SNBS Humble yourselves, James 4 4 10

Whitten Baptist Church

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What's up, everybody? Welcome to Sunday Night Bible Study with Pastor Joe Sias Shipley of Witten Baptist Church.

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We left off in James chapter 4 and we begin in verse 4.

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We're gonna read verse 4 through 10. Here we go. You adulterous people, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?

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Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you suppose that it's for no purpose that the scripture says,

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Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you. Okay, plenty to say here.

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Let's look back at verse 4. You adulterous people. Now, any of you

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Greek scholars may recognize or anyone that can look at the far top right of the screen will notice that this word is in the feminine.

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So, some of your Bibles may say adulterouses, not adulterous people because it is in the feminine.

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Now, James is not talking to only women, so why would he use the feminine form adulterouses?

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Well, it's because just like in the Old Testament with God's covenant relationship with Israel, he referred to them as his bride, as his wife, who has whored themselves out to the nation, whored herself.

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So, we the church are the bride of Christ and we have whored ourselves out to the world. That is what

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James is talking about when he's writing to these Christians, Jewish Christians scattered throughout. If you have one foot in the world and one foot in God, you are a whore.

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You are an adulterous person. You are cheating on your husband, God. That is the idea behind it.

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That's why it's in the feminine form. Don't you know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?

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Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

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I want you to think about that for a minute. Whoever's a friend, philos, a friend of the cosmos, makes himself an enemy of God.

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This is made clear in 1st John. Do not love the world or things of the world for the love of the

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Father is not in them. Guys, we are to be at peace with all men.

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Remember the word world sometimes is referring to all the lost. Sometimes it's referring to the worldly system.

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And that's what it's referring to here. How much do you look, talk, and act like the rest of the world?

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If you never opened your mouth or made a Facebook post, would anyone know by the way you walk that you are different, that you are a

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Christian? Or do you look, talk, and act just like whatever else the world did? Let me give you a hint.

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I know some of you aren't gonna like this, but it's the truth. If something is super popular in the world, that may want to give you pause on whether or not it's godly.

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Not that it always isn't, but it should give you pause. If something is current and the whole world agrees with it, you should check and see how godly that is.

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Because a lot of times, that is what God is at enmity with.

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Or do you suppose that it's for no purpose that the scripture, the graphe, the scripture says, he yearns jealously over the spirit he has made to dwell in us.

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All right, verse 5 is an interesting verse. And the reason is, there is no direct scripture that James is quoting here.

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This is unusual because normally the New Testament authors, no, excuse me, the apostles are quoting directly from the

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Old Testament. But here, as in Matthew chapter 2 and a number of other places, James is quoting a general truth out of the

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Old Testament, but not a specific passage in mind. He's quoting a general truth that says he yearns jealously of a spirit he's made to dwell in us.

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Now, there are several scriptures he could have in mind here, but none of them explicitly say it just like this.

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So this is a general truth from the Old Testament. Matthew chapter 2 verse 23, we see the same thing.

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There's a lot of debate about this verse, on what it means when it says he yearns jealously over the spirit he's made to dwell in us.

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For example, is the spirit talking about here the Holy Spirit or our human spirit?

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Remember humans are made with a body, a soul, and a spirit, or a body, a mind, and a spirit.

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So the spirit is the eternal part of us. So what is God yearning jealously over that he's made to dwell in us?

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Because some translations read, he's made us to yearn jealously over the spirit. I tend to read this as spirit, not the

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Holy Spirit, and you may notice some English translations choose to capitalize this as to signify that they're talking about the

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Holy Spirit, but I don't think that's the case here. I think it's, he yearns jealously over the spirit that he's made to dwell in us.

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In other words, the fallen dead spirit and all of mankind, God yearns jealously to have that spirit that he's put in us, to have that spirit be made right with him, to be regenerated, to come alive.

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That is how I read that. Now, I could be wrong, but I think it's consistent with what

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James is talking about here. He doesn't want us to be friends with the world. He wants our dead spirit to be in union with him.

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Others say, no, he's speaking to Christians, and he's talking about the Holy Spirit in us, and he yearns jealously over that, in that that Holy Spirit should be, we should be solely dedicated to the

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Holy Spirit in us and not look to the world. I think either fits in the passage here, so it's not a huge dividing line for me, but at either rate, it says, but he gives even more grace.

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So he says, like, hey, God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.

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That is a quote directly from Proverbs chapter 3, verse 34. God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.

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This next section, section 6 through 10, is, reads a lot like 1st

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Peter. We're gonna head over to 1st Peter real quick. What's cool is, Peter and James did not choreograph writing this, but they both used the same source of Proverbs chapter 3, and therefore came across with basically the same conclusion.

