James Part 1 - The Split Soul

Andrew Grey starts a new preaching series on the book of James.

This week's Bible passage is James 1v1-18

Transcript

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Please turn in your Bibles to the Book of James, James chapter one. Today we're going to begin preaching our way through the book of James over these next weeks and months. Let me pray, and then I'll read verses one to eighteen. Let's pray. Father in heaven, we ask that you would bend our hearts towards your testimonies and away from selfish gain. And we ask that for Jesus' name's sake. Amen. Amen. So, James chapter one, let's listen to the words of Almighty God. James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes in the dispersion, greetings. Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness, and let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. But let him ask in faith with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord. He is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways. Let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation, and the rich in his humiliation, because like a flower of the grass he will pass away. For the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the grass, its flower falls and its beauty perishes, so also will the rich man fade away in the midst of his pursuits. Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial. For when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life which God has promised to those who love him. Let no one say when he is tempted, I am being tempted by God, for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one, but each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then, desire when it is conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death. Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures. Well, thanks be to God for his word to us today. Children, children, you know what a tug of war is. Yes? You know what a tug of war is. Two teams pulling on a rope in opposite directions. Now I want you to imagine or even practice a different kind of tug of war, okay? So, children, you have my permission to do this. If you are sitting on one side of either your mum or dad or a very well-known friend. What I would like you to do, ideally with someone on the other side, is try and tug said mum or dad in two different directions. So no rope. This is a tug of parents, okay? So you can you just practice that for a minute. Big people, if you wanted so to do, you're welcome to. Or just use your imagination. And if you are very strong, that person may feel like you can stop now. And if you're very strong, your mum or dad may have felt like they were actually being torn in two directions. Now that tug of war, that kind of tug of war, is a little bit like what this letter of James is all about. So God the Holy Spirit gave this letter through James. Probably this James is Jesus' half-brother. It came firstly, verse 1 tells us to the twelve tribes in the dispersion. So a bunch of Christians who were dispersed, they were scattered, probably because of persecution, probably people who were converted out of a Jewish background, and they are now persecuted and suffering. But there was something else going on. They were being torn, torn in two directions, just like we are. This and then this, and then this, and then this, and all of these different bits, they don't feel like they've got anything to do with each other. They seem a bunch of spiritual problems which are unrelated. But here is the point, they are not. They are not unconnected, they are all to do with our tug of war. Think of it like going to see the doctor. You've got three different things wrong with you. You've stored them all up, and you go along with your little shopping list. Hey, doctor, I've got a sore elbow, I've got a rumbly tummy, and my left eye is blurry. You say, okay, I've got these small niggles, it's not a big deal. They are three different medicines. I would like to have three lots of pills, please. I would like some elbow medicine and some tummy medicine and some eye medicine, and I will be on my way. And then the doctor looks at you and says to you, listen to me very carefully. 9 a.m. tomorrow morning, be at the hospital. Um, I don't want to scare you, but you are in trouble. These symptoms you've just described, they do go together. They're actually symptoms of a really serious disease. I've got no medicine that I can give you. You need to have a heart operation. Otherwise, you will die. And at that point, in the doctor's surgery, we either go, it's all right, Doc, I know best, or we go, I will do what you say. Now, I'm not preaching this morning the whole of uh chapter 1, 1 to 18. Lord willing, we're actually going to spend two more Sundays on the passage. My aim for this sermon is simply to introduce the diagnosis, introduce this underlying diagnosis, which has to do with this internal tug of war, and begin to show us the course of treatment the Lord provides. But I think most