the doctrine of god

Introduction

 

The Impact of the Virus

Well, if you have a copy of the Word of God, I'd like to ask that you open it to James 5, we're going to be moving through. This is the second to last sermon, God willing, in the Book of James, and we've had an incredible journey through this book. But now, we could never have foreseen, when we began this study in James, these extraordinary times, and these are certainly extraordinary times, as Andy already mentioned. People all over the world are being impacted by the coronavirus. Total number of cases, I checked yesterday afternoon, over 300,000 worldwide, almost certainly, the number's higher this morning, with over 11,000 deaths as of yesterday afternoon, maybe even more now. In the US, over 25,000 cases, I think now, with 250 deaths. And along with that, as I mentioned, there's the staggering economic effect of this virus. Not only has the stock market crashed, with a loss of somewhere between 17-20%, depending on what index you look at, as I mentioned in my prayer, small businesses are struggling. We think about coffee shops and other businesses that depend on a steady stream of customers walking in and interacting, and they've had to shut down. Think about hourly workers who are wondering how they're going to make it with their income being curtailed. And along with all of this is the change in the lifestyle that we've felt. 

Me streaming this sermon in an empty room is just one symbol of this. So also college students coming back, having their semester cut off, maybe they never even came back from their spring break. They never expected, when they went away on spring break, that it would turn out like this. Government schools closed all around us, elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, closed. We think about sports leagues that have stopped, all of the sports that people just enjoy, especially around this time. March Madness, the basketball tournament, closed down. Ordinarily, people would be following their brackets now, they were never filled out. People staying home hour after hour, day after day. Supermarkets displaying weirdly empty shelves in certain categories, as people are hoarding various items, and their behavior then forces a similar pattern of behavior in those that would not ordinarily do it. All of this is clear evidence, I think, of the fragility of our lives and of our lifestyles, of the fragility of our economy, the fragility of our physical health, our earthly hopes, all of these are fragile. 

If the Lord Wills, We Will Live

Now, the last sermon that I preached live, here at First Baptist Church two weeks ago, was on the text of Scripture in James 4:13 and following, it says, "Now listen, you who say 'Today or tomorrow, we'll go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money,' while you do not know what will even happen tomorrow. What is your life? It is a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, 'If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.' As it is, you boast and brag, and all such boasting is evil." What a memorable statement that is. “If the Lord wills, you will live. And if the Lord wills, you will do this, or if the Lord wills, you will do that.” All of our times and our days are in the Lord's hand. 

The Gospel For Unbelievers

Now, if you're not a Christian and you have been led, this morning, somehow, to come on this live stream service, I plead with you, right now, to realize the brevity of your life and flee to Christ while you still have time. You have an eternal soul created by Almighty God. He created all things, heaven and earth and everything in them, and as the creator, he is the king and ruler, and as the king and ruler, he makes laws by which we are to be governed. But like all of us, you have violated God's laws, and therefore are called by God a sinner, a transgressor, as all of us are. God sent His Son, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, into the world, born of the Virgin Mary. He lived a sinless life, He did miracles, He healed every disease and sickness that was brought before him. This COVID-19 virus would have been nothing for him. No disease was too difficult for him to heal. He did all of these healings as a sign of a coming world in which there'll be no more death, mourning, crying, or pain. But above all, Jesus came to die as a substitute for our sins, which he did on the cross, and he bled out and died, he gave up his life as a substitute. He died under the wrath of God, the death penalty we deserve for our sins, but God raised him from the dead on the third day and appointed the Church to preach the Gospel to the ends of the earth. This simple message, that faith in Jesus Christ is sufficient to forgive you for all of your sins, that you will be forgiven, justified of all of your sins, past, present and future, if you simply trust in Christ, and I'm pleading with you to do that now.

For all of us who are already Christians, maybe members of this church, you're coming here this morning to be fed by the Word of God, and I want to do that. I want to feed myself, and want to I feed you also by this marvelous text, and what a beautiful opportunity we have this morning to consider patience in affliction, patience in suffering. To learn to wait quietly and patiently under the Lord's mighty hand until he decides to lift us up. So we need patience for salvation, we are waiting for salvation, that's what's going on here. 

I. The Need for Patience: Waiting for Salvation

 

What is Patience?

Look at verse 7, "Therefore be patient brothers." What is patience? The Greek word used here, “makrothumia,” means longsuffering, the word “makro,” a long time of waiting. We're talking about the patience, the endurance of a marathon runner, not of a sprinter, the lightning-quick reflexes of a sprinter, the power of a 100-meter dash runner, not at all. We're talking about longsuffering, being a long time in the race.

Now, James discussed endurance in the Christian life earlier, but he used a different Greek word there, “hupomone.” One scholar said the difference between makrothumia, long-suffering, and hupomone, which is endurance, is longsuffering has to do with patiently enduring difficult people, and endurance has to do with patiently enduring difficult circumstances. Whether that's linguistically true or not, we know that that's all part of the patience that we have to have in the Christian life. Patience is essential to our salvation. 

The Context in James

Now, let's look at the context in James. James is writing to a people, the Jewish people, it seems, scattered throughout the world that are enduring great trials, they're going through various trials. James has just gotten done in the last text we looked at last week, speaking a fiery word of judgment to wicked oppressors who use their positions of power to oppress and dominate, and even murder people. He then turns his attention toward his brothers and sisters in Christ, verse 7, "Therefore be patient brothers until the coming of the Lord." Now, the suffering they're enduring at the hands of these rich oppressors will not go on forever, Judgment Day is coming for those rich oppressors. But this also, this message of patient endurance and suffering also fits the overall message of the book. It fits the first message that James gave in James 1:2-4. "Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance, and perseverance must finish its work, so that you'll be mature and complete, not lacking anything." So that is a strong word of patience in affliction to the end, that we would be spiritually mature and complete in Christ. So James again points Christians to the need for patience in suffering, for the patient endurance that is essential to our salvation. 

Our Context: We Are a Very Impatient People

Now, that's their context, what about our context? Well, we are a very impatient people. Do you feel it? I feel it more than ever before. We are impatient, we're wanting this COVID-19 affliction to end today. That's how we are, we're very impatient. As western Christians, American Christians, we do not generally suffer the kinds of beatings and oppression and the trials that James describes even at the beginning of this chapter, in James 5. We do not face, generally, the kind of afflictions and oppression that our brothers and sisters face in certain regimes and countries, like North Korea, for example, or Iran, or China, even. In those nations, our brothers and sisters are arrested, they are detained for a long time, they're beaten, imprisoned, even tortured and killed for their Christian faith, so they would read this text very acutely and powerfully, and they're drinking in these words, needing to be sustained in their faith through fiery trials that they're enduring.

Now, we know our sufferings do not reach that level, but still, we're called on to perseverance in the Christian life, and we are a very impatient people. Our technology has, I think, tended toward that end, of making us impatient. We are used to instant solutions to life's problems. We are used to instant answers from the internet from our handheld devices or our laptops; we're used to next-day delivery from Amazon Prime; we're used to fast food, very fast; we're used to GPS systems that tell us how to get through the city from point A to point B, avoiding traffic snarls. We're used to immediate answers. 

I have found myself, even recently, getting impatient at a drive thru at a fast food place, because it wasn't fast enough. I still don't know what happened. I was there waiting, we didn't move for five minutes, five minutes, and I was wondering what was happening to my food, and I was thinking about pulling out, canceling my order. All of these weird thoughts going through my mind, and I think, “What must my brothers and sisters in Heaven be thinking about me right now, who have had to endure far worse trials than that?” I found myself getting impatient over the blue donut that circles on my laptop while I'm sitting in an air-conditioned office waiting for the program to download. So we're impatient people, and James 5:7-12 speaks a strong word to us, as do many other scriptures, of the need for patient endurance in the Christian life.

The Scope of Our Waiting

Now, what is the scope of our waiting, what are we waiting for? Well, look at verse 7 again, "Be patient therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord." Now, we're going to talk more about this in a moment, but this is definitely speaking of the second coming of Jesus Christ to earth, ending all of human history. For 2,000 years, every generation of the Church has waited patiently for the second coming of Christ. The imminent coming of Christ. It was planned, it was prophesied, it is the next major event in redemptive history. For 2000 years, we've been hearing this word "soon." "Behold, I am coming soon." Three times in the final chapter in the Bible, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ said it, "Behold, I am coming soon." For example, Revelation 22:12, he said, "Behold, I am coming soon, my reward is with me, and I will give to everyone according to what he has done." So James is calling for a long-term, big picture waiting by the church, waiting for all of this to end. For those suffering daily under the oppression of rich tyrants or governmental oppressors, it's day after day suffering, out in the fields bringing a harvest and you're never going to get paid, or languishing in a cell with no end in sight. 

The Purpose of Our Waiting: Salvation

Now, we need to understand while we're doing all this waiting as a church, what are we waiting for? What's the purpose in all this? We know that God could step in at any moment and end our afflictions and end all of our grief and sorrow, he could do it. Well, the Bible makes it very clear that we're waiting for salvation, that's the reason for the delay. 2 Peter 3:15 says, "Bear in mind that our Lord's patience means salvation." So God is being patient too, God is waiting. You need to realize that, your Heavenly Father cares about your afflictions, he is concerned about your suffering, it is hard for him to watch his people suffer. I know that's hard to believe, but it's true.

He was concerned about the Israelites in bondage in Egypt, He was concerned when David committed that sin of the sinful census, and he afflicted the Israelites with a plague for three days. He was concerned and he couldn't take it anymore, God couldn't, and finally moved to end it. 

So then, what is he waiting for? He's waiting for salvation. God has a timetable of purpose for all of history, for every day of history, and his ultimate purpose in human history is his own glory in the salvation of human beings. That's what he's doing in history. So he means, at least, the redemption of the elect, who he chose by name from before the foundation of the earth, that the elect would come to saving faith in Jesus Christ, that's what he's waiting for. 2 Peter 3:9. "The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness, he is patient with us," I think that means with the elect, "not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance." So history continues because there are, as yet, some elect people that God knew by name before the foundation of the world, who have not yet come to faith in Christ, they've not yet come to repentance. Not only that, though. God's patience means our own salvation, even if we have come to saving faith, we're not done being saved. Philippians 2:12-13 says that we are "to continue to work out our salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in us, to will and to act, according to his good purpose." 

Our Salvation Comes in Stages

So we know that salvation comes to us in stages, justification, sanctification, then glorification, so we're not done being saved, and we need to have these trials, as we saw, again, from James 1:4, that God's affliction of us who are already in Christ, is tending toward our own sanctification. Perseverance must finish its work, so that you'll be mature and complete, not lacking anything. Mature means sanctified, conformed to Christ, so that's what God is waiting for, and God has a timetable for everything. He knows the value of time better than we do. 2 Peter 3:8, it says, "With the Lord, a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years are like a day." So the two thousand years since Jesus said, "Behold, I'm coming soon," is as nothing to Him, like a watch in the night. Christ can rightly say to every generation, "I'm coming soon, be ready, be prepared at any moment for the coming of the Lord."

God Acts in His Perfect Timing

But notice also that God works intensively and extremely actively, every single day of human history to accomplish unique purposes for that day. That day, “this is the day the Lord has made,” that day is unique and will never be repeated. And so, God has a specific purpose. With the Lord, a single day is like a thousand years. And so God has measured out the days of COVID-19, He knows exactly how long they're going to go on, He knows what He's trying to achieve with every day. He is working his secret purposes out. So if you're a Christian, you should be praying for those secret purposes to be worked out, don't just pray that the virus would end. You should pray for that, but say, "In the meantime, Lord, would you please accomplish in people's hearts everything you're trying to accomplish?" We should pray for that. We know that Christ came at just the right time, didn't He? He was born of a virgin. "When the fullness of time came, [at exactly the right time,] Christ was born of a virgin," Galatians 4:4. We know that he also died at exactly the right time, even down to the minute he died. Passover night, before sundown, right before they came to break his legs. And so Romans 5:6 says, "You see, at just the right time, when we were powerless, Christ died for the ungodly." So everything has been meticulously measured out. So also, your life, all the days of your life have been measured out. Psalm 139:16 says, "All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be." So all of these days have been measured out. So God is calling on us Christians to have patient endurance in the suffering of the Christian life because our sufferings are essential to the salvation of our own souls, and the salvation of other people's souls as well, converted or not converted, that's what God is working on. 

II. The Scope and Hope of Patience: The Second Coming of Christ

 

The Scope of Patience: The Coming Lord

Now, I mentioned the scope and patience of our waiting is the second coming of Christ. We need to focus, more than ever before, on the coming of the Lord. Look again at verse 7, "Be patient therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord." History will come to an end at the second coming of Christ, and all of the suffering of the elect will end on that day. All of the brothers and sisters that patiently waited, and were even incarcerated waiting for their release, and it never came physically, they actually were tortured and executed, as it happens. They're waiting for the coming of the Lord, their sufferings have been great, but no matter how great their sufferings were, Paul, who had greater credentials of suffering than any Christian that's ever lived, still calls our sufferings “light and momentary,” 2 Corinthians 4:17. And he says in Romans 8:18, "I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us." And so we need to think light and momentary, not worth comparing with the glory that is coming, that is the hope of our patience. We are longsuffering, waiting in hope, we are filled with hope. What is hope but a strong feeling in the heart that the future is bright based on the promises of God, and our future is indescribably bright?

We are going, brothers and sisters, to a perfect world. Revelation 21:4 says that “there will be no more death, or mourning, or crying, or pain, for the old order of things well have passed away and the Lord is going to make everything new. “That's where we are going. A world free from all evil, free from all evildoers, a world free from Satan and his demons, a world free from the decay and corruption of this present age cursed in Adam, a world free from all disease and suffering, a world radiantly beautiful illuminated at every moment with the glory of God and of Christ and there's no need for the light of the sun, or the light of the moon, or the light of the lamp to shine on the new Jerusalem for the glory of God will give it light and the Lamb is its lamp. So when Paul says that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with that glory, we should be filled with hope. Other people who watch us, who look at us during this time should see us filled with hope so that they'll ask us to give a reason for the hope that we have.

The Coming of the Lord is Absolutely Certain

Now this coming of the Lord, this second coming in Lord, is absolutely certain. The second coming of the Lord is either alluded to or openly discussed over 500 times in the New Testament, it's incredible. For example, Revelation 1:7, "Behold, He is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see Him, even those who pierced Him, and all the peoples of the earth will mourn because of Him. So shall it be, amen." Or Jesus Himself said, Matthew 24:30, "At that time, the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky and all the nations of the earth will mourn. They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky with power and great glory," Matthew 24:30. So this certain promise of the coming of the Lord should fill each of us with a radiant buoyant hope no matter what suffering we're going through right now. And James says that Christ's coming is near, look at verse 9, "The judge is standing at the door." He's right at the door.

