Transcript
James Really Works: Drawing Near to God
First Baptist Richmond, September 22, 2024
The Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
James 3:17-4:3, 7-8a
Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.
“If you’re so smart, then why aren’t you rich?” It’s a thing people say sometimes, isn’t it? Especially after someone has been bragging about how smart he is. And the implication seems to be that if he were actually smart he would use his superior intellect to acquire wealth. Wouldn’t he?
Wouldn’t everyone?
Maybe you’ve seen a movie called The Pursuit of Happyness, starring Will Smith in the role of Chris Gardner, a man who is down on his luck. There’s a scene where Gardner is walking down the sidewalk after a long day of trying to sell a piece of medical equipment that nobody seems to want. He’s been to one doctor’s office after another, lugging this outdated device in a heavy case, setting it up, demonstrating what it can do, and then being told—with a smile and a shake of the head—that it’s just not needed. He’s exhausted. He’s discouraged. And then he sees a guy pull up to the curb in a red Ferrari convertible. Gardner stands there, staring, as the guy jumps out of the car and starts feeding coins into the parking meter. He says, “Man, I’ve got two questions for you: what do you do and how do you do it?” The guy grins and says, “I’m a stockbroker.” Gardner says, “Oh, I guess you have to go to college to be a stockbroker.” But the guy says, “No,
you don’t have to. You have to be good with numbers and good with people. That’s it.” And then he pats him on the shoulder and trots up the steps into the building where he works.
Gardner stands there watching him go, and then he starts looking at all the other people going into and coming out of that building. There’s a voiceover in which an older, wiser Gardner says, “I still remember that moment. They all looked so…happy to me. Why couldn’t I look like that?” And even if you haven’t seen the movie you can probably guess that in that moment Gardner makes up his mind to be a stockbroker, his pursuit of happiness driven by the dream of someday pulling up to the curb in his own red Ferrari.
“If you’re so smart, then why aren’t you rich?” It’s an assumption that dates back to biblical times, only in those days people didn’t talk about being smart, they talked about being wise. A wise person was one who knew how to make good choices, and if you made enough good choices you would eventually have a good life, and that life would almost always include wealth: the two just went together. King Solomon, for example, is considered the wisest person who ever lived, but in his time he was also the wealthiest person who had ever lived. People in the ancient world didn’t see that as a coincidence, they saw it as a consequence. They believed that wisdom led to wealth. It’s one of the reasons the sayings of Solomon were collected and published in a book we call Proverbs. It’s one of the reasons people have studied those proverbs through the years and a reason some people still do. When they come to a fork in the road they want to make the right choice. They want to follow the path that leads to the good life and most of them believe that life will include wealth.
I’ve told you before that when I was in prep school the unwritten creed was
that if you studied hard you could get into a good college, and if you got into a good college you could get a good job, and if you got a good job you could make a lot of money, and if you made a lot of money you could buy a lot of things, and if you had a lot of things you would live happily ever after. In those days nobody questioned that creed, but since then I’ve heard from former classmates who did all those things in just that order and only later realized that it wasn’t true, they still weren’t happy.
Maybe James knew some people like that. Maybe that’s why he begins this week’s reading by asking, “Who is wise and understanding among you?” If you’re really wise, he says, then show us, not by your great wealth but by your good life. And for James the good life is not about having a lot of money or a lot of things. He may have learned that from his brother Jesus who once said it like this: “Beware! Keep yourselves from every kind of covetousness. For a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions” (Luke 12:15). The word beware is a strong one. It’s the kind of thing you might say to someone who was about to walk off the edge of a cliff. James doesn’t use that word, but he does say that “bitter envy” and “selfish ambition” come from earthly wisdom—the same kind of wisdom I learned in prep school, where it wasn’t enough to get an “A” on a test, you had to get a higher score than your classmates, because you were all competing for a limited number of admissions at Harvard, Princeton, or Yale.
In verse 17 James begins talking about another kind of wisdom, “the wisdom from above,” which is God’s kind of wisdom. I want you to listen to these words, underline them in your Bible, say them out loud, taste them on your tongue. “The wisdom from above,” James begins, is “first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality
or hypocrisy.” That doesn’t sound like the wisdom I learned in prep school. No, according to James that prep school wisdom, the wisdom that is full of bitter envy and selfish ambition, is “earthly, unspiritual, devilish.” Those are strong words, and that last one is especially strong. When I read it last week I realized that I hardly ever talk about the Devil. Have you noticed that?
I think it’s because I’ve listened to preachers who talk about the Devil more than they talk about Jesus, until you begin to wonder who’s really in charge. I’ve listened to Christians who talk as if the Devil were hiding behind every bush, waiting to pounce on them, as if we didn’t have a Savior. I’ve heard people talk about the Devil as if he were prowling around Hell with a pitchfork, tormenting the poor, unfortunate souls who have ended up there. But about five years ago I realized that every story needs a villain, and the Bible’s villain is the Devil. But in the Bible he is not what he is in popular culture.
