Drawing Near

1. Read James 4:4-10. What hit you most from this passage and the sermon today?
2. How does James link the idea of selfish behaviors in community with the idea of murder?
3. In what ways can submitting to God help us overcome selfish tendencies and foster deeper relationships within our community?
4. How might I ponder the idea that God might be withholding grace from me?
5. What might it look like if God were regulating the highs and lows of my life? (My emotional and mental wellbeing and sanity)

Prayer + Practice:

Do some self reflection on your approach to the Lord and your relationship with Him. Pray and ask God to reveal the ways that you have committed adultery towards him and then repent of your adulterous ways.

It's great to see you. We are back in the book of James, continuing through it and we've spent quite a bit of time in this first paragraph of chapter four, getting through just three verses of a ten verse paragraph.

And James is trying to get us really to see community the way that God does. And one writer I think puts it as succinctly as I can over the. What we've learned over three weeks of looking at this. There is no human spirituality apart from those relationships. So that's the first thing you got to get your mind right about if you believe there's a way to have a relationship with God but not with other people within the church.

And then he says we must seek our spirituality in those relationships. So James has taught us that. Now what that essentially means, we've said, is spiritual maturity and spiritual growth are caused by community and they result in community. It's community on both ends. You cannot grow the way you need to without community.

And if you do grow, it will enhance community. If those two dynamics aren't at work, then James would say he has no idea what you're thinking. He has no idea what you're thinking. So to visualize that image, we have been using this. Here we have the sort of the picture of the Trinity, Father, Son and the Holy Spirit interacting in love and selflessness with one another.

And then God decides to give that love. It overflows and comes down to us. Then according to the scriptures, once it comes to us, we become ministers of it. We must share it with other people. That is the dynamic.

And we said there's no maybe. It's better to say there's, there's very, very few one way streets where it's just about you and God. Most of the time it's about you and God and then what he wants you to do with others. All right, if, if you want forgiveness, what does the scripture say? You better give it.

You don't get to hold it. You don't get to just be happy with God's forgiveness. And that's pretty much true of most of what God gives you.

It has to be shared.

And I think James said something that I'm not sure we even entertain very often. God says, I'm not going to give it to you. You will receive it if I think you're going to give it. If you give it, you'll receive it. Sort of works both ways there.

And the only alternative to this is to somehow separate yourself. And now you're just, you've, you're outside of that whole flow of God's movement toward you and then toward other people. And I don't know what you have.

I just. I just don't know what you have. Now you say, how serious should I take this? We've looked at it pretty deeply. How serious should I take this if I avoid community, you know, step out of the whole thing?

And I know lots of Christians in this world. There's a lot of Christians out there who have concocted some relationship with God that they have that excludes the responsibility of loving other people.

And then there are those who are in community and are just, you know. And you know, at least in James head, they're selfish. And so they do harm to community when they're in there. We all do occasionally. James says both of those are problematic.

But how serious do we have to take that?

Well, to be honest with you, I have no idea how to prepare you for what James is about to say about it. I have no idea how to prepare us for it. I have tried to get to this verse for the last three weeks, but I haven't been able to get to it because of everything we're talking about. And so I have been meditating on it for about. For at least a month, and I still don't know how in the world to prepare you for what you're going to hear.

How serious does God take that? You adulterous people. Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy God? Or do you suppose it is no purpose that the scripture says he yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us?

So we have already established the link between our spiritual lives with God and our relational lives with other people. James. James is helping do what the rest of the New Testament does in his unique way, is link those together in a way that you can't separate them. You can't just have relationships without God. You can't just have God without the relationship.

They're linked together.

They're so linked together that. And James says when you hurt people over here, when your selfishness gets in the way and hurts people, it's murder.

You just have the ability, one way or another, a little bitty cut sometimes. Sometimes it's just a, you know, a massacre, but sometimes it's just lots of little ways we hurt each other. God looks at that because we're trying to see community the way God does as murder. You're hurting the people that I love. You're hurting people.

I love.

But James is about to say, let me show you what it does to this dynamic. It's adultery in this dynamic. So here's the two big sort of. It's like, it's hard. It's really hard to think about two ways we would damage the most valuable things in life.

