The Wisdom of Humility

 “The Wisdom of Humility”

 Message @ Jericho Ridge Community Church – Sunday, Oct 26, 2014

Text: James 4:1-10 // Series: Mirror, Mirror: Reflections in the book of James

What do you think is the most annoying word in the English language?  (I’ll give you a hint… if you are the parent of a toddler, you will know this word).  You might think it is “mine” or “no”, but I think from my recollection of when our kids were younger, I might suggest to you that the most annoying word in the English language is the word is WHY? 

See if any of these sound familiar.  “Daddy, why it raining today?” You can take the simplistic route and say “well, we need rain for the grass to grow” which is true.  But my wife reminded me that I never chose to take that road with our kids.  They would ask “Why it rain?” and I would say something like “Well, when you live near the ocean, the probability of precipitation increases due to the higher percentage of evaporation off a large body of water.  Couple that with the ocean currents in the north Pacific and our proximity here in Langley to the coastal mountain range means that as clouds move higher in the atmosphere, that temperature differentiation causes condensation to increase and eventually, the rain falls to the earth as precipitation.  So that’s why it rain today.”  Doesn’t always work with a 2 year old, does it?     

They get a little bit older and they start asking “Why do I have to go to school today?” and you say something like “Because you need to learn – that’s your job, to get a good education.”  But here’s where you enter the slippery slope… when they begin to ask “why?” to your initial response.  “Why do I need to learn?”  Well, because people with an education have a statistically higher chance of growing up and succeeding in life.”  [you see what I tried to do there? I tried to shut it down by using the word “statistically”].  To which your student might reply “But Why do people with an education end succeeding in life?” [deep breaths]  “Because most of the good jobs go to responsible people who didn’t skip school.” Why do most of those jobs go to those people?”  Because I said so, that’s why.    

Asking WHY, though it can be annoying, can also be a very powerful exercise.  Because asking WHY takes us below the superficial answers.  It gets us probing and thinking more deeply about the real questions and what is really going on with our world and in our own lives.  When a kid is asking WHY, sometimes it is because they want to better understand the reason behind the instruction or request.  And if they understand better, they can obey better.  The same is true when we come to the Bible and we want to try and understand what God wants you to be, to know and to do.  If we ask “why would God have put this here or said it in this way” it can help you dig deeper as you work to figure out what God saying to you today.  That’s also WHY we open God’s Word every weekend here at Jericho Ridge so that we can intentionally put ourselves as individuals and as a community into a posture of listening to God and expressing our desire to act on what He tells us in an ongoing way.  So let’s pray. 

This fall we’ve been in the book of James, a highly pragmatic book toward the end of the New Testament.  Our series has been called “Mirror, mirror” because the book of James challenges us to look at our lives and see if we are living out what we say we believe.  James was the half-brother of Jesus and a key leader in the early Christian movement so he had a front row seat to a lot of things including some of the tensions and arguments that occurred as the early church was forming.  James saw the church of his day wrestle with integrating people from various cultural histories - Jewish and non-Jewish.  He watched the church come together from various religious backgrounds; various socio-economic backgrounds (remember what he said back in chapter 2 about the rich and the poor?).  So it is natural that this diversity of opinion led the church into conflict sometimes.  So here at the start of chapter 4, James begins by asking a good question – why are you fighting?  Look with me at James 4:1-2a.

James is writing to a church in conflict.  There are verbal spats going on.  Bitter controversies that are bringing out self-interest and jealous rivalry.  We don’t know a lot about what their issue(s) were – James isn’t most concerned about that.  He is most concerned by the selfish spirit that is on display not about the right-ness or wrong-ness of the various positions.  Now, when you ask the question of someone “why are you quarrelling?”  the usual answer is “because the other person is wrong and/or stupid. They don’t understand me and my position on this issue!”  But James says these arguments are silly “wars” that not born out of righteous passion or justifiable zeal but out of the fact that my selfish, indulgent desires are not being met.  I am personally challenged by what teaching pastor George Stulac says in his commentary on this passage: “We try to justify our role in fights in terms of the high ideals, the critical issues and the injured rights we are supposedly defending. James does not entertain any such talk. He drives right to the fact that the fights are, at bottom, about personal desires. His point is reminiscent of 1:14, where he refused to allow excuses for temptation. People are tempted when they are enticed by their own "evil desire." We get into fights because of pleasures we desire for ourselves. An important self-examining question for Christians in conflict is "What personal desire am I trying to protect or to gain?"

