The Seven Gracious Steps

Good afternoon. I was out of the country for about six weeks on this trip. It's great to be back and to see you all here and to be here for the Holy Day. I think I ended up getting a parasite in Togo. It's my own fault. Basically, I tell people, if you go to Africa, you have the choice of having chicken or fish or French fries or rice. You can make as many combinations of that as you want. After 12 days of that, lunch and dinner, you think, I'd just like to have some vegetables. I made a mistake and I had some vegetables.

Sure enough, I ended up getting this thing called Gardias, which is one of the most common parasites around. You can just go down to here in the Sierras and just get it if you want. Just drink from a stream. You'll have no problem getting it. It's very common.

It did put me out for a while for about three weeks. They figured it out in France. I'm on medication, but doing better. It's a great weight loss strategy. You want to just do that? Ten pounds, three weeks, you're good. More if you want. Thank you for your prayers.

It really was miraculous how it turned out because I went to a doctor in France. She was like, well, it would be three days before we find out the results. I was leaving the day after, two days later, for a pretty extensive trip through France with a lot of important meetings that had been planned for months. They got back to us the next day. We got into the pharmacy right before they closed. We found a doctor that was open. After he looked at the medical results, he said, okay, here's what you need. We said, how much is it? He said, don't worry, have a good trip. Wow! Wouldn't mind that happening here. It really was miraculous. I started feeling better within two or three days. It was very good. How are we doing on the sound? Is that better? Okay. For the last week, we have lived a little bit differently, haven't we, without bread. In France, they have this thing called a pan au chocolat, which is translated as chocolate bread. You know how we have muffins for breakfast?

That's kind of like having cake for breakfast, but it's a muffin, so you don't feel bad about yourself because it's a muffin. It's not cake. That's what this pan au chocolat is. They basically take two strips of chocolate and they put it inside a pastry, then they bake it. Man, it's like having a chocolate chip cookie for breakfast, but like a big one.

I love to have that in the morning, but I did it. The croissants and the bagels. Turos are leavened, right? They're not? You can have turos during the days of the bread? Wow!

Okay, I'm going to take some turos with me. We've lived a little bit differently. There's a lot of joke about donuts, and I don't know if there's donut fans in here, but you can have your donut tonight after sunset. Obviously, it's different. We had to be aware of that.

Our faith goes obviously much beyond our ability to forego a Krispy Kreme for seven days, although some of you, maybe that's challenging. I don't know. Krispy Kreme people in here. Okay, nobody's like, oh yeah, they're back there. Somebody's like, oh yeah, Krispy Kreme.

Let's turn over to 1 Corinthians 5, and let's look at this, because obviously the last seven days go beyond that, but it's an analogy. It's a symbol, and 1 Corinthians 5 verse 7 gives us that symbolism. In 1 Corinthians 5 verse 7, we've read this extensively. It says, purge out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened.

Just as that leaven is cycled and recycled, and we don't think about that now, but it used to be that you had a lump, and that lump got you your next loaf of bread, and then that got you the next loaf of bread, and you recycled that leaven. Paul says, away with it. Be done with that, because you are going to be different. We have to throw out our old ways of thinking, our old ways of doing things. As it were, we have to take a massive trip to the spiritual dump. We do that at baptism, where we take this big load and we just drop it off at the dump and say, I don't want to have anything to do with that anymore.

I'm throwing that out. Each year, around this time, and as we come up to the Passover, we look through our house and we get rid of the leaven, and then we think about the spiritual intent of that, and really the fact that we've got to be looking at our lives and deciding what really needs to stay there or not. What we do is we create this environment, then, where this leaven is purged, where we can live differently. This year, I was really focused. I was like, this year, I'm really going to be focused. I'm traveling. I've got to really pay attention. I'm in different restaurants. I'm in different places. My wife and I are traveling together. I was really focused and came back on Tuesday. Like I said, on Wednesday, I went shopping. Again, very focused, want to avoid any leaven. I went shopping. I went by the pastry section, and I smelled those donuts. I thought, man, I've been sick. I haven't wanted to eat anything, but boy, that donut really smells good. I thought, I never eat donuts. They're really not good for you. I thought, I'll just have a donut. I went over to the section. They're lucky. They're only 75 cents. I got an apple fritter. I put it in the bag, and I went to the checkout. I had the groceries and stuff, and I went into the car. I pulled the apple fritter out, and I said, I've got to be careful, because the car is unleavened. I don't want to get any leaven in this car. Man, anybody been on that bus before? That is so stupid. What was I thinking? It definitely dawned on me, of course it's leaven. That's how you're going to get the car. It's interesting, though, because we create an environment where we don't want to bring an 11 into that environment.

I created this environment. I knew I had D11 in this car. This car needed to stay at D11.

When I brought something into that environment, then it was like, oh, this is not right. This is bad. This is leaven. I'm going to get my car full of leaven. I didn't think about it.

I was actually going to eat the donut, and it was going to be the crumbs I got in the car. Anyway, thankfully I did catch myself as I pulled it out. I ended up taking that apple fritter to the trash. I may go buy one tomorrow, but anyway, we'll see.

The point is we create an environment. We create an environment where we avoid these kinds of things. It sounds pretty silly, but we've created that environment because we took the time to purge that old leaven out. It's about reducing. It's about purging. It's about stopping the inflammation. It's about being smaller. We're not puffed up, because that's what it says here in 1 Corinthians 5, verse 2. It says, and you are puffed up.

