James Study - Part 9

“Taking the Cure”

James 4:1-10 (Message #9 in James Series)

INTRODUCTION:

            All of us have had the experience of going to the doctor for a check-up. None of us likes it, and we are always a bit nervous about going, but sometimes it becomes necessary.

            Many years ago, I caught a cold, which quickly developed into chest congestion. I fussed around with it for a few days but breathing became more and more difficult, so I finally went to the doctor. First, he checked my pulse, temperature, and blood pressure, and then he looked at my tonsils and listened to my chest with his stethoscope. Finally, he took a bunch of chest x-rays. After a while he came back in and said, “Mr. Wilson, you have pneumonia and your lungs are filling up with liquid. I am admitting you to the hospital immediately.” And he did! I spent a week there, and then two more weeks at home recuperating.

            But how did he know my problem? Easy! By looking at my symptoms he was able to determine the cause of the problem. Then, based on that diagnosis he was able to prescribe the cure. He gave me clear instructions concerning what I needed to do to get rid of the problem.

TRANSITION:

            There is a spiritual disease described in our text for today. It is a disease that plagues every believer. It has certain classic symptoms, and by these symptoms we can identify and diagnose the disease. We are speaking of “worldliness,” a spiritual illness to which we are constantly being exposed. According to James this worldliness results in four sad predicaments: (1) fighting and quarrels among believers, (2) our prayer life gets curtailed, (3) we grieve the Holy Spirit within us, and (4) we make God our enemy.

            Our text is James 4:1-10. In these verses James begins by listing the symptoms in verses 1-3 – THE CONDITION.  Then, in verses 4-5 he deals with the root problem – THE CAUSE.  Verses 6-10 give the prescription from Dr. God that will cure the individual who takes the medicine – THE CURE.

            What we are saying then in a nutshell is that: Worldliness and its symptoms can be cured by taking God’s prescription. This is the basic truth of these 10 verses. Now let’s see how James develops his argument.

                                                      

MAIN BODY:

First, in verses 1-3 we have THE CONDITION described. In verse 1 James talks about wars and conflicts. In verse 2 he speaks of lusting and coveting. Then in verse 3 he discusses an ineffective prayer life. These are all symptoms of worldliness. By the way, I am working today from a very literal translation of this text, so what I read may sound a little different from the particular version you are using, but I am doing it to help us get a better handle on the verb tenses that James uses throughout this passage.

Verse 1: [From] whence wars and whence battles among you? (Is it) not from this very source, out of your lusts waging war in your members?  

• Notice that he begins by asking two questions: the first one relates to battles between believers (“among”); the second one relates to personal spiritual battles going on inside the heart of each combatant (“in”).
• Here James contrasts these wars and battles with the “peace” he spoke of up in 3:17-18. This ongoing warfare involved quarrels and factions among the Christians in the churches. He says that the source of all this conflict is to be found in their evil desires that war inside of them.
• James uses the Greek word polemoi (as in “polemic”) meaning the chronic state of war, and machai meaning the separate battles in the war. He is speaking of Christians in general, but this applies to me personally as well. There are fights and quarrels going on inside me. My old nature keeps sticking his head up and saying, “You really need one of those new gizmos.” My new man responds by saying, “Beat it, Satan!” But there is still trench warfare going on all the time and this does not lend itself to having peace in the heart.
• “Lusts.” Here this Greek word, which basically just means pleasures or enjoyments, is used negatively to refer to selfish desires that motivate believers. Lusts are the obsession to get what one does not have and yet greatly desires, and at any cost.

Verse 2: You are lusting and are not having (so) you are murdering; and you are jealous, and you are not able to obtain (so) you are battling and waging war. Yet you are not having because you are not asking [i.e. not asking Him].

• In Greek this is a difficult verse because of the punctuation. James is here using Hebrew parallelism but that is hard to see in some of the translations. Note the predominance of present, active, participles (i.e. verbs that end in …ing) showing that the situation was ongoing.
• James is here analysing the result of choosing the world’s pleasures instead of God. He is saying that when we covet something that someone else has this can lead us to a murderous jealousy.  We covet but cannot obtain, so we become miserable and unloving. But the last part of the verse says that often we do not even go to the right source. We seek to get what we want by our own efforts, whereas God would have us come and ask Him. James tells them that the reason they are not receiving is that they are not asking the right Person—namely, God.

Verse 3: [On the other hand] You are asking and you are not receiving, because you ask for yourselves wrongly, in order that you might squander it in your sensual pleasures.

