James Part 8 - Grace... For The Humble

Andrew Grey continues the Sunday sermon series on James, from chapter 3v13 - ch 4v12. This is from Sunday 17th May 2026

Transcript

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Let me pray for us. Heavenly Father, by nature we are from below, and we do not have what we need. We thank you for your grace, your mercy, your kindness, whereby you come down to us in the Lord Jesus by His Holy Spirit. And we pray for more grace now as we come to your word. We pray that none of us would harden ourselves against it. We pray that you would do this word in us for our joy, our gladness, our perseverance, our holiness. And we ask that in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. So continuing in the book of James, we're picking up James chapter 3 and verse 13. Let's listen to the true and living words of God. Who is wise and understanding among you, by his good conduct let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic, for where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people. Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you suppose it's to no purpose that the scripture says he yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us? But he gives more grace. Therefore, it says, God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. 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 hearts, 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. Do not speak evil against one another, brothers. The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother speaks evil against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law, but a judge. There is only one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbour? Thanks be to God for his word to us. The church of which we just read in those verses, can you imagine visiting this church? That church, that Christian community to which James wrote those words. Suppose for a moment that church had a website, and a website that was actually honest. Join us on Sunday morning for, verse 16, disorder and every vile practice. Chapter 4, verse 2. Come and experience murder as we fight and quarrel. As verse 11, as we speak evil against one another. Now, James, who wrote these words under the inspiration of God the Holy Spirit, he he wrote this letter to his brothers, brothers in Christ. The word brothers is tossed around liberally now. In the Bible, it is reserved for the adopted children of God. So here's the question: Can Christians, could a Christian church be so frankly unchristian? Is that even believable? It ought not to be so, but can it be so? How can it be so? Now to many of us, it will seem frankly unbelievable. Not all of us, though. Some of us know how sin, the world, and the devil can infect a church. James knew. Remember, his big aim in this letter is to help Christian people, whole churches, to become whole. All of us, we have somewhat split hearts. We love Christ and we don't love Christ. And he wants and God wants to make us whole. He wants an integrity of heart that then overflows in our lips, in our lives, in our congregation. In our passage today, we kind of join the company of this particular group of Christian people to whom James wrote, and he takes us away down the road that is marked double-minded. You know, this is the church of the seriously split soul. I think this passage is a bit like one of those warning pictures printed on a pack of cigarettes. If you're going to have a smoke, you've got to get past that photo. You know, your lungs are going to look like this, you know, tar-soaked, black, croaking, if you keep going down this road. So God's word here in the book of James says, your heart will look like this, your relationships will look like that, your words will sound like this if you keep going down this road. Your church will disintegrate if you carry on down the route marked double-mindedness, split soul. And obviously, James's aim that we is that we don't go that way. The Holy Spirit's aim through James is to make us whole. Now, just a word for you, if you're someone on the outside of the Christian faith and looking in and you're learning the things of Jesus Christ, can I just encourage you with this? The Bible is super honest about sin. It might be that as you're learning about Jesus, you're learning about what Jesus says about yourself. You're learning about the way to wholeness according to Jesus. And it starts by recognizing our own sin. Now, sin remains even in Christian people. And you hang around Christian people long enough and you discover that. You hang around here long enough, we will let you down. We all have the seeds of this passage in us, all of us. Hopefully, it's not worked out as hideously as this, but it could, even as Jesus is changing us. So my prayer for you is that you learn what it is for the first time to seek and receive God's grace. And that's where we'll get to by the end of this passage. So where we begin though, it's a bit like by lifting the bonnet of the car. And there are two cars before us in this passage, and James lifts one bonnet and then another bonnet, and he wants us to look at the engine, and they are two very, very different engines driving the car. Now, he doesn't call them engines, he calls them wisdoms. So he tells us there are two types of wisdom. For us, when we hear the word wisdom, we probably