A New Beginning to the New Year: “Greater Grace"

James 4:6-10

1. in 1916 a young Swiss pastor by the name of Karl Barth gave an address in a small village. He was 30 years old & had been a pastor for 5 years. He was just beginning to discover the Bible. He entitled his address The Strange New World within the Bible.

2. Barth’s thesis – we do not read the Bible in order to find out how to get God into our lives. No. We open the Bible and find that page after page it takes us off guard, surprises us, draws us into its reality & pulls us into participation with God on his terms.

3. Barth describes what I desire for us as we continue to expose ourselves to James 4:6-10. To be pulled into participation with God on his terms.

Confess your sins to one another
1. I have a group of men from our church that I’ve been meeting with for years. Once a month we have a campfire, like we did this past Monday night. It was bitterly cold. It took the fire 1 hour to get hot enough to warm us up.

we sat around that fire & talked about James 4. I flipped out the question – what is your biggest sin, the sin you struggle with the most? Silence. Finally someone gathered up enough courage to share their besetting sin. Then someone else followed & someone else. It was one of those times that I will never forget – raw honesty & transparency before God & each other.

Now I know how to pray for my friends & them for me. I know what pointed questions to ask them. We can support each other.

2. wash your hands you sinners, says James. We are followers of Christ who have been redeemed by his death on the cross. But for as long as we live in this skin, we are going to sin. No big surprise.

3. James in chapter 5 exhorts us to confess our sins to one another. If we want to be a new people for a new building we absolutely have to name our sin. To God. At times to each other. We must become a confessing church.

resist the devil
1. these 5 verses begin with grace, are book-ended with humility, filled with 10 commandments & topped-off by 3 God-statements:
he gives us more grace – God gives grace to the humble (6)
(God) will come near to you (8)
(God) will lift you up (10)

2. the devil is held in contrast to God in this section. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you (7). A few words about the devil.

3. 1st Satan/devil is real. He is a fallen angel who rebelled against God. He was kicked out of God’s presence. He took with him a company of like-minded angels who are called demons or evil spirits in the Scriptures.

4. 2nd Satan is God’s greatest enemy & ours as well. He is out to destroy the reputation & work of God. His mission is to get us to doubt the goodness of God & live for ourselves.

5. 3rd Satan was defeated by Christ’s work on the cross (Colossians 2:15). He’s the defeated foe who still carries limited power & influence until the 2nd coming of Christ.

6. 4th Satan can’t stand in the face of our faith (I Peter 5:8-9). Faith here is faith in Christ, which means we hang onto Christ & his work on the cross in our behalf.

God gives greater grace
1. Father Jeremy Discoll of Mt. Angel defines grace as, God’s life acting in me. By saving grace God redeems us from our sin. By sanctifying grace God transforms us into the image of Christ. What James has in mind here is sanctifying grace – God’s life acting in us to make us like Christ.

2. God gives us more grace. Greater grace is the literal translation. This is like saying God give us grace upon grace upon grace.

3. when? In moments of personal weakness. When anger, selfishness, impurity, stubbornness, greed, compulsiveness, fear – you name it – rear up their ugly heads & take over our thoughts, attitudes & choices. Greater grace.

4. when? In the face of insurmountable obstacles. A terminal disease. A loved one’s death. A business setback. A shattering divorce. The bitter ashes of failure. The sting of betrayal. Greater grace.

5. when? In moments when God is calling you to do what
seems impossible. To forgive. Share your faith. Begin giving. Stand up for evil or injustice. Confront the person who abused you. Greater grace.

6. humility is the pathway to greater grace for personal weakness, insurmountable obstacles & the seemingly impossible. God’s life acting in us.
God will come near you
1. come near to God and he will come near to you. How do we come near to God? This whole section tells us – get rid of our pride, humble ourselves, submit to God, resist the devil, wash our hands of sin, purify our hearts of double-mindedness & mourn over our sin.

2. God can be intimidating. I’m not sure we always want God to draw near to us. He’s the Almighty Creator. He hatches the 10 plagues against Pharaoh. He rolls back the Red Sea. He dwells on Mt. Sinai in clouds, thunder & lightening. He’s the supreme God of judgment in the book of Revelation. He’s simply invincible. He’s a consuming fire.

3. but he’s also our Abba. Galatians 4:4-7 –
But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons. Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, "Abba, Father." So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir.