of all, most of all, try to help us understand and feel and really believe that this could even be a problem. So, first heading: We are divided people. We are divided people. In verse 8, we read this phrase He is a double-minded man, literally double-souled. So God has made us with a body and a soul. Here is a man with two souls, or you could say a split soul. We all know what it is to have to make a choice, but to not know which choice to make. And sometimes that's absolutely fine. Uh, you're at a car showroom. Do I buy this car? Do I buy that car? And I'm completely torn, I'm tugged in two directions. Well, that's fine. That's not a problem at all. Uh we are creatures, we don't know all of the facts, some level of indecision is absolutely fine. That is not the double-mindedness James is talking about. He's talking about something deeply wrong with us. Uh human beings, we are made in God's image. If Christians, we are redeemed, we're purchased by Jesus, and so we exist to love God and love our neighbor. That's why we are here, that's what we exist for, and yet we also love other things which pull us in different directions. I love Christ. I love other things. I love Christ, I love other things. There's a war within. In verse 6, James gives us a picture of this. He talks about a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. So you imagine you are by the sea on a stormy day. The sea is never fixed, it is never constant, it never stays in one place. The wind constantly moves it. It is never solid. And that is the man with the split soul, never solid in his loves and his affections. And all through his letter, James gives to us different symptoms of this split soul. For example, our words. We say we are a Christian, yet we sometimes use words in a profoundly non-Christian way. And that's a symptom, isn't it, of a split soul. Or the way that Christians might be treat tempted to treat one another. Now, this was a big problem in the churches to which James wrote. So imagine for a moment that a church needed to raise funds for a building project. It's purely hypothetical. You read on in the book of James and you you hear a really serious warning. It is very easy to treat a rich man who comes into the gathering differently to a poor man. Yes, we we love the Lord, but we love rich Christians more than other Christians. And James would say, yes, that's a symptom. That's a symptom of a split soul. And James wants us to know, the Spirit of God wants us to know that this double-mindedness is actually fatal. And verse 15, it brings forth death. It's not inevitable. Now that is one really important thing for us to register. By the grace of God and through the work of the Spirit, and through God's gift of repentance, there is life, there is wholeness, there's healing. But without that, there is death. Double-mindedness ends in hell. And God hates it. That's why it ends where it does. He hates it. He hates it like a husband who discovers his wife has been cheating on him. All through the letter, James says exceedingly direct things to the Christians, to the churches he's writing to. Maybe the stiffest is in chapter 4 and verse 4. If you just look over there for a moment, you adulterous people. Literally, you adulteresses. He's talking to Christians who are in real trouble, actually. They've gone a long way down this double-minded, split-souled route. And he says, You're adulteresses. So marriage is meant to be faithful and exclusive. Marriage is meant to teach us about our union, our covenant with the Lord. And so when we love Christ and we love elsewhere, the Lord hates it. It's spiritual adultery. Let me give another Bible illustration of this. Do you remember the Old Testament story of Elijah and the prophets of Baal? You can read about it in 1 Kings 18. It's a brilliant chapter. It's like a face-off between the true God and a false God, Baal. And the prophet Elijah, he accuses his own people of being double-minded. Now he doesn't use the word double-minded. He says this how long will you go on limping between two opinions? Are you going to worship the Lord or are you going to worship Baal? They were tugged in two directions. They just couldn't quite make up their minds. And we might think to ourselves, you know, Christian people, that seems a bit OTT. But it's really easy to do, isn't it? I love you, Lord. And if we are Christian people, we do. We do. We love him. But our hearts also stray. We find that we love other things too. We have other gods. Maybe it's like this on Sunday, I love you, Lord, but on Thursday, not so much. Now, our souls, um, our hearts to use another word, they are always at work. Yeah, we are busy creatures. You know, our souls, our hearts, they are always working, we are always desiring something and thinking about something, and then making choices and acting on those choices. And so easily we desire two things at once. The Psalms warn us about having a double heart. It's not it's not a new idea that James comes up with. Though this word