The Double Drawing Near
(No. 2795)
A SERMON INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD'S-DAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 1902.
DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON LORD'S-DAY EVENING,
SEPTEMBER 22, 1878.
"Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you." James 4:8.
As soon as man had disobeyed God, he ran away from Him. Our first
parents hid themselves among the trees of the Garden when they heard
the voice of the Lord God calling them. They did not come to Him at
once, confess the wrong which they had committed and ask for mercy. The
natural effect of their sin was to harden their hearts and not to lead
them penitently to the great Father–and it led them impertinently to
run away from Him. So, when the Lord came walking in the Garden, in the
cool of the day, Adam did not seek Him, to plead for mercy from Him,
but the first words had to come from God–"the Lord God called unto
Adam, and said unto him, Where are you?" It was God's voice speaking in
mercy to His wandering child.
Our blessed Savior has set forth the result of sin in His parable of
the lost sheep which has strayed from the fold and which, if left to
itself, continues to go further and yet further away. We have, all of
us, gone astray, as Dr. Watts says–
"EEach wandering in a different way, But all the downward road"
Our Lord Jesus has set forth this same Truth in that other parable in
which He describes the prodigal son as gathering all together and
taking his journey into a far country, away from his father. He could
not live as he wished in his father's house. He could not, there, waste
his substance with riotous living. His father's eyes would have been a
check upon him at home, so, the only way for him to obtain that foolish
and ruinous liberty for which he sought was to get as far off as he
could from his father. Alas, this is the condition of every
unregenerate sinner–he has gone away from God and he tries continually
to get further and further away from God. Why do men neglect to keep
holy the Sabbath, unless it is that they do not want to think of God?
Why do they put religious books on one side? Why do they leave their
Bibles unread but because God's name, God's Person, God's Law, God's
Gospel–all about God–has become distasteful to them? Like the fool of
whom David tells us, they say in their hearts, "No God!" They do not
want Him and if there could be an official announcement made that there
is no God, they would welcome it! God is not in all their thoughts, or
if He is there at all, it is as an enemy, or as One for whom they have
no care, One whom they are not willing to have to reign over them. O
heart of man, you have, indeed, gone astray from your God when the
distance at which you are from Him is loved by you and you even wish,
in your unkindness and your folly, to make that distance greater! If
you wish to return, you are already halfway back, but, alas, you do not
wish to return! That thought comes not to you and, if you could, you
would take the wings of the morning and fly to the uttermost parts of
the earth in the hope that there you could be hidden from the eyes and
the Presence of God!
Knowing this to be true, I am glad to be able to give the message of my
text to those who are far off from God because the only cure for such
sinful wandering is for the sinner to come back to God. While the
prodigal was in the far country, he could not be set right. The first
step towards getting back into his right position was his resolve, "I
will arise and go to my father." If he could have filled his belly with
husks or anything else–if he could have had his rags exchanged for
robes–if he could have been made a nobleman in that far-off land, it
would have been a mischief rather than a benefit to him, for the
radical cure, in his case, must lie in his saying, "Father, I have
sinned," and in receiving his fa-
ther's kiss of forgiveness and all the tokens of restoration to his
father's favor. It must be the same with any of you who are far off
from God–if you would be right with Him, you must come back to Him.
Poor creatures, how can you be right till you love your Creator? Poor
sheep, how can you be right till you are back under the care of the
Good Shepherd? O poor immortal, how can you hope for an eternity of
blessedness till the Immortal God is reconciled to you and you are
reconciled to Him? A creature remaining at enmity against God must
expect to dwell forever with the devils in Hell! Where can it dwell but
where other rebels are confined in chains? You must come back to your
God, Man, if you would have eternal bliss, for if you could have one of
the harps of Heaven, it would yield no music to you till you had
yielded yourself into submission to the God of Heaven! If you would
have the street of gold, it would not enrich you until you had the God
of Heaven to be your Friend! So I say again that the only remedy for
sin– the only radical efficient cure for the great evil of
iniquity–is for the sinner to come back to God! I want to impress this
one point upon you and I pray that God, the Holy Spirit, will work
effectually upon some who are here and draw them back to God while, in
His name, I deliver this gracious message to them, "Draw near to God,
and He will draw near to you."
First, I shall ask you to consider this message with hope. When we have
done that, we shall, secondly, learn how to put it into practice. And
then, thirdly, we shall think of how many ways it will help us if we do
draw near to God.