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We've got to humble ourselves before God. All right, what am I doing wrong here? 1st

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Peter 5, verse 5 through 6. Likewise, you who are younger be subject to the elders.

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Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility towards one another. For, quoting from Proverbs 3, just like James did,

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God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Same access to the same scripture James had. Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, so that, remember, that's my favorite

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Greek word, if any of y 'all remember this one, so that, henna, at the proper time, he may exalt you.

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Humble yourselves in the mighty hand of God. Why? So that he may exalt you in due time, at the proper time.

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Going back to James, James has a fuller teaching on this, and what James is saying, humble yourself, therefore, in the mighty hand of God.

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Humble yourself. God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.

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Submit yourselves, hupotasate, or hupotasso, to willingly put yourself under the authority of someone else.

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Submit yourselves, therefore, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

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I always, I don't mock at their misery, but it does strike me that in Hollywood, and in many parts of Christianity, we focus a lot on this whole, what does it mean to resist the devil?

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But step one is submit to God. If someone is, and I mean this genuinely, if some of you feel that you are under some demonic influence, the

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Bible's very clear. If you submit yourself to God, which in turn is the same thing as resisting the devil, he will flee from you.

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Not he might, not he possibly, but he will. It all starts with this right here. Hupotasso, submitting yourself to God.

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What does that mean? Obeying him. That is resisting the devil. He will be fleeing from you.

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Submitting to God is to put yourself under his authority, to live like he is in total control of every aspect of your life.

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So there are ten commandments here between verse 7 through 10. The first commandment is to submit yourself to God.

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The second commandment is to resist the devil, which is the same as resisting your natural worldly desires, since he is your natural father.

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John 8 Ephesians 2. Third commandment is to draw near to God.

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That is to actively seek an intimate, real, authentic relationship with God. The next command is to cleanse your hands.

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That is purifying your outward sins, putting an end to your sinful habits. Whatever those outward sinful habits are, this is about getting rid of those.

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Some of us try to do this before we draw near to God, not recognizing that you draw near to God in your heart and then you cleanse your hands.

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Now, purifying your hearts. This is more internally, your inner thoughts, your motives. So not just what you do, your hands, but the reasons why you do it, your heart.

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This next command tells us to be wretched and mourn.

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Be wretched or miserable. Why would the

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Bible tell us to be wretched and miserable? This has to do with crying out through the brokenness of your sin.

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God never turns this person away. Psalm 51 17 says, A broken and contrite heart,

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O Lord, you will not despise. It tells us to mourn, to weep.

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That's the same thing. Being wretched and miserable is being broken for your sin. Weeping is crying out about that brokenness.

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Turn your laughter in the morning and your joy to gloom. That's going from the idea.

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I wrote this a few weeks ago. That's going from the idea of a state of sinning where you do not care you're disobeying

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God, to a state where you are broken for your sin whenever you sin. Being wretched and miserable mourn is

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God telling us to be broken for our sins. Number nine, turning our laughter in the morning, is telling us we're in a state where we're always broken for our sin.

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And lastly, the summary of all these, humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you.

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Guys, humility is a consistent teaching throughout the Bible. It's consistent all the way throughout.

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We see this with the parable of the tax collector and the Pharisee praying. We saw it in 1st

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Peter. We see it in Matthew 23. We see it in Philippians 2, where our example of humility is that of Jesus, who existing in the form of God, did not consider a quality of God as something to be used for his own advantage, as something to be grasped.

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But he emptied himself by assuming the form of the slave, taking on the likeness of men. And when he came as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross, and then

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God exalted him. Anyone who does not humble himself, humble yourself.

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Anyone who does not humble themselves will be humbled by God. That is a painful and fearful thing to have happen.

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Ask yourself when you look at these 10 commandments, how well do you obey them? Let's count them again.

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Submit yourself to God. Resist the devil. It's your passions. Draw near to God.

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Cleanse your hands, your sinful outward habits. Purify your hearts, your inner motives.

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Be wretched and mourn. Be broken for your sin. Weep. Cry out to God. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.

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Be broken for your sin as a constant state, so that your joy is what is in God and not in your sin.

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And finally, humble yourselves before the Lord. What you want is less important than what

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God wants. And the more you have that attitude, the more you will turn what you want into what

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God wants, where you love what God loves and hate what God hates. I always consider

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James to be a spiritual kick in the teeth, but it's a good reset button for all of us who get comfortable in our

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Christianity. All right, we'll pick up in verse 11 next week. As always, guys, please like, share, and subscribe to these videos.

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