James Part 9

James 4 brings into sharp focus the internal roots of external conflict. Having addressed speech and wisdom in James 3, he now exposes the deeper issue that fuels division within communities: disordered desire and divided allegiance. Drawing from Jewish wisdom, prophetic tradition, and the teaching of Jesus, James calls his readers to repentance, humility, and renewed covenant loyalty to God. Give a listen. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:19

Welcome to the Messiah in Life podcast. This series on the Epistle of James is taught by Bishop Justin D. Elwell of Restoration Fellowship International, who also serves as the Messianic Rabbi of Messiah Congregation in Washington Mills, New York. From our congregational home, we invite you into a rich and practical study of one of the most direct and challenging writings in the New Testament. Over the coming months, each episode will carefully examine James's call to a living faith, a faith that endures trials, governs the tongue, pursues wisdom, and expresses itself through righteous action. Rooted in the scriptures of Israel and the teachings of Messiah Jesus. This study brings the message of James into clear focus for life today, forming disciples marked by integrity, mercy, and spiritual maturity. Thank you for joining us. Now pour yourself a tea or coffee, and may the word we hear shape the lives we live.

SPEAKER_02 1:29

JAMESTE 4, verses 1 through 10. What causes quarrels and causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and you do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you not suppose it is to no purpose that the scripture says he yearns jealous jealously jealousy? Oh my goodness, I just have to read the page. He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us. But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, God opposes the proud, but he gives grace to the humble. There's five points that you need to pay attention to in verse seven and eight. Submit. That's point one. Submit yourselves, therefore, to God. Point two, resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Point three, draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Point four, cleanse your hands, you sinners. Point five, purify your hearts, you double minded. Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you. This is God's word. James shifts. Let me just read uh verse 18 from chapter three quickly. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. That is a wonderful transitional statement into chapter four, where we're moving, of course, from the power of the tongue, the inward condition of the man, the inner man, um, what influences us, what drives us, what brings conflict within the community. All of this is kind of stirred in here as he has unpacked so much of how we are to walk, how we are to be, how we are to view ourselves, and so on. Um we talked about the tongue, we talked about faith, faith without works is dead, not oppositional to Pauline theology, of course. But the tongue, as he says, is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting the setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell. Obviously, words that are not for the faint of heart but are incredibly important. So as you begin in chapter four, and as we read chapter four, we have to ask ourselves a few questions. What forms us? What forms us? Who reforms us, and how does that impact our community? It's not always considered seriously how much our upbringing, how much our community environment, our family environment impacts us, how it causes us to view not only ourselves but the world around us, and how long that formation can last in our life. I use that language of formation because I think I'm always kind of reflecting on the potter's wheel and how the Lord is forming the clay. So when we think about formation, formation is kind of the um technical apparatus that underlies discipleship. Discipleship informs us, discipleship helps us to be conformed to the image of Messiah, as Paul tells us. And over time, that formation that we receive by the Holy Spirit and by discipleship and fellowship changes how we interact with others, how we view the world, how we view our place in the world, how we view our identity with the Lord. And as he gets right to the point, what causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? So far, he's dealt tremendously with the inner, the nature of the inner man. As I like to call it, the echoes of the old man. Sometimes those echoes speak a little bit louder than we'd like, and it causes us to respond, react, even speak in a way that is inconsistent with our faith because we're responding to some echo from long ago. We're responding to something somebody said, that somebody inferred, some experience that we've had. And the inclination of that old