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Sermon: Drawing Close to God (James 4)
160 Plays8 months ago
In this sermon, I walk through James 4 and what it looks like for us to practically draw close to Him.
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Transcript
Introduction & Theme of Humility
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey, thank you so much for tuning into the Office of Theology podcast. I'm excited to share some sermons that I've preached with you. In this message, I break down James chapter 4, drawing close to God. Hope you feel encouraged and blessed by it today.
00:00:14
Speaker
I'm excited, we're gonna be in James chapter four. I do talk about Genesis like three times in my sermon, so it's not completely off. So it'll be great though. So if you are taking notes, you can write this down at the top. This is drawing close to God. That's what I wanna unpack together. That's what I wanna talk through today, this idea of drawing close to God. And I wanna explore this main thought right here.
00:00:40
Speaker
Humility is the antidote to our pride and the avenue through which we draw close to God. Humility is the antidote to our pride and the avenue through which we draw near or draw close to God. So would you pray with me? Jesus, we love you. God, we thank you for who you are. We thank you for your peace and your grace and how you are here in this place this morning. God, I pray that we don't
00:01:10
Speaker
Just kind of sit back and just take a casual approach to encountering you, but we really say Jesus, come and have your way in this service, God, in our hearts, in our minds, in our thoughts, Jesus, that you are the one that is being glorified today. We say this in your wonderful name, amen.
Humorous Anecdote & Life Reflection
00:01:28
Speaker
So a lot of you know so I have a wonderful little daughter. She's about nine and a half months and Parentees just wild And I'm gonna be that person. I'm sorry if you don't have kids yet man. It's but I'm gonna tell a story about my kid Teaching your kid to eat solid food is the most stressful thing I've ever encountered in my life it is like I
00:01:50
Speaker
They're like, oh, they're supposed to choke. I'm like, no, they're not. Give them whole pieces of banana, and they have to learn how to gag. I'm like, what? Who comes up with these rules? My wife's in their feeder, and this is her high chair. I'm sitting behind her, all stressed out, ready to pick her up and go, whack, do the Heimlich. I am just an absolute stress case.
00:02:11
Speaker
if you didn't know, with this. But it's funny because as we're teaching her to eat, she makes a lot of weird noises while she eats. And she'll be eating and going, and I'm like, Kelly, why does she do that?
00:02:26
Speaker
And I'm like, I don't know. And then one day we were feeding her food and we try to remind her to chew her food. And it might me and my wife are looking at her while she's chewing her pancakes going, I'm not like overextensioning the chewing motion. So she learns to chew and we're like, Oh.
00:02:42
Speaker
She learned that because she thinks that's how things are supposed to go. Like, that's just how you chew food. So when my daughter grows up eating really weird, my bad. She was our first, so we'll smooth it out later, you know? All the first kids are like, amen. We'll have prayer time at the end.
Influence & Priorities in Life
00:03:02
Speaker
It's interesting what we surround ourselves to and what we draw close. We actually learn the habits of the things that we are the closest to.
00:03:10
Speaker
The people, the mindsets, the things that we read, the sphere of influence that you allow in your life, what you choose to draw the closest to is going to have the greatest impact on what comes out in your life. So my question for us that I want to propose today is, what are you drawing the closest to on a daily basis?
00:03:31
Speaker
What is your heart drawing close to? What is your mind? What is your thoughts? What is your affection? What is your attention? What gets the most of you drawing close to it?
00:03:45
Speaker
I wanna give the context of James real quick because I don't wanna just zoom in on one spot without doing justice for about 30, 45 seconds of the flow of the book of James. So the book of James was written to the Jerusalem church in about 45 to 48 A.D. And he was the half brother of Jesus. So James chapter one talks about trials and temptations, listening and responding to scripture, listening and doing.
