Active Faith (Part Seventeen): The Call of Duty

Transcript

JRNT 17
03/26/2023
Active Faith (Part Seventeen): The Call of Duty
James 4:7-10
Jesse Randolph


Well, in 1973 a psychiatrist named Karl Menninger wrote a book that was titled “Whatever Became of Sin?” And the overarching thesis of Menninger's book was that a day was coming when the concept of sin was going to be elbowed out by excuses and rationalizations for human misbehavior. And that sin instead would somehow be explained away by biochemistry or environmental factors or experiences or trauma. And a day was coming, according to Menninger, when the idea of sin would entirely be swallowed up by medical and scientific jargon and now would be excused as having been caused by illness or disorder or dysfunction or a syndrome. And a day was coming, according to Menninger, when the very word sin would eventually be completely eliminated from our culture's, our society's, vernacular. It would no longer be spoken of, at least in educated and enlightened circles. Well, I think it is safe to say that Menninger was on the money with his predictions, because again, he wrote that book in 1973, fifty years ago. And fifty years later we are living in days in which terms have been radically redefined. Sin is no longer called sin. People are no longer called out for the sin of drunkenness, it's instead called the struggle against the disease of alcoholism. A man is no longer guilty of the sin of sexual immorality, instead it is said he has a sexual addiction. A child is no longer engaging in the sin of disobedience to parents, warranting discipline, instead the child has oppositional defiant disorder. (Look it up.)

But not only that. We are living in days in which societal priorities have been entirely rearranged. Humanistic agnosticism and atheism have been elevated over God's Word. Relativism now reigns over the concept of objective truth. And the chief virtue that man strives after and strives to pursue is independence, to be his own boss, to be his own sovereign, to be the captain of his own ship. And when his independent streak gets him in trouble, there must be some sort of explanation for it. He is presumed to be innocent, the victim of his own circumstance, the unfortunate product of his culture and his family. His dad didn't play catch with him, his mom didn't hug him. There just has to be a reason, but whatever that reason is, we cannot call it sin.

Well, the author of the book that we've been studying on Sunday mornings for the past several months, James the Apostle, the leader of the early Jerusalem church, the half-brother of Jesus, has a bit of a different take. See, what we've just come out of in James 3 and in the first six verses of James 4 -- in this section of James' letter he is taking multiple swipes at sins of various types. That includes the sin that was still nesting in the hearts of these early Jewish converts to whom James was writing, and sin that was manifesting itself now outwardly in the lives of these early followers of Christ. James has identified the sins of the tongue in the first twelve verses of James 3. He has flagged the sins of bitter jealousy and selfish ambition, the sins of arrogance and lying and jealousy which stem from that so-called form of wisdom that is earthly and natural and demonic he calls it, which produces disorder, he says, and every evil thing. He has called out sinful quarrels and conflicts and pleasures. He has called out sinful lust and envy and all that makes one a friend of the world, hostile to God, and what James called last week adulteresses. And in the text we will be in today James, acknowledging that the battle against sin in the life of every believer is real, issues ten imperatives, ten commands.

Turn with me in your Bibles please, to James 4, we're going to be looking at verses 7-10 this morning, James 4:7-10. God's Word reads, “Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be miserable and mourn and weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you.” Ten imperatives, ten commands packed into those four short verses. And these are blunt military-like commands. These are like a drill sergeant's orders and they demand immediate action. But in response to what? Action in response to what? In response to sin. James here is waving the smelling salts of truth under the noses of this wayward group of early believers and by extension to us and is saying, wake up.

With that we get into our text. This won't be a three-point sermon this morning, it won't be an alliterated sermon this morning. It's a ten-point sermon and the title of the sermon is “The Call of Duty.” I use that title not to appeal to the high-schoolers, but rather because it speaks to the fact that here James, like a drill sergeant, is laying out the various duties that we as Christians are called to, the various commands that we are called to heed as we identify the sin that's in our lives still and as we turn from that sin and as we pursue a restored and vibrant relationship with the living God. And as we work through our text this morning we're simply going to track along with these ten commands that James gives us here. I'll give you the background of each, the context of each, the meaning of each, I'll give you the point of application for each and then we'll roll on to the next one.

So we're going to start with command #1, look at verse 7. He says, “Submit therefore to God.” Let's start with the word “therefore.” This is very clearly a transitional term, linking what James is about to say with what he has just said. And what has he just said? Well, look back at the end of verse 6 where he says, “Therefore it says, ‘God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.’ ” That's the link, that's the axle that is going to turn the wheels in the direction of where James is going to take us next. “God is opposed to the proud” and He “gives grace to the humble.” Apparently pride had contributed to the quarrels and conflicts and lusts and wrong motives among this early group of believers. So because God is opposed to the proud and because He gives grace to the humble -- and now James launches into the first of his ten commands which is that the Christian is to submit to God. And it sounds so simple and in a sense it is, but as we are going to see there are layers and layers and depth to just those three words.

