My Morning Meal

“This town ain’t big enough for the two us.” So comes to mind this well worn cliché of the old western movie (and Toy Story) as I continue to read in James. I read that in the dynamics of the kingdom of God, it’s either friendship with the world or it’s friendship with God . . . not enough room for both . . . to embrace one is to in effect tell the other to “get outta’ town by sundown.” And James calls for a showdown.

“You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.” (James 4:4 ESV)

Doesn’t get much more black and white than that . . . the “town” of God’s kingdom can’t accommodate both friendships . . . friendship with the world and friendship with God are mutually exclusive . . . no working both sides of the fence . . . if we choose to embrace and live for with the world system around us then we set ourselves up in opposition to God. Which is it gonna be?

So, it’s high noon . . . the streets are empty . . . friendship with God has been chosen . . . the time has come to drive the dirty rotten scoundrel outta’ town. And the love of the world takes on form . . . the one who seeks to lure us into friendship with the world comes more clearly into view . . . recognized as a once beautiful, but prideful, and now fallen angel. You’re looking down the dusty street at the devil . . . the prince of the power of the air (Eph. 2:2) . . . the god of this age (2Cor. 4:4). And it’s time to pull the six-shooter out of it’s holster . . . time to draw . . .

“Therefore [because God gives more grace and He gives that grace to the humble] submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you . . . Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up.” (James 4:6-10)

There it is . . . the push and pull of our showdown at high noon. We push, or resist, the devil and he will flee . . . we pull, or draw near, to God and He promises to draw near to us and lift us up. It doesn’t come down to how well we handle a “Colt 45” but that we determine to pull the trigger . . . deciding to resist the devil and draw near to God. The power is not in how good our aim is, but how effective His “more grace” is . . . that grace which He bestows when we humble ourselves before Him and willingly submit to Him . . . and in so doing, say “no” to the devil’s sales pitch on all that the world has to offer.

We determine to stand firm against the enemy of our souls . . . and he high tails it outta’ town. We willingly bow down before the Savior of our souls . . we cry out to Him who has loved us with a costly, everlasting love . . . we desire and long for Him . . . wanting friendship with Him over friendship with this world . . . and He pours out grace . . . and He descends to envelope us . . . and lift us . . . and seat us with His Son in the heavenlies.

Resist the devil and he will flee . . . draw near to God and He will draw near . . .

Seems like a promise worth claiming . . . a promise worth pursuing . . . for my benefit . . . for His glory . . . amen?

You know, there are some passages of Scripture that I probably would just as soon avoid. Those passages that seem to put you in a corner . . . don’t leave any wiggle room . . . verses that you can’t just dismiss as being for someone else. They are those admonitions that just nail you. James’ teaching on the tongue in the third chapter of his letter is one such passage.

“For we all stumble in many things. If anyone does not stumble in word, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle the whole body.” – James 3:2

Busted! We all stumble . . . trip up . . . literally “descend from a higher place to a lower” . . . aka fall, fail, err, blow it. Uh, yeah, that would be me. Not liking this so far. And then James focuses on one particular “descent” . . . the “descent in word.” Only a perfect man never stumbles with his tongue . . . and, I’m no perfect man . . . I know what he’s talking about . . . been there, done that . . . way too often . . . way too recently . . . this is getting way to close for comfort.

The taming of the tongue is a hard undertaking. Massive horses can be controlled with a small piece of metal in their mouths . . . huge ships can be directed by a very small rudder (3:4) . . . but the tongue? . . . now that’s gonna take some help to master. It’s a spark that can set a great forest ablaze . . . it has the potential to be a world of iniquity defiling the whole body . . . an unruly evil, full of deadly poison. And James says, “No man can tame the tongue.” (3:5-6,8)

Heavy sigh.

This “little member”, which I so delight to direct to bless God . . . to speak words of honor to the Creator . . . to articulate thoughts of praise to the Father of Lights . . . it is same tongue that can get away from me and “curse men” . . . to utter desires of doom upon those who have been created by the God I bless . . . to invoke evil upon those for whom the blood of Jesus was shed. Talk about your two ends of the spectrum!

