THE DIRT ROAD TO GREATER GRACE
Posted by Pastor Greg Allen on July 24, 2024 under AM Bible Study |
AM Bible Study Group: July 24, 2024 from James 4:6
Theme: God gives greater grace to those who humble themselves before Him.
(All Scripture is taken from The New King James Version, unless otherwise indicated).
Imagine going to a doctor, and hearing him say, “I’m sorry to tell you this; but you have a very serious disease. Your situation is very, very bad; and you can only be saved if you do exactly as I say.” What would it be like if you responded by saying, “Well; thank you, Doctor. But the fact is that I don’t think I’m as bad off as you make me out to be. After all, I look around and I see lots of people who are in much worse condition than I am. And while I greatly appreciate your opinion, I feel that I know myself far better than you do. So, I’m going to tell you instead what I plan to do in order to make myself better …”
If we did something like that, we’d prove ourselves to be arrogant, foolish, and deserving of what we suffered. But we’re being no less prideful and foolish when God tells us that we’re in a very bad spiritual condition before Him, and that we’re doomed to suffer serious loss if we don’t repent, and that we absolutely must do what He tells us to do in order to get better … and then reject His counsel out of pride.
In James 4, Pastor James has introduced a ‘cure’ for a sinful pattern that is very destructive in our spiritual life and in our church fellowship. But it’s a hard cure that can only be taken with humility. We’d be very foolish to reject it. The sinful pattern that he’d been writing about in James 4 is the way we—as believers—have conflicts and fights among us. In verses 1-3, he described our ailment when he wrote;
Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures (vv. 1b-3).
And in verses 4-5, he described the terrible character of this ailment. He doesn’t mince words, either. He wrote;
Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, “The Spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously”? (vv. 4-5).
The cause of the fights among us within God’s household is ‘the desires for pleasure’—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life—the kinds of things that are hostile to God and contrary to His way for us. And James then calls our condition out for what it is: a form of spiritual adultery—an unfaithfulness to God that shows itself in the way we seek to find fulfillment from the sinful aspects of this world rather than simply asking Him for what we need. It comes from the pride of thinking that we know better than God how to bring about our own happiness and fulfillment. And in verses 6-10, he gives us the cure. It’s not an easy pill to swallow; but it’s the only one that will make us better:
But He gives more grace. Therefore He says:
“God resists the proud,
But gives grace to the humble.”Therefore submit 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. Lament and mourn and weep! Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up (vv. 6-10).
Verses 7-10 tell us what to do. It prescribes the medicine for what ails us. But verse 6 is important because it shows us why that hard medicine is necessary. It would be worth our time to take this one verse into careful consideration. It shows us that humbling ourselves in repentance before God is absolutely necessary; because God gives greater grace to those who humble themselves before Him.
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It takes a great deal of humility for most people to admit the wrong of their bad choices. This is true even of believers. It’s hard to fall before God, admit our error, repent (or ‘change our mind’) about it, confess the harm we’ve done, and appeal to God for His gracious help. It’s such a hard thing to do that many refuse to do it—even as professing believers. The reason is because such humility is in opposition to our natural inclination toward the protection of our own pride. Pride causes more of us to remain on a spiritual course of destruction and loss than any other sin. In fact, pride could rightly be called the chief of sins—and the sin that’s at the root of all other sin—because it causes us to refuse to admit the truth of our condition before God, and to refuse to accept the grace that God freely offers to us.
The nature of pride is such that, every time we sin—every time we disobey God’s good commandments for us—we’re, in our hearts, saying to God that we think we know better than Him how to run our own lives and how to bring about our own ultimate happiness. We’re in essence setting ourselves above Him and His commands, and pouring scorn on His good will for us. No wonder God hates pride so much.
So then; let’s look at this one verse—James 4:6—and from it see the fundamental principle that …
1. GOD IS OPPOSED TO THE PROUD.
In this verse, James quotes Proverbs 3:34; which says,
Surely He scorns the scornful,
But gives grace to the humble (Proverbs 3:34).
Whenever we find an Old Testament passage quoted in the New Testament, we should take careful note of it. But we should take even greater care to notice when it’s repeated in the New Testament more than once. And Proverbs 3:34 is not only quoted here in James 4:6, but also in 1 Peter 5:5-6; where Peter urged his readers to “humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time”.
Not only is this verse repeated; but the principle it teaches us is expressed in several other places—showing that it’s a basic principle of our relationship with God. For example, we’re told in Proverbs 16:5;
Everyone proud in heart is an abomination to the Lord;
Though they join forces, none will go unpunished (Proverbs 16:5).
And we’re also told in Psalm 138:6;
Though the Lord is on high,
Yet He regards the lowly;
But the proud He knows from afar (Psalm 136:8).
This principle is basic because it sums up the difference between those to whom God shows mercy and those to whom He opposes. When Jesus told the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector who prayed in the temple, it wasn’t the proud Pharisee who boasted of his good deeds that went home justified; but rather, the poor tax collector who cried out, “God, be merciful to me a sinner!” (Luke 18:13). As our Lord Himself said in Matthew 23:11-12;
“… he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. And whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Matthew 23:11-12).