So the rich oppressors that we talked about last week in James 5 should realize their judgment is imminent. Imminent. The Judge is at the door. For our brothers and sisters in North Korean prisons or in Chinese prisons that are eating filthy and inadequate food and drinking filthy and polluted water, and being tortured mentally and physically for their faith, the judge of all the earth is standing at the door. And for us who are enduring far less dramatic sufferings and afflictions, whatever they are, not just with this virus but just things that are going on in your life, maybe chronic pain, illnesses of other sorts. We were just saying a moment before the service began, wouldn't it be nice if all the other diseases took a break while the virus had center stage? But they don't. And people continue to have afflictions in other categories, brain tumors, heart disease, other things continue to go on. Some have lost godly spouses and they're struggling every day with loneliness. And then there's other afflictions common to life. We need to realize that the second coming of Christ is imminent, the judge is standing at the door. 

III. The Examples of Patience: Farmers, Prophets, and Job

 

Example #1: The Farmer

Then James gives us examples of faith and patience. He begins with the farmer's patience. Look at verse 7, "See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop, and how patient he is for the autumn and spring rains." Now, I would say none of us that are members of First Baptist Church, as far as I know, are vocational farmers. I've never been a farmer, I've killed a lot of plants that I intended to do well, but I've not been a farmer. My family would starve, no doubt about it. But farmers learn to be patient as they've done everything they can for the crop. They've plowed the field, got it ready at the right time, they planted the seed, they looked after it, they did all that they could, but then the harvest has to come based on something they have no control over, and that's rain. Without the rain, the harvest will fail. And so James mentions the early and late rains as the pattern of rainfall in Palestine that was essential to the final harvest. And so this picture of a farmer's patience, looking up, waiting for something he has no control over, that's a powerful image of the kind of patience the Lord wants us to have. 

Jesus used a lot of agricultural parables to talk about the Kingdom of Heaven, the Kingdom of heaven is like seed that a man went out and sowed, etcetera. There's a lot of parables like that, agricultural. Listen to this one in particular, Mark 4:26-29, "This is what the kingdom of God is like, a man scatters seed on the ground night and day. Whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself, the soil produces grain, first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head, and as soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it because the harvest has come." Our salvation is like that, and so is the advance worldwide of the kingdom of God. We have a certain role to play, like the farmer, but we cannot make it grow. As Paul said, "I planted the seed, Apollos watered, but God made it grow. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who makes things grow." So the salvation of sinners all over the world is totally dependent on the grace of God and the grace of God alone, not on us. Now we have a role to play, we have to evangelize. Pray, set a good example, do the works that God's given us to do, that's true, but in the end only God can send the rain and only God can give the growth, and so we need to wait. 

And notice how he talks about patience as the strengthening of the soul. Verse 8, "You also must be patient and stand firm" or "strengthen your hearts," one translation gives, "because the Lord's coming is near." So you have to strengthen your hearts, this is the powerful image, establish your hearts. Think about a building, a structure, concrete with rebar in it or structural members in a building. Do that in your heart. Now, ordinarily, this strengthening of the heart is a work done, a secret work done by God the Holy Spirit within the hearts of believers, and so we should be strong. James talked in James 1:6-8 about the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea blown and tossed back and forth by the waves, double-minded, unstable. We can't be like that during trials, buffeted around, like, "What's God doing?" and getting upset and being all frustrated. No, no, no, strengthen your hearts in patience. Put that structural member in there. Now, again, that's something that God does in us. I love Ephesians 3:16, Paul says, "I pray that out of His glorious riches, he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being.” So that's exactly what James is calling on us to do. So it's a partnership. The Holy Spirit will strengthen us, as we make ourselves available to him in prayer, say, "Oh God, would you strengthen my heart? I'm so weak, I'm so impatient. Would you strengthen my heart?"

And as Andy mentioned earlier, I love that text in Isaiah 26, “He will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on him.” So stay your mind on God, or in Isaiah 40, it says, "The Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, His understanding no one can fathom. He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary and young men stumble and fall, but those who wait on the Lord will renew their strength, they will soar on wings like eagles, they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint." So that could be you right now. Strengthen your hearts in patience and wait on the Lord.

Example #2: The Prophets

The second example he gives is of prophets that spoke in the name of the Lord. Look at verse 10, "Brothers, as an example of patience in the face of suffering, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord." James opens that long and tragic history up for our eyes. Again, we know what he's talking about. These prophets suffered universally, greatly, great opposition from the people that they were sharing with and they were speaking the word of God to. Stephen said in his great sermon in Acts 7, "Was there ever a prophet that your fathers did not persecute? Was there a single one?" Elijah was persecuted viciously by the wicked king Ahab and his demonic wife Jezebel, Isaiah was sawn in two, tradition has it, by Manasseh, the evil son of the godly King Hezekiah. Jeremiah was probably the most hated of all the prophets, and he was assaulted, beaten, he was thrown in prison, he was thrown in a miry pit. John the Baptist, for just telling the truth to King Herod that he shouldn't have taken his brother's wife as his own, was thrown in prison and then beheaded by King Herod.

This is the history of the prophets, and James wants us to consider. Consider the prophets, the patience that they showed, but they persevered in their ministry, and when they were finally done with their suffering and God took them to Heaven, they came into great rewards in Heaven. And so Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5:11-12, "Blessed are you, when people insult you, persecute you, falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in Heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you."

So for us in our generation, we don't have a lot of persecution. Some of it is because we shrink back from boldly proclaiming the Gospel. I think the Lord is calling on First Baptist Durham to be more and more bold, bolder and bolder in the sharing of the Gospel, and more and more persecution is going to come. That's not our goal, but it's going to happen. We should be willing to take up the fallen mantle of the prophet Elijah, he went up to Heaven in a chariot of fire, and as Elisha did, took on that mantel said, "Okay, that's our role now. It's our time now, it's our time to share the Gospel, and we're going to be persecuted, but rejoice and be patient in it."

Example #3: Job

The third example he gives us is of Job. Look at verse 11, "As you know, we consider blessed those who have persevered. You've heard of Job's perseverance and have seen what the Lord finally brought about," one translation gives it. What was his final purpose, what was the end? How did it all end up for Job? The Lord is full of compassion and mercy. Perhaps other than Jesus Christ and the Apostle Paul, no one in the Bible suffered more than Job. In a single day, wave upon wave of horrifying news came to him, wave upon wave of his losses and material losses, and then irreplaceable, his 10 children all killed in a single day. Hard to even imagine for me as a parent, more I meditate on it, I think has any parent ever received such news? And then in a second wave of attack, Satan came after his body, and his health was taken from him, and he was sitting there covered with sores festering sores, scraping them with a piece of a potsherd, a piece of pottery.

Now, we may think it's a bit strange that James mentions him as an example of patience and suffering because most of the Book of Job is his lamentation and complaining about it. For example, he gets going right away cursing the day of his birth. Job 3:11, "May the day of my birth be cursed. Why did I not perish at birth and die as I came out of the womb? Why are the suffering even given the light of day at all?" And then it gets worse in Job 19:6-7 he says, "God has wronged me and drawn His net around me, though I cry, I've been wronged, I get no response, though I call for help, there is no justice." That's a very serious charge to lay at God. And it was for this very reason that when God finally spoke to Job out of the whirlwind, He rebuked him. Job 38, “the Lord answered Job out of the storm and he said, ‘Who is this that darkens my counsel by speaking words without knowledge? Brace yourself like a man, and I will question you and you shall answer me. Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?’" And he goes on like that for chapters. He's rebuking him, but he's also lovingly healing him from questioning God, ever questioning God. God's commitment to justice was seen at the cross, and I know that Jesus hadn't died yet but there is no higher statement of a commitment to justice than the Father pouring out his wrath on his only begotten Son, whom he loved. And Job questioned God's justice. However, for all of that, he repented, he said, "I put my hand over my mouth," at the end of the book, he said, "surely I spoke of things I did not understand, and therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes."

It could be that, not at that level, but that you need to do some repenting too. Maybe you've murmured and complained against God during this virus time. Don't do it, don't do it, but see what God finally brought about in the midst of all of that, you say, "How is Job an example of perseverance?" Well, listen to what he said in the middle of his trial, a trial far greater than you will ever endure. This is what Job said, Job 13:15, "Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him." And then he said in Job 19:26, "The worms destroy my body, yet in my flesh I will see God." Now that's the perseverance of faith, and therefore, God in the end vindicated Job and restored all his possessions to him. More on that in a moment.

IV. The Holiness of Patience: Free From Grumbling and Swearing

 

How We Get Through the Trial Matters

Now in the midst of this, we have the call to holiness in patience, free from grumbling and swearing. It matters a lot, dear friends, how you go through this time or any time. How are you going through it? What are you like? God wants us to control our mouths when we are in times of trial. The Israelites were constantly grumbling against the Lord. Remember when they were pinned up against the Red Sea, and Pharaoh's army was coming down, they looked like they were about to die, they cried out, Exodus 14:11 and they said to Moses, "Was it because there were no graves in Egypt you brought us here to die?" That was just the beginning of the complaining they did, and God hated their grumbling. At one point after they refused through unbelief to enter the promised land, they had to turn back, they started complaining about the manna that God was miraculously giving them. Numbers 11:4-6, "The rabble with them began to crave other food and the Israelites started wailing again and said, If only we had meat to eat, we remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost, and also the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic. [Remember those good old days?] But now we have lost our appetite. We never see anything but this manna." The good old days of being slaves in Egypt, how they had forgotten God's mighty hand and outstretched arm. It's very easy for us as sinners to charge God with wrongdoing, and to grumble against him.

And so God warns us not to grumble against him vertically in other texts. Here, he warns us not to grumble against each other. Look at verse 9, "Don't grumble against each other, brothers, or you will be judged. The judge is standing at the door." Isn't it amazing? When we go through afflictions, we start to take it out on others. Hard time going on in your life, you start to have marital problems. We heard this week, it's a great tragedy, but in China, where the virus began and where there was so much suffering and death, the divorce rate has skyrocketed. And I understand that we're on top of each other, we're with each other hour after hour, day after day, and problems come up, but we Christians have resources to be able to not grumble against each other and not complain against each other.

For me, I like to think about Jesus, He's up on the cross, hands and feet nailed, blood pouring out, he's in agony and several of his statements show his tenderness and compassion to others, like when he set up his mother to be cared for by John, his beloved disciple. And he said, "Father, forgive them, they don't know what they're doing," I think, speaking about the Romans, who killed him. And he said to the thief on the cross, "Today, you'll be with me in paradise." Jesus was suffering the agonies of the wrath of God but was still gentle, loving, horizontally caring for others. So don't grumble against the people in your life, in your home. We could be another several weeks together. Don't grumble against each other. The judge is standing at the door, he hears everything you say.

Do Not Swear

Now in verse 12, he commands us also not to swear, "Above all, my brothers do not swear, not by heaven or by earth or by anything else. Let your yes be yes and your no be no, or you'll be condemned." It's one of those interesting moments in James where it's hard to see the train of thought. It doesn't well connect with what we've been talking about, and it doesn't well connect with the next section, which we'll look at next week, God willing. So it's just a word from the Lord about swearing. And by this, I don't think he means using foul language, but taking an oath like, "I swear on a stack of Bibles," you know how people do that. And what that means is that your word can't be trusted. If you have to swear on a stack of Bibles to make certain that your word is upheld, that's evil. "Anything," Jesus said, "beyond letting your yes be ‘yes’ and your no, ‘no’ comes from the evil one." And so James picks up on that and says the same thing. Don't make vows. Just be faithful to what you have said you will do.

V. The Outcome of Patience: A Rich Harvest

 

The Outcome Christ Wants

Now, what is the outcome of patience? Well, it's a rich harvest. Look at verse 11, "As you know, we consider blessed those who have persevered. You have heard of Job's perseverance and have seen what the Lord finally brought about, seen his ultimate purpose there, the Lord is full of compassion and mercy." God is so compassionate and merciful, he doesn't love seeing his people suffer, but he has a purpose, he has an end. And so what happened with Job? What was the final outcome for Job? Well Job 42:12-17, it says, "The Lord blessed the latter part of Job's life more than the first. He had 14,000 sheep, 6,000 camels, a thousand yoke of oxen, a thousand donkeys, he also had seven sons and three daughters. After this, Job lived 140 years. He saw his children, and their children to the fourth generation, and so he died old and full of years."

Well, the blessings we are pursuing are eternal and spiritual, not physical, but Job's physical blessings point to that. Patient endurance in trials results in Christ-like maturity. We saw that in James 1, conformity to Christ. And the Lord is disciplining us and training us so that, as Hebrews 12:11 says, "No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it yields a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it." So our own maturity, if you humble yourself during a time of affliction, God is going to make you mature, so that at the end of your life, you'll be much more like Christ than you were before.

And then beyond that, we need to look to the unconverted elect. What is God's purpose in all of this? And that is that lost people may be saved. Very soon, we trust, we pray, this affliction will end, but people will remember it, they'll think about it and they'll remember what they felt. They'll remember that they looked at death. They thought about death more than they usually do. And that will be an opportunity for us in evangelism and in missions to share the Gospel. Let's do it. 

VI. Application

 

Redeem the Time

Let me say a few final words of practical application for the facing of this hour. Can I say just redeem the time? Redeem the time. When Paul's activities were shut down, he was an energetic go from place to place church planner, but then he was arrested and thrown in prison, sometimes for years. How did he redeem the time? Well, he witnessed to his captors, and he wrote Scripture. He wrote the Book of Philippians from jail, when the Apostle John was exiled to Patmos, he wrote the Book of Revelation. When Martin Luther was basically exiled to the Wartburg, an old castle, and he was up in the attic with the bats for three years, a very energetic, hard-working individual, who wanted to get out and about, but for his own safety needed to be there. For three years, he translated the entire New Testament into good German, which serves as the foundation of the modern German language. Now the Lord, I don't think, is expecting any of you to be that fruitful during the time of your confinement. But let's redeem the time, let's make the most of the time that we have. 

Study More Scripture

Start with your daily devotions. Don't shrink them, expand them. Read through the book of the Bible in ways you've never done before, pray more than you've ever done before, pray specifically for the issues related to this plague. I would suggest you do a word study in the word “plague,” see why God brings plagues. See how often they're connected to human sin. You may need to begin by confessing and repenting from any sins that you may have committed. We'll, God willing, talk more about that next time. Sometimes people are sick because they've sinned. And so that may be something that we need to ask, but we don't want to be Job's friends saying, “It's definitely because we've sinned.” But it's at least a possibility. So for us, even if we haven't committed any sins other than ordinary sins that are serious, but our conscience isn't testifying against us, we still should be confessing the sins of the human race, and we know that God brings plagues because of human sinfulness. 

