How to Draw Near to God: Part 3

Well, praise God, we're on the air. Well let's continue our series as we look to the wonderful book of James. Hasn't this been a glorious study? And we've got still a ways to travel, but we're not going to be in a hurry, we're going to take our time.

As a matter of fact, I thought I'd be able to get to the section about being afflicted and mourned. I'm not going to make it there, as I was going through the notes, as much as I'd like. But we're just going to basically look at what the apostle is actually talking about, drawing near to the Lord.

I think that's going to be enough for us to meditate on today. But Lord willing, we're going in the direction of godly repentance, godly sorrow versus worldly.

Sorrow.

We'll be going in that direction. So I don't want us to get in too big of a hurry, I want us to draw out everything we can by God's help. We don't want to miss nothing here, do we? We want to just meditate on it, precept by precept, word by word, verse by verse, and soak up all the truth we can.

I don't know about you, that's the way I feel. I desire truth that much. I want God and more of God and to draw near to God. So we're going to look at drawing near to God and how we can draw near to God.

And James pretty much tells us in the Ten Commandments of James here, he tells us exactly how we can do that. And he gives us a list. So as you turn here, let's look at verses, in chapter 4, verses 6 through 10.

We'll continue this. We're going to stay on verses 6 through 10 for a while. And Lord willing, next week we're going to have communion and we're going to probably just give a pause on James and just go to the gospel and to the Lord Jesus Christ.

And of course, always we see that, but specifically focus on His cross and His sacrifice for us.

And have communion.

Lord willing, next Lord's Day, as God wills. So hear the word of the living God. Aren't you glad He's a living God? He's not the God of the dead, He's the God of the living.

He's here. He's here with us. He's here with us.

Verse 6, beginning with verse 6. But He gives a greater grace. Just sung about it. He gives a greater grace. Therefore it says, and He speaks of Scripture, it is the verse of Scripture. 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 not 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. And in verse 10 is the bookend from verse 6. Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord and He will exalt you.

Amen.

To the reading of God's word, may He richly bless it to our hearts this morning. As we come before His presence, let's bow in prayer. Our Father in heaven, once again we call upon Your name. Lord, we desire that this just not be another sermon to our heads.

Lord, we can know the truth in our heads but be empty as a barrel, as an empty gun. But Lord, we desire to be loaded up in the heart with truth. That's where we desire it, is in our hearts. So Father, first of all, we adore You, we glorify You, we praise You because You are the holy God, but yet You're loving.

And we love You because You first loved us, as it's already been said. We thank You for Your infinite love. Lord, we thank You for Your infinite perfection. All Your glories and all the beauty of Your attributes.

Lord, now we, within our hearts, we desire holiness. For we know without holiness no one will see the Lord. No one will see You. And it's not our holiness that we try to achieve to reach You, it's You coming down to us, making us holy.

It is the Holy One of Israel. So Father, we cannot even dare try to be holy enough. It's the Gospel that comes to us. It's something You have done. So now Lord, in salvation and being justified, now is the work of sanctification, even You are working in us and through us, but yet there is a side to sanctification that we have to do.

Lord, that's where we need grace. So Lord, give us the grace. Help us to sanctify us. Sanctify Your people with Your truth this morning. Sanctify us here, holy in spirit, soul, and body. That is our desire, Lord, that we mourn over our sins, even of our past sins and our present shortcomings and our present sins.

For sin is a constant battle within our redeemed hearts. So Father, as we bless You, we thank You for forgiveness through the blood of Your dear Son that cleanses us from all sin. Grace that is greater than all of our sin.

We thank You for the reconciliation that You have brought through the death of Your son Jesus. Now Father, our prayer is this, that we seek Your face. We look, as we look into the perfect law of liberty, that Your word would do its work upon our soul and cleanse us, purify us, strengthen us for this journey until we get to heaven.

As Your word afflicts the comfortable, it also comforts the afflicted. And by it, as David said, Your servant is warned. And in keeping them, keeping them, there is great reward. So Lord, may we be doers of Your word for Your glory in Jesus' name.

Amen.

