Draw Near to God and He Will Draw Near to You

Scripture Lessons: Psalm 1 and James 3: 13 – 4: 10 Sermon Title: Draw Near to God and God will Draw Near to You Preached on 9/23/18 One of my favorite restaurants in the whole world is the OK Café on the corner of West Paces Ferry and 41 right there just off I 75. I’ve eaten there so many times that I don’t need to look at the menu, and the menu hasn’t really changed since the first time I sat down in one of their red booths to eat. It’s one of those timeless places that hasn’t changed a whole lot, but I have, so part of the reason I love going to the OK Café is because it makes me think about all that’s changed in my life over the years I’ve been eating there. The memories I have of being 8 years old and going there with my Dad are just as important to me as the food. When I walk in I think of how much my mom likes their red zinger iced tea, or when right before they got married, Sara and I took my old friend Matt Buchanan and Jessica, who was then his fiancé, there for dinner. Now Matt and Jessica have a nearly teenage daughter. That’s the kind of big change that happens over the course of several years and going to the OK Café makes me think about all that. But even more so, the Chevron across the street from the OK Café makes me think about how things change, because right after graduating college, when Sara and I were first married, I worked for a lawn maintenance company, and pretty much every day we’d park near that Chevron, so we could eat lunch with all the other lawn maintenance crews at the picnic table in the back under a big magnolia tree. That picnic table is still there, and all these Atlanta landscape crews still stop to eat lunch right at that spot. So, when I went to the OK Café last week I stopped to buy gas at that Chevron, and there they all were. Nothing much has changed, but I’ve changed. Back in those days when I ate at that picnic table I was tan from working outside and I spoke Spanish all day to communicate with my crew, and once when I walked into that Chevron to buy a coke the guy at the register said to me, “Buenos dias.” Well, last week all the guy at the register said was, “Good morning,” and I was a little disappointed, but that’s to be expected because while it’s the same Chevron with the same picnic table under the same magnolia tree I’ve changed. I no longer fit into the world that I was once proud to belong to. Now that idea brings us to the matter at hand from the book of James. If you know what it’s like to change in such a way that you no longer fit into the world you once belonged to, either because you moved to the city and your friends back in the country think you talk like a yankee or because you got divorced and now your couple friends are weird about inviting you to dinner parties, use that feeling of no longer fitting into the world you once belonged to as a lens to really understand what James is trying to say to us today. It’s important to hold onto that feeling of no longer fitting in to where you once belonged because we Christians – now we are citizens of the Kingdom of God, so why are we still trying to fit in to this world that’s not our home any longer? We feel the drive to fit in – but should we? When in reality, we aren’t meant to fit in here anymore. Because of the life changing Gospel of Jesus Christ, something inside us has changed; “but,” as James says, “if you have bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts,” then you are guided, not by heavenly wisdom, but by what is “earthly, unspiritual, devilish…” There are two ways. Two kinds of wisdom. One is of this world and the other is of the world to come. James demands that we ask ourselves, “which way are we choosing?” For: “You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts.” James is sure that too much of the time our behavior makes us hypocrites. It just doesn’t make any sense for us to keep on living according to the customs of the earth when we are citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven, but as James says, there are “cravings… at war within” us. We accept the standards of our society where everyone spends too much money, then we allow the reckless pursuit of wealth to trump our moral compass. We lay down with the dogs of reckless power, following their actions and listening to their every word, then wind up waking up with their fleas. We think we’re just watching the commercials for restless leg syndrome, but before we know it we’re talking to our doctor about it and she’s writing a prescription for some disease that we never knew existed. If anyone really has that restless leg syndrome I’m sorry for being a jerk about it. It sounds awful, but the point I want to make is that sometimes we are influenced in ways that we don’t even realize – because the fallen world that we don’t belong to anymore still influences the way we think and the way we act. There it all is in first half of verse 4 chapter 4: Adulterers! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? The truth is that we have to change our ways. The change in our heart that comes with our Christian belief must also create a change in our actions. We must become as pilgrims on the earth that we might be prepared to settle in heaven, so James says to us: Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Maybe you’d agree, that this does sound like exactly what we ought to do. But maybe you’re getting a little tired of all this preacher’s “should's” and “ought's.” That can be exhausting. You know, the thing about James that I don’t like is that at first, James makes me feel the same way as a trip to the dentist. It’s like he’s looking in my soul and saying, “Joe, you really ought to clean up in here.” And I should, but why? How? What’s so important in this long lecture that James gives us for these 5 chapters is that there’s joy to be found in following his advice. And you know that’s true, because trying to fit in to the world as we know it will ultimately make you miserable. I heard a story once about how hard it can be to please your father. The story is about the first female president of the United States. She called her dad and invited him to go to the inauguration. He told her that he didn’t have a ride to get there or a suit that fit any more, so he probably shouldn’t go. Well, the president to be wasn’t going to take that. She wanted her daddy there. She wanted him to be there, so he could be proud of what she’d accomplished, so she sent over a tailor to his house. Paid for his suit, sent a helicopter on inauguration day to pick him up. He rode to DC in that fancy helicopter, the secret service met him at the landing pad and escorted him right up to the front row where he could see his daughter put her hand on the Bible to be sworn in as President of the United States just as plain as day. But you know what her daddy said? He says to the guy sitting next to him, “You see that lady up there. She’s my daughter, but her brother played for Georgia.” You see – we can work hard to be somebody in the eyes of our earthly father, but there’s no guarantee that we’ll ever shine in his estimation. We can work hard to fit in at the high school, but as soon as you save up the money to buy whatever clothes you’re supposed to have the trend changes and you’re out again. In the same way – this world we live in – even the ones who make it to the top and have all the stuff that supposed to make someone happy – they’re miserable. You can read about it in US Weekly. So, the call from James is not a 5 chapter finger wagging lecture, but a mirror that we can hold up to this world that we’re trying to fit into. We worry about not being somebody in the eyes of the world, but no matter how hard we work – we might still wing up feeling empty, but to be somebody in the eyes of God. That’s like “soaring on the wings of eagles.” That’s like “running and not growing weary.” That’s like drinking the kind of water that satisfies. And you know what it takes to be somebody in the eyes of God according to our passage from James? All it takes is humility. For a long time now, every meeting of our youth group has ended with the whole group forming one big circle, so that together they sing the words of James chapter 4 verse 10: “Humble thyself in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up.” The version that we read from this morning translated the words just slightly differently, but the meaning is the same. Regardless of how you say it, all we have to do to draw near to God is face the fact that the way we’ve been doing it isn’t working. It’s just like how the first step towards going down the right path is walking into the gas station and asking for directions. We have to humble ourselves before the Lord, because those who aren’t willing to admit that they need a savior can’t benefit from the one that we have in Jesus Christ. We have to humble ourselves before the Lord, because until we’re willing to admit that we’re broken we can’t be mended. Until we’re ready to admit that we’re sick we can’t be healed. Until we’re ready to say we’re blind we’ll never see. Until we’re ready to say as the Prophet Isaiah said, “Lord, I’m a man with unclean lips living among a people with unclean lips,” the Lord can’t make us clean. But once we surrender, once we accept it – we wonder why for so long we’ve been laboring in vain. To say it as the psalm did in our first Scripture Lesson: Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, Or take the path that sinners tread, But their delight is in the law of the Lord, And on his law they meditate day and night. If we want to be like the trees planted by streams of water that this psalm talks about, we too have to be ready to admit that where we’ve been living and what we’ve grown used to is so much like a desert that the people of this world look everywhere for a drink that they’ll never find. We’ll never be able to buy our way to satisfaction no matter how much money we have. We’ll never be able to legislate our way to happiness no matter how much power we have. And we’ll never be able to medicate ourselves to joy no matter how many pills we take. You see – what the world makes promises, but it cannot deliver. There is only one source of living water. There is only one life giving stream and it runs through the city not made by human hands and that’s the place that we call home. If you want to go there with me, take stock of your actions. Take stock of your heart. Have you adopted the ways of the world – the habits that we mortals accept as normal behavior that you’re on your way to going down with it – or is your heart so changed that you’re preparing to live in a New Heaven and a New Earth where the lion lays down with the lamb and the Lord is there to wipe away the tears from our eyes that we might live in joy forever more? When I die I don’t want anyone to say that he sure was an upstanding citizen of the City of Marietta. I want them to say, “that Joe Evans was always a little weird, but that’s because he didn’t belong here. He was always preparing himself to live in the New Jerusalem, the Kingdom of God.” Draw near to God and God will draw near to you.