How to Draw Near to God: Part 1

How to Draw Near to God: Part 1

What I'd like to do is do several parts on this message. This will be part one of how to draw near to God. And these are some really loaded verses. I personally believe it is the heart of this epistle.

And I was speaking to Brother Keith about this earlier this week. All of us, after going through chapter 3 and the first part of chapter 4 of James, we felt like we've gone through some serious surgery.

We are actually coming out of the surgery room into the recovery room. So, that's about right, isn't it? So now we go into recovery. And he gives actually ten commands of how... I actually could say commands, but how we can draw near to God.

And it is straightforward. It's very simple. But we will find it quite challenging as well, as we have the enemies of God, the world, the flesh, and the devil. And where we have these battles constantly raging upon us.

But thanks be unto God, we have the power of the Holy Spirit to help us through this and to bring us nearer to God. So I pray that these series of messages will be a great benefit and profit to you. It's a lot of application.

This is nothing but pure application. So, I really believe as the Holy Spirit would give us ears to hear, it would be beneficial to our souls. So, hear the word of God from James chapter 4. And we are looking...

I like to begin with verse 6. Some commentators, some Bibles split it right here. They start with verse 7. But I believe verse 6 is really a bookend all the way to verse 10. So, hear God's word. But He gives a greater grace, therefore it says, God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.

Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be miserable, and mourn, and weep.

Let your laughter be turned into mourning, and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you.

Amen.

May God richly bless His holy word to our hearts this morning. So, let's bow in prayer and ask the Lord to come and meet with us. Our Father, as we come before You within this hour, Lord, we have so much to be thankful for.

But above all, we thank You for Your presence. We thank You for You, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And our heart's cry this morning in prayer is to glorify Your name. That is our heart's cry. That is our desire.

And Father, only by Your blessed Holy Spirit, the third person of the Godhead, can we have this privilege to see You, and to behold You, to have ears to hear You speak. Only by Your blessed Holy Spirit can we see.

Only by Your blessed Holy Spirit can we hear. Only by Your blessed Holy Spirit can we perceive and understand Your word. So, Father, help us not take this for granted. So, Father, as Jesus came alongside the road to Emmaus, as I'm thinking at the moment, to the disciples, and as Jesus gladly stayed with them, He lodged with them.

He spent time with them. And He took the bread and He blessed it. And in breaking it, and He began giving it to them.

He gave.

Then, it was then, their eyes were opened. And then they recognized Him. Then He vanished from their sight. And they said to one another, Were not our hearts burning within us while He was speaking to us on the road, while He was explaining, opening up the Scriptures?

Lord, be pleased to do it again for us, for Your name's sake and for Your glory.

I ask this in Jesus' name.

The Presence of God, Emmaus, and the Need for Illumination

A .W. Tozer says this in his classic devotion, Nearness is likeness. Wonderful devotion. It's a classic.

He says this, quote,.

One serious and often distressing problem for many Christians is their feeling that God is far from them. And that they are far from God. Which is the same thing. It's hard to rejoice in the Lord when we are suffering from this sense of remoteness.

It is like trying to have a warm, bright summer without the sun. He goes on to say,. The chief trouble here is, of course, not intellectual. It cannot be cured by intellectual means. Yet truth must enter the mind before it can enter the heart.

So let us reason together about this. And I love what he says. I'm going to pause here for a second. I love what he says here. And he aims towards something that is right to what James is saying in the text.

It may sound like he's kind of going around the long path. But he eventually gets to the truth and to his point. Tozer goes on to say,. In the spiritual matters, we think correctly only when we boldly rule out the concept of space.

God is spirit. And spirit dwells not in space. Space has to do with matter. And spirit is independent of it. By the concept of space, we account for the relation of material bodies to each other. So we should never think God as being spatially near or remote.

For he is not here or there, but carries here and there in his heart. Space is not infinite, as some have thought. Only God is infinite. And in his infinitude, he swallows up all space. That's so good, isn't it?

