A Sermon by Alexander Hislop
James 4:8a Draw nigh unto God, and He will draw nigh unto you.
In considering those words, I propose, by the help of God’s Spirit, (1.) To open up the meaning of the text. (2.) To show how a sinner ought to draw nigh unto God. (3.) To state some motives to induce him to do so.
1. The meaning of the text. In considering a passage such as this, the pride and self-sufficiency of the natural heart of man are prone to convert into a deadly error what, when rightly understood, contains a most glorious truth. Men of legal and Arminian spirits contend that we are hereby taught that, in the great work of conversion, the first effective movement must be man’s – that the sinner first returns unto God of his own free will, and that only then does the grace of God take effect on his soul. Now this is in direct opposition to the whole tenor of Scripture. The very nature of man’s fallen state renders it impossible for a sinner to return to God by his own will or power. The moment man fell, spiritual life utterly forsook his soul. When therefore we read that men in their natural state are dead in trespasses and sins, we are not to regard the expression as merely a strong figure of speech, but as one which displays the absolute hopelessness and helplessness of our case.
The soul that God has forsaken cannot have one particle of anything truly pleasing in His sight. Lost and ruined man shall return to God by his own moral strength only when the corpse rotting in the grave shall rise from the dust by its own power. But the case is even worse. Not merely has man no power to draw near unto God, he has an incurable aversion to Him and His service. “The carnal mind is enmity against God, for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.” Until this enmity is subdued by effectual grace from on high, until sinners are made willing in a day of God’s power, until He Himself will work in them both to will and to do of His good pleasure, they will not return; they will only revolt more and more and every day depart farther and farther from the living God.
The nature of the case, and the express words of Scripture, combine to prove that no man can come unto Christ (which is the same as to come unto God) “except the Father . . . draw him”. Never yet did one of Adam’s fallen race truly draw nigh unto God until God, by His efficacious grace, had first drawn nigh to his soul. Does the sinner feel the slightest spark of real desire after God? Then, beyond all question, God has been there.
1Taken, with editing, from The Free Church Pulpit, vol 3. Hislop (1807-65) was a Free Church minister in Arbroath. He is best known today for his book, The Two Babylons, which demonstrates the pagan origin of many Roman Catholic beliefs.
How then are we to understand the text? We are to understand it as a gracious promise of conscious communion with the Father of our spirits to everyone who makes a true and acceptable approach unto God; just as truly as the returning sinner feels his heart going up unto God, so shall he feel God in tender mercy coming down into his soul. While the first breathing of a soul after God is the effect of God’s presence and power in that soul, it is nevertheless true that real, efficacious grace may have been working upon a sinner’s heart for some considerable time before then.
There may be cases in which God has, without any previous exercise on man’s part, revealed Himself as a God of love and plenteous redemption, in which that Scripture has been graciously fulfilled: “I am found of them that sought Me not”. But, in His ordinary dealing with sinners, He generally communicates first the grace to seek Him and then the grace to find Him. And it is most certain that no man has the slightest warrant to expect that he shall ever experience that loving-kindness of His which is better than life, unless he heartily and perseveringly seeks God’s face. It is a most blasphemous delusion, sprung from the bottomless pit, for anyone to soothe himself in a course of sin with the thought that, because he has no power in himself to turn unto God, he need not give himself any concern about the subject. He imagines that, when the day of God’s power comes, he shall be willing to obey, but until then it is vain for him to think of it.
Let such a person know that his damnation is just and, without a miracle of grace, it is certain. You have no power of yourselves, dear friends, to turn unto God, but you yourselves must turn unto God; otherwise you will perish. You have no ability of your own to draw nigh unto Him, but He invites you, He commands you now to draw nigh, and He offers you strength to enable you to do so. If you seek Him, you shall find Him. If you draw nigh in prayer to Him, He will draw nigh in mercy and communion to you.
2. How a sinner ought to draw nigh to God. (1.) He must draw nigh by the way God has appointed, and that way is Christ. The angels who never sinned, appear in their own righteousness before God, and are accepted in His sight. And before his fall, man enjoyed delightful communion with his Maker on the same grounds. But our apostasy from God has barred up that old way, the way of works, completely and for ever. Without a perfect righteousness, answerable to the spotless holiness of God’s nature and law, no creature can come before Him with acceptance. “Thou art not a God that hath pleasure in wickedness: neither shall evil dwell with Thee.” “Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity.”