I. First, then, let us CONSIDER THIS MESSAGE WITH HOPE–"Draw near to
God, and He will draw near to you."
We may consider it with hope, because, first, here is a sincere call to
us to come back to God. When we preach from such a text as this, "Draw
near to God, and He will draw near to you," somebody is sure to say,
"But is not that the wrong order? Is it not a fact that God draws near
to us and thenwe draw near to Him?" Yes, that is the right order and
our text is in the right order, too, because there is understood here
something which is manifest to every careful reader and which shows
that the Grace of God is implied at the back of it all. The text itself
is a call from God and no sinner ever comes back to the Lord until the
Lord calls him back. But in this text He does call him–by the mouth of
the Apostle, He says, "Draw near to God" and He bids us repeat this
message in His name. To those who are the furthest off and who have
wandered the greatest distance from Him, God says, "Draw near to Me."
If you had offended some friend and wished to make up, you would feel
that it was an easy matter if your friend, himself, invited you to
come–if he took the initiative and asked you to come to him. Then, I
think, you would feel great gratitude to him and say, "He has taken the
first step towards our reconciliation. Now I will willingly and
cheerfully take the second." It is thus that the Lord sends you this
message to induce you to return to Him, "Draw near to God."
"But may I come to Him?" someone asks. May you do what He bids you do?
Of course you may! The text is not merely an invitation, it is a
command! Obey it, I beseech you! You must have liberty to obey when God
commands. You need not entertain any fear that you will be an intruder
when, in the exercise of His gracious Sovereignty, He says to you,
"Come, come, come!" Surely, among those here who are still unconverted,
there must be some who will say to Him, "O Lord, You have said to us,
Seek you My face, and our heart says to you, 'Your face, Lord, will we
seek."
I have next to remind you that in addition to a sincere call from God,
there is also an open road to Him. God says to you, "Draw near to Me,"
but He would not bid you come to Him if there were no road by which you
could come. Once there was a great gulf fixed between you and God. Your
sin had dug a fathomless gulf which you could never have bridged–but
Jesus bridged the awful chasm by throwing His Cross across it and now
there is a plain and easy way by which the sinner may come back to God.
As Paul wrote to the Corinthians, "God was in Christ, reconciling the
world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and has
committed unto us the word of reconciliation."
When the Babe was born at Bethlehem, a multitude of the heavenly host
praised God and said, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace,
good will toward men." And when that Babe, after a life of perfect
obedience to God's Law, offered up Himself on Calvary's Cross, He said,
"It is finished"–and then every mountain was laid low and every valley
was filled up that there might be a magnificent causeway over which
fallen and far-off sinners might draw near to God! The making of that
way cost the Savior His life, but He did make it. His heart bled out
its life that He might make plain that way of expiation by which,
alone, a sinner can come near to God. The road is made and there is now
nothing in the way–no Divine anger, no righteous wrath, no avenging
Law–to prevent your coming, O you who desire to return to your God!
Christ has made the way and cleared it and "no lion shall be there, nor
any ravenous beast shall go up thereon,
it shall not be found there; but the redeemed shall walk there." So,
draw near, for the road is open! Draw near, "without money, and without
price," for the road is free to all who believe in Jesus! Christ has
completed it. He has not merely made it half way, but He has finished
it all the way and He, Himself, has said, "I am the way, the truth, and
the life." Oh, then, with what force does the command come, "Draw near
to God," when there is an open road by which you may come to Him!
Consider the invitation of the text with great hopefulness, next,
because there is an encouraging promise appended to it. You fear that
if you were to try to get to God, you could not–and that if you did
reach Him, He is so pure and holy that He must spurn you because of
your impurity–and drive you from His Presence. But read the whole of
the text– "Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you." There is
nothing in it about casting out, or spurning, or rejecting! The promise
is emphatic, "He will draw near to you." I have already referred to the
parable of the prodigal son. I will refer to it again by reminding you
that, "when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had
compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him." It is,
after all, but little of the way that the sinner has to go in returning
to his God. The greater part–no, I might say, all the way–God comes
to the sinner who desires to return to Him! Only turn your face
God-ward and your God is at once with you!
"Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you." That is the Inspired
declaration! Do you believe it? Oh, I think if you do, you will at once
draw near to Him! Satan will perhaps whisper, "He does not mean you."