• Secondly, he tells them that even when they do ask, they ask with the wrong motives. They were asking for their own pleasures, not according to God’s will. In 1 John 5:14 we are given the essential condition of all prayer: “If we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.” 
• Here James says that when we do ask God, sometimes our prayers come back with a big “NO!” stamped on them. If our motives are wrong and we ask out of selfish desires, God may say “NO” even though He might not be opposed to the thing that we asked for. I think it is a similar situation to a child coming to his father and demanding that his father give him 2 Euros to buy candy. Or for example, God might not necessarily be against me having a new motorcycle, but rather is against my selfish motives and the way in which I ask for it.

Verse 4: Adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

• This verse begins the second section of this text, in which James lays out THE CAUSE of worldliness. This verse gives strong evidence for both a Jewish author and Jewish readers. James addresses his readers as “adulteresses” after the fashion of the OT prophets who spoke of Israel as the wife of Jehovah (cf. Isaiah 54:5; Jeremiah 3:20; Ezekiel 16:23; Hosea 9:1).
• James uses this term “adulteresses” referring to those who put Christ second in their lives and go out whoring after the world. We are likened to an unfaithful wife because the Church is the Bride of Christ. This verse certainly does not leave room for any fence-sitting. 1 John 2:15 says, “Do not love the world (cosmos), nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” Worldliness is an ailment of the heart. It is a spiritual disease with external symptoms, but its root-causes are below the surface. Likewise, adultery is always committed in the heart first. And here James says that if we are hobnobbing with the world (the “cosmos,” not the earth itself), with its system and its materialism, we have signed a declaration of war against God. “Whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.” The scary part is that we become His enemy too, according to James, and God is a much better fighter than we are. This verse recalls the challenge in Joshua 24:15, “Choose ye this day whom ye will serve.” I choose to say: “Get out of my way, Satan. I am going to serve the Lord!”

Verse 5: Or do you think that the Scripture vainly speaks [saying] the Spirit that He made to dwell in you yearns to jealousy?

• Some versions treat this verse as though James is quoting some specific verse from the OT. The problem is that there is no one verse in Scripture that says it exactly this way. I believe, rather, that James is drawing this truth out of several texts and creating a synthesis from them, laying out the principle that God is jealous of our affections.
• James here takes a jab at his readers. He says that the Scriptures are not speaking in vain, but are pointing out that God is a jealous (original root word means “burning heat”) God and He will not tolerate divided allegiance (cf. Ex. 20:5; 34:14; Deut. 32:16; Zech. 8:2; I Cor. 10:22).
• When the Holy Spirit took up His residency in my body, He had no intention of sharing the space with worldliness and sinful selfish desires. James says that the Holy Spirit yearns to have complete control of my life. He wants every part of me, including that which I have been holding back for so long. Our God is a jealous God and will not tolerate our divided allegiance.
• “Yearns.” The Holy Spirit is the subject here—yearning, desiring, longing with a holy jealousy after the wandering affections of the believer. The word is used here in a positive sense, the way Paul uses it in Philippians 1:8, “For God is my witness, how I long for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus.” 

Verse 6: But He gives greater grace. Wherefore it [i.e. the Scripture] says: “God resists to the proud, but He gives grace to humble men.”

• “But He gives greater grace” that is, grace greater that the problem we face. Starting here in verse 6 we have the third section of this text, in which James lays out THE CURE for worldliness. He begins by pointing out that God can give the grace needed to live for Him. The difficulties of living wholly for God in a wicked world are many, but God offers gracious help. Here James begins to get down to the “how” of the matter. He says that God can give the grace that is needed to live the Christian life but that this is a conditional offer. He quotes Proverbs 3:34 to show that God makes this gracious aid available, not to proud self-sufficient persons, but to humble, dependent men.
• This would imply that if I seek help from the Lord, I must do it with a humble heart and an objective view of my lowly standing in the presence of a holy God, recognizing my own sin and spiritual bankruptcy.

Verse 7: Be subject therefore to God. But resist the devil and he will flee from you.

• James uses ten imperative commands in vs. 7-10. Here in verse 7 he says to “be subject to God” and to “resist the devil” and the promise follows that the enemy will flee from us. These are both important steps in avoiding the sin of worldliness. Notice that this call to submit to God follows logically the promise of grace to those who come humbly.
• “Be subject.” This is primarily a military term, meaning “to arrange or rank under.” In the middle or passive voice as here, it denotes “to submit or subject oneself, to obey, to subordinate oneself to.” Here in the context it means to submit oneself in obedience to God. It is a command to surrender fully to the Headship of Christ.