The most intimate relationship, adultery ranks pretty high in defiling it and of course, murdering human beings. How serious am I supposed to take these things?

That's pretty serious, wouldn't you say? Those are both pretty serious. So pretty seriously. And they happen simultaneously. You murder someone, you're committing adultery.

You commit adultery with God, it usually results in murder the relationship. That's how serious this whole spiritual dynamic is.

Just to be honest with you, over the last month, I've thought about this. But before that, I can't recall thinking of my issues on either one of these planes as murder and adultery. Anybody in here want to say, oh, yeah, I think about that all the time.

So what we're learning now, as we shift in this text to the spiritual problem, that is part of the problem of relating horribly. This is how God feels about it.

I want to show you what you're doing to people when you're relationally unhealthy. But I also want you to see what it's doing to me. And I feel like a husband or a spouse that's been cheated on.

That's how I feel like the most devastating betrayal of the most intimate relationship.

And that's why you see the language of this from adultery, which assumes an intimate relationship, to language like friendship and enmity, friend and then enemy, relational kind of language. So that disruption in one relationship is disruptive of my relationship with God as well. And so somehow to God, what happens when we're not what we should be with one another?

It's as if we've started flirting with some other ways of relating. That's the only way really to apply it. We've gained an affection for some other styles of relating that are not healthy. And you all know what they are. If you just ask someone close to you, they might be able to reveal to you what yours are, some of the unhealthy ways you relate and how tied to them you are, how affectionate you are toward those ways, and then have gone as far as jumping in the bed with them.

In God's mind, you didn't just flirt. You didn't just get an affection for it. You jumped in the bed with looks like worldly ways of relating.

There are Worldly ways to do this.

There are worldly ways of relating to people. All of us have paid the price for those ways for God. It's like you have. You've taken on a whole different system of operating than the one I have given you.

And you know what a friend is? A friend is somebody you have mutual interests with. You have mutual interests with one another. You like similar things. And then you have an emotional connection and a physical connection to some degree, because you're together in some ways.

And then at some point, they win your heart and you begin to act on that love.

And I guess what God is saying here is we just have to be really, really careful that we don't fall in love with culture's way of treating people. And then we get to flirting with that, and then pretty soon we get affectionate for it. It wins our heart, and we start treating people like other people, treat people like the world treats people. I mean, just look around. I mean, just look around at how people treat each other.

Any of those ways captured your heart.

You looked at them like you would look at somebody romantically.

That's how attractive they've become. When that happens and we start to treat people, we lose whatever this really close relationship we have with God, who had won our hearts, and now we have become an enemy of God.

He is talking to the church and about their relationships.

And all God's trying to do here is, I just need to give you a window into how I feel. And this is really important, and I think it's a really important setup that we're going to learn here. I don't think you and I will ever really hate sin unless we view God like we view a spouse. And what it would feel like for any party to be so betrayed or violated.

It's going to be really hard for us to see sin the way we ought to see it, because God is showing us a view of sin that it's very likely we don't think about very often.

When I was our first year of marriage, I've shared this with you. I did not know how to be married. And to some degree, I think James is telling us, as people who are espoused to God, we may not know how to be married to God. Now, that wouldn't seem unreasonable to me to think that maybe I don't understand what it means to be married to God. Right?

You'd go, yeah, I probably don't. My first year of marriage, I didn't understand what it meant to be married. I didn't know how to be married. I was working 70 hours a week. I married the best girl that I had ever met and known.

Fell like a ton of bricks from day one. Two and a half years later, we're married. First year of marriage, I'm working 70 hours a week. I get home, wee hours of Saturday morning sleep. So Gail's been home all day in a city, in a town she's never lived in.

I see her briefly during the week. First year marriage, sleep. Half a Saturday, wake up, call Oscar because he manages a gym so that I can finally get a workout in.

Sunday morning comes around, we go to church, and then Grandma wants us to come over for dinner, for lunch. And I got to get in bed by 9:00 because I have to get up at 3:00am to start that week over again. What would you say to me?

She had her bags packed, called her dad, said, get me home. Don't want to be here.

And I'll tell you what God. What she didn't want, and this isn't what God doesn't want either, is me to go down there and say, all right, that's what you want, I'll do it. I won't call Oscar on Saturday.

