LIFE MATTERS 3: A Study From The Book of James
January 18, 2015
If you have been reading the news over the past few weeks, you are probably now familiar
with Kevin Jorgeson and Tommy Caldwell. Over a period of 19 days, these two men became
the first to free climb the Dawn Wall of El Capitan in the Yosemite Valley. That means these
two men climbed 3,000 feet up what is essentially a vertical rock face. On top of that, they
did it without any climbing tools aside from safety ropes. They didn’t use any contraptions
to grip the rock or carve holes in the rock for a better grip. Like Spiderman, these two
climbed up a sheer rock face with only their fingertips and toes.
Pictures from this harrowing journey show these men bandaging and super gluing their
raw fingertips back together so they could continue to pull themselves up this most difficult
of climbing paths. Here is what is amazing. After completing this climb, in a fashion that no
on else has ever done, Kevin Jorgeson said, “This is not about conquering the Dawn Wall. It
is about realizing a dream.” As impressive as their ascent was, Kevin is right, they didn’t
really conquer it. They still needed ropes. They still need supplies sent up via rope. They
still need bandages, rest and whiskey to help make it through.
John Sutter wrote an article about these two men and their amazing effort, and he echoed
Jorgeson’s sentiment, “Jorgeson and Caldwell's epic ascent of the Dawn Wall should be a
reminder of how small we humans are in the face of the natural world.”(CNN 1/15/15)
When you see the pictures, you will probably tend to agree with Jorgeson and Sutter. Two
people can read this story and see two different headlines, 1) the huge accomplishment of
humanity and 2) the true smallness of humanity. I think the man who helped include
Yosemite Valley into the Yosemite National Park would favor the latter.
Theodore Roosevelt was a true conservationist and saw the vastness of God through his
creation in comparison to man and his role in it. That is why he led the way in creating
National Parks and National Monuments, including incorporating Yosemite Valley into the
larger Yosemite National Park in 1906 during his presidency. For a man who did so much
and is often hailed as one of America’s greatest presidents, a statesmen, an intellectual, a
conservationist and a leader, he often reminded people about the size of man, “How small
he often is. How fragile he often is.” Theodore Roosevelt has many great quotes, ones you
probably know like, “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” The quote that most embodies his
approach to the size of man is, “If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for
most of your trouble, you wouldn’t sit for a month.”
There is something profound about that tension. Knowing the size of what man can
accomplish and yet knowing the true size of man, how frail and how fragile. I think
Theodore Roosevelt and James would have gotten on together quite handsomely. In our
passage today, James will give us another key to Life in God and it has everything to do with
acknowledging your size. We are in the middle of our Life Matters series and we are
reacquainting ourselves with our discipleship process at SFC. We are a church that wants to
embody and offer the life that God gives. The human condition is encapsulated in
Ecclesiastes 3:11, God has placed eternity in man’s heart but he cannot obtain it. We are all
looking for something. We all want life, and there are a hundred ways to come at it in the
Valley. Here at SFC, we believe Jesus when he offered eternal and abundant life and that
only he can satisfy those deep longings in our souls. Longings that only he can make sense
of this world and give us true joy and purpose, and that is by following him.
To follow Jesus, to receive the life he offers, we are encouraging everyone to pursue three
life goals: Life in God, Life with Others and Life for Others. We are spending two weeks on
each of these goals, and we are on the second week of Life in God. Last week we said Life in
God is found when you see what God sees and love what he loves. When you look into God’s
law and are a doer and not just a hearer, it will lead you to love who he loves, the lowly, the
downcast, the downtrodden. This is the vicarious nature of Life in God that when we love
others well, we are loving him. Last week,we really focused on how you see others. This
week I want to focus on you, the size of you. When you understand your size, you will see
your maker clearly.
James 4: 1-10
Verses 1-4 are essentially the briefest of hamartiologies. Hamartiology is the theology of
sin. Before James gets to a prognosis, he paints a harrowing diagnosis. We are sin sick in
our natural state and bigger than life in our own eyes. James asks why there is division and
problems within the church and then he points to our desire run amok. He says, “Your
passions are at war within you. He points to greed, anger, jealousy and all the outcomes
that they bring. He is building a case for the interrelated domino effect of sin. The desire for
all of these things is crushing you and breaking you and your community down. Your big
desire for small things is crushing you. Everything this world has is small in comparison to
a big God. As it turns out, we usually have a big appetite for small things and a small
appetite for big things. Paul would call this the desires of the flesh versus the desires of the
spirit.
James was steeped in Jewish learning and thinking, and his mind probably went to the idea
of the yetzer. Contemporary Jewish scholars discussed the idea of a body warring with
itself to the point of different organs vying for satisfaction. The bigger idea was that we all
have yetzer, desires. Yetzer tov - good desires and yetzer ra - evil desires. Desire on the
whole is amoral, not immoral, but amoral in other words, neutral. When we desire good
things in excess, they quickly move from being yetzer tov - good desires to yetzer ra - evil
desires. Big desires for small things.