Grow in Your Prayer Life

Let's be praying for the issues related to this virus. Pray for the caregivers, family and friends that stand alongside worldwide around people that are suffering, pray for those that are in the medical jobs, that they would be protected from illness. Pray for our brothers and sisters in those roles. Pray that the numbers, the COVID-19 numbers, will soon flatten out and diminish, pray for that. But also, as I said earlier in this message, pray that God's purposes in all this would be achieved. Pray that these extraordinary times will result in a huge harvest of souls of, as yet, unconverted elect people, that they will come to faith in Christ, be ready when all this ends to talk to people about the brevity of life, and the fragility of life and the fragility of our lifestyle and of our economy. I think people would be ready to listen. If you're parents, gather your children around and talk to them openly about these things, speak to them in the language they can understand, get them to pray for these things as well. And don't waste time with a big upswing of electronic entertainment. Don't waste time pouring into the electronic hole. Spend more time talking to each other, reading books, going out on walks, maintaining social distance of course, but just use the time well and wisely, and realize that God is merciful and compassionate, and when he wills, these days of trial will end and God's purposes will be established. Would you close with me in prayer? 

Prayer

 

Father, thank you for the Word of God, we thank you for its timeless lessons, we thank you for the way that it speaks to us in every generation, we know that other brothers and sisters with the Black Death, the plague faced far worse afflictions than this, but we want to be faithful in this day and in this hour, help us to be ready at any time for the second coming of Christ, and help us to make the most of this opportunity to “redeem the time because the days are evil.” But we know that though the days are evil, God is full of mercy and compassion, and we look to you in Jesus' name, amen.

Andy Davis preaches a verse by verse expository sermon on James 5:7-12. The main subject of the sermon is how Christians can faithfully and patiently endure suffering.

Andy Davis preaches a verse by verse expository sermon on James 4:13-17. The main subject of the sermon is that we do not ultimately live according to our will but God's.

Introduction

 

Jonathan Edwards and the Great Awakening

Amen. So turn in your Bibles to James 4, continue our study in James, incredible book, so convicting and so powerful. In April of 1734 the greatest revival of the Christian religion, arguably in church history began in a quiet hamlet in Western Massachusetts where Jonathan Edwards was pastor of a small church in Northampton. And it began in that community for that time, with a shocking event, the sudden death of a teenage boy. And Edwards spoke about that. “There happened a very sudden and awful death of a young man in the bloom of his youth who being violently seized with a pleurisy, and taken immediately very delirious died in about two days. Which together with what was preached publicly on that occasion much affected many young people." Edwards biographer, George Marston, says this, "Jonathan Edwards’ whole life had prepared him to seize this moment. Having been twice on the verge of death himself in his teenage years, he had spent much of his own youth reflecting on the folly of loving earthly pleasure when on the brink of eternity." Edwards preached the funeral sermon for that young man from the text in Psalm 90:5-6. “In the morning they are like grass which groweth up, in the morning it flourisheth and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down and withereth.” That's the text that he preached. And this poignant sermon brought many of the friends of the dead young man to tears. Edwards went on, at length, with the experiences many of them had had of walking through a field of wild flowers, which look beautiful but which soon wither. 

Recently I was in a beautiful mountain area in Europe and I saw these vivid purple flowers. And I wanted to bring a small bunch of them home to my wife, so I picked them and brought them to my hotel room. That evening I couldn't recognize them, I actually didn't know the color, so I threw them in the trash and my wife never knew anything about it. Sorry hun, that I didn't bring you your flowers, but they were withered within hours. And so it is these young people at this funeral had this sense of walking through a field of wildflowers and perhaps they've even picked them and had the same experience I had within hours.

He then turned from that image to warn the youth of Northampton against squandering their lives in the pursuit of worthless things. This is in the funeral message. He said this, "Consider, if you should die in your youth how shocking would the thought of your having spent your youth in such a manner be to them that see it. When others stand by your bedside and see you gasping and breathing your last, or come afterward and see you laid out dead by the wall and see you put into the coffin, and behold the awful visage which death has given to you, how shocking will it be to them that think, 'This is the person that used to live so vain and frothy a life. This was he that was so lewd a companion. This is he that used to spend of his time and his leisure hours in so much frolicking.'" He then concluded this funeral sermon very sweetly. "If you have gained an interest in Christ by faith,” that means become a Christian, “if you have gained an interest in Christ, your body shall flourish again, in a glorious manner. If you should die in the flower of your days when the body is most attractive and beautiful, it will actually rise again a thousand times more attractive and beautiful. Your happiness would be far greater than that of simply being fondly remembered for a time. Your glory will last forever." 

Well, Edwards used this occasion to gain a foothold in the lives and hearts of the young people in Northampton, and to minister the Gospel to them deeply and widely. Over the next few weeks they would gather together in small groups to pray, and it wasn't long before many of them were savingly converted. This was the beginning of the Great Awakening. Right there in Northampton, it transformed the youth culture in that town, and it was soon spreading to many other communities around. And when he wrote about it, and it was published in England it kindled similar effects in that country and it began to cascade around the English-speaking world.

I. Salvation: Rescued from Being the Master of Your Fate

 

Invictus

Now, this morning's text tells us that “our lives are a mist, a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes.” And therefore the wisest thing that any of us mortals can do is flee to Christ while there's time. To come to Christ for the forgiveness of our sins for eternal life. And I believe a good way to look at salvation is mirrored in the attitude of the text. It's being rescued from being the master of your own fate and the captain of your own soul. This phraseology came from a different kind of man than Jonathan Edwards. In 1894 William Ernest Henley lost his precious six-year-old daughter, Margaret. And in his grief and anger, he rather defiantly wrote a poem called “Invictus”, which means I have not been conquered. And this is what he wrote, "Out of the night that covers me, black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be for my unconquerable soul. It matters not how strait the gate, how charged with punishment is the scroll, I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul." 

Well, the essence of the rebellion of the human race against Almighty God is autonomy. That word literally means “self-rule.” Being the master of your own fate and the captain of your own soul. You can determine therefore what you will be and what you will not be. Where you will go, what you will do with your time, you'll decide all that for yourself, and how long you will live. So there's an essential arrogance and defiance about all that, about autonomy. One of the key ingredients to this human self-rule, this autonomy, is presuming upon tomorrow. Presuming upon tomorrow. Assuming that we will be alive tomorrow, and in the text, even a year from now, just assuming that we'll be alive. And that if we'll be alive a year from now, we get to choose to do whatever we want with our time on earth, and whatever we want in whatever city we go to. We get to make that decision. That's what autonomy is all about. We see it in our text. 

Saved from Autonomy

Now when our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ saves a sinner, He saves that sinner out of autonomy. He actually comes and takes our stiff necks and puts them under his kingly yoke, under his kingly rule. And we, by the transforming work of the Spirit, consider that the greatest thing that has ever happened to us, that we've been delivered from being masters of our own fates and captains of our own souls. We actually have repented for the kingdom of Heaven has come near, Mark 1:15, that's how Jesus began His preaching ministry, "Repent, the time has come, the Kingdom of God is near." He didn't say these words, but he could have. And at the center of the kingdom of God is God the king. So repent and believe the Gospel, believe the good news. And as he says, so sweetly in Matthew 11:28-30, “Come unto me all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” For many years I didn't understand what that yoke was all about until I did a biblical word study and found that when it wasn't a literal physical piece of wood, put across the necks of beasts, it was generally a metaphor for kingly rule. Again and again, kingly rule, and Jesus is saying, "Take my kingly rule upon you and learn from me. You have been serving another king, a wicked tyrant, Satan who flogs you and beats you, but I'm here to break and shatter that yoke off your shoulders and put another yoke on you.” Not no yoke, that's the lie from Satan. "You have no yoke on you, you're free." No, you're not. But you will find if you take your stiff neck, and yield to me and submit to me and put my yoke upon you, you'll find rest for your souls, and you'll find that my yoke, my kingly rule is easy, my burden is light. That's salvation. And therefore, we learn to say that God the creator, God the king, God the law giver, God the judge, he's the center issue of my life and all that matters is His will. That's it. What is the will of the Lord for me in my brief time here on Earth? The Lord then brings a serious consideration every day of the best use of our time and our energy and our money and our gifts and all of that for His glory.

Be Wise and Redeem the Time

Wisdom then very much consists of making a wise improvement of our time and of the opportunities that we enjoy. This is often spoken of in scripture, a great part of wisdom. Deuteronomy 32:29 “O, that they were wise that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end." Wisdom is to know where you're going, where is all this heading? Or again, Psalm 90:12, “Teach us to number our days properly that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” Or as Ephesians 5 says, "Be very careful then how you live. Not as unwise, but as wise, Redeeming the time because the days are evil, therefore, do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord's will is." It's the same concept as the text we're looking at today. So that's what this text is about. Being saved from autonomy, self-rule, being saved from being the master of your fate, the captain of your soul, and learning to be wise about the fleeting time that we have here on earth, and the centerpiece of that wisdom is learning to say, "If the Lord wills, I will live, and if the Lord wills I will do this or that."

II. The Arrogance of Presuming Upon Tomorrow

 

Prideful Assurance About What is Uncertain

Okay, so let's walk through the text, let's begin with the concept, the arrogance of presuming upon tomorrow, we'll look again at the words. James 4:13-17, “Now listen, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we'll go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money’ while you don't even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? It is a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.’ As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil. Anyone then who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it sins.” Alright, so we're picturing here, perhaps a businessman a merchant who travels a bit for his trade, goes from place to place, he's used to being prosperous and he's making plans for the future. And notice his attitude about the future. “Today, or tomorrow,” it doesn't matter, they're equally sure to him. “There's plenty of time. Actually, there's a limitless resource of time.” And notice his autonomous plans, "Well go to such and such a city, this city or that city, whatever I think is best. And we're going to spend a year there, and we're going to carry on business, we're going to make a trade and we're going to make a profit, we're going to make money, that's how it's going to go." 

Notice that this individual goes far beyond certainty about tomorrow to certainty about a full year beyond tomorrow. The one is as certain as the other in this mindset. In all of his plans, the will of God never enters in, and think about it, he is the master of his fate, he is the captain of his soul. He will live as long as he wants to live, I guess and spend his time as he chooses. He is presuming on the future. Notice also verse 16, one translation says, "You boast and brag or you boast in your arrogance," is another translation. So there's an essential pride to all of this. The human being is pridefully forgetting about God, he is making his own plans, he forgets that his very existence is in the hand of God.

We Live and Die According to God's Will

Look at verse 15, “Instead you ought to say, ‘If it is the Lord's will we will live.’" Let me just pause right there and just say this is probably one of the most helpful things you can begin to say to yourself, every day. “If it is the Lord's will, I will live.” I don't think it'll do you any harm to say it multiple times a day. You don't have to say it to others. It will alarm them. Maybe they should be alarmed, I don't know, but you should be alarmed at least into “numbering your days properly that you may gain a heart of wisdom,” just say again and again, "If it's the Lord's will, I will live." This is biblical theology for Paul said in Acts 17, "In him [God] we live and move and have our being.” Colossians 1:17 says, "In him [Christ] all things hold together." The very atoms of your body are being held together by the ongoing will of Almighty God, whether you believe in him or not.

As Daniel the prophet said to the wicked king of Babylon, Belshazzar, who was holding a horrible, idolatrous, drunken feast, using the holy articles taken from the Holy of Holies in the temple, in Jerusalem, and using them to toast the gods of bronze, iron, wood, and stone. And then the hand, this mysterious hand appeared, and there was what we call, “he saw the writing on the wall,” comes from Daniel 5, and Daniel came in and said to this evil king, "’You did not honor the God who holds in his hand your life and all your ways.’ That very night, Belshazzar the Independent died.” So the arrogant man who presumes in the future forgets this one fact. Hebrews 9:27, “It is appointed to each one of us to die, and after that to face judgment.” Or again, Ecclesiastes 8:8, “No man has the power over the wind to contain it, so no one has the power over the day of his death.” It's not in your hand. You don't control it.

He also forgets that God is sovereign over the things that happen on his planet. He overrules every human decision for his own purposes and his own glory. Proverbs 19-21, "Many are the plans of a man's heart but is the Lord's purpose that prevails." So whether you believe in or not, God's purpose, every day, is being worked out providentially. So this arrogant person in the text boasts about something he doesn't possess, tomorrow. And he just goes out, and he's going to do what he's going to do. Now, I think James probably had this proverb in mind, Proverbs 27:1, "Do not boast about tomorrow for you do not know what a day may bring forth.” Sounds exactly like our text, doesn't it? “Do not boast about tomorrow for you don't know what a day will bring forth.” And why is this so foolish? Well, the boasting about tomorrow shows the independence from God, forgetting the transitory nature of our lives, forgetting how dependent on God, we are for our continued existence.

The Brevity of Human Life

And so James says it in verse 14. “What is your life? “It is a mist [or a vapor] that appears for a little while and then vanishes.” So our time here on Earth is extremely brief. God in judging the original sinner, Adam, said, "By the sweat of your brow, you will eat your bread until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken, for dust you are and to dust you will return." Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 2 had a vision, a dream in which he saw a statue with a head of gold, chest and arms of silver, legs of iron, belly and thighs of bronze, legs of iron and feet partly and partly, clay. Those different metals represented different empires, four mighty empires. And then in the dream he saw all of them became like chaff on a threshing floor, and the wind blew them away without leaving a trace. That's four empires, the Babylonian empire, and the Medo-Persian Empire, and the Greek Empire, and the Roman Empire blown away without leaving a trace.

The Book of Ecclesiastes, one of the central themes, "Vanity of vanities, everything is vanity, it's meaningless," says the teacher. “What does man gain from all his labor, at which he toils under the sun? Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever.” Ecclesiastes 1:11, “There's no remembrance of men of old, even those who are yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow.” Ecclesiastes 1:14, “I've seen all the things that are done under the sun, and all of them are meaningless. They are chasing after the wind.” 

So as I was meditating on this, "your life is a mist, it's a vapor," I was thinking about the parable of the rich man, you remember, whose fields produced a bumper crop and he had immediate logistical problem, “Where am I going to put it all?” “He didn't know what to do. He said, “Oh, I know what I'm going to do, I'm going to tear down my barns and build bigger barns and there I'm going to store all of my grain and my goods and I'll say to my soul, ’Soul, you have plenty of good things laid up for many years, take life easy, eat, drink and be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘You fool, this very night your soul will be required of you. Then who will get all the things you have prepared for yourself?’"  