think knowledge, knowing stuff, being skilled at doing something. That is not what Bible wisdom is about. Bible wisdom is about what drives us. So there's our engine. Yeah, what is fueling it, and also what comes out of us, our output, words and behavior. Massively, wisdom is actually about ethics, how we speak, how we treat people. And in these verses, looking here at verses 13 and 18, James goes backwards and forwards between these two wisdoms, and obviously, he wants to get us to the place where we crave God's wisdom and more of it. And we will do and pray whatever it takes to go that way. And one key thing about wisdom, it will show itself. So that's the very first verse of our passage. Just look at verse 13 again. Who is wise and understanding among you, by his good conduct, let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. So for the Christian, if you're a Christian, you're a new creature, you've been born again, and it will show. It's what James has been saying in lots of different ways all through the letter. Faith reveals itself in godly works. You can't see saving faith, but you can see the fruit of saving faith. And in verse 13, we're given our first big clue about God's wisdom. He talks about the meekness of wisdom. Wisdom and meekness go together. God's wisdom and meekness belong. Now, meekness that doesn't mean uh being like a doormat. Jesus was meek, Jesus was not a doormat. In essence, meekness is humility, it's a totally honest self-appraisal. So here I am, honestly, truly, here is how I am before God. And then that is how I am before everyone else. Side note, probably meekness. I wonder whether that is the attribute that social media most loathes. When you stop and think about what it implies, that you are meek. Then we come to the other wisdom. Flip to the other car, look up, lift up the bonnet. Not the wisdom from above, but the wisdom from below. The next few verses. So here is the engine room of the divided heart. And the fuel that drives it is pride. Okay, that is the central feature of wisdom from below, and really it does come from below. It comes from the pit. What's it like? It's earthly. See that in verse 15? It's not of God, it's not from heaven, it's unspiritual. So we're imagining a person now who is driven by, animated by, not the Holy Spirit. And it is demonic. There is a devil. He has demons. That is part of the caste of characters in this universe. And this worldly wisdom is animated by the evil one. So here is the wicked trinity: the world, the flesh, and the devil. How do you discern it? Well, remember, wisdom reveals itself. So the wisdom from the pit, the wisdom from below, it comes out first of all inside of us. Verse 14. We all know what this feels like. Bitter jealousy and selfish ambition. Our newspapers this week have been full of bitter jealousy and selfish ambition. You just have to look at the front bench of the government in Parliament this week. You could just see it oozing. It was simultaneously fascinating and repulsive, wasn't it? Jockeying. Get out of my way. Children, uh, listen for a moment, children, you know what it is to feel jealous of someone. They have got something better than you. And that makes you sad or even cross. And the sad thing is, the tragedy is, Christian people, we can be like that. Jealousy, ambition, you can find them in Christians. And it is anti-meekness. It leads to things like boasting, puffing yourself up and knocking someone else down. So that's all going on inside. And then what is inside then reveals itself, it sort of vomits itself out into our relationships. Verse 16, where jealousy and selfish ambition exist in the heart, there will be disorder in every vile practice. Remember, this is talking about a church. So we're to imagine a bunch of people who are and ought to be brothers and sisters in Christ, but they are defending their rights, puffing themselves up, putting others down. There's a horrid bitchiness. And I think one challenge is really to believe this, you know, to read those words and think, yeah, actually, this can happen. Worldly wisdom can really infect Christians and churches. It's not make-believe. Whereas, verse 17, and then we we flip back to the other car, the other engine, the wisdom from above. And it's a beautiful vision of growing wholeness. It is a pure vision. There's cleanness on the inside and the outside. Here is something that is approved of by God. And James says it's all about growing and harvesting, it's about sowing and reaping. If you plant this seed, you will get that crop. Now is a good time to be sowing, it's spring. Plant an apple seed, and you get a harvest of apples. If you plant peace, if you plant peace in your relationships, what do you bring into the barn? Answer. Well, he says, doesn't he? Verse 18, you bring a harvest of righteousness. And above all else, this wisdom from above means that we will sow peace. Talking about sowing peace, not peas, peace. So here is a bunch of Christians in this letter who need to learn how to sow peace. Verse 17 is a beautiful verse. Imagine that personified by the Holy Spirit. Imagine that actually lived out, fleshed out. Here is a person who does not welcome conflict. He treats other people as precious. He is persuadable and teachable. He defers to others. His instinct when he meets another person's sin is to show kindness and