4. we’ve been redeemed from our sin. We are sons & daughters in God’s family. We can call God Abba, Father. Abba is a personal term of affection, means Daddy. No reason to be intimidated; only reason to seek intimacy with our Abba Daddy.

5. When Prince Charles of England is formally introduced at a state dinner, this is what is said: Prince Charles, Prince of Wales, Earl of Chester, Duke of Cornwall, Duke of Rothesay, Earl of Carrick, Baron of Renfrew, Lord of the Isles, Great Master of the Order of Bath, Knight of the Thistle, Prince and Great Steward of Scotland!

6. how’s that make you feel? His titles distance us from him. Do you think that’s what his sons Harry & William call him? No, they call him Father, Dad, Daddy. James calls us to come near to our Heavenly Daddy.

God will lift you up
1. humble yourself before the Lord and he will lift you up.

2. I’m not sure exactly what this means. I don’t think it means that if we humble ourselves before God that he will make us rich, powerful, happy, healthy, good looking or parents of trophy kids. Maybe. But that’s not the thrust of Scripture. Christ-likeness is.

3. I think it means that God will work in our lives in such a manner that will we bring honor to him on his terms. Remember Barth – the Bible is a book that pulls us into participation with God on his terms. Not my will but Thine be done. The lifting up is according to God’s kingdom purposes in Christ.

4. I think of Mother Teresa. At 12 she was called to be a missionary to spread the love of Christ. At the age of 18 she left her parental home in Macedonia and joined the Sisters of Loreto, an Irish community of nuns with missions in India. After a few months' training in Dublin she was sent to India, where she took her initial vows as a nun. From 1931 to 1948 Mother Teresa taught at St. Mary's High School in Calcutta, but the suffering and poverty she glimpsed outside the convent walls made such a deep impression on her that in 1948 she received permission from her superiors to leave the convent school and devote herself to working among the poorest of the poor in the slums of Calcutta. Although she had no funds, she depended on Divine Providence, and started an open-air school for slum children. Soon she was joined by voluntary helpers, and financial support was also forthcoming. This made it possible for her to extend the scope of her work.
On October 7, 1950, Mother Teresa received permission from the Holy See to start her own order, "The Missionaries of Charity", whose primary task was to love and care for those persons nobody was prepared to look after. The rest is history. She humbled herself before God & he lifted her up.

5. I think of Morris Dirks. At 33 he became the Senior Pastor of Salem Alliance Church. Everything he touched seems to turn gold. The church grew from 800 to over 2000. A new sanctuary was built. The church moved into their community with compassion ministries.

Morris wanted a new challenge so he went to the Woodenville Alliance Church on the east side of Seattle – lots of money & power thanks to Microsoft & the 1st wave of the dot.com success. Morris encountered challenge after challenge. To make a long story short, Morris had a serious emotional crash – depression, anxiety, sleeplessness. Eventually he resigned.

He humbled himself before the Lord in the midst of his darkness. And God showed him that much of his success was motivated by Morris’ ego needs for approval. He had made ministry about him.

He humbled himself before God & God lifted him up. The old Morris is gone – the new Morris has come. He gives his time to meeting with pastors & leaders as their spiritual director – challenging them to take care of matters of the soul. I started meeting with Morris 3 weeks after our church fire. He has been an enormous help & encouragement to me.

6. greater grace; our Father Abba Daddy coming near to us; God lifting us up. May God reveal himself to each of us in the days ahead.

A New Beginning to the New Year: “To Do in Order To Be”

James 4:6-10

1. this morning I want to draw our attention once again to James 4:6-10. As I shared last week, I have lived the last 3 months in the grip of these words. I’ve wrestled with them & them with me. And now its time for us as a community to wrestle with them.

2. James is writing to a group of churches as Eugene Peterson brought to our attention last week:

The letter of James shows one of the church’s early pastors skillfully going about his work of confronting, diagnosing, and dealing with areas of misbelief and misbehavior that had turned up in congregations committed to his care. Deep and living wisdom is on display here, wisdom both rare and essential. According to church traditions, James carried the nickname “Old Camel Knees” because of thick calluses built up on his knees from many years of determined prayer. The prayer is foundational to the wisdom. Prayer is always foundational to wisdom.

