Sermon 2020.10.25 James Part 7

Karl Barth is widely considered to be one of the finest Christian minds of the 20^th century.  Barth profoundly impacted the work of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Hans Kung, and Reinhold Niebuhr, among many others, and his five-volume work on Church Dogmatics is one of the most thorough and influential studies of systematic theology written in the history of the church.  He’s also the author of one of my favorite quotes.  Barth once said “in the church of Jesus Christ, there should be no non-theologians”. 

Having an understanding of the theology of our faith is incredibly important because through that understanding, we learn how to live.  At its core, theology is the study of God’s heart, and since our goal is to make our hearts look like God’s heart, we really kind of need to know what our goal looks like, don’t we?  I’ve spent almost my entire adult life working as a retail store manager, and one of the things that is drilled into managers in training is the importance of giving clear, definable, attainable goals to those who report to you.  A manager can’t reasonably expect his staff to perform up to expectations until you’ve made those expectations crystal clear.  So it is with our faith that we want to have a clear understanding of what God’s expectations are for us, and that understanding comes from our knowledge of theology.

It would be my fondest hope that in the weeks that you have so graciously allowed me to fill this pulpit that I have helped to lead you on that journey to a better understanding of the theology of your faith, but there is a really interesting dynamic here.  In spite of all of the words spoken, Theology, from God’s standpoint, is actually just about as simple as it gets…  Love God, love your neighbor.  That’s it folks, love God, love your neighbor.  When Jesus was asked what was the most important commandment, He replied ^“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.  This is the first and great commandment.  And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.  On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”  Those were Jesus’ own words, “On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

The great Jewish Rabbi Hillel was once asked to teach the entire Torah while standing on one foot.  Hillel’s insightful reply was “That which is hateful to you, do not unto another: This is the whole Torah. The rest is commentary — [and now] go study.”  This is a beautiful response, not only for its simplicity and accuracy, but especially for its admonition to “go and study”.  Though God’s theology is incredibly simple, learning to apply that theology to our everyday lives is incredibly complex.  Karl Barth’s seminal work on systematic theology is over six million words written in five volumes, and it is unfinished; he died before he could complete it.

In the two books of Peter that we have studied together, and now in James, both writers have tried to present our Christian theology as being rooted in a choice that we each have to make either to present our lives to God, committing to spend a lifetime learning what it means to follow Him and to serve Him, or to reject God, either consciously or subconsciously, and to live our lives according to our own whims and desires.

Critics of Christianity, and really critics of religion in general, claim that people follow that which can’t be known; that ultimately, people get their minds set on one thing or another that “God told me to do” and that much of the world’s strife and suffering is a result of this line of thinking, and they’re not completely wrong.  But follow me on this, because there are some things that CAN be known… if God’s perfect commandment to love God and to love our neighbor is being applied, then strife and suffering will be completely impossible, because the actions of one who is loving will, of necessity, never hurt anyone… ever.  So those who are acting hurtfully, much as they may feel their cause to be justified, are NOT acting within the will of God.  THIS is why understanding the theology of our faith is so critically important.  Not only do we need to have a right understanding of what it means for us to serve God, but we need to be living a life of faithful service to God, in order to help the world to understand that God is not the source of earthly strife and suffering.  When hatefulness and intolerance are wrapped in the name of Jesus, it gives all of Christianity a black eye.  Our responsibility as believers is to counter that narrative by living lives of extravagant love and unmerited grace; in order that we may show the world what the heart of God really looks like.

James begins this section of his letter explaining why people do not get along.  Dissention in the church greatly diminishes our witness, and James wants us to understand why differences and quarrels happen.  The language that James uses here is harsh, but he is trying to make a point.  He is describing the actions of people who have chosen to continue to follow the world’s way of doing things.  “What is causing the quarrels and fights among you?” James says, “Don’t they come from the evil desires at war within you?  You want what you don’t have, so you scheme and kill to get it. You are jealous of what others have, but you can’t get it, so you fight and wage war to take it away from them. Yet you don’t have what you want because you don’t ask God for it.  And even when you ask, you don’t get it because your motives are all wrong—you want only what will give you pleasure.” 