00:04:10
Speaker
Chapter two warns against partiality and prejudice and how faith without works is dead. Chapter three talks about controlling the tongue and how can we curse people one moment and then praise God in the next month when we curse those people who are made in God's image a wonderful, wonderful chapter. True wisdom comes from God. Chapter four, which we'll be hanging out in, is drawing close to God and warning against judging others and boasting. And chapter five is a warning to the rich
00:04:40
Speaker
patience and endurance and prayer. And we'll be right, like I said, zooming in on James chapter four, verses one through 10. So let's read this. James comes out a little hot, just so you know. So if you're mad, don't get mad at me. Okay, moving on. James chapter four, verse one through 10 says this.
Reading & Reflecting on James 4
00:05:00
Speaker
What is causing the quarrels and fights among you? Don't they come from evil desires at war within you?
00:05:08
Speaker
You want what you don't have, so you scheme and kill to get it. You are jealous of what others have, but you can't get it, so you fight and wage war to take it away from them. And yet you don't have what you want because you don't ask God for it. And even when you ask, you don't get it because your motives are all wrong. You only want what gives you pleasure. Welcome to true hope today. Verse four, you adulters, it just keeps going.
00:05:38
Speaker
Don't you realize that the friendship with the world makes you an enemy of God? I say it again, if you want to be a friend of the world, you make yourself an enemy to God. Do you think that scriptures have no meaning? Rhetorical question, by the way. They say that God is passionate that the spirit he has placed within us should be faithful to him.
00:06:02
Speaker
And he gives grace generously and the scripture say God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Verse seven, so humble yourselves before God, resist the devil and he will flee from you. Come close to God and God will come close to you. Wash your hands you sinner, purify your hearts for your loyalty is divided between God and the world.
00:06:27
Speaker
Verse nine, let there be tears for what you have done. Let there be sorrow and deep grief. Let there be sadness instead of laughter and gloom instead of joy. Oh boy. Verse 10, humble yourselves before the Lord and he will lift you up in honor. Whoo. They done messed up, I guess. And James letting them have it.
00:06:49
Speaker
But the reality is I love this portion of scripture so much because it is incredibly challenging. Because it's exposing, it's going to the heart of the issue, it's going to the heart of our loyalty. What it is doing is it is challenging the way that we live and why we live that way.
00:07:09
Speaker
And there's not a person in here that is exempt from this intensity of text from James asking us this question because whether you're in this room this morning, you're like, bro, this is wild, I don't follow Jesus and you're coming off really intense. That's okay, welcome, I'm glad you're here.
00:07:28
Speaker
Maybe you're a new to the faith. Maybe you're a seasoned Christian. Maybe you're a super seasoned Christian. I don't know what phase of life you're in, but there's not one of us that in some way, shape or another, that our life is still at enemies with God. That in the depths of our heart, in the secret of places, that the ones that maybe your spouse doesn't even know about, that there's things in your heart that is still at odds with God.
00:07:56
Speaker
So let's get after those today. I think I gotta go. Too late. The plane is taking off. These are the main takeaways that I really see that we wrestle through in the text.
Desires, Self-focus & Struggles
00:08:10
Speaker
Number one is this. The struggles we face start with us.
00:08:15
Speaker
The struggles we face start with us. You see verse one right off the bat, he says, what's causing these quarrels and these fights among you? He says, don't they come from evil desires at war within you? I don't know about you, but I'd like to think that all my fights are because of other people provoking them with me.
00:08:36
Speaker
Well, well, if they didn't do this, then I wouldn't have thought this way. You know what I'm saying? Like, oh, if they didn't make that remark, or if they didn't look at me that way, or if they didn't say these certain words to me, then I wouldn't have to stand up and throw fisticuffs. You know what I'm saying?
00:08:52
Speaker
No, the reality is this is that it starts within us. But if we're constantly saying that the problem is out there, which I will to be fair, there are problems out there. But if we say the only problem is out there, we're missing a chance for the Spirit of God to renew us.
00:09:13
Speaker
See, one word here at the heart of this verse is the word desires. And in the Greek, this is how it's pronounced as hedoni, which is where we derive our English word of hedonism. If you don't know what that is, hedonism is the belief that pleasure is the chief end goal of life, that the goal of life is to chase pleasure. And what's interesting, so I'm nerding out because I know Pastor Ryan's really good at that and I have to do some justice today, is this.