But, indeed, He means any soul that comes to Him, for His promise is,
"Him that comes to Me I will in no wise cast out." And the "him that
comes" means any sinner, all the world over, who trusts in Jesus! Yes,
you shall be received graciously and loved freely if you will but come
back to your God through Jesus Christ His dear Son. "Draw near to God,
and He will draw near to you." Our text ought to be like a hand to
beckon you and to draw you back to your God–and you ought to run to
Him as swiftly as the doves fly to their windows! You have seen the
pigeons hastening home to their dove-cotes as if anxious to reach their
nests–may the gracious Spirit thus move you to flee away to your
resting place in the loving heart of your Lord!
There is one more thing that I want to say before I leave this first
point in which I am urging you to a hopeful consideration of the text,
and that is, draw near to God, O dear trembling ones, because He will
help you to come to Him. Before our Lord Jesus Christ went up on high,
He promised that the Holy Spirit would be given to His Church. And He
had not long sat upon His Throne before the Spirit descended–and that
Spirit has never gone away, but He is still here to help our
infirmities, to guide us in prayer, to convince us of sin, to reveal
Christ to us, to create faith in us and to strengthen that faith while
it is yet weak! If you cannot come to God by yourself, here is One for
you to lean upon, who will help you to come! If you feel as if you
could not move a foot, here is a sweet prayer for you to present to
God, "Draw me, we will run after You," and He will draw you! I hope He
is drawing some of you now. Do you feel as if you wish you could come
to Him? I think that wish is a proof of His gentle drawing. Are you
saying to yourself, "I will think this matter over. I will be careless
no longer"? He is, as it were, putting out His finger to guide you, to
help you, as a nurse does to a little child whose tottering footsteps
can scarcely avoid a fall! Only be you willing to be helped and He will
help you! Yield yourself up to Him and He will bless you. Be like the
mariners who spread the ship's sails, after which they can do no
more–but when the sails are spread, the wind fills them and the vessel
is driven onward to its desired haven. Be you like the needle of the
mariner's compass and the Spirit of God will be like the magnet to
attract you. Be you willing to be cleansed from all defilement and He
will say to you, "Be you clean," and so you shall be, for, where the
will has yielded itself to Him, the citadel of the town of Mansoul is
won and Prince Immanuel takes the entire possession and control of
it!
Listen to me, for a moment or two, while I put together these things of
which I have been speaking. God says, "Draw near." There is His
call–will you disobey it? It is implied, in that call, that He has
made a way for you to come to Him–will you not avail yourself of it?
He has added to His call an encouraging promise that you shall be
welcomed if you come to Him–will you suffer that promise to be made
known to you, and yet not obtain the blessing that is promised? Then,
beside all this, there is the Holy Spirit waiting to be gracious–will
you resist the Spirit, as so many have done who have perished in their
sin? I can do no more than tell you these things with affectionate
earnestness, but, dear Hearers who are far off from God, the day will
come when, however poorly I have told you these things, if you despise
or neglect them, you will have to answer, not to me, but to Him who
sent me! Therefore, consider, I pray you, what answer
you will give to Him–to the question whether you will come to Him or
not–while He says to you, "Draw near to Me, and I will draw near to
you."
II. The second part of our subject is very practical. It is this–LET
US LEARN HOW TO DRAW NEAR TO GOD.
"How can a man draw near to God?" someone asks. Well, we must begin
thus. Draw near to Him by thinking of Him. God is not fixed in any one
place so that we need to go on a pilgrimage in order to reach Him. "God
is a Spirit," and the way to draw near to a spirit is, first of all, to
think of Him in our own spirit. I shall begin to have hope of any man's
salvation when he begins to seriously think about God and about his own
relationship to God. Will you do so, dear Hearer? Take time to think
about your Creator, your Preserver, your Provider, your Guardian, your
Friend, your Judge, your Savior. To help you to think of Him, read His
Word, for Scripture will both give you the best subject for thought and
assist you to understand and know more of God.