It is truly my desire this morning to minister grace to your hearts from these wonderful verses here in verses 6 through 10. James offers a rather comprehensive, wonderful invitation to sinners as we looked at last Lord's Day.

And we saw the verses of Scripture of that invitation. You see it all through the verses of Holy Scripture, Holy Writ. Come unto me, he that thirsts, come. Buy without money. Jesus says, come unto me all you labor and heavy laden, I give you rest.

The invitation to salvation is there. And I really believe to the context of what James is speaking of here, that he is giving an invitation to sinners to come to God in true faith. This is what he is giving.

Why? Because look at what he says in the previous verses in chapter 4. He speaks to the prideful, the quarrelsome. He speaks to the worldly, the people who are in desperate need of forgiveness. And they are the ones that are in need of this great salvation that saves to the uttermost.

They need to be justified, they need to be sanctified through grace and by God's power and the blood of Jesus Christ. These people are envious and they cannot obtain, as he says, so they fight and quarrel.

That's what verses 1 and the rest says. What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? That's the first question he asks. Is not the source of your pleasures that wage war in your members? Strong language, actually.

But he is rebuking the pride and the sin. And that's actually what he is speaking of, pride that promotes strife here. And there are wars among them. And then he speaks that they are envious and cannot obtain.

They fight and quarrel and they do not have because they do not ask. And there is a lack of prayer. There is prayerlessness here. And then he says when you do pray, they ask and do not receive because they ask with wrong motives.

They ask for the wrong reason. It's all about their own self. And it's all about their own pleasures. So why? They spend it on their own pleasures. All the glorious benefits of God that are given from above, and he says this in the previous verses, every good and perfect gift comes from above.

The true joy, the true peace of mind, even true happiness, meaning, hope, everlasting and abundant life comes only through God the Father and by our Lord Jesus Christ. Yet unbelievers are unwilling to ask for these things, these wonderful glories that God gives and these riches that God gives on His terms.

They do not want to come to God on His terms. I had the privilege of hearing several weeks ago, and I'll keep the name anonymous, but this particular person I was speaking to about the gospel. Well, the first thing she came to me and she texted me as we made friends on Facebook, she says, I need Jesus.

I said, okay, we'll see how far this goes. That's what I was saying to my mind. So I got to know her, and I did not jump in hook, line, and sinker. I kind of got to know her a little bit, and I told her a little bit about myself on practical matters and so forth, personal matters in the sense of this is who I am.

And let me ask you a few questions about, you know, and this particular person is going through some hardships, granted, a lot of pain, just lost a son to suicide. So I had to be very careful and not to dig in in the sense with all that pain that's going on in this person's life to push this person away from the gospel.

But at the same time, I'm not going to compromise and not give, hold back the truth, you see what I'm saying? Because truth always, love always tells people truth. It's just the timing that we need to know by God, and this is for all of us, isn't it?

Because we need to know the timing of how to give that truth and love without compromise. But God always knows how to open up the doors. Well, God did open up that door, so she was okay for a while in listening to the scriptures.

I tried to point her to the scriptures. Read your Bible. Oh, I'm going to get my mother's Bible out. And she was sentimental to her mother's Bible because her mother passed away, of course, and I can understand that.

So she said, I got my mother's Bible. It's a rainbow lettering, and it's marked and all this, and she's got marked personal notes in it. I said, okay. So as she was sharing these things with me, time went by.

And eventually, she's got a, I'm sorry, she has a daughter, a surviving daughter. By the way, the son that committed suicide was a Mormon believer, and that really was a very sensitive subject. So I didn't go there on that, even though we know where the Mormons stand.

We want to love these people, right? Even though they're involved in false doctrine and occult, we've got to love them. And it's hard. You know what I'm saying? Because you've got to love these people, but we never compromise the truth.

So she's got this daughter that is a lesbian. And the subject came up. She said, well, are you telling me that you're unforgiving toward my daughter? And the subject came up about this lifestyle. And without beating around the bush, I got right to the point here, and I knew this was right.