00:09:41
Speaker
is that the only other uses of this word in the New Testament are about three or four other places. The first is Luke 1814, where Jesus is talking about the parable of the seeds being scattered, some on a path, some in good soil, some being choked out by the thorns, because it talks about one of those seeds being choked by life's pleasures.
00:10:03
Speaker
Another one is in Titus 3.3, which refers to people being enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. In 2 Peter 2, it talks about how all these false teachers that are coming are revealing their pleasures, the idolatry in their heart of pursuing
Worldly Pleasures vs. Fulfillment in God
00:10:22
Speaker
pleasure. So James' emphasis on one's intense search of own pleasures and gratification. What's happening is he's using this very strong language with the church.
00:10:33
Speaker
That the evil desires, all that's come from this deep rooted, I want to satisfy myself above all things.
00:10:44
Speaker
And what's interesting about today, I would say for me is this, is I don't think I would ever come out and say, you know, my chief and goal of life is to find the things that bring me the most pleasure and just run after those for all I've got. I wouldn't say that, but my life definitely may be shaped that way.
00:11:08
Speaker
And I don't know if you're anything like me. If you will be honest with yourself, maybe there's some places in your life that the end goal of you living is that you find the pleasures of life and make that the idol that you are chasing. Now, pleasure is not bad. I'm going to get to that in just a moment, so don't get out of whack about that.
00:11:29
Speaker
And the phrase, this desire for pleasure that's a battle within you in verse one, James, is explicit about how this searching for pleasure works misery in your own life. A person is drawn to these desires and then once we are drawn to these desires, my inner life, your inner life becomes this battleground, this war that is raging within us of do I want to pursue the things of God or do I want to pursue the things of pleasure?
00:11:58
Speaker
But here's the thing, though. The old nature, that is, with its self-seeking focus on personal pleasure, battles against the new nature of God within us. And when the selfish pleasure-seeking dominates, it creates fights and quarrels among us. And I like to even think about it this way, because I was reading this. This is really intense. And I'm sitting there praying, my God, isn't there an easier passage to talk about right now? This felt really intense for me, if I'm honest.
00:12:28
Speaker
And as I'm thinking about these things and I'm thinking about how this, this pleasure seeking dominance in my life. And sometimes I think of it like the pleasure that I'm trying to seek is just the self preservation of how I look to everybody else. And I will fight tooth and nail to make sure that my image outward looks exactly how I want it to look.
00:12:52
Speaker
Because when I hear the word pleasure, I don't think sometimes of pride. I don't think of self-preservation. I may go to like, I want to just to feel good and feel better, but also realizing that pleasure can come into the mindset of I'm just trying to make myself appear a certain way to people all the time. And so if someone threatens that self-preservation within me, I will react to that and start fights and quarrels and justifications in my life.
00:13:23
Speaker
My question I want to ask is this. Do you find yourself struggling with the list that James brought to attention? You want, but you don't have. You are jealous of what others have, but you can't get it. You're sitting in this tension of this. If so, it may be because we have been profoundly dominated by our own focus to pursue these things in our life.
00:13:47
Speaker
There's a story that my youth pastor told me way back when. They went on this missions trip to Mexico, and there's a bunch of students that went, and they were all down there helping out. And there's a free day, if you may. And this kid went to one of the street vendors that sell knockoff stuff. You know what I'm saying?
00:14:14
Speaker
Like you can get like the Jordan, but the Jordan doesn't look quite right, or the Nike Swish, but the Nike Swish might look a little off, you know. He said that he went to this vendor, it was a Rolex vendor. And he was like, guess what? Hey, he's like, hey Caleb, check out this Rolex that I bought.
00:14:34
Speaker
He goes, yeah, the best part was he wanted 10. I offered him five. And I got it for $5. I got a Rolex for $5 in Mexico. He was all walking around with his Rolex, which is ironic. He's on a mission trip, but that's a different conversation for a different day. And it was funny because he was so excited about his Rolex that he got for $5 on some shady alley in Mexico.