James does not specify examples of the desires. What he does say could refer to conflict in group relationships, such as within a church: inflexibility about issues (from a desire to have one's own way), maneuvering for position of authority (from a desire for status and admiration within the community) or criticizing others (from a desire to make oneself look good). It is equally applicable in individual relationships, such as a marital conflict: constantly exchanging hurtful words (from a desire to get even) or being sexual unfaithful (from a desire for selfish pleasure).”

Whether it is a verbal argument, violent behavior or national conflict the root cause can be traced back to frustrated desire to want more than we have.  James says my selfish desires and wanting what I don’t have give birth to scheming and jealousy and then it bubbles over into quarrels and fights – verbally, physically.  This is the wrong way to go about getting things!  But this also isn’t the only problem that stems from our motives. Let’s keep reading in James 4:2b-3. 

“Yet you don’t have what you want because you don’t ask God for it. 3 And even when you ask, you don’t get it because your motives are all wrong—you want only what will give you pleasure.”

So our first why question that James asks us to consider is “why are your quarrelling?” the next one might be phrased Why do some prayers go unanswered?

This is a multifactorial question but one of the things that this text points out to us is that

• Because we don’t always pray with the right motives (James 4:3)

Those who have or are around toddlers can also identify with this strategy.  If I can’t get what I want by fighting with you for it, I’m going to go over your head and ask dad.  James says the same thing here.  Sometimes when we pray, we aren’t really praying as Jesus taught us to prayer “let YOUR kingdom come let YOUR Will, God, be done here in my life here on earth as it is in heaven”.  We are saying “I haven’t’ got what I want through my own initiative or resources so God, you need to give it to me.  Sometimes we are so blind to our true motivations that we don’t even know that we are praying or acting with tainted motives. 

Some years ago, an interviewer sat down with country music superstar Garth Brooks.  He asked him about his song “Unanswered Prayers”.  The song is based on a story from Brooks’ own life where one day at a football game back at his hometown in Oklahoma, he saw an old high school flame.  He had really thought at the time he was dating her that she was “the one” for him.  But at the football game, as he looked back on that period in his life, examined his motives and his current reality Brooks sings the lyrics to what he describes as the truest song he had ever been involved with as a writer when he says

Remember when you're talkin' to the man upstairs

That just because he may not answer doesn't mean he don't care

Some of God's greatest gifts are all too often unanswered...

Some of God's greatest gifts are unanswered prayers

James is saying the same thing here.  Sometimes we think we know what is best for us so we tell God exactly what He should do.  But some of these prayers are driven by what will make us feel good or what we think we want or need in that moment.  Sometimes you will ask and ask and yet if your motives or your intentions are all wrong, then God will simply say “no”.  Some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers.     

Now James uses a series of spectrums to get this point across.  He comes on pretty heavy as we continue reading in James 4:4-6.  If our first WHY is “why are your quarrelling?” (which is a question about our relationships with others) and our second why is “why do some prayers go unanswered?”, (which is about our interactions with God), then our third why deals with what is going on inside our hearts and minds: our interior world.  James paints this picture of a battle that leaves us asking: Why Am I Feeling Torn?

Remember that James likes to use powerful images or word pictures to help us hold up that mirror to our lives.  The first image is a very strong marital image: Fidelity             vs.               Infidelity

James says the more place you give in your life and in your heart to the things we talked about last weekend – jealousy, selfishness, boasting, lying, ungodly ambition – then the less place you have in your heart for a relationship with Almighty God.  This past spring at Jericho, you might remember we taught through the Old Testament book of Hosea.  And there God is portrayed as a faithful, loving husband who is jealous in the right way because you and I play the part of the unfaithful spouse when we give place to things in our lives that come between us and God.  It is as if we are committing spiritual adultery.  And this is why James says that friendship with the world creates a wedge between us and God.

• Friendship with God            With the World

This goes back to what James was saying earlier about divided loyalties or double-mindedness.  It is spiritual adultery if you come to church on a Sunday morning, lift your hands in passionate worship and say “yes, God, I love you… I will serve and follow you with all that I am” and then Monday to Saturday you live your life however you want.  That level of incongruity or double-mindedness will always result in you feeling torn.  You see one of James’ main points is how you live, not what you say that is important. 