What she wanted to know was, why don't you think about wanting to be with me?

What makes you wake up and think, this is not the person that I want to spend the day with, that I want to call somebody else?

She wasn't just looking for compliance. And God's not just looking for compliance there. He. He's wanting a kind of affection that makes you say, yeah, these aren't the things I need to be doing over here. Do you see the difference in those?

You know, because it's what you want every day from people, not compliance.

You want something more special than that. That's what God is saying. And it's very likely that you and I are a little bit too cozied up to ways of doing things that have. That are not the way you're supposed to be married to God.

And God becomes an enemy. He packs his bags.

That's what it says. And this is what he makes it clear.

I mean, I'm a jealous God. You've broken my heart. This is. This has put me sideways the way any one of us in here would feel. This is God trying to give you a.

Into vulnerability and tell you, let me tell you how I feel.

I'm not even sure I really know how to contemplate how God feels. Like I didn't know how to contemplate How Gail felt. Wait a minute, God, you want me to think about your feelings? Yeah. We're learning how to be married to God.

And he says, James says, what do you think the scripture says? And this would be like your spouse saying to you, well, what do you think I've been saying?

I've been saying it. And this is God saying the whole scriptures say how much I love you and how much I want to be the priority of your life.

I'm not sure this is how I see God as sort of the jilted lover over here. But if we don't see him rightly, then I think two things are true. We're going to see them. Sin doesn't look as bad as it should, and purity doesn't look as holy as it should. If I don't see God right, I'm going to let my.

I'm going to go ahead and call my friend. I'm going to go ahead and go to Grandma's for dinner.

This doesn't feel that bad to me.

And, but basically God is saying here is. And this is where we have to get to the point of is you don't really love me. If you don't really love others the way I want you to, then you don't really love me. That's the bottom line.

You don't really love me if you don't know what's number one on my heart. And that is people in your community. You don't know me ever said that to somebody close to you.

And here's what God says. This is where it gets different, I guarantee, than any of us have thought about.

But he gives more grace.

Therefore. It says therefore. So whatever he is saying, it's supported by this principle here, which means we got to really understand what this phrase means. This phrase is grounded by God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble. Does this mean God gives grace even though we call Oscar on Saturday and go to Grandma's for dinner?

Does that mean no big deal, we can treat God like it's no big deal? Just we treat our spouse like it's no big deal. God says, no, I have a lot of grace I would like to give. You are making it hard for me to give it, just like a spouse would do to you. Don't touch me.

I have a lot of love for you. You're not getting it. It's hard to be stronger than that because whatever the attitude undergirding this is, is I'm arrogant and I can get what I need for myself. I don't need anything from you, God. See, the proud need nothing.

They're not humble, they're not lowly. They don't take the position of selflessness which James has been teaching us about. And so that person, there's so much more that God has. There's so much more.

But you miss out on the grace and you do what you do to your spouse. You make them hold back love they would love to give you.

You know, to think of your relationship that way is pretty interesting. I make it really hard for my spouse to love me. Well, I make it really hard for my spouse to love me the way I think they would want to love me.

And this is God saying the same thing. I'm capable of giving you so much more. I can help you overcome your selfishness. I can help you be more loving. I can help you relate to people better than you ever thought you could.

I can help you get rid of some of those unselfish way or those selfish ways that you relate self defeating patterns of living that you've had all your life. I can help you with all of that. But you're just too self sufficient.

I can't think of anything worse than being God's enemy.

And I certainly don't want to imagine life without God's grace.

Book I read a couple years ago, some of us on staff read, it's called the Pastors the Minor Prophet by Craig Barnes. It's a for, for those in ministry really. But one of the lines he has in the book says no mission in life is greater than learning how to receive God's overwhelming grace. It should be your mission to be receiving grace.

And I would add to that in light of what James is saying, no greater mission than to get it and no greater mission than to give it both.

So you have to be able to say in your life, do I really need God's grace? We'll talk about what that is in just a minute.

Now we tend to think of grace and this is where I think we have to sort of change our thinking on this. And James is going to help us here. We have a few minutes to do that. We tend to think of grace as well. God has to give it.

I want you to hold on now to your seat.

Okay?