There are two things that are going on here.  First, James is describing the actions of the one who has a worldly heart.  It’s not a pretty picture that James paints, but unfortunately, it’s accurate.    I’ve used this quote from Richard Coble before, but it bears repeating, as it explains perfectly the worldly heart.  Coble says “[It’s the] order of human life which consistently rejects or defies God and His claims upon [humans].  It is essentially a self-centered life.  Its primary traits are the giving of great effort to gratify appetites, physical, mental, and emotional, and intense hatred of any who may resist or fail to cooperate in efforts to attain that satisfaction.” 

The heart that has rejected God can be cooperative to a point.  But when it comes down to having one’s own way, as opposed to sacrificing something that one really wants, there will be no sacrifice, and indeed, there may be great strife as people contend with one another to satisfy their desires.

In the first century, prospective church members went through a thorough period of learning about the Gospel before they were ever even admitted to the assembly, and yet still these problems existed.  Dissension in the church is nothing new, but it’s always a problem.  Harmony among believers is something that will draw others to the church.  Lacking that harmony damages the witness of the church, and may even drive people away; especially new or prospective members.

The second thing that’s going on is a wonderful teaching about prayer that almost gets lost in the middle of James’ argument.  “You don’t get what you want because you don’t ask God for it, and when you do ask you don’t get it because your motives are all wrong.

I’m not certain, but I believe that it was my friend, Chaplin Greg Monroe, who once told me that “Prayer is not asking God to do your will, prayer is asking God to incorporate you into His will.”  The believer who has chosen to serve God prays within God’s will because the believer’s heart is attuned to God’s heart and desires the same things.  When a person prays selfishly, it’s probably a pretty good barometer of where their heart is. 

James continues by calling worldly people adulterers, but this doesn’t mean what you may think it means.  Remember that the church is called the bride of Christ.  For a couple of thousand years before the time of Jesus, Jewish theology viewed rebellion against God as spiritual adultery, and indeed this is a concept that you will find often spoken by the prophets.  A quick reading of Hosea should be all you need to understand this concept.  James is actually making his most powerful argument yet about the need to make a choice to be a follower of God rather than a follower of worldly ways.  “Don’t you realize that friendship with the world makes you an enemy of God?” James asks. 

I know that I’ve spoken about this before.  We know that God IS love, and so sometimes the warnings to humanity about the consequences of turning away from God may seem a little incongruous, but rejecting God is not something to be taken lightly.  Remember that God, in spite of His infinite power, does not have the ability to create love.  Love only exists when it is given of one’s free will, and so free will is a central and indeed indispensable, part of God’s plan.  No one is forced to love God; the choice is entirely ours. 

In one of the best sermons I ever heard on this subject, David Cotton said that ultimately, God gives people exactly what they want.  The Bible says that the wisdom of God is foolishness to man, and to those who have made the choice to reject God and to embrace the ways of the world, God’s kingdom is foolishness.  The idea of turning away from selfishness and greed and exchanging those things for generosity and compassion is laughable to those who are of the world; and so, God, lovingly, strange as is seems, will reluctantly, but resolutely, allow these people to have their own way. 

I have to be honest.  I have struggled mightily over this sermon this week.  I’ve written, deleted, and re-written a dozen different versions of this thought, because I want to present this with a sound theology, but this is one of the most challenging questions of the Christian faith. So, leave it to the Spirit to provide me with a theologically sound comment.  After all of the writings and deletions, in frustration, I opened my email to send Rev. Rack a note to ask him if he had any insight for me on this passage.  When I opened my email, the first thing that I saw was his daily devotion, and in that devotion was a quote from St. Symeon’s “The New Theologian that expressed exactly what I wanted to say. 