So it's about shrinking. It's about being smaller. Like I said, it's about removing something. Interestingly, Jesus Christ, half-brother James, who was the head of the Jerusalem Church, had something to say about this process that we go through where we remove these things that puff up and that lead to pride. He had something to say about it in James, chapter 4. I'd like to talk about James, chapter 4, today.

In James, chapter 4, he talks about some pretty damning things about his audience. Then he gives what I will call seven steps of how you move away from that. He doesn't leave us concerned about that. I'm going to call those the seven gracious steps. The seven gracious steps, because he talks about grace in there.

There's seven steps to... and then you can fill in the blank. You can call it seven steps to humility. That's definitely there in verse 10. You can call it seven steps to being right with God and man. You can call it seven steps to being less anxious. You can call it seven steps to being steadfast in the faith. You can call it seven steps to being in the kingdom of God.

You can call it seven steps to taking us from being leavened to being unleavened. The title of this message today is the seven gracious steps. Seven gracious steps. They embrace God's plan by focusing on repentance and living a changed way of life. Their steps as a remedy to war, as an anecdote to dealing with loss, if you're dealing with loss, as a path to redemption.

Today I want to talk about these seven steps in James chapter 4 and this time that we have remaining. Let's turn over to James chapter 4 and verse 1. Let's read the run-up to these seven steps. We'll see these steps revealed as we go through. I'm not going to read them to you right now. They'll be fairly obvious when we get to verses 7 and 10. James chapter 4, let's start at verse 1. Most commentaries point out that this language, which is directed at believers, is about as damning or condemning as any language that you're going to find in the Bible.

This is part of the Bible. It's that this is pretty rough stuff. James 4, verse 1. Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure, that war in your members?

You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask. You ask and you do not receive because you ask amiss that you may spend it on your pleasures. Adulterers and adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever, therefore, wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

Imagine if I got up here and I called you adulterers and murderers and covetous people who just want to spend their life on their own pleasures. How many people could I offend? This is pretty strong language to be sharing with Christians in the diaspora. It's written to the ten tribes abroad, abroad, abroad, so Jewish Christians throughout the Middle East and Europe and so forth and into Asia and God's people and certainly the Gentiles scattered in there as well.

This is pretty serious indictment against people. Murderers. I mean, did he have murderers that he was writing to? When he uses the word adulterers and adulteresses, right, he's not missing anybody in there. Some commentaries will point out that this is sort of a reference to the Old Testament where the nation of Israel was married to God and they were then unfaithful to God and they played the adulteress. And so he's using this sort of Old Testament language to describe a mindset that these people had where they were playing loose with their faithful relationship with God.

And the murdering part is probably anger. That's some interpretation that there was enough anger and enough wrath in these people's hearts as to want to murder somebody. That's what was leading to a lot of dissension and a lot of discussion and debates.

And then, of course, you have this spending it on your pleasures that you want things that you can't have. The Roman Empire was an empire of great income inequality, great wealth disparity. And so you could see somebody who had the servants and had the big house. And they didn't have cars, but they had these things they'd carry you around on and people might want to have those types of things. And so James is really just in his first four verses, if you think about that as me, if you think about that as you, you're going to feel pretty sick.

If I got up here and said, Mr. Smith, how dare you?

If I started going around like all of you, get your act together, you'd start either you'd walk up offended or you'd start feeling really bad about the fact that you're going to feel bad about the fact that things had come to that point. But verse 5 changes gear and doesn't leave us so depressed or upset because verse 5 says, or do you think that the scripture says in vain, the spirit who dwells in us yearns? The spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously. And this is actually one of the more challenging verses in the book because there's the clarity as to which scripture he's quoting is not as clear. He's clearly quoting Old Testament scriptures. And most people will point out that he's quoting Exodus 20 verse 5 or Exodus 34 verse 14 in this passage where God talked about how he is a jealous God. He's jealous for his people. He wants those people to be faithful to him.

And so he changes gears by saying, you know, look, you're doing this, but don't you realize that God is a jealous God who cares about you and he wants you to be with him and he doesn't want you to be out there doing all these other things in this sort of fast and loose lifestyle. He yearns jealously. And verse 6 then takes us from whatever terrible place we were at or we are at, and it gives us hope because it says, but he gives more grace.

God gives more grace. So if this is us, if we can find ourselves in James chapter 4, you know, I've given a sermon before you might recall, a sermon that's not for you, right?

That sermon that's not for you about pride because none of us can stomach that we have pride. None of us could stomach that we're the adulterer, that we're the murderer, that we're the covetous person, that we're the person that's causing contention and that you know, contention amongst our peers. None of us could stomach that, but in fact that does happen. In fact, there is something, as one person said, we are our worst enemy, right? That happens, but God gives more grace. He gives more grace. That is, he gives us mercy. He gives us forgiveness. He gives us time. He's patient with us. So no matter how bad it might have gotten for us, no matter how far we have sunk, God gives more grace.