two-souled, he did coin it, double-souled, in a duplicity. It comes very naturally. Now, just a little side note in verse 6 and verse 7, he talks about doubting. He says, no doubting. Um we'll we'll come back to that a little bit next week, God willing. But just for now, note this. He is not saying that a real Christian never has doubts or questions. We find hard things to wrestle with in the Christian faith. He's actually talking about divided loyalties, and that is different to doubts and questions. Divided loyalties. I trust God and I do not trust God. And both of those things are going on in the same heart, in the same breath. I trust God and I actually trust in something else. I am loyal to the one true God, Father, Son, and Spirit, but I'm actually loyal to something else as well. Look down at verse 14 for a moment. This again opens another window on this split soul. We'll say loads more on this verse in a couple of weeks' time, God willing. But just for now, look at it. Each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Now that verse, it is an exceedingly relatable verse. Now, this is this is you and me at our worst, if you like. So if we're Christian people, when we're in our right minds, we love the Lord Jesus Christ, but we are not always in our right minds, and I am often, do you see there, enticed, but but enticed by what? Answer, enticed by my own desire. So my desires, my lusts for pleasure or power or security or wealth. It's like bait on a fisherman's hook. I want that thing, and it entices me, and it leads me away from allegiance to Christ. And I find myself torn in two, though, because at the same time I also love him. Now, one example James keeps coming back to in later chapters is our words, our speech. You might want to just look briefly at chapter 3 and verse 10. Chapter 3 and verse 10. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. So a Christian's mouth can one minute bless someone. You know, speak words of life and grace and truth. And in the next breath can curse them. So, in other words, our speech, it's like a symptom, isn't it? Of double-mindedness. We can have a split tongue. Now, sometimes we feel this double-mindedness in the moment, don't we? We can actually feel this tug of war. And maybe you think in Romans chapter 7, you know, the things I want to do, I don't do, the things I don't want to do, I do. And you feel this internal tug of war. Sometimes it's after the event, isn't it? And you look back and you think, Andrew, how how could I have done that? How could I have said that? How could I have thought that? And this is the reason why. Um because there is something still wrong with my soul. Now, question do we believe this? First, if you're someone just looking into the Christian faith, you you know you're not yet a Christian. Let me encourage you. Like being in the doctor's surgery, hearing bad news can be the best news if it sets you on the road to health. You and me, all of us, you are made to worship the one true God and to love other people the way God wants you to, but you do not love as God wants you to. You are set against your own nature, you're set against how you were built. And maybe you're learning that you're held as a captive in this, maybe a willing captive, but also you're sensing a kind of an unwillingness. Well, you cannot make yourself whole. You cannot make yourself whole, but Jesus can. Jesus can make you whole. He can both forgive you your sins and he can begin this wonderful renovation project in you. Next week we'll begin thinking about the process of how God makes Christians whole. What should a Christian do with this idea of double-mindedness? Well, we need to understand it and we need to believe it, don't we? So by the grace of God, I have been brought to love and worship the Lord. I love him. And to a greater or lesser extent, I still have divided loyalties. So however healthy a Christian may be, however healthy a church may be, this side of heaven, we are not yet cured of double-mindedness, and there is a constant danger before us. I'd encourage you this week to try and try and go through your week, just alert to the reality of double-mindedness. Some of us will know we are deeply divided, and maybe it is as stark as on Sunday I profess faith in Jesus, Monday to Saturday, I do not feel, think, speak, act like I belong to Jesus. And you know that. Well what? Second heading. God wants us to be whole. He does not want us to be content in double-mindedness, no sense of that'll do with my split soul. He wants us to be whole. So back in chapter one, look at the end of verse four. That you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. That word perfect comes seven times in the book of James, and that's no accident, I'm sure. In the Bible, seven is a number of perfection. Seven times he talks about perfection. Now, what do we make of that word? It's the same word Jesus used in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5:48. He said, Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.

