How To Draw Near To God (Part 2)
James 4:8b-10
Preached by Pastor Tony Miano
Pico Canyon Community Church
July 8, 2001
Introduction: Two weeks ago we began to look at what can be described as a ten-stop road map for drawing near to God. James, in chapter four, verses 7-10, of his letter gives us ten definitive commands to be followed in order to draw near to God.
Remember, a general theme throughout James’ letter is that he wants to see the genuineness of his readers’ faith, not hear lip service about how faithful they are. And we also need to remember James’ tone of voice in this passage. He is rattling off a series of commands with a definite sense of urgency. Finally, let’s not forget that what James is laying out for us in this passage is not a formula, per se, for receiving salvation.
James is not saying, “Do, this, this, and this and you will earn salvation.” James, particularly in chapter two of his letter, agrees with Paul that we can do nothing to save ourselves. It is through the gift of God’s grace that a person is saved from their sins. What James is spelling out for us is a list of commands, if followed, will serve as evidence in a person’s life that their faith is genuine.
Let’s read James 4:1-10 again this morning.
As we began our study of this passage, we looked at the first three of the ten commands. We looked at the command to submit. James writes, “Submit therefore to God.” We looked at the command to resist. “Resist the devil and he will flee from you.” And we looked at the command to be near, which James followed with a great promise. “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.”
But the promise in the first half of verse eight is not the end of James’ roadmap—a roadmap that finds the “x” marking the spot of authentic joy in the presence of the holy God. No, James calls his readers to do a little more traveling. But the remainder of the journey, the last seven stops on James’ map may not seem to be as positive as the first three. In fact, as we continue our journey toward drawing near to God, you are going to hear words like, “cleanse,” “sinner,” “weep,” and “mourning.”
You may find that because of conditions and circumstances in your own life that some of these words look more like potholes than stops on the roadmap for drawing near to God. If that’s the case—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 are not going to step around the potholes. We are not going to put up roadblocks with flashing orange lights over the hazards. We’re not going to plant pretty flowers around the potholes in order to make them more pleasing to the senses.
We’re going to deal with the potholes by filling them in with the dirt and gravel of repentance, and the tar of the truth of God’s word; and resurfacing them with the impenetrable concrete of God’s amazing grace. Although the work has already been completed by the sufficiency of Jesus Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, we may find that the remainder of our journey on the road to drawing near to God will result in a little sweat, a little pain, and maybe even a few tears. But be encouraged, whether the seven commands we’re going to look at this morning appear to you as stops or potholes, the “x” still marks the spot of drawing near to God, where every one of us should long to be.
Let’s dig in!
Stops #4 and #5 — Washing & Purifying
In the second half of verse eight we read, “Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded.” We’re going to look at the fourth and fifth stops on James’ roadmap at the same time. Think of these two stops as twin cities, like Minneapolis and St. Paul.
The first stop, “washing,” deals with the external aspects of our life, and the fifth stop, “purifying,” deals with the internal. “Together [these two stops] . . . call for a radical repentance that embraces the total person” (Moo, p. 194)—inside and out. That’s right. If you want to draw near to God in an authentic and intimate way, genuine repentance is a prerequisite. And here we see it as a command, not a suggestion.
In this phrase we have probably the strongest evidence in the entire passage for the argument that James is, at the very least, including unbelievers in what he is saying. And the evidence lies within the use of the word “sinners.” The word “sinners,” by definition, is an all-inclusive term. Every man, woman, and child who ever lived, is living today, and who will be born on this earth, with the exception of Jesus Christ, is a sinner. A sinner is anyone “who act[s] contrary to the law of God” (Davids, p. 167).
So how can we know with any level of certainty that James uses the word to reference unbelievers? Well, one way—and this is something that any believer that wants to study the Bible on their own can do—is to see in what context the word is used in other passages of Scripture.
It’s helpful to know something about the Greek language when doing word studies, but it’s not imperative. There are plenty of tools, books available that are designed to explain the biblical, Greek language in such a way that the layperson can not only understand the basics, but also make use of it in their daily Bible study. If you would like to know what some of these tools are, come and see me and I will be happy to point you in the right direction. With that said, let’s take a look at other passages of Scriptures where the word “sinner,” or in the Greek language, hamartôlos, is used. For instance, listen to these words out of First Timothy.