You can’t say “I am a friend of God” but simultaneously life fully given to the values and vision that the world’s system purports.  The evidence of your friendship with God will come out in very practical ways - how you handle your money, in how you treat your co-workers, in how you organize your time to serve, in how you deal with adversity by relying on God, in how you speak to people you are in conflict with and in countless other ways.  I think that one of the reasons why James uses such strong language here is to help us understand the fundamental posture of a growing disciple, a person who not only has said yes to Jesus but who is actively seeking to grow in relationship with Him.  If I say I love God and I make choices to orient my life toward Him, then God’s Spirit is living and active in my life and God begins to give you and I the grace that is necessary to stand against such evil desires.           

This is good news.  Because on my own initiative, the Bible is clear that you and I cannot meet the demands of God’s holy jealousy.  Left to our own devices, you and I are going to flirt with the world and that friendship is going to turn into something more complicated and more damaging over time.  And so we are reminded here that God doesn’t just say “you need to be faithful to me” and then see how we do.  We are reminded not only of the standard, but also the means of living in congruence with it: God’s grace, poured out into my heart, poured out into your heart, is completely adequate to meet the demands of his holy jealousy.  I love the way Saint Augustine put this.   

–      “God gives what He demands”  (Saint Augustine)

And you and I have only to do one simply but incredibly difficult thing in order to experience this grace and to draw close to God.  We have to humble ourselves.  Look with me at James 4:7-10

James has already told us in chapter 1 that God favours the lowly and in chapter 3 that humility and wisdom are inter-dependent on one another.  And here he gives us a series of actions that would demonstrate our last why: “Why is humility to important?” Humility is vital because it brings us close to God.  Through our words and our actions, it demonstrates that we desire to increasingly surrender our lives to God and allow His Spirit to.  The New Century Version translates 4:7 “Give yourself completely to God”.  Humility is important because it demonstrates total continuing surrender to God’s power in my life.  When I humble myself before God it demonstrates that I want to get rid of the sins and evil desires that cling to my hands and to my heart.  It demonstrates that I want to get rid of anything that stands between me and God.  This is what James is on about when he talks about sorrow and deep grief – not that we would wallow in a morbid depression over sins, but that we would get a sense of how much damage our pride does to our relationship with God and with others   

Humility demands a total reversal of one’s life and a total surrender.  I love the way contemporary Catholic spiritual writer Sister Joan Chittister answers the question why is humility so important?  She says this:

“Humility is not a false rejection of God’s gifts

but the acknowledgement that I have been given them for others. Humility is the total continuing surrender to God’s power in my life

and in the lives of those around me.”

             - Sister Joan Chittister 

As we move into response in song, I want you to spend time consider the following question “What areas of your life are difficult to submit to God?”  Perhaps it is a broken relationship and your pride is screaming out “that person is in the wrong – they should come to me and ask for forgiveness”. But humility would invite you to initiate with them and reconcile.  Maybe it is something you have been praying for or about and you are beginning to realize that perhaps you need to invite God to search your heart to see if your motives for wanting that outcome are pure or if they are tainted.  

Perhaps it is an area of sin that keeps cropping up in your life no matter how hard you try.  You gave in to anger or gluttony or lust again this week and you need the strength to resist the devil.  You need to pray a humble pie prayer and say “God, I acknowledge that I cannot do this on my own.”  When we humble ourselves before God, He gives us His grace to resist the devil.  He lifts us up in honour.  But none of this comes if you and I don’t live out of the wisdom of surrendered humility.  If we don’t actively invite God’s power and His Holy Spirit to work in your life and in the lives of those around you.  One of the ways we evidence this is our physical posture.  I invite you as we sing these two songs of response to say to God not just with your words but with your body “God, I humble myself before you”  I invite you to kneel as you are able.  I invite you to offer God your hands in surrendered worship.  I invite you to come over to our prayer team: Deb Jarvis, myself, _________________________  We will be at the sides for you.  We would love to celebrate with you what God is doing or pray for His grace to face a difficult situation you find yourself in.  Let’s not just sing about drawing near to God – why not actually do it today.