Now, he doesn't expect us to stay that way because if we stay that way, we know that there is no redemption for someone who has trampled underfoot Christ's sacrifice, that has considered and despised his blood. There is no hope for those people, but God gives more grace. And then it says, therefore he says, God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble. And now we have the tie-in to the days of Unleavened Bread. God resists the puffed up. He resists the big puffed up, inflamed person. He resists that person, and he gives grace to those who are not like that, to those who are small, to those who are flat, to those who don't put the emphasis on themselves. He resists the proud. That is the sin that is the root of all the other sins, the original sin. The original sin, a lot of times people will say it was in the Garden of Eden, but the original sin was when Lucifer said, I will mount on high and become like God on high. That was the original sin of pride. The prideful person is us. We're the picture in the dictionary of pride, and there's our picture. That's us. And that's what God tells us throughout Scripture, and that's why we have these days of 11 bread to take the 11 out, to take the puffed up down, to take the pride away, to resist the pride, and to learn about humility.

This quote, God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble, is a quote from the Old Testament. It's in Proverbs 3, verse 34. You might note that there. It ties in directly, as I said, to what we're talking about today. Now, verse 7 is where we begin to see these seven steps. So what we've seen then is we've seen just how bad we can be, and then we've seen just how good and gracious God can be, and how He will resist all of that evil, and He will give grace to those who are willing to come out of it. And now, James is going to give us seven things that we can do to move from that very diseased, inflamed place to this very whole, safe, flat, small place. Seven things that we can do. So let's go through these seven things, and let's think about how these apply to us. Verse 7, therefore, now He's going to tie everything that He said, starting in verse 1, to the rest of it. Therefore, submit to God. Because of all this, submit to God. The first commandment says, you shall have no other gods before Me. You shall have no other gods. We say small g gods because at that time there were all these gods of Egypt and so forth. It's not to imply that they are actually God like God is. They are man-made creations, evil spirits, and so forth.

That's Exodus 20, verse 3. Jesus said, you shall love your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. That's in Mark 12, verse 30. Jesus asked the Father during the most difficult time in His life, in His human life, that if He was willing that God would take the cup from Him. But if not, God's will be done. That's what it means to submit to God. That's what it means to submit to God. Submission means that our personal will and our personal desires are made secondary. So take whatever thing you really want in life and say, God, should I have that? Should I do that? Should I be that? Is that a worthwhile goal? And be willing to submit that to God's will. So whatever you would like. I talk to a lot of young ladies. They say I'd really like to be married. They really like to be married. Now, that's a good thing. That's a biblical thing. There's nothing wrong with getting married. But maybe you're not ready. Or maybe this isn't the right time. Or maybe there's some things that you have to grow in before that right person comes along. Because maybe you're just going to end up being in a relationship that's not going to be a good relationship. Maybe the kind of guy you're looking for right now is not the kind of guy you need. So that's where you take whatever you want and you say, I'm going to submit that to God right now. I'm going to find out whether that's what I should be doing right now. As guys, we identify a lot of times our self-worth with what we do. So we want to do something cool. We want to do something cool, generally make money with it, have lots of time, flexibility, whatever it might be. But oftentimes that's not what we get to do in our jobs. We end up doing jobs that aren't cool. But we do them because we've got a car payment, or we've got a house payment, or we've got commitments, or whatever it might be. And so we want to do something else. And so we ask God, God, what are we going to do? We want to do something else. And so we ask God, help us find something else.

Well, maybe God doesn't want us to find something else, because maybe we're not ready for that something else, and we're just going to mess that thing up, too. And so we submit to God in terms of what our desires are. And we say, God, help me to be ready for that next thing that I'm supposed to be in. What is hard for us to overcome? That is where God is going to find out where we stand, for Him or for us. And once we're in a state where we have submitted our will to God, then we are better prepared and empowered for the next step, which says right here in verse 7, resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Step number 2, resist the devil. Resist the devil. The allure. The allure. The temptation that makes us feel so good. The cool factor. Going along with the crowd. Looking good. Wanting to please people because of the gratification we get from that. We may think that that's what we want because it feels good at the time. But often we're just a puppet dancing to the tune of some great adversary out there against us. Turn over to Matthew 24, verse 24. Matthew 24, verse 24. I'm amazed sometimes by how easily we just give ourselves a chance to move over to whatever societal stream or pressure or thing is going on and get wrapped up in that. Matthew 24, verse 24. For false Christs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders so as to deceive, if possible, even the elect. So we're the elect.

False prophets, false Christs. Now this little comma, if possible, comma phrase can sometimes give us the feeling that we're let off the hook. Like, we can't be deceived. We're the elect. It's not possible. But in actual fact, if you look behind the phrasing of this, it's actually written a little differently. It's actually written with the sense that the elect just like everybody else is going to be deceived, yet for God's grace and mercy intervening in our lives, he will protect us. So it's not that we just, you know, we're, because we're baptized and because we have God's Holy Spirit and so forth. No, we are just as susceptible if not for submitting to God, if not for resisting the devil, right? We, you know, we've got to do those things and in God's mercy, then he will reveal those false christs, those false prophets, those false signs and wonders. Sometimes we can be so blind to the societal trends around us and we just end up, we go along, right?

Ignorant of history. So swayed by the rhetoric, right, of whatever movement, right? Suede by the right, swayed by the left, swayed by the center, swayed by whatever, the newest thing that comes along. Oh, that's what's going to fix this. And so a lot of times we don't even know that we're being conned. We don't even know that we're being conned.