The Christian is to submit to God. Now the word there for submit is “hupotasso” and the word literally means to line up under, to line up under. It can also be rendered to render obedience to, to be subordinated to, or as we have it here to submit to. But as you might expect that term, to-line-up-under, was often used in military contexts in James' day. It's an enlistment term, it's a term that is used to describe the responsibility of the soldier to line up under the authority of his commander. So that term “hupotasso” is a term with this definite military link, this military connotation, but not exclusively so. In fact, we see it elsewhere in the New Testament where it is referring to submission to various non-military types of human authority. For instance, that word, “hupotasso,” is used by Luke to describe Jesus' submission to His parents' authority. Luke 2:51 says, “He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and He continued in subjection to,” that's the word, “them,” meaning His parents. It's the word Paul uses to describe the role of the Christian, vis-a-vis human governments in Romans 13:1. “Every person is to be in subjection to,” same word, “the governing authorities.” It's the word Paul used when he described in Ephesians 5 the church's submission to Christ and the wife's submission to her husband. It's the word Paul uses when describing the responsibility of servants to submit to their masters. Titus 2:9, “Urge bond-slaves,” it says, “to be subject to,” same word, “their own masters in everything, to be well-pleasing, not argumentative.” And then Peter uses this same word when he describes master/servant relationships in 1 Peter 2:18. “Servants, be submissive to,” same word, “your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and gentle but also to those who are unreasonable.” And notably in each of those instances that I've just mentioned, what is being described is the responsibility of one human being to line up under the authority of another human being, one fallible image-bearer to line up under the authority of another image-bearer, one sinner to line up under the authority of another sinner. Except in the occasion of Luke 2:51, of course. But that's not what James is referring to here, is he? He is not talking about lining up under the authority of another human being, is he? One sinner submitting to another human being, is he? No, James here is referring to submitting to God Himself.

Now before we go any further, I don't want us to skip over the simplicity and at the same time the depth of what is being said here, which is that the One that we are called to submit to is God Himself. Now sadly because we are fallible, because we are flawed, because of the curse of sin, because of the blinding effect of our own sin, we can find ourselves going to church for years and learning Christian things and doing Christian things and being around Christian people and listening to Christian songs and reading Christian books and still somehow managing to lose sight of the nature and character of God Himself. We inject the word “God” into our various conversations, we speak about God casually, we sometimes use the word “God” irreverently. And though we would never say we are doing so intentionally, we act and we speak practically as though we have graduated from the doctrine of God. We affirm what Genesis 1:1 says, “In the beginning God.” God is our creator, He created all things in six literal days, young earth, amen. But with that key truth in place we somehow think it is safe to leave that core doctrine behind as we rush ahead to more refined points of theology.

Well, let me tell you this. The more and more refined we think we are theologically, the greater the risk that we will forget who God is actually. The more refined that we think we are theologically, the more we run the risk of forgetting that His name is Yahweh, that He is self-existent, that He is a triune being, meaning He is of a singular divine essence but He exists at the same time as three distinct persons—Father, Son and Spirit. That He is eternal and infinite, that He is transcendent, meaning over all and over us, but at the same time immanent, meaning very much near us. That He is holy which refers both to His moral perfection but also His separateness or His separation from all that is not Him or holy. It refers to His immutability, that fact that He is unchanging. He is not a God who just gets with the times. That He dwells in unapproachable light, that He is a consuming fire, that He is a God of wrath and feels indignation, anger, with the wicked every day. But at the same time He is patient and merciful and gracious and loving and He expressed His mercy and grace and love most clearly by sending His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, into the world to die for our sins. That He is the all-wise, all-knowing, all-sovereign God over the universe who sees all and knows all and has planned all. And because of that is surprised by nothing that happens on this ever devolving planet. And He is the God who, if you have trusted in Christ, has rescued and redeemed you and saved you. He is the God who controls every breath you take, controls every beat of your heart and controls every brain wave you have or ever will experience. He has complete claim and dominion over every aspect of every one of your lives.

Consider these words… in fact, turn with me to Psalm 145, please. Psalm 145, beginning in verse 1, it says, “I will extol You, my God, O King, and I will bless Your name forever and ever. Every day I will bless You, and I will praise Your name forever and ever. Great is the Lord, and highly to be praised, and His greatness is unsearchable. One generation shall praise Your works to another and shall declare Your mighty acts. On the glorious splendor of Your majesty and on Your wonderful works I will meditate. Men shall speak of the power of Your awesome acts, and I will tell of Your greatness. They shall eagerly utter the memory of Your abundant goodness and will shout joyfully of Your righteousness. The Lord is gracious and merciful; slow to anger and great in lovingkindness. The Lord is good to all, and His mercies are over all His works.”