We ought to meditate in light of the text we're studying today on those words, “You fool, this very night your soul will be required of you [demanded of you.]” Friends, not requested, demanded of you. And when God demands your soul, you have no choice. You could be in the death throws and say, "I can't die, I was doing X." Does not matter what X is. "I had plans to do Y." Doesn't matter, when your soul is demanded you will die. And people die suddenly, all the time. They die of car accidents. Jonathan Edward's case, it was a pleurisy, a fever that came on two days later, dead, you know, it happens. The older you get, the more of those scenarios you hear about, or even are personally involved with with people we know. And so, we're aware of how individuals can go from prime health to sickness and then death very quickly. And even aside from immediate death, there is the process of aging, which comes on people faster than they think, and so, their capabilities get reduced. And then some injury or some other illness comes and then they're in physical rehab for a while and they never really quite return to that, and they never got back to their prime strength and health, and those days are quickly gone, in which we can energetically powerfully serve the Lord. So James wants us to be humbled by our transitory lives, by how brief our time here is on earth. We ought to realize every day that our life here as a mist, it is a vapor. 

When I drive to work in the morning, every morning, I cross a body of water, it's a reservoir near my house. And there are some mornings that the atmospheric conditions, the sun, everything, there's a thick mist that floats up and kind of hovers there over the bridge and over the lake. And you cut through it, you drive through it and then if you have the opportunity to come back even within an hour, it's gone, it's been burned off by the sun. Now, you've had that experience, and that's what James says our life is, it's a mist, it's a vapor, it's brief. And so, as Moses said, "Teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom." We don't know how long we have. 

The Calendar of Our Lives

Let me just give you a kind of a geeky image that stuck with me from my engineering days. Bear with me. It's one of the prices you have to pay to have me as your pastor. So, we used to have, in the engineering department I worked at, we had this big ugly calendar of the whole year. And it was given to us by a hardware supplier. It's one of the ugliest calendar's I've ever seen. I like calendars with mountains and rivers and beautiful things, but this was a 3 x 4 matrix for the 12 months. January, February, March, April, May, June, etcetera. So there are 12 months, and I remember somebody got up with a red pen and put an X through the day we just did yesterday, so we're on the next day that doesn't have a red X in it. It was kind of depressing. And you're looking at it, and the red X is just making progress through the 3 x 4 matrix. And one day in my weird sort of way, I looked at it and I said, “Suppose that calendar represented my whole life, with January 1st being the day of my birth and December 31st the day of my death, where am I?” I don't know. I know what the actuarial charts say about where I am, okay. The average lifespan of someone in my condition, I know that, but, I don't know. And I'm never satisfied, I always push it to the next level. I wonder if that represents the day I began working at this company and December 31st the day I'll stop working at this company, where am I? Or parenting, the day that they're born and the day that they grow up and leave our home. Our days are numbered friends and they're brief and they fly by. And so the Gospel lifts our eyes above this present age to eternity, and it shows us that the world to which we are going is entirely different. Our eternal life is not a mist or vapor, not at all. It's eternal. And the world to which we are going, we will be there for all eternity. If you have trusted in Christ, it will be glorious and beautiful and radiant. If you have not, it will be eternal conscious torment, that's the Bible's doctrine of Hell. Flee the wrath to come. 

III. What It Means to Presume Upon Tomorrow

 

Be Wisely Prepared

So, what do we mean by presuming upon tomorrow? Well, let's set up some boundaries, okay? It does not mean you shouldn't plan for anything. There's a big difference between saying, “I'm depending on, or relying on tomorrow for spiritual reasons, and I am preparing for a day, that may come, and I'm preparing wisely.” So the Scripture actually does commend that we prepare for the future. Proverbs 6:6, says, "Go to the ant you sluggard. Consider its ways and be wise. It has no commander, no overseer, or ruler, yet it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest.” So I'm not arguing that you should sell all your possessions, buy a white robe, and sit on the roof of your house and wait for the second coming of Christ. Actually, in church history, some have done exactly that, and they eventually came back down and tried to buy back their things. So we are to live as though every day might be our last, but we're also supposed to prepare and store up for the future. 

All missions are done this way. You prepare a mission trip, you don't say to the people going with you on the mission trip, we don't know where we're going or how we're getting there, but come. We're going to get on a plane, and who knows what'll happen. That, we don't do that. We plan short-term mission trips, career missionaries plan, they prepare, they get trained and that's appropriate. That's how we live in this world. And so we do prepare for the future, but there's a difference between preparing for the future, and presuming on the future. And so, the most important thing that you can do in hearing this is, be certain that you are born again, that you have trusted in Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. Don't put that off to another day.

Make Good Use of Today

You remember Felix had the greatest evangelist in church history incarcerated with him. He was imprisoning him, and he had access to him, and he took advantage of it. So he sat with Paul, the Apostle, the one who wrote the Book of Romans. “Do you know anything about the Gospel Paul?” “I know a lot about the Gospel. Let's talk about the Gospel.” And so, He discoursed with Felix about righteousness, self-control, and the judgment to come. And when Felix heard that, he became alarmed, and stopped him and said, "Stop. We'll talk about this at another time." Amazingly, God in His grace gave him another time, and actually many other times, maybe a year or more, maybe two. But in the end he never, as far as we know, repented and believed, and then handed Paul over to the next governor Festus and moved on. He put it off because he thought he would have more time. The Lord says to all of us, 2 Corinthians 6, “In the time of my favor, I heard you, and in the day of salvation I helped you.” Then Paul says, “Behold I tell you now is the time of God's favor. Today is the day of salvation.” Or again, the author to Hebrew says, “Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.”

Repent and Serve God

So the wisest thing you can do then is hear this Gospel message, hear of the atoning work of Christ, here that all you have to do is believe and not by works, but by faith are all your sins forgiven and flee to Christ while there's time. For us as Christians we're stronger every day by people who think just like the person in this text. You know it's true. We go to work in secular places that people are basically thinking this. “We're going to do this, we're going to do that, etcetera,” and God never enters in. We're surrounded by people without hope and without God in the world. Our task in this Raleigh, Durham area, our task is to shine the light of truth into that darkness. So, I'm giving you kind of the talking points for tomorrow at work. Find some way to talk about the brevity of life. Find some way to talk to some lost person about their life is a mist, it is a vapor. Find some way. And then for you as Christians, put your own house in order. Put your own house in order.

Don’t Procrastinate

Is there something God wants you to do? You know there's something God wants you to do, do it. Do it. Don't wait. Some Christian people are postponing some spiritual aspect of their life, could be a sin pattern that they plan on repenting from and turning from, but they haven't yet. Or it could be a good ministry that God, they feel, is calling them to do, but they just haven't begun it yet, and they'll get to it, they plan of it, they have to arrange some things first. So we tend to do spiritual procrastination thinking we're going to have plenty of time in the future. And so, we procrastinate from addressing sins in our lives and from beginning positive, fruitful ministries that the Lord is calling on us to do. So, if you have a pulling, a magnetic pull towards some ministry, follow it, feed it, see where it will lay, don't postpone it. And if God is convicting you, if I say to you, "Is there some sin pattern by which you are violating your conscience?" And something pops in your mind right now, the Holy Spirit is convicting you right now, I don't know what it is. Don't delay repenting from it. Put it to death now, don't wait. But deal with it now. So, positively, if God's calling on you to do a ministry, don't delay, find out about it, take steps toward it, start doing it. Negatively, if there's some sin in your life, don't delay, repent. Put it to death. 

IV. Application

 

Learn the Lord’s Will

Now, there's some practical things that I want to give you about this. I believe you should have a quiet time every day. You should get up and feed your soul in God's Word. And in so doing, you'll do what it says in Ephesians, “find out what the will of the Lord is,” find out what His will is. So, you should say, If the Lord wills, I will live and do this or that. Okay? So, I've already covered, If the Lord wills, I will live. So, in your quiet time, you say, “Lord, thank you that I have this day, this is the day the Lord has made, you have willed that I'd be alive, at least to this point. If you will, I will finish the day out. So I'm putting my life in your hands. It is yours.” 

Secondly, if the Lord wills, I will do this or that. What are your plans? It's not wrong to have plans, but have you asked God for wisdom? Have you sought His face concerning your plans? Have you passed them by for his review? Have you said like Jesus did with the greatest single act of human courage there's ever been in history, “Not my will, but yours be done”? Jesus was exactly the opposite, he was saying to his father, If the Lord wills, I will die. And it was God's will that he died. And he was willing to drink that cup for us, that's how much he said, if the Lord wills, I will live and do this or that. So we follow after Him and say, if you will, I'll live for your glory. So what do you want me to do? And then, first and foremost, the Spirit speaks through his word, he's going to tell you what the Lord's will is. Just do a word study on, it is the will of the Lord to that, so that you be sexually pure, 1 Thessalonians, “that each of you learn to control his own body in a way that's holy and honorable, not in passionate lust, like the heathen, who do not know God.” So it is God's will that you be sexually pure and holy. So you can just go down. Find out, it is God's will, it is God's will that we serve Him with all of our time and our energy. 

It is God's will that we ask him, “Should I go to this or that city? Should I spend a year there if you give me that time? Should I make money? And if I do make money, what should I do with it?” And so, there are some clear things that God says, it is His will, well we'll just find out what the Scripture says. But then there are some things that are pertinent to you, they're unique to your life and you don't know. “Should I leave this church and go to this city and take a job offer that I have now that I finished my graduate program, or if there's an opportunity, should I or not?” The Bible is not going to tell you directly what to do, but it does say in James 1, "If anyone lacks wisdom, he should,” what? “Ask God.” Ask God. Should I take that job? Should I marry that person? Should I go on that mission trip? Should I do this, Lord? And listen to him. “And when you ask, you should believe and not doubt that he'll speak into the quietness of your heart and lead you and guide you.” 

Sins of Omission 

Finally, the text ends with an important statement on a category of sin called sins of omission. We tend to focus on sins of commission, things that you do that you know God doesn't want you to do. You violate some law. But this says, “if anyone that knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, he sins.” So, God wants us to be lights shining in a dark place. I mentioned this a few minutes ago. He wants us to be evangelistic. But are you evangelistic? Are you sharing the Gospel with lost people? Is this a regular pattern of your life? These were his last words to the church before he ascended to Heaven. Read the end of Luke 24, you know exactly what I'm talking about. He said, share the Gospel to the ends of the earth and then He ascended. So, if you know what you ought to do and don't do it for you, it is sin. So for us, let's not procrastinate.

Is there a lost person in your life, somebody that you are focused on, somebody you're seeking to lead to faith in Christ? Don't wait, share the Gospel with them, be bold and see what God will do in and through you. Friends let's make the most of the time we have here as a church. Let's make the most of the days we have left together. Let's realize they're brief, they're fleeting, and let's live for the glory of God. 

Preparing for the Lord’s Supper

Now we have an opportunity to prepare for the Lord's Supper. Let me say something about the Lord Supper. I believe that the celebration of this ordinance is an opportunity that we as believers in Christ have to encounter the living God. I do not believe in transubstantiation? I don't believe it actually becomes the body and blood of Jesus, neither do I take a bare memorial view, like we can't expect anything here. I believe that in proportion to our faith in the Word of God, we can have an encounter with the living God, prepare your hearts for it. You've already had the opportunity to confess your sin, but be mindful of the fact of any sins that you may have in your life.

If you are not yet a Christian, if you've not testified to saving faith through water Baptism, we ask that you refrain, that you refrain and just observe. But we pray that in later months that you may actually be able to partake with us. But if you are a believer and you've testified to it by water baptism, we want you to partake. So let me this close this sermon time in prayer, and then I'll ask the helpers to come and I'll read the words of institution. Let's pray. 

Prayer

 

Father, thank you for the power of your word, thank you for the clarity of your word. Thank you for the insights that it gives us about the brevity of our lives. Thank you for the Gospel that saves us from eternity and not apart from you. I thank you for this church, and now, Lord, as we have the opportunity to not just having fed on God's Word by hearing it, but that we can partake in the actual elements we pray that you would be glorified and send forth your Spirit. Be with us as we celebrate now in Jesus' name. Amen.

Andy Davis preaches a verse by verse expository sermon on James 4:1-12. The main subject of the sermon is our need to repent and the grace God gives to those who do repent.

Introduction

 

Directions Back to the Lord Almighty

Turn in your Bibles to James 4. We're looking this morning at this incredible passage in the Book of James. Last summer, I had the joy of going on a graduation trip with my son, Calvin. And the day that we were to leave was complicated for me because I was speaking at a conference in the New Jersey area, and I had to fly back to Raleigh, Durham and I was going to meet him and we were going to drive back up the Eastern Seaboard. Kind of inefficient, but it was exciting. We were looking forward to that. However, my flight was delayed, and then delayed, and then delayed some more so we got quite a late start. And as we drove that late afternoon and on into the evening, we were to have stayed at a hotel outside Philadelphia, but we were supposed to get there around 11 o'clock in the evening and it was actually two in the morning. And when we arrived at the location, there was no hotel or a motel or anything like it in that place. And so, there we were in the dark, outside Philadelphia. And thankfully I had my smartphone with me and there was an amazing device on there called the GPS navigational system, which many of us did not grow up with. We had to stop at gas stations and get maps. Some of you will know exactly what I'm talking about. The maps that would fold out. But now all you have to do is type in a location for the nearest motel where we could stay. And though we did not know anything about where we were, though it was dark, we didn't know the road we were on, we knew nothing, the device was able to navigate us from that situation to a safe destination. Relatively safe. I won't tell you about the motel; it was an interesting place. But we spent the night and we're fine. Got started early the next morning.

For us, in the Christian life, the Christian life is a journey, and we are in the process of being sanctified. We're on a spiritual journey, and it is very likely that at some point we are going to stray from God. We're going to stray from Christ. You think about the hymn, “Come Thou Fount,” and I wrote at the lyrics while I was sitting in my seat and I remember them. So powerful. "Oh to grace, how great a debtor, daily I'm constrained to be. Let thy goodness, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to thee. Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love. Here's my heart, Lord, take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above." How many of us who have been walking with the Lord a long time can say, “amen” to that line, "Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it."

But when we wander, we're going to find ourselves, sometimes, in a place that's unfamiliar. And we're going to wonder, how will we get back? Is there a GPS navigation system? Is there a way whereby we can get out of that mess that we've sinned our way into, and find our way back? In Pilgrim's Progress Christian and Hopeful got off the path because they found, they thought, a better path alongside the way. And one of the basic rules of the road in Pilgrim's Progress is: Never leave the path. Every time they did, they got in trouble. And they ended up in the land of a giant called Despair, and they didn't know where they were and it was rainy, and it was windy, and it was dark, and as they tried to get back some other individual that was a minor part of the story, they didn't even know him, was ahead and he fell into a pit and died. And so they decided just hunker down, and they ended up having the worst trial they ever had.