“God is truth and light, God’s judgment is nothing else than our coming into contact with truth and light.  In the day of the Great Judgment all [people] will appear naked before this penetrating light of truth.  The “books” will be opened. What are these “books”?  They are our hearts.  Our hearts will be opened by the penetrating light of God, and what is in these hearts will be revealed.  If in those hearts there is love for God, those hearts will rejoice in seeing God’s light.  If, on the contrary, there is hatred for God in those hearts, these [people] will suffer by receiving on their opened hearts this penetrating light of truth which they detested all their life.  So, that which will differentiate between one [person] and another will not be a decision of God; a reward or a punishment from Him, but that which was in each one’s heart; what was there during all our life will be revealed in the Day of Judgment.  If there is a reward and a punishment during this revelation – and there really is – it does not come from God but from the love or hate which reigns in our heart.  Love has bliss in it, hatred has despair, bitterness, grief, affliction, wickedness, agitation, confusion, darkness, and all the other interior conditions which compose hell.”

So, let’s take a step back and take a wide-angle view at this.  Practically everyone, and especially people who have been married for a while, are familiar with the idea that love requires some sacrifice.  If you’re blessed to be in one of those relationships where both partners are equally willing to sacrifice and both partners are equally committed to the relationship, the joy that one derives from that relationship, and the beauty of that relationship are impossible to deny.  Even among such imperfect beings as us, such a relationship can be wonderfully and magically fulfilling. 

We, the church, are the bride of Christ.  Marriage was given to us as a guide to help us to understand the nature of our relationship with God.  Given the opportunity, which of us wouldn’t choose a blissfully close and loving marriage over a marriage marked with selfishness and strife?  When we think of it this way, James is making perfectly good sense.  Why would we choose enmity with a loving and gracious God when, with a little sacrifice and commitment to the relationship, we can enjoy the greatest love we could ever possibly find?  Why would we ever turn our back on a God whose graciousness is such that He sent His own Son to die for us, that we might be reconciled with Him?

James continues: “Do you think the Scriptures have no meaning? They say that God is passionate that the spirit he has placed within us should be faithful to him.” Blaise Pascal once said “There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of each [person] which cannot be satisfied by any created thing but only by God the Creator, made known through Jesus Christ.”
When all is said and done, the question becomes relatively simple. Are we willing to commit to a relationship with God and to make the sacrifices necessary to make that relationship work?

And what sacrifices are we asked to make? James closes this section of his letter telling us just that. “So humble yourselves before God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come close to God, and God will come close to you. Wash your hands, you sinners; purify your hearts, for your loyalty is divided between God and the world. Let there be tears for what you have done. Let there be sorrow and deep grief. Let there be sadness instead of laughter, and gloom instead of joy. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up in honor.
It’s been said that our God is a jealous God. What that means is that God is totally unwilling to give up on us. With unimaginable love and infinite patience, God forgives us over and over and over again. He seeks us, calls us, illuminates our path to finding Him, and ever seeks to draw us near to Him.

So, let us seek to draw near to Him, in order that we may discover a love that is unlike any love that we have ever known, and deeper than we can ever imagine.

Sermon 2020.10.18 James Part 6

I love the comics.  I subscribe to a website that sends me all of my favorite comic strips in a daily email.  I got this love of comics from my mom.  From as early as I can remember, my mom spent a part of every morning reading the comics.  She still subscribes to a newspaper today, and every day she reads the comics.  After she reads them, since she knows which ones are my favorites, she cuts them all out, sorts them by comic, then by day, boxes them, and mails them to me about once every other month.  I love reading these comics, and I do so often, but speaking honestly, I think I’m about 6 months behind and I have a huge box that I haven’t even started yet.  This is just one of the many reasons why I think that my mom is so awesome. 

My all-time favorite comic is Calvin and Hobbes.  For those of you who aren’t familiar, Calvin is a perpetually 6-year-old child, and Hobbes is his stuffed tiger.  Well, he’s a stuffed tiger except when Calvin and Hobbes are alone, at which point he becomes a real tiger, and I’ll let you in on a little secret; I think the reason that I love Calvin and Hobbes so much is because Calvin is really me as a child and Hobbes is me as an adult.  For those of you who are familiar with Calvin and Hobbes, that should explain a lot!