Do you think thoughts like that about God? Do you meditate, as it says here, on the glorious splendor of His majesty? On His wonderful works? On His awesome acts? I hope so. Not only because this is who God has revealed Himself to be but because it is this God, bringing it back to James, that we are called to submit to. Not some genie in the sky, not some generic deity, not a mere force or presence, not some lower-case god among other gods. No. As Isaiah 57:15 puts it, He is “the high and exalted One who lives forever, whose name is Holy.” And James 4:7 here is calling on Christians to demonstrate a willing and a conscious submission to that God.

And note, James here is speaking of voluntary submission to God and to His will. He is not here referring to coercion, he's not referring to this sort of okay, fine kind of faith or an I-guess-I-have-to kind of faith. Not at all. James here is referring to voluntarily and willingly falling in line as we submit to God, joyfully accepting our station as His children. Doing what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:9, making it our aim to please Him. Not to please mom and dad who dragged us to church all those years. Not to please the wife or the husband who is hoping that we'll get more plugged in at church. Not to please the children who drag us here because they want to partake of all the programs and activities at the church. No. To please Him, the eternal, self-existent, triune, holy, just God revealed in Scripture.

God is not looking for proud self-reliant faith. He's not looking for adherence to tradition for the sake of tradition. He's looking for humble, dependent faith. And we all came to Him humbly at some point, did we not? We were all at some point when we were confronted with our sinful state, when we were confronted with our sinful practices, when we were forced to grapple with our sin, we sure did come to Him humbly. All of us came to Christ in some form humbly and lying prostrate. We came humbly, we came lowly, we came with a sense of the weight of our sin, but at the same time a sense of joy of the removal of the burden of our sin. And with a sense of resolve to say goodbye to the world and to live completely sold out lives for Jesus Christ. But as time goes by, as life in the body of Christ moves on, our backs start to straighten up again, those once lying prostrate backs start to straighten up again like a spring. And we can find ourselves again starting to think those sinfully prideful thoughts, and we can find ourselves like those who James is calling out here drifting back to some of the old sinful thoughts and the sinful practices of our old BC days. And it's all of us. 1 John 1:8 says, “If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.” Well, James here is calling us back to that initial posture of humble submission, which is rooted in that first love that we once had for the Lord.

That's our first command, nine to go. Submit to God. Look at the rest of verse 7, he says, “Resist the devil and he will flee from you.” Resist the devil. That's the flip side of the first command. It's submit to God and resist the devil. Stop resisting God and instead submit to Him and start resisting the devil. Now note James' language here, to James the existence of the devil is a given. His use of the definite article - that's a fancy word for the word “the” - in front of the word “devil” indicates that he really believes that there is the devil, a devil, and he knows that the devil is real. For James the devil is no mythical figure, he is no figment of one's imagination, he's not a mystical force or an evil power or this concept that has been foisted on society to scare small children at night. No, Satan is real, a real fallen angel and one who is, and I use this term intentionally, hell bent on destroying the faith of Christians. He can't destroy Christ, Christ already won, so he goes after Christ's followers.

Now that word “the devil” comes from the Greek word “diabolos” which literally means accuser. And that highlights that one of Satan's chief functions today is to accuse. He accuses us to God and he accuses God to us. He is an accuser. And we see that his role as the accuser come to light in places like Genesis 3. Genesis 3:1, when he first enters the scene it's “Has God said?” Three little words, accusing. We see it in Job 1 and 2 where he very clearly plays the role of the accuser. Recall what he says to God about Job in Job 1:11. He says to God, “But put forth Your hand now and touch all that he has,” meaning what Job has, “surely he will curse You to Your face.” Satan is an accuser, he is the accuser. And we know from Scripture that Satan works by deception and delusion. He seeks to entice the people of God, he seeks to allure the people of God. To do what? To live self-centered, worldly lives. To not give God the genuine heart-level worship that He deserves. To diminish and dilute their worship of Christ. To be divisive and self-interested and worldly. To pursue not the wisdom from above, but instead the wisdom from below which is earthly and natural and demonic.

So as we submit to God as the Word reveals Him to be, as He truly exists, we are to resist the devil as he truly exists. Now what does it mean to resist the devil? Practically? Well, the word “resist” is a compound, meaning it is just two Greek words mashed together and what the real rough translation is, is to stand against. It's another military term and James here is intentionally bringing in another military metaphor as he is directing his ancient audience, and by extension us, to take a stand against, to stand firm, to stand strong against the devil. And that's such an important word for us this morning. We can only submit wholeheartedly to God if we are committed to also wholeheartedly resisting the devil. The reality that people in this world are either entirely submitted to God as they come to faith and trust in Jesus Christ, or they are under the lordship of an entirely different ruler, namely Satan. I mean, that's showcased throughout Scripture. John 8:44, Jesus addresses the Pharisees and says, “You are of your father the devil and you want to do the desires of your father.” 1 John 3:8 says, “The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil.” 1 John 5:19 says, “We know that we are of God, and that the whole world lies in the power of the evil one.” There is no third way here, there is no middle ground. We are called to resist the devil.