The best of lines . . . the worst of lines . . . both sourced from the same tongue. “Out of the same mouth proceed blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not to be so. Does a spring send forth fresh water and bitter from the same opening? Can a fig tree, my brethren, bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Thus no spring yields both salt water and fresh.” (3:10-12)

So what do I do with this? First, I agree with God . . . these things ought not to be so. And while I can’t tame the tongue on my own, I know One who can . . . the Perfect Man . . . the One who never lost control of His speech . . . Who always picked His words carefully . . . Who, even when He did have harsh words, spoke them in truth and accuracy and without malice . . . desiring that even a “brood of vipers” would repent (Matt. 3:7-8). It is this Perfect Man, who had power over His own tongue, who has begun a good work in me through the new birth. A work of regeneration . . . of reformation . . . of transformation . . . that, in my life, He might increase and I might decrease . . . that, through the sanctifying work of His Spirit, I would take on more the characteristics of the Perfect Man and shed, more and more, the behaviors of my old man . . . that I use my tongue more like Him and less like the world around me.

Mastering the tongue will be an on-going battle . . . but my desire is that my words would increase as a source of fresh water and decrease as a dispenser of bitter salt water . . . that I might be known, more and more, as a conveyor of the best of lines and not the worst of lines . . . for His glory . . . amen.

Welcome to the main event . . . let’s get ready to rumble! Ladies and gentlemen may I present to you the combatants . . . waging war throughout the ages . . . opposed to one another at the core . . . battling over the souls of men. In this corner, weighing in as greatly over-rated and over-valued and over-used . . . judgment. And in the far corner, not looking necessarily very impressive . . . not loud . . . not flashy . . . not the stuff of macho men . . . but oh, so effective . . . having won every prior meeting between these two . . . weighing in through the power of God and the sacrifice of Christ . . . may I introduce to you . . . mercy! . . . the undisputed champion!

In judgment’s corner . . . supporting him in a losing battle . . . is his manager, the law . . . supported by his corner men, pride and partiality. Doing battle based on the works of men, his tactics are simple . . . set a standard that sounds holy but is really based on what he can attain and then challenge others to live up to it. Set before them a checklist to be completed in order to measure up . . . whether it be the 10 commandments . . . or 1st century “principles and practices” . . . or just a self-formed view of righteousness . . . and require those who would seek to measure up to check off the right number of “to do’s” and “to don’ts” in order to get a passing grade and then measure on a bell curve . . . and, through arrogance and favoritism, start judging them in their failure. The essence of his strength? His secret weapon? The fact that, for those who try to attain righteousness through the law, or any other measure of works, stumbling in one point renders them guilty of all . . . thus giving judgment the upper hand.

The upper hand? . . . at times, perhaps. Victory? . . . absolutely not! Enter into the ring . . . mercy!

Mercy . . . “kindness or good will towards the miserable and the afflicted, joined with a desire to help them” . . . the determination to withhold the punishment deserved for sin . . . the set of eyes that look upon those who fail and identify with their stumbling and, rather than take judgment’s destructive approach, seek to lift up . . . and restore. Yes, the wages of sin is death . . . so what allows mercy to do battle in such a way? Backing him in his corner is the grace of God and the blood of Christ. The heart of the Father that not only longs to forgive but to rebuild . . . that seeks not only to withhold punishment but to lavish upon the sinner the spiritual riches of heaven itself . . . that seeks not only to save a man or woman from hell, but to transform them into the image of His blessed Son . . . receiving them as children . . . accepting them as His own Beloved. And grace is fueled by the blood of Christ . . . the atoning flow for men’s sins . . . the knock out blow for judgment’s attacks . . . the submission hold on the accuser of the brethren . . . the basis for eternal victory . . . the ultimate triumph.

