OPEN: - We are dealing with the issue of disconnectedness in our relationship with the Lord. And how we can draw near. This is a passage of Scripture that follows a warning James gives to his readers on the issue of pride.
Every spring there is an international competition called the "Wacky Warning Label Contest" The fear of lawsuits has driven companies to fork over millions of dollars to place beneath-the-level-of-common-sense warning labels on their products. There is often this disconnectedness between the issues addressed on the label and real life. But somehow the people marketing the product fail to see it. People who find these wacky warning labels submit their findings and one label is chosen as the winner each year. The 2009 winning label was fixed to a portable toilet set called "The Off-Road Commode." The seat is designed for outdoorsmen -- complete with camouflage padding -- and attaches to a vehicle’s trailer hitch. Try to picture that. The warning label reads, "Not for use on moving vehicles" (no seat belt?) Other labels are equally ridiculous. A small tractor has a sticker that reads "Danger. Avoid death." A label on a hair dryer advises, "Do not use while sleeping" An iron-on T-shirt transfer warns, "Do not iron while wearing shirt" On a package of bread pudding the label cautions, "Product will be hot after heating" A sleep aid alerts the insomniac, "Warning. May cause drowsiness." There’s a child’s superhero costume that label reads, "Wearing the garment does not enable you to fly." But I think this one would have been my pick for the winner: A Swedish chain saw gives the user a critical reminder: "Do not attempt to stop the chain with your hands or genitals." (Now admittedly I really don’t know much about the culture of Sweden -- but it’s a bit of a stretch for me to think that’s really a valid concern for that product.)
- These labels may seem insulting to anyone with half a brain. But we live in an age when most people don’t think for themselves, so these idiotic labels become necessary and essential. Ignoring warning labels can obviously result in some very bad things happening to you. James is teaching us how to draw near to God following a warning that we dare not ignore. "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble." It is a necessary warning and essential that we understand. The problem we have with this verse of course is we are all people who from time to time struggle with pride. And pride always causes a distancing in our lives -- on an interpersonal level and more importantly on a vertical level between us and God.
- the goal is moving into authentic joy in the presence of God in the midst of a world that steals it away.
A sign of genuine faith in Christ is seen in the heart of the person who has a genuine longing to be in close proximity to their heavenly Father
What the Lord really wants is for those who draw near to draw near with a pure heart and a true heart. We’re told this time and time again in the Scriptures. For instance, in Psalm 27:7-8 we read, "When You said, ’Seek My face,’ my heart said to You, ’Your face, O Lord, I shall seek.’"
In Psalm 63:1-5 we read, "O God, You are my God; I shall seek You earnestly; my soul thirsts for You, my flesh yearns for You, in a dry and weary land where there is no water. Thus I have seen You in the sanctuary, to see Your power and Your glory. Because Your lovingkindness is better than life, my lips will praise You. So I will bless You as long as I live; I will lift up my hands in Your name. My soul is satisfied as with marrow and fatness, and my mouth offers praises with joyful lips."
Psalm 84:2 says, "My soul longed and even yearned for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God." In these verses you hear words like "seek," "longing," and "yearning" There nothing passive here in relationship to the Lord -- there is a chasing after -- a pursuing -- a following after Him. We settle for a casual relationship with the Lord but got wants us to have the exact opposite.
One more -in Hebrews chapter 4:16 says, Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. God is saying draw near, come close, there’s grace here, there’s mercy here if your heart is right.
So last week as we started this passage we saw that James has ten steps that show how a person can draw near to God. No where you presently are -- these ten steps will bring you back to where God wants you to be. If our hearts desire is to draw near to God then we must do as God’s Word commands. We must first submit to Jesus Christ as Lord of our lives. We must stand firm in our faith and resist the lies of Satan. When we do Satan has no choice but to flee and we’ll be able to draw nearer to God.
Let’s move on -- we’ve got several other steps to cover. The next several steps to drawing near in chapter four can be perceived as something of a downer. In fact, as we continue our journey toward drawing near to God, you are going to hear words like, "cleanse," "sinner," "weeping," and "mourning," "wailing" and "gloom" There’s a tendency to want to candy coat our walk with God -- and make it all sunshine and lollipops -- it doesn’t normally happen that way. At least that’s not the formula here. If the next steps look a little difficult to you -- good. That might be exactly where God wants you this morning. Let me encourage you with this. Now, some of you may look at what I’m about to say as more of a forewarning than encouragement. We can’t just step around them because they are not feel-good verses.
Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. (James 4:8)
Who he is talking to? Note he’s addressing, "sinners who are double-minded" each have specific instructions. Sinners need to wash their hands. The "double-minded" need to purify their hearts. He says to them, "Wash your hands and purify your hearts." These are very clearly distinct calls to repentance, on two fronts--externally and internally. Why hands? Because hands are the symbols of what? - Of action...the symbols of behavior, of deeds done. How many of you who are parents have ever struggled with getting your children to wash their hands? Have any of you ever taught your small children to say their "ABC’s" while washing their hands? It takes a while to go through the alphabet -- so as long as they keep washing while they are reciting, by the time they get to the end of the alphabet their hands should be clean. The problem with that of course is that they catch on to this fairly quickly. When you first teach them -- they start out singing it properly. The older they get the faster the song gets. The issue is not having clean hands -- the issue is jumping over the hand washing thing so they can get to the table and enjoy the PBJ and cookies that’s waiting for them. The older children get, the more disregard they have for cleanliness. Ill of old "Leave it to Beaver" episode. The "Beave" was told by his parents to take a bath. He obediently responded by going up to the bathroom. He didn’t really like taking a bath -- and He thought he could somehow trick his parents by taking a pocketful of dirt and throwing it into the bath water so the bath water looked dirty. The problem was when he came downstairs he was just as dirty as when he went up the stairs.
That’s a silly little childish game isn’t it? Throw a little bit of dirt in the water and think that mom and dad wouldn’t notice that you’re still dirty. Interesting enough we try to play that exact game grown-up style.
In Isaiah 1:15-16. God’s Word says, "When you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide my eyes from you; even if you offer many prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are full of blood; wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight! Stop doing wrong, learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow. "Come now, let us reason together" says the LORD. "Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool." The people of ancient Israel had a practice of playing the game with the Lord. They went through the motions of worship but all the while hanging onto the sin in their lives.- God says to them -- "Your hands are dirty. You want me to ignore that? To pretend that’s not there?
It is presumptuous, even arrogant, to try to come before the presence of the Lord while insisting on hanging on to the sin in our lives. God says "I won’t even look upon -- I won’t even listen to that person."
When he says, "Cleanse your hands," the hands have always been symbols of conduct; symbols of behavior; symbols of action, activity, what you do. The heart is the place of thoughts, and intents, and motives, and desires. The Levite Priests of Israel were required to wash both their hands and their feet before entering the tabernacle to perform sacrifices. In fact the Scripture tells us that without this preparatory washing, the priests would die if they tried to come into the presence of the Lord. There was this cleaning ritual they had to go through -- not that the washing of the dirt from their hands cleansing them from their sin -- but it was a physical reminder not to try to approach God with a casual flippant attitude. Cleansing our hands is a cessation of external sinful behaviors.
Then he says purify your hearts, you double-minded. The Greek word here is more literally translated as "two-souled." They will acknowledge a belief in God on some intellectual level, but they still live for themselves and their primary desire is to be satisfied by the world. "Double-mindedness" is another word for hypocrisy. James used this word in 1:8 when he spoke of the person who prayed while doubting that God would answer. A "double-souled" person is one who says one thing and does another. They say they believe one way yet their life is a contradiction. So James is addressing the heart -- the inner person. The inner person includes thoughts, motives, desires, the heart. It’s the heart, Jeremiah said, that is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, desperately wicked. We often interpret that verse to be referring to our emotions -- but it’s more than that -- it’s really talking about our inner thought life -- the inner person. There is something inside each of us that is deceitful -- desperately wicked -- desperately wicked. The person who comes wanting to draw near comes not just longing to be delivered from the things he did that are wrong, but from the wrongness that’s deep within him.
Please understand that what Scripture says is that this is the only way a human being can walk in nearness to God. Who may ascend the hill of the LORD? Who may stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to an idol or swear by what is false. (Psalm 24:3-4)
The Almighty is also the All-Holy. -- none of us can approach Him by just picking our terms or making up our own ideas. Nearness requires clean hands -- and a pure mind. A turning away from sinful behaviors -- and turning away from sinful thoughts --and a sincerity in seeking His Face.