forgiveness. He loves his brothers and sisters without favoritism, both the easy ones and the hard ones. He's not a hypocrite. It's a beautiful picture, isn't it? And then when you take that and plug that into a web of relationships, of course there is a peace. Should remind us of Jesus' words in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5, 9, Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. Actually, this reminds us of Jesus himself, doesn't it? Look again at verse 17. That is Christ. But it is not us by nature. We are not by nature like this. That's why we're told, verse 17, this wisdom is from above. It doesn't come from us, it doesn't come out of us. Something else comes out of us. Because we are people of jealousy and ambition. But when you're joined to Jesus, when you're filled with the Spirit of Jesus, that is what we can become. People who bring a godly order and peace to the body of Christ. Now the Christians to whom James first wrote this, they were a long way from that kind of wholeness. And he gives a really serious rebuke, therefore. And that's our second big heading. He says simply, worldly wisdom is wicked. And in the start of chapter 4, chapter 4, verses 1 to 5, he takes us in a couple of different directions. The wickedness of fighting among Christians. So he looks at the horizontal relationships in the church. That's verse 1. Then verse 4, the wickedness of setting yourself against God. So messed up relationships with each other, but also a messed up relationship with God. Think first of all, though, about the horizontal Christian people at war with each other. He talks about quarrels and fights and murder. And James says such things amount to war. Now most of us here will have very little direct experience of actual fighting. We haven't experienced actual war. We watch it on the news. We are distant from it, even as we have some sense of how horrific it is. And that is how enmity in the Christian community looks to God. So imagine two brothers, two Christian brothers in dispute. That's like a missile that just took out a house. Or two sisters in Christ are silently bitter toward each other. It's as if they are bayonetting each other to death. And James says that those quarrels and fights, that warfare, chapter 4, verse 1, it actually flows from our warlike passions within. The human heart is constantly ready, it's constantly on high alert to declare war against someone who clashes with us, who clashes with our self-gratification. Your passions are at war within you. Now, of course, God gives us desires. We are desiring creatures. We are built to love and to love intensely. The passions, though, that that word in verse 1, it's the word that gives us hedonism. These are desires to please myself. This is not a love of God, this is not a love of nature, this is a desire to please myself. And so here's the thing: when you step on my desires, I am then tempted to murder and fight and quarrel. Now when we stop and look at what James is saying, one response, I guess, to this might be isn't this a bit OTT? Isn't it just human nature to fight and quarrel? Is this really such a big deal? And the Bible's answer is emphatically yes. The very first murder in the Bible, Genesis 4, when Cain murders his brother Abel, the New Testament says that when Christian people do not love each other, we are like Cain. You know, 1 John 3. So we're not to tolerate war in the church. Then James, in this in this rebuke, he actually goes a bit further and deeper. He turns to the warring Christians walk with God, or what is left of their walk with God. Because here is a Christian who is very deeply out of sorts with their God. So verse 2, you do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, verse 3, because you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions. It's talking about unanswered prayer. And James does actually want to frighten us here because the Bible does sometimes use fear to bring us to our senses. Self centeredness, pleasing ourselves, it impacts the Christians' walk with God. God always hears us when we pray. But prayer is hindered when we are driven by those base desires. James says they don't receive because they're driven by those selfish passions. They're asking only to please themselves. It's a selfish kind of praying. And here is the most deeply divided heart, a split heart, professing to love the Lord, but even their prayers are motivated by greed. So give me this thing, Lord, to answer my desires. And the Lord will not have it. Alec Mottia puts it like this Prayer is defiled by the insistently self-centered heart. And James's conclusion, he kind of turns it up yet another notch, verse 4. You adulterous people, literally, you adulteresses. He says, You are like a wife who is cheating on her husband. And in that one word, adulteresses, James sums up so much of Scripture. For the Christian, God is our husband. He loves his people with the zeal and the passion of the holiest husband. He is jealous of us. Now, for us, jealousy is often stained with sin, but we know even, don't we, that jealousy is a right response to a breach of faith. And the Lord intends a full and exclusive communion with us in Christ. That union, it can't be undone. So when a person is joined to Jesus, it's it's it's irreparable that union, praise God. But, and here's the point it's possible for