dying man is to protect itself and to wrestle against. I'm not going to give glory to the devil. Rather, I'm going to say to wrestle against what the Lord is doing in our life. As we pray, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil or from the evil one. When we rightly understand that is lead us not into trial or into testing that would be beyond our scope to handle it, right? Seems like it's this is outside of our hands. When we rightly see, lead us, we know that the Lord is leading us. We know that the Lord has the best for us in mind. We don't always know what that best is or what it will look like, but he does. It is not our place to question his good that he has for us. That's hard. That's really challenging. But he would not lead us through that valley. And I was praying about this as I was, excuse me, as I was hiking the other day. I was making my way up. You know, I haven't put more than a few hundred feet on these knees vertically or at an elevation gain. And I was making my way up, feeling good, feeling strong. And all of a sudden I started praying about Calvary and how we pray, we sing about that hill called Calvary. But sometimes Calvary is that deep valley, that deep valley where we have no choice but to go to the cross and to bear the cross that He has given to us. So while we are down in that valley, if we recognize that this place that is incredibly painful, very difficult, very challenging, where we see very profoundly that we are in fact dying in this faith. We're being humbled by the death of the natural man and the renewal of the Spirit of Christ in us, the Holy Spirit. Then we begin to process that journey through that valley and ultimately up to the summit entirely differently. But I'm not going to remind you of that when you're in your valley. The last thing you want me to do is to come alongside of you in your valley and start theologizing. As I've said before, if you come to visit me in the hospital and you start theologizing my pain and giving me rationale for why the Lord would put me in a hospital bed, I'll probably put you in the one beside me. We'll the I gotta edit that out. We'll theologize after, but not while. We tend to the need at the moment. We deal with the theology of the moment much later. So James is addressing this and he is going to the heart. This is where this is the chapter that hurts. This is the chapter that hurts because we see the hurt that we potentially cause others in our community. When the natural man becomes front and center, and the spiritual and the grace that we're to live in and the forgiveness that we're to live in becomes not even second, somewhere further down the line. So James has dealt with the internal roots of external conflict. That's really what we're going to see here. And he addresses the wisdom of guarding our tongue, of making sure we think before we speak, pray before we speak. I know it's often said and it seems a little trite, but go to the Lord before you say it, even if it's just an instant. Take a pause, take a break. Nobody needs to hear the unkind word that so often comes so quickly. Arrest it before it comes out. You know, there's an old rabbinic saying that you can um oh, how does it go? Oh my goodness, it was right on my tip of my tongue and I lost it. You know, we say it in English and in this way that you know, we can't unsay what has been said. Once it's out there, it's out there. And it's a it's akin to gossip. We can stop the gossip or we can stop the word before it comes out. Repent of it here in the interior. And except for feeling sorrowful for what we were thinking, we haven't inflicted that damage. Like I said a few weeks ago, we can murder with our tongues. And much more. I mean, you think about the wounds that people carry for their life from the cuts of the tongue. Can be very devastating. So he looks at this and he says, What is fueling this division? Well, it's disorder, desire, divided allegiance, pride, all of these things working together. So he draws from a number, of course, he draws from the teaching of the Messiah, he draws from the Word of God, but he calls readers to repentance, humility, and renewed covenant loyalty to the Lord. We have to continually remind ourselves that none of this is about us, none of this is about our preference, none of this is about our advancement. It is the advancement of the kingdom of God by the gospel through the truth of Christ and the cross, salvation of those who do not yet know him. So we we can't insert ourselves into a pattern that is not based on us. Everything we do needs to be um glorifying to the Lord. Now, are we always going to behave in such perfection? Of course not. That's what repentance is for, that's what forgiveness is for, that's what grace is for. But we can model that. You know, when you all mess up in here