Seek, also, to hear the Gospel.If you know anyone who speaks to your
heart about God, Christ and the Gospel, give him the opportunity of
speaking to you as often as it is possible. Also try to talk with some
of God's friends–with men who pray to Him, who have communion with
Him–and get as far away as you can from those who deny Him and
blaspheme Him. In this way, I believe that it will not be long before
He will begin to show Himself to you. You will be astonished to find
how He is everywhere present around you–in every flower, in every
blade of grass, in every drop of dew you will see signs of His
Presence. If you are willing to find Him, you will see traces of His
skill and of His wisdom there. If you look at the workings of His
Providence, expecting to find Him, you will not look long before you do
find Him, for, as we have often been reminded, He who watches
Providence will never be without a Providence to watch. And when you
begin to say, "Wherever I go, I feel that God surrounds me. He is
within me and I am in Him."–As such thoughts as those possess you, I
shall begin to have bright hopes concerning you!
Draw near to God, next, by trusting Him. Some of you will not be able
to do that immediately–you will have to think a little about Him
first. And when you have thought about Him and, especially when you
have received what this Book tells you about Him, then draw near to Him
by trusting Him! If you trust God, He will not deceive you. If you
believe in Him that He will pardon your sin, He will pardon it. His
rule still is, "According to your faith, be it done unto you." Whatever
you can believe concerning God, that is in accordance with what He has
revealed in His Word and that is for His Glory, you shall find that He
will do. He has been pleased to give His dear Son to be the Redeemer of
men and He tells us that all those who trust in Him have everlasting
life. Now draw near to Him by saying, "If these things are true, I will
trust myself upon them. As God has revealed them, they are true and I
will just cast myself upon Him. Jesus Christ has shed His precious
blood to put away sin and He promises to forgive all who confess their
sin and trust Him. I will confess my sin and trust Him to forgive me."
One is getting very near to God when he does that, so I bid you, in
that sense, draw near to God by trusting Him. And if you do, He will
draw near to you by forgiving you. He will accept your trust and He
will welcome you. He will be as good to you as your faith, and better
still.
Next, draw near to God by repentance. You have done wrong. Do not stay
away from Him and so do more wrong. Do not try to hide your sin, or to
make up a righteousness of your own, but go to God and tell Him that
you have done wrong and plead for His forgiveness for Christ's sake.
Tell Him that you have a tendency to do wrong and ask Him to change
your heart. Tell Him that you seem to be wrong altogether and beg Him
to make you "a new creature in Christ Jesus." Draw near to Him in a
penitential spirit! It is your sense of sin that keeps you back from
Him, but, rightly considered, that sense of sin should drive you to Him
rather than restrain you from going to Him! What would a man do, if he
has offended another, but try to make matters right between them? To my
mind it is a beautiful thing to clear up difficulties and to settle
disagreements–but it is the sweetest thing of all to get right with
God–to tell Him that you have been all wrong, to plead the merit of
His dear Son's obedience and Sacrifice, and to ask Him to set you right
both as to the past and as to the future, too! Draw near to God in that
way, by repentance.
Then draw near to Him in prayer Did I hear you say, "I do pray"? Yes,
but do you reallypray? That is the question! You may have said certain
words, morning and night, for many years, yet you may never once have
prayed. Do you know that prayer is the soul speaking to God? It is not
the act of repeating something that you have learned, or heard, or
read. The mere utterance of any particular form of words is nothing.
You might as well set up one of the prayer windmills, at which so many
have smiled, as expect to pray by the mere repetition of good words!
No, no–speak to God! Any true speech, straight from the heart, is
accepted by God. Mr. Rowland Hill stayed one night at an inn and he
told the lan-
dlord that he must have family prayer there. "But, Sir," said the man,
"we never had such a thing in our lives." "Then," said Mr. Hill, "order
out my horses, for I will not stay in any house where I cannot get the
people together to pray." "We shall all come in, Sir," said the
landlord, hardly realizing the preacher's purpose. Then the Bible was
read and Mr. Hill said, "Now, Sir, you pray. Every master should pray
in his own house." "But I cannot pray," he said, "I wish I could."
"Tell the Lord that," said Mr. Hill, and the man said, "Lord, I cannot
pray. I wish I could." Then Mr. Hill said, "You have begun to pray
already, so I will go on for you. Only tell the Lord, from your heart,
anything that is true about yourself and you have begun praying."