Paul wrote, “But we know that the Law is good, if one uses it lawfully, realizing the fact that law is not made for a righteous person, but for those who are lawless and rebellious, for the ungodly and sinners” (I Tim. 1:9a).
Paul, just a few verses later, also wrote, “It is a trustworthy statement, deserving full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost of all” (I Tim. 1:15). Now, you don’t have to know the Greek to understand that Jesus didn’t die on the cross to save people who were already saved. He came to save unbelievers from their sin and eternal separation from God.
In this verse, however, we see Paul associating himself with the same group of people. What does this mean? It means that Paul recognizes that Jesus Christ came to save sinners and that he is a sinner saved by grace. So although the word is used to refer to unbelievers, the Christian reading the Scriptures should never lose sight of the fact that the only difference between them and the unbeliever is their faith in Christ. One group is lost in their sin. The other is saved from their sin.
In verse 4:18 of his first letter, Peter, quoting Proverbs 11:31 wrote, “And if it is with difficulty that the righteous is saved, what will become of the godless man and the sinner?” Here the sinner is described in contrast to the righteous person, as one who is without God, and as “one who is willfully devoted to the practice of evil” (Hiebert, p. 294).
There are several other appearances of the word “sinner” in the New Testament, but let’s just look at one more. Let’s see how Jesus used the word. Matthew 26:45 says this. “Then He [Jesus] came to His disciples and said to them, ‘Are you still sleeping and resting? Behold, the hour is at hand and the Son of Man is being betrayed into the hands of sinner.” The context is pretty obvious here, isn’t it? Did believers in Jesus Christ betray Jesus Christ? Of course not. The word “sinners” is obviously a reference to unbelievers.
Now, again, although the word “sinners” is used to describe unbelievers, that fact cannot be twisted into some unbiblical notion that believers don’t sin. The Bible is filled with graphic stories about how genuine believers fall short of God’s glory and sin against Him. Peter’s denial of Christ is a good example.
But what we are trying to do is determine how James is using this particular word, in this particular setting. So what we have here is James using the word “sinners” to point to one group—unbelievers, and using it in such a way as to remind the majority of his readers—believers, that they too fall short of the Glory of God.
And what does James tell them to do? They were to cleanse their hands. They were to wash. But what were they washing away? Well, since these parallel commands, washing and purifying, refer to repentance; James must be referring to sin. But can man cleanse himself from his sin? No. What James is calling for is a cleaning up of one’s act with genuine repentance, not self-absolution—not self-forgiveness.
The picture James is painting of a person washing his or her hands comes from the Old Testament. Beginning with Aaron and his sons, 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.
From the moment sin entered the world with the disobedience of Adam and Eve, through the Old Testament practice of the Law of centuries past, to our present age, and for all eternity, no sin can ever be in the presence of a holy and righteous God.
What grieves me is the fact that there are churches all around the world today that will not preach about sin and repentance because they are afraid of offending people. The practice or philosophy of avoiding harsh terms like, sin, transgression, and repentance may seem magnanimous, but all it accomplishes is creating congregations filled with people stained with unrepentant hearts who presume to worship God when, in actuality, they’re not.
God warned people about doing this through the prophet Isaiah. Listen to the words of the Lord in Isaiah 1:15-16. God’s Word says, “So when you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide My eyes from you; yes, even though you multiply prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are covered with blood. Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from My sight. Cease to do evil.”
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. We talked at length during our last study about the genuineness of worship. To come before the Lord in worship, knowing we are involved in sin for which we refuse to repent is useless, because we have no audience with Him. If we come before the Lord in worship, with the stain of sin on our hands, we may walk away after the experience feeling good, but it is only because we entertained ourselves, not because we were allowed at the footstool of the throne of God. In order to draw near to God we must stop doing those things that dirty our hands, in a spiritual sense. We need to wash our hands of the sin in our lives by repenting.
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, as if reciting twenty-six letters automatically translates into clean hands? Mahria and I have done this with Amanda. When Amanda first began reciting her “ABC’s” while washing her hands, it was a very melodic tune (sing “A, B, C . . .”). But over time the tune has changed. What was once a rhythmical rendition now sounds like this (recite rapidly). The older children get, the more disdain they have for cleanliness.