and cause me great strife, the the beautiful thing is the grace and forgiveness. That contract might be voided now, I don't know. Um the grace and the forgiveness that is at work. You know who that glorifies doesn't glorify me. It glorifies the Lord, it glorifies the presence of the Holy Spirit. Of course, the Lord, the Holy Spirit is also Lord, but it glorifies him to see that, yes, my people who are called by my name, they are repenting, they are acting in a manner that is consistent with not only what I've given to in the word, but the presence of the Holy Spirit in their midst. So, what causes the quarrels and divisions? Is it not your passions? Oof. James James refuses to attribute the the issues in the church to simply the political, and that's important for this day and age. He refuses to say, oh, there's quarrels and divisions because of the politics. There's quarrels and divisions because of the economy. No, no. He's saying it goes deeper than that. The problem is you. I'm paraphrasing, I'm paraphrasing for the apostle, but the problem is you. The problem is me. It's not the politics, it's not the economy, it's none of the external factors in our world. It's us and what the reality inside of us is. It's not the Roman oppression, that's what they were experiencing at the time. It's none of that. Instead, it is the battleground within the human heart. I I have been taught spiritual warfare by one of the world's leading spiritual warfare authorities. And I will tell you that the greatest battleground or the most important battleground of all spiritual war warfare is in here. It's in here. This is where that battleground rages. This is the this is the front line of the spirit. You don't have to go up in the in the in and one world trade center and get to the roof and start proclaiming over. You can sit right here and start proclaiming the promises of God into your own heart. Because this is where all of that warfare, this is where the open door comes in. When you open the door in your heart to the enemy, when the enemy has a legal, a legal entry into your life, just as we see with Job, what did Job say after after the Lord says, hey, you can you can you can challenge him, you can oppress him, but you can't kill him. What does Job confess? That which I have greatly feared has come upon me. What was the legal entry for the devil into for the enemy into his life? Fear. Fear was that legal entry into his life. Once he had that, he could enter in. The devil can't read your mind, please. He's not omniscient, he doesn't know everything. Once you start uttering it, that's when he's looking. Where can I get in? Where can I find a way in? And he starts, and he's a le this is the thing. The devil is a legalist, he knows the law, and he will use it against you. You think you know the word of God, you had the devil trying to challenge the word-made flesh. Think of the audacity, right? And we'll get to that in a moment. So the uh term translated as passion, we get hedonism from it. Hedonistic, hedon on, hedon on, I should say. The pleasure-driven desires, our preferences, those things that we quite often look out into our surrounding community and go, would you look at those miserable sinners? They want all their goodies. But James is saying, oh nay, nay, don't look so far. Look right into your own heart. They seek those passions that we have seek satisfaction without reference to the will of God. What is God's will for this? What is God's will for us? It's really worldliness. The passions that go unchecked, the passions that drive us really in a manner that is contrary to the will of God, it's just worldliness. It's unresolved worldliness, it's part of our disposition that we don't want to give up yet. And again, this is the progressive sanctification. It's the way that we are daily sanctified to the kingdom of God. So this diagnosis reflects, as we might say, that uh Jewish moral teaching, biblical teaching, that there's a struggle between the Yetzer Ra and the Yetzer Tov, the evil inclination and the inclination to do good. That word yetzer is form to form, formation. So what is the formation of your heart? What is the formation of your mind? Are you inclined to good or are you inclined to evil? So we wrestle with that formation, and quite often that is that really is what constitutes those old echoes of the past that continually speak to us in a way to say, see, you are no better than what they told you, what you believed. You are, you in fact, you know what, you're worse than that. You're not worthy, you're not lovable, whatever it might be. So that's the struggle between the the voice of the Lord that continually gives us his promises, that tells us his promises through the word, and our inclination to do evil. Evil that is contrary to the will of God, of course. So unchecked