And does he have a chapter and verse? Absolutely. Do not I fill heaven and earth, saith the Lord? He fills heaven and earth as the ocean fills the bucket that is submerged in it. And as the ocean surrounds the bucket, so does God the universe he fills.

Chapter and verse? Absolutely. Tozer's got it. The heaven of the heavens cannot contain thee. God is not contained, he contains. As earth-born creatures, we naturally tend to think by earthly analogies.

And then he's got another chapter and verse here. He that is of the earth is earthly and speaketh of the earth. And he goes on to say this. Now notice which direction Tozer's going with this. And I wrote this down because it is real good to the text in which we have before us.

It's about drawing near to God. God created us, Tozer says, living souls and gave us bodies through which we can experience the world around us and communicate with one another. But when man fell through sin, he began to think of himself as having a soul instead of being one.

It makes a lot of difference whether a man believes that he is a body of having a soul or a soul having a body. The soul is inward and hidden, while the body is always present to the senses. Consequently, we tend to be body-conscious and the concept of near and remote, which attaches to material things, seems quite natural to us.

But it is valid only when it applies to moral creatures. When we try to apply it to God, it no longer retains its fidelity. Yet, when we speak of men being far from God, we speak truly. The Lord said of Israel, their heart is far from me.

And there we have the definition of far and near in our relation to God. The words refer not to physical distance. And here's his point, but to likeness. I thought that was so good. And he actually nails exactly what James is speaking of in this chapter.

About drawing near to God and He would draw near to us. So in these five verses of Scripture before us this morning, verses six through ten, we have a series of commands. These are ten to be exact. We're going to go through them.

It may take us a few weeks, Lord willing. But these are loaded verses. These are strong bullet points. In these ten commands, in these verses of Scripture, in the Greek imperative mood, that will resolve the conflicts in which James speaks of.

These commands that James gives draw our attention, I believe, to the focal point of the complete Holy Epistle. And as I've said earlier, I believe this is the heart of the Epistle. This, in my judgment, is the very heart.

And it is one of the great and one of the clear and one of the most precise invitations of salvation you can find in Scripture. It's actually what it is. It's an invitation to God and salvation. So you know as well as I do that there are many, many invitations to salvation throughout all of Scripture.

And I read one of them from Isaiah 55 this morning in the opening. And if you notice, he speaks about drawing near to God. God desires us to be drawn near to Him. And He provides it, too, through His Holy Spirit.

But since God is a saving God, and aren't you glad He is? He's in the saving business. And it's only He that can really save. And I like the way R .C. Sproul put it. He says, actually, it's God saving us from God.

It's God's mercy in Jesus Christ saves us from His wrath. So it's God saving us from God. He provides it. And that's awesome to think of that. And since He is a saving God, He desires that all men would come to know Him and come to the knowledge of the truth.

And ultimately, as the chief end of man is, is to enjoy Him and glorify Him forever. To love and to adore Him. So God our Savior desires, as the Scripture says, that He wills that all men come to the saving knowledge of the truth.

Now, that brings us to the favorite word that most of our Armenian brothers love. And you cannot dispute it because it's in Scripture. It's that wonderful word, and Brother Keith quoted it earlier in John 3 .16.

That whosoever will believe. Whosoever. And the whosoever is there. And that is the invitation for all to come to Christ. Now, will all come? No. Those who believe are the elect. And that's what Scripture teaches.

But the invitation is to all. And Spurgeon put it, he says, Damnation, when damnation comes, it's not God's fault. God will not be held accountable to that, it is man's fault. But God desires for all to come to the knowledge of the truth.

And that whosoever will, yet, we also acknowledge at the same time, the great truth that God is sovereign. And God is in complete control. We acknowledge that God has all authority. And that God has absolute prerogative within himself to choose whomever he will to be saved.