I was over at Paul and Martha’s the other day. Paul was saving me a hundred dollars on my car, in his driveway. Well, little Emma was there and she wanted some “M & M’s.” Paul told her that she first had to wash her hands. She stood there looking up at her dad as if she was trying to formulate a way out of washing. Four-year-olds are very sharp that way. She resigned herself to the fact that dad wasn’t going to give her the treat until she washed her hands, so she shuffled her little feet off to the bathroom.
As Paul and I stood in the garage, we could hear the water turn on in the bathroom. But as soon as we recognized the sound, it was gone. A split-second later, Emma bounds back into the garage—with much more enthusiasm than she had walking toward the bathroom, mind you—ready to receive her treat. She even added a tactic I had not seen before. She approvingly smelled her hands. I was impressed. I wished I had thought of that when I was a kid.
Paul, being an experienced parent and determined to have his daughter’s hands clean, didn’t buy the rouse. “Did you wash your hands?” He asked. Emma smiled and tilted her head. How is it that little girls know that dads often turn to putty with a simple tilt of the head? Because their mothers were once little girls!
Anyway. Paul sent Emma marching back to the bathroom to wash until she was clean. Like Emma who tried to convince her dad that her hands were clean, even when she knew they weren’t; we can sometimes look at our lives and rationalize our sin in the same way. We rationalize, justify, even lie about our sin and we presume that God is going to buy it—that God will simply overlook it because that’s what we want Him to do. It doesn’t work that way. If you are living your life in such a way that does not bring glory to God, if you commit sin—and you will because we all do—and refuse to repent, you cannot draw near to God.
Having dealt with the outside of man’s sinful condition, James goes on to address the inside. He writes, “Purify your hearts, you double-minded.” Unbelievers are 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 live for themselves and to be satisfied by the world. Now, although we’ve established that James is likely directing his attention to the unbelievers in the church, don’t think for a second that believers cannot be “two-souled.”
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. “Double-mindedness” is another word for hypocrisy. As we see in James’ words, this double-mindedness is a heart condition, an internal struggle. In order to draw near to God you must give God your undivided attention, from a pure heart. He deserves and expects nothing less.
The apostles John and Peter wrote of this inner, moral purity. John wrote, “And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure” (I John 3:3). And Peter wrote, “Since you have in obedience to the truth purified your souls for a sincere love of the brethren, fervently love one another from the heart” (I Peter 1:22).
In order to purify your heart you must have your hope, all of your hope fixed on Jesus Christ. Your life must be committed to Jesus Christ and you must live in submission to His lordship. Submitting to the lordship of Christ includes living in obedience to the truth of God’s Word. And what Peter describes as a byproduct of submitting to Jesus Christ as savior and Lord is sincerity—not a superficial outward appearance, but sincerity inside and out, of thought and deed.
Stops #6, #7, and #8 — Misery, Mourning, & Tears
Let’s take a look at verse nine. It says, “Be miserable and mourn and weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom.” Now, how many of you will rush home today after church and put this verse on your refrigerator? How many of you will now claim this as your life verse? I doubt any of you will.
In the first half of verse nine we have three more stops on James’ roadmap—the small, neighboring towns of misery, mourning, and tears. 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 read the verse and just keep on going. We don’t stop to understand what it means. We don’t understand what it means and we don’t have the time to learn. 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. Well, I think we all should have this verse on our refrigerators and, more importantly, on our hearts, because of the great and powerful truth it contains.
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. And that life includes these three important characteristics of genuine repentance. These three commands “unite to form an urgent demand for open and thorough repentance” (Hiebert, p. 239).
The first command in verse nine is to be miserable. The Greek word James uses here is found nowhere else in the New Testament. It literally means, “to do hard labor, [to] suffer hardship or distress” (Abbott-Smith, p. 439). James is calling his readers to 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.
The next command is to mourn over our sin. Most, if not all of us here this morning, have lost someone close to us. I will be presiding over a memorial service on Tuesday at the Summerhill Villa retirement community, where we lead a Bible study every Thursday. The best friend of the lady who died is a regular at our study. And I’m not embarrassed to say that I’ve adopted him as my own grandfather. Glen is his name. And Glen is in mourning. His heart is broken over the death of Alva.
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.
Genuine repentance that leads to drawing near to God can be seen outwardly in a person’s life. No, 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 one who truly mourns over their sin is not one who can always, without exception, hide their remorse. They are not the person who responds to a call to repentance with words like, “Hey, this is between me and God. God knows my heart. I’ll repent when I’m good and ready. God understands. I’m in a season of rebellion right now and I’m not ready to give it up.” When you hear these words from others, or when you say them to yourself, you need to ask the question, “Where’s the remorse?”