desires not only leads to personal sin but communal breakdown. What destroys congregations? Unchecked passions, unchecked preferences, an unwillingness to forgive, an unwillingness to walk in grace. That's what destroys. What has destroyed every if you know if everybody's, well, we need revival in this nation. We need conversion first. Yes. Conversion of the saints. Because what happens? You have a revival, things go great, the Lord's bringing people through the door, and then one or two guys get it in their head that, you know what, this isn't really no, we need to do this this way. No, we need to do this this way. And everybody gets their little camps, and that which the Lord has done, man divides. Why? Because we want our preferences, we want it the way we want it, and that's what causes communal breakdown. And quite often, of course, we're not the problem. I don't know if you've ever noticed that, but when it comes to division in a community or why we leave a community, we're never the problem. It's always someone else. Have you noticed that? I've noticed that with me. Whenever there's an issue, it's never me that's the problem. But I think that is again, when pride enters in, when pride rather than humility is more prominent, for whatever reason, maybe we're going through a wounded season. We're trying to protect ourselves. That's the time we need our brothers and sisters in the Lord. But you know, we we we've been burned so many times. I don't know how many times. Well, I was burned at the last church I was in. Have you dealt with the burns? Because you're just gonna be burned again if you're sensitive, if your skin is still sensitive to that, you're just gonna feel that you're continually being afflicted. So pride quite often becomes this security blanket, it becomes a barrier, and that creates tremendous issues within the community because everything is an affront to our pride, to our ego, to our inus. That's the greatest illness that we have in the body, is we still have an inus uh that is very prominent. So Messiah traces the same the same root of communal breakdown, you know, in the Sermon on the Mount. The violence, the lust, deceit, it goes right back to the heart. Again, it's all heart issues. And why we need, you don't need to trust everyone in the congregation, everyone in the community. That would be a little foolish. I mean, you just don't, you might you don't know this person over there, you don't know that person over there. But you do know one or two people that you can really just pull your heart out of your chest and say, This is where I'm wounded. Can you help me? Can you? You need that vulnerability, friends. You need it. It's sad to say that that's not the norm. It's not the norm. But the reality is that we need to have that in order to be healthy. We need that in order to be healthy. The leadership here knows what will set the Justin off. What will send him into a spiral of depression, anxiety, angst. You don't have to nod so heavily. But they they know what it is. And you know what? They know how to respond to it. Because why? They've walked once or twice through that valley with me. And they don't punish me because of it. Yeah. And that's loving each other through it glorifies God, brings healing, and develops trust. So external obedience without internal transformation cannot produce peace. You can wear the longest tzit seat in the world, you can put on tefillin, you can pray the longest, most eloquent, beautiful prayers, but without dealing with that internal reality, the transforming, the changing of the heart by the Holy Spirit, if you're not walking in peace, you're not bringing peace. There's a difference between the peace of the Lord and the peace that the world tries to establish. Have you noticed that? So what what is the fuel for this? Grace. What fuels this? Grace. Grace is what, you know, I don't deserve anything from any of you. You don't deserve anything from me. But God. It's He that creates this interaction between us that freely gives, freely loves, freely appreciates, freely, freely suffers and endures, right? That's the grace of God working in us. It's contrary to the natural man, it's contrary to who we are because the natural man preserves first himself, then his family. But the body of Christ, we don't preserve ourselves first. We're not the first in preference. We love the Lord, and because we love the Lord, we love his people. So our entire priority changes when we uh meet him and when we receive his grace, and grace must abound. I'm not talking about you know, floppy agape or greasy grace. You can laugh, it's good. Floppy agape. Talk about agape in a minute, I guess. I learned that in seminary. It's a technical term. Floppy agape. Well, anyway. So grace must abound, but again, it's it's it's not without power, it's not without