This is what God says about this lifestyle. Now, love tells us, God gives us the truth because he loves us enough to say this is wrong. And you know what Scripture says about those, it's not just that lifestyle, it's people who committed fornication, people who practice thieving, people who are practicing adulteries, and it goes on, the list goes on.

And all those who do these things will not inherit the kingdom of God. And living a homosexual, lesbian lifestyle, if you practice this, you are not going to inherit the kingdom of God. I gave her the Scriptures, and she thought I was unloving.

And then all of a sudden, I became a hate person. This is very familiar language that's going on today. So, in brief, I'm bringing this up because people's motives are wrong. First, she says she needs Jesus.

And then I went right to the gospel and I said, this is the way you come to Jesus. You come to Jesus on his terms. Amen. Not on our own terms. And she thought, well, in other words, and I began to see this.

I began to see that her children, and we all have to be careful here, because, I don't want to sound self-righteous or sanctimonious, because we could put anything before God. And it's obvious, it was obvious that she was putting her children before God.

And that her children were the idol of her life. The apple of her eye. Now, we love our children. But they are not the idols of our lives. We idolize one, and that's the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the one and true living God.

And God says, thou shalt not have no other gods before me. Jesus says, you come to follow me. You come after me. You deny yourself. And you take up your cross and you follow him. People don't want to count the cost.

They don't want to come to Jesus on God's terms. They want to come on their terms. So, gloriously, I thank God for this wonderful opportunity. I gave her the invitation of the gospel, and I gave her the scriptures.

And I even closed with this. And I gave her the story in John 8 about the woman caught in adultery. And I said, I'm going to set before you this. This woman was caught in adultery.

She deserved to die.

The law, even the Pharisees, tried to set up Jesus and say, Okay, this woman, according to the law, she needs to die. Jesus showed her grace. But, after he showed her grace, what did he say to her? Go and sin no more.

There is repentance from sin. There was grace and pardon. But at the same time, grace is not cheap, as we sung a minute ago. It is a glorious grace that saves to the uttermost. So people have a hard time with this, don't they?

They've got this image in their mind. And especially today, you see the church is going backwards. You can put any name on it. Going backwards and backwards and backwards into this, I call it antinomianism.

It's basically, well, that too. But also there's a grace that is being preached that's not God's grace. It's a total compromise. And it is another God. It is another gospel. You know what I'm saying. Well, these people right here, they were coming to God and they were praying.

But they were praying for the wrong motives. Wrong motives. And we all must check our own motives. And coming to God. And there can be acting of evil manners. And motivated by personal ambitions and personal gratifications and selfish desires.

Technically, they're unbelievers. Unbelievers seek things for their own pleasures. And not for the honor and the glory of God as we read earlier. Because it's really about God, isn't it? Christianity is about God.

It's God coming to us. And Paul says this to unbelievers in Corinthians, I believe. He says, be reconciled to God. That's the message. Well, isn't that the plea? That we desire to reach out to people and say, be reconciled to God.

So James is dealing with these. Who talk the talk, but do not walk the walk. They know about it in their mind, but they have a warped concept of who God is. They're friends with the world. They're enemies of God.

And look, in verse 6, he comes in here and he says, He, being God, gives a greater grace. Don't you love that? All the strong language that James gives by the Holy Spirit. And then he says, but God gives a greater grace.

Greater grace. God's abundant in grace, isn't He? And He's plentiful in infinite grace, even to the worldly sinner. To those who have offended Him. We've all offended God some way or another. And when we were sinners.

And don't you love what the verse says in Romans there? Yet we were sinners. Christ died for us.

He died for us.

That's a wonderful, gracious verse. But here, the question then comes to us. But to whom does God give that grace to? And the answer, James gives the answer. And don't you love it? He gives chapter and verse.

That's, I don't know about you. I think that's always the wisest thing to do, is give chapter and verse. He gives Proverbs 3 .34. What does it say? Wherefore He saith, God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.

And by the way, He's not the only apostle that quoted it. If you read 1 Peter 5, 5 and 6. Peter writes this. And like manner, Peter says, you younger, submit to the elder. And all of you be subject to one another.