Tragically, it will be pride—more than anything else—that will keep people out of heaven; because no one can be saved except by the grace of God through Jesus the Savior, and no one can come to Jesus for salvation unless they first humble themselves and admit that they need to be saved. In a practical sense, no one will be in hell because they sinned—since the only human beings that will be in heaven will be redeemed sinners. Rather, the occupants of hell will be there because they would not humble themselves to receive the gift of God’s saving grace. What a hateful thing it is to God when one of His fallen creatures struts around before His sight in arrogant pride when He stands ready to give His grace to the humble. In Proverbs 6:17, one of the seven great things that are an abomination to Him is “a proud look”.
So; James warns us—for good reason—that “God resists the proud”. But as great as the sin is that we seek to cover with our pride …
2. GOD GIVES GREATER GRACE.
James adds, “But He gives more grace.” More grace than what, we might ask? It’s more grace than our sin. Because of our sin nature, inherited from Adam, we have a sinful bent toward arrogantly setting ourselves up against our Creator and His good commandments. No sooner does God tell us to do something in His word than we’re finding reasons not to do it. And no sooner does He tell us in His word not to do something than we’re off doing the very thing He said not to do … and suffering the consequences of our actions. But as we’re told in Romans 5:20-21;
… the law entered that the offense might abound. But where sin abounded, grace abounded much more, so that as sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord (Romans 5:20-21).
The bad news is that God is opposed to the proud. But the good news is that Jesus died on the cross to pay the penalty of our sins on His cross; so that the proud man or woman—living in open rebellion against his or her Creator—can be completely forgiven. The opposition can now be brought to an end, and God’s grace can be poured out on even the worst of sinners. It’s a ‘grace’ that is truly ‘greater’—or ‘more’—than the sin. Where we’ve sinned $100 worth of sin, God buys us back to Himself, through the blood of Jesus, with $1,000,000 worth of grace.
How do we receive that ‘greater grace’? That leads us to the necessary cure … and to why it’s the cure that’s necessary. James tells us that …
3. GOD’S GRACE IS GIVEN TO THOSE WHO ARE HUMBLE BEFORE HIM.
James wrote that God does indeed resist the proud; “… ‘but gives grace to the humble.’” Obviously, to be saved then—and to receive the ‘greater grace’ of God—we must ‘humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt us in due time’. Consider why this is so:
- To be saved by God, someone would have to admit that they have sinned against Him—that is, that they had lived in rebellion against the One to whom they rightfully belonged. They have to admit the truth; and this requires humility.
- To be saved by God, someone would have to admit that there’s nothing they could do to make themselves worthy—that there are no good deeds that could ever pay the penalty for their sins, or outweigh the heaviness of their guilt, or make things right with Him. Again, humility is needed to admit this.
- To be saved by God, they’d have to admit that, unless God did something, they would rightly deserve His condemnation and wrath; and that He would be just in condemning them to eternal judgment and to thrust them from His presence forever. To admit this about oneself requires great humility.
- To be saved by God, they’d have to place their trust completely in the only provision God has made for their sins—the only payment for sins that He accepts—that is, the sacrifice of His own dear, sinless Son on the cross. They can’t offer an alternative to Him; because there is no legitimate alternative to be offered. They would have to humble themselves before God and accept the offer that only He can give.
- To be saved by God, they’d have to accept that God is completely satisfied with the sacrifice of His Son on the cross for sins, and count their faith in the cross as ‘righteousness’. The cross is not—in any way—a compliment to our own sufficiency to save ourselves. And in humility, such a person would have to refrain from trying to ‘augment’ God’s salvation with their own good deeds—which could never be good enough.
- And to be saved by God, they’d have to turn away from their old sinful lifestyle patterns, and—out of love for their Savior—increasingly hate the sins that put Jesus on the cross in the first place. They couldn’t, in arrogant pride, cling to the cross on which Jesus died for sins, and at the same time cling to the same sins He died to save them from. This, too, would require humility.
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One of the most divisive periods in the life of King David came about because he had given in to his ‘desires for pleasure’. He committed adultery; and killed the woman’s husband. He suffered greatly under the disciplining hand of God; and caused conflicts and wars within his own kingdom and his own household. David was proof that ‘desires for pleasure’ are at the root of division and conflict.
But God’s grace was greater than David’s sin. And he came to that grace through the hard path of humility. In Psalm 32:3-5, he wrote;
When I kept silent, my bones grew old
Through my groaning all the day long.
For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me;
My vitality was turned into the drought of summer. Selah.I acknowledged my sin to You,
And my iniquity I have not hidden.
I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,”
And You forgave the iniquity of my sin. Selah (Psalm 32:3-5).
What a wonderfully gracious God our God is! We all—like David—have sinned grievously against Him. We have all shaken our fists at Him in arrogant pride at one time or another; and have all told Him that we would not obey His commandments. And that rebellion has caused divisions and wars among us. But as James reminds us, there is a cure … a necessary cure and a hard cure, but a truly sufficient cure if we will take it:
But He gives more grace. Therefore He says:
“God resists the proud,
But gives grace to the humble.”
AE
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