But God says through James, resist the devil, resist, which means we are not ignorant of his devices, right? What does Satan say to Eve? You're not going to surely die. Don't worry about what God said. He doesn't want you to know that you're going to be like him, right? This is like, yeah, you know, I got some value here. Yeah, I can do this, yeah.

And then suddenly we're in some sort of movement. We're in some sort of taken away with something.

You know, it's so easy because we live in a world where we have so many messages coming at us all the time, whether in social media or in the news or in entertainment or with friends and family. And we have all of these messages coming our way. People are saying, you know, can you believe that somebody did that? Yeah, can you believe they did that?

Somebody needs it? Yeah, somebody, let's go do something about that. Well, I'm not really, yeah, what do you mean? You need to do something about that. And so we get kind of wrapped up in these things. See, I used to think that God's way of life was basically about applying formulas, right? There's all these formulas here. So, for example, you know, if you keep the Ten Commandments, one of those Ten Commandments is that you honor your father and your mother and you live a long time. Okay, so if you keep the Ten Commandments, you're going to live a long life. If you tithe, you know, you're going to be blessed for that tithing. And, you know, you're going to basically apply all these formulas, and life's going to be good. And, you know, clearly God's law says that, you know, if you keep these things, you will be blessed. But what I came to find out later was that it's not the problem with God's law. The problem is with me. So I'm applying this formula over here. Well, that's not the formula to apply. I'm applying the wrong formula. You've heard the expression, everything looks like, you know, every screw looks like a nail when you're holding a hammer. Right? Hey, let's go ahead and pound that screw down with this hammer.

That doesn't go down very well. That formula's not working. And so we go around, you know, and like, yeah, that thing's, yeah. And so we're, you know, we're like, we got a screwdriver, and we're trying to get that nail to go into that piece of wood. And it's nice. Man, that screwdriver hit my hand. Right? Because we're misapplying God's law. God's law is not the problem, right? If we do these things, God is going to bless us. But are we applying the right, the right set of principles for where we need to be in life? And so if we are puffed up, if we are so smart about this, like, I've been in God's church a long time, you know, I've seen things, you know, I've been around. Right? If we kind of take that approach and think, yeah, you know, I've seen this, it's not my first rodeo, I know what I'm doing here, right? And we lose the ability to keep sort of learning and submitting and resisting. Then what's going to happen is we're going to end up applying the wrong set of principles. And then we're going to find ourselves as not working. And then it doesn't work. And then we're like, well, God, what is going on with you? You know, I am, I'm doing my part here. You know, where's up? What's going on with you? I'm doing my part.

Right? And then we become resentful. We can become resentful with God. Like, He's not pulling His weight. I'm pulling my weight where He's, you know, that is such wrong thinking, right? I mean, you know, God is there. God is the same yesterday, today and forever. He's not going to change. He's waiting for us to wake up to the fact that we are not actually listening to Him in what we're supposed to do. And we are puffed up. And we're not resisting the temptation and the various influences on us. False Christs, false prophets, false premises in life. That's what we end up misapplying. So we've got to submit to God. Let's go back to James 4. So we've got to submit. We've got to resist. And then we come to the next one. After we submit and after we resist, back to James 4, then it says, draw near to God and He will draw near to you. So what's the difference between submitting to God and drawing near to God? Right? That's kind of an interesting, I mean, sometimes you read these things like, man, James, could you be a little more clear here with me, please?

You know, like submitting to God. I think you're saying the same thing. What does it mean to draw near to God? But there is a slight difference here. Submission is an act of the mind. A voluntary decision to surrender our will to God. That's what I talked about. It's submitting our will. It's an act of the mind. But drawing near to God is a very important thing. But drawing near implies a heart connection. It implies a heart connection with God. Something tender, something dear. And we know that sin is what separates us from God. And that's why step number one and step number two have to take place before a closeness of heart can take place. Because that first step, like, okay, God, alright, I'm going to submit.

There's no tenderness there. It's like, okay, you win. That's the submitting part. And then the resist is, okay, I'm not going along with this. I'm turning off the TV. I'm not going to get that. I'm going to get into the book. I'm going to get on my knees. I'm going to resist. And then you can get to the point where, thank you, God. Thank you. I can begin to see what I've done. And now we can begin to draw near. I actually was going to turn to Flip Ins 313, but Mr. Melizio already read it this morning. So you should know what it says, right, about pressing forward. You know, the step of the journey from 11 to 11, where you go from the old man to the new creation. And you don't look behind, but you look forward.

You look forward to what's ahead, the upward call of Christ, the upward call. Drawing near means getting close, leaning in. It means sitting in the front row spiritually. I'm not dissing you on the back row. It's okay. I'm not saying that. But, I mean, spiritually, you're in the front row, right? Just like, I want to get as close to this as I can. It means excitement about gaining new biblical insights. It's like finding things. Wow, I didn't see that before. It's about connecting the dots in our spiritual lives between something we read in Scripture and something that we're living and we're dealing with. Wow, yeah, this is... I'm going to do this today, right? I read this morning about the fruit of righteousness.

