I can’t remember which of the kids it was asked me one year, “Daddy, have you made any New Year’s REVOLUTIONS this year? The whole world makes New Year’s Resolutions and they are generally a good thing for as long as they last, which is generally not very long at all. Many people will already have abandoned this year’s resolutions as impossible ideals which we just don’t have enough willpower to stick to.
As Christians we know better than to make New Year’s resolutions which rely on our own determination and effort. We know our own weaknesses too well. But the New Year is an excellent time to look back on the last year and seek God’s forgiveness for the ways we failed. And it is great time to recommit our lives to God and seek His strength to live a new life in 2014. God’s grace can indeed bring a New Year’s REVOLUTION. And at the beginning of this New Year a Bible passage which can really help focus our thoughts and prayers in James chapter 4.
As we seek to draw close to God we still have to battle with
THE PULL OF SIN (vv 1-5)
Looking back on 2013 I am sure we all recognise our failings and will want to begin the New Year with a conscious determination to turn our backs on sin.
And the first sin this passage challenges us with is
FIGHTS and QUARRELS
4 What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you?
If we want to draw close to God, the biggest battle for many Christians is fighting with other people. Battles within our family, or with neighbours, or with other Christians in the church. Unkind words, spiteful actions. We cannot draw close to God if we are at war with other people!
4 What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? 2 You want something but don’t get it.
BATTLING DESIRES
The struggle between the right thing we know we should do and the wrong thing we end up doing through ignorance, through weakness and sometimes we have to admit, through our own deliberate fault.
COVETING
2 You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight.
Of all the ten commandments, the tenth is surely the hardest to obey. “You shall not covet.” Wasting our lives longing after things we should not have. Do not covet. That’s about changing out attitudes which involves an even deeper repentance than changing our actions. James says, “You kill and covet.” Is that too strong? No! Jesus said hating somebody is as bad as murdering them. If murderous thoughts really did kill there would be very few people left on the earth by now, if any!
USELESS PRAYERS
You do not have, because you do not ask God. 3 When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.
Failing to ask – the post office has rooms and rooms of parcels “awaiting collection.” And heaven is full of rooms of answers to prayers “awaiting collection” because Christians have simply not asked for the blessings God is waiting to pour out on them.
Failing to ask, and asking with wrong motives. Selfish, greedy prayers do not bring us closer to God – they keep us away from Him.
FRIENDSHIP WITH THE WORLD
4 You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. 5 Or do you think Scripture says without reason that the spirit he caused to live in us envies intensely?
There are so many ways in which it is easy to compromise our standards. The television programmes we watch or the internet pages we visit, the books we read or the conversations we are drawn into. Friendship with the world stops us drawing near to God. We cannot say, “Lead us not into temptation” if we deliberately put ourselves in places where we can be tempted!
As we look back on 2013 we might well ask, “Can things really be any different in 2014?” Can there be a New Year’s REVOLUTION?
Well the answer James gives is definitely yes, there can! And the secret is there in verses 6 to 10
SUBMIT YOURSELVES TO GOD
6 But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says:
“God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”
Life can be different, if we will only throw ourselves on God’s mercy revealed in Christ and trust in the strength which comes from God the Holy Spirit living inside us. God can help us to live a new life!
God gives us GRACE. And that grace has two aspects.
Forgiveness for the sins of the past – God’s riches at Christ’s expense. AND
Strength to serve God in the future. We thought about this in our Christmas communion service.
Hebrews 4 14 Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. 15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin. 16 Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.
Jesus understands the battles we face, the challenges we need to overcome. Jesus understands and He is able to help us when we are tempted. What we need to do is learn to find ways to draw on God’s grace and strength in our times of need, and in the next four verses James gives us four ways to do just that.
RESIST THE DEVIL
7 Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
In order to submit to God we need to resist the devil who is opposed to God. The devil likes to deceive and con Christians. The devil tries to fool us into believing that he is too powerful for us to resist him. The devil tells us lies like, “It is impossible to resist temptation.” That is rubbish! The Bible tells us that Jesus gives us all the grace we need to stand up against the devil. God promises us that there is always a way of escape when we are tempted.
