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Tyndale University presents a series of recorded chapel services from Tyndale's very own faculty and guest speakers.
Welcome to our continuing spring/summer chapel series. I am Zohrab Sarkisian, and I served in the Student Development department here at Tyndale as the former seminary council president. My topic today is taken from James 4: 1-10 (NIV) and is about humility; that God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble.
First, let me start with a prayer. Triumph Triune God Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We thank you for your grace and mercy. We thank you for this community and to all who serve through it for Your glory and Your kingdom. As we talk about humility today, move our spirits to draw closer to You and embrace Your grace and mercy. Touch our hearts so that we can live humble lives and be conformed to the image of Your humble Son, Jesus Christ, who sacrificed Himself for us. In His precious name, we pray, Amen.
James 4:1-10 (NIV)
Submit Yourselves to God
4 What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? 2 You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. 3 When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.
4 You adulterous people,[a] don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. 5 Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us[b]? 6 But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says:
“God opposes the proud
but shows favor to the humble.”[c]
7 Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.
The themes in this text remind us of the themes in the story of the prodigal son, ideas such as selfishness, pride, envy, worldliness, wailing and weeping, submission, humility, and exaltation.
Let’s be honest who does not want to be raised up to success or authority? or to get recognition and exaltation? We all want to have some sort of authority, get recognition, pursue our personal pleasures, and reach high positions where the sky is the limit. However, often time, our pride and envy become the motives that drive us. This was exactly what was happening In James’ time within the Jewish Christian community. That’s why James is saying it is not wrong to have such desires, but the way (how) we satisfy them is what matters.
James tells us that there are three issues standing in our way.
1. Pride and selfishness
The proud are marked by envy and selfish ambitions. They say, “No one is better than I, no one deserves more, I deserve the best, I, I, I …”. Their jealousy and pride produce conflicts and evil practices, such as fights, quarrels, and wars. In the first two verses of this chapter, we notice how our internal conflicts lead to external conflicts. Cain and Able is a perfect example of this case. Where Cain, because of his internal envy, acted outwardly and killed his brother. Human history is full of similar stories. In other words, as James puts it, the battle of our desires, jealousy, and pride within us creates wars, quarrels, fights, and murder among us, outside of us, in our churches and families.
Have you fought recently? Ponder on it, and you might find it’s from within you. Is it not because you seek to satisfy your pleasures? The Greek word for pleasure is ἡδονή (hēdonē), from which we get our English term hedonism, which is defined as the pursuit of pleasure as life's supreme goal. Pleasures lead to fights because they are so self-centred, self-focused and self-exalting.
Pride and envy are the two sides of the same coin that promote our kingdoms. Therefore, our lives become prideful and all about our positions and possessions.
But God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble.
2. Prayerlessness
James, in verse two, says we don’t get what we want because we don’t ask God. That is simply Prayerlessness.
We don’t receive it because:
• When we are in need, we do not go to the right source – God, who is the source of everything in life.
• Or maybe we are too busy to ask God.
• Or we think we can do it all on our own. Then our prayers will sound more like “My kingdom come, my will be done” as opposed to what Jesus taught, “Father, Your will be done, your kingdom come.”
• Or we know God is going to say “No”, for our prayers will sound selfish and proud and reveal the true motive of our prayer.
And that is exactly what verse three declares: “You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.” Sometimes, God does not give us what we want but denies it, for He knows that we will waste it on our pleasures. Or because we ask it with the wrong motives.
3. Worldliness
James calls in verse four his audience “adulterous” people (another translation says “unfaithful” people). Being in love with the world is spiritual adultery against God.
Even though the church is the bride of Jesus, it seems we seek more worldly pleasures and friendship with the world at the expense of obeying God. True friendship means spending a lifetime together, having shared values, interests, and goals. This kind of friendship is based on trust, faithfulness, and loyalty. This is not a Facebook kind of friendship where we don’t know the person we are “friending” with. Christians are called to be friends of God, not His enemies. By the way, our Facebook page will show if we are friends of the world or of God. Check out yours and see where you stand!
We can’t have both. They contradict each other. James here reflects on Jesus’ teaching and lifestyle “No one can serve two masters. You cannot serve both God and Money.” (Matt 6:24). In other words, we can’t love both the world and God. By “world” we mean the system and values of it, not the actual physical world.
The apostle, John too, warns us against this in 1 John 2, verses 16 and 17. He writes, “For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever.”
So, you ask, what is the cure for all these issues? The answer is humility before God. Humility, as C.S. Lewis said, is not thinking less of yourself but thinking of yourself less. It is the opposite of pride.
In verse five, James shows the predicament once more before he declares the solution – our fallen human nature - jealously longs for envy and pride shifts our mind to sinfulness. He warns against it by quoting verse six “God opposes the proud.” But James does not stop there. He continues by giving us the solution: God “shows favour to the humble” (another translation says “gives grace to the humble”).
Now, let me draw your attention to God’s Son, Jesus Christ, who exemplified this reality. Phil 2:8-11 states, He humbled himself even unto death and gave his life on the cross for our salvation. Therefore, God exalted him to the highest place, for He rose from the dead in victory over sin.
God is extending his grace to you, too, today. He wants to raise you up. When you humble yourself, you will receive his grace, and God will lift you up. This is a promise. Don’t trust yourself for exaltation, but trust God. For Jesus confirms this in Luke 14:11 “Those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
Today James is asking us to test our spiritual condition.
• What are we longing for? Selfish ambitions, power, money, fame?
• Are we relying on our friendship with the world to satisfy our pleasures?
• Or are we looking up to Jesus and seeking God’s kingdom and grace in humility to be raised up for his glory?
Therefore, to go up, we must go down first; to be raised up, we must submit to God. Why? Because God opposes the proud and shows favour to the humble. In verses 7-10, James gives a set of commands on humility.
1. To submit to God, that is to arrange ourselves under God’s authority, obey Him and do his will.
2. To resist the devil – by fleeing from his temptations.
3. To come near to God, pray to him and have intimacy with him. That is to be a friend of him.
4. To wash our hands and purify our hearts – to be holy. Cleansed of both our sinful actions and sinful attitudes of hearts by the blood of Jesus. Not to be double-minded. In other words, not to love the world but God.
5. To mourn, grieve and wail, that is, to understand the magnitude of sin and its effects in our life and around us and to repent from it.
You see, when we recognize our sin by opposing God and befriending the world; when we recognize our guilt in front of a holy God; when we see how small we are in comparison to Almighty God; when we grasp what Jesus had done on the cross for you and me, then and only then we can humble ourselves before Him, repent, and plead for mercy.
God grants grace and raises up the humble
In closing, I want to bring us back to the story of the prodigal son and remind us that we, too, can choose God to be raised up by submitting to him and humbling ourselves before him. Therefore, let’s be wise and not choose the world, for it is misleading and will pass away, but choose God, for He is life everlasting. Let’s not choose the way of selfish ambitions, power, and pride, for that leads to fights and death, but choose the way of repentance and humility before the Lord, for he is gracious and promises to exalt the lowly.
God Gives Grace to the Lowly and Raises Them Up