But man is altogether defiled with sin. It is impossible that a creature so vile can present anything to his Maker that can secure His favour. He must
therefore have a righteousness other than his own in which to appear before the holy God. But where is he to find such a righteousness? Not in saints, not in angels, nowhere in the whole universe, except in Him who is the incarnate Son of God. As there is but “one God”, so there is but “one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus”, who said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man cometh unto the Father, but by Me”.
If we will not receive the testimony of God about our lost and ruined state, if we will not submit to the righteousness of God as revealed in the obedience and sacrifice of His Son, we may presumptuously think of drawing nigh to God, but He will not draw nigh to us; He will turn away His face; He will shut His ears to our prayers. But if, with a contrite heart we look by faith to Him who bore the sins of all the redeemed in His own body on the tree, and now, as a priest upon His throne, pleads the merits of His life and death for all that come unto God by Him, then shall our hearts be sprinkled by His blood from an evil conscience, then shall our persons be clothed with a righteousness in which God’s eye shall see no stain of sin.
If you will not first come unto Christ, you cannot draw nigh unto God, and God will not draw nigh unto you. If you were truly alive to your own natural state and the evil of sin, if you had eyes to see the holiness and majesty of the God whose law you have broken, you would not dare to come into His awful presence in the filthy rags of your own righteousness. Let no one think that the God with whom we have to do is less terrible now than when He revealed Himself on Mount Sinai in thunder and lightning and blackness and tempest. And to those who venture to approach Him without respect to the righteousness and atonement of Christ, our God is still a consuming fire.
In times of youth, health, prosperity and carnal security, while your eyes are blinded by the god of this world, you may think it a small matter to approach the most high God in your own name; you may think it no great act of condescension if He should hear the prayers of such honest, virtuous individuals as you may imagine you are. But if God should only lift up a very small corner of the veil which, by nature, is over your hearts and give you a glimpse of His glory, you would look for your righteousness in vain. Instead of feeling confident about approaching Him, you would feel like those who, in the great day of wrath, shall call upon the mountains to cover them from the face of His majesty. Only in Christ is God reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them.
(2.) A sinner must draw nigh to God with a sense of his own helplessness. He must rely on the Holy Ghost for strength. It is only when we are weak that we are really strong. It is only when we truly realise our inability that we shall ask for the strength which is made perfect in weakness. I have already
shown that, unless power is first exerted on us from on high, we shall never take one step back to God. I note now that the power which effectually draws unto Christ is that of the Holy Spirit. He alone can convince us of sin, reveal Christ to us, and persuade and enable us to embrace Him. “The natural man”, says Paul, “receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God [in other words, the gospel]; but they are foolishness unto him, neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” – discerned, that is, by the power of the Holy Ghost.
If our faith is only the offspring of our own minds, if it is not produced by the Holy Ghost, it is only an imaginary faith, one that will never give us an interest in the righteousness of Christ, or bring us near to God, or deliver us from the wrath to come. Without the Holy Ghost, we can not breathe one prayer that shall enter with acceptance into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. However regular our attendance on the worship of God and however importunate our prayers, if they do not arise from the Spirit’s work on our hearts, they are polluted in His sight. They spring only from our old, sin-defiled nature and do not come up before God perfumed with the incense of Christ’s righteousness and atoning death. Nothing except what has come down from God can ever ascend to God. Unless we are baptized with the Holy Ghost, as with fire, our faith is vain, our prayers and worship are utterly vain. If therefore you would draw nigh with acceptance, and feel the love of God shed abroad in your hearts, you must “pray in the Holy Ghost”.
(3.) You must draw nigh to God in all His ordinances. They all depend on the same gracious blessing for their efficacy. If sinful man will presume to pick and choose which of them he will observe and which he will neglect, he should not be surprised to find them wells without water to his soul. If, for instance, a man attends public worship but does not make conscience of waiting diligently on Him in secret, has he any right to complain that his soul has no eyes to see – yet the glory of that grace is shining around him?
Again the devil may change himself into an angel of light and persuade you that, because the Word of God contains all that is necessary for salvation and because the Holy Ghost is all-sufficient to make that Word effectual, you may warrantably absent yourselves from God’s house, or come only when it suits you. Do you then think that you could expect His blessing on the Bible while you are violating the solemn injunction not to forsake “the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is?” If His holy providence should disable you from attending public worship, you might then expect His blessing on the other ordinances of religion. Otherwise do not deceive yourselves: you cannot expect God to draw nigh to you in any of His ordinances, if you do not draw nigh to Him in them all.