I pray you, dear Friends, to draw near to God in prayer! Make it your
habit to ask of Him what you really need and He will draw near to you
and you will get what you have asked of Him. You will be surprised to
find what gracious answers you will receive to your supplications, for
I have noticed that if the Lord delays His answers to the prayers of
His saints when they grow strong, He generally hears them very quickly,
indeed, when they first begin to pray. I have often known the answer
come while they have yet been speaking. Try it, dear Friend! In your
own case draw near to God in prayer and see what answers He will give
you! How I wish that those who doubt the existence of God had ever
tried to speak to Him! If they once came into familiar acquaintance
with Him from day to day, doubts of His existence would be no more
possible to them than doubts of their own existence, for they would
say, "We have spoken to Him and He has heard us, and given us the
desire of our heart." Draw near to God in prayer, and He will draw near
to you.
Then, dear Friend, try to draw near to God every day by laying all your
affairs before Him and yielding up all your plans to His will. Begin
the day by asking Him to be with You and to glorify Himself in you. Ask
Him to stay near you and to let you feel His Presence and you will have
truly blessed times if you draw near to God in that way.
Sometimes, you will most appropriately draw near to God by praise–with
sweet songs in your mouth and thankfulness in your heart. You will feel
it to be indeed a–
"Happy day, happy day,"
when you are thus brought near to God. You will do well to keep on at
that praise till there will come a day–(you need not mind how soon it
comes) when the Lord will say to you, in another sense, "Draw near to
Me"–and you will go up to your chamber and gather up your feet in bed
and He will draw near to you with such a glorious vision of His
Presence that before you are ever aware, you will find yourself at His
right hand–your poor mortal body left behind to wait a little while
for the resurrection–but you, yourself, very near to Him in Heaven!
Then, before long, there will sound out that blast of the archangel's
trumpet that shall wake even your body from its slumber among the dust
into which it had moldered–and it shall rise again and then there
shall come One whom you have known in this life, and known still better
in Heaven, who will say to you and to all the redeemed, "Come, you
blessed of My Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the
foundation of the world." Then your body, soul and spirit shall draw
near to Him as He draws near to you and so shall you be "forever with
the Lord!" That is what will come of your drawing near to God–it will
end in your being with Him where He is, that you may behold His Glory
forever and forevermore! And therefore do I feel a deep stirring within
my soul that every far-off sinner should hear this gracious invitation
and obey it at once–"Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you."
III. Now I shall conclude by just a few words upon THE PRACTICAL EFFECT
WHICH THIS DRAWING NEAR TO GOD WILL HAVE UPON OUR LIVES.
Well, now, if we draw near to God, it will have an effect upon our
common, everyday life. How? Why, first, if you will follow the run of
the chapter, you will see that drawing near to God will help us to
resist the devil. The injunction, and promise, "Resist the devil, and
he will flee from you," are immediately followed by the words of our
text, "Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you." The devil is
not quite everywhere, but it is difficult to tell where he is not to be
found. He, and the powers of darkness under his control, tempt us in
all sorts of ways and all manner of places. And if any one of us would
be so armed as to be able to resist the great adversary of souls, the
very best thing we can do is to draw near to God! The sheep is never so
safe as when it is close to the shepherd. And the prodigal son is never
so safe and happy as when he is sitting at his father's table and
feasting on the good things provided by his father's love. Draw near to
God and you will be able to resist the tempter and drive him away from
you!
In the next place, drawing near to God will help you to become pure.
Read the whole verse from which our text is taken–"Draw near to God,
and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and
purify your hearts, you
double-minded." You do wish to be chaste, do you not? You wish to be
sober. You wish to be honest. You wish to be pure in speech and pure in
action, do you not? Well, nothing purifies us like getting near to God
in Christ! There is cleansing by water as well as by blood–the blood
that washes away the guiltof sin is accompanied by a cleansing flood
that takes away the powerof sin–so that hands are cleansed and hearts
are purified when we draw near to God.
Further, drawing near to God will help us to sorrow for sin, for the
next verse to our text says, "Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep." "Oh,"
says some thoughtless person, "I do not want to be helped to sorrow for
sin." And yet–and yet–and yet, if you did but know it, one of the
sweetest things in all the world is godly sorrow for sin! Often do I
quote to myself that verse–
"Lord, let me weep for nothing but sin, And after none but Thee! And
then I would–oh, that I might!– A constant weeper be!"