And what about you? If you can say, “amen” to that statement about your soul, "Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it," and you will sin your way into some great difficulty, how will you get back? And I want to commend to you the text that we're looking at today, as a way to get back to God. There are going to be specific steps James is going to tell you to take. And we are going to look at those steps today so that you can find your way back, through the grace of God, to a healthy walk with Christ. That may be your situation today. You may be saying, "Pastor, I feel like you've written this sermon exactly for me. I am in a bad place spiritually. I'm in a bad place. It's my own fault, but I'm in a difficult way. How do I get back to a healthy, joyful walk with God, where the fruit of God is at work in my life?" This text is for you.

The Journey of the Christian Faith

Now as I think about the Christian life, I think, as I said, about the journey of the Christian faith. I think about the Gospel and how privileged we are to understand the Gospel rightly, to have the Word of God unfolded for us. And for me, as a church historian, I know that a key moment in redemptive history was the moment that Martin Luther began the Protestant Reformation and nailed the 95 Theses on the door of the Wittenberg Castle, and that was the beginning of the Protestant reformation that reclaimed, that found again the Gospel, justification by faith alone apart from works of the law, which had gotten covered over by all kinds of false teachings and idolatries and superstitions. And just through the word of God. Now, the first of those 95 theses that Luther wrote, 95 theses were just concepts for debates that he wanted, and he put it up there on the door. That was a place like a public community bulletin board.

And the first of the 95 theses reads this: "When our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ said ‘repent,’ he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.” You don't just repent at the beginning of your Christian life, you repent and repent some more, and then you repent even more, and you keep repenting. Your whole life is a life of repentance. Now, justification is the beginning of the Christian life, the way by which a sinner is made right with almighty God, the way by which we are forgiven of our sins. And the Gospel is clear on this, we maintain, Romans 3:28, that a person is justified by faith apart from works of the law. Not by works but by faith, we are forgiven, we are made right with God, always. But what kind of faith justifies? 

What Kind of Faith Justifies

There are lots of different kinds of faith, and the Book of James is written, uniquely, to answer that question. As we saw in the second half of James 2. It's not dead faith, or useless faith, or fruitless faith, or demon faith that justifies. But there's a genuine faith worked in us by the Spirit of God that inevitably produces works in keeping with repentance. The fruit of good works that keeps with repentance. Now, I've said many times before, I find this to be a helpful statement: "Faith is the eyesight of the soul by which we see invisible spiritual realities, past, present, and future."

Ephesians 1:18 mentions the “eyes of the heart.” "May the eyes of your heart be enlightened... " I think the eyes of the heart refers the ability of the heart to see spiritual things, that is faith. And saving faith, as I've studied it, has two sides to it. There is an attractive, beautiful side to what we see. The attractional side of faith. And there is a repulsive side to faith, and both are necessary for salvation. So, attractionally, we see the beauty and glory of Jesus Christ as the only begotten Son of God. 

We see in the face of Christ, the glory of God shining. We see his radiant beauty in his virtues and the attractions of his person. We see his love, his power, the perfection of his work and his death on the cross, we see to be glorious and beautiful and radiant. And we see his mighty resurrection from the dead. We see him, the author of Hebrews said, by faith we see him seated at the right hand of the Majesty in Heaven. All of that's beautiful and attractive. Not only that, but we see Heaven, we see the glories of Heaven, we say how beautiful it will be. That's the attractional side of faith. 

But there's also a repulsive side to faith as well. And in that, we see ourselves. When we're justified, we see ourselves rightly for the first time. You see who you really are and it's repulsive. It's wretched. Like “Amazing Grace” said, "That saved a wretch like me." We see ourselves as genuinely, to the core, polluted by sin and depraved and sinful. And in that we see that we deserve to die for our sins, and that Christ's bloody death on the cross under the wrath of God was as a substitute for us. We deserved to die that death. We see that. So, that's what saving faith is. We see both sides of that. It's the eyesight of the soul. 

And as we go on in the Christian life, we see both of those things. If we're healthy in the Lord, and we're taking in the Word of God, we see both of them more and more and more clearly. So what's going to happen is, as you go on in a Christian life, you're going to see Jesus more and more beautiful, and more and more attractive. And you're going to see the holiness of the Christian life more and more attractive. You're going to see the beauty of Heaven more and more beautiful and attractive. But the flip side is you're going to see your own sin and you're going to hate it more and more. And you're going to say like with the Apostle Paul, after years of walking with Christ, "I am the chief of all sinners."

I. The Need for Continual Repentance

 

The Reality of Indwelling Sin

So that's what's going on, and that's what I think James 4:1-12 is all about. We have the need for continual repentance displayed for us here. Now, not just Martin Luther in the 95 Theses, far more important is the Lord Jesus when he began his public ministry. And when he did, in Mark 1:15, he said, "The time has come, the Kingdom of God is near, repent, and believe the good news." So there's the negative and the positive side. Repent of your sins and believe the good news of forgiveness. Now that just begins at the moment of justification. The moment you're born again, that starts and then it continues. And why is that? Because of the reality of indwelling sin. The reality of indwelling sin. We have battling within us both beautiful good desires and corrupt evil desires. We have that indwelling sin. Paul said it most clearly at the end of Romans 7, and there Paul said, "I do not understand what I do, for what I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate, I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is," listen to this, "sin living in me that does it." That is nasty. That's disgusting.

Some time ago, I read an article on the body's immune system. They had remarkable scanning electron microscope pictures of viruses, and bacteria and other pathogens, the parasite that causes the disease malaria. And you could actually see it and it was disgusting. Imagine if you were shown all of the pathogens there were in your body right now, how much that would freak you out? Isn't it better not to know? As I've said to my wife before, as she talks to me about my diet sometimes, I said, "you gotta die of something." So that's not very satisfying to her, but I don't want to know. But here, Paul says, "sin living in me." And so we have these evil desires. Look at verses 1 through 4. This is a diagnosis. On the GPS journey, you have to begin by knowing where you are. Where are you spiritually? What's going on? 

The Effects: Fights, Quarrels, Worldliness

Look what he says, "What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something, but don't get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. And when you ask, you do not receive because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God. Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God." So that's verse 1 through 4. And so James is writing to these local churches, and this is going on. Fights and quarrels among you. And then again at the end of the passage, verses 11-12, "Brothers do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against his brother or judges him, speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you're not keeping it, but you're sitting in judgment on it. There is only one lawgiver and judge, the one who is able both to save and to destroy. But you, who are you to judge your neighbor?" 

So this is the kind of corruption that's going on in the hearts and minds of the people and in the church. And it comes in families, it comes between husbands and wives, between parents and children, between neighbors, between co-workers, between leaders in the church, pastors and elders and the people in the church. This is just going on, these battles, this corruption. And the root cause of all of this is what he says in verse 1, "your desires that wage war within you." We have conflicting desires. And we've already seen this in James. The reason for all temptation and then of sin, is lust, evil desires. James 1:14-15, "Each one is tempted when by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. And then after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and sin when it is full grown gives birth to death."

So, it was Jesus in the Sermon of the Mount, that zeros in on the heart. What's going on in the heart? So he says, "you have heard that it was said, 'you shall not murder, and anyone murders is subject to judgment,' but anyone who is angry with his brother will be in danger of the fire of Hell.” So the root of murder, that James mentions here, is anger. A heart condition of anger. Jesus said the same thing about adultery, the root of adultery is lust, it's the internal desire of the heart. And so James says, "you kill and covet." So you're desiring, you're coveting, you're looking on your neighbor's life. Looking on your neighbor's wife, his house, possessions, his privileges, all of those things that he has, and you covet it and you want it. That's where the desire comes from. And he says, "you quarrel and fight." The bickering, the arguing, the brokenness in human relationships. It's amazing. If you look at the acts of the flesh in Galatians 5, which is right before the famous fruit of the Spirit, so many of those things are just person-to-person bickering. “Factions and divisions and dissensions and fits of rage.” There's all this relational brokenness. 

Prayerlessness

James also zeros in on prayerlessness. Look at verse 2, he says, "you do not have, because you do not ask God." That's such a great verse, isn't it? It's like prayerlessness. Prayerlessness is a tremendous diagnostic. What things do we not commit to God in prayer? In those areas, we are self-reliant. We're not inviting God's wisdom in, we're not inviting God's power in. We're on our own, we're fine. For me, a matter of sanctification is to become prayerlessness in less and less areas of my life. I don't want to be prayerless when I drive, I don't want to be prayerless when I come to work, when I go home, when I sit, when I rise. I want to bring God into everything and lose this, this self-reliance, this arrogant self-reliance. And so, James says, "you do not have because you do not ask God." And then he says, even when you do pray, you don't receive. Look what he says in verse 3, "When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives that you may spend what you get on your pleasures." So if I can just summarize verse 1 through three, James are saying, "you folks are seriously messed up." And we all are like this, we can't read that and say, "Well I'm glad that's not happening in our Church. I'm glad that's not happening in our family. Nothing like it. We are not like this at all." It just isn't so. We've got this sin problem.

II. The Spirit’s Deep Longing for Our Repentance

 

Our Worldliness is Spiritual Adultery

Now we see the Spirit's deep longing for our repentance in all of this. The force taking hold of us and causing us to take that spiritual GPS journey back to righteousness is the Holy Spirit. Now, our worldliness, the Spirit is saying, is spiritual adultery. Look at verse 4, "you adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God." So when we talk about being a friend of the world, that's not planet Earth with its populations of human beings, that's not what the world is. God loves the world and sent his only begotten Son, John 3:16.

“The World”

No, no. He's talking about the world system, the evil, corrupt, satanic, demonic system that pulls us away from God. The reason that our hearts are prone to wander, is because of the magnetic attraction that comes to us through the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, the boastful pride of life. That's 1 John 2, that's what the world is. And James calls it spiritual adultery. He calls them adulterous people. They're hankering after the world, they're claiming to be part of the Bride of Christ, but instead they're wandering in their minds after the world. They're a spiritually adulterous people. And he says, "you're aligning yourself with the enemies of God, those that are deeply hostile to his person.” They are setting themselves up to be God's enemies. You don't want God to be your enemy, but the people of the world think like enemies of God. “The mind of the flesh is hostile to God, that sinful mind, it does not submit to God's law, indeed it cannot,” Romans 8:7. So you're lining yourself up with that. The enemies of God. Now, Jesus one day will crush all those enemies. As the Father said to the Son, "Sit at my right hand until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet." You don't want to be Christ's enemy and God's enemies. At one time, we were his enemies, but we were rescued from the dominion of darkness and we have become like Abraham, God's friend, James 2:23. Well, how then can we now join in with Christ's enemies? How can we through worldliness become an enemy of Christ? 

Peter’s Betrayal

Do you remember the night that Jesus was arrested? Do remember how, earlier that evening, Peter said, "I am, of all of your followers, I am the most loyal." he didn't say those words, but effectively, he did. “Even if all fall away on account of you, I never will.” Remember? Remember the boasts he made? And Jesus said, "This very night before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times." And he swore up and down that it would never happen. We remember what happened. Jesus orchestrated the escape of all of his apostles, that they should run away, John 18, he orchestrates that they should go away. "If you're looking for Me, then let these go." he wants them to go, because they're not ready to be arrested, not part of God's plan yet, and they all run away except one person, Peter. Follows at a distance because of all of his arrogant boasts. He tries to go into the courtyard where all of Jesus's enemies are, and there is a servant girl there at the door, remember? "You're not one of his disciples, are you?" "No, I'm not," there's his first one. And once you tell one lie, you're going to double down with another lie, and there he is standing with Jesus's enemies by a fire warming his hands. Even though Jesus had orchestrated his safe escape that very night, there he was standing with Jesus enemies and it gets worse and worse to the point where finally he calls down curses on himself if he even knows Jesus. I remember one preacher was talking about Peter that night, and he said he had warm hands and a cold heart. Standing with the enemies of Christ. We don't want to be like that, we don't want to be spiritual adulteresses.

Hosea’s Unfaithful Wife

Remember that tragic story of Hosea the prophet in the Old Testament? Remember that? Where God commanded Hosea to marry a prostitute, a woman named Gomer, to model the agony that Almighty God was feeling over the nation of Israel's spiritual adultery, going after the Baals and the Ashtoreth. And so Hosea marries Gomer, and at one point God commands Hosea to go buy his wife back, to buy time with his wife, the prostitute. Hosea 3, it says, "The Lord said to me, go, show your love to your wife again even though she is loved by another and is an adulteress. Love her as the Lord loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love the sacred raisin cakes. So I bought her for 15 shekels of silver and a homer and lethek of barley." It's one of the most tragic verses in the Bible. “I had to go buy her.” "And then I told her, you are to live with me for many days. You must not be a prostitute or be intimate with any man and I will live with you." So as I was memorizing Hosea, going through all that, I was like, "Lord, what are you saying to me? Who am I? Do you have to buy my affection with stuff or I will not follow you? Do I really love you, Jesus, the way I should, or am I wandering?" 

The Spirit Deeply Longs for Our Hearts

And look at verse 5, this lines up exactly with what we're talking about from Hosea. "Do you think the scripture says without reason that the Spirit," I think we should capitalize that, like the Holy Spirit, "the Spirit that he caused to live in us envies intensely, or is jealous over us." He has a strong desire over us. The Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity who lives within us, deeply yearns over our hearts to love him. Remember how it said of God, in Exodus 34:14, "Do not worship any god, for the Lord, whose name is jealous, is a jealous God." he actually says, "One of my names is Jealous." One of my names is jealous. And so the spirit, if you're a Christian, the Holy Spirit lives within you, and if you wander into spiritual adultery, into worldliness, you wander into that, he yearns for you and is jealous over you and wants you back. He knows your heart, he knows your mind, he knows what you are made for. And you were made to worship God in your intellect and in your mind, to understand the story of God and to see the evidence of God, and to know and to have your heart go after him so that he would be uppermost in your affections. There would be nothing you love more than God, the triune God. That's what he yearns for.

The Spirit Works in Our Hearts

But we are by corrupted nature, idolatrous, and so we reverse the order. God is not uppermost in our affections anymore, some created thing, some creature, is. And that's the essence of idolatry, worshipping and serving the created thing rather than the Creator. And so he wants us, he yearns over us, that our hearts would be on fire for him, that we would love him and go after him, but the world creeps in and pulls us away. And so the Spirit works within our hearts. He works genuine fiery repentance and jealous love, and he will orchestrate, if you're one of the elect, and your straying, he will come get you and he will do things in your life. Hosea 2, Hosea, speaking about his wife, but then by way of allegory or analogy to Israel, "Their mother has been unfaithful and has conceived her children in disgrace. She said, I will go after my lovers who give me my food and my water, my wool and my linen, my oil and my drink. Therefore I will block her path with thorn bushes, I will wall her in so that she cannot find her way. She will chase after her lovers, but not catch them. She will look for them but not find them. And then she will say, I will go back to my husband, as at first, for then I was better off than now." Blocked in, walled in, still corrupted in the mind, and then she has no choice but to turn in a certain direction.

