Would you please take your copy of the scripture now and open it to James chapter 4. James chapter 4 as we return this Sunday after our Easter celebration last week to the book of James. I want to start reading in verse 1. Our text for this morning is verses 7 through 10. But I want to back up to verse one just so you can get the full context. James chapter four starting in verse one. James writes, what is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? Is not the source your pleasures that wage war in your members? You lust and do not have, so you murder. You are envious and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive because you ask with wrong motives so that you may spend it on your pleasures. You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world sets himself as an enemy of God. Or do you think that the scripture speaks to no purpose? He jealously desires the spirit which he has made to dwell in us, but he gives a greater grace. Therefore it says, God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Now, just a quick note, these first six verses of chapter four are describing what the life of pride looks like. God is opposed to that, but he gives grace to the humble. Now what is the way of humility look like? That's what we see starting in verse 10. Be subject, 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. Purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be miserable and mourn and cry. Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you. Father, this morning, we want to know the way of humility, the path of humility. This is what our Savior exemplified. This is who Christ is. The book of Philippians tells us that even though he exists in the very form, possessing all the attributes and the full nature of you, Father, yet he humbly took the position of a slave and came to this earth wearing our flesh. And in that flesh, went to the cross out of obedience to you and to secure salvation for us. This is who our Lord is. This is what we must be like as well. Father, help us this morning. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Of all the things that are certain about the world in which we live, humility is not popular. That is one of the things that is certain. Humility is not popular. People are interested in putting themselves first. Most are often looking out for their own personal interests. They want others to fulfill their desires, validate their ideas, and advance their agendas. People are looking for personal greatness and they want to use worldly wisdom to attain it. And if they can't get those desires fulfilled and those ideas validated and their agendas advanced, then they will attack. The church, as we've been seeing in James chapter four, is not immune to this. That's what he's been showing us here in these first six verses of chapter four. Conflict is driven by lusts that come from a person's heart. Those lusts wage war internally within us to dominate a person, and the Christian is to fight against those, they are to fight against those and they are to subdue them. And when that doesn't happen, when we lose the battle within, those lusts drive people to have conflicts with others. They seek to obtain what their flesh craves by lusting after what either A, they don't have, or B, others do have that they want. And they do this as James has told us, rather than trusting God to provide what they need. And we saw in the first six verses of chapter four that oftentimes we don't even bother to ask God for the things that we need. And when we do ask, we ask in such a way as to use whatever he gives us to use them fully on our own lusts. Those lusts then become the driving force behind our lives. And we will then give the worship and devotion due to God to those lusts. Whatever we are lusting after then becomes an idol. And so when we ask God for what our desires are, and we want to use them for what our idol craves, we are essentially asking God to engage in the worship of our idol. And when we do that, we have made God an idolater. This is horrendous, to take God's good gifts and sacrifice them to your idols, which ultimately makes God an idolater. And as we saw two weeks ago, like a jealous husband, whose wife has committed adultery, God desires your heart and your desires to be for him and for him alone. You do not belong to or serve any other God. God has saved you. He has saved you to make you distinctly his. He has purchased you. And so thus God is opposed to the proud pursuits of the fulfillment of personal lusts, but he gives grace. to the humble. And when the proud person repents and turns from pride to humility, God will provide them grace. And so God opposes the proud in the hope that they will give up their foolish pursuit and repent. And when they do, as we said just a moment ago, there is grace. Grace to live, grace to serve, grace to meet all the challenges and trials of life. In short, it's grace to do all that God has called you to do. So humility is what God requires in your life. And now in verses seven to 10, James shows us how to get there. In fact, the central idea of our text this morning is that the Christian must reject pride and pursue the path to humility. The Christian must reject pride and pursue the path to humility. And James shows us that by giving us three requirements and one result of humility. You have then four headings this morning. Number one is this, humility requires submission. Got that? Humility requires submission. Look at verse seven of James chapter four. Again, James writes, be subject therefore to God, resist the devil and he will flee from you. Now, we know here in verses seven to 10, we're in the context of humility, and I think I've tried to highlight that a little bit as we looked at the end of verse six and also at the beginning of verse 10. Again, verse six, the end of the verse, God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Then drop down to verse 10, humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord and he will exalt you. This book ends our text for this morning, doesn't it? This is a device in the original language in the Greek that they call inclusio. When you have this at the beginning of the text and then the writer mentions it at the end of the text, what he's saying is that the entire text, those four or five verses or however big the passage is, that entire text is enveloped by this idea of humility. That is your context. So he begins by saying God gives grace to the humble. He ends with the command. Humility, as he tells us at the beginning of verse 7, comes then by submission to God. Humility comes by submission to God. We can easily state that by just saying, obey God. That's the simplest way to say it, isn't it? And on the most foundational level to be saved is to be in a state of submission to God. That is how you enter salvation. That is how you then conduct yourself throughout the rest of the Christian life, in submission to God. What