And in fact, does that before the foundation of the world. He's already had made that decision. That's what Scripture teaches. A lot of people have a hard time with that. But that's what the Bible, you cannot argue against the Scriptures.

God wins. And Paul the Apostle made that very clear. He said, let man be found liar, let God be true. And yet, from a human viewpoint, in a paradoxical way, there are many invitations throughout the Scriptures.

I'm just going to touch on a few of them in which he calls generally. It's a general call to sinners. Not the effectual call, but the general call. For example, you find this in Deuteronomy chapter 30, verses 19 -20.

In the Old Testament, this is a wonderful passage of Scripture, and we read these words, and this is Moses speaking of God. And he says this, I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, and I have set before you life and death, and the blessing and the curse.

So choose life in order that you may live, and you and your descendants, by loving the Lord your God, by obeying His voice, and by holding fast to Him. For this your life, and the length of your days, that you may live in the land which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give them.

That's one in Deuteronomy, of an invitation. And then we read, like I said, this is, I'm picking up a little bit on Isaiah 55, in verse 6 and 7. Notice in verse 6 and 7, a very familiar invitation, Seek the Lord while He may be found.

Call upon Him, amen, while He is near. And let the wicked forsake His way. There's repentance. And the upright, I'm sorry, the upright, righteous man, his thoughts, the unrighteous man, his thoughts. And let him return to the Lord, and He will have compassion on him, and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.

There's the promise. There's the invitation. Now that's just a couple. There's so many. I'm just picking out a few. There's so many in the Old Testament and the New Testament. Then we see another familiar invitation that comes to us in the New Testament.

And of course, the words of our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. In the Sermon on the Mount, chapter 7 and verses 13 through 14, very familiar verses here, but these are verses that are very good to use in evangelism as well.

As Brother Keith spoke to this man, Abdu, Abdu, yeah, about, and he pointed them right to the person of Jesus Christ. That Jesus is the only way, the only way to truth and the life. But this is a good one here as well.

And Jesus said this, enter by the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction. And many there, notice what he says, many there are who enter by it for the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life and few are those who find it.

Notice the differences of narrow and wide.

Of the gate.

Notice the the amount of that goes through it. The gate is small, the way is narrow,.

Leads to life, few.

Those who.

Find it. And Jesus even said in another verse that many will strive to enter in and will not be able to. That verse has always captured my attention because I'm thinking why? You know, and I'm thinking many people strive, but see that shows you right there, it's God's grace.

Yes, they love their sin.

And they.

Just want the benefits of salvation, but they really don't love God. And only really, if you look at it,.

As we are.

Sitting here today, the only reason we love God is because the Holy Spirit has shed the love of God upon our own hearts and has regenerated our hearts. There's no way we can have that capacity within ourselves and our depravity.

We don't have.

That. There's nothing.

Good in us. We realize that. So we're depraved as God's grace. And that's where we're going here in just a minute. But then we have this another awesome invitation. And it's the gracious invitation that's given to us in Matthew 11, 28 and 30.

And this is one of my favorites. And speaking of A .W. Tozer, this was the verse he heard a street preacher preach on the street back years ago.

And.

This preacher didn't know. Tozer heard this. And it went into his ears and God, the Holy Spirit just pierced it right to his heart. He fell on his face right there on the street corner and repented.

He said people were.

Passing him by while he was on his knees. People were laughing at him. He said, people's not going to laugh me to hell.

And he,.

Amen. And he heard this wonderful call and this invitation that's so straightforward from.

Jesus.

And his words. But such a loving call. Such a gentle call. Such a powerful call of our Lord Jesus. When Jesus.

Reached out.

To his people in his day and says, come unto me all you who are weary and heavy laden. I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am meek and lowly in heart and humble in heart and you will find rest.

Don't you love that? Find rest for your souls for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. That's the great invitation of salvation, isn't it? Beautiful.

Matthew.