True remorse, the kind that carries with it a sense of mourning not unlike what we experience when a loved one dies, does not come before God and announce, “Guilty with an explanation.” Remorse resulting in genuine repentance grieves not about giving up the sin, but about sinning in the first place.
Like mourning, the next command is also one that, when obeyed, is seen outwardly in a person’s life. The command is to shed tears over sin. I mentioned Peter’s sin of denying Christ a little while ago. But let’s go back and read the account. Turn to Mark 14. We’ll be reading verses 66-72.
“And he began to weep.” Peter was so convicted of his sin, his misery and mourning over his denial of Christ was so great, that he wailed. The tears flowed. This outward expression is a 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.
Stop #9 — Get Serious
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.”
By telling his readers to get serious, 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” (Hughes, p. 189).
There are many different gospels floating around the Christian church that embrace this kind of flippancy. We could spend all day looking at examples. But just to give you a taste of what a flippant gospel sounds like, I’m going to share with you the words of a man by the name of Brennan Manning, who wrote, “You don’t have to change, grow, or be good to be loved” (Manning, p. 195).
Yes, it’s true that God loves us despite our sinfulness. But to speak of the love of God in such a way as to lead people to believe that they don’t have to change their ways, grow in their knowledge and understanding of God’s Word, or live a good life in order to show the genuineness of their faith is simply a false gospel.
For those of you who have never heard of Brennan Manning, he is an inactive catholic priest, turned spiritual guru to the stars—not the Oprah’s and Madonna’s of the secular entertainment industry, but the Michael W. Smith’s, Amy Grant’s, and D.C. Talk’s of the Christian entertainment industry. He encourages mind-emptying meditation consistent with eastern mysticism. He’s a Universalist that leads people who listen to him speak or read his books to believe that everyone goes to heaven.
The following quotes are from Manning’s book The Ragamuffin Gospel. No—I’m not endorsing the book nor am I suggesting you add it to your personal library. The very name of the book implies a different gospel, different than the gospel message of the Scriptures. And that’s what Manning sells, regardless of how he dresses it up.
I share these quotes with you to make the point that the flippancy and superficiality James wrote against is alive and well in Christendom today. For instance, on page 196 Manning writes, “The first step toward rejuvenation begins with accepting where you are and exposing you poverty, frailty, and emptiness to the love that is everything. Don’t try to feel anything, think anything, or do anything. With all the goodwill in the world you cannot make anything happen. Don’t force prayer. Simply relax in the presence of the God you half believe in and ask for a touch of folly.”
What can be more flippant than approaching the throne of grace and, instead of laying our sins at His feet and repenting, we ask God to give us “a touch of folly?” I looked up the word “folly” in Roget’s College Thesaurus to see if maybe I didn’t understand what Manning meant when he used the word “folly.” Here are the synonyms listed for “folly”—“shallowness, silliness, foolishness; nonsense; frivolity, trifling, ineptitude, inconsistency; giddiness; inattention; irrationality, eccentricity (see insanity); extravagance, absurdity; rashness” (Roget’s, p. 194). Did you hear anything that would rightly describe the attitude with which you would want to come before the Lord, or did you hear anything that you would ask God to give to you? I hope not.
And listen to what the Scriptures have to say about folly. In Proverbs 15:2 we read, “The tongue of the wise makes knowledge acceptable, but the mouth of fools spout folly.” Later in the same chapter, in verse 21, we read, “Folly is joy to him who lacks sense, but a man of understanding walks straight.” And probably the most telling description of folly is in Proverbs 24:9. “The devising of folly is sin, and the scoffer is an abomination to men.”
One last quote from Mr. Manning, and we’ll move on. On pages 94-95 Manning writes, “Grace abounds in contemporary movies, books, novels, films, and music. If God is not in the whirlwind, He may be in a Woody Allen film or a Bruce Springsteen concert . . . . Troubadours have always been more important and influential than theologians and bishops.”