The simplest picture of this illustration is a child sneaking cookies out of the pantry. Here is
the mindset of a child: cookies are delicious, and I wish I could eat them all day long. That is
a big desire for a small thing. However, mother has told me not to sneak cookies from the
pantry, therefore, mom has some issues with my cookie consumption but I don’t. Mom gets
angry about it, but the cookies aren’t really bad for me. Inherent in this misconception is
that a child does not understand that the mother isn’t trying to withhold good things but
rather protect the child. A child left to his own devices eating cookies all day long would
suffer from an upset stomach in the short term and in the long term could be subject to
unhealthiness and disease with unfettered access to cookies.
Now, using the illustration of getting sick on cookies as a picture of sin might seem like a
minimization. Sin is devastating. It isn’t as benign as a tummy ache, and cookies aren’t
inherently bad but sin is. In one sense you are right, but let me explain why I think this is an
appropriate metaphor. More often than not sin is God-given desire consumed in excess, a
big desire for small things. Sex isn’t bad. It is a God-given desire, but when sex is sought in
excess outside of the confines for which God created it, it is sin. Money isn’t bad. Greed
which is pursuing money in excess is. Drinking isn’t bad. Drunkenness which is consuming
alcohol in excess is. Anger isn’t bad. Hatred or even murder which is anger carried to excess
is. Appreciating things isn’t bad. Desiring things so much that you covet or steal them is. Sin
is often God-given things abused in excess. The Greek word in the New Testament for lust is
epithumia, and lust is a bad translation. Epithumia means strong desire. Jesus tells his
disciples he epithumia to share the Last Supper with them. It can be a good strong desire or
a bad strong desire. When we epithumia God-given things in excess, this is often sin. That
is why the cookies make sense. The mother in this illustration enjoys giving her child good
things, but the child and his natural tendencies without a governor or law is prone to eat in
excess and make himself unhealthy and sick.
In a similar fashion, the temptation of sin, the desires for the cookies of this life, leaves most
people thinking that God is some kind of grandfatherly prude in the sky who doesn’t want
us to have pleasure. So many times as Christians, we treat sin as sneaking a treat rather
than consuming something that will make us ill and diseased. Call it desire. Call it
epithumia. Call it yetzer ra. Call it a big desire for small things. Whatever it may be, sin can
lead to natural consequences and systemic brokenness. That is what James is describing,
people whose desires are outsized, too big and too much. They see themselves as big
creatures with big appetites that need big satisfaction. That is why James has a prognosis.
Be small and worship a big God.
In verses 6-10 James’ main prognosis is the path of humility. He talks about a lot of sin in
the first five verses and a lot of fixes in the last five verses. It seems to boil down to this:
The biggest small thing is pride. The biggest sin that leads to everything else is pride. Pride
is what leads to outsized desires for small things because pride puts you first; your desires,
your passions, your goals and your well-being. Pride puts you first, and everything else
flows from that. Really the biggest small thing you can worship is you, and pride gets you
there very quickly. James knows this. That is why the antidote is humility, emptying you of
you and becoming what you really are - small. Small before a big God.
The problem, of course, in our modern setting is that our hierarchy of sin is backwards. Not
that there really is a hierarchy of sin, it is all sin. It is all offensive to God, but some sins are
worse because they are catalysts, gateways to more. That is what pride does. It unleashes
you to pursue more of you, your goals, your passions, your desires, all of your big desires
for small things. This could be perceived as a bit backwards today. In evangelical circles,
sex is the ultimate sin. Sexual sins get headlines. Sexual sins sell, but historically this hasn’t
always been the case.
CS Lewis writes, “If anyone thinks that Christians regard unchastity as the supreme vice, he is
quite wrong. The sins of the flesh are bad, but they are the least bad of all sins…According to
Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is pride. Unchastity, anger, greed,
drunkenness and all that are mere fleabites in comparison: it was through pride that the devil
became the devil. Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind.”
(Mere Christianity)
James knows this. Pride leads to big people, at least in their own minds. When we pursue
our own passions, pleasures and pursuits at all costs, we make much of ourselves. We
inflate ourselves and make ourselves larger than life. Big people who are rather
uninterested in the smallness of the needs of others. Big people who are not focused on
loving those who stand in the path of their goals. Big people who seemingly put themselves
on par with the big God they allegedly serve.
A hamartiology need not be thorough as long as it includes pride, and yet we are almost
proud of pride in Silicon Valley. Hubris is not really called that it is called leadership. It is
confidence. It is vision. This is not reserved only for the business sector. There are many
pastors who are seemingly incorruptible. They don’t drink, they don’t cuss and they don’t
cheat on their spouses. Meanwhile, they lead their church like a despot with an ego that
could fill this room, but for some reason that isn’t immoral. It is vision.