3. in 4:6-10 Old Camel Knees tells us how to restore our relationship with God when we’ve let it go. There’s nothing superficial here. Old Camel Knees lays down the hard and deep work of soul restoration.

4. the passage breaks down like this:
§ begins with grace (6)
§ book-ended with humility (6 & 10)
§ filled with 10 commands – submit, resist, come, wash, purify, grieve, mourn, wail, change, humble
§ topped off by 3 God-statements – he gives grace (6), comes near to us (8), lifts us up (10)

5. last week I pointed out how humility is the pathway to grace. Humility comes from the Latin root humus. Humus is rich organic soil. Tim Gilmer, our own organic farmer, emailed me this:

I was struck by the connections between humility and humus, of course, being an organic farmer. The decaying and death of matter is so important to healthy growth that some organic farmers need only use compost, and nothing else, to supply everything a plant needs. Compost (humus) is a living entity, an interwoven tapestry of bacteria, fungi, worms, insects, minerals and all kinds of essential elements that eventually become plant food, entering the roots and spreading throughout the entire plant. It not only promotes health but helps the plant RESIST the decaying forces of nature. It is anything but dead, yet it is birthed by the death process. Compost is rich in organic matter, breathes, has an earthy odor, good tilth, and excellent aeration and ability to absorb and hold water.

6. our humility before God is like rich organic compost. It promotes healthy spiritual growth. It enters the deep roots of our hearts & spreads throughout our entire lives. It helps us to resist the forces of evil & sin. Humility is life-giving. Is the pathway to God’s life-giving grace.

10 commands
1. the heart of this passage is filled with 10 commands. These are not nice suggestions or ideas for discussion. They are flat out God saying, “do this!” They speak to our human responsibility in our relationship with God.

2. remember these commands are surrounded by God’s grace = God’s life at work in us – and our humility = the pathway to God’s grace. As we humble ourselves before God grace is given to put these commands into play in our lives!
3. 3 of the commandments have to do with God – submit, come near, humble yourselves. 1 has to do with the devil – resist. And the remaining 6 have to do with ourselves – wash, purify, grieve, mourn, wail, change.

4. the 6 that have to do directly with us can be summed up with one word - repentance. Old Camel Knees is calling us to deal with our sin. The stuff in our lives that hurts our relationship with God & others.

5. to repent means (according to Brian McLaren) that you rethink every facet of your life from God’s perspective – from the way you think about God to the way you treat your spouse, from your political affiliations to your spending habits, from what makes you angry to what makes you happy. It doesn’t mean that everything changes at once, but it means you open up the possibility that everything may change over time. It involves a deep sense that you may be wrong, wrong about so much, along with a sincere desire to realign around what is good and true (and pleasing to God).

6. sin & repentance are not popular topics for today’s culture. They are not easy to deal with for a number of reasons. One, we have an imperfect understanding of God’s holiness. Of his anger toward sin. The closer God moves to us, the greater his holiness & the greater our sin.

7. two, we have an enormous capacity to deny or minimize our sin. Euphemisms proliferate our vocabulary – mistake, bad call, poor judgment, negligent, slip, oversight, misstep, screw-up, bungle – and so on BUT rarely sin (Eugene H Peterson). When’s the last time you went to somebody & said, I have sinned against you?

8. I love how Eugene Peterson describes sin – sin is basically a depersonalizing word or act. It is not, in essence, breaking a rule, but breaking a relationship. Sin is a refused relationship with God that spills over into a wrong relationship with others. Sin is relational.

9. third, we have a spiritually & morally skewed compass. Moral absolutes are up for grabs in our postmodern times. “The self” has become the determiner of right or wrong. What is right is what works for me.

10. we desperately need to hear Old Camel Knees when he exhorts us to wash, purify, grieve, mourn, wail, change. For these are the stuff of our health & healing & holness – hear holiness. James is calling us to a healthy brokenness & a necessary humility.

11. when something is wrong with our bodies we try to address it – why not our souls?

12. the summer of my 10th year was a disaster. I was running, tripped, fell & scrapped my right arm just above my elbow. It was a deep scrap. I can remember sitting on the dining room table while my mom poured hydrogen peroxide on my scrap & then scrapped out the dirt & sand with cotton balls. Before the summer was over I fell & re-opened that wound 2 more times. More peroxide, more cotton balls, more pain. No swimming for the whole summer!