Verse 8: Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you. Cleanse (your) hands, you sinners; and purify (your) hearts, you double-minded ones [literally, two-souled].

• The imperatives continue with “draw near to God.” Close communion with God assures His friendship (i.e. “and He will draw near to you.”) and estranges one from the world.
• That worldliness is sin, is graphically shown by the following commands: “cleanse your hands”, a reference to sinful outward conduct; “purify your hearts”, a reference to impure inner motives.  This is the heart of the thing. A double-minded man is characterized by divided allegiance. And according to this passage, worldliness is basically divided allegiance. This is serious business because throughout the Scriptures we are told that Jehovah is a jealous God (see the references listed up in verse 5).

Verse 9: Be sorrowful and mourn and weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning and (your) joy to gloom.

• In this verse we have a series of four imperatives. This is a call to heartfelt genuine repentance in the face of serious sin.
• “Be sorrowful.” It means to be wretched, miserable. The point is that the believer should be miserable about his sin against God. He should be moved by it and grieved.
• “Mourn.” This same word is used of sorrow for the death of a loved one in Mark 16:10. Here it refers to sorrow for sin. It is a call to the same kind of godly sorrow Paul speaks of in 2 Cor. 7:9-10 – “I am happy, not because you were made sorry, but because your sorrow led you to repentance. For you became sorrowful as God intended and so were not harmed in any way by us. ¹⁰ Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.”
• “Weep.” This Greek word literally means to sob and wail aloud. Throughout the NT it is used of any loud expression for grief, especially in mourning for the dead. Here it refers to a genuine mourning for our own sin. It is used to refer to literal sobbing. Few of us ever take our sin this seriously. Notice that there seems to be something of a progression in these three imperatives—from an inward sorrow to an outward weeping.
• “Let your laughter be turned into mourning.” Sorrow, mourning, and weeping are more fitting than laughter or joy in view of the circumstances. This mourning and gloom describe the downcast, subdued expressions of those who are ashamed and sorry. We should feel real sorrow and remorse when we realize that we grieve the Holy Spirit. Oh, that we might see our sin the way our Lord does; we would never think lightly of it again. Here James exhorts the people to take their sin seriously. Often, we do not realize the gravity of our sinful condition. We take it lightly. James calls believers to change from a frivolous, sinful attitude to a godly recognition of sin for what it is.

Verse 10: Humble yourselves in the presence of (the) Lord, and He will exalt you.

• “Humble yourselves.” This word literally means to lower oneself, to prostrate oneself. Notice that we are not to ask God to make us humble. We are to make ourselves assume a humble position before Him. For example, we are commanded in Colossians 3:12 to “put on humility.” 1 Peter 5:6 is similar to this verse. You will notice that it has the same imperative and the same blessing. – “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time.” 

CONCLUSION:

            Putting all this together I conclude that worldliness is really caused by unfaithfulness to God and to the Holy Spirit. At the core it is a heart issue of divided allegiance between God and the world system around us. Worldliness has symptoms that find their way from our inner attitudes into our external behaviours. But taking God’s prescription can cure worldliness and all its symptoms. Submitting to God in all areas of my life is the only answer to the problem of worldliness. It is also the key to a successful prayer life.

           

God’s prescription involves:

1. Accepting the cure with a humble heart.
2. Submitting totally to Him.
3. Seeing our sin through God’s eyes and from His perspective.
4. Being cleansed inwardly and outwardly by Him.
5. Allowing Him to exalt us in His own good time.

These verses in James shed light on my situation. In observing my own spiritual life, I see many things that grieve me. More importantly, I am certain they are things that grieve the Lord. Although I am a Christian and have assurance of my salvation and a peace that passes all understanding, many times I revert to a position of worldliness. When this happens, I lose the joy of my salvation, my prayer life becomes ineffectual, and the Christian life becomes drudgery.

            This worldliness does not mean an outward change in my mode of life. I do not go off into gross immorality or anything like that. Rather, it takes the form of a desire for material things, a lack of trust in the Lord, a dislike for ministry duties, and a tendency to be irritable and self-centred.

             But I am so thankful that at those times when I go off the rails, His grace is always greater than my sin, and He always comes looking for me to bring me back home. And when I humble myself and ask for His forgiveness and cleansing, my loving Heavenly Father is always faithful and just to forgive me, and to cleanse me, and to dust me off, and to send me on my way again, happy in the knowledge of His tough love that never quits or gives up on me, just because I am stupid and forgetful of His amazing blessings.