Is that you? Does God have to buy your affections? Does your heart continually wander after the “lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, the pride of life?” Do you act like an enemy of God? The text stands over all of us, when we sing, "prone to wander, Lord, I feel it," this is what the text is saying. Do we hate that? Do we say, "I don't want to live my life like that"? Is the Spirit filling your heart with a longing after God? So God, in his mercy, gives us the gift of continual grace for repentance. 

III. God’s Gift of Continual Grace for Repentance

 

Look at verse 6, "He gives us more grace." Hallelujah. He gives us more grace. That is why scripture says, "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble." To save us, God must give us more grace, and then more grace, and then after that, even more grace, and more grace, and more grace. And so we need a steady stream of that. And you need to say that in your mind, say, "Oh God, give me more grace. Fill me with grace." May there be grace to you through the ministry of the word of God. You need a steady stream of grace. Not like grace, born again, forgiven and done with grace. Not at all. You need a steady stream of God's sovereign grace every moment.

Bunyan’s “Fire Against the Wall”

In Pilgrim's Progress, Bunyan's classic about the Christian life, there is this powerful image in Interpreter's house. He goes to Interpreter, and he gives him a bunch of allegories and stories that give aspects of the Christian life, and they're acted out, and you can learn things. Bunyan thought in pictures. And so there is this one allegory of the fire burning against the wall, and he said, "I saw in my dream that Interpreter took Christian by the hand and led him into a place where there was a fire burning against a wall." So, picture like a marble wall, and a marble hearth and a fire in it. It's burning. "And one was standing by it, always casting much water upon it to quench it. Yet did the fire burn higher and hotter." So picture this fire in a hearth and there's someone just pouring water on it, but the fire's not going out. Then said Christian, "What means this?" What does this mean? The interpreter answered, “'The fire is the work of grace that is wrought in the heart, and he the casts water upon it to extinguish it, and put it out, is the devil. But then that thou seest the fire not withstanding, burn higher and hotter, thou shalt see also the reason of that. So he had him around to the back side of the wall where he saw another man with a vessel of oil in his hand of the which he did also continually cast, but secretly, into the fire.’ Then said Christian, 'What means this?' The interpreter answered, ‘This is Christ, who continually, with the oil of his grace, maintains the work already begun in the heart by the means of which, not withstanding what the devil can do, the souls of his people prove more gracious still. And then that thou sawest that the man that stood behind the wall to maintain the fire, that is to teach thee that it is hard for the tempted to see how this work of grace is actually being maintained in their souls.’"

God Opposes the Proud but Gives Grace to the Humble

So that's such a powerful picture. If you're born again, God lights a fire within you, a work of grace. And that fire is going to keep burning and there's nothing the world, the flesh and the devil can do to put it out, praise God. But the only way it doesn't get extinguished is more grace, and that's why James 4:6 says, "He gives us more grace." But he gives it to the humble. "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble." I remember when I was teaching this verse to my kids and we used to do much more physical things that we do now. We used to play wrestling games until I broke a rib and then I retired. My kids were getting bigger and bigger and they just consistently won. The game was to get me off the couch within five minutes. That's all they had to do, just get me off the couch. It got pretty violent. Lamps were getting knocked over. It was not good. But I wanted to teach them God opposes the proud. 

So I stood in the way and I told them to go through a door, and I opposed them, and I was much bigger than they were at that point. They're much bigger than me now. But at that point. So you don't want God, Almighty God, opposing you. You don't want God, the omnipotent God, fighting you. But he gives grace to who? The humble. And so, the grace of God comes and makes you a spiritual beggar, makes you, like the beatitudes say, it makes you mourn over your sins, it makes you hunger and thirst for righteousness, it makes you humble. And so you are humbled by your sin, you're humbled by your condition, and you go toward Christ, you go toward God and you say, "Give me more grace," and he will. God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. And here we see the nature and fruits of true repentance. 

IV. The Nature and Fruits of True Repentance

 

Nature and Fruit Intertwined: What God Commands He Works in Us

When he's doing that, what does he do? He grants repentance, and he works in us repentance. God gives us what he commands. He commands us to repent, and then he works repentance in us. 

Now the commands given here could be given both to unsaved and saved people alike. If you're here today, and you are as yet not a Christian, these words can stand to you. And they say, "Submit yourself to God, take Jesus's yoke upon you and learn from him. Submit to his kingly reign, stop fighting him. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands in the blood of Christ, trust in him and you'll be forgiven." This is the Gospel invitation to anybody to believe in Christ. And so if that's you here today, then God brought you here by his grace to hear, for this moment, that all your sins can be forgiven. All you have to do is trust in him, apart from works, just by trusting in Jesus, all your sins will be forgiven. 

But these words are written to Christians and so we need to hear this too. And so, maybe you see worldliness creeping in. Maybe you've defiled yourself through some pattern of sin this week. Maybe you're locked in some addictive pattern. Perhaps you're a married couple constantly fighting and quarreling. Maybe you're a teenager, and you're rebelling or fighting against parental authority. Maybe you see an overall pattern of worldliness in your life where you're living for the things of this world and not for the things of God. And you say, "What do I do now, how do I get home?" James 4:7-10 tells you how, tells you what to do. 

Submit Yourselves Then to God

First of all, submit to God. “Submit yourselves then to God.” Kneel before God as the king of your life. Kneel before him right now, in your hearts. Kneel before King Jesus. Take his yoke, his kingly yoke upon you, and stop fighting it. Maybe when you get home physically, literally kneel before him. Paul did. In Ephesians 3 he said, "For this reason I kneel before the Father." Sometimes we just, with our bodies, we want to say, "You are my King and I yield to you." So submit yourself to God. All salvation is of, in essence, bringing us into the kingdom of God and yielding to his kingly reign. 

Resist the Devil and He Will Flee From You

Secondly, "Resist the devil and he will flee from you." Say no to what the devil is tempting you to do. Say no to the devil's schemes of temptation. Ephesians 6, "Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand in the day of testing." In the day of temptation you've got your armor on, you're going to say no to sin. Resist the devil. And then amazingly, he will flee from you, as though he's afraid of you. Friend, he's not afraid of you. He's not afraid of you at all. He is so much more powerful and experienced than you are. Is he afraid of something? Yes, he's afraid of Jesus. He's afraid of Jesus.

We're going through men's Bible study on Thursdays. We just got to the account, you remember where Jesus drives out Legion, the legion of demons from the demoniac of the Gadarenes, remember that? And there's this demoniac breaking chains, literal chains that could not hold him. Naked, cutting himself with stones, howling at the moon, no one would go near him. He's terrifying, absolutely terrifying. And then he is terrified of Jesus. Begging Jesus, "Please don't torment us before the appointed time. If you drive us out, please send us into the herd of pigs." And Jesus just says, "Go," and they go. They are terrified of Jesus. So what ends up happening? You're resisting the devil, the devil's tempting you, the demons are assaulting you, you're being tempted and you say, "No. No, by God's grace, no." And then the Spirit of God gets around you and puts the devil to flight. I love the image and the promises in the Old Testament about Israel's armies. They will come at you in one direction and flee from you in seven. Isn’t that a great picture? And so putting the devil to flight, all you have to do is just put on the spiritual armor, and stay and stand firm in holiness, and say no, and he will put the devil to flight. 

"Come Near to God and He Will Come Near to You"

And then, "Come near to God and he will come near to you." Our sins have made a separation. That's the distance. That's where the GPS comes in. We need to get back to God. We feel distant from him, and that distance is a spiritual reality. It says in Isaiah 59:1-2, "Surely the arm of the Lord is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear, but your iniquities have separated you from your God and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he will not hear." And so we feel distant from God. Well, then come near to him. Like one of the minor prophets said, "Take words with you." I love that. So what words? Psalms. "Well Pastor, do you have a Psalm in mind?" I actually do. Can I recommend Psalm 63:1-3? "O God, you are my God. Earnestly, I seek you. My soul thirsts for you. My body longs for you in a dry and weary land where there is no water. I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld Your power and Your glory, because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you." Say those things to God. "I feel so distant from you. Other things have crept in, and I've loved them. Now I want them out and I want the love of God in me. Your love is better than life, it's better than any created thing. I want to be close to you, oh Lord." Say that to him. Draw near to God. As it says beautifully in Jeremiah 29:13. "You will seek me and you will find me if you seek for me with all your heart." So I just commend Psalm 63:1-3 or some other passage like it, and just say that to God. And let your heart be heated up and you will find that he will draw near to you. 

"Wash Your Hands, You Sinners"

And then he says, "Wash your hands, you sinners." We come to Christ's cleansing blood. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” So we get spiritually cleaned. But the hands are practical, they do things. The hands are attached to the heart and so we need clean hands and a pure heart, and so we purify our heart by the Word of God. But then, what about your habits? What about your behaviors? What about what you're doing? Wash. And you do that by holy resolutions and by living up to those holy resolutions. "Lord, I've been doing this, I'm not going to do this anymore. I'm going to fight that sin pattern. I'm going to wash my hands. I'm going to bring forth fruit in keeping with repentance. I'm going to put this sin out of my life. If my right hand is causing me to sin, I'm going to cut it off and throw it away. If my right eyes is causing me to sin I'm going to gouge it out and throw it away. Jesus told me to deal seriously with sin. I am going to wash my hands by the grace of God. I'm going to change the way I'm living."

"Purify Your Hearts, You Double-Minded"

And he says, "Purify your hearts, you double-minded." It ultimately comes to that. As I've already mentioned, the bottom line is, what are you doing? Double-mindedness is like, "I'm going after the world, I don't want to do that." So, what are you feeding in your mind? So feed on God's Word, meditate on scripture. Stop thinking those worldly thoughts. "Purify your hearts," he said, "you double-minded". And then, “Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom.” Long ago I stopped asking for a show of hands and sermons. I don't do that anymore, but if I were to ask for a show of hands, how many of you would say this is your favorite verse in the Bible? How many hands do you think? Well, this is my favorite: “Grieve, mourn and wail, change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom." It's nobody's favorite. Let me tell you something, it's part of the journey back. 

Grieve, Mourn, Wail

We American evangelicals, we like a kind of Christianity lite. With chipper sermons designed to make you laugh and feel good about yourselves. John Piper is speaking of churches that try to create an atmosphere of bouncy Chipper, frisky, lighthearted playful worship. Well, that's not what James is talking about here. Not at all. Now, obviously we don't want a Christianity that would be characterized by these words. Morose, gloomy, sullen, dark, heavy, solemn. Jesus did come to bring us joy unspeakable and full of glory. And we're going to a place where there will be for all eternity no death, mourning, crying or pain. We will not spend a moment in Heaven grieving, mourning and wailing over sin. None. But we're not there yet, dear friends. We're not in Heaven yet. And sometimes the healthiest thing you can do is to join the Holy Spirit in grieving over your sin. Join the Holy Spirit in grieving over your sin. 

Do you realize the third person of the Trinity grieves over sin? It says in Ephesians "Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God with whom you're sealed for the day of redemption." It says in Isaiah 63:10, concerning Israel, "They rebelled and grieved his Holy Spirit." And so what happens is, we're going along, we get tempted and we have the temporary pleasure and joy of sin, but the Holy Spirit is immediately, instantaneously grieved. So we're up here in terms of the happiness thing, and he's down here and grieving over us. Then by the power, the sovereign power he exerts over the redeemed, he pulls you down to his level of happiness, which is grief, and then together, you go back up to the joy of the Lord. "Restore to me the joy of my salvation," David said. And so he does that. But there's a process. “Grieve, mourn, wail. Change your laughter to mourning and joy to gloom.” Don't go too quickly to feeling good again after you've sinned. Take the time to go and think and pray, and say, "God, would you please show me what you felt about my sins? Show it to me. And I will join you and grieving over it." 

Do you remember when the Lord was working with Peter that very night? Do you remember? And after he had disowned him for the third time, the rooster crowed and the light went on, remember? And at that exact moment, in Luke's Gospel, Jesus was being moved from one place to another on his night of trials, and he had the opportunity, sovereignly ordained by God, to look right at Peter, right as a rooster was crowing. What do you think that did to Peter? It must have been like a javelin thrown through his heart. And you know what he did, we know what he did. He went outside and wept bitterly. And after the resurrection of Jesus, he pulled Peter aside and asked him, "Peter, do you love me? Peter, do you love me? Peter, do you love me?" And it says in the text, Peter was hurt because he asked him a third time. "Lord, you know all things, you know that I love you." he said, "Then, feed my sheep." Was he intending to hurt him? In one sense, yes, but not as an ultimate end. But to cause him to repent and to turn away, because someday he would be martyred for Jesus and he had to lose that fear of death and fear of man and preach boldly and he had to be healed from his sin. And so, humble yourself before the Lord. Humble yourself, like the tax collector. Stand off at a distance, beat your breast and say, "Be merciful to me, oh God, a sinner." And you will go home justified. You'll be forgiven, you'll be restored. And then it says plainly, "He will lift you up." Humble yourself before the Lord and he'll lift you up, he'll fill you with joy, he'll give you the peace of justification, he'll give you the joy of your salvation again.

Prayer

 

Close with me in prayer. Father, you have taught us here in these verses, you've taught us the way back. And there are some of us here today that know immediately, they know directly what you're talking about. They feel it in their hearts, they know that they're sinning. They know that there's a pattern of sin that's corrupting them. And you are working by grace that the fire of grace would not go out in their hearts, that Satan's pouring water on it, but you will not let it go out. Father, I pray that if there's a brother or sister here that needs to just take these verses and go quietly into a room somewhere and kneel down and pray, step-by-step, until they have been restored to you, Oh God, give them strength to do it. Thank you for the Word. Thank you for its truth. In Jesus's name, Amen.

Andy Davis preaches a verse by verse expository sermon on James 3:13-18. The main subject of the sermon is the value of heavenly wisdom and the danger of earthly, devilish wisdom.