13. when I was 13 I was playing tackle football with friends after school. I imagined myself to be the Chicago Bears running back Gale Sayers. I burst through the line, dodged to the left, cut back to the right, headed down the sidelines to what I was sure would be a touchdown when John Robinson tackled me from behind. We both fell down & I landed on a irrigation head. I felt a sharp stab of pain on my right arm, looked down, and saw a huge cut that had been opened up, blood oozing out. It was obvious that I couldn’t keep playing. My mom took me to the hospital. Our family doctor met us there. I watched Dr. Hoopengardner insert a needle into the cut – ouch – to deaden my arm so he could clean it out & sew it up.

14. we scrape our souls with sin & cut open our spirits with moral, spiritual falls. Can’t we see that we need a physician for our souls as badly as we do our bodies? Old Camel Knees is that physician. His wisdom gained on bended knees is invaluable:
§ turn your life over to God, all of it, all the time
§ yell a loud no to the devil & watch him run
§ say a quiet yes to God and he’ll be there in no time
§ quit dabbling in sin
§ purify your inner life
§ quit playing the field
§ hit bottom, and cry your eyes out
§ get serious, really serious – the fun & games are over
§ get down on your knees before God
§ he’s the only One who’ll get you back up on your feet

15. of these 5 verses, 4:9 is the one I know the least of as far as experience – grieve, mourn, wail, change your laughter to mourning & your joy to gloom. Grieve refers to an ache in your heart that brings tears to your eyes. Inner sorrow over our sin that so grips us that we are moved to tears.

16. I’ve talked for over a year about rebuilding what was lost in the fire. And more importantly, the rebuilding of our lives before God and each other. A new people for a new building.

17. the “new people” will be birthed out of 4:9 – grieving, mourning, wailing, changing. Coming to grips with our sin that we work so hard at trying to hide from ourselves, each other & even God. We are masters at it.


the pursuit of happiness….God
1. Will Smith & his son Jaden star in the movie The Pursuit of Happiness, based on the true story of a now very successful man named Chris Gardner. Set in San Francisco in the early 80s, Chris Gardner goes through an unbelievably tough streak. He loses his wife, his savings & his apartment. The movie centers around how Chris Gardner pursues his dream of becoming a stockbroker while he & his son live on the streets.

2. Chris Gardner never gives up against some incredible odds. He fights & fights & fights. He’s knocked down & gets back up, knocked down & gets back up.

3. the spirit & tenacity he personifies is a picture of how we live with Old Camel Knees’ 10 commandments. We humble ourselves before God. He grants us grace. And with humility & grace we go at these 10 commandments with all that we are & all that we have.

4. and its hard, very hard, often hard. The grace is God’s part. The effort is ours.

5. submit yourselves then to God
resist the devil and he will flee from you
come near to God and he will come near to you
wash your hands you sinners
purify your hearts you double-minded
grieve mourn and wail
change your laugher to mourning & your joy to gloom
humble yourselves before the Lord and he will lift you up

SERIES: A New Beginning to the New Year

James 4:6-10

1. I like the new beginning to the new year. I usually spend some time looking backwards at the year that just was. I spent Wednesday morning at the Urban Grind coffee shop in Portland pouring over my 2006 journals. I was encouraged by the God-prints I found scattered throughout my scribblings.

2. I like the new beginning to the new year. I usually spend some time thinking ahead to the year that will be. I spent a good part of Wednesday afternoon at the church in one of the Sunday School classrooms writing down my vision, my thoughts, my dreams for the coming year.

3. part of how the year that was & the year that will be converge is in the area of Scripture. There is 1 passage of 2006 Scripture that clearly stood out above all the others in my pursuit of God last year.

4. James 4:6-10 1st appeared in my journal on October 16 & never disappeared. I have lived the last 3 months in the grip of these words. I’ve written them over & over again in my journal. I’ve turned them into prayers. I’ve memorized them. I’ve meditated on them. I’ve been examined by them. I wrote them on the wall of our prayer room @ 1:30am Friday morning while I listened to Chris Tomlin sing Amazing Grace over & over on my ipod.

5. there is no way I could not not preach them to start the year AS MUCH as I wanted to jump back into Mark’s gospel.