Now note, there is something else important to see here which is that Satan is a created devil. As Luther once put it, “He’s God's devil.” And not only that, he is a defeated devil. Our Lord, the Lord Jesus Christ, resisted the temptations that Satan threw at Him during His life here on earth, Matthew 4, Luke 4. And of course, the Lord achieved total victory over Satan in His death on the cross when that final word was issued across the lips of our Lord before He breathed His last, “tetelestai,” “It is finished.” That rendered Satan a defeated foe. As Hebrews 2:14 says, he is now rendered powerless, and what that means for us practically, for us who have trusted in Christ, for us who have been sealed by the Spirit, for us who now have the saving relationship with God the Father and this hope of heaven to look forward to, is that Satan ultimately has no power over us. He has been rendered, Hebrews 2:14, powerless.

He can tempt us to be sure. He not only is the accuser, he is not only the father of lies, he is the tempter. But he has never forced anyone to sin, he has never been the ultimate cause of a person's sin, he can never ultimately be blamed for the sin that we commit. In fact, by way of reminder go with me back to James 1, we studied this probably back in October or so. Look at James 1:13, “Let no one say when he is tempted, I am being tempted by God”; for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He himself does not tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. Then when lust has conceived it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death.” Who is missing in that equation? Satan. In other words, the old the-devil-made-me-do-it excuse will not fly. Nevertheless, try to persuade us he does.

He is a tempter, he is an accuser, he is a seducer, he is an evil one, he is wicked. So we have to be diligent not only to be aware of his existence but also to be on guard against his ways, to actively resist him, to fight him off, to fend him off. He is a persistent foe and a diligent adversary. He knows our weaknesses and our strengths. He knows our specific areas of temptation. He has seen the game film. He knows who he is up against. But at the same time he also knows which doors, new doors, to temptation to creak open. Which is why we always have to be on the alert to his methods and his schemes and his strategies and his devices. We also always have to stay on the alert against him and the spiritual battles that he is waging toward us and those battles that we are all conscripted to fight.

Reminds me of Ephesians 6, in fact, you can turn there to Ephesians 6, familiar passage for many of you for sure, where Paul outlines this spiritual battle. Look at Ephesians 6:12, he says, “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.” And then note what Paul says in the next few verses, “Therefore, take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand firm therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; in addition to all, taking up the shield of faith with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.” That's practical wisdom in terms of fighting off the attacks of the enemy. Keep your feet planted in God's Word, seek strength from the Lord through prayer, fall in line as you submit to God and then stand strong in your resistance against the devil.

And back to James, James 4:7, look at the promise given at the end of verse 7. If we resist the devil, what's going to happen? “He will flee from you.” Unlike God, Satan is not all powerful, he is not all wise, he is not all knowing. He is a created being, he is a fallen angel and he is a fallen angel who has already taken the loss, meaning we can resist him. 1 Peter 5:8-9 says something very similar. It says, “Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. But resist him, firm in your faith.” And when we do so, when we walk with God, when we submit to God, when we live according to His Word, when we ward off the spiritual attacks which will inevitably come from Satan, when we do not give the devil an opportunity as Paul says in Ephesians 4:7, he will flee.

And of course, there is no stronger example of resisting Satan for us to consider than that of Jesus during His temptation in the wilderness. In Luke 4:13 it says, “When the devil had finished every temptation,” making all the promises he made Him, “he left Him,” meaning Satan left the Lord, “until an opportune time.” Our Lord resisted the devil by consistently citing Scripture and Satan fled. So when you are tempted to click on that link that you know you shouldn't be clicking on, when you are tempted to speak selfishly to your wife or your husband or your friend, when you are tempted to anger or discouragement or doubt or pride or worry, resist him. “Resist him,” James says, “and he will flee.” And we have to think of what John said in 1 John 4:4 when he said, “greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world.”

Submit to God, resist the devil, third command in verse 8. We submit to God, we resist the devil and he will flee from you, and here is command #3. “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.” “Draw near to God,” this is the positive side of resistance -- resist the devil and draw near to the living God. Now the concept of drawing near was associated originally with the old Levitical priests. You have to remember James' original Jewish context here. And Exodus 19 [verse 22] speaks of the priests coming near to the Lord to consecrate themselves. Leviticus 10 [verse 3] says, “By those who come near Me I will be treated as holy, and before all the people I will be honored.” That's the Lord speaking. But eventually that idea of drawing near would come to describe anyone approaching God.