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Oh, that comes, maybe that comes like a bucket of water. Be perfect. It has the sense of completion. That's what it means. Being whole, not missing anything. So imagine a craftsman who has built something beautiful. It's a piece of music, maybe a symphony. Or maybe it's an engine, a finely tuned engine in an F1 car. Or maybe it's a rugby team. It is finished, it's completed. Every single part is there and is working together and is working wholly, perfectly. So now apply this to our souls. What does it mean to have a whole soul? And the answer is total allegiance to the Lord, which reveals itself in Christ-like obedience. Total allegiance to the Lord revealing itself in Christ-like obedience. Blessed are those who keep his testimonies, who seek him with their whole hearts. So going after the Lord with a whole heart and in the power of his spirit keeping his law. Or another way to define wholeness, we could simply say it looks like Jesus. He is the ultimate whole human. Take his words, just his words. He blesses God. He speaks grace and truth to his neighbor always, even when he's under pressure. Isn't that the moment when so often our speech fails us, or rather our hearts fail us? He doesn't just instruct us to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. He actually does it. Now, I want to have speech like that. I hope you want to have speech like that, a consistent tongue, a single tongue. And the Lord Jesus Christ was like that right across the board. You could look at his, you could listen to his words. You could see the way he treated both the great and the lowly. Maybe lepers or the unclean. You could actually look at all of his conduct and you could you could read something off it. They were symptoms, symptoms of something, symptoms of a whole soul. He loved God, loved his neighbour. He obeyed in the power of the Holy Spirit. And really wonderfully, and this is why it's such good news, this is what he desires for us. He wants us to share in his wholeness. It's what we were made for, it's what he has redeemed us for. He wants to put us back together again. So, third heading. This we finish with. Ask for grace from the undivided God. Look at chapter 1 and verse 5. If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach. So when we lack something, we ask God, and when we lack this, this wholeness, and that's what he's talking about here mainly. When we lack this wholeness, ask God, and that makes sense because he is an undivided God. He loves wholeness, he hates it when whole things get divided, because he is an undivided God. In the Old Testament, the great confession, the great command comes in Deuteronomy 6. It was part of our call to worship this morning. So Deuteronomy 6, 4 to 6. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, might. That sentence, the Lord is one. Just think about what that means. It it doesn't just mean there is only one God, that's true. It's actually saying more, it's saying the Lord is one, he is whole, he is undivided, he is not split in his affections, in his character, it's not chopped up into bits. Now, one implication, he does not change. Wonderful, he does not change. I am very changeable. I might be vaguely lovable one minute, and I might be selfishly grumpy the next, and so might you. Never him. There is no shadow of turning or changeability with God. He is only and ever light, pure light, pure goodness. So, what in theology is called God's simplicity, he does not have bits. We have bits, both because we're creatures, but also because we're sinful. He does not have bits, he is simple. So he cannot be divided against himself. He's always all good, all-wise, all powerful, always. And of course, that is why we're to love him with all that we are. Makes sense, doesn't it? Undivided God, undivided love. And here's the encouragement, and I hope this encourages you if you feel the weight of your split soul. When we lack wholeness, even as Christian people, we do love the Lord, but we know we're still divided, we can ask our generous God. Now, in verse 5, there's something really wonderful, it's slightly hidden in the English. That word generously, it actually means single or without division. Tells us how he gives. Remember the last time you gave reluctantly. I have many times it's the right thing to do, but I really do not want to have to do it. That is not how God gives. He gives in an undivided way. And it's wonderful, isn't it? He comes to people who by nature are adulterous, me, you. We're divided in our affections, and he says, Draw near to me, you know, draw near to me, and I will draw near to you. He stands ready to bless us and heal us and give us himself. And he does so without reproach. Yeah, what's reproach? I think reproach is something like this. I cannot believe you have made more pro you've made so little progress. But I suppose I'd better help you out again. That's reproach, isn't it? He is not like that. Just remind us of what the Lord Jesus says in Matthew 7. You know, ask and it shall be given to you. He is that kind of God. And so the Lord comes to us in verse 5 with a real promise. Verse 5 is a real promise. If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. That is to say, he will make you whole. Now, next week we'll begin, God willing, thinking about the process by which he makes us whole. But just for now, we we tend towards divided hearts. The world around us, which we haven't really talked about, it's full of lies, isn't it, about where to find completion. You find completion in yourself, or you follow your desires, or you are completed by another person. Don't be deceived. We are only whole when we love the Lord with all our hearts. That's the message of James. We are only whole when we love the Lord with all our heart, and that is a work which our generous, undivided Father in heaven delights to do. Let's pause for a moment of silent prayer. Let's each take an opportunity to talk quietly to our Father in heaven. And so, O Lord, uh, teach us your way that we may walk in your truth, unite my heart to fear your name. For Christ's name's sake. Amen.