(4.) You must draw nigh to God with clean hands and with a pure heart. In the clause immediately after the text, it is added: “Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded”. It is vain for you to look for deliverance from the guilt of sin through the blood of Christ or profess to depend on the grace of the Holy Ghost in approaching God, if you are practising any known iniquity. You may be ever so orthodox in your creed, ever so zealous for the purity of the faith; you may be regular in attending the worship of God; it is even conceivable that, to pacify your consciences, you may pray in secret; but if you permit yourselves just one sinful practice, all your other observances will be unavailing. There is an Achan in the camp and, till the accursed thing is put away, wrath is denounced against you.
It is clear that such a course of conduct on the part of the professed people of God is as absurd as it is wicked; yet it is often seen. Israel was often sternly rebuked for this very thing. “Cry aloud, spare not,” says God, by Isaiah, “lift up thy voice like a trumpet, show My people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins. Yet they seek Me daily, and delight to know My ways, as a nation that did righteousness and forsook not the ordinance of their God; they ask of Me the ordinances of justice, they take delight in approaching to God.” That is too often still the case.
Such people may flatter themselves with hopes of heaven but, without repentance, their hope is the hope of the hypocrite, and it shall utterly perish. “Hear the word of the Lord, ye rulers of Sodom: give ear unto the law of our God, ye people of Gomorrah, to what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto Me? saith the Lord: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats. When ye come to appear before Me, who hath required this at your hand, to tread My courts? Your new moons, and your appointed feasts, My soul hateth: they are a trouble unto Me, I am weary to bear them. And when you spread forth your hands, I will hide Mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear.”
But those who would approach God acceptably must also draw near with pure hearts. The God with whom we have to do, will not be put off with bodily service, however faultless. He is a spirit, and they who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth. He requires truth in the inward parts. “If I regard iniquity in my heart,” says David, “the Lord will not hear me.” Not only sinful practice, but unholy desires, will cut off the light of His gracious countenance from us. If we would come to Him with acceptance, we must completely renounce every wicked way and every unrighteous thought, at once and for ever. Not only must we abandon those things which are positively sinful, but everything that comes in competition with God’s glory. He
requires the chiefest place in our hearts. He will not dwell in a divided heart, one that wishes to serve Christ and the world.
You may seek Him carefully all your life long, but if you set up the stumbling blocks of your iniquity before your eyes, if you will not give Him that place in your affections which He claims as His due, you shall seek Him in vain. Are there any deluded sinners here who are satisfying themselves with a name to live, trusting to a form of godliness while denying its power? Let them hear God’s righteous requirement: “Ye shall seek Me, and find Me, when ye shall search for Me with your whole heart”. Only the pure in heart have the blessed assurance that they shall see God, that their fellowship shall be with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ.
- Some motives that ought to induce you to draw nigh to God with all your hearts. (1.) Consider the graciousness of the invitation. It is addressed to “adulterers and adulteresses”. To those who are puffed up with some idea of their own goodness, this will be no recommendation. But if there is one broken-hearted sinner here, he will feel that this is exactly the invitation he needs. Yes, adulterers and adulteresses – if there are any such here – the invitation of the text is addressed even to you, and to drunkards, the profane, the wicked of every description, the vilest of the vile. You may have added sin to sin; you may, by your wickedness, have made yourselves the offscourings of the earth, but here is good news for you. The God of heaven and of earth, who has all glory and blessedness in Himself, who does not need the service of men or angels, looks down upon you with the most tender compassion. He invites, He entreats, He beseeches you to draw nigh unto Him that you may have life, holiness and everlasting salvation.
And that He is intensely in earnest in His invitation has been abundantly demonstrated by the fact that He spared not the Son of His love, but freely gave Him up to the accursed death of the cross, so that the very chief of sinners might have pardon, peace and the love of God shed abroad in their hearts. He gave up the Well-beloved of His heart, the Elect in whom His soul delighted, to be baptized with the baptism of wrath, so that sinners such as you might be baptized with the sanctifying and comforting grace of the Holy Ghost. If God’s gracious invitation to you all to partake of His love, in giving His Son, will not move you to return to Him, what can possibly influence your hard hearts?