Introduction

 

Turn in your Bibles, if you would, to James chapter 3, we're going to be looking this morning at verses 13-18, and we're going to be looking at the issue of wisdom and the contrast between earthly wisdom and heavenly wisdom. There are two kinds of wisdom that James is going to walk through. He's going to make them very clear how different they are. And the question is, which of those two, earthly wisdom or heavenly wisdom, is going to characterize us individually, and which is going to characterize our church? James is writing to a very complex context. He's writing to Jewish believers in Christ, who have been scattered throughout the Greek-speaking world. And so, they have to deal with the Greek idea of wisdom. We'll talk about that. And also there's the backdrop of Hebrew wisdom, of Biblical wisdom, and now the final complete perfect wisdom that's come to us in Christ. And so, James is writing into that situation because he is very eager that the churches of Christ would be characterized by the kind of wisdom that you just heard read about for us so beautifully. And, Ben, that was great. I don't know that there's anything more. That was one of the best prayers I've heard. That was like a mini sermon on the text. I'm not sure what else there is for me to do as we just see how perfectly these characteristics are in our savior, Jesus Christ. Now let's talk about our context. 

I. The Timeless Quest for True Wisdom

 

Our Context: The Highest Concentration of U.S. PhDs

When I first got here, I heard that the Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill area had the highest concentration of PhDs in the United States. And I was impressed by that, until as I prepared this sermon, I found out it wasn't true. And I was dismayed by that. I found that actually Bethesda, Maryland has the highest concentration of PhDs in the United States, and that there were four cities in Eastern Massachusetts, around my hometown where I grew up, that have a higher concentration of PhDs than the Raleigh, Durham area. As a matter of fact, friends, we're not even in the top 25. So I don't know who it is that told me that. But we are characterized by a high level of intelligence, a high level of academic achievement, academic pursuit. And as I look at how James characterizes earthly wisdom, what is it but natural intelligence combined with ego, combined with energetic ambition to produce certain effects in the world, and it is effective to produce much in the world. But Christ doesn't want to see that in His Church, that's not going to drive the Church to be what it must be. 

Now, we human beings, we are enamored with intelligence. You think about how anthropologists imbibing that atheistic evolutionary scheme, talk about the ascent of man. And the final step is to move from, I guess, Homo habilis through Homo erectus up through Homo sapiens, which they tell us is the wise man. The ability to shape our environment by intellectual analysis and by the making of tools and all that. And so, we're so filled with this sense of natural knowledge of wisdom. Now, we Christians know from the Bible how false that lie is. We've not really seen, historically, an ascent of man, but actually quite the opposite. We've seen the descent of the human race from what we were originally intended to be. That our intellectual capabilities came from creation, from the very beginning, in that we were created in the image of God. It says in Genesis 1:26-27, "Then God said, Let us make man in our image, in our likeness and let them rule over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground. And so God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female, he created them." 

A Worldwide Esteem and Quest for Wisdom

Now, all over the world, human beings have an esteem for intelligence, it's one of the things we esteem the highest. along with physical strength, the power of a warrior to win a battle, but we also esteem the power of a king, an empire builder who is intelligent, shrewd, able to make clever arrangements with other kings to plot strategies and all of this by a shrewd application of intelligence to be able to build an empire. You think about Nebuchadnezzar and how he, with the Jewish exiles, was looking for a certain kind of person who could serve with him in his court, and this what it says in Daniel 1:3-4, "Then the king ordered Ashpenaz, chief of his court officials, to bring in some of the Israelites from the royal family and the nobility," listen to the criteria, “young men without any physical defect, handsome, showing aptitude for every kind of learning, well-informed, quick to understand and qualified to serve in the king's palace. And he found Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah, and he found that their intellectual abilities far exceeded anyone else. And so, he drafted them into the service of the Babylonian empire.” So every nation on earth esteems the ability to reason, the ability to analyze and to make shrewd plans. 

James’ Hebrew Context

Now James comes from a Hebrew context. Since we're reading the book of James, we see there's a strong Jewish feel to the book. He's writing to Jewish believers in Christ and he talks about the suffering of the prophets or other examples that would just flow from a Jewish context. And James has that in mind, as well, when he writes about wisdom. There's a strong sense of the superiority of the wisdom of God, flowing through the Jewish nation. Now, before the Jews were born as a nation through Abraham, then Isaac and Jacob, then over centuries in Egypt, and then Moses and the Laws of Moses, before all of that happened, there were intelligent races and nations that were achieving great things. Think about Egypt and the things that they were able to do. It's still a mystery to many how the pyramids were built. The technology is quite remarkable and we only have theories on how they were able to attain it or how they were able to irrigate that whole Nile Delta region with foot pumps, and with irrigation techniques. But it wasn't just the Egyptians. In the orient, the Chinese were able to develop amazing skills with water, with hydrology for example, with dams that they were able to build up and metallurgy, the bronze and the tools they were able to make. So, there's intelligence flowing from the nature of man all over the world. 

The Jews however, were called out, and went through a certain experience of being lower than the dust as slaves in Egypt, and then they were brought out by a mighty hand, an outstretched arm, to Mount Sinai. And there, God descended from heaven in fire on Mount Sinai. And he spoke to them, and he gave them wisdom from Heaven, from the mouth of God. And Moses went up on Mount Sinai up into the very presence of God, and received from him the same thing that they had just heard the voice of God speaking. And they were written, inscribed on tablets of stone by the finger of God. You remember that Moses broke those tablets out of anger at the idolatry of the Jewish nation, but then after that, from then on, Moses himself stood in the presence of God and gained wisdom from God and wrote it down so the people would have the very words of God to shape their minds and their hearts. And it says in Deuteronomy 4:6-8, "Observe these laws carefully, for this will show your wisdom and understanding to the nations, who will hear about all these decrees and say 'Surely, this great nation is a wise and understanding people.' What other nation is so great as to have such righteous decrees and laws as this body of laws I am setting before you today?'" In other words, what sets the Jewish people apart is the wisdom of God's Word which has come down from Heaven through the prophets into the hearts and minds of the people, that's what set the Jewish nation apart. What other nation is so wise as this nation to have such laws? 

Then you remember King Solomon, how when he began as a king, God appeared to him in a vision and spoke to him and said, "What would you have me do for you?" And he said in 1 Kings 3:9, "Give your servant a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong. For who is able to govern this great people of yours?" And so God was pleased with this request, and told him so. And he lavishly granted this request to King Solomon, He gave him wisdom, He said in 1 Kings 3:12, "I will do what you have asked, I will give you a wise and discerning heart, so that there will never have been anyone like you, nor will there ever be." In 1 Kings 4:30, it says Solomon's wisdom was greater than the wisdom of all the men of the East and greater than all the wisdom of Egypt. And so, Solomon esteemed wisdom above every other human virtue. He said in the book of Proverbs, he wrote, Proverbs 4:7 and 8, "Wisdom is supreme. Therefore, get wisdom, though it cost you all you have, get understanding. Esteem her and she will exalt you, embrace her and she will honor you."

And so from that heritage comes a genre of writing in the Scripture called the wisdom literature. So we have the Book of Job, and we have Psalms and Proverbs and Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs, and the focus is living in light of the existence and the holiness of God. That's the essence of the wisdom that comes down from Heaven in the Old Testament, “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and the knowledge of the holy one is understanding.” That's the essence of Hebrew wisdom. Now, the Book of Proverbs is intensely practical. God cares very much how you live every day of your life, every detail of your life, your use of time, the way you spend your money, what you do with your tongue. The very thing we just covered in the Book of James last week, the way you talk, the way you raise your children, how you deal with your animals, how you deal with your neighbors. The Book of Proverbs covers all of this practical wisdom. So the wisdom that comes down from Heaven flows out into every area of life, but the centerpiece is the “fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”

James’ Greek Context

Now, James is also writing in a Greek context, he's writing in the Greek language. And undoubtedly, even as a Jew, he grew up speaking Greek. It wasn't his mother tongue but it was homebase, he was the half brother of Jesus, and he wrote in polished Greek. And why is that? Well, because of one individual in particular in history, a man you may have heard of: Alexander the Great. Alexander the Great from Macedonia was zealous about everything to do with Greek culture. He thought it was the greatest culture in the world, and in trailing behind his military conquests, he never lost a battle, as he spread Greek military power over that entire region, he also spread a love for Greek culture, Hellenism, a love for Greek philosophy. Now, Alexander had been tutored by a Greek philosopher, Aristotle. And that's just part of the Greek culture, there is a love for philosophy, a love for wisdom.

The city of Athens is named after the goddess of wisdom, Athena. Now, you remember what happened when the Apostle Paul went to Athens and preached the heavenly wisdom of the Gospel and then how he went on Mars Hill, the Areopagus, and how there are a bunch of philosophers up there who gathered together and spent their whole time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas. Epicurean and stoic philosophers. And so Paul, they gave him a hearing, and as he began to preach and talk about Christ crucified and resurrected, they said of Paul, "What is this seed picker trying to say?" Sometimes translated, “babbler” in your Bible. I memorized that, by the way, in the Japanese language. When my wife and I were missionaries, I memorized how to say that in Japanese. "What is this babbler trying to say?" I was just entertaining myself as I tried to learn the Japanese language. They never quite got the humor, but I thought it was funny. "What is this babbler trying to say?” 

But behind that was a tremendous arrogance. They believed they had the quintessential pristine wisdom, that's the Greek mentality. And so when Paul went just a few miles down the road to Corinth, and preached the Gospel there and then later wrote to the church in Corinth, he had to deal with the issue of human wisdom, Greek philosophy. And he said this in 1 Corinthians 1, "The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate. Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?" So James in the flow of his Hebrew heritage, but now consummated with the coming of Christ, as Christ comes as the perfection of the wisdom from God that descends from Heaven to earth, he's got to battle that Greek context of human arrogance, being so enamored with human intelligence and human ambition, and he's got to talk about the true wisdom that comes down from Heaven to Earth, and the centerpiece of that wisdom is salvation. 

The True Wisdom of God: Salvation Through Faith in Christ

The wisest possible thing you can do is to save your soul by faith in Jesus Christ. Conversely, the most foolish thing you can do is to lose your soul through sin. This is the centerpiece of the heavenly wisdom that comes down from Heaven to earth. Jesus said in Matthew 16, "What would it profit someone if he should gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? Or what would you give in exchange for your soul?" The soul. The eternality of the soul, whether you spend eternity in Heaven or Hell. It is the essence of wisdom that you spend eternity in Heaven through faith in Christ. And the most foolish thing you could do is to lose your soul for some earthly thing and spend eternity in torment, in anguish over your foolish choice. Therefore, Christ crucified, the message of the cross and of the empty tomb, is the centerpiece of the heavenly wisdom. It's the centerpiece of everything God has to say to us. In Colossians it says, "In Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." Christ is wisdom from God. As it says in 1 Corinthians 1:23, "We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles, but for us who are being saved, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God."

Are You Wise or Foolish?

Now, Christ in his own teachings often spoke of the wise and the foolish. Remember at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, he goes through all of this magnificent teaching and he says, "Everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock, and the rains came down, and the streams rose and the winds blew and beat against that house, but it did not fall because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on the sand and the rains came down and the streams rose and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash." Are you wise or are you foolish? When you hear the words of Christ, do you take them to heart and put them into practice? Or when you hear the words of Christ, are you foolish and do not put them into practice? Wise or foolish? 

Or think also about the wise and foolish virgins. Remember? Talking about the end of the world and the waiting we all have to do, we're waiting for the coming of Christ. Second Coming. We're waiting. It's not here yet. And he likened it to five wise and five foolish virgins. And the wise virgins took oil and jars along with their lamps, but the foolish virgins did not, and their lamps flickered and went out before the second coming of Christ, and then they come later and bang on the door to try to get in the wedding feast. And he says, "I never knew you." Wise and foolish. Or think about that, that man whose crops came in like a bumper crop, and he doesn't know what to do because he doesn't have enough barn space, and he says, "I know what I'll do, I'll raze my barns, and I'll build bigger barns, and then I'll take it easy for the rest of my life. And I'll say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have lots of things stored up. Kick back, relax.’" And then comes the voice, the message from Heaven, "You fool. This very night, your soul will be demanded of you, required of you." You have no choice but to give it back. "Who then will get all the things you've stored up for yourself?"

So again, the issue of wise and foolish, it always comes down to salvation through faith in Christ. And that's why the Bible was given. This is the centerpiece of all that the 66 books of the Bible have to say. The scriptures are given to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 2 Timothy 3:15, "All scripture is God-breathed." Its task is the same, to save you from your sins through faith in Christ. So, the issue stands before you, individually, each of you before me. Are you a wise person or are you a fool? That's what's in front of us here with this issue of wisdom, heavenly wisdom, and there are a lot of brilliant people who have done brilliant things and have achieved much. And James would say, and we're going to walk through it in a moment, but he'll say, they're doing it out of ego, out of selfish ambition. But they achieved much. And they invented things, and started companies and built empires, they did many things. Some of the greatest names in science and in human culture have ardently rejected the Gospel. Thomas Jefferson, Voltaire, Thomas Edison. Some of these great individuals, Ben Franklin, achieved great things. Stephen Hawking, who died recently, brilliant, brilliant men. Their names are engraved in stone, literally, in places around the world. But if they didn't know Christ, if they didn't find salvation through faith in Christ, then the Bible would say they're fools. I don't know the final state of any of those, don't know. But if they didn't find salvation through faith in Christ, they're fools. Conversely, the Bible would say the simplest uneducated believer in Jesus Christ, no matter what kind of life they're living economically is wiser than any of those if they didn't know Christ.

II. The Practical Test of True Wisdom (vs. 13)

 

The Message of the Book of James

Alright, so let's look at the practical test of wisdom. Verse 13, "Who then is wise and understanding among you? Let him show it by his good life, by the deeds done from the humility that comes from wisdom." So this fits the whole Book of James, doesn't it? James is basically, “Show me, it's who he is. You think you're religious? Show me. You hear God's words, do you put them into practice or not? Don't deceive yourself about the state of your soul,” James 1. James 2, "Faith without works is dead." And so now we come to James 3, and he's going to say, "If you think you're wise, if you claim to be wise in the church of Jesus Christ, then you better show it by the deeds you do." That's what he's saying here in verse 13. So he's challenging some who claim to be wise. 

The Holy Spirit’s Gospel Work

Now, I think the Gospel, the Holy Spirit through the Gospel cuts through this claim for unregenerate people, whom He is working on to save. So you stop thinking of yourself as wise, you're convicted. As it says in Isaiah 5:21, "Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight." Cuts through all of that and shows you that you're not, and brings you to faith in Christ. So, what he's saying is, If that's happened, if the heavenly wisdom has come down into your soul, it's going to show in the way you live your life, by your good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. So your daily behavior is the final test of wisdom. If you claim to be wise, but you're daily walking in what the Bible calls foolishness, then you're deceiving yourself. He wants you to show it, and not just show it, but it's going to come from a heart state, a demeanor that he's going to walk through, an attitude of soul. So the wise demeanor that he gives here is the humility that comes from wisdom. So the heavenly wisdom makes you humble. Boy, does it humble us, doesn't it? If you've been genuinely saved, you realize how much the theology of the Gospel humbles you to the core of your being.