um conviction. All of that is caught up in grace. Paul warns us, of course, that we not continue in sin, that grace would abound. We don't need to continue in sin for grace to abound. So James's critique also addresses prayer. He immediately goes from what's causing this to, hey, what up, what's up with your prayer? But think about what he's doing here. He's he's really laying aside. So this was an issue somewhere. This this these were not something he just said. You know what? I think I'm I want to really spank them. He says you desire and you do not have, so you murder. Talk about the ultimate and worldliness. You covet, but you cannot obtain. So you fight and quarrel. This describes many of the church splits we've had. You do not have because you do not ask. Absolutely. Describes a worldly personality. You ask and you do not receive because you ask wrongly, you ask inconsistently with the will of God. So prayer goes unanswered, not because the Lord is indifferent, but because our prayer life often ignores covenant purpose. Covenant purpose. So again, it it aligns with the teaching of prayer of the Messiah that we seek first the kingdom of God rather than our personal issues related to our personal consumption, issues related to our personal desire and will. You ask and you do not have because you ask wrongly. You're asking inconsistently with the will and the heart of the Father. Because why? You want to spend it on your passions. You know, all we have to do is look at the major televangelists who are who whose congregational families were nice enough to give them airplanes. I just lost you all. But think about this. Nobody needs a private jet as a pastor. I'm sorry. I fly first class in the United States for events, but I pay for that out of my own pocket. Internationally, no, I'm I'm in steerage in international travel. I'm in the baggage, I just stay down the I put myself in my suitcase. Um, but nobody needs that. Nobody needs that. You spend it on your passions, that hedonistic desire, that will. And then he says something that is incredibly penetrating. You adulterous people. Do you not know their friendship with the world is enmity to God? Well, the first thing that is first is that the translations here are atrocious, largely because translators do not know what to do with this. The Greek text says, you adulteresses. It's feminine. He's addressing men, women, and children. So, ladies, he blames it all on you. You it again, he's speaking. Well, now the pens are getting chucked and all this good news. Anyway, so what is he saying? Who are we in the Messiah? Who are we to the Messiah? We're the bride. He's talking about spiritual adultery that is inconsistent with the covenant that we've been brought into. Therefore, we are acting in a manner that is adulterous, but he is pointing to our relationship to the Lord. You are behaving as an adulterous wife. You adulteresses. Think back now, the quarreling, the fighting. We're acting inconsistently with our bridegroom. Yes, Messiah flipped tables, but he didn't flip tables every day. Right? You're acting inconsistently with your calling, your salvation, with your bridegroom, therefore, you adulteresses. So he's employing prophetic language that is, you know, echoing Hosea, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, all of which, of course, all of these prophets describe the covenant unfaithfulness of Israel as adultery. It is seen as adultery. So the world, the cosmos, that's simply the Greek that is used here, it's not speaking of creation. You don't have to go out and have, you know, when I say, look at this beautiful sunshine bluebird day. Oh, you wicked, adulterous fool. You're supposed to hate the world. That's not what he's speaking about. If we just turn to the Psalms, we can see that would be inconsistent with the Word of God. So he's not speaking about creation, but he's speaking about the systems, the values that oppose the reign of God. Status seeking, domination, self-reliance, all of this that causes division. Again, it if we think about how in the United States, especially, and I know I pick on us, but I live here. I can't say, you know, in some other nation, I don't live there. But I can say this because I've had to wrestle with this in my own personality and my life of faith, that again, we have been programmed to say that we are independent, individualistic, autonomous, right? We don't have a king and all these other things. I mean, I don't I'm about to wax political and I don't want to. Um but we we we view ourselves as being autonomous and independent, but we're not. That attitude is inconsistent with covenant community, covenant life. No one was to view themselves as independent of the other. We all together. Now I'm not talking about communism. Um, I would have to uh how are you using autonomy?