6. I read this in Ian Morgan Cron’s book Chasing Francis, Years ago in Silesia (present day Poland), they built pulpits in the shape of a whale standing on its tail. In order to get to the area for preaching, the pastor climbed a ladder through the whale’s body until he emerged in the opening that represented its mouth, and from there he’d preach his sermon. The implication was that a pastor didn’t have the right to preach until he’d spent time wrestling with God, like Jonah did.

7. I feel like I have been in the whale’s belly for 3 months wrestling with God in this passage. James 4 still has me in its grip and it’s a good thing.

8. now I want to place you in its grip. I want God to grab you
like he has grabbed me.

intro to James
1. I want to read to you Eugene Peterson’s introduction to the book of James from The Message. Listen closely:

When Christian believers gather in churches, everything that can go wrong sooner or later does. Outsiders, on observing this, conclude that there is nothing to the religion business except, perhaps, business – and dishonest business at that. Insiders see it differently. Just as a hospital collects the sick under one roof and labels them as such, the church collects sinners. Many of the people outside the hospital are every bit as sick as the ones inside, but their illnesses are either undiagnosed or disguised. It’s similar with sinners outside the church.

So Christian churches are not, as a rule, model communities of good behavior. They are, rather, places where human misbehavior is brought out in the open, faced, and dealt with.

The letter of James shows one of the church’s early pastors skillfully going about his work of confronting, diagnosing, and dealing with areas of misbelief and misbehavior that had turned up in congregations committed to his care. Deep and living wisdom is on display here, wisdom both rare and essential. Wisdom is not primarily knowing the truth, although it certainly includes that; it is skill in living. For, what good is truth if we don’t know how to live it? What good is an intention if we can’t sustain it?

According to church traditions, James carried the nickname “Old Camel Knees” because of thick calluses built up on his knees from many years of determined prayer. The prayer is foundational to the wisdom. Prayer is always foundational to wisdom.

2. Old Camel Knees has much to teach us. In 4:6-10, James tells us how to restore our relationship with God when we’ve let it go. There’s nothing superficial here. Old Camel Knees lays out some hard work.

3. I spoke a few weeks ago about the 3 tenses of salvation:
§ Past – I was saved (salvation)
§ Present – I am being saved (sanctification)
§ Future – I will be saved (glorification)
James is speaking of the present tense – I am being saved, our sanctification, our becoming more like Christ.

4. let me give you a simple layout of the passage:
§ it begins with grace (6)
§ is book-ended with humility (6 & 10)
§ contains 10 commands – submit, resist, come, wash, purify, grieve, mourn, wail, change, humble
§ states 3 things about God – he gives grace (6), comes near to us (8), lifts us up (10)

5. this is a picture of how we cooperate with God, participate in his life, kingdom, story.

Grace
1. not grace that saved us in salvation but grace that is saving us in sanctification

2. this is grace for the follower of Christ. Grace to keep following Chrsit. Grace for staying close to God, his will & his ways. Grace as a prescription for self & sin. Not the grace that saved us but the grace that is saving us.

3. I came across this description of grace that I really like - Grace. It is not what I do that will be significant and lasting but what I allow to be done in me by grace, by God's life acting in me. What grace can do in me and through me is limitless, coextensive with what God is doing in the world. (Father Jeremy Driscoll, O.S.B., A Monk's Alphabet)

4. grace is God’s life acting in & through me & you. Grace is God’s Divine enablement. And we are dead in the water without it.

Humility
1. God’s grace is limited, stifled, shut off by our pride & arrogance. God opposes the proud. He is on the side of the humble.

2. humility comes the the Latin root humus. Humus is rich organic soil. Formed from the decomposing of plant & animal matter. This rich soil is needed for life & growth. Yet it comes from the death of other matter.

3. humility means death, dying to our self-sufficiency, pride, independence.

4. here are some contrasts between the proud & the humble:
§ focus on the failure of others – overwhelmed with their own spiritual need
§ are self-righteous, have a critical, fault-finding spirit, look at own life/faults with a telescope but others with a microscope – are compassionate, forgiving spirit, look for the best in others
§ are independent, self-sufficient spirit – dependent spirit
§ maintain control, must have their own way, have to prove they are right – surrender control, willing to yield to the right to be right
§ claim rights – yield rights
§ demanding spirit – giving spirit
§ desire to be served – motivated to serve others
§ feel confident in how much they know – humbled by how much they have to learn
§ quick to blame others – accept personal responsibility, can see where they were wrong
§ work to maintain image & protect reputation – die to own reputation
§ defensive when criticized – receive criticism with a humble, open heart
§ wants to be sure no one finds out about their sin – quick to admit fault & seek forgiveness
§ blind to true heart condition – walk in the light

5. humility is the pathway to grace, leads to grace, releases God’s grace in our lives!

