How To Be Redeemed?

Good morning.

The next few passages from the Book of James give a certain standard to Christian living. As we have said in the beginning of this series on this book, James did not beat around the bush, but he said it as it is and should be. The next passage follows on from our previous message.

I really hope you would agree that the previous message was quite a strong challenge. If you have not read it, you would benefit from reading it. James is coming over quite strongly in challenging Christians who play games with the Lord. We think we can simply live our selfish, sin-controlled lives as long as nobody else in church would know what is really in our heart. Sin is very diverse and range from obvious sins such as theft and adulterous lust to discreet sins such as pride and a critical mindset. According to James, as recorded in our previous passage, simply living as the world does and not obeying the Lord are considered by God as hatred towards Him.

How much higher could the standard be set? Are you looking a bit into your own life as you read this? Let’s have a look at our next passage.

 

“Submit yourselves 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 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,” (James 4:7-10).

 

Remember this passage refers to the previous passage in verses 4-6, which spoke about friendship towards the world, in other words living selfishly as the world does, which is enmity towards God and then the statement that God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.

 

Verses 7-10 give guidance towards restoring this blunder that we have made by living as the world does. We tend to think that, if we have left a foothold for the devil, the way to get rid of him is to quickly tell God that we submit to Him and then expect Him to back us when we resist the devil. However, verses 7-10 need to be read and acted upon in context.

 

The sinners and double-minded James was talking about are those committing the sin mentioned in the previous passage, which is acting and living like the world does as discussed in our previous message. According to this passage submitting to God involves drawing near to the Lord, meaning we need to choose between Him and Mammon (which include self and any idols) in the devotion of our time and energy. It also involves cleaning our hands and purifying our hearts, in other words confessing and stopping doing those things of the world that steals our time that belongs to the Lord.

 

With what attitude should all this be done? “Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.” Does this mean we should not laugh and be happy as Christians? We certainly should not laugh and be happy if our actions depict hatred and disregard towards God. It is so easy to have a form of godliness and live in pretence, whilst in reality our hearts are far from God and that which He really wants to do with and through our lives. Living like the world does cause us to not hear when the Holy Spirit calls on us to do certain things. Ignoring Him is a show of disrespect, does not matter how many times we tell Him during Sunday worship that we love Him.

 

This kind of behaviour calls for regret and mourning, it calls for hearing the conviction of the Holy Spirit and repenting as a result. When my dog has been naughty, it is written all over his demeanour. His tail is between his legs and he literally crawls before me. When I found out what he had done and reprimanded him, he is quick to offer his paw in repentance and once I have pardoned him, he is his old self – all guilt forgiven and forgotten. In many ways we should be the same towards God.

 

Lord, help me to realise in what respects I disregard you.