Then James goes to another dimension, in verse 9, of drawing near and he gives several more steps - most admittedly this really is kind of a downer, Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom" That’s the way the NIV translates it. Other versions are even more extreme: The NASB says: Be miserable and mourn and weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom. That’s a pretty pathetic verse. You probably wouldn’t put that on next year’s birthday card. My guess is that you won’t rush home and tape this verse to your refrigerator door either. What in the world is he saying? I thought when you came to Christ it was a happy time, I thought there was sort of an exhilaration, isn’t this a joyous and wondrous occasion? Well, it is on the other side of your salvation, but going into it, dealing with what’s in your heart, we understand what he is saying.
In Charles Schulz’s "Peanuts" cartoon there was this little fellow named "Pig Pen." How many people remember this guy? Pig Pen, was the perpetually dirty boy who could raise a cloud of dust on a clean sidewalk, in a snowstorm, or inside a building. Pig-Pen never reached the status of Charlie Brown, Linus, or Snoopy, but he became one of the most recognizable cartoon characters in America. Pig-Pen had one distinct quality that set him apart from the other characters in the cartoon. He didn’t long for the little red-haired girl. He didn’t carry a security blanket at his side. He ran no psychiatrist’s booth. Pig-Pen was simply a happy mess. Despite his detractors, he remained defiant in preferring soil to sterility. Pig-Pen was dirty and proud of it. Like most little boys, he cared little for his appearance. He breathed the clean air and embraced the dirty ground. For him, dirtiness was next to godliness. Pig Pen was a little kid who was happy being dirty.
Pig Pen’s philosophy of life is illustrated in this little cartoon where Charlie Brown tells him his mother wants him to come home to take a bath. "Hey Pig Pen, Your mother wants you to go home and take a bath." "Fine. I’ll Go right now." "Really? I sort of had the idea that you’d HATE baths..." "Oh no... I LIKE to take baths... The whole trouble with me is that I like getting dirty even better!" There’s a world of theology in that strip, isn’t there? Pig-Pen was a dirty little kid and it didn’t bother him. In fact -- he was dirty because he liked being dirty. Like Pig Pen, we can’t avoid getting a little dirty -- but that does not mean we should embrace its qualities.
That’s the issue James is addressing in these next steps. He says, "Grieve, mourn and wail -- change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom." Be miserable -- just feel wretched. Why? Because of your shame over your sin. Because of the personal misery that your sin has brought about in your life. This is part of what we would call "brokenness." This is your emotional reaction to repentance. This demonstrates the rejection of the flesh, if we can say it that way. The old timers used to call it a "spirit of penitence." The misery that you feel over sin. Imagine going on a trip and as you are traveling you look at a map and there are three towns named Grieving, mourning and wailing are all small neighboring towns. If you were driving down the road and were low on gas, and you came across towns with names such as these, you would probably take your chances and just keep driving. You wouldn’t even consider towns with names like this as nice places to visit. Well, the same can be true when we read verses like verse nine. We tend to read these verses and just keep on going. We don’t stop to understand what it means. We don’t understand what it means and we just pass right on through because we don’t see the love. We don’t see the grace. All we see is doom and gloom.
James is not calling his readers to a life of doom and gloom. He is calling them to a life of authenticity, a life of genuine faith. The first command in verse nine is to be miserable. The first word James uses here (grieve) is found nowhere else in the New Testament. It literally means, "to do hard labor, to suffer hardship or distress" James is calling his readers to intentionally distress themselves over their sin. James does not want them to live miserable, joyless lives. He wants them to be miserable about the sin in their lives. He doesn’t want them to be comfortable. He doesn’t want them to be so fixated on the idea that God loves them just the way they are that they convince themselves that there is no reason to change the things in their lives that are contrary to God’s Word and repent. Yes, it is true that God can and will work things out in the end. But if you refuse to repent of your sin, if you insist on focusing solely on the love of God and refuse to consider the truth that God is holy, righteous, and just, the end result will not be in your favor. If you are thinking this way, stop fooling yourself. Be distressed over the sin that separates you from God and repent.