SPEAKER_01 32:52

Yeah. I mean citizen standpoint in the world, in my world, which would be spiritual, but not in my spiritual.

SPEAKER_02 33:08

Then you would be an anomaly. Quite often that political view influences the spiritual view. So from that we have the idea of uh of the of the uh the importance of individual salvation. Right?

SPEAKER_01 33:28

Separate church at the state.

SPEAKER_02 33:30

Um no, I wouldn't go there. I'm talking about uh like when people are uh people you know view them at my salvation, you know, very specifically individualistic. Um because that's not the vision that scripture gives us. We're saved corporately in a in a covenantal sense, right? So how that political, the let's say the westernized political view of autonomy and independence, that seeps into our spirituality and then reforms our theological perspective in the lens by which we view scripture. So that's my you know, it's one of the things I'm seeing is the wrestling between I am an independent American and not seeing ourselves community and communally minded, right? So we'd probably agree on the political, the plain political view, but when it infiltrates the theological view, that's when we have that's when we have issues that greatly impact how we view scripture and how we view communal life. So the Greek friendship, you adulterous people, you adulteresses, I should say, doesn't say people. Do you not know that friendship, philia with the world is enmity with God? Philia, philia often translates uh friendship or fondness. It's one of the four loves, as people like to say. Um and it most often is translated, it was used to translate ahava in the Hebrew scriptures in the subtu from the Septuagint. Uh it would translate a hava into the subtuit in the Greek Septuagint. And that's, I think, where the power of what he is saying comes from. So if we just look at friendliness or fondness, we're like, hey, what's the big whoop here? Ah, we have to go to Ahava to see what he is saying. Um the Ahava is often translated as love, but it is it's not an emotion. It's not an emotion, it's far, it's far more powerful than that. It's dedication, it's active commitment to, it's friendship connection, but it also the root of it is breathing after. And it is inclined, it's inclined sexually. And that's where he's drawing this. You know, if you are breathing after the world, you're desiring the world, you have made yourself an enemy of God. That's what he is correcting, and that is the power of what is being um spoken here. Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you not suppose it is to no purpose that the scripture says he yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us? Now, this makes him sound petty. What is he saying? Uh, I I would submit to you, it's not not to be interpreted in the way that we would imagine. So there's a sharp warning that comes from Asai, of course, and I'll put this out here. This no one can serve two masters. You cannot serve two masters. As I've said before, if we view ourselves as first and foremost, principally citizens of heaven, we will be better citizens of the community that we're in. We'll be more involved, more active. We'll care for more people, we'll care for the the life of those, of even those who are lost, we'll care more for. That's why we involve ourselves. You know, uh I try to stay, uh keep the gospel as the primary preaching point. I don't wanna what you know, I don't wax into you know these great uh philosophical and political treatises in my messages, mainly because the gospel is in informs what our politic would be, or it should. The gospel of Christ informs that. So what I mean by that is so with politics, you know, politic has to do with the people, the people of the polis, the people of the city. It's not it's not the infrastructure, it's the people. So when we are given this great commission by the Messiah, that we go out to make disciples of all the nations, baptize them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, that is the care for the people. And how the gospel informs our care for the people, the purpose, the end. What is the what is the synam bonum? What is the highest good of for people is Christ. He is the highest good. He's not an ideal, he is the highest good. So divided loyalty inevitably results in betrayal of covenant faithfulness, spiritual adultery. Quite often you see it in well, you can look at how denominations, historic denominations, tried to for many years appease the wider world. No, we're not different from you. Um and what that what is that? It's it's just old-fashioned spiritual adultery. When you try to appease the broader culture, when you try to say, uh, well, you know, uh, you know, it's not really as it doesn't really in in well look what's happening in Finland. Quoting parts of the Bible now is illegal. In Canada, quoting parts of the Bible now is illegal. It's considered hate speech. Do not imagine that that's not coming here to the United States. It is on the road to that in Great Britain. Quoting the Bible, if it's offensive to someone, will be illegal. That is this flow of the world around us. The world does not want to be convicted of sin. So you have to silence those who would proclaim the word of God. You can't pray in Great Britain across the street silently to yourself from an abortion clinic. The Imams can do the call of prayer in a public square. If a Christian prays in public, he's arrested for public nuisance. That is in Great Britain. That's the reality. Yeah, very scary. And that's coming here. That's coming here. Um, you have you have the King of England, who is the highest authority, the governor of the Anglican Church, praising Islam. You have the Prince of Wales telling us that Islam is a religion of peace. Their minds are already sacked. Okay. So we have to be mindful of that. We cannot give ground to having the political authorities silence us. That's when it is better for us to obey God, right? We obey God over the will of man. So James affirms that God is jealous. And it's good that he's jealous for you. Why? Because he loves you. That's all it is. It's speaking about the intensity of his love. It's covenant, it's covenantal, it's not petty, it's not a petty