a Christian to live and even to relate to God as if he were not a Christian. It's worth repeating that. It is possible for a Christian to live and even relate to God as if he were not a Christian. Adultery, double-mindedness, a split soul. And James says this is a kind of disloyalty of the greatest order. You're seeking friendship with the world. You know, Christian, you don't belong in the world. But when we indulge our selfish desires and pleasures, we're actually stepping back into the world, to that place where Jesus is not Lord. And so James asks the Christian, what do you wish for? Verse 4. Do you wish to be a friend of the world? And the Christian, when we're in our right minds, we say, Of course not. But there is a warning for all of us. Friendship with the world equals enmity with God. Now I am so thankful for loving relationships in our church family. By the grace of God, I don't see a church that is far gone in hatred and disputes like this. I see so many seeds of peace-making, and I praise God for that. But we do need to believe the word of God. Any church in every Christian has the seeds of warfare in it. I do, you do, we do. Because we still battle with selfish desires. So small skirmishes, for example, they are really important. We're not just on the lookout for nuclear war in the congregation, but skirmishes, small arms combat, hand-to-hand, voice-to-voice conflict. It actually matters. Now, the place where the Lord wants to leave us, and that's our final point, it's with the grace of God. The grace of God which is given to the humble. God should be my enemy. God should be your enemy. Our sins deserve his righteous anger and condemnation, but he gives grace. In fact, he gives more grace. Now, the grace of God is the favor of God, the smile, the kindness of God for those he has joined to his son Jesus. Grace is given to those joined to Jesus. And this grace, what does it do? Well, grace cleans us. We have dirty hands, we have impure hearts. Here is cleansing through Jesus in the grace of God. The Lord Jesus' death upon the cross, that is the place of the Christian's cleansing. When we need to cleanse our hands and our hearts, it is to the cross that we must go. Because my dirtiness was taken by Jesus. The destruction which I deserve was borne by him. And so the grace of cleansing is available. But grace also changes us. The grace of God in Christ changes us. It's not just cleaning grace, it's changing grace. The Holy Spirit, He works on our hearts, He erodes those selfish ambitions. He makes us to pursue peace. But if here is grace, there is one way in which we can absolutely guarantee we will never receive grace. And that simply is pride. Verse 6: God opposes the proud. God implacably, unrelentingly, opposes the proud. So if we don't repent, if we don't turn from that selfishness, if we don't seek the Lord's cleansing and changing, if we continue to live for selfish passions, then there is no grace. Because God opposes the proud. Verses 11 and 12. I think they are a warning. And it goes like this. You speak evil against your brother. By implication, you're saying that the law of God, which says love your neighbour, that law does not apply to me, doesn't bind me. In fact, you're saying you know better than the law, but there's only one lawgiver and one judge. He can save, but he can also destroy. So, in other words, the meekness of wisdom, humility, it's the only way to grace. So, what's our posture? Your posture, it's kind of what you do with your body. So, what is the posture of the soul towards God? And the answer is verse 10. Humble yourself before the Lord, and he will lift you up. We need cleansing. Well, humble yourself. We're to be honest with God about our sin, and he will cleanse you. We need changing. Well, we're to be honest with our God about those just really foul passions that still grip me, still grip you sometimes, and even your pride, and confess it, and the Lord will help to kill it. Some of you will know how the Lord Jesus once told a story in Luke 18. There was a man who professed to be a believer, yet who treated other people with contempt. He would have fitted right in to that church James was writing to. But there was another man, a really notorious sinner, who would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but he just beat his chest and continually said, God be merciful to me, a sinner. And Jesus' verdict, the verdict of the judge, I tell you, this is the man who went home justified. And the other man did not. So let's bow our heads. We're going to take 30 seconds or so for silent prayer as we consider ourselves, things to confess, things to ask for, and then I'll lead us uh in prayer. Let's take a moment of quiet. So, Heavenly Father, we praise and thank you that you are a generous Father. We pray for more grace, we pray for more wisdom, pray for a fresh filling of your Holy Spirit and an increasingly whole heart. We pray that for ourselves, we pray that we might be a blessing to one another, build each other up, not tear each other down. We pray that because we know it pleases you and honours the Lord Jesus, who is the Lord of the Church. We pray, Heavenly Father, for the grace of humility, uh humility of heart, which then washes over into our words and our deeds. Pray that in and through that we might also honour and bless you and your name. Amen.