We see this both in the Old and in the New Testaments. Psalm 73:27-28 says, “For behold, those who are far from You will perish; you have destroyed all those who are unfaithful to You. But as for me, the nearness of God is my good; I have made the Lord God my refuge, that I may tell of all Your works.” There is an idea of drawing near there. Same with Hebrews 4:16, it said directly in Hebrews 4:16, “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.” Or Hebrews 10:19-22 says, “Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.” And now here is James saying, “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.”

Now is that a spatial term, meaning is there a sense in which we are to draw closer to God physically? Like is there a literal stairway to heaven somewhere that we need to start climbing? Or are we to extend our finger closer and closer to God like the old painting of Michelangelo? No. To draw near to God means to approach the Lord, to pursue the Lord, to pursue an intimate relationship with Him. As the older writers would put it, to seek communion with Him. We're not only to submit to God, we're not only to resist the devil, we are called to draw near to God.

I'm going to give you a few psalms here which really get to the heart of what it means to draw near to God. Psalm 27:4, “One thing I have asked from the Lord, that I shall seek; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord.” Psalm 42:1-2, “As the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.” Psalm 84:2, “My soul longed and even yearned for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God.” And then this carries over, this concept of drawing near, in Paul's writings in Philippians 3. Philippians 3:10, Paul says he seeks to “know Him,” meaning Christ, “and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, while being conformed to His death.”

Drawing near by definition is describing a situation where somebody is afar. They aren't afar relationally in the ultimate sense because James, we're going to see in a few places here, is writing to Christians, but they are afar practically in that they have drifted like the church in Ephesus in Revelation 2 which has lost their first love. So the command to such a person is to draw near. He is not speaking of conversion, he is speaking of contrition, a repentant and decisive return to the Lord. And note this verse, James 4:8 is placing the initiative on the believer. God already worked sovereignly in saving us, from bringing our spiritually lifeless corpses up from the bottom of the ocean floor. There is nothing more He needs to do to satisfy our greatest need which is relationship with Him. But if we want to commune with Him as believers in a way that is being described here, to have this close, abiding relationship with Him, if we want to grow in Him, if we want to grow into the likeness of His Son, we are going to need to draw near to Him.

God isn't going to pull us out of bed each morning and force us into the Word. God isn't going to remove the phone from our hands until we have suddenly developed a vibrant prayer life. God isn't going to get us dressed for church each Sunday morning. Those are your decisions, those are my decisions, those are our responsibilities. Godly habits don't happen by accident. You don't just stumble into holiness.

So we are called here by James to draw near to God, and when we do so, James says, He will draw near to you. Draw near to God and He will always respond. He hears every prayer. He hears every cry and plea, He understands every worry and concern. He will draw near to you. “Resist the devil,” note this contrast, “and he will flee,” “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.” Are you someone who draws near to God, I mean, seriously? I'm not asking about your church attendance. I'm not asking about your involvement in a Bible study. I'm not asking if you serve or if you have been baptized or if your grandfather was a pastor or your dad was a pastor or your uncle was a pastor or if you pray around the dinner table as a family.

The question on the table is, are you someone who draws near to God? See, a death sentence for any church including ours will be an auditorium packed full of people who can rattle off Bible facts, who can rattle off Bible trivia, who can dominate in any Bible bee, but who don't have an active and abiding and thriving relationship with the living God, a relationship with the living God that drives them to fall to their knees to pray to Him, to yearn for eternity with Him, to pursue Him by reading and meditating on the riches of His Word, to reach out with their hands to help fellow brothers and sisters in the Lord and to open their mouths to share His saving gospel.

Back to James 4:8. Again, our text today does not, I believe, represent an evangelistic appeal to unbelievers here. This is an appeal to believers, believers who in some sense by James' time had been contaminated by worldliness and away from this allegiance to God. And when they returned to the Lord, when they do so, when they renounce the evil and the sin that they have been engaged in, when they draw near to Him, they are going to find that He will draw near to them. He will not be unresponsive.

So it's submit to God, it's resist the devil, it's draw near to God, and here is the fourth command. Look at verse 8, “Cleanse your hands, you sinners.” As I outlined for you at the beginning of the message James here is referring to sinning Christians, those who have failed to maintain God's standards for His people, those who have fallen into some cycle or pattern of worldliness. He calls them here sinners, earlier he called them adulteresses. He has called on them to submit to God, to resist the devil and now to draw near to God, but before they do so they need to cleanse their hands. To draw near to God sinners must be cleansed. And that would have been a picture that would have made complete sense to James' audience full of Jewish converts because James is very clearly here playing off the fact that the priests of the Old Testament were required to ceremonially wash their hands before they approached a holy God. You can look at Exodus 30 later to see all the details of what that process involved. But in other words, to be ceremonially fit to approach God an Old Testament Levitical priest had to cleanse his hands with water. But James here isn't merely addressing outward washing or purification rituals for Levitical priests. He's not concerned about proper hygiene for the sake of proper hygiene. Instead, he's referring here to a person being cleansed from the defilement of sin before they dare approach a holy God. And the context of this section again is James addressing this people that had slipped into lower and lower levels of depravity. That's what we have seen in James 3 leading into chapter 4. And now as he is encouraging these people to come and draw near to God, he is saying to them that before you do so, make sure you've cleaned up your act, make sure you've cleansed yourself from the defilement of sin.