I'm going to do that today. That's a drawing near. That's an excitement about what God is. Now, we draw near to God when we pray, right? I mean, that's a practical spiritual front row experience. We're on our knees. We're praying. If we have our Bible in front of us when we're praying, that's even better, right? Because we can pray and then we can pause and we can read a Scripture and then we can meditate on that Scripture and then we can pray some more, right? That's how we, obviously, draw close to God. If you look over Hebrews 11, it's just a couple pages away, so you'll keep your place there. In James 4, we'll come back to it. Hebrews 11, verse 6, says, But without faith, it's impossible to please Him. For He who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him, seeking God, drawing close to God, coming to God. He is this special person in our lives. And this is where we move beyond the academic. We move beyond the formulas. We move beyond the words on the page and it becomes a relationship.

I remember talking with a man in the church. Actually, he probably was here in this hall many years ago, 20 years ago. And he approached me to tell me that he was no longer coming to church. And I asked why, and he explained that he had been studying. And he came to the conclusion that the story of Jonah was a fable. That this is not scientifically possible for a fish to swallow a human being and for the human being to live. That this is just not scientifically possible. And that because Jesus cited this example, then Jesus himself was citing a fable, which means he could not be God because God would not cite a fable.

So Jesus can't be God and the Bible can't be true. And so, you know, done. And as I was listening to him and as we were talking, I asked him, I said, well, you know, do you feel like you have a relationship with God? And he thought, and he was a very logical person. And he said, no, I don't think I do. And I said, really? Yeah. I said, do you ever have an experience in your life where you really felt like God intervened, like he was there for you or you spoke to him and he heard your prayers and things moved in a different way in your life? And he said, no. And I said, well, you know, I said, without that, I can kind of see where you're going because the rest of it is very academic. It's very logical. It's like, well, let's see, there's 66 books and it's written over 1,500 years. And there's a consistency across the scriptures. And, you know, it becomes very academic, right? Like, this is the Word of God because, you know, I've got these commentaries and these scientists. And then you run across something and you go, well, you know, if we lived 150 years ago and we were having this conversation, you know, I would be telling you that I could be telling you a story about how somebody said, well, you know, they've never found the ponchus pilot ever existed. There's no record of ponchus pilot, right?

Going back to whatever it was, 1880s. No record of this man. You know, I mean, he's a pretty significant figure in Roman politics in the area. Why wouldn't there be any reference to his name? And so, skeptics of the Bible would point this out as just another example of where the Bible's just making things up. They had to make up this guy's name because they had to have this exchange. And then they found his name. And then they found his name.

And now it's like, it's, I mean, nobody disputes that pilot existed, that he was the Roman, you know, person in charge, who he worked for. They have now a lot more information on it. And so, you know, it's sort of just whatever the issue is, it sort of comes out, right? You know, 30 pieces of silver in the case of Joseph and what the value of silver in Jesus and so forth. There's so many things that begin to come out. So, okay, so if you think a fish can't swallow a human being, okay, you know, I don't know. Maybe you'll tell me, you know, maybe in a sermon chat tomorrow, somebody will tell me, yeah, no, they actually have found out that a fish can swallow a human being. I don't know. But what I do know is that eventually these things tend to work themselves out. And in the meantime, that relationship is what holds us there, because we have a relationship with our Creator.

And yeah, we're not blind. I mean, if there's something in here that's like, you know, well, this is obviously wrong. I mean, we go and study it, right? But our faith is not an academic faith. It's a relational, personal faith that we have with God as our Creator. The path to keeping the Feast of Unleavened Bread with sincerity and truth passes through this relationship with God that we have to have, that we submit to Him, that we resist that adversary, and that we draw close to Him with a tender heart seeking Him. Let's go back to James 4, and let's see what the next thing is here, number 4. After we draw near to God and He will draw near to us, it says, Cleanse your hands, you sinners. Cleanse your hands, you sinners. Let's go back over to Exodus 30. Again, keep your place here in James 4.

Let's go to Exodus 30, verse 18. Exodus 30. The priests were the priests who were the priests who were told that they needed to wash. Here in Exodus 30, verse 18. It was a very specific procedure. Starting in verse 17. Then the Lord spoke to Moses. This is God's instruction. You shall make also a laver or a basin of bronze with its base also of bronze for washing. And you shall put it between the tabernacle of the meeting and the altar, and you shall put water in it. For Aaron and his sons shall wash their hands and their feet in water from it. When they go into the tabernacle of meeting or when they come near the altar to minister to burn an offering made by fire to the Lord, they shall wash with water lest they die. And they shall wash their hands and their feet lest they die, and it shall be a statute forever to them, to him and his descendants throughout their generations.

I wonder if James was thinking about this when he wrote what he wrote in James 4, because what he's describing here is that these hands, this is where we take action. This is where our deeds come from, right? Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might.

Put your hand to the plow and don't look back. There's all these references to the fact that the hands are what we do. Now, today we work with our minds, but we still need our hands to type on the keyboard if you're going to work with your mind. So you still need your hands to type. If you're a mechanic, if you're a carpenter, you're going to work with your hands more specifically. But at that time, everybody worked with their hands. So your hands really represented your works, your deeds. And what James says is, at this point now is to cleanse those hands, you sinners. Stop doing what you were doing. Those actions and those deeds. Our deeds and our actions must reflect the relationship that we have with God in the previous step, the rejection of the adversary, and the submission to God from the previous steps. It's really where the rubber meets the road of our conduct.