"It is a bitter sweet," say some, but I say that it is a sweet bitter
and that the sweetness predominates–the sweetness of so feeling the
evil of sin as to loathe and shun it! It is a miserable state of things
to have a hard heart. Even a hard hand may be a burden. It happened to
a poor blind woman, who read with her fingers, that, after a while,
they lost the delicacy of touch so that she could not distinguish the
letters. It was a great grief to her, but, putting up to her lips the
precious Bible that she had been accustomed to read, she found that she
could read with her lips. She was very glad to have tenderness
somewhere. A tender heart is necessary to the reading of the mind of
God, so always try to keep your heart tender. A hard heart, or a stony
heart, is an awful curse. When you feel your heart beginning to ossify
or to petrify, pray God to plunge it in a bath of the Redeemer's blood
to make it soft again! The Lord grant that we may so draw near to Him
that our heart may be kept soft, for hardness of heart can never come
to the man who is kept near to God.
If you draw near to God, dear Friends, it will also help you to think
well of other people. "Do not speak evil of one another," says the
Apostle in the 11th verse. When you know that the great Judge of all,
Himself, is near, you will not be so quick as you sometimes are to take
His work out of His hands, but you will let Hmjudge. I am sure that the
man who lives near to God gets to have a kindly feeling towards others.
If ever you find a person saying that there is no life in the Church
and finding fault with everybody, you may be sure that that man has not
seen Jesus Christ of late, for Jesus Christ speaks not so. He says of
His people all He can that is good. Surely, if Christ loves His Church,
you ought not to find so much fault with it. "Do not speak evil of one
another," Brothers and Sisters, else it will prove that you have not
been anywhere near your Master of late!
And, last of all, if we live near to God, it will help us to think of
eternal things. The Apostle warns us not to say, "We will go into such
a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain," and
all that kind of talk. He who speaks like that has not seen God of
late, for he who is much with God thinks of eternal things and he knows
how near they are. And he says to himself, "I shall soon be gone. This
world is not my rest–there is nothing here that is substantial and
abiding." So he is waiting to hear the trumpet sound, "Boot and saddle!
Up and away!" and he stands ready, at his Captain's call, to be gone to
another and a better world! If you dwell near to God, you will not be
afraid of dying– you will rather dread to remain here than to be taken
away! Remember, this is your place of exile, and your state of
probation. O Lord, bring us near to You! Really, Brothers and Sisters,
I do not know anything that can do us so much good in our daily life as
walking with God. If you live near to God, the family worries and
troubles will not vex your spirit as they now do. You will live above
them and the outside world, with all its fault-finding, its anxieties
and its ups and downs will seem very small and insignificant to you
when you dwell on high and your place of defense is the munitions of
rocks. Some of us know what it is not to care even a snap of the
fingers when the world seems enraged against us–if we can but get away
into the secret chamber of communion where God is pleased to manifest
Himself to us.
If you live down in the marshes, you will get the chills and fever. But
if you live up on the mountaintop, you will rejoice in the sun's rays
before your fellow creatures see them and you will bask in them long
after those below have lost sight of them! You will also find the air
up there to be fresh and bracing and, among the eagles, you will grow
like an eagle, yourself, for you will mount up with wings as eagles,
till, one of these days, you will mount so high that you will not come
down again, for you will have gone to dwell forever near your Lord!
May the Lord bless you, Beloved, with all that this drawing near to Him
is capable of giving to you, for His dear name and mercy's sake! Amen.
EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON: JAMES4.
Verse 1. Where do wars and fights come from among you? Whether between
nations, or parties or individuals–if there are wars and fights, where
do they come from?
1. Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your
members?Do they not arise from one desiring something, and another
desiring the same thing? Is there not a competition or emulation of an
evil kind in which each one prefers himself and seeks not the good of
his neighbor?
2. You lust, and have not: you kill, and desire to have, and cannot
obtain: you fight and war, yet you have not This is nature's way of
trying to get by contention what it desires to possess–fighting,
warring and killing–yet the result of all this is nil. After all is
done, "yet you have not." There is a simpler and a surer way which men
forget–they leave that Divine path untrod–"You have not,"
2. Because you ask not With all your efforts you do not succeed because
you omit to pray to God! Prayer would have brought you every blessing
that you need, but, instead of going to God and asking at His hands,
you rush upon your neighbor and seek to take what you desire as spoil
from him. Perhaps some say, "But we do ask." "Well, then," says the
Apostle–
3. You ask, and receive not because you ask amiss, that you may consume
it upon your lusts. The lusts of the flesh come in and put us upon the
wrong track. Or if we take the right road, yet, if the lusts are there,
God will not bless us because, in doing so, He would be helping us to
gratify our lusts.