Funny—I don’t find an apostle who went by the nickname “Boss” anywhere in the New Testament. In the next paragraph, on page 95, Manning writes, “In many ways Bill Cosby is the most influential religion teacher in America.” When writers and speakers that are popular in the Christian community look to Bill and the Boss for spiritual discernment and guidance, and the body of Christ legitimizes such writers and speakers by flocking to their conferences and buying and endorsing their books, is it any wonder why Christians are “yuckin’ it up” when they should be mourning over their sin? Is it any wonder that some Christians approach the throne of grace with flippancy and superficiality?
Those parts of the body of Christ, which are fulfilling the word spoken by Paul to Timothy that says—“For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths” (II Tim. 4:3-4)—those parts of the body of Christ should take heed to what James says in verse nine and get serious.
If we want to draw near to God then we must set aside any flippancy that makes light of sin and repentance and chooses to focus on the false gospel of total acceptance without repentance and obedience. When the body of Christ fails to discern, when she approaches sin and repentance with a flippant attitude, is it any wonder that the unbelievers standing on the fringe also look at repentance flippantly? Think about it.
Stop #10 — Humility
All right—we’re in the home stretch. Let’s very quickly review where we’ve been so far on this journey. We’ve made nine stops on our way to drawing near to God. The first was Submission. Jesus Christ must be Lord of our life if we are going to draw close to Him. The next stop was Resistance. We need to resist the devil at every opportunity. The third stop was Nearness. In order to draw near to the Father, we must want to be in close proximity to Him, through authentic worship. And today we’ve made stops at the towns of Washing, Purifying, Misery, Mourning, Tears, and Seriousness.
As we pull into the last stop, we find that our journey has taken us in a circle. 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. And we’re talking about genuine humility—not a false humility that practices “self-put-downs that many people use in order to induce others to build them up” (MacArthur, p. 213). No—we’re talking about godly humility.
Remember that when we talked about submitting to God, we learned that James wrote the command in such a way as to call his readers to voluntary submission. He uses the same wording here in verse ten. Humility is to be the voluntary heart attitude of every person who wants to draw near to God. “The point is that humility before God is the only way to true joy” (Martin, p. 155).
Notice that James writes “in the presence of the Lord.” The NIV translates the phrase “before the Lord.” Both translations use prepositions that carry with it the sense of being under something. I Peter 5:6 makes this idea even more clear. Peter wrote, “Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time.”
Genuine, godly humility never loses sight of the fact that we are under God. We are not His equals. We are not His counselors. We are not His advisors. We are not His friends in the sense of having a relationship built on mutual respect and admiration. We are under His sovereign will and His mighty and righteous hand.
This idea of genuine humility is so important to our Lord and Savior that He spoke of it on three separate occasions. In Matthew 23:12 we read, “Whoever exalts himself shall be humbled; and whoever humbles himself shall be exalted.” Luke 14:11 says, “For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” And finally, in Luke 18:14 we read, “I tell you, this man went to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.”
And again, humility is to be voluntary. “We are not to wait passively for someone else to humble us, nor should we wait for the [changes of fortune] to do it. Rather, self-humbling is our Christian duty” (Hughes, p. 190). And with godly humility comes an incredible promise. God will lift us up.
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.
The idea that you are in some way God’s partner or equal will not bring you near. The idea that God owes you something will not bring you near. Simply feeling good about yourself will not bring you near. Filling one of our chairs on Sunday morning and then living your life “business as usual” will not bring you near. Coming before the Lord on your terms because His seem too restrictive will not bring you near.
Do you really want to draw near to God? Then get serious about it! If your desire to draw near to God is genuine, it is only because God is drawing you to Himself, by the power of His Holy Spirit.
As we come to the communion table this morning to remember Jesus Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, let us also remember that His sacrifice is the greatest example of humility ever given. As we do that, let’s meditate once again on the words of the apostle Paul, who wrote, “Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross” (Phil. 2:5-8).
As we spend a few minutes in prayer, let me encourage you to humble yourselves before the Lord. Maybe you’re here this morning and have never truly done that. Maybe up until this morning you never realized your need for the Savior. If God has spoken to your heart this morning, through His Word and the leading of the Holy Spirit, humble yourself, repent of your sin, and ask Jesus Christ to be the Lord of your life.
The promise for those who repent and humble themselves before the Lord is a greater grace than you have ever known and will ever know. It is the free gift of eternal life. Draw near to God with a humble heart and a genuine faith and He will draw near to you and lift you up. And you will be secure with Him, through the finished work of Jesus Christ, for all eternity.