00:14:58
Speaker
And a few days later, as his watch is going through the thick of life, it kind of stops working. The hands don't really move anymore. The diamonds that were all the time started falling off, became like a baby shaker. And his Rolex that he was so proud of was not able to withstand and do the job of what it is because the quality was not actually there.
00:15:26
Speaker
And what happens is the desire for pleasure is given to us by God, but we often try to find fulfillment in cheap imitations that promise the result of God. And so when we look at this, we want the Rolex results without the Rolex quality.
00:15:43
Speaker
So when we dive into these self-pleasure things of trying to make ourselves feel good, and the chief end goal of me is to feel good and feel better and to get what I want, we are actually pursuing a good godly pleasure, but we're trying to get the results from something that cannot satisfy like God does.
00:16:05
Speaker
So my questions I wanna ask you this morning is where in your life are you pursuing the satisfaction of God but you're settling for a cheap imitation instead? Where have you sold your soul short? Where have you settled for a cheap imitation rather than the genuine satisfaction that only God can bring?
00:16:32
Speaker
Because I wanna tell you about this and I wanna talk about this and I wanna address this because I firmly believe every single one of us has areas of our life where we are still settling for less than ideal. Where we are settling for the things that represent or try to imitate God but not actually God himself.
00:16:52
Speaker
Because the point is that our humanness is to seek pleasure. The problem is that we often seek it from the wrong source and in the wrong way. Consider, for example, the words of God through the prophet of Jeremiah and Jeremiah 2 13 says, my people have committed two sins. They have forsaken me the spring of living water, and they have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.
00:17:21
Speaker
Where have we dug in imitation and broken cisterns in our life? Because the reality is that God wants us to immerse ourselves in his pleasure by immersing ourselves in him. If you find yourself in this place of I want more, I want this, I want that, I want more, I want, want, want, the antidote is fulfillment in Christ.
00:17:46
Speaker
that you find that contentment in Him. If you find yourself being jealous and envious of what other people have that you're so busy looking outward at what you don't have, the antidote is the fulfillment and contentment in Christ. Realizing that what He offers you this morning is more than enough to fulfill that need that you have.
00:18:08
Speaker
Because all we're gonna do is chase the mirage of what seems like it will satisfy but will never fully quench our thirst. His desire to be glorified and your desire to be satisfied are not at odds. I'm gonna say that again.
00:18:31
Speaker
His desire, God's desire to be glorified through you and your desire to be satisfied are not at odds. Could it be that your life as being a living sacrifice to glorify him will satisfy your deepest innermost being? Could it be that your life as a living sacrifice to glorify God will satisfy the deepest part of you?
00:19:05
Speaker
But the reality is this takes a healthy dose of humility, and humility costs you your pride.
Tension: Worldly Values vs. Godly Relationship
00:19:19
Speaker
The second main takeaway is this. You can't be friends with the world and God. Coming off that statement, let's go back to verse four. How about that? You adulters.
00:19:34
Speaker
Great. There's some people here for the first time like, I'm sorry, I didn't know he was going to be preaching today. Just kidding.
00:19:43
Speaker
Don't you realize that friendship with the world makes you an enemy of God? I say it again. If you want to be a friend of the world, you make yourself an enemy of God. I want you to remember the audience. He's talking to the Jerusalem church through dressing Christians. But this requires some reverent and careful thought real quick. James is not saying friendship with people in the world is hatred towards God. That's not what he's saying. Rather, a friendship with the current cultural worldview does.
00:20:13
Speaker
So it's not us being friends with the world. We need to be friends with the world. It is a mandate from Jesus himself, the great commission. But what I'm talking about here, what makes us an enemy to God is when we choose to allow the current cultural state to be the dominant ideology in our life. A worldview that has rejected him and his leading.
00:20:37
Speaker
But I do want to say once again, no matter where you find yourself today, if you are not a follower of Jesus yet, if you are newer season or super season, there are areas in my life and in your life where we are still at odds with the creator. And I love that about our savior. I love that he cares so much, not just about our justification being made right with him, but he cares about our sanctification continuing to be made like him.
