SEVEN STEPS ‘DOWN’ TO ‘UP’
Posted by Pastor Greg Allen on July 31, 2024 under AM Bible Study |
AM Bible Study Group: July 31, 2024 from James 4:7-10
Theme: If we will follow God’s pattern of humbling ourselves before Him, He will lift us up higher than we could ever make ourselves to be.
(All Scripture is taken from The New King James Version, unless otherwise indicated).
A Christian who had been wandering from God once went to see a doctor. He asked that something be given to him that would relieve him of his depression. Depression, of course, can come from many different causes—some of them physical; and for them, medication may be a help. But after listening to this believer’s story, the doctor refused to give him a prescription. This wise doctor told this wayward Christian, “Why should I give you something to relieve you of feelings that you ought to be having?” And as it turned out, the doctor’s refusal to give this believer a way to circumvent his bad feelings resulted instead in him turning his life around in repentance, and becoming restored to fellowship with God.
Sorrow isn’t always a bad thing. There’s an unhealthy and unproductive kind of sorrow, of course. But there’s also a godly kind of sorrow. There was a time when the apostle Paul wrote a very harsh letter to the Corinthian believers. He called them urgently to repent of sinful practices; and the things he wrote to them made them sorrowful. But later on—in 2 Corinthians 7—he commended them for their response to their sorrow and said;
For even if I made you sorry with my letter, I do not regret it; though I did regret it. For I perceive that the same epistle made you sorry, though only for a while. Now I rejoice, not that you were made sorry, but that your sorrow led to repentance. For you were made sorry in a godly manner, that you might suffer loss from us in nothing. For godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation, not to be regretted; but the sorrow of the world produces death. For observe this very thing, that you sorrowed in a godly manner: What diligence it produced in you, what clearing of yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what vehement desire, what zeal, what vindication! In all things you proved yourselves to be clear in this matter (2 Corinthians 7:8-11).
Paul said that this world produces a certain kind of sorrow that only leads to loss and death. But there’s another kind of sorrow—a sorrow that’s a part of God’s good plan for His people—a sorrow that leads to life and salvation. And this godly sorrow can be known by what it produces. Paul said, “godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation, not to be regretted”. It’s a kind of sorrow that causes us to humble ourselves before God because of sin in our lives, and that then leads us to turn around in repentance before God so that He can bless us with Himself.
It was this gift of God’s grace—this ‘godly’ sorrow put into action—that Pastor James was writing about in James 4:7-10. He wrote to his brothers and sisters in Christ and told them;
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 (James 4:7-10).
This, of course, isn’t the kind of advice that will ever find favor with an unbelieving world. In fact, much of the counsel that this world gives is motivated by a desire to avoid almost everything that James describes. But if God is the holy God that the Bible tells us that He is, and if our greatest good is found in a deep personal relationship with Him through faith in Jesus Christ, then James’ seemingly hard pastoral advice to his readers is very good advice indeed.
His words teach us that, if we will follow God’s pattern of humbling ourselves before Him, He will lift us up higher than we could ever make ourselves to be.
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Now; James was giving this hard advice for a reason. He was dealing with the problem of conflicts within the church family. In verses 1-3, 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 (James 4:1-3).
People often suppose that the cause of conflicts and fights is to be found outside themselves. They believe that it’s caused by outward circumstances, or by other people. But Pastor James—writing under the power of the Holy Spirit—let his readers know that the real cause was inside themselves. Those conflicts were a product of their own “desires for pleasures”—the lustful craving for things that are hostile to God’s will for us—the passions of the flesh, the greedy desire for material things, and the ambition to be better than everyone else.
James went on to show his readers that a pursuit of the gratification of these sinful desires amounted to unfaithfulness to God. He used strong terms in verses 4-5 when he said;
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 reason we’re tempted to turn away from God, and to these things instead, is because we sinfully doubt that our heavenly Father truly has our best interest in mind, or that He is able to make us the happiest we can be through trusting in His good way for us. And so; James affirmed a basic principle in verse 6;
But He gives more grace. Therefore He says:
“God resists the proud,
But gives grace to the humble.”
“Grace” is another word for God’s unmerited favor and blessings—given to us freely as a gift. And His grace—greater than our sin, and greater than anything else the world could give us—only comes to us as we set aside our pride, and humble ourselves before Him in faith. And so; that’s why James gave us this seemingly-hard counsel. In verse 7, he said, “Therefore …” which points us to this advice as a necessary set of steps toward humbling ourselves before God.