God has to give it. So I can wander off anytime I want. I can call my friend anytime I want. I can get affectionate with other things anytime I want. I know God will take me back.

He's already says I'm opposed to the proud.

Don't get on my Bad side.

Don't imagine that you can play this game your way, and I'm somehow obligated to give you grace, because that's not how it works.

James is very clear about that. He's about to get clearer. Just preparing you for it. You say, what is grace in this context, it's whatever I need. It's whatever I need to be the best person I can be in community.

In this context, it's whatever I need. Whatever issues you personally have that make it hard for you to love other people. Well, like I have them for multiple reasons, I have them. Sometimes it's just pure selfishness. Sometimes it's just the habit of relating a certain way.

You know, when I get hurt, this is what I do. When I. When I get upset, this is what I do. And you do the same thing. You have yours, and you say, God, what do I need right now?

I need somehow to be able to get past this so that I can love people the way youy want me to. And God is saying, I have what you need to get past yourself. And that's the most important thing in your life. You say, whatever grace is, it's helping you get over yourself, which is destroying your life.

What is it about you that keeps destroying everything healthy in your world, everything that could be great in your world? God says, I have the grace for that. I have the grace for you to stand over here and say, I'm not getting what I want and it be okay. Wouldn't that be nice? Man, I wish it would be okay that I didn't get what I wanted or that it didn't go the way I wanted it to go.

Proud people think they know how life ought to go.

Proud people think they know how life ought to go, and when it doesn't go that way for them, they are mad at everybody.

And those same people think they deserve a certain something.

That's how arrogance works, and that's how it destroys relationships. You stomp around. I stomp around because I didn't get what I wanted. Because I'm so certain that I know exactly how life ought to go. Who's that certain?

Anybody in here want to say, I don't know what God did with me. He screwed this up bad.

Anybody want to say that? That's how we act.

God opposes the proud. He gives grace to the humble. And the word for proud is literally to show above. You just show yourself above God. You're just too high.

All of a sudden you see yourself here, maybe higher than God up here.

That's what the word means to show above. Above it all. And God is saying, you can't stay there if you want me to work with you, because that's not the flow. Here's what God's essentially saying. When I dole out grace, I do it downward.

If you're up here. I never hand up grace to anybody. I always hand it down. How you like that? I never hand up grace as if you're above me.

You're not getting it. If I have to raise my arms, God has weak shoulders. You know what I'm saying? I have them. Now, do you have them?

And God said, that's not really true. I'm joking with you. Now, for those of you who don't know me, okay, God says, I'm not lifting my shoulders to give you grace. I'll pass it down to you all day.

If you want to be up here bigger than everybody and, you know, more than everybody, you know, you're not going to get from me what you need.

Now, I think we understand what it means to be up here relationally. You know, you just. Everybody's faults look worse than yours when you're way up here and you know how life ought to go and everything's important. You don't know how to let minor things be minor things and major things be major things. You major all the minors, and you're a pain in the neck, quite frankly, when everything's important.

Hey, not everything is. And in relationships, we just destroy each other like that. We don't know how to give grace. That's being way up here. And God says, I'll oppose that all day.

And so what does he tell us? So here's the rest of the text, and I got 11 minutes to make you see this before we take communion. And we desperately need communion today. Oh, we defer. Anybody here not think they need communion today?

Oh, I'm desperate. Like, I'll have two pieces of everything. You're gonna want it after this. So he begins this little section with humility. And he ends it in chapter 4 and verse 10.

Whatever it is, you better get from. You better get from up here to down. Back in your place. You better get back in your place.

So then he's going to say, well, what does that mean? What does it mean, this humility? Because whatever it is, it's what's inside here that helps us understand what this humility is and how to get down. How do you get down from being up there? All right, well, he's going to say first word right now.

Submit. That means put yourself under authority. That's the perfect word. Get yourself back down here and just say, from the get go, lord, I realize I've overstepped and I just want you to know I'm heading back down. That's the first thing.

That's what the word submit means. You're in charge, not me. Can you say that in your heart? Really? That's not easy to say.

Don't imagine it is. Nothing about what I'm about to say is easy and James knows it. And there are two things that submitting means. That means I'm going to have to resist the devil. He says, resist the devil and he'll flee from you.

Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. And that's the spiritual dynamic you want at work in your life. You want the devil running and you want God approaching anybody want different. Because that's what James says. Pretty sure.

Submit yourselves, therefore, to God. Resist the devil. He will run, draw near to God, he will draw near to you. Whatever humility is, don't take it as weakness. You got a fight on your hands.

And if you think it's going to be easy to give up all the things you've won affection for or that have won your heart over or that you've been flirting with for years, oh, no, you have a fight on your hands, but you will have to resist. That means to stand against. It's a military term. You're about to go to war. You want to.

You want to be humble. You're about to go to war, and so devil run for you in there. He has no time for that. He has too many people that want to live up here. He'll go to somebody else.

You get down here and you draw near to God. This is an incredible deal where God says, and I'll draw near to you.

That's the spiritual dynamic you want, and that's what's at play in community. Don't miss that. Don't just individualize this. Well, yeah, I've had a bad week. And that's because.

Me, me, me. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is tied back to relationships. This is tied back to community. The resisting the devil and drawing near to God in community.

As I move toward community, I'm resisting the devil and moving toward God. That's what he's saying. And so on the one hand, on the one hand, this is kind of the look of it. It's, I'm fighting the devil and I'm tiptoeing toward God. Two different spirits.

One of them is real active and hard. And I'm going to have to. I'm going to have to go to bed hungry. That kind of fight.

And then I got to draw near to God. This is priestly language in the Old Testament. Remember how the priest used to approach God in the temple? We didn't just barge in like it was we looking around. Did you know he'll kill you dead if you come in there and your clothes aren't right, your buttons aren't all buttoned up, your hair is out of place, you had a bad thought right before you came in, you knew you'd be dead, you drew near clothes.

That's the language. It's cultic expression only James is using it for everyday life, not just when you go into the temple. When you wake up on Monday morning, you're fighting the devil and you're looking around like, I know somebody's out to get me today and I need to do what God wants me to do. You see those two things, but they're everyday things in James mind. They're not just when you go into the temple.

Listen, you had to do that, right? And so what does he say? He says exactly the same things he would say to a priest. Cleanse your hands because you're a sinner. Purify your heart because you're fickle and I know you like other things beside me, and I know there's things you want more than me.

Outside, inside, Whatever it means to go from up here to being down here, it's a full radical transformation. I can't just have my heart in the right place. I gotta wake up and make sure that my hands do the right thing. Because my heart starts to long for it and want it. And God is saying, you know what I want?

I really want your heart to be in this. Is your heart in this? It's the same thing your spouse would say, is your heart in this?

Because if your heart's in it, then I know you'll do the right things if your heart's in it.

And I know that I won't be second choice and I know I won't be sinned against.

That's basically what God is saying.

So that's how it works. And you know, that's a different kind of repentance than I think most of us are used to. We just tend to think, if I just have a good thought, God will give me grace. I've screwed up. I'll probably do it again this week too.

And he's going to give me grace. And James is saying, no, you need to be more serious about this than that. You need to be like one of those priests.

I've been reading a book called Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices by Thomas Brooks. I started reading a few weeks ago, and he's a Puritan. It was written in the middle of the 17th century, and it's all about Satan's devices against a person's life and sin. You want to talk about. It's unbelievable to hear him talk about sin.

I was reading it one morning when I had a meeting and somebody came in and said, what are you reading? And I showed it to them and I read a little section of it, and they were like, oh, my goodness. And asked me this question, should we think about sin that often in our lives?

Because I'm getting the feeling James is suggesting that, like, do I do a lot of things that aren't really holy but don't really bother me?

And I never think twice about them. I'll lie, take something, cuss somebody out like it's nothing.

I don't know. I think it ought to dawn on us when we're doing those kind of things, the second image comes from a prophet. You got that priestly looking around like, I think I just screwed up. And you also have the prophet, the prophetic side, where he says, I want you to grieve is the word. Cry, weep, wail.

I want your laughter to turn to mourning and your joy to turn to gloom. And you're like, you're asking for misery. That's how I want you to feel when you commit murder and adultery. That's how I want you to feel when you don't love. Now, this takes a second.

James in chapter one said, I want you to rejoice even when bad things are happening in your life. So I want you to think about something because I think you have to.