00:21:05
Speaker
And so in this process of a continuing to be made like him, it takes honest analysis of your heart. It takes inventory of your thoughts. It takes inventory of your habits. It takes inventory of all of it and allowing the parts that are an opposite to God to be exposed. But friend, it is a painful game. But in that we find the most joy.
00:21:30
Speaker
And I just feel like we need to address the elephant in the room with this text. Why does he use the language of adulterers? I'm like, is he just like really mad? Like, is he just like hangry? Like, what's going on? James, how you doing, man? Like if Jesse was in friendship with James, after he said, are you doing OK? Are you really doing OK? For those of you who know Jesse, he'll ask you how you're doing, and then he'll follow up with how you're really doing. He's like, I'm not good. You're right.
00:22:01
Speaker
It's so great. When I'm feeling emotional, don't go around Jesse. He'll get you. The reality is he uses a strong language because we're made for relationship with God, our creator.
00:22:17
Speaker
We have been studying this so far in Genesis, see God creator of all has created us male and female in his image to be in relationship with him. But when we choose the pleasure seeking lifestyle, we're giving our love and our affection to someone else other than the one who deserves all of our love and affection.
00:22:42
Speaker
See, the reality is when we are created, we're meant to be in this relationship with God. And when we're choosing to partner with the world, we're saying that this relationship is not enough. I'm going to choose a different relationship, hoping that it produces the same results as the one I get from the creator. So use as a strong language because that's the intensity of what we are doing.
00:23:05
Speaker
And so in the middle of this confrontational text, James is reminding us that he gives grace generously. Let's not miss this. This has been a one-two punch so far, but he reminds us of this, that his grace
00:23:20
Speaker
is sufficient and his grace is abounding and his grace is bigger. He meets us in the middle of this being exposed moment and says, I see your divided heart. I see your affection is wayward, but my grace is sufficient enough and strong enough.
00:23:36
Speaker
You see that this moment of realizing the double-mindedness of our life, it should bring us to this place of humility of God being like, I see it, I acknowledge it, but in the middle of seeing and acknowledging it, my grace is sufficient for the insufficiencies of what you've done. And in that insufficiency, our response is, thanks be to God.
00:24:00
Speaker
that we no longer have to stay this double-minded person, but we can be made whole and made right, and that we can be more aligned to the words of God and God Himself. Because the reality is this. May the goodness and kindness of God's grace bring us to repentance today.
00:24:26
Speaker
The third piece is this, humility is born out of realization and repentance.
Humility, Repentance & Spiritual Restoration
00:24:34
Speaker
I just want to ask you some questions. Have you found there's areas in your life that as we're going through this, and I'm sweatingly yelling at you this morning, that you are still friends with the world in the way that it operates?
00:24:52
Speaker
Is there mindsets that you have in ways that you process and how you view individuals or how you view people's lives? Is there areas in your life that you are still friends with the world? If so, there's one thing to do. It's repent. Wash your hands and purify your hearts and get ready for more grace.
00:25:21
Speaker
I love how James ends this passage. Like he's just going to town.
00:25:30
Speaker
And he's saying, come close to God and God will come close to you. And as you wash your hands and purify your hearts for your loyalty is divided. And he talks about in this, like there's a process to coming back to God in this, in this area of your life. Humility brings us to the feet of Jesus. When we realize we are no match for our sins, we have multiple options, but only one option satisfies. And that's drawing close to God.
00:25:59
Speaker
Like in the realization of the way of how my life is not as far along as I hoped it would be. And I see my shortcomings and when I read passages like this and it's confronting me and I'm sitting there, I have multiple options.
00:26:14
Speaker
I could close it. I could be like, you know what? That was good devotion. I don't really want to think about it today. Check, I did my stuff. Or I could allow the very word of God to destroy the sin inside my heart and allow the very words of God to bring conviction. And say, you know what? I am not okay with living a double life in this area.