Pride is the biggest small thing because it makes the most of us. It enables us to pursue a
pro-me agenda, whether in church or business. Wherever you find small people aspiring to
be big, it is a killer. So James essentially says, be small and worship a big God. Humble
yourself. Be humble. That’s how you draw near to God.
Pride is so dangerous because it seeks to invert the created order. It tries to minimize God
and maximize us, and that’s why this passage says, “God opposes the proud.” That’s not just
because God wants to prove he is the biggest and most powerful being on the block, so
when you get too big for your britches, he is like the bully who pushes you down to put
your in place in some kind of punitive, vengeful way. God opposes the proud. God trips up
those who are prideful because it is the biggest obstacle to seeing God clearly.
That’s what 4:5 is about. God is jealous for the spirit he has put in us. He is passionate about
you knowing him, and that goes hand in hand with knowing yourself. As long as you are
sitting on the throne, it is hard to see God. He is jealous, passionate about your salvation,
about the opening of your eyes. He opposes proud people because that is what often keeps
people from clear sight.
I am guessing many of you in this room have been humbled before. I want you to know,
that is a gift, even though it doesn’t feel like it at the time.
There is an anecdote from Don Shula, the famous coach of the Miami dolphins. He walked
into a near empty movie theater with eight people in it and they all cheered as soon as he
entered. Don turned to his wife and said, “I can’t go anywhere where people don’t know
me.” He then leaned over to the guy in front of him and said, “ I guess you know who I am?”
The man replied, “No…the manager said he wouldn’t start the movie until 10 people
showed up.”
God is longing for you to know life, to find the incredible joys of communing with your
maker. He longs for your joy, and he knows it is only found when you see how small you are
and how big he is. When we do inflate ourselves, when we do get too big, we are setting
ourselves up for disaster. That is the story of David. It’s the story of Nebuchadnezzar. It’s
the story of Belshazzar. It’s the story of Saul. It’s the story of Paul. It’s the story of Peter. It’s
the story of you and me. Time and again God opposes the proud. For their joy, he reminds
them of how small they really are. James carries the same message, be small and worship a
big God.
This of course leads to the question of how. It is within that phrase, be small and worship a
big God. It could really be, “be small by worshipping a big God.” It is so hard to worship God
when you think you are him. When you refuse to invert reality, when you put God at the top
regularly, it changes you. When you intentionally choose to show up for worship on
Sundays at SFC, it changes you. When you listen to Christian podcasts or sermons or
worship music, it changes you. When you pray and ask God for help and honor him for all
he has done, it changes you. In all of these acts, you are shrinking.
Acknowledging his largesse and your own finitude. When you are consistently, persistently
telling yourself through music, word and deed that God is enormous in power, love and
grace, you can’t help but be small. It is a happy by-product. Kenda Creasy Dean, in her book
Almost Christian, talks about the great power of vocalization. It is a gift in our hardwiring
that stories that we tell affect the people we are. It’s one thing for conceptions and thoughts
to bounce around in your brain, but when you say them, it is as if you are speaking a reality
for the first time. Think of that moment when you said, “I love you” to your spouse for the
first time. It’s one thing to think it, but when it finds voice, there is a scientific and
psychological actualization that happens. So when we speak of his name and his glory, we
magnify his goodness. We call him big because he is.
There are many elements to Life in God but this one is huge. Enormous. It is all about being
small. You are the servant and he is the King. You are limited and he is not. You are the
passenger and he is El Capitan. Be small and worship a big God. This week ask a friend or a
spouse where they see pride in your life. Ask your friend or spouse where you are a bit
outsized. The easy way to find pride in your life is the areas where you have a big desire for
small things. When you can find that, pride won’t be far behind. More than any of that,
choose worship. Choose to speak his truth. Hear his truth. Choose to acknowledge how
small you are and it will bring you all the more joy to consider how big he is.
I’ll finish with some right sizing from Theodore Roosevelt as told by William Beebe:
After an evening of talk, perhaps about the fringes of knowledge, or some new possibility of
climbing into the minds and senses of animals, we would go out on the lawn, where we took turns
at an amusing little astronomical rite. We searched until we found, with or without glasses, the
faint, heavenly spot of light-mist beyond the lower left-hand corner of the Great Square of
Pegasus, when one or the other of us would then recite:
“That is the Spiral Galaxy in Andromeda.”
“It is as large as our Milky Way.”
“It is one of a hundred million galaxies.”
“It is 750,000 light-years away.”
“It consists of one hundred billion suns,
each larger than our sun.”
After an interval, Colonel Roosevelt would grin at me and sa,; “Now I think we are small
enough! Let’s go to bed.”
We must have repeated this salutary ceremony forty or fifty times in the course of years.
(William Beebe The Book of Naturalists)