Tuesday, September 24, 2013

James 4:7-10

Therefore submit to God.  Resist the Devil by actively applying opposing pressure and he will flee from you.  Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.  Cleanse your hands, sinners.  Morally purify your heart, those who are uncertain of truth.  Lament, grieve, and weep.  Transform your laughter into mourning and your joy into dejection.  Be humble before the Lord and He will give a high position to you.

Thoughts for Today

First Thought:

 Resist the Devil and he will flee from you.  This is often quoted.  But I’d like to talk about this word “resist.”  Etymologically, the word is a combination of the Greek prefix “anti-” and the Greek word “histemi,” which means “to set upon” or “to place upon.”  I think you can see here why we translate this word as “to resist.”  I think that’s a great translation.  But the question is, what does it mean to resist?  Steel armor resists a bullet.  A dive suit resists the influence of water.  But that isn’t the kind of resisting of which this word is speaks.  This word uses the prefix “anti-” which brings about the idea of active opposition rather than passive resistance.  This word is about resisting through an opposing force rather than an inner strength.  Have you ever seen a “fireman’s tug-of-war?”  You get two fire trucks about 50 feet apart.  You extend their ladders up and tie a rope between them and then suspend a beach ball below that rope.  The fire trucks have to use the spray from the hoses to move the beach ball towards the other truck.  That’s the kind of resistance about which James is speaking.  Rather than thinking about resistance in the form of an inner strength like armor, we are rather to think of our resistance as being done through applying a greater opposing force than the incoming force.  God has called us into action against the Devil, not simply into endurance of the Devil’s siege upon our life.

In this light, how do you resist the Devil?  In what ways are you actively working against what the Devil is doing in your life?  Why might it actually to be easier to resist when we are actively opposing instead of just enduring through inner strength?

Second Thought:

Most of this passage falls under the umbrella of submitting to God.  As you have no doubt heard, this is an important topic in the book of James.  As we submit and drawn near to God, He draws near to us.  We who are uncertain can find purity.  We who are sinful can find catharsis.  We often tell God that we will submit after He has demonstrated His ability to bring peace in our life and purify us.  In truth, we can see that peace, purity, and catharsis often best come after we submit to Him.

Why is it human nature to want to submit only after we see that God has upheld His end of the bargain?  How might we then tie submission to trust, especially with what James says here?

Third Thought:

The middle part about turning joy into dejection and laughter into mourning can be confusing.  James is not talking about denying ourselves pleasure.  Nor is James saying that we have to hate life and walk around with a grumpy chip on our shoulder.  Rather, James is calling for a sober perspective to life.  James is saying that we should not rejoice in the things in which the world rejoices.  We should not laugh when the world laughs.  When we come to God, our perspective should change.  That which most people in the world find humorous should now likely only become evidence of the fallen nature of the human being.

What did you once enjoy but in submission to God you are finding out that you really don’t enjoy it as much anymore?  Have you found new joy in God about things that you never would have celebrated prior to submission to God?

Fourth Thought:

I have never before read verse 10 the way that I read it today.  I’m sure you’ve heard those preachers out there who proclaim the self-fulfilling Gospel.  Things such as, “God wants you to be successful, so just believe in yourself and you can do it!”  Or perhaps you’ve heard, “You may think there is a lot wrong with you, but there is also a lot right with you.”  There are a few famous public preachers who have made an incredible living on that style of preaching.  Yet when I read James 4:10 I hear something that is important when remembering statements like these.  My job is to be humble before God.  God’s job is to lift me up.  There is nothing wrong with having a good self-esteem; we are children of God and that alone should give us reason to love what God has Himself created.  But we must remember that I am not to love who I am but rather what God has created in me.  The emphasis is on God’s action, not my being.

Do you find it easy to be humble before God and love His hand at work in you more than you love yourself?  Why is it more difficult to love something outside of ourselves than it is to love ourselves?


Passage for Tomorrow: James 4:11-12

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