One of my many favorite, and very telling, Calvin and Hobbes strips is one where Calvin is talking to Hobbes.  “You know what we need Hobbes”, Calvin says, “we need an attitude”.  “An attitude?” Hobbes asks.  “Yeah” Calvin replies.  “You can’t be cool without an attitude”.  “Really?” asks Hobbes.  “Sure, they’re all the rage” Calvin says, “Now what kind of attitude could we have?  Hobbes answers “We could be courteously deferential”.  With a scowl on his face, Calvin responds “Oh good, that’s real cool”.

I laughed, thinking about this strip as I was reading Douglas Moo’s commentary on James this week, because Moo was commenting on James’ passage about “the humility that comes from wisdom”.  Let’s face it, the world does not consider humility to be a virtue.  Humility is for the weak.  In a world that subscribes to the old adage to “get while the getting’s good”, in a world that exalts self over others and always looks out for number one, to be humble will likely get you bowled over as others race past you in pursuit of their own goals.  The expression on Calvin’s face is priceless as he responds to Hobbes’ suggestion, because Calvin knows that meekness will get you nowhere.  Or will it?

In today’s passage, the NIV uses the word “humility”, as does the translation from which I read the passage this morning, the NLT.  The King James uses the word “meekness”, but the word in Greek is πραΰτητι, a word that is used to describe a horse that has been trained, with the meaning of something that is extremely powerful, but is under the control of a master.  Hmmm!  How appropriate is that description?  So often it is that God’s wisdom is foolishness to the world.  While the world interprets meekness as weakness, an unwillingness to act boldly, the Godly definition of meekness is of one who has immense power, but whose power is under God’s control.

We spent a couple of months studying 1^st and 2^nd Peter and the thing that stuck with me about that study was Peter’s continual emphasis on choosing the kingdom strategy over the earthly strategy.  Here, James is essentially saying the same thing, though for the time being, he has limited his scope to talking about wisdom.

Throughout his letter, James maintains the theme of having an active, functioning faith, a faith that expresses itself in Godly action.  And James continually contrasts this vibrant, active faith with a worldly belief system that is filled with knowledge but lacks wisdom. 

The Apostle Paul speaks directly to this idea in his preface to that famous passage in 1 Corinthians 13 where he writes “If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.  If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.  If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. 

When we read this passage, it really brings home the point that love is the driving force behind Godly living, and so I think that what James is trying to teach us is that Godly wisdom is knowledge, that is tempered by love; that this meekness that comes from wisdom is knowledge that is under the control of a master.  The master is God, and God is teaching us to temper everything that we do with love.

In Micah 6:8 the prophet Micah, speaking the words of God, asks the question “What does the Lord require of you?”  Through Micah, God answers His own question with three requirements.  Live justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.  According to Micah, this humility, this power under the control of a master is one of the three requirements for serving God.  Douglas Moo makes the point that meekness springs from wisdom.  Moo says “This Christian meekness involves a healthy understanding of our own unworthiness before God, and a corresponding humility and lack of pride in our dealings with our fellow humans”.

So, let’s think about this for a minute.  What’s likely to happen when we humans gain an abundance of knowledge about a particular subject?  May there possibly be a tendency to develop a bit of an attitude about it? 

I can tell you from personal experience that songwriters are a hopelessly pompous bunch of people.  Songwriters tend to be hyper-critical of the work of others, always picking apart the things that they think that they would have done better.  If you’ll remember, I personally admitted as much in a sermon that I preached a few weeks ago.  Remember my comment that there was a song that I found to be musically unintelligent?  Now, imagine that I was teaching the student that wrote that song.  Would my knowledge allow me to critique the song, offering opinions on how I thought that the song could have been better written?  Could I have made suggestions as to what could have been done to make the song more musically intelligent?  Could I have helped the songwriter create a more musically interesting piece of music?  Yeah…  I absolutely could have done that!  But could I have done it lovingly? 

This is the question that James is asking.  I have a lot of music knowledge, gained from years of practice and from having attended a pretty good music school, and in the world’s way of doing things, this knowledge is all I need.  But when we seek to serve God, we understand the fact that all of this is not of our own doing.  Our knowledge is a gift from God, He is the One who gave us the aptitude, He is the One who supplied the opportunities for us to learn and to hone our craft, He is the One who led us every step of the way, in order that we may learn to use the gifts that he has showered upon us, to His glory, and doing this requires more than just knowledge, it requires wisdom.  Knowledge, tempered with love.