16, 24 Jesus again says to his disciples if anyone wishes to come after me, there's the word invitation, come after me, let him deny.

Himself.

Take up his cross that's obedience to the commandments of Jesus and follow me for whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it and whoever loses his life for my sake shall.

Find it. All.

This wonderful glory is all in the person of Jesus Christ and as brother Keith said earlier he is the pearl of great price.

These.

Are just a few. I just selected just a few. There's so many throughout.

The scriptures.

We could just take this whole time and go through all these invitations but we got to head on to our text. James 4 is actually a call to invitation to salvation as well. This invitation is directed and I really believe this.

Some commentators don't believe this. They feel that this is to the Christians. Now even though he wrote this to Christian dispersed Jews that was being persecuted at the same time and the writer of Hebrews does the same thing.

He never takes for granted that all are Christians. This is what he's getting at. There's tares among the wheat. There's always those who profess but don't possess. There's always those who say but do not do.

So that's what James is really doing here. He's calling people to salvation and he's not taking for granted that all are saved. So the invitation is directed to those who are not saved and those who are still captive to early sensual demonic wisdom and how we know this.

Well, look at all the scriptures we looked at. Those who love the world are enemies of God. They're not saved. Those who are in the terms of verse 5 are still governed by the inner spirit which is the lust of the flesh and the pride of life.

So in other words, they're driven and controlled by their fallenness to those.

Who according.

To verse 6 are proud and not humble. And those who to sum it up are in desperate need of God's grace. So let's begin. Let's look at these points and this would be a good starter on verse 6. Now, to understand where he goes on verse 7 to 10.

Look at what he says in verse 6. But he gives a greater grace. Therefore it says, he's quoting scripture. He's talking about the verse of scripture. God is opposed to the proud but gives grace to the humble.

So in these first 5 verses we have seen how the wicked, the unrighteous, the old nature can be. How we learn that if we're not left to deal with the lust of the flesh in our own power and strength we can't handle.

We can't do it.

But God gives us the.

Strength to handle and to deal with it. Thank God.

He gives.

More grace or strength wherever it is needed. I love. Hebrews 4 .16 says this. Therefore, let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace. For what reason? So that we may receive mercy, God's compassion and find grace to help in time of need.

What a promise.

What a privilege.

We're not worthy of. That should humble us. And praise God, the only ray of hope in man's spiritual darkness is the sovereign grace of God. I could say that this morning to each and every one of us here in this little room.

Which alone can save and rescue man from his own sins and lust to evil things. Thank God for grace, God's undeserving favor to the undeserving. We don't deserve it. Grace is greater than all of our sin.

God gives a.

Greater grace.

And He's telling us that grace is greater than all the sin that He has just enumerated. Shows that the grace is greater than all the power of sin. Greater than all the flesh of the world. Greater than all the world itself and Satan as well.

That's what He's saying. And the verse James gives is originally actually Old Testament passage. He quotes Proverbs 3 .34. Now, and if you read, 1 Peter 5 .5 Peter quotes it as well. It shows you how powerful this verse.

Is.

This verse reveals who obtains God's grace. And the recipients of God's grace are to who? The humble. Not to the proud. And as James has already mentioned, the proud is the enemies of God. That's the enemies of God.

Is the proud. The arrogant. And God hates pride above all sins. It is the chief sin. And here the word humble does not define the special class of Christians, does it? It encompasses all believers and the true believers in Jesus Christ.

Isaiah.

66 .2.

Don't you love Isaiah? To this one I will look, God says, to him who is humble and contrite of spirit and who trembles at my word. Now there's humility. First foundation, foundational beatitude our Lord Jesus Christ spoke of in Sermon on the Mount.

Blessed are the poor in spirit. That's the humble. For theirs is the kingdom of heaven. The only way we're going to get into the kingdom of heaven.

Is to truly be.

Poor in spirit and humble ourselves before the almighty hand of God. No other way. So now, with this.