And be clothed with humility. Don't you love that language? In other words, you clothe yourself with humility. And God, for God, resists the proud. And gives grace to the humble. In verse 6, and then Peter says it.

Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time. And as Ms. Lillian pointed out earlier, the life of Joseph is a beautiful example of being humbled. And living a life of humiliation.

And then God brings the exaltation. And as, I don't know about you, as I was thinking about the story of Joseph. And what a beautiful story it is. Of seeing the hand of God. But you also see this in the life of the Lord Jesus Christ.

All the way when He was born. And He took upon Himself flesh. And I don't know about you, when I just think about that scene. It almost just causes me to weep. Because He comes, and He was not born in mansions.

But He was born in the poorest of the poor. In a stable of stench among animals. Think of that, the environment. Unsanitary. He was almost born right into a homeless environment. He was. And yet, all the way from the stable to the cross.

He lived a perfect life of humility.

Perfect humility.

And that's the life our Lord lived for our sake. And for the glory of God, right? It's humbling. Well there's also a very familiar concept taken from Proverbs 3 .34. And let's just look at that very quickly.

To whom does God give this grace? Scripture says, God gives the grace to the humble. It's to those who humble themselves. God is looking for the man and woman who is humble. That's broken. A contrite heart.

Who trembles at His word. That's what Isaiah 66 .2 says. Oh, what a wonderful verse of Scripture. Isaiah 66 .2, God says, For My hand made all these things. Thus, all these things came into being. God is the creator of the universe.

He's the sovereign Lord. He has none beside Him. And then He says, declares the Lord, But to this one I will look. Now think of this. God's going to look to this one.

Who is it?

To Him who is humble and contrite of spirit. And who trembles at My word. Jesus said it in Matthew 18 .3. Jesus Himself said, Unless you become as a little child. Unless you humble yourself.

Jesus says this.

Unless you humble yourself, you will not enter the kingdom of God. I mean, straight to the point. So when we say God gives grace, when we ask the question to whom the answer is, according to God's word, it's those who are humble.

Truly humble. That leads us to another question. A very important question is posed. What is the essence of true humility? What is the essence of true humility? Well, how do we describe humility that God blesses with His saving grace?

What kind of humility does God bless? Well, how do we demonstrate the kind of humility.

That God expects?

Well, James answers that too. In verses 7 -10.

That's how he gives it.

7 -10. Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil. He will flee from you. Draw near to God. And He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, your centers. Purify your hearts. You're double-minded. Be miserable.

People say,.

You mean to tell me that's how I draw close to God?

This is it.

You draw close to God, 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. Now keep in mind, He's dealing with the sinner.

He's dealing with the worldly. And I don't know about you, if you look about you today,.

People whether...

We have to guard ourselves from worldliness. But it has a strong pull on our flesh. And He's dealing with people that are... I mean, they're saturated with the world.

And the love of the world.

And it has to be a strong dose of truth. And He gives it to them. And He doesn't beat around the bush, does He? You notice how pointed He is.

How direct He is.

Submit, therefore, to God.

Period.

Your submission, you line up underneath. It's a military word, as we looked at it. You line up under God's authority. You resist the devil. And it says, He will flee from you. In other words, you submit to God, you will resist the devil, and He will flee from you.

I think the first thing is it's in perfect order that there is submission to God. Well, these are the Ten Commandments of James, and they're called to bring people to saving faith. I was reading John MacArthur's commentary on this, and this is what he said.

The Ten Commands that James gives are directed at people who have not submitted to God. They are directed at people who have not taken a stand against the devil. They are directed at people who are far from God, who are corrupt inwardly, who are corrupt outwardly, who hold on to the world, and hold on to sin, who laugh and celebrate when they should be weeping, and it is directed at people who are proud.

End quote. So these are the characteristics that indicates people who are unregenerate.

I'm sorry.

They are called by James in verse 8, notice,.

Sinners.

He doesn't say beloved there, does he? He does not say saints of the living God. He says sinners, a term in the New Testament referring to those who do not believe the gospel. The reason I say this because there are some commentators that will believe that tell you here that he is speaking to the saved, but as the writer of Hebrews, there's always those, he's conscious that there's always terrors among the weak.

