Are you close with God?
Are you close with God?
Do you even want to be close to God?
Are you trying to draw near to Him?
I ask these questions to launch into a scriptural study about them, but hopefully, you can answer or at least want to answer ‘Yes’ to all three. There are many more questions that are similar.
Over our spiritual journey, we often times will hear ‘I want to be close to God’ or ‘I want a relationship with Him’. Or maybe you’ve said these things yourself.
We even use and quote popular scripture to reinforce these statements. Ask and you shall receive, seek and find, mustard seed of faith, believe without doubt or being double minded. The list goes on.
You want to be obedient or you want to submit. You want to be close and have a relationship. That’s great, but what does this mean? Are you defining what it means? Or, are you looking to what God defines this as?
This scripture study will look into obedience to God and relationship with God.
January 30, 2020 verse of the day:
James 4:7 “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”
This is the perfect summary for Satan tempting Jesus. Jesus was submitted how? His thoughts and actions were based on the word of God. God’s commands were written and Jesus obeyed them. Because of this he was able to resist the devil and the devil fled.
James 4:7
While this one verse is just fine, it’s not a stand alone verse. It is part of a letter from James, a letter written “to the twelve tribes who are dispersed abroad”. James 1:1
Right now maybe you might dismiss this as not relevant to you today because you might not consider “the twelve tribes” to be fitting to you or describe you. However, we should seek to be and we are part of this. (another study completely)
Now let’s look at the immediate context in chapter 4.
v1 - Asks “What’s the source of your war and conflicts among you?” then gives the answer “Is not the source your pleasures (or lusts)?”
It seems people of this day were fighting over worldly pleasures or getting what they wanted. This was causing big fights. Can this be said amongst believers today?
v2-3 - You lust, and have not: so you kill. You desire to have, and cannot obtain, so you fight. You ask, and receive not, because you ask with wrong motives to spend it on your pleasures.
Here he is elaborating on this. Lusting, desiring and asking with wrong motives.
v4 - You adulteresses (referring to those who do the above), do you not know that friendship of the world is hostility toward God?
Doing those things you shouldn’t is creating distance between you and God and showing that you are in acceptance with the world.
Compare this to Jesus’s prayer in John 17. In v14 “I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.”
It is clear that the world will hate us (even create distance from us) because of God’s word, not to be friends with the world.
v5 - Do ye think that the scripture saith in vain, The spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy?
God wants us, our intentions, our desires, to be for Him. He longs for us to seek Him, when we don’t He is jealous.
v6 - But he giveth more grace. Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble.
Even though he is jealous, he provides more grace until we turn back to him. And he wants you to turn back to him.
Peter says part of this as well, 1 Peter 5:5
“Likewise, ye younger, submit yourselves unto the elder. Yea, all of you be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility: for God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble.”
This comes from Psalm 138:6 and Proverbs 3:34
Or maybe they received it directly from Jesus, Matthew 23:12
“Likewise, ye younger, submit yourselves unto the elder. Yea, all of you be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility: for God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble.”
At any rate, God is against those who lift themselves up, but when you’re humbled (brought low, afflicted) God is for you.
v7 - Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
Submitting ourselves to God is in line with humbling ourselves
We’re starting to get a picture of what we should be doing vs not be doing.
v8a - Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.
v6 to v8a seems to be more a general appeal of what to do.
Drawing near to God is what we want, and the last few verses could be seen as follows:
Humbling yourself and submitting to God is how you draw close God, how you show God you want to be near to him. When you do, God draws close to you.
There are actions/ways of thinking/corrections we need to first consider before God lets us in.
Not to say God does not want us, he wants us first before we want him. He pleads for us to turn to him.
v8b - Cleanse your hands, ye sinners;
While the last verses seemed more general mid v8 is a pointed appeal to correct our ways.
Consider this: Cleaning our hands (or our work, what we set out to do) allows us to grow stronger and stronger (Job 17:9), we do this by removing the evil (ill intentions) from our deeds (or ways/actions) in the sight of God (Isaiah 1:16), so we can lift our hands in prayer with holy (clean/worthy) hands. (1 Timothy 2:8)
v8c - Purify your hearts, you double minded
Why would he need to say purify our hearts? We should understand where he is likely pointing to.
Jer 4:14 - Wash your heart from wickedness (evil), O Jerusalem, that you may be saved. How long will your vain (wicked) thoughts lodge within you?
What do you think of when the words evil and wicked thoughts come up? The worst of the bad? Maybe you might think it doesn’t apply to you then.
It’s safe to say that if God's ways are righteousness (we seek this right?) and God’s word is pure and truth, anything that goes against his ways and word would not be good. Or in God’s sight, by God’s standard, going against him would be wicked or evil or opposite of good.
There’s no middle ground, in Rev 3:16 the lukewarm are rejected. How does God know where you stand if you don’t take a side? That’s being double minded. It’s the world’s ways or God’s ways. You have to choose one or the other completely.
In Matt 5:21-48, Jesus starts with the command “you shall not murder” and then says hey if you are angry with or insult your brother you also will face judgement.
1 Peter 1:22 - Since you have in obedience to the truth purified your souls for a sincere love of the brethren, fervently love one another from the heart,
How to purify: Be obedient to the truth.
What is the truth we should be obedient to? Or be submitted to? Or to comply with?
Psa 119:142 - Thy righteousness is an everlasting righteousness, and thy law is the truth.
Psa 119:151 - Thou art near, O LORD; and all thy commandments are truth.
Psa 25:10 - All the paths of the LORD are mercy and truth unto such as keep his covenant and his testimonies.
Psa 100:5 - For the LORD is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations.
Psa 119:30 - I have chosen the way of truth: thy judgments have I laid before me.
Proverbs 3
James 4 continues from there, but we can see that the disciples knew scripture and were teaching it. All we have to do is search it out.
What started as a nice verse of the day, one that we likely read and pass on by. We agree with it, but maybe that’s as far we take it.
We should resist those thoughts and find out what these head nodding one off verses are really trying to tell us.
So let’s review what we have so far…
God is against those
who lift themselves up,
who are arrogant,
who are wicked,
who seek after their own ways,
who do not fully choose his side,
who are not clean but sinners,
who seek after worldly pleasures,
who are friends and accepting of the world.
God is for and draws near to those
who humble themselves,
who submit themselves to him,
who are obedient to him,
who choose his side and all that comes with it,
who purify themselves through his word, paths, truth, commandments, law,
who cleanse themselves by removing the wicked thoughts,
who seek after him
who choose to follow God fully and end up with the world against them.
You can see that for the most part it’s God is against you or for you, and as mentioned before there really is no middle ground. Scripture would agree with the above review, you just have to start reading.
From here, let’s move towards defining some of these terms that will see God drawing near to us.
I have not been able to complete this section of the study yet. The next steps for you would be to define further, using scripture, what it means to do the above.
Humble yourself
Psalm 119:65-72
Submit yourself
Obedience
God's side / ways
Purify yourself
Cleanse yourself
Seeking God
Follow God completely