jealousy. I saw you talking to that other God. No, it's not petty. It's a deep love. It's a love that is so great that he would give his only begotten son for us. That's how much he loves us. He loved us while we were yet sinners. We love him because he first loved us. So the Spirit of God is placed within his people that the Holy Spirit yearns and is forming us and conforming us so that we would have an undivided devotion. So this reflects the Torah's portrayal of God as being jealous. We think of jealousy in this manner, in this way, but it is the intensity, it's the zeal of his love that he has for us. It's not insecurity, but it's faithful. It's the level of faithfulness of his love for us. So then James really introduces the central theme here. Submit yourselves to God. Excuse me, let me go back to verse six. But he gives more grace. So your argument that you've run out of grace for me doesn't hold biblical water, sorry. Because he gives you more grace to suffer me. Hallelujah. Oh well. Hallelujah. Therefore, it says God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. What is he speaking to here? What is causing the quarrels and the fights? Pride, an unwillingness to die, an unwillingness to lose. And that's what he's speaking to. What keeps the natural man alive? Pride. Where do you most often see resurrection power flowing? To the prideful resurrection of the old nature. And he gives grace to the humble, grace to endure, grace to live, grace to forgive, grace to receive, grace to be, you know, in every way conform to the image of his son. Submit yourselves. I know that's a naughty word. It's a naughty word for wives based on every marriage counseling session I've ever done. It's also a naughty word for men. The body of Christ has a horrible problem with submission. We don't like it. We don't want it. We think it's optional. Right? I personally like it. It's safe. It's safe. Rightly applied. It doesn't mean we submit to, you know, a tyrant of a spiritual leader. No. No, no, no, no. If the spiritual leader is a tyrant, if a spiritual leader is a bully, if a spiritual leader is unkind, if a spiritual leader, you fill in the blank. Anything that is opposed to the identity of Christ, the character of Christ, you don't submit there. Submission is submission because you willingly do it. You want to, because it's safety. It is. At the heart of it, it is safety. I still submit to Dr. John Looper. I'm his bishop, technically on paper, right? But he's still my bishop. I still submit to him. And I do so because I know I'm safe to do so. He would not bully me. He would not abuse me. He'll tell me what I don't want to hear based on several conversations. He'll tell me what I don't want to hear. And that's why that's why I feel safe in it. Right? And we submit, submit yourselves, therefore, to God. Point two, resist the devil. It doesn't say get your doesn't say go get your baton out. It doesn't say go marching down the street. It says resist him. Resist him. It's not a battle, it's just a resistance. Just turn away. For the love of God, just turn away. And what's he gonna do? Resist the devil and he'll flee from you. So why is the devil more powerful than you? Why is the devil stronger than the Holy Spirit that is in you? There. Cheryl gets the uh gold star for the day. Because we let him. I think there is an emotional, there's some emotional um programming from somewhere that influences us to want, to want to have that struggle, to want to let him abuse us, direct, misdirect us, or whatever it might be. To want to have a battle we don't need. I don't need to battle the devil. I just have to resist him. But the more you mature, the more cunning he becomes. He's not out of ideas about how to trip you up. But the things that used to work for you don't work. And guess what? He adjusts, his minions adjust, his kingdom adjusts. But you still, the the formula is still the same. Resist him. Doesn't say go to the don't go, don't go out and challenge him to a wrestling or boxing match. He's gonna bust your nose, you're gonna go crying to your papa. Resist him. What is that like? I always say it's like he puts his hand on you and you pull away. You pull away and you cry out to your father, and he goes, Uh oh, I'm out of here. And then he says, draw near to God. That is self-sacrifice, that's self-sacrificial language. Draw near to God. That is the Corbin, that is the sacrifice, that is to be the living sacrifice that Paul talks about in Romans 12:1. If you are the living sacrifice, honestly, the devil doesn't want you. If you are living as a sacrifice unto the Lord, he's not going to waste, he's going to find someone else that's not in that place. Draw near to God, self-sacrificial posture, and he will draw near to you. How did he do that? Christ through the Messiah. The ultimate drawing near of God to humanity is in the person of Messiah, who is the only way of salvation. Do you see the depth of the text here? It's absolutely incredible. And then he continues this temple-centric language: cleanse your hands. Go to the laver. Look into that brass laver where you will see where you need to be washed. Start washing those hands. Why? Because you've been quarreling, you've been fighting, you've been reaching out to fulfill your passions and your desires. See where you need to be clean. Oh, I got a little bit of, I got a little bit of quarreling here behind the ear I need to take care of. Cleanse your hands, you sinners. My gosh, didn't anyone give James the seeker-friendly version of the gospel? Cleanse your hands, wash your hands, you sinners, purify your hearts. Wash, be washed by the word. You double-minded, you double-souled. What does he speak? Why is there quarrels and fights among you? You're double-souled. You have two lives in you. You have the life of godliness and you have the life of ungodliness that is still trying to work within his members. How is that defeated? Through Messiah. Submission to the Spirit of God. What influences you to do the wrong thing? Naqash. Everybody thinks that the the this the voice of the serpent must have been so wonderful and eloquent. And Nakash is a whisper. Satan wasn't going, hey Adam, hey, come here. I gotta test you now. He was whispering.