He is writing to the Jews that are dispersed and to the believers, but there's also a call to those in the crowd that profess to be Christians,.

But they're not.

And after all, if you notice, just about the whole book of James deals with,.

He's dealing with,.

You say this, but you don't do this. You say it, but you don't act it. You see this time and time again. And they live a life of deception. Well, these are the people that disregard the law of God and they manifest a sinful lifestyle.

Now, James gives the call to sinners. So what's that call? What is the call to? Or to whom?

Or to what?

Look at verse 7. Well, we've already gone, we've covered, almost covered some of the same turf, but we're going to try to draw out a little bit more. The first is to submit therefore to God,.

Resist the devil,.

And he will flee from you. The second command, that's the second command,.

I'm sorry,.

The first and the second. The third is in verse 8, a beautiful statement, and then we're going to look at this in detail here the rest of our study here. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.

Now, keep in mind that our author here is James. He's a Jewish man, and he's speaking to the Jews that are dispersed. If you go back to verse 2, 1 and 2, the twelve tribes scattered abroad. So he's with a Jewish heritage.

They would understand the richness of this concept of drawing near. The term draw near was originally associated with a priestly function. And priests were said to be those who draw near. Levite priests.

For example, just to give you a few passages we'll look at very quickly in Old Testament on this you'll be able to follow through in your thinking. Go with me very quickly to Exodus. Exodus chapter 19.

You see, they understood this, and you got to, you know, it's real important when you do a study in the books. It's very important to see the audience. You got to see the audience to understand the context.

And his audience are Jewish. And he knew exactly how to pull them in to the truth by the power of the Holy Spirit. So Exodus 19, look at verse 22. Also let the priest who come near to the Lord. Notice the letter, the language there.

Come near to the Lord. Consecrate themselves, or else the Lord will break out against them.

What a verse.

You come near to the Lord. You got to come God's way. If you don't, you're going to die. Even as a priest. That's why they had to tie this rope to them when they went in. And if they messed up, beloved, I'm telling you, God smote them dead because of His holiness.

And they couldn't go in and get them because they would die too. They had to pull a rope around them. And if they died, they just pulled the rope and pulled their body out. But that's what it means that God would break out against them.

So here, that's the language. Skip, go to very quickly. I want to just touch just a few.

Leviticus.

If you jump to Leviticus, and you know about the book of Leviticus. It's all about God's holiness. It's not about rules and regulations. It's about God's holiness. The whole book is a wonderful study.

Look at chapter 10. Look at verse 3. This is about the sin of Nadab and Abihu. You know the story. Let me read just a few verses here. Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron. These are two sons of Aaron. Aaron, as you know, Moses' brother.

He's a priest.

They took their respective firepans and after putting fire in them, placed incense on it, offered strange fire before the Lord, which He had not commanded them. Uh-oh, there's trouble. If God doesn't command it, you're in trouble.

The fire came out from the presence of the Lord and consumed them. I want you to think of that. And they died before the Lord. Then Moses said to Aaron, Is it what the Lord spoke? Saying, By those who come near me, I will be treated as holy.

And before all the people, I will be honored. So Aaron, therefore, kept silent. He was wise because he knew. Now I want you to think about this. He just lost his two sons. He knew. He knew. They messed up.

They did not obey the commandment of God and they went in there and offered strange fire and God had every right to kill them. You got people thinking, Why would God do something like that? He's a mean, horrible God.

No.

It's the reverse.

These people that Nadab and Abihu offered strange fire and God consumed them. But the language, I want you to draw close, By those who come near me. So we're not coming just near some person on this earth.

You can't compare God with persons on this earth because we're the creature.

He's the creator.

So we come near him. We tread his courts very carefully, don't we?

So that's a few old tales.

Let me couple it to Ezekiel. Ezekiel has a lot. There's so many verses here. I don't have time to cut it. Go with me to Ezekiel chapter 43. You can do your own study on this and I'm telling you, it's rich.