do I mean by that? Well, salvation began by your submission to God's command to obey the gospel. And it is a command. John the Baptist in Matthew chapter three, verses one and two preaches this. It says, now in those days, John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea saying, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Did you notice that's a command? Repent, do this, obey this. The gospel is not given as an offer that you can accept or reject if you like it. It's a command. You either obey it or you resist it. You submit to it or you reject it. Those are your two options. It is not an offer. It is a command. Jesus did the same thing. Matthew chapter four, verse 17, just a chapter later in Matthew's gospel, it says, from that time, Jesus began to preach and say, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. This also is a command. And so both Jesus and John the Baptist are issuing commands to repent regarding your sin and to believe in the gospel message or to believe the message, trust in the message that God has set before you. And so salvation is to submit to Christ as Lord and believe the message that God has given regarding Him. You don't come into salvation other than through humility and submission. You do not enter the door of the saved through pride. That is impossible. It is impossible. The word that James uses here for submit, or be, verse seven, be subject, is the Greek word hupotasso, and it means to cause to be in a submissive relationship. Here it means to subordinate yourself specifically to God. In the most literal sense, the word means to line up under. It was a term used in the military of their day, and they would give orders to the military and the lesser soldiers or the lesser officers were to line up under the greater officers. And so inherent within this idea of submission is humility because it means that you are accepting and doing the will of another. One commentator has put it this way, that submission is, quote, a voluntary act of placing oneself under the authority of someone else to show him respect and obedience." And so it is to reject your way, it is to reject your will, it is to reject your desire in order to submit to the way, the will, and the desire of your master, who is God. So you can't walk the path of humility without submission. And again, humility is to reject your way to embrace God's. Paul said this in Romans 1, verse 1. Paul writes, Paul, this is how he introduces himself, Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus. What do you know about slaves? Slaves cannot exercise their own will, do they? They exercise the will of their master. They further the agenda of their master. Paul says, this is exactly what I am, and Christ is my master. He writes, Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus, what did Christ Jesus call him to? Called as an apostle, and then he says, having been set apart for the gospel of God. My master has saved me, he has called me, he has set me apart, I do the will of my master. That's what Paul is saying in Romans chapter one, verse one. God has set us apart for him and to do his will even from before our birth. Listen to this, Jeremiah chapter, unless you think that Paul is by himself in this, Jeremiah chapter one, verse five, this is God speaking to Jeremiah and he says, before I formed you in the innermost parts, I knew you and before you came out from the womb, I set you apart. I have given you as a prophet to the nations. God says, before you were even born, I had chosen who you were going to be, that you were going to be mine and what you were going to do. This is what he has chosen for Jeremiah. And before you say, well, that's Paul, he's an apostle, that's Jeremiah, he's a prophet. Certainly God just does this with some people and not with everybody, right? No. Ephesians 2, verse 10, listen to this, this is Paul speaking about every person who has ever been saved. Ephesians 2, verse 10, Paul says, for we, that's us, right? For we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus. What do you think he's talking about there? He's talking about salvation. We are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works. Okay, so I'm saved, I'm supposed to serve God, I'm supposed to obey Him. Okay, that's fine and dandy, I can buy that. But now it gets very specific. Listen, which God prepared beforehand. Oh, so God has prepared the good that I would do for Him from before I was saved, yes. before you were even knit together in your mother's womb. But Paul's not done. For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand. Listen, so that, that's a purpose clause, in order that, here's the purpose, in order that we would walk in them. In other words, God has called us to submit to all that he has decreed for our life. He has chosen not only who we would be, not only that we would be saved, not only what we would do for him, but that we would actually accomplish it. So God has called us to submit to all that he has decreed. Now, we see that easily when it comes to the commands of scripture. That's easy for us to see and to accept. draw your attention to something that might not be quite as evident for you. See, this idea of submission even involves all the circumstances that come in your life. You say, what do you mean, pastor? Well, can you control the weather? Can you control your health? Look, I don't care who you are or how healthy you eat or all the good things that you do. People who follow the greatest examples of health get cancer. People who follow the greatest examples of health die of heart attacks. People who have the greatest examples of health get sick just like everybody else. So you can't control the weather, you can't control your health, you can't control what other people do, you can't control what the government does. You don't decide if your car is going to break down today or if you're going to get sick. But dear friend, there is someone who does. There is someone who is over all those things, and his name is Yahweh God. Isaiah 46, verses 10 and 11. This is God speaking. He says, declaring the end from the beginning. In other words, I declared from the beginning of time what the end would be and everything in between. Declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things which had not been done. So before things even came about, I declared that they were going to be. saying, my council will be established, I will accomplish all my good pleasure, calling a bird of prey from the east, a man of my council from a far country, truly I have spoken, truly I will bring it to pass, I have formed it, surely I will do it. God's sovereign over everything. Do you see that? So all of the different things that happen in your life didn't just happen. And the circumstances that we face in this life, those are from His hand. Part of submission to Him is accepting the things that He has sovereignly decreed. Those are the things that from