6. 2 ½ months ago Ken Barnes left Newport Beach, California to sail around the world. He’d planned this trip for 10 years. He was an experienced sailor. This past Tuesday he ran into a low pressure system 500 miles off the coast of Chile. He was hit was winds of 35-40 miles an hour that created swells 25 feet high. A 50 mile gust of wind hit him, his sailboat was carried up the swell, it tipped over, broke off his mask, he lost his sails, lost everything on board, flooded the cabin, came to rest up right after doing a 360 degree flip.

He lost all his power, was dead in the water. At the mercy of the wind & waves.
Friday he was rescued by a fishing boat commissioned by the Chilean coast guard to pick him up.

7. God’s grace is the wind in our sails & our sails are our humility. Humility is how we pick up the wind of God’s grace.

8. God’s grace is sometime violent, stormy, tips us over, breaks off our mask, makes us totally dependent upon God & others. This humbles us.

9. but sometimes God’s grace is beautiful, fast, smooth-sailing.

10. this week let James 4:6-10 grip you. Let it set you in the belly of the whale where you wrestle with God. Let is humble you & take you into the hands of God’s grace.

A New Beginning to the New Year: “Humility the Pathway to Grace”

James 4:6-10

1. I like the new beginning to the new year. I usually spend some time looking backwards at the year that just was. I spent Wednesday morning at the Urban Grind coffee shop in Portland pouring over my 2006 journals. I was encouraged by the God-prints I found scattered throughout my scribblings.

2. I like the new beginning to the new year. I usually spend some time thinking ahead to the year that will be. I spent a good part of Wednesday afternoon at the church in one of the Sunday School classrooms writing down my vision, my thoughts, my dreams for the coming year.

3. part of how the year that was & the year that will be converge is in the area of Scripture. There is 1 passage of 2006 Scripture that clearly stood out above all the others in my pursuit of God last year.

4. James 4:6-10 1st appeared in my journal on October 16 & never disappeared. I have lived the last 3 months in the grip of these words. I’ve written them over & over again in my journal. I’ve turned them into prayers. I’ve memorized them. I’ve meditated on them. I’ve been examined by them. I wrote them on the wall of our prayer room @ 1:30am Friday morning while I listened to Chris Tomlin sing Amazing Grace over & over on my ipod.

5. there is no way I could not not preach them to start the year AS MUCH as I wanted to jump back into Mark’s gospel.

6. I read this in Ian Morgan Cron’s book Chasing Francis, Years ago in Silesia (present day Poland), they built pulpits in the shape of a whale standing on its tail. In order to get to the area for preaching, the pastor climbed a ladder through the whale’s body until he emerged in the opening that represented its mouth, and from there he’d preach his sermon. The implication was that a pastor didn’t have the right to preach until he’d spent time wrestling with God, like Jonah did.

7. I feel like I have been in the whale’s belly for 3 months wrestling with God in this passage. James 4 still has me in its grip and it’s a good thing.

8. now I want to place you in its grip. I want God to grab you
like he has grabbed me.

intro to James
1. I want to read to you Eugene Peterson’s introduction to the book of James from The Message. Listen closely:

When Christian believers gather in churches, everything that can go wrong sooner or later does. Outsiders, on observing this, conclude that there is nothing to the religion business except, perhaps, business – and dishonest business at that. Insiders see it differently. Just as a hospital collects the sick under one roof and labels them as such, the church collects sinners. Many of the people outside the hospital are every bit as sick as the ones inside, but their illnesses are either undiagnosed or disguised. It’s similar with sinners outside the church.

So Christian churches are not, as a rule, model communities of good behavior. They are, rather, places where human misbehavior is brought out in the open, faced, and dealt with.

The letter of James shows one of the church’s early pastors skillfully going about his work of confronting, diagnosing, and dealing with areas of misbelief and misbehavior that had turned up in congregations committed to his care. Deep and living wisdom is on display here, wisdom both rare and essential. Wisdom is not primarily knowing the truth, although it certainly includes that; it is skill in living. For, what good is truth if we don’t know how to live it? What good is an intention if we can’t sustain it?

