again to hold the ball for him. “No thanks!” said Charlie Brown. “Every time you say you’ll do it, I fall flat on my back.” As soon as Charlie Brown accused Lucy of this, she began weeping and sobbing, “Oh, you’re so right. I admit that in the past I’ve played cruel tricks on you. But I’ve seen the error of my ways! I’ve seen the hurt in your eyes! Won’t you give a poor repentant girl another chance?” Charlie Brown said, “Okay.” So he backed up, started running at the ball, and just as he was about to kick it, Lucy pulled the ball away. Once again Charlie Brown went flying through the air and ended up flat on his back. As Lucy walked away, she commented to a friend, “Unfortunately, recognizing your faults and actually changing your ways are two different things.”
This is an astute observation, Lucy! It’s not enough for us merely to recognize our faults. We must also change our ways if we wish to get closer to God! So many times in our Christian life, we see the sin that is in our lives. We pray for God to deliver us from that sin. We confess it over and over again in our prayers. However, just realizing the problem is not dealing with the problem.
James says that we are to wash our hands and purify our hearts if we are going to get close to God. What does that mean? It means that we don’t just confess the sin in our lives – we get rid of them. If you have a stain on a shirt, it is not just enough to realize there is a stain there. If you want to wear the shirt again out in public, you must make the effort to remove the stain. And, God is better than Tide. There is no stain too tough for Him to remove. And, just like we would do with clothing, we must be careful not to get the stain again.
I have a huge problem with stains. Almost like clockwork, I get something on almost every new shirt I wear. Why does it happen? It is usually because I am not careful enough. I don’t take any extra steps to protect from getting a stain. I continue to eat in the same manner without putting extra napkins or being more deliberate in bringing the fork to my mouth. In our lives though, we must make this effort. We must realize that God has given us a clean slate and we must treat it as we would a new and expensive outfit. We must make every effort to keep the stain away. We do this by avoiding situations where there is a great chance of us falling and failing. We must build up our “stain-resistance” by spending time with God in prayer and through the Bible. Our passage says it best by telling us to resist the devil. Just because he tempts you does not mean that you have to give in. It’s OK to tell the devil no – in fact, it’s encouraged. Until we take a stand against the devil and sin, we cannot get close to God. When we sin, we are sending a message to God that we love the sin more than we love Him, so He will keep His distance. What do you want more this morning? Do you want to hang on to sin that you know has only fleeting pleasure, or do you want intimacy with the Master that lasts forever and exceeds anything we could ever experience? Ask yourself the following question when tempted – Do I love this sin more than God? You reject God by choosing the sin, and that shows what you love more.
How Can We Come Near?
There are two words here that fit hand in hand that give us the key to entering into God’s Presence. They are submit and humble. These two words are not new to us. They are not even that hard to understand. They are just hard to put into practice. Let’s start with submission.
If you want to get on an airplane, you will be practicing an aspect of submission. After all, there are many rules and regulations on what you can bring aboard. You have to go through a metal detector, put your bags through a scan, and you might even be lucky enough to be put through a random check where they dump everything out of your bag to go through it. And, if you are suspicious, they even have the right to search you personally. If, at any point you refuse to do any of this, you will not be getting on the plane. You are required to submit fully to their every request.
Now, if we are willing to submit ourselves to complete strangers to get on an airplane, why are we afraid to fully submit our lives to God? Our Scripture very plainly tells us we are to do it, and yet we hang on to some things and don’t allow God to take complete control. Let me give you a few examples. You have a non-Christian friend you know needs to hear about Jesus, but you are fearful of what might happen or that you won’t know what to say, so you keep your mouth shut even though we are told in Scripture that the Holy Spirit will be with us and give us the words to say. We worry about situations we have no control over even after praying about them when God tells us not to worry or be anxious about anything. We continue to hang on to some behaviors we know are sins and begin to rationalize by saying that no one is perfect when God calls us to holiness. We push off prayer to times of trouble when it should be our first line of defense. We hang on to our wants, desires, and opinions when we should be seeking the Lord’s and adopting His ways. Submission means that we give God permission to do whatever He wants in our lives. It means that he can go through our lives, search out and find things that should not be there, and then, we will remove them.
Now, in order to fully submit, we must learn to humble ourselves. We must learn to get rid of our pride that we all have that can control our every move. It’s humility that allows us to say, “Not my will but Yours be done”. It’s humility that keeps our feelings and emotions from lashing out at someone we think is trying to hurt us. It’s humility that turns the other cheek. It’s humility that allows us to love others as we love ourselves by putting their needs and desires above our own. It was humility that sent Jesus Christ to the cross. You see, He is Lord of all. He had every power available to God, and yet, He gave it up to come to earth. Then, he went to the cross and died for you and me. That is why we should be so willing to humble ourselves before the Lord – He’s already done it for us.
This morning, I want to close with a few questions. How close are you to God? Are you as close as Moses who God called His friend and spoke to face to face? Are you as close as you want to be? What’s stopping you from getting closer? I tell you this morning that you are as close to God as you want to be. I want everyone to close their eyes and I want Carrie to come and play softly. The Holy Spirit is here and wants to meet you this morning. I know this because people have been praying and fasting this week for our church. They have been praying that we would draw closer to God. This is our opportunity. How many of you want to be closer to God this morning? Maybe you have never known Him at all or maybe you just want to know Him more. Would you raise your hand if that is you this morning? Well, if you just raised your hand, I have good news for you. You can be closer to God if you come near this morning in submission and humility by coming to the altar. The altar is not just some place you go to because you have sinned and need forgiven although that is one use for it. The altar is a place you can go and meet with God. It takes humility to step out and come to meet Him and not to think about what others may think. But, this is between you and the Lord. Won’t you throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles and come meet with Jesus. If there was a celebrity or a sports star here, we would all come to meet them and talk with them, but I offer you something more. Won’t you come meet the King of Kings and Lord of Lords? Let’s pray.