It's where faith is developed. It's where character is built. It's when the time comes where somebody says to you, you know what? It's time for you to take action on this.

It's time for you to quit having a pity party. It's time for you to actually go get help with this. Or it's the time when you say to your boss, you know, I really can't work that rotation schedule that you've described. And you know I've already told you that, right?

Or if you haven't told them that, that's when you say, I should have told you this before.

I always tell people when you get a job, when you're getting the offer, after you've got the offer, but before you accept, that's when you tell people about the Sabbath and the feast days. You don't walk in there on the first interview and say, by the way, I can't work on these days because they're like, I don't know if you're here to work. But after you get the offer, it's fine. But if you don't say that, and you're like, well, you know, it's December and the feast is a long way off, I've got lots of time, I'll tell them before, you know, in the summer sometime. Big mistake, right? So you finally tell your boss, well, I need to take this time off for the feast. And the boss is like, really? You know, you can't take that time off. That's a very important time for us. Why don't you take it off? Well, that's not fair to the other co-workers. You know, why would you do this to us now? No, I mean, you know, I'm sure you can find some other time. That's where character is developed. That's where faith is built. When we really have to do those things. Or, if we're talking about, you know, some things that we're doing that maybe weren't right, that's where we're we stop doing those things. And maybe when we stop doing those things, then people get upset with us. You know, if you're coming out of a gang, that's pretty scary stuff. I don't want to do this anymore. Yeah, right.

You're in this, right? You're in this thing. If you're coming out of a gang, if you're coming out of some sort of criminal situation, it's hard to get out of those situations.

It takes prayer. I was talking with a gentleman in Paris who grew up Muslim in Egypt. He was and he came to realize that his faith was not right. And so he became Catholic. And then he realized that was a problem. So he was talking to me. And we were there in a Paris cafe and we were talking, we had our Bibles out. It was kind of strange, but we had our Bibles out there. And we were talking about this. And he was telling me that he realized just how destructive many aspects of his Muslim faith in Egypt were. And he was speaking out against it in France. And he said he started getting death threats.

And I said, well, yeah, what did you think was going to happen? He says, yeah. And then his Catholic friends were saying, hey, go easy, go easy. It's hard to step out of that.

It's hard to make some of these decisions and some of these changes.

Let's go back to James 4. Let's go to the fifth one. After we then cleanse our hands, there's something very, very similar where it says that we are to cleanse or purify our hearts. You double-minded. Purify our hearts. Being able to be cleansed and to have a pure heart, it flows from that relationship with God. And we can't do it by ourselves. And that's why the whole thing starts with grace in verse 6. But you see, the heart is where that sin starts, right? And the hands often are just the extension of that. And so we stop doing those things, but then we still have things in our heart to cleanse. So, yeah, I've stopped doing that, but that doesn't mean that I don't want another fill-in-the-blank.

I don't want something else. And so that's where it starts getting really tough, where you're cleansing the heart. You're actually making changes in your life.

Let's go back to Hebrews 10.22, just a couple pages back. Hebrews 10.22, just a couple pages back. Hebrews 10.22, it said, Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscious and our bodies washed with pure water. We wash our hearts. Cleansing means that we can see the difference. And I was in Benin a couple weeks ago or last month, and we went out to see the fisight location, and we were on dirt roads pretty much the whole time with the windows down.

And I got back to the hotel, and there was no water. There was three million people in the city, and they didn't have water. So I had this bottle of water, and I put it on a little towel, and I wiped my face, and it was just dark. It was just all this dirt on my face from just being in the car and having all that sand and stuff blowing in. When you wash your heart, you can see the dirt. You can see it come off. And he says it's a double minded. And this is what's so interesting, I think, for God's people, because it's not that we in God's church want to be bad people. We don't want to be bad people. We're not going to walk out of here and go, hopefully, go commit a crime. We're not going to do that.

So we tend to be double minded, though. We're like, we know the right thing to do, but we know we have this thing over here that we really like to do. But maybe if I can just make a little tweak to that, I can probably do that, and that will be okay. I won't cross the line. Maybe the line's here and not here. We rationalize all these things that we think about and that we do. And so we have to cleanse our hearts and we have to cleanse our minds.

And what happens after we do that is we can tell a difference. There's a calm, there's a peace. We're not going to be jumpy. We're not going to be aggravated. We're not going to be biting people's heads off of the least provocation. We're not going to have a slow build of anger that then bursts out. We're able to work through those things. And then that's when we begin to get tested, because now we're cleansing, we're really working those things, and God's like, we'll see how this turns out.

One of our brethren in France is a retired director of music at a municipal music center.

This is a big, big municipal center. People from all over the community, they have 300 students in there enrolled, people coming in in the morning, afternoon, evening for piano or for trumpet or whatever instrument it might be. And this gentleman is a very accomplished musician. He's won many nationwide competitions. And so he rose to the level of being the director of the school. And as the director of the school, he typically was not as busy in the summer, and we came very busy after school started in September.