Christ did not die for your sin so that you may go on living in your sin. And he has ample Old Testament and New Testament precedent to lean on here. Old Testament, Psalm 24:3-4, “Who may ascend into the hill of the Lord? And who may stand in His holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart.” And in the New Testament he has places like 2 Corinthians 7:1. After saying to the church at Corinth that God has made a promise to be a Father to them, he says in 2 Corinthians 7:1, “Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.” Or 1 John 1:9, John says, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

What James is saying here then is that if you want to draw near to God, if you want to be in close communion with Him, if you want to live as you were designed to live as Christians, remove your fingers from the cookie jar of sin. Stop reaching with your hands for all the world's contaminating pleasures. Repent of your worldly conduct and repent of the underlying love for the world that is attached to that conduct. God is not going to work through dirty hands that are stained by the world's value system and the sins of the world. So cleanse your hands, wash your hands. To draw near one must be cleansed.

And then we see this companion command here in verse 8, at the end of verse 8. He says, “and purify your hearts, you double-minded.” To draw near to God a sinner must not only cleanse their hands, they need to purify their hearts. Now the double-minded to whom James is speaking here are those whose affections are divided. They have a hand in the world but at the same time they are trying to hold onto God. They are literally, the word here, two-souled, two-faced. They are models of wavering inconsistency. They are divided in their loyalties. They are spiritually unstable. They are doubting, they are friends of the world, they are seeking to serve two masters. And that never works because God always demands of His people both their undivided affection and their undefiled conduct. “Purify your hearts,” again he is drawing on Old Testament Jewish ceremonial language here. For instance in John 11:55 we see this reference to many going up to Jerusalem in Jesus' day around the time of the Passover and it says they were doing that “to purify themselves.” But here James is bringing out more of a moral meaning to the term, he is calling for inner purification. Whereas the cleansing of hands symbolizes the person's external behavior, purifying one's heart refers to their inner thoughts, their inner motives, their desires. And we see the concept of purification again in both the Old and the New Testaments. In the Old Testament, familiar reference, Ezekiel 36 [verses 25-26]. “I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. Moreover, I will put a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.” New Testament, 2 Timothy 2:22, Paul says to Timothy, “Now flee from youthful lusts and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart.” 1 John 3:3, “Everyone who has this hope fixed on Him,” the hope of glory, “purifies himself, just as He is pure.” And now we have James here saying, “purify your hearts,” “cleanse your hands.” You need to deal with the outside, external behaviors, but you need to purify your hearts, deal with the inside. And again, he's not only speaking to this early group of believers, surely that's the context here, but through the divine authorship of the Holy Spirit he is speaking to us. So if we have been cozying up with the world, if you've been befriending the world, if you are guilty of spiritual adultery and if after a period of waywardness and drift you now seek to draw near to God, James here is saying we need to “purify our hearts.” We not only need to be pure in hands, cleansing them, we need to be pure in hearts, purifying them. Then and only then, can we truly call ourselves blessed. “Blessed are the,” what? says our Lord, “the pure in heart, for they shall see God,” [Matthew 5:8]

We're five commands in if you are counting, five to go in 15 minutes. It's okay, we have three coming up in verse 9, our sixth, seventh and eighth commands. They all kind of spill out from James' pen at the beginning of verse 9. He says, “Be miserable and mourn and weep.” There they are, six, seven and eight. Now you might be thinking, be miserable? And mourn? And weep? I mean, I thought as Christians the joy of the Lord is our strength. I thought as Christians we are called to rejoice always. Indeed we are. James again, though, is writing into a very specific context here. He is writing to this group of early believers who had slid into worldliness, into friendship with the world, into certain ungodly behaviors and so much so that he has called them adulteresses, he has called them sinners. And it is into that context with this group still wearing their black eye of sin that he says, “Be miserable and mourn and weep.” Let's take each of those three words briefly because each of those three words represents a distinct command.

he says, “Be miserable.” Do you think James was getting many dinner invitations after sending out this letter? What's your counsel to us, James? My counsel to you is to be miserable. All right, I'm going to go seek counsel elsewhere, new church, the seeker-sensitive one across town, we don't like your counsel. But again, in context what James is saying here is so appropriate. Having been called out for their bitter jealousy, for their selfish ambition, for their arrogance, for their disorder and for every such thing; having been called out for their conflicts and their quarrels and their hedonistic lusts and their envious thoughts; having been called out for their friendship with the world and their hostility toward God, what did we expect them to hear from James? You're doing just fine? God loves you just the way you are? You are so cute and special and cuddly and He loves what you are doing to Him right now as you rebel against Him openly? Of course not.