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Now; in James 4:7-10, we can clearly see seven pieces of counsel that Pastor James gave to his readers. They can be seen together as a description of “godly sorrow” leading to repentance that results in the healing of our souls and the uplifting of our spirits. They describe the ‘humbling down’ that will bring us to the kind of satisfaction in our relationship with God our Father that allows Him to ‘lift us up’. And in the flow of these seven pieces of counsel, there’s a discernible process—with one thing leading naturally to another.
The first piece of advice—a basic one that is an essential step to our happiness—is to …
1. SUBMIT TO GOD.
In verse 7, James wrote, “Therefore submit to God”. The word that James used for “submit” is one that has a military meaning. It was used to describe how one soldier would ‘subordinate’ himself, or ‘rank’ himself under another in the chain of command. James put it in the passive voice; which meant that it’s a command to allow ourselves to be aligned under the authority of God and not resist.
At the root of ‘worldliness’ is an arrogance that causes us to say, “I’m not happy with the way God is meeting my needs. I think I can make a better arrangement for myself than He would. He’s telling me to say ‘no’ to these passions; but I’m going to satisfy myself with them because they’ll make me happier than He wants me to be. I’m going to go ‘independent’.” This is why James warned his readers, in verse 6, that “God resists the proud”. And it’s a self-deceiving decision; because, even though we think we’re declaring our independence, we’re actually making ourselves into the devil’s slaves. As the apostle Paul put it in Ephesians 2:1-3;
And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others (Ephesians 2:1-3).
And so; an essential first step is to submit—to subordinate ourselves under—God and His good will for us. And this would naturally lead to the next piece of counsel James gives us; to …
2. RESIST THE DEVIL.
To submit ourselves under the authority of our heavenly Father would naturally—as the flip side of the coin—mean that we resist the archenemy of our Father. James says, in verse 7, “Resist the devil …” In 1 Peter 5:6-9—in words that are remarkably similar to the counsel of Pastor James—the apostle Peter tells us;
Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time, casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you. Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. Resist him, steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world (1 Peter 5:6-9).
When we submit ourselves to our own sinful passions and desires, we don’t make ourselves ‘independent’. Instead, we make ourselves into the victim of a very powerful, very hostile, very dangerous enemy. But the moment we once again submit ourselves to God, this enemy becomes helpless and fearful—not because of us, but because of the One to whom we submit. As James tells us, “Resist the devil” by submitting to God, “and he will flee from you”.
Now; ‘submission’ can—if we’re not careful—become a passionless action. We can ‘submit’ by simply resigning ourselves regretfully to God’s plan for us; and thus not enjoy the intimacy with Him that He desires. External obedience without inward sincerity of love is not God’s will for us; and it puts us in a situation that the devil can easily use to deceive us and take advantage of us. And so; a third important piece of counsel that James gave was to …
3. DRAW NEAR.
In verse 8, James said, “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.” In verse four, James wrote, “ 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.” When a believer has turned from God to instead pursue the ‘desires for pleasures’ that are hostile to God’s will for them, they’ve chosen to enter into a position of enmity toward Him. They are still His children; but they have offended the relationship. It wasn’t their Father who had moved away from them; but rather they who had moved away from their Father.
And the order of things, as James has put it, is very important to notice. A wandering believer is invited to draw near to the Father—but not until he or she has first submitted to the Father. While in that proud attitude of ‘having an adulterous affair’ with the things of this world, they’ve placed themselves in a condition of rebellion toward Him; and they cannot have the intimacy of the relationship restored until they’ve set the rebelliousness aside and once again submitted to Him. Then, they’re free to draw near.
And how wonderful that as we sincerely draw near to God, He draws near to us. It’s like the prodigal son in our Lord’s parable. That wayward son came to his senses, and thought to go back to his father and offer himself as an unworthy servant. But Jesus tells us;
“And he arose and came to his father. But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him” (Luke 15:20).