And you know, of course, you know what happens in September and October is there's this thing called the Feast of Tabernacles. And so he comes back from a summer break and then says, I'm now going to need to leave for nine days. And that tended to be irritating for people in the school. And there was one woman in particular who wanted his job. And she began to go after him and accuse him of various things and go behind his back when he was gone at the feast and, you know, raise up to his superiors in the city council. Why do we have this director that leaves the school every year for all this time? And this was a huge trial for this man, a huge trial for a decade. This woman just, you know, if you worked in civil service, you know that, you know, people don't get fired, right? And so you just can't, you know, it's very hard. And so, you know, he wasn't going to risk losing his job, per se, but, you know, he would be losing his position and might, you know, end up having to be transferred and all these kinds of things. And so, you know, if somebody's after you, what do you do? Well, you're, you know, the pride comes in. How dare this person come after you? What do they think they're doing? You know, I'm going to let them... But when you're cleansing your heart, you have patience. You have love, right?

You turn the other cheek. You begin to acknowledge where you've made mistakes. And dealing with that trial over a period of time, you begin to continue to see things about yourself.

And this person worked and worked and worked. And finally, through long suffering, it came up that indeed this woman was just making stories up. And eventually she was the one that was transferred. And his job was saved. And he ended up being the director of that school 25 years. I'm looking over my wife, something like that. 30 years. And when he retired, you know, recognized by the mayor, by the department and so forth that he was in. And so when we're cleansing our hearts, it's not a one-time thing. Because we think, oh, I know I can get a little angry. I know I can get a little upset. I know that I don't listen as well as I should. You keep saying the types of things that you deal with. But you've got to cleanse it, and then you realize it's not quite as clean. And then there's more dirt coming off, and there's more dirt coming off, and there's more trials that come up. And then you realize, I'm not really where I'm supposed to be. And that's, again, we're where faith and character and humility come from. And so once we cleanse our hearts, our double mind, this double-minded, then it goes on to verse 9 with something that's very strange.

It says in James 4 verse 9, lament and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned into mourning, and your joy to gloom. Wow! That's kind of dreary, isn't it? That's kind of depressing.

Why would we be admonished to do that? Are we supposed to rejoice always? Are we supposed to be happy? And yet now it's saying to lament and mourn and weep, and let our laughter be turned to mourning, and our joy to gloom. So what is being discussed here? Well, again, keep your place here. We'll go back to 1 Corinthians 5 verse 2, where we started. And let's see what Paul counseled the Corinthians to do. 1 Corinthians 5 verse 2, talking about this very despicable situation, where in verse 1 it talks about how this man had taken his stepmother as a wife, and he says, and you were puffed up. You are puffed up. You're like, this is okay. I don't want to judge. I'm not a hater. It's none of my business.

This man can do what he needs to do. It's between him and God. No, Paul says, you're puffed up and have not rather mourned that he has done this deed, that he might be taken away from you. Paul says the same thing. He says to mourn. There's a description of the people at the end time and how they sigh and they cry for the abominations that they see around them. That's what we're talking about. When James talks about mourning, he's not saying, be depressed people and walk around lamenting. What he's saying is that when we see the evil that is around us, when we've submitted to God and we've resisted the devil and we've drawn near to God and we've cleansed our hands and we've cleansed our hearts and now we've got that clean car with no leaven and leaven comes into the car. We're like, oh, how can this be? Right? There's a lamenting. There's a mourning. There's a laughter that like, oh, I was having such a nice day and this is so sad. Right? And you're touched.

Your heart is touched. It's hurt by this. And you lament and you mourn. Just like these people in Corinth, they should have been mourning for the fact that this man had made this decision and now they were going to have to put him out of the church. What a difficult situation this has put the congregation in, that it's put him in and they should be mourning about that. And when we see the kinds of evil that goes on in the world, that we see the kind of evil that we ourselves have inflicted on others, we mourn that. We lament that. Our laughter is turned to sorrow. That's what Paul is describing. Now, notice that he doesn't say become angry, frustrated, and self-deprecating. He doesn't say become angry at sin. He doesn't say. He says, mourn and lament. He says, he doesn't say, you know, call yourself an idiot for how bad you were in the past, right? He doesn't know. He doesn't say that because this is not about hopelessness. This is not about self-defeating talk. We actually have a lot of value in God's eyes. We have a lot of value. Why do I say that? Well, because he sent his son to die for us. So we have value. We have value as human beings. And this value is in the form of our talents, our gifts, how we can be an instrument in God's hands. You know, I think it's interesting. In English, we have this word called pride.

And you can be proud of your children. And you can be too proud to listen to your wife.

Now those are two different meanings, but it's the same word. Now in French, there are two words for pride. You have a word when you're proud of your children, and you have another word when you're too proud to listen to your wife. Those are two completely different words. And so it's a much easier concept to express. But in English, we have this one word. And so if somebody is prideful, you know, well, are they prideful about the great accomplishments of their children? Well, that could be a negative thing, because maybe they're overly prideful. Or it could be a positive thing, like, you know, I'm really thankful that God has given my children such wisdom to do this. So we sometimes can confuse this. And so we have to recognize that we've got to walk that line of being thankful, rejoicing in what God has given us, the talents that we have, that we can be proud of, of the work of our hands. Well, at the same time that we don't fall into the excessive pride, as we would say in English, or the inappropriate pride of thinking we can do things on our own. And so we mourn this previous behavior. We mourn the sickness that we see in the world.