Now, while God offers you His unspeakable gift, how do you treat the offer? Will you not accept it? Then, hear, O heavens, and be astonished, O earth! The High and Holy One comes down to this world of sin and sorrow, bears in His spotless soul the curse of the broken law in the place of fallen man, and now beseeches sinners to be reconciled to God. Yet men, whose
breath is in their nostrils and are every moment in danger of eternal perdition, hesitate to accept a full and free salvation and be delivered from the wrath to come. Whoever heard of infatuation like this? Can you possibly so sin against your own souls as to put away from you so great salvation? Can you resist the mercy of a crucified Saviour? The blessed angels of God are amazed at your blindness. Even the spirits of darkness, that tempt and cheat you, laugh you to scorn for your inconceivable madness.
(2.) Consider the greatness of the benefit that will be yours if you draw nigh to God with your whole heart, in the way He has appointed: “God will draw nigh unto you”. “If any man love Me,” said the Saviour, “he will keep My words, and My Father will love him, and We will come unto him, and make Our abode with him.” You will have communion with the Father of spirits; you will for ever be temples of the Holy Ghost; God will manifest Himself to you as He does not to the world; He will make you, even in this vale of tears, drink of the rivers of pleasure which are at His right hand; He will show you the “glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth”. All your interests, both for this life and for the next, will be infallibly safe. All things will be yours, “whether the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come, all are yours; and ye are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s”. Prosperity shall no longer be a snare to you, as they are to the men of the world, and adversity shall only work out for you a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. Goodness and mercy shall follow you all the days of your life, and you shall dwell in the house of the Lord for evermore.
Are those blessings not worth seeking, yea, worth striving for? What are all the pleasures, the riches and the honours of this world comparatively but shadows which give no real satisfaction while you possess them, and they must soon fly away for ever. Give not sleep to your eyes, nor slumber to your eyelids till you find a place in your hearts for the mighty God of Jacob. Even now, Christ Jesus stands at the door of your hearts and knocks; even now He says, If any man will open the door, I will come in unto him and will sup with him, and he with Me. Will you let Him knock in vain?
(3.) It would be very little encouragement to hold up to you the blessings of communion with God, if you were left in any doubt that these blessings are attainable. Now this is the glory of the gospel: it lays the most solid ground for your assurance of success. This is indeed the only thing of which you can be absolutely certain: that you shall gain it if you seek it earnestly. Riches may take wings to themselves and fly away from those who most diligently pursue them. Pleasure may elude the grasp of the one most devoted to it. Shame may be the portion of those who most earnestly hunt after fame. But no one ever yet sought the favour of God with his whole heart and missed
his aim, and no one shall ever have to complain that he drew nigh to God in the way He has appointed and his labour was in vain.
Why? Because God has pledged that “everyone that asketh receiveth, and he that seeketh findeth, and to him that knocketh it shall be opened”. Will you believe the word of a mortal man and will you not believe the word of Him who cannot deceive? He has not merely pledged His word on the subject, He has given you His oath: “As I live, saith the Lord, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways, for why will ye die?”
If you were convinced of the truthfulness of a fellow creature who offered you a gift, would you doubt your warrant to accept his invitation? And will you show less confidence in God? When Christ Jesus invites you to come to Him for life, will you dare question His willingness to receive you? “Whosoever will,” He says, “let him take of the water of life freely”. “Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out.” If He were to call you expressly by name, He could not invite you more explicitly; and dare you doubt that the merciful Saviour, the faithful and true witness, means what He says? I call heaven and earth to witness that the offer of a full, free and eternal salvation has been made to every one of you this day and that, if you will not come to Him, your blood will be on your own heads, and your own consciences will bear witness against you on the day of the Lord.
(4.) Consider the dreadful consequences which will result if you continue estranged from God. “They that are far from Thee shall perish.” You shall perish because you have broken God’s righteous law; you shall doubly perish because you have rejected the offered grace of His gospel. You have had one more opportunity to hear the message of reconciliation. Christ has been pleading with you; the Holy Ghost, I doubt not, has been striving with you; and if you stubbornly continue unrepentant, you will at last be driven away in your wickedness and you shall know the dreadfulness of mercy abused. You shall feel the full weight of the wrath of the Lamb, as recorded for your warning in the Book of Proverbs: “Because I have called, and ye refused; I stretched out My hand, and no man regarded; but ye have set at nought all My counsel, and would none of My reproof; I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh, when your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you. Then shall they call upon Me, but I will not answer; they shall seek Me early, but they shall not find me.”
Now, while it is the accepted time, while it is the day of salvation, hear the word of the Lord: “Draw nigh unto God” in the way of His own appointment. And beyond all question, God will draw nigh in mercy unto you.