The magnitude of their drift from God, the blackness of the sin which still remains allowed no room for merriment. So James here says, “Be miserable,” which could also be rendered ‘be afflicted’ or ‘be wretched or grieve or lament.’ Paul uses a similar form of this word in Romans 7:24 when he confesses, “Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?” Peter, having denied the Lord three times in the days leading up to His betrayal and crucifixion, outwardly demonstrated this form of misery when in Luke 22:62 it says, “he… wept bitterly.” What James here is describing when he says, be miserable, is that state of brokenness over sin that we all have to experience. Sin certainly shouldn't bring us joy, but sin certainly also should not breed in us any sense of passivity. It should bring about brokenness. Why am I befriending the world and committing adultery with the world when the Lord has made me His own? Why am I going back to those cesspools of sin from which the Lord drew me? Why am I flirting with the very sin that resulted in stripes being laid on my Lord's back?

The word James uses here for “Be miserable” has a counterpart in the Old Testament and whenever that word is used in the Old Testament it refers to the response of Israel to some catastrophe that was now coming upon them on account of their sin as a nation. Like Joel 1:10 says, “The field is ruined,” that's a similar word here, “the land mourns; for the grain is ruined, the new wine dries up.” Like Jeremiah 4:13 says, “Behold, he goes up like clouds, and his chariots like the whirlwind; His horses are swifter than eagles. Woe to us, for we are,” and here is the word, “ruined!” Sin is no less catastrophic in the church age than it was in Israel's day. And sin should, as James points out here, bring about a sense of mourning and gloom and heaviness and weight. Now sin doesn't need to lead to self-flagellation, we don't need a place up here for sackcloth and ashes, or head for the hills to hide out and practice asceticism. But this sense of misery over sin that James is drawing out here should lead to confession of that sin to God, a humble and contrite heart before God and a renewed resolve to walk faithfully in the sight of God. So he says, “Be miserable.”

Next is “and mourn.” So be miserable would refer to just that state of being broken over one's sin. Mourning is now the inner response to that sense of brokenness, to that sense of conviction, that sense of inner turmoil, that sense of godly sorrow, what Paul singled out in 2 Corinthians 7:10 where he said that godly sorrow “is according to the will of God” and “produces a repentance (that is) without regret.” But the worldly sorrow, sorrow of the world will produce death. But this mourning over sin that we are called to here is not a hopeless mourning because as followers of Christ we remember the truths of God's Word and we remember what David said back in Psalm 51:17 that “a broken and contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.” We remember who we are in Christ and we remember what our Lord said in Matthew 5:4 when He says, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”

Number 8 in verse 9, last in this rapid fire statement here in verse 9, “Be miserable and mourn,” and then there is “and weep.” Mourning refers to one's inner sorrow over sin, weeping pretty obviously describes the outward manifestation of that inner sorrow. It is describing the shedding of actual salty, water-down-the-cheeks tears. And mourning and weeping are often seen paired together in Scripture which is describing the intensity of the feeling, of being deeply gripped by grief. And these are not tears, James here is describing when he says weep, of the embarrassed politician at a press conference. These are not the tears of the criminal who is weeping when he is ready to hear the sentence read from the judge. These are not the tears of the child who is being disciplined and whose only thought is, why isn't my sibling being disciplined. These are not crocodile tears. These are real tears, repentant tears, which is yet another mark of the man or woman who has been shattered internally because of their sin.

James isn't done, though. We see command #9 at the end of verse 9. He says, “let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom.” And this language is deeply contrasting and rather startling. But James here is not being some sort of divinely inspired killjoy. He's not calling out laughter or warning against laughter or saying that laughter is always wrong, instead, he is actually getting after a specific type of laughter. He is writing in the tradition here and he's drawing upon some Old Testament wisdom literature. And he is highlighting from that Old Testament wisdom literature the scornful laughter of the fool, the one who casually refuses to take sin seriously, the one who flippantly laughs as he foolishly indulges in all the world's pleasures. I was only joking, as the Proverbs say. Such a person's laughter, James says, will be turned into mourning when Spirit-wrought conviction grabs ahold of them, when getting falling-down drunk isn't funny anymore, when mean-spirited joking doesn't make them giggle like it used to. James here sounds so much again like the words of his half-brother, our Lord, Luke 6:25, where He says, “Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep.”