So the Holy Spirit comes down from God and converts individual sinners. And when he converts someone, He does it first and foremost by convicting that person of his or her sins, that they're corrupted, that they're vile in the sight of God, they need a savior. Without that, you can't be saved, you're not going to repent, you don't need Christ. And so what he's going to do, and Jesus describes it so beautifully in what's known as the beatitudes at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew 5, "Blessed are the... Blessed are the... Blessed are... " He just walks through, but look at what he's talking about. The people the Holy Spirit's working salvation in, the people who are saved by the genuine work of God are spiritual beggars, they're the poor in spirit, they have nothing and they know it, he'll give them the Kingdom of Heaven. These are people who are meek, they are humble because they realize who they really are before such a holy God. They have nothing to commend themselves for. They mourn over their sins. In context, it's mourning over your sin, "I know who I am and it grieves me." And James is going to talk about that in the very next section in James 4. We grieve over sin, it breaks us, it hurts us, we mourn. They hunger and thirst for righteousness, they yearn to be righteous, actually righteous in themselves, they want their lives to be righteous, and they want to be with other righteous people, they yearn for a righteous world. And they're pure in heart because the Holy Spirit's worked that supernatural operation, He's taken out the heart of stone and He's given the heart of flesh, and the heart of flesh, the essence of it is that humility, that perspective realizing who you really are before such a holy God. This is what the Holy Spirit does in you when He saves you. This is what it looks like to be made wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. By contrast, James exposes and diagnoses the wicked worldly wisdom that will kill our souls.

III. The Origin, Motive, Nature, and Fruit of Earthly Wisdom (vs. 14-16)

 

The Origin of Earthly Wisdom

So look at verses 14-16, the origin and the motive, and the nature and the fruit of earthly wisdom. Look at verse 15, the origin of earthly wisdom, "Such wisdom does not come down from heaven, but is earthly, unspiritual, of the devil," or demonic. So it comes from below, James calls it earthly, epigeios, coming from the earth. It has its origin in the earth, the world system, its goals, its prosperity, its power, its methods, that's what earthly means. It is unspiritual, it is natural, it is sense oriented, it's tied to your five senses, the earthly wisdom is. It's not tied to the redeemed nature. Remember what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 2:14, "The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit because they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned." That's a natural man or woman, They don't get the spiritual things, can't discern them. So that's what this wisdom is like. And he calls it demonic or of the devil. At its root, it's motivated and taught by, as Jesus said to his enemies, "your father, the devil." So if you're unregenerate, you're imitating the satanic mindset or demonic mindset. What does that mean? Well you know from Isaiah 14, the Lucifer passage in the KJV, where Satan was enamored with how God made him. He was very impressed with himself and his own beauty, and his own intelligence. And he thought, "You know, I've got what it takes to rise up and topple God from His throne. I know I can do it. I'm a very smart being." Oh, did he underestimate God. The gap between Creator and creature, friends, is infinite. And yet that's the demonic or satanic arrogance and ambition, that's where it comes from.

The Motive and Character of False Wisdom: Self-Worship

Well, look at the motive and character of false wisdom, it ultimately comes down to self-worship, verse 14, "If you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth." Motivation is why you do what you do. And at the root of earthly wisdom is self-worship. You want people to think well of you to feed your ego, to feed your ambition. James mentions bitter envy or jealousy. The Greek word for bitter is pikrós. Pikrós. I get the picture of a cactus, this prickly cactus. And so this bitter envy or jealousy, it's something pointed, it's sharp, it's pungent, it's acrid, prickly. And so envy, jealousy, cuts and prickles and rankles. A person may hear of someone else being honored or someone else getting the promotion and they seethe with resentment. It comes from pride. And he said, "If that's what characterizes you, do not be arrogant and deny the truth," deny the Gospel, because that's not what a converted person looks like. Worldly wisdom is motivated then and characterized by selfish ambition, whatever advances self-interest, whatever stokes the ego, whatever elevates the person up to the level of worship, being worshipped, adored, honored. Earthly wisdom is about self-gratification, self-fulfillment, what Maslow called Self-Actualization at the top of the pyramid. As you go higher and higher, it's all about you. Selfishness. By the way, I love what Ben did just walking through. How different is Jesus? Amen? Instead of the upward journey, when he found himself in appearance as a man, “he humbled himself and became obedient to death, even death on a cross.” Very different journeys.

The Fruit of Earthly Wisdom

Well, the fruit of earthly wisdom is frequently spectacular, it really does achieve much in this present age. Empires actually are built, Nebuchadnezzar really can walk over the palace roof and say, "Is this not the great Babylon I have built by my own greatness?" And so inventions are made, 1% inspiration 99% perspiration, Thomas Edison. Companies can be built, battles can be fought between those companies, empires can rise, others come later and topple them. This is what the history of the world is. Isn't it amazing how Nebuchadnezzar's dream with the statue, in the end the whole thing ends up chaff on the threshing floor And the wind comes. It blows it all the way without leaving a trace. So all of that achievement ends up dust in the wind.

Verse 16, "Where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice." Disorder means instability, confusion. God is a very orderly being, He sets things up in a clear order, and so He's at the top, the triune God at the top, and then created beings that He puts in positions of authority, archangels rule over regular angels, all authority comes from God, and so He establishes people in positions of authority. Parents, husbands and wives, parents and children, all of that, that whole structure. There's an order. But selfish ambition seeks to topple that whole thing and you find disorder and every evil practice. And every evil thing is just a broad category for all the bad stuff. All of the bad things that happen in life, all the bad things that happen in local churches, all the bad things that happen in denominations, and in nations happen because of this. “Disorder and every evil practice.”

IV. The Origin, Motive, Nature, and Fruit of Heavenly Wisdom (vs. 17-18)

 

A Breath of Fresh Air

Now what about the origin, motive, nature and fruit of heavenly wisdom? Verse 17-18, "The wisdom that comes from Heaven is first of all, pure, then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere." Verse 18, "Peacemakers who sow in peace raise a harvest of righteousness." Oh wow. What a breath of fresh air these verses are. What a breath of fresh air. After all of that nastiness when we look around the world, then this comes, it comes down from Heaven. I can't help but think about the day that Jesus was baptized and he just quietly submitted to the will of the Father, submitted to John the Baptist's baptism. Remember John didn't want Him to, "I need to be baptized by You, and You come to me?, “Let it be so. It is proper for us to fulfill all righteousness.” And as He was coming up out of the water, the heavens were torn open, what a great image in Mark's Gospel, and the Holy Spirit descended like what? Like a dove, comes down on Him. So peaceful. And this voice comes down from Heaven, "This is my Son whom I love. With Him I am well pleased." Every good and perfect gift comes down from God. And so this heavenly wisdom has its origin in the heart of God, in the heart of God. And look at its nature. 

Motive and Nature of True Wisdom

First of all, he said, James says, "It is first of all pure. Above all things, it's pure." It's like if you don't learn anything else about this wisdom, know that it's pure, That is so beautiful, isn't it? Reminds me of 1 John 1:5, "God is light, and in Him, there's no darkness at all." That's what this heavenly wisdom is like, it is a pure light. This heavenly wisdom. It's not got any corruption in it at all, there's no defilement, there's no poison in it, there's no bitterness, there's nothing twisted or disgusting. This wisdom is first of all pure. That makes it intensely because it's intensely God-centered, it's all about knowing God. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and the knowledge of the holy. A.W. Tozer had a book, The Knowledge of the Holy, the knowledge of the holy God. That's what this wisdom is all about. And it's so pure, it's so beautiful. And it says it's peace-loving. It doesn't create conflicts, it ends them. I love to think about our heavenly future, and how peaceful that world is going to be. What's it going to be like to be with a multitude greater than anyone could count from every tribe, language, people, and nation, of people who are totally at peace with God vertically, and God's at peace with them, and they are totally at peace horizontally with each other. What is that even going to be like? And so, this heavenly wisdom is like that, it's peace-loving. These people don't create conflicts in their families, they don't create conflicts in churches, they don't create conflicts where they go, they're peace-loving. 

The Harvest of True, Heavenly Wisdom

And then the third word is “gentle.” What one scholar William Barkley says is the hardest single word to translate in the New Testament. So let's skip it and move on to the next one. John MacArthur gives these options: equitable, seemly, fitting, moderate, forbearing, courteous, considerate. I guess I just think of it as it fits the situation perfectly, like Jesus every moment said exactly what was the right thing to say. So there's that sense it perfectly fits, like someone who's been laboring hard on a hot August day out in the field, comes in, and a friend meets them with a hot fudge sundae. A steaming hot dog. No, no, no, no, a big beautiful cold glass of water. It just fits. And so the wisdom comes and just it's seemly, it works, it fits every situation. It is therefore reasonable. These people are characterized by a reasonableness. There's that humility to this, but also a willingness to be moved by biblical reasoning. So therefore these people are readily persuaded from Scripture, they're not stubborn, hard-hearted faction builders. They don't argue and dispute. They're reasonable. And they're full of mercy. They are merciful to others because God has been merciful to them. And so, like in James chapter 2, suppose your brother or sister without clothes or daily food, they don't say "Go, I wish you well, keep warm and well fed." They show them mercy. It's actual good works that flow from this disposition. And it says full of good fruit. It's a rich harvest of fruitfulness. And it's unwavering, it doesn't flicker like a candle. 

James seemed to have no patience for double-minded people who are unstable. Be who you are, be a Christian, it's stable and strong, this heavenly wisdom. It doesn't flicker like a candle, it's just a strong wise way to live your life. And it's without hypocrisy, it's sincere, it is what it appears to be, There's not a double life, it's not a white-washed tomb, wisdom. It is what it appears to be. Look what he says in verse 18, one of the more fascinating verses, okay? "Peacemakers who sow in peace raise a harvest of righteousness." That's the translation that I use that smooths out all difficulties. Alright, let's not smooth them out. What does it actually say? It talks about a sowing. A sowing happens. What is sowing? That's where you put seeds into the ground, but if you look at the verse, what's actually sown? Fruit. That's weird, you don't sow fruit, you sow seeds. Ah, yes. But where do the seeds come from? For example, for the next generation of apple trees, where do those seeds come from? Well, they come from inside the fruit. So, I perceive a kind of a cycle that goes on here with this heavenly wisdom. So there's already a harvest in your life, you reinvest it, and you do it as a peacemaker, and the more you take the fruit you've already learned, the fruit that this heavenly wisdom is working in, you sow it back, and a bigger, bigger harvest comes. Jesus talked about thirty, sixty, a hundred-fold. Hundred times what was sown.

V. Application

 

Look at Yourself

Alright, so applications. Begin by evaluating yourself, look at yourself. Look at yourself in light of the wisdom of Christ crucified and resurrected. Are you born again? Have you received the gift of salvation? If you have received it, there is a wisdom that comes in and just levels you, it humbles you, it makes you realize you needed Jesus to die a bloody death on the cross for your sins. If He hadn't died, you would rightly be condemned to Hell. That's the humility that the Holy Spirit works in you. Has that happened? And then you've seen the beauty of Christ crucified and resurrected, and you're yearning for that, and you want it. So like the thief on the cross, you can say, "Remember me when you come into your kingdom, there's nothing I want more than to spend eternity with Christ in Heaven." Has that happened to you? 

You've heard right now in this message, even in the last few minutes, everything you need. You're a sinner. The law stands against you. Christ came in your place, died and rose again, trust in Him for the salvation of your soul. So has that happened? But then beyond that, you say, "Well, I've been a Christian for a lot of years." James is only beginning to get busy with you. You know how James is. He's not going to say, "Oh, you're a Christian? Great! Have a great day." That's not who he is. He's going to say, "What's going on in your life? Show it by your good deeds. Do you see more of the earthly selfish ambition, faction, fighting kind of thing, or more of the fruit of the Spirit, heavenly wisdom, peaceable harvest of righteousness? What's actually happening in your life?” 

We have to especially look as leaders of the church. I'm speaking now to all you leaders because it's like he says at the beginning of the teaching on the tongue, "Let not many of you presume to be teachers." Here, he's like, "If any of you claims to be wise, I have something to say to you." So it seems like he's talking to leaders.What kind of leaders will you be? Are you going to be ego-driven dominator tyrant type leaders, or are you going to be characterized by this kind of humble wisdom? And you might not even be a positional leader, an elder, or a deacon or be a fall teacher, you just might be a leader. You might be an influencer. Yes, but which of these two is characterizing you? And so for us as elders we have to look at ourselves.. I have to look as a senior pastor, I have to look at this and say, "Which of these two is how I'm leading?" 

Godly Leadership

Jonathan Leeman wrote a book on church membership, and he's talking about when you should leave a church, especially in reference to its leadership. And so he draws out what I would call a list of toxic leadership style. And I'll close with that. I don't ever want this in my life, I don't want this here in this church and I want you wise enough for whenever you replace me and the other elders to make certain you replace us with men that are characterized by this heavenly wisdom. So he's saying that these toxic leaders make dogmatic prescriptions in places where Scripture is silent. They bind people's consciences on those things. They rely on intelligence, humor, charm, guilt, emotions or threats, rather than in God's word in prayer. That sounds exactly like the earthly wisdom I've been describing. They play favorites. They punish those who disagree. They employ extreme forms of communication, they use their temper or silent treatment. They recommend courses of action that always somehow improve the leader's own situation, even at the expense of others. They speak often and quickly, they seldom do good deeds in secret, they seldom encourage, they seldom give the benefit of the doubt. They emphasize outward conformity rather than repentance of heart. They preach, counsel, disciple and oversee the church with lips that fail to ground everything in what Christ has done in the Gospel; and they fail to give glory to God. So pray, pray that our leaders would not be that kind of toxic leader. Conversely, pray that we would be characterized by this beautiful, attractive, heavenly wisdom that comes down from God through Christ through the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

Prayer

 

Close with me in prayer. Lord, thank you for the time that we've had in your word, thank you for what it does to us how it really exposes us, how I cannot preach a single passage in James without feeling deeply convicted to the core. Oh God, I pray, drive away from me and from my brother elders and from all leaders in the church, men and women alike, anyone that you raise up to a position of influence, help us to be characterized by the humility and the peacefulness and the purity that this heavenly wisdom is characterized by and produces. Lord, do this for your praise and your glory. In Jesus' name, amen.

Andy Davis preaches an expository sermon on 1 Corinthians 12:13. The main subject of the sermon is how Christians share in one baptism in the Holy Spirit and how they are filled by the Holy Spirit.