“Who is wise and understanding among you?”James asks, “let them show it by their good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom.”.  The Rev. Dr. Bob Utley says “God’s wisdom must have a proper motivation or it ceases to be God’s wisdom.”  You can be completely right, and yet still be wrong, because your heart is in the wrong place!

 To have full knowledge of something and to be able to impart that knowledge can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on where it is coming from!  To impart knowledge in an unloving way does not glorify God, and acting in an unloving manner can be spiritually detrimental to the person on the receiving end.  If they know you are a person of faith, and yet you act hurtfully, you significantly diminish your witness, if not negating it entirely, with the end result that God is not glorified.  Now, impart the same wisdom but do so in a loving manner and the end result is completely different; same knowledge, different wisdom.

This is where that kingdom strategy vs. earthly strategy thing comes in.  Are we genuinely seeking to serve God?  Are our actions designed to bring Him glory?  Is the love with which God has filled our hearts to overflowing shining through our lives and our actions for the entire world to see?  Or… are we seeking glory for ourselves?  Warren Wiersbe says “The wisdom of this world exalts man and robs God of His glory.” 

And it’s here that James gives us that contrast between the heavenly and the worldly.  “But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth.  Such “wisdom” does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic.  For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice. “

Those who are of this world believe themselves to be in competition with the rest of the world.  This “take what you can before someone else takes it from you” attitude is the antithesis of how God calls His people to live.  Let’s take a quick look at the first century church, as described in Acts 4:32-35.  “All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had.  With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all, that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.

Does anyone remember the story of Ananias and Sapphira?  In Acts 5 they sold some of their possessions to give to the community of believers but kept some of the proceeds for themselves.  There wasn’t anything wrong with their keeping some for themselves but apparently, they presented the gift as if they had given everything.  In so doing, they revealed the condition of their hearts.  Their giving was motivated not by a selfless desire to serve, but rather for appearances.  Peter called them out on their actions and spoke of their gift, saying “While it remained, was it not your own? And after it was sold, was it not in your own control? Why have you conceived this thing in your heart? You have not lied to men but to God.”

Worldly wisdom creates strife and dissension as people contend with each other for available resources, for acceptance, for admiration, or for status.  There is neither room nor reason for this in God’ kingdom.  Once believers understand how deeply we are all connected, once believers understand the depth of responsibility that God has given to each of us to care for one another, that is when we begin to understand the wisdom that comes from heaven.  Verse 17: “But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere.” 

And so, just like Peter, James has set this contrast between heavenly and earthly wisdom.  James makes clear his conviction that good works are the natural by-product of a faithful life.  Douglas Moo says “It is clear that James does not view wisdom as a series of correct propositional statements but as a quality that motivates certain kinds of behavior.”

Our care for others is inexorably rooted in our Godly wisdom, and the things that we do for others are done in meekness, not only that in our actions not we, but God may be glorified, but also that those in need are spared the embarrassment of the publicity of gifts that have been given in order to glorify the giver.  Earthly giving is always transactional.  I had a boss once who was a genius in the area of customer service.  Time and time again I watched him turn irate customers into smiling, happy people.  He knew how to bend just enough to satisfy the customer, but his mantra was “never give something without getting something”.  He had mastered the worldly art of schmoozing, but his motives were always self-serving; satisfy the customer so we can make more money from them.  Godly giving is not transactional, Godly giving is rooted in grace. Our actions, as believers, are simply a by product of WHO WE ARE IN CHRIST.  DR. Utley says “If you don’t care about people who are in need there is something wrong with your wisdom.”  As believers, we always want our hearts to be in the right place, and so we must continually seek the Spirit’s guidance as we seek to live and to act with the meekness of wisdom.

Warren Wiersbe hit the nail right on the head when he said “Meekness is the right use of power and wisdom is the right use of knowledge.”  

As we leave here today, let us carry with us this wisdom from above, and let each of us seek to be a person with immense power, under the control of a master.