Judgment vs. mercy . . . a battle as old as time. And I read in James this morning that “Mercy triumphs over judgment.” (James 1:13b)

And the warning from James is to be careful whose corner I migrate to. Certainly I have been a benefactor of mercy . . . I have known grace . . . my sins . . . past, present, and future . . . forgiven in full, tossed as far away as east is from west . . . but pride and partiality have a way of taking recipients of mercy . . . trophies of grace . . . and having them participate in judgment’s losing fight. Instead, as one who has known mercy and experienced grace, I should be a dispenser of the same . . . “So speak and so do as those who will be judged by the law of liberty” (James 1:12). Putting down pride and seeking the mind of Christ, through the Spirit of Christ, mine is to view others without partiality . . . to not judge based on some set of rules I think others need to step up to . . . but to show mercy . . . to exhibit grace . . . to align myself with the all-time, undisputed champion in the fight for men’s souls.

Oh, that I would be marked by mercy and grace . . . for His glory . . . amen.

Do you have another 3 1/2 minutes?  Click here to check out Gordon Mote’s take on “the fight”.

There are those who somehow would separate theory from reality . . . who would talk of being “street smart” rather than “book smart” . . . who would see the two as being somewhat mutually exclusive. There are those in the church who would see it the same way . . . somehow distancing the relationship of Bible knowledge from “practical Christianity” . . . minimizing the need to know the word . . . claiming that “just doing it” is what’s important. But, if I’m reading James correctly this morning, I don’t know that you can separate the two. James’ letter is intensely practical . . . it deals with being doers . . . it concerns “pure and undefiled religion.” But as I hover over the first chapter of James the basis for “doing” is hearing . . . the genesis for true religion is right doctrine . . . and, it seems to me, James establishes that in order to get to the works, you need to start with the Word.

“Of His own will He (i.e. the Father of lights) brought us forth by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures . . . Therefore lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.” (James 1:18, 21)

Begotten by the word of truth . . . set forth as an initial “harvest” of firstfruits . . . so were those first century Christians. They were the prototype . . . the first examples of the gospel’s impact . . . the first members of the body . . . the first stones in the living building . . . the first kings and priests of Messiah’s “not of this world” kingdom. And there’s a degree to which I think all believers can claim some of this . . . maybe not firstfruits exactly . . . but part of that harvest . . . more “produce” intended to speak of a different way, a different land, a different motivation for life. But it doesn’t end with the initial harvest . . . in fact, that was to be just the beginning.

Born of the word . . . yes . . . but then they were to be shaped by the word . . . the implanted word . . . or, as the old KJV says, “the engrafted word.”

The idea here seems to be more than that of just a seed being sown . . . but of a shoot from one type of plant being implanted or grafted to another so that the second might take on more the characteristics of the first . . . that it might bear fruit in accordance with the shoot’s plant of origin. And ours is to receive that shoot . . . the image of Christ via the word of God . . . with meekness. We’re to take it in submissively and obediently . . . to allow it to become part of us . . . to let it define us more and more . . . to give it the nurture needed to bring forth much fruit. In so doing, we “save our souls”. More than this referring to the initial act of salvation which saves us from the “penalty of sin” . . . the engrafted or implanted word can take over and choke out the weeds of wickedness as it saves our soul from the “power of sin.”

And I’m a bit in wonder at the spiritual dynamic associated with the implanted word . . . or as James refers to it a little later, “the perfect law of liberty” (1:25). I think I’m just doing my devotional readings . . . or just working through some Bible study . . . but God sees it as divine horticulture . . . the grafting of the heavenly within the earthbound . . . the insertion of the nature of God within the redeemed nature of man . . . a series of organ transplants, beginning with a new heart . . . all through the implanted word . . . all through the word of truth.

What folly to think we can be like Christ apart from the word. He is the Word . . . check out the opening verses of John’s gospel. He is the Living Word . . . and His written word is the key to living for Him and like Him. When we put away the junk that defiles the ground . . . when we cultivate the ground so that it is supple and filled with the nutrients of humility and teachabilty . . . then the implanted shoot of the word starts to takeover . . . and the reality of “the theory” becomes evident in the living out of “the practical.”

Oh, that God’s people would determine to be people of the Book . . . that they would not cede to the enemy’s deception that somehow we can do Christianity apart from the implanted word . . . that they would seek the Vinedresser to graft more and more of His living word into our souls . . . that we might be doers . . . doers of the word growing in us . . . for His glory . . . amen!