our perspective might be easy or hard or good or bad. All of that is wrapped up in this idea of submission. Now, prayer is one of the areas where this really shows up for us in a very practical sense. And there's a lot of misunderstanding about prayer out there because prayer is not where you try to get God to do what you want. There's a lot of people who think that that's what prayer is for and about. They think it is me trying to get God to submit His will to mine, or it's me trying to get Him to do what I want Him to do. That is not what prayer is. Prayer is you submitting yourself to His will. Do you understand that this morning? See, when you are praying and you say, thy will be done, God's will be done, you have resisted pride and you have placed yourself in submission to God. And that's not just a tagline you throw into your prayer. You really mean it. Unless, of course, you're just hypocritically praying. So we need to actually mean that when we say it. At the end of the prayer when we say, in Jesus' name, amen, that's not some magic formula. There's people who teach this today. They teach that that is some magic formula by which you can say, well, if I can get one or two people to agree on something and we pray about it and we use the formula, in Jesus' name, at the end, He's gotta give us whatever we want. Who do you think is sovereign anyway? You think you're sovereign? Are you kidding me? That is not what prayer is. And that expression, in Jesus' name, that is you submitting all of your requests in prayer to whatever His desire is. It is as if to say, may all of my prayer be in accordance to His name. And when we say in accordance to His name, what that means is to be in accordance or to be consistent with all that He is, with who He is, and what His will is. When that expression, someone's name or his name or according to your name was used in ancient times. When that text was written, what that meant was, I want this to be in accordance to all that you are. His will, his sovereignty, his desires, his decrees. So it is to submit all your thinking and requests and your will to his. That's a big part of submission. Otherwise, our prayers are rebellious. Do you think God answers positively a rebellious prayer? Now, the word in verse 7, be subject, that is a passive verb, which means you allow yourself to be governed by God. Let me state it this way. In other words, you don't resist His will or His commands regarding you or regarding anything. So this is to obey God in everything. It is to offer Him full, complete, willing submission, respect, allegiance, and honor. And this is in no way begrudging submission. That doesn't work. This is not, well, I'll do it, but I don't like it. No. That's not submission. That's still rebellion. You're filing a protest while you quote-unquote obey. No. You don't get to file protests with God. And by the way, we do this knowing that God will do what is right, both for His glory and for our best. That means that we're going to be content with whatever he decides is for our best. Romans chapter eight, verse 28, Paul writes, and we know, we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. You say, but it doesn't always look good. You're not God. Do you fully understand? This takes us right back to the book of Job, doesn't it? Do you fully understand all of his purposes and everything that he's doing, and the perspective that he has, and all of the things that he is trying to accomplish through his purposes, and his will, and his sovereignty, not just for now, but for all of eternity? Do you have an eternal perspective? No. No, we don't have that, do we? And that's exactly what Job says at the end of the book. when he realizes the foolishness of what he's been saying. And so this morning I want to ask you the question, is this what your life is? Is it one continuous statement of obedience to God after the other? Is your life characterized by submission to him, submission to his will, submission to his desires, submission to his commands as they've been revealed in his word? This is what the life of the believer is to be like. It's to be the most obedient, submissive, and compliant to God that we can possibly be. But it's my duty to be independent, and not with regard to God, it's not. No, no, we don't get to do that. Whatever he says, our response is always a willing, eager, yes, Lord. And so we offer full allegiance, full obedience to our new Lord, Yahweh. But that also means you must resist something else. See, if being a Christian is obedience and submission to God, then it must of necessity also mean that you have to resist and therefore rebel against your old Lord, who is the devil. See, if you wanna be a rebel, rebel against and rebel against something, then rebel against him. Resist him. Refuse to submit to him. Look at verse seven again. Be subject therefore to God. So that's submission that we've been talking about. Second command, resist the devil and he will flee from you. The word resist means to rise up in opposition against something. That's what it means. It means to take your stand against something. That is the epitome of rebellion. And so James sets up in the text here this submission rebellion motif. Submit to God, rebel against the devil. You rebel against him simply by being in active obedience to God. If you are in obedience to God, you're in rebellion against the devil. Satan is the one who is in opposition to God. He is the one who leads the rebellion of this world against God. So if you do what God has commanded, you are actively in opposition to Satan and you are rebelling against him and rebelling against his kingdom. Now, what does that look like? Keep your finger here in James 4 and turn back to Ephesians 2. Paul paints for us Really a wonderful, well, the picture that's there is not wonderful, but the summation that we have is wonderful because of how comprehensive it is. Ephesians chapter two, verses one, two, and three. This is who we were before salvation. This is what we were. This is what we followed after. This is what we rushed headlong into and went for like crazy. Paul writes this, and you, meaning the Ephesians and by extension every Christian who's ever been alive, and you were, before salvation, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the ruler of the power of the air, Who is that? Well, he's the spirit that's now working in the sons of disobedience. Who do you think that is? That's Satan. This is a picture of the entire world. And it describes you and me and everybody else before salvation. We were spiritually dead, which is to say we were not alive to God at all. We were fully immersed in our own sin. We walked, we lived, we conducted our lives according to the path of this world. We were following after its path, its way, its desires. And the world itself, that word there, kosmos in the Greek, means an orderly system of worldly opposition. And so by definition, that is in rebellion to God