I still remember the description from the movie, O Brother, Where Art Thou? where a hobo named Pete asks, “I’ve always wondered, what’s the devil look like?” and a know-it-all named Everett replies, “Well, there are all manner of lesser imps and demons, Pete, but the great Satan hisself is red and scaly with a bifurcated tail, and he carries a hay fork.” Where did he get that idea? Probably from the same place we get a lot of our information about the Devil, from books and movies and sermons meant to scare the sin out of us, but not from the Bible itself, where the Devil’s main job is 1) deceivingi us into thinking God’s way is not the best way; 2) temptingii us to take some other way; 3) and then accusingiii us when we do. And that movie about Chris Gardner may be the perfect example.
Because there is: just a regular guy, an Everyman, trying to make it in this world, when along comes the Devil in a red Ferrari. And it’s not like he’s asking
Chris to leave his wife or abandon his child; he’s simply asking him to believe that money is the answer to all his problems. And can I be honest with you? Money is the answer to a lot of problems. It would have solved a lot of Chris’s problems, like how to pay three months’ of back rent or how to get his son into a better childcare situation or how to keep his wife from having to work extra shifts at the dry cleaners. I have sometimes said that as far as false gods go, Money is a pretty good one; it can get you most of the way to where you really want to go, but it can’t get you all the way. Chris would learn that later in the movie. James is trying to keep us from having to learn it the hard way.
At the beginning of chapter 4 he asks, “Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings which are at war within you? 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.” And then he offers this solution: “You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures. Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you.”
Suppose that Chris Gardner had run the other way from that red Ferrari, not because money is a bad thing, or because he shouldn’t have become a stockbroker. Certainly not because he should have kept on trying to sell medical equipment that nobody wanted. But because money is a false god; it can never truly satisfy. You could fall asleep on a big pile of it every night and still be all alone. Jesus tried to warn us against that, but we weren’t listening. In Matthew 6:24 he said, “No man can serve two masters; you can’t serve God and Money.” We weren’t listening but James was, and in today’s reading he urges us to flee
from the devil, from money or anything else that would keep us from giving our hearts to God and God alone.
Suppose that Chris Gardner had, literally, run from that red Ferrari. Suppose that he had run to a church, and knelt at the altar, and poured out his heart. Suppose he had said, “Lord, I’m trying as hard as I know how to sell this medical equipment, but nobody seems to want it. My wife is on the verge of leaving me because she’s so stressed about money. My kid is in a day care center where all they do is watch TV all day. Lord, I need some help! Help me find a better job. Help me find a way to pay these bills. Help me be a good husband and a good father!”
I don’t know how Chris’s story would have turned out if he had done that, but when James says, “You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly,” that doesn’t seem like the wrong way to ask. That doesn’t sound like asking in order to spend what you get on your own pleasures. That sounds like asking out of desperation, because you’re sinking deep in debt and about to go under. And whatever else Chris Gardner may have gotten from such a prayer, I believe that when he got up off his knees he would have known that he was not alone.
Back in chapter two James was warning us not to show partiality toward the rich. He said, “If a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, ‘Have a seat here, please,’ while to the one who is poor you say, ‘Stand there,’ or, ‘Sit at my feet,’ have you not made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters, has not God chosen the poor to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the Kingdom he has promised to those who love him?”
In my experience that’s been true. The poor have been rich in faith. And it’s partly because they have no other choice. As false gods go money is a pretty good one. When you’re sick it can take you to the doctor. When you’re hungry it can buy you some food. But when you don’t have money and you get sick you have to ask God to heal you. And when you don’t have money and you’re hungry you have to ask God to feed you. As a consequence you end up spending a lot of time with God. You develop a relationship with him. And if you get well you thank him. And if you get fed you thank him. The fabulously wealthy don’t do that. They don’t thank Money for their latest round of plastic surgery or for dinner at a five-star restaurant. They thank themselves, they pat themselves on the back, while we look on from a distance with hearts full of bitter envy and selfish ambition.
If wisdom really is the ability to make good choices, and if good choices really will lead us to the good life, then let’s not confuse the good life with the rich life. Let’s listen to Solomon, the wisest man in the world, say that chasing after money is “vanity,” as he does in the Book of Ecclesiastes. Let’s hear him say that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,” as he does in the Book of Proverbs. And then let’s do what James says in the book that bears his name: let’s draw near to God so that he will draw near to us.
You may have heard that while the church in America is struggling the church in Africa is thriving; it’s growing by leaps and bounds. But not long ago I was talking to a woman from Africa who said, “That’s true. The church is growing. But it’s a mile wide and an inch deep. It’s all this prosperity gospel. It’s people believing that God is going to make them rich.” I hope that’s not true about the African church. But I think this is true: I think that if we flee from the Devil he will flee from us, and that if we draw near to God he will draw near to us. And I
believe it’s there—not in prosperity but in proximity—that we will find our heart’s desire.
—Jim Somerville © 2024