4. You adulterers and adulteresses, know you not that the friendship of
the world is enmity with God?The Apostle uses this strong language not
concerning the actual sin of adultery as the term is commonly
understood, but in relation to our not loving God with true chastity of
heart, but lusting after something else. This is the very essence of
spiritual adultery. We ought to give God the whole affection of our
being, but, instead of doing so, we allow at least some of it to wander
to other objects and, therefore, we are called, by the Holy Spirit
Himself, "adulterers and adulteresses." These may seem to be hard
words, but they are true ones. May they bring us to our spiritual
senses and cause us to love our God with all our heart, mind, soul and
strength!
4. Whoever, therefore, will be a friend of the world, is the enemy of
God. In one sense, Christians are the greatest friends of the world,
for they desire the good of all men and seek their salvation. But, in
another sense, viewing the world as a great conglomerate of evil, we
are no friends of the world. There is a certain form of theology,
popular nowadays, which teaches us that we ought to remove the line of
demarcation between the Church and the world. This kind of teaching may
be calledtheology, but it comes not of God–it is a gross lie which we
ought to abhor in the very depth of our spirit!
5, 6. Do you think that the Scripture says in vain, The Spirit that
dwells in us yearns jealously? But He gives more Grace. There is a
spirit, resident in the naturalman, the human nature of man, which is
always inclined toward hate and envy, always wanting to get something
from other men and always grieved if other men seem to be or to have
more than the person himself has. How is this spirit to be met? This
verse supplies the answer, "He gives more Grace." "More Grace"–this is
the great remedy for hate and envy! "More Grace"–this is the balm for
sorrow. "More Grace"–this is our greatest help out of all
difficulties. "More Grace"–this is the universal recipe for all that
we need–"He gives more
Grace."
6, 7. Therefore, He says, God resists the proud, but gives Grace unto
the humble. Submit yourselves therefore to God. Lay aside that fighting
spirit–that effort to pull others down so as to raise yourself up–and
bow before God! Yield yourself wholly to His blessed will. This is the
way of peace and the way of joy, too!
7. Resist the devil. Who will seek to stir you up to rebellion! Give no
place to him. "Resist the devil."
7, 8. And he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and He will draw
near to you. Hear this command and practice it. Get near to God in
Christ Jesus and you shall soon find Him come to your help in every
hour of need.
8. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you
double-minded. For, if you are double-minded, your hands and your
hearts must both be cleansed. The Apostle does not say, "Concentrate
your thoughts," but he does say,
"Cleanse your hearts," for, to have two objectives in life is a kind of
spiritual adultery from which we need to be purged, so the command is,
"Purify your hearts, you double-minded."
9. Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned to
mourning, and your joy to heaviness. If the previous verses have
rightly accused you of sin, confess your guilt with shame and
sorrow–and so come to Christ imploring pardon.
10. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He shall lift you
up. If you exalt yourself, He will pull you down. If you lie down in
the dust before Him, He will lift you up. It is according to God's
usual way of acting to practice these reversals. Mary truly sang, "He
has put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low
degree. He has filled the hungry with good things; and the rich He has
sent away empty."
11. Do not speak evil of one another, brethren. He that speaks evil of
his brother and judges his brother, speaks evil of the Law and judges
the Law: but if you judge the Law, you are not a doer of the Law, but a
judge. If you cease to think of that which is evil, you will also cease
to speak evil. If I speak evil of my brother, I have condemned the Law
which bids me love him as I love myself. I have practically said that
it is an absurd Law and an unrighteous Law–and this is a great evil in
God's sight.
12-15. There is one Lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy: who
are you that judges another? Come now, you who say, Today or tomorrow
we willgo into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy andsell,
andgetgain: whereas you do not know not what will happen tomorrow. For
what is your life? It is even a vapor, that appears for a little time,
and then vanishes away. For that you ought to say, If the Lord wills,
we shall live, and do this, or that We are all too apt to say what we
will do and where we will go, forgetting to add, "If the Lord wills, we
shall live, and do this, or that."
16, 17. But now you rejoice in your boastings: all such rejoicing is
evil Therefore to him that knows to do good, and does it not, to him it
is sin. There are sins of omission as well as sins of commission! May
the Lord graciously keep us from both forms of the evil, for His dear
Son's sake! Amen.