In view,.

We come to verse 7.

He says this,.

Submit therefore to God. Now, notice, not only submit yourselves therefore to God, but the therefore, by the way, takes us into these ten commands off the idea of what humility is. Now, since God gives grace to the humble, therefore, here's how to be humble.

That's what he's saying. Here's how to be humble. Here's how we can draw nigh or draw near to God. And the first thing he says is submit. Now, scripture says a lot about submit. This word submission. Submission.

Submit yourselves to, therefore, to God. Then, number two, he says resist the devil. Now, I want to let you know right now, that's as far as we're going to be able to get.

Today.

You know, when we're going through scripture, there's no way we're going to be able to hit all these points, but thank goodness we can go through it part by part, precept by precept. So let's look at these two here.

Submission.

To God.

And resistance against the devil. Number one, submit yourselves, therefore, to God. Submission.

Resistance.

That's the command. And there we have the very nature.

Of true humility.

Because in James 4, 6 through 10 begins and ends with a call to humility. And to be precise with you, it starts, and I love this, it starts with a warning that leads to a promise.

God.

Opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. It ends with a command that leads to a promise. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will exalt you.

Thus, the.

Need for humility and the call to humility really have bookends. That's the bookends for our text. Isn't that beautiful? You see the bookends. That's why I started with verse 6, because I do believe to verse 10.

There's a reason why the bookends are there. God is a God of order. And the Holy Spirit does everything perfectly in order. So, thus the need for humility and the call to humility form the bookends for our text.

And God gives grace to the humble, and we must humble ourselves before the Lord.

Now He.

Gives the grace.

To humble ourselves, then we must humble.

Ourselves.

You see both. You see the sovereignty of God, but you also see man's responsibility. I like what Spurgeon said. If he wrestles with something that he sees in Scripture that are hard to pull together, he says, I believe the both of them.

And I amen that all the way. They do not contradict each other, do they? The Scripture does not contradict. Actually, they complement one another. And you and I know this, as we read the Scriptures, Genesis through Revelation, all 66 books of God breathed words of all this Revelation.

You start tying these verses together. It's like chain upon chain upon chain, link upon link, and precept upon precept. And the greatest, you come to find out, you start loving just the Word of God. You love commentators, but when you start letting Scripture interpret Scriptures, you say this is the best commentator.

Matthew Henry was right. It's the best commentator of all is the Word of God. It's its own commentator.

So here you see this,.

And there James is talking about the need for humility and the call to humility. And so this is how we draw near to God. So how do we draw near to God? Well, Scripture says, I really believe this, by humility.

And that's what he's talking about. It's submission to God. So true humility is.

Submitting to God. Then.

The rest of the passage describes the life of true humility. The Scripture has elements of, I would like to say, Hebrew poetry. Now I got this from James, I'm sorry, not James, but Daniel Duran on his commentator, a commentation, commentaire, I'll get it right in a minute, commentary on James.

It could be profitably arranged in a stanza, and this is what he said. Notice in verses 6 and 7. First you have a warning, God opposes the proud. Then you have a promise, that God gives grace to the humble.

Then you have a conclusion, submit yourselves therefore to God, and then verse 10 you have a command, humble yourselves before the Lord. Then you have the promise, and He will exalt you. The commentator, and Daniel Duran goes on to say this, the intervening verses develop the demand for humility by exploring the two poles of divine promise and human responsibility.

Notice he says James 4, 7 with its call to submit to God explains in James 4, 6 since God opposes the proud we should submit to Him as an act of humility.

So the.

Submissive can expect to receive grace. He says. And the rest of the passage describes the key elements of Christian humility and submission to God. And then he goes on to say notice as James writes that humility has nothing to do with a shy or retiring person.