The last few words of verse 9 where he says, “and your joy to gloom” points to a parallel reversal. Whatever irreverent laughter was happening, that joy, James here says, must become gloom. It's hard not to imagine here the tax collector of Luke 18 who is unwilling to lift his gloomy eyes to heaven but is “beating his breast and saying, ‘God have mercy on me, the sinner.’ ” James here isn't calling on us to be sour-faced downers, he's not calling us to just walk around with hunched-over shoulders and all solemn and puritanical, he's not calling us to live a life of morbid depression. No, we are called to, 1 Thessalonians 5:16, “Rejoice always.” We are called to, Philippians 4:4, “Rejoice in the Lord.” But at the same time what James is highlighting, his emphasis here, is we are not to take sin lightly, we cannot be trivial with sin. Rather, we are to grieve over our sin and mourn and weep over our sin as we turn from the laughter of the autonomous, arrogant fool to the heart posture of true humility before God. Only then will we be able to experience not mere laughter but actual, genuine, Christian joy.

Last we turn to James' tenth command, verse 10, “Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you.” There it is again, we see it again. The key to all of this is humility. Last week we ended at verse 6 where James says, “God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” And here in verse 10 James is saying, humility leads not only to receiving God's grace, the grace that we need to fulfill each of the commands that have been laid out in our text for today, but humility also leads to exaltation. “Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you.” Note, it's “Humble yourselves,” it's make yourself low. James here is not describing a forced humiliation, rather he is describing a voluntary self-abasement. He is describing the person who sees how far short they still fall, who lay themselves before the Lord, who submit themselves to the Lord, who draw near to the Lord, who cleanse their hands and purify their hearts, who are miserable and mourn and weep, whose laughter is turned to mourning and whose joy is turned to gloom.

To such a person who has truly humbled themselves, look at the result, verse 10, “He will exalt you.” As one commentator puts it, “The picture is that of someone prostrate before… [a] monarch, begging mercy. The monarch leans down from the throne and lifts the petitioner's face from the dust. The person rises with grateful joy, knowing he or she is forgiven.” That concept, lowly and then being exalted, was familiar in the Old Testament. Job 5:11 says, “He sets on high those who are lowly.” It was articulated three times by the Lord in the gospels, the idea of whoever exalts himself will be humbled and he who humbles himself will be exalted.

But the point is, bringing it back to James, to humble ourselves in the presence of the Lord means to recognize our own spiritual bankruptcy, to acknowledge our desperate need for God's help, and our commitment to submit our will to His in our lives. It is then that He will pour out His grace, grace upon grace as we saw last week and He will exalt you. The way up is down, the lowly one becomes the lifted one, humility brings honor, the one who is humble will be exalted. Exalted in the present-day sense of knowing that we have returned to a position of favor with God which will bring natural peace and joy to our hearts, but exalted also in that future-oriented sense which Paul describes so beautifully in Colossians 3:4 when he says, “When Christ, who is our life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory,” an amazing promise. And like so many of these contrastive promises in the New Testament—the one who is last shall be first, the one who is a slave shall become free, the one who dies shall live, and here the one who humbles himself shall be exalted.

Well, this morning's sermon has been, if you've noticed, more of the rapid fire variety. I don't know if it's a correct musical term, I'd have to ask somebody in the orchestra, but it's more of a staccato sermon, ten points instead of three, with all these direct commands that James is giving us to follow—submit, resist, draw near, cleanse, purify, be miserable, mourn, weep, let your laughter be turned into mourning, your joy to gloom and humble yourselves. It's quite the long list, isn't it? But it's not only a list, because Christianity is a lot more than list-keeping. If we treat our faith in Christ as a list, we are certainly missing a key ingredient to our life in Christ as a whole, which is grace. We need grace, we need God's grace, and He has grace to give. Remember how we ended last week? We're going to end the same way this week. James 4:6, take a look at James 4:6. “But He gives a greater grace.” Do you want to know how you keep that list of all those ten things that we worked through today? Do you want to know how you submit to God, how you resist the devil, how you humble yourself, all of it? The answer is grace, praying to God for greater grace, grace He will give. Praise the Lord for His grace.

Let's pray. God, thank You again for this morning and the chance and the privilege we have had to be in Your Word. Thank You that Your Word is truth, thank You that Your Word is sufficient, thank You that Your Word is eternal, forever fixed in the heavens. And thank You that Your Word gives us all that we need to navigate the lives that You have given us. Thank You that Your Word contains the truth of the message of the Gospel, about the death, the burial, the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And thank You that Your Word gives us guidance for how we are to live in Christ once we come to Him. I pray this morning that we would come away with a sense of conviction about the various areas of our lives where there is still sin and there is still purging of sin that needs to happen as we seek to draw closer to You, but at the same time I pray that we would remember that there is grace, grace abundant, grace abounding in You, an all-gracious God. So God, would You motivate us and encourage us to live more faithfully for You this coming week and in the weeks ahead, and may we continually go back to the wellspring of grace which is You, our living God. We thank You and praise You. In Jesus' name. Amen.