But this requires a change of attitude. The word ‘repentance’, as it’s used in the Bible, means ‘to change one’s mind’ or ‘to change one’s inward attitude’. The closer we draw into the light of our holy heavenly Father, the more His light will reveal the sinfulness of our sin … and the more we will grow to hate the sinful nature of that which drew us away. There will be a need to actively reject those things that we had turned to that defiled us, and to decisively rid ourselves of them. And so; the next piece of counsel that James gave was to …
4. CLEANSE YOURSELF THOROUGHLY.
In verse 8, he wrote, “Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded”. In saying this, James pointed out that this cleansing must occur in two main spheres. First, it must occur in our outward behavior. We must “cleanse our hands”; which speaks of the sinful life-style practices habits and patterns of action that displease our Father. Repentance in the sight of God involves increasingly embracing a morally pure habit of lifestyle practice before Him. But it must not be merely on the outside. We must also “purify our hearts” and cease to be ‘double-minded’. To be ‘double-minded’ or (literally) ‘two-souled’ is what James warned us—in verse 8—would make us “unstable” in all our ways. We must cease loving something more than we love our heavenly Father and His good ways for us; because as Jesus warned us, “No one can serve two masters” (Matthew 6:24). We cannot be devoted to the Father on the outside, while remaining in rebellion against Him on the inside. We must cleanse ourselves thoroughly on both the outside and the inside; and become devoted to him internally and externally.
And James puts this to us as something that we must do ourselves. It’s our responsibility to cleanse our own hands and purify our own hearts. It’s like what the apostle John said in 1 John 3:2-3;
Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure (1 John 3:2-3).
In keeping with this, James’ next piece of counsel is that we …
5. EXPRESS GENUINE REGRET.
In verse 9, he says, “Lament and mourn and weep!” It’s true that the Bible teaches us in 1 Thessalonians 5:16 to “rejoice always”. But the intention of that command is that we do so in a state of holy fellowship with Christ—truly rejoicing “in the Lord” (Philippians 4:4). Here, however, James calls his readers who have wandered from their fellowship with the Lord to feel the sorrow that must precede His loving restoration … and to give sincere and appropriate expression to that sorrow. We’re to be like that repentant tax collector in Jesus’ parable; who couldn’t even bring himself to lift his eyes upward to heaven, but could only beat his breast and say, “God, be merciful to me a sinner!” (Luke 18:13).
These things have, so far, mostly described actions that we’re responsible for taking—things that we’re to do for ourselves. But it’s interesting that the next thing that James advises we do is to put in the passive voice. That is; he is now describing something that we’re to allow to be done to us by Someone else. James went on to counsel his readers to …
6. LET YOUR ATTITUDE BE CHANGED.
He wrote in verse 9, “Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.” The natural inclination of the philosophy of this world is to do the opposite; that is, to actively turn our mourning into laughter, and our gloom into joy. The people of this world do whatever they can to get rid of the feelings of guilt, to forget about sorrow, and to make themselves happy. This comes from the belief that all such sorrow is harmful, negative, and destructive. But here, James urged his readers to not only cease trying to avoid those feelings, but to actually allow ourselves to feel them. James urged his repentant readers to feel bad about their sin.
This reminds us that the Holy Spirit is at work in us, helping us to feel as God our Father feels about our sin. The Bible tells us that a part of His ministry is to convict the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment (John 16:8). And if He does this with respect to the unbelieving world, He would naturally communicate His own grief for sin to a believer. He lets us feel the pain when we have “grieved” Him (Ephesians 4:30). As King David once put it;
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit,
A broken and a contrite heart—
These, O God, You will not despise (Psalm 51:17).
Often, for God our Father to bring us to the place where He can bless us as He wishes, He must make us feel the pain that our sin inflicted upon His own heart. The realization that our rebellion made it necessary for His own Son to suffer on the cross for us is enough to turn our laughter over our sin into mourning, and our joy over our rebellion into gloom.
But God our Father doesn’t leave us there. It isn’t God’s design for His people to be perpetually in a state of mourning and weeping and sorrow and gloom. The last thing that James advises—indeed the thing that all of those other steps are meant to lead to—is to …
7. HUMBLE YOURSELF BEFORE GOD.
In verse 10, he wrote, “Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up” (v. 10). Verses 7-9 describe what ‘humbling’ looks like in practice. But it all ends with the glorious promise that God will exalt those who truly humble themselves before Him in that way.
Note that God Himself is the one who must do the exalting—and not we ourselves. Our exaltation is something that is good and right, and that even God Himself expresses that He wishes to bring about for us. But it must be exactly that: something that He brings about for us, and not we who bring it about for ourselves. It’s His job to do the exalting; but our job to do the work of humbling ourselves before Him. The Lord Jesus—who took our sins upon Himself on the cross—sets the example for us. As Philippians 2:5-11 teaches us;
Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2:3-11).
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So; even though it runs counter to the advice of this world, here’s James’ counsel regarding the conflicts and fights that arise among us. It’s God’s appointed cure …
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.
AE
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