According to church traditions, James carried the nickname “Old Camel Knees” because of thick calluses built up on his knees from many years of determined prayer. The prayer is foundational to the wisdom. Prayer is always foundational to wisdom.

2. Old Camel Knees has much to teach us. In 4:6-10, James tells us how to restore our relationship with God when we’ve let it go. There’s nothing superficial here. Old Camel Knees lays out some hard work.

3. I spoke a few weeks ago about the 3 tenses of salvation:
§ Past – I was saved (salvation)
§ Present – I am being saved (sanctification)
§ Future – I will be saved (glorification)
James is speaking of the present tense – I am being saved, our sanctification, our becoming more like Christ.

4. let me give you a simple layout of the passage:
§ it begins with grace (6)
§ is book-ended with humility (6 & 10)
§ contains 10 commands – submit, resist, come, wash, purify, grieve, mourn, wail, change, humble
§ states 3 things about God – he gives grace (6), comes near to us (8), lifts us up (10)

5. this is a picture of how we cooperate with God, participate in his life, kingdom, story.

Grace
1. not grace that saved us in salvation but grace that is saving us in sanctification

2. this is grace for the follower of Christ. Grace to keep following Chrsit. Grace for staying close to God, his will & his ways. Grace as a prescription for self & sin. Not the grace that saved us but the grace that is saving us.

3. I came across this description of grace that I really like - Grace. It is not what I do that will be significant and lasting but what I allow to be done in me by grace, by God's life acting in me. What grace can do in me and through me is limitless, coextensive with what God is doing in the world. (Father Jeremy Driscoll, O.S.B., A Monk's Alphabet)

4. grace is God’s life acting in & through me & you. Grace is God’s Divine enablement. And we are dead in the water without it.

Humility
1. God’s grace is limited, stifled, shut off by our pride & arrogance. God opposes the proud. He is on the side of the humble.

2. humility comes the the Latin root humus. Humus is rich organic soil. Formed from the decomposing of plant & animal matter. This rich soil is needed for life & growth. Yet it comes from the death of other matter.

3. humility means death, dying to our self-sufficiency, pride, independence.

4. here are some contrasts between the proud & the humble:
§ focus on the failure of others – overwhelmed with their own spiritual need
§ are self-righteous, have a critical, fault-finding spirit, look at own life/faults with a telescope but others with a microscope – are compassionate, forgiving spirit, look for the best in others
§ are independent, self-sufficient spirit – dependent spirit
§ maintain control, must have their own way, have to prove they are right – surrender control, willing to yield to the right to be right
§ claim rights – yield rights
§ demanding spirit – giving spirit
§ desire to be served – motivated to serve others
§ feel confident in how much they know – humbled by how much they have to learn
§ quick to blame others – accept personal responsibility, can see where they were wrong
§ work to maintain image & protect reputation – die to own reputation
§ defensive when criticized – receive criticism with a humble, open heart
§ wants to be sure no one finds out about their sin – quick to admit fault & seek forgiveness
§ blind to true heart condition – walk in the light

5. humility is the pathway to grace, leads to grace, releases God’s grace in our lives!

6. 2 ½ months ago Ken Barnes left Newport Beach, California to sail around the world. He’d planned this trip for 10 years. He was an experienced sailor. This past Tuesday he ran into a low pressure system 500 miles off the coast of Chile. He was hit was winds of 35-40 miles an hour that created swells 25 feet high. A 50 mile gust of wind hit him, his sailboat was carried up the swell, it tipped over, broke off his mask, he lost his sails, lost everything on board, flooded the cabin, came to rest up right after doing a 360 degree flip.

He lost all his power, was dead in the water. At the mercy of the wind & waves.
Friday he was rescued by a fishing boat commissioned by the Chilean coast guard to pick him up.

7. God’s grace is the wind in our sails & our sails are our humility. Humility is how we pick up the wind of God’s grace.

8. God’s grace is sometime violent, stormy, tips us over, breaks off our mask, makes us totally dependent upon God & others. This humbles us.

9. but sometimes God’s grace is beautiful, fast, smooth-sailing.

10. this week let James 4:6-10 grip you. Let it set you in the belly of the whale where you wrestle with God. Let is humble you & take you into the hands of God’s grace.