But if you go through the Old Testament, this language is very meaningful and it's rich. Notice Ezekiel 43 .19. 43 .19, I'm just touching just a few. Let me back up, go to 18. The offerings, offerings, and his altar of sacrifice and his offerings.

And he said to me, Son of man, thus says the Lord God. These are the statutes for the altar on the day it is built to offer burnt offerings on it and to sprinkle blood on it. You shall give to the Levitical priest who are from the offspring of Zadok who draw near to me to minister to me.

There's the language. Who draw near to me to minister to me he declares the Lord God a young bull and a sin offering. And let's read further. And you shall take some of its blood and put it on its four horns and on the four corners of the ledge and on the border around about.

Thus you shall cleanse it and make atonement for it. And you shall also take the bull from the sin offering and it shall be burned into the appointed place of the house outside the sanctuary. So there's the altar.

And these all the measurements of the altar burnt offerings are given here in what God requires in verses 13 through 17. And you have the offerings that are described in verses 18 through 27. And keep in mind these offerings are not to necessarily to cleanse away the sin of itself.

The Old Testament sacrifices were all symbolic of death for sin. They do not take away sin as Hebrews 10 verse 4 says but they were perspective. And these will be retrospective in that sense that they do literally do the job to take away sin.

It's the blood of Jesus. It all points to Christ. And you read Hebrews you see the Hebrew writer doing this. And some people even I don't, we don't know this for sure who the writer of Hebrews is. Really it's not going to matter once we get to heaven.

We can ask then, right? But it's not going to matter because you're going to be so lost in God. It's not going to matter no more. But some people feel that James wrote Hebrews. I've heard that. But I take the opinion of Paul.

That's my personal opinion. We don't know. Because Paul knew so much about the Old Testament. But some people feel James. Well anyway, I'll stop there. But the point is, is the language. Notice the language.

Draw near to me. Draw near to me. Jump with me very quickly to Ezekiel 44 verse 13. And they shall not come near to me to serve as a priest to me nor come near to any of my holy things to the things that are most holy but they will bear their shame and their abominations which they have committed.

There's that language, once again, about the nearness. In verse 10, if you look back there, the bearer of the punishment for their iniquity. God makes distinctions here. Levites in the line of those unfaithful days before the judgment can minister in the temple services but they cannot make offerings or enter into the most holy place.

I'm telling you, they had to do it directly the way God said. And that's so important in worship that it's all centered in God the way He has commanded. We don't come to God the way we want to or on our terms, right?

And that's the point. So the Old Testament, and there's a drawing near where the priest, and before they could draw near, they had to have washed and cleansed themselves and they had to wash their hands.

They had to go to the laver. And before they went into the Holy of Holies, there had to be a washing. Isn't that beautiful? So before we enter into the very presence of God, there has to be a washing.

They washed their hands, they had to wash their feet. Makes me think about how Jesus washed the disciples' feet.

See?

And He says, Except for one. And that was Jesus. He was not clean. Well, there's another connection here about cleansing. And I like to go to that. Let's see how much more time I got here. It's moving by quick.

I better hurry up. Psalm 24, 3 and 5. 3 through 5. And I love this. And the question is this.

Who? Who?

May ascend into the heel of the Lord. And who may stand in His holy place? You notice verse 4. He gives the answer. Excuse me. He who has clean hands and a pure heart. And notice what he says. Who has not lifted up his soul to falsehood.

Notice that. Lifted up in pride. Lifted up. You see, it's best to come down. But he's talking about falsehood. Who has not lifted up his soul to falsehood and has not sworn deceitfully. In other words, he's a liar within and without.

In verse 5. He shall receive a blessing from the Lord and righteousness from the God of His salvation. There's the answer right there.

That's how. That's who.

Who and how. Well, what does he say? James says. Let's look at it. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Isn't that beautiful? Cleanse your hands. You're sinners. Purify your hearts. You're double minded.

There's the fourth commandment. From James.

Cleanse hands, sinners.

That's what the original says. The original text. Cleanse hands, sinners. A purging. A purifying. A cleansing. And the cleansing of the hands, James, has in mind the Jewish thought that done by the priests before they ever went.