1 Corinthians 10 12 So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall! 13 No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.
God provides us with a way to overcome temptation – so we are obliged to rest on His grace and take it!
The devil tries to fool us into thinking that “a little sin won’t hurt anybody.” But that’s another lie. Our sins nailed Christ to the cross. We need to treat all sins like deadly poisonous snakes, not like cream cakes, “naughty but nice.” James urges us, “Resist the devil and he will flee from you.”
COME NEAR TO GOD
V 8 Come near to God and he will come near to you.
What a wonderful promise! We submit to God and the more we seek to come close to Him, the more God will come close to us. Draw near to God.
That is what we are going to be doing in our new midweek prayer meetings here at the church on Tuesday evenings starting the week after next. Listening to God in prayer. Opening ourselves to the power and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Drawing close to God.
But of course that is also something each of us should be doing individually every day in our own times of prayer and Bible reading. We should want to take every opportunity to draw near to God, in services and prayer meetings and prayer triplets as well as on our own. As we draw close to God, He WILL draw close to us. Of course that will take time. And the amount of time we give to prayer is a fair indication of how serious we are about drawing close to God. How important it is for us to meet with God – or how unimportant.
So we submit ourselves to God by resisting the devil and by drawing near to God. And the third way of submitting James gives us is this.
REPENT
Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom.
We need to take repentance seriously. To wash our hands and live clean upright Holy lives. And to purify our hearts and let God transform our thinking. There is a place for us to grieve, mourn and wail over our manifold sins and weaknesses. A place for true Godly sorrow and tears of repentance which show that we take the battle with sin seriously! And then James says
HUMBLE YOURSELVES
10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.
Submitting ourselves to God. It makes me sad as I look around at some of the very “successful” churches growing up today. Because it seems to me that some have completely missed this aspect of humility before God. Everything is about success. When the truth we must never forget is that we are nothing but miserable sinners and without God’s grace and transforming power we are all doomed! We need to humble ourselves and turn away from the pride which says, “I did it my way” and set our faces to living our lives God’s way.
GO ON WITH GOD (verses 11-17)
There are so many things we could talk about here. The Holy Spirit will bring to each individual’s minds areas where our own lives need to change if there is to be a New Year’s REVOLUTION. But James points to three areas where we all need God’s grace to be different.
DO NOT JUDGE EACH OTHER
11 Brothers, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against his brother or judges him speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it. 12 There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you—who are you to judge your neighbor?
We need to learn to accept one another in the same way as God in Christ has accepted us and to love each other as Christ has loved us. Do not judge each other.
DEPEND ON GOD
13 Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” 14 Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. 15 Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” 16 As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil.
None of us know what 2014 will hold for us. What new adventures. What new tragedies. What new opportunities. What new battles. What new delights. But we need to approach that unknown future with faith in God. We need the humility to recognise that our lives are in God’s hands, not our own. We need to put our trust in God to lead us forward, to depend on God and his mercy and grace. “Through many dangers, toils and snares, we have already come.
Tis grace has brought us safe thus far. And grace will lead us home.”
And the last thing James calls us to do in this chapter is this.
DOING THE GOOD WE KNOW WE SHOULD DO
17 Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins.
I have a suspicion that many people will get a rude awakening when they approach the pearly gates and God will ask them, “Why should I let you into my heaven?” Some people will say, “I’ve never done any harm.” But God will say to them, “But you’ve never done anybody any good either!” The Bible teaches us that sins of omission are as serious as sins of commission. We will all be accountable before God for the good deeds which we could have done, but left undone!
Galatians 6 encourages us to commit ourselves to a life of good deeds.
9 Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. 10 Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.
So Happy New Year everybody – a time for a New Year’s REVOLUTION. We should resist the pull of sin, submit ourselves to God, and go on with God in every area of our lives. Not just turning over a new leaf but for living our new life to the full! A time for drawing near to God.