00:26:45
Speaker
Because in the moments of not being okay with where you see yourself is where like Jesus like, oh, yes. So almost tells us that God will not break, well, God will not reject a broken and repentful heart.
00:27:03
Speaker
You see, allow the living water of who Jesus is to wash our hands. Allow the fire of the spirit of God to purify our hearts. Allow the faithfulness of God to break our devotion to the world. Because he goes on in verse nine, and he just says this, and this is actually my favorite verse in all one through 10 it says, let there be tears for what you've done.
00:27:32
Speaker
in a world where we're taught to chase pleasure. We have been trained and we have been formed and we have been taught to reject these deep feelings of feeling pain and grief. He says, let there be sadness instead of laughter and gloom instead of joy. I read this and I'm like, yes.
00:27:56
Speaker
But this verse isn't talking about like a doom and gloom lifestyle. It is a call to embrace and examine your life and allow what you find to grieve your heart. That it has been double-minded. And then from that realization, allow humility to bring you repentance and back to God.
00:28:22
Speaker
In a current culture, in a current lifestyle where we say, I just want the good things. I just want to feel good. I just don't want to feel any pain. What this scripture is calling us back to is have sorrow for the things you find, the sin you find in your life. And that is a lost art. It is a lost art.
00:28:50
Speaker
And I believe that God is looking for people that will be honest about the condition of their hearts. Because when we're honest about the condition of our hearts, God's like, yes, now let me show you how I can transform that. Let me show you how I can heal that. It's about taking the word of God and honestly allowing it to show us where your life is out of alignment with him in his ways.
00:29:21
Speaker
In our current cultural state, you can find any voice to tell you what you want to hear. Affirm your double-mindedness. But whether we like it or not, we are faced today with the choice of who will be the Lord of our life, us or him. I think repentance has either been abused or has a negative connotation to it, but I think it's one of the most beautiful words in all of scripture.
00:29:53
Speaker
It was Jesus's first public sermon, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. It's an invitation to return back to God. And I've said this before, but it bears repeating. The goal in this conversation is not just turning away from double mindedness, but it's returning back to Jesus.
00:30:16
Speaker
You see, we can turn from sin easily. We can turn from one double-minded mindset to another double-minded mindset. The power is not in if you can turn, but the power is in who do you return back to? So when we see these things and we see these moments in our life, it's an opportunity to return back to Jesus saying, Jesus, I've been living double-minded. So therefore bring the change, bring the conviction, bring your grace and your mercy and your power to transform me.
00:30:45
Speaker
So we have an opportunity today to allow what we see and what we find to bring a godly sorrow to use scripture that brings us to repentance. And in repentance, we find wholeness and restoration.
00:31:02
Speaker
Instead of pretending like we're not double-minded, let's acknowledge it and let's move forward and let's grow. Allow our hearts to be, feel the weight and allow our hearts to be grieved and allow the joy of the Lord and the grace of Jesus to heal the double-mindedness in our life.
00:31:26
Speaker
It's the last thing I want to say. The gravity of grace will always be available to those who submit to God, whose souls are moving towards Him, who purify their inner and outer lives, who mourn over their sins, and who obey God's command to humble ourself before Him.
00:31:45
Speaker
Now I wanna remind you of the guiding thought or the main thought is this, humility is the antidote to our pride and the avenue through which we draw close to God. So today we have an invitation from God, who will we serve ourselves or him? Would you pray with me, Jesus, we love you. And I pray that we use this time well
00:32:15
Speaker
And I pray that we are encouraged in the midst of being confronted, Jesus. I know in my life, this is, I am not absent or drawn back from this, that this is very much what you've been revealing to me. So God, we ask that you continue to work out that in this moment, people don't feel shame.
00:32:33
Speaker
They don't feel the overwhelming sense of that that they are they don't they aren't full of shame God but what they are is full of Conviction and conviction leads us to Godly sorrow and Godly sorrow leads us to you Jesus It's God. We thank you for who you are. We thank you for your peace. We thank you for your grace. We say this in your name