“Be afflicted and mourn, and weep, let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness. 10. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He shall lift you up.” Notice that in the title I put a question mark after “mourn.”
On the surface this is a woeful text, in the light of all that Jesus said about joy and rejoicing, and all that is written in the Bible about joy and rejoicing. This is especially true of Paul’s epistle to the church at Philippi. Remembering that all scripture was written by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, James has a message for us from Him that we need to heed, as well as the messages about joy and rejoicing. We need to delve into why James told his readers, including us, why they should “be afflicted and mourn.” This is not a message about our lifestyles. As written above, Jesus spoke a lot about Joy and rejoicing in His earthly ministry. There are many other passages in the Bible that tell us to be joyful and to rejoice. This is not a call to long-faced religion. That was the kind of religion that the Pharisees practiced. Being joyful is part of our witness and ministry to the world. It reminds me of the little girl who was visiting her straight-laced Grandma’s farm, whose lifestyle was sort of akin to the Pharisees. Every time the little girl turned around her Grandma would say “no.” Everything was “no,” and seemingly everything was forbidden. The little girl saw the old mule standing at the fence with its nose hanging over the fence, looking sad and forlorn as mules will do. She said to the mule: “You look so sad, but I think I know what’s wrong with you. You’ve got religion, but don’t feel too bad, Grandma has religion too.” This is not what James means. The book of James was written to Christians who were not being good witnesses for Jesus. Their lifestyles were such that they gossiped, shunned poor people, and generally ignored living like Jesus. What James meant here was that until they got straightened out and made their lives right with Jesus, they were to “be afflicted and mourn.” Sin in our lives does not bring out the joy of Jesus, and as long as sin is reigning in our lives, we should mourn and our joy should turn into heaviness. James was telling these recalcitrant people that they needed to repent, turn their lives over to the Lord and get their lives in order. James was telling them that they should not be happy in their sins, and he is telling us the same thing. The two verses preceding our text verses, explain what I mean: “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. Cleanse your hands you sinners; and purify your hearts you double minded.” Then he told them to “be afflicted and mourn.” Verse 10 gives us a clue as to how to solve the sin problem and recover the joy of Jesus in our lives: “Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He shall lift you up.” The people to whom James wrote were vain, proud and haughty. What they needed was a good dose of humility. This is true of us as well. Pride and haughtiness are rampant today, even among the fellowship of God’s people. Our pride gets in the way of our service to people for the Lord, and it robs us of the joy that Jesus wants us to have. In fact, it is the joy that He has given us. Joy is mentioned in Galatians 5:22 as part of the “fruit of the Spirit.” If we heeded the remedy given in this text, we would be better witnesses for Jesus, and a lot of problems in our churches would be solved. The promise here is that when we humble ourselves, the Lord “shall lift (us) up.” In the process, He will restore the joy of our salvation. The whole point of this is that we need to get right with God. Bro. Joe
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AuthorDr. Joe Beauchamp is the author of this blog and website. Categories
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