He says, "mourn" Again, James is not saying that one of the attractions of the Christian life is the fact that Christians live a life of sorrow. The command is not to mourn over being a believer. The command is to mourn over the interruption of fellowship with Christ because of the sin that separates us from Him. This doesn’t mean that if we run around beating our chests, dumping ashes on our heads, and tearing our clothes that our mourning automatically translates to genuine repentance. It doesn’t mean that every time we repent of our sin that it has to be a public proclamation and a theatrical production so everyone will believe we are sincere.
* But there has developed this standard of behavior in a lot of churches that focuses on maintaining a dignified decorum in a worship service that often gets in the way of what God is trying to accomplish in our lives. People tend to focus on remaining right in the eyes of other people rather than responding properly to what God is saying to their hearts. James is saying that if God has moved you into a brokenness over the sin in your life -- don’t even think about what other people might be thinking about you. He says "weep" -- when Peter realized that he had betrayed the Lord that he loved the Bible says he wept. The tears flowed -- it was an outward sign of an inward brokenness - not brokenness about being caught in sin and fearing the consequences, but brokenness over the realization of sin and how it insults God and damages our fellowship with Him. It’s the realization that, through our sin, we have thumbed our nose at the grace and sovereignty of God.
James ends verse nine by saying, "Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom."
And here we see the ninth stop on James’ roadmap for drawing near to God. No - it’s not an order to live a life of boredom, walking around the house saying over and over again like Eeyore, "Woe is me." The ninth command basically says, "Get serious about walking close to Jesus everyday. " James is confronting an attitude of flippancy - flippancy about sin, obedience, reverence, and repentance. There were those among James’ readers who reveled in their relationship with the world. In a nutshell, what James is giving us in the second half of verse nine is a scathing denunciation of those who are so insensitive and superficial that they are laughing when they ought to be weeping.
Last step: Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up. We’re in the home stretch. We began with Submission and we end with Humility. The two go hand in hand. Humility is the tenth and final stop on our road to drawing near to God. We also find that this last stop encompasses all of the others. You see--without humility we will be unable to do the things we’ve studied in this passage. You voluntarily bring yourself low and God will lift you up high. Conscious of His presence, conscious that He is watching, conscious of who He is, infinitely holy, sovereign majestic God. He is so great. He is so mighty. He is so pure. He is so perfect. He is so holy. We must be humbled in the light of who He is. In light of who God is -- you bow before Him and he does what -- he will lift you back up. The disciples were more afraid when Jesus stilled the storm than they were of the storm. It says they were afraid of the storm, afraid they might drown. Jesus stilled the storm and it says they were exceedingly afraid because more fearful than having a storm outside your boat is having a holy God in your boat. Peter’s response was..."Go away, depart from me, I am a sinful man." Why? He knew he had just seen the living God control nature and he was afraid to be exposed to the living God whom he knew to be holy for he was a sinful man. That’s humility.
There is such a thing as false humility. Sometime you will a person that uses self-put downs in order to induce others to build them up. That’s a kind of play-acting. That’s false and not what is being addressed here. James is talking about genuine humility. Notice the phrase "before the Lord" Genuine, godly humility never loses sight of the fact that we are constantly before our God. We are not His equals. We are not His counselors. We are not His advisors. We live continually under His sovereign will and His mighty and righteous hand.
If you take anything away from our study this morning, if there is anything that just takes hold of your mind and won’t let go until you deal with it on your knees, in the presence of the Lord, may it be this.
The only things necessary to gain authentic access, to genuinely draw near to God and to have Him lift you up are humility and repentance.
If drawing near to God is what you seek, if being in the presence of the Lord, at the foot of His throne is the true desire of your heart, then humble yourself in His presence. Submit to the authority of Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior and repent of the sin that separates you from Him. Your independence will not bring you near. The things you do that you would call "good works" will not bring you near. The view of God that declares that God is all loving and looks the other way when it comes to sin will not bring you near. Believing the half-gospel of acceptance without repentance will not bring you near.
Close: In a few moments we are going to come to the communion table to remember the sacrifice Jesus made on the cross. There has never been a greater example of humility than the Cross of Christ. As we do that, let’s meditate once again on the words of the apostle Paul, who wrote, "Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death - even death on a cross!" (Phil. 2:5-8).