Is it possible to have true joy without ever mourning over anything? Ask yourself that question. Can you really be joyful if you've never cried over anything? And what James is saying is, if you don't face the reality, the reality of your sin, you can't ever really know the joy of grace. James is trying to get us to understand that there is more grace God wants to give and we would really love it.

The way to it is to weep over our sin. Then we'll know the real joy of grace until you weep over your sin, until you go through the day, and it doesn't even dawn on you if you ever get at night and it's time to confess a sin and you go, I don't even know what to say. And then you have to start thinking through the day to think if there's anything I did wrong.

How in the dark are we about our sin?

How in the dark are we now? One more thought about this. Lord have mercy.

Think about your daily life and the highs and lows, your emotional well being. This is something I screw up a lot. And I really want to learn how it is that God's in control of my emotions, whether they're weeping or joy, my ups and my downs. Most of our country struggles with that. Wouldn't you agree?

What's supposed to regulate our mental sanity, our emotional sanity? Well, the scriptures suggest God should be the one doing that. That doesn't mean you may not have particular issues, but it does mean that. Why doesn't God dictate that? I mean, why isn't the things that make me sad, the things that make God sad, That's what should be making me sad.

What should be making me glad are the things that make God glad. Those are the two things that should be regulating me. He's the one who governs my emotions, my highs and lows. Now, CS Lewis had something worth pondering, and I just want to tell it to you. So C.S.

lewis, in the problem of pain, which you know, we all understand, when we're hurting, we have all kind of emotions around that. He goes, I'm not really an expert on emotions, he says, but he did say this, and I think it's relevant for this text. My own idea, for what it's worth, this is just him spouting off, is that all sadness, which is not either arising from the repentance of a concrete sin and hastening toward concrete amendment or restitution, or else arising from pity and hastening to active assistance, is simply bad. That means if you're sad and it's not because you just did something you shouldn't have done, or because someone in your life is hurting really bad and you pity them, if your sadness is not for sin or suffering, he says, what the heck's bothering you? Isn't that good?

That's worth.

I've been reflecting on that for weeks. There are a lot of things to make you sad in the world, but most of the time the scripture tells me to rejoice in all things. The one, the two times in my life when I should be the saddest is when I screw up or when somebody I love or care about is hurting or Suffering. Wouldn't you agree with those two sentiments? What the heck else is making you upset?

Becomes the question.

I'd love to talk to you about on that, but I just can't do it. We got to be done here. Come back to that plot. But it's worth contemplating. Don't you agree with that?

What the heck is making you sad?

So this is a great exhortation. Now makes a whole lot more sense. You better get yourself back down there. And then God has this way of getting you up here where you want to be. You say, what does that mean?

What does it mean to be exalted? Because that sounds like a throne and robes. Here's what I think it really means at the end of this text, everything it is that you are trying to attain selfishly. God says, I'll grant you. You want to feel worthy, you want to feel valuable.

You want to feel like your life is worth a living. You want to feel like you're cared for and loved. I will handle all that for you. If you'll just stay low and selfless and give to other people, I'll make sure you have what you long for the most.

Let me take care of those things. Don't you demand them from people. Don't you take them from people. Don't you make people love you. You love them.

I'll love you. I'll lift you up. I'll give you what you need. So stop using that as an excuse to take from people.

We got to take communion, so I'm going to ask them to come down. And while they're doing that, let me say to you, who are guests, if you want to get up with us and go to these tables in a moment and get the elements and then come back to your seat, you can do that. You can stay in your seat if you're not comfortable or not ready.

If you can't get up and it's just not easy for you, just raise your hand. Somebody will get it to you. This is the gluten free table in case you need that. All right? And here's what I want you to do.

And there's no way in one sermon, I get it, you know, that we can solve all this. So many things I would love to just sit around and talk to you about right now. Here's what I would do if I were you. Before I got up and did anything, took one step toward that table, first thing I'd do is I'd admit God. I know I'm just not sensitive enough to your feelings.

About sin. I'm just not sensitive enough to it. And I would certainly like my state of being to be more regulated by who you are and not by my life circumstances.

I would like for you to dictate my sanity and not put that burden on other people.

I think I've broken your heart, Lord.

And I realize that I am more desperate for your grace than I even understand.