But powerful and exuberant people can be humble. And that is so true. You know you think of what scripture says the righteous are as bold as a lion. Where boldness doesn't mean they're not humble. Actually what they're doing, they're submitting to God to be bold unto God and bold unto others to tell the truth and speak the truth in love.

So here we have the command submit therefore to God first and foremost. Now scripture says also to submit to one another in fear, in the fear of God. And we are to do that. But first and foremost we are to submit to God.

Our personal submission to God. Now let's look at this word submit. It's a strong word. It's a very strong word. It comes from a military word in the Greek language. I'll try my best to pronounce it. Submit.

It means to yield. It means to obey. It means to subject oneself or arrange under oneself under someone in authority. To line up underneath that person's authority. That's what submit means. And here James is given the command to place ourselves under the complete and absolute command.

Of the authority of God.

And stay there. Now that's what's convicting. We must stay there. Amen.

That's the.

Sanctification. That's the imperative. That's the imperative of the second Aristotle's passive tense. And to do this means we must accept God's will for our lives as he purifies us and sanctifies us into Christ's likeness instead of chasing and pursuing after our own desires.

Now that's where the flesh comes in. So we need to have that mortified and crucified and put to death. And to submit in Scripture is not to sit back as you well know in a recliner. To sit back and wait for God to issue some orders.

Is it.

Actually our commander in chief has already.

Issued the orders.

Submission certainly includes obedience no doubt to those commands but we also submit when we arrange our lives under or line up under God's general direction. For example, and I wrote down just a few here and I think this would apply to all of us in some way form or fashion since we are at home or on the work and business.

We are first and foremost under God's authority because we do all things under the Lord. Unto the Lord. But a worker submits, let's look at the worker by obeying his supervisor's directions. But the worker also exemplifies from his leader's principles taking on new tasks according to his principles.

He need not wait for orders does he because he understands the leader's goals, he understands the leader's vision, he understands the leader's ethic as well enough to apply them to his new situations day by day.

So this is everyday life here. An athlete let's take a look at the athlete. An athlete submits to his coach by coming into the season well conditioned and fit and trained even if the coach did not get specific about tight training he knows what the leader, what the one in authority is looking for.

A wife can exercise considerable authority in the home and yet be submissive to her husband if she manages the money and the property and the time and the ways in which they have worked out together. They are heirs of grace together even though the husband is the head but he's not to be a cruel taskmaster and a tyrant.

He is to be a servant leader as Jesus had simplified.

A lot of.

Guys take that too far and I'm for one that didn't understand that when I first got married but I learned right quick. I had a good wife that taught me scripture and taught me the context of that. So I praise God for her.

But anyway I was learning that, I'm still learning but we're heirs of grace together and I thank God. And just look at it through scripture.

You look at.

Through scripture how Jesus applies that to the church, his bride.

He's not.

This.

Dictator in a.

Cruel way.

He's a loving dictator, gentle,.

All loving,.

Caring for his bride,.

Jealous.

Over his bride.

You see that.

And it's beautifully.

Portrayed in scripture. Well let's look at obedience because obedience no doubt is certainly an element of submission isn't it? To submit is to recognize the lordship and authority of another. That's what it means.

Submission requires subordinates to bend their will to the will of the superior. That's what it means. Even that the superior issues a directive that seems unpleasant or unwise and insists upon it. Now you and I have been there haven't we?

We've disagreed with superiors and those in authority and we may not understand, what is my boss thinking here?

I disagree with this.

It's not saying right but we are to submit nevertheless. This does not mean that we must... Let me insert this real quick. We always do whatever a superior says. Especially if the authority commands something that's contrary to the will of God and the word of God.

There's where we disobey man in order to obey God. Right? Because that's scripture. The apostle says this when certain Jewish leaders forbade that they preach Jesus Christ. They said, no you're not going to preach in this name.

Well you think the apostle said there, oh yeah you're right. No, no, no. Acts 5 29. We must obey God rather than men. When any time it is against God's word that's where we say no. It's God first. Always.