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Did he say that?

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Did he really shut it out? When was the last time you heard a snake shout? But if you hear the rattle, run. Okay, that's all I'm gonna say. So that that other that other echo in your in your life, the the history that formed you, the inconsistency, the hurt, the pain, the sorrow, the letdown, whatever it might be. That's that voice that the enemy will use to try to influence and you influence and lure you away. No, I really, I really have the remedy for this. I have the remedy for what ails you, right? Trying to lure you away. But purify your hearts. And then I love what he says here. Hey, be honest. Oh, actually, he said be wretched. I I was cleaning up it a little bit. Be wretched. Mourn. Weep. What is he saying? Remember who you are. Like I said, what is what is the good news of the gospel? You are worse than you thought you were. As bad as you say you were, you were far worse. Aren't you happy? Aren't you glad you came? Wretched man that I am, be wretched. Recognize how bad you were. And then you remember that you're far worse. But the good news is what? That you are far loved than you can ever imagine. So God knows that. He knows your wretchedness. He knows your wretchedness. But he still rescued you. He's leading us to repentance. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. I don't think James took his happy pills that day. What is he saying? He's leading us to repentance. And the seriousness, this is this is the posture of the the of the prophets when they put on cycloth and ashes. When they would cover themselves with ash. Humble yourselves before the Lord. I love how Lewis constructed this. Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it is thinking of yourself less. Humility. That's what leads to the arguments and the quarrels at the beginning of the chapter. We're constantly putting ourselves first. We want our preferences, we want our desires to be met. I'm not in that business. I don't have time, I don't have the emotional energy or the strength to do that. But when we come here having already put ourselves somewhere other than the first, second, third place, and we're coming to worship the Lord, to love his people, and to be uh fueled up, we might say, or prepared for the mission of the gospel, then we see this beautiful uh exaltation. He lifts us up, he takes us from that valley and he brings us to the summit. He shows us the possibilities. He shows us what was already what was always there, but that we couldn't see because we were deep in the valley. When I got to the summit the other day, I looked out. That view was there. I just couldn't see it because I was too low. And I've seen that view hundreds of times. I don't know how many times I've climbed that mountain, but I've seen it, I've recorded it, I've video, I've done everything. I've pictured it. And it's always there, but you can't see it from the valley. So humble yourselves before it doesn't say humble yourself before me. It says before the Lord. Because he knows how to rightly handle humility. He will exalt you. Not man will exalt you, not your neighbor will exalt you, but he will exalt you. He will lift you up. And where does that all come from? Resist the devil. He will flee from you. Draw near to God, he will draw near to you. This leads us to that place. I don't know if I think I missed my whole last page. I apologize. Alright, most of it I've already covered. Um, but just the closing. So, James, again, cleanse our hearts, cleanse our minds, cleanse our hands, priestly, priestly language. But true repentance involves sorrow over sin, recognizing the wretch that we are, and a willingness to be humbled in order that we will be exalted. What are we exalted? We're not exalted in ourselves, we're exalted in him. We're exalted in him. So all of this, of course, stands in tension to cultural norms, um, social convention, the prize, really self-assertion, image management, um, triumph, ego. Think about we have the I bone, right? Social media makes celebrities out of everyone. Because the image of self is what the world thinks is all we have. What's the only commodity I have? I've got me. That's not what the Lord says. So Messiah calls for seriousness about sin, but that always leads us to transformation. Not despair, but restored relationship. So at the end of this, humble yourself before the Lord and he will exalt you. What is it happening at the beginning? We're trying to exalt ourselves. We're trying to press our rights. Again, these are there's a lot of Western ideas that come in and intermix in our theology and our communal relationship. Alright, so I'm gonna pause there as far as uh this part of the chapter. Next week we'll pick up in verse 11 and conclude it. So if anybody has any questions, amen.

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Thank you for joining us, and until our next episode, may the Lord bless and keep you in the name of Messiah Jesus. Amen.