We mourn the type of difficulties that people face because of sin. And finally, let's go back to James 4 and hit the seventh one. Finally, he says then, humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he will lift you up. Humble yourself in the sight of the Lord. So now, we can then put into practice all of these things and come to the seventh point of humbling ourselves in the sight of the Lord. We're ready now to take these steps. The steps of grace and repentance above lead us to a much more greater awareness of where our value really lies and what God can do with us. We are to imitate Christ in this regard. Let's go back to Philippians 2, verse 7. We will turn there. We were in Philippians this morning.

Philippians 2, verse 7 gives us the example that Christ followed that he wants us to follow.

Christ said here, or Paul says about Christ, but made himself of no reputation, taking the form of a servant and coming in the likeness of men. Christ gave up his Godhead to become a person like us, subject to all the difficulties. It's kind of hard to really imagine somebody who would just give up everything they had. It's kind of like somebody who just says, well, yeah, I'm a billionaire, but I'm just going to give it all away, and I'm going to go work in a difficult job and struggle with maybe I'm going to have to have two jobs, and it's going to be hard, and it's probably going to affect my health, and I'm probably going to gain some weight, and I'll probably struggle a little bit with being able to just keep my mind right, because I'm going to be so stressed out, and I'm not going to sleep very much. I just think I'm going to go ahead and do that. That sounds like a good idea.

Most of us would say, well, don't do that. Don't do that. Just, you know, but Christ said, no, God the Father and Jesus Christ said, no, we're going to do this. And so if we follow each of these seven steps, we become the collective ecclesia that's humble, the church that is small in its own eyes, a church that is not lifted up but allows God to lift it up. We become, I think, the biggest small church. And I think that's a great goal. We should be the biggest small church we can be, small individually and small collectively, because God makes the difference. Small in the sense of flat, unleavened, without concern for our own importance, not enamored with our own capabilities, how we impress others, authentic in our brokenness, in our inadequacies, unencumbered by our weaknesses. Paul says, when I am weak, I am strong. He had this thorn in the flesh that he prayed three times that God would remove. And Paul realized that God just said, you know, my grace is sufficient for you. And we're authentic in that. Yep, this is part of the cross that I bear. And we all collectively are at peace with that. How powerful is that when somebody walks into a group of believers that way and says, wow, these people are at peace. You know, one of the great pastors in the modern era of God's church was a man by the name of Robert Faye.

Mr. Faye passed away several years ago. He was the pastor of the United Church of God Mr. Faye was Herbert Armstrong's personal assistant for many years in the 1980s. You know, he was traveling around the world with him. There were pictures with him and Mr. Armstrong and you know, president of Jordan, president of Ethiopia, you know, the prime minister of Israel, you know, the prime minister of the United Kingdom, Prince Charles, and so forth. He was a regional director in South Africa, the worldwide Church of God. He was later the regional director in Canada, regional director in England, one of the great speakers of the era. And many people felt that he was really in line, if Mr. Armstrong were to die, to be the next pastor general. Until one day he was falsely accused. He was falsely accused of doing something inappropriate. And there was sort of circumstances such that he was removed from his position. And they found a position for him in New York City as an assistant pastor. And the people who did that actually were looking, the pastor of the time was known to be a very difficult man. And so it was a very difficult assignment. And it was a terrible thing. He was terribly mistreated by really a problematic administration at the time. But he had an expression that he would always say, that those who knew him, no pride, no problem. No pride, no problem. And that's how he lived his life. And so he became the assistant pastor in New York and later became the pastor in other places.

And he went about his life not worrying about that. No pride, no problem. That is, so long as we remove the pride, then the personal hurt, the personal offense, the personal pain that we might feel because we've been mistreated goes away. Jesus said, forgive them, God, they know not what they do. And so despite being falsely accused and treated, he just did his job. And he did his job for the next 30 years. And he became a pastor in Chicago receiving all who would come to him for teaching and mentoring. He served on the doctrinal committee of the United Church of God, writing many of the key positions of the church. And he left behind a comprehensive library in his home, which has been a resource for countless ministers. No pride, no problem. I hope we can all remember that. I try to remember that when times get tough, because that's really what the last part of James 4 says. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord and he will lift you up. No pride, no problem. Seven steps in James 4, seven steps made possible by God's grace, because it all started with how he gives more grace than whatever issues we might face. And that's what we're going to call the seven gracious steps. Because they're a walk with God. We've lived seven days without pizza. Muffins, donuts. And that's kind of silly. But, you know, we have. And it's a symbol of something greater. It's a symbol of living a different way of life than a different way of living. And it's a symbol of something greater. And it's a symbol of something greater. It's a symbol of living a different way of life. A life that's worthy, as it says in Ephesians 4, of God's calling. And as we close these seven days of Unleavened Bread, I hope we can consider these seven steps as a bridge to the next 50 days. Because these seven steps are really all about repentance. And with repentance, then comes a changed way of life. And now God can put His Spirit in us that we might be able to be one with Him. And that's what the next Holy Day pictures, then, is the giving of God's Spirit. And so these seven steps, I think, are a bridge to the next 50 days, or now less than 50 days, to Pentecost. Through God's mercy, we are not condemned, whatever we're dealing with.

And God is jealous, as it says in verse 5, that we might be part of His kingdom. Let us build on the steps of repentance that we've learned in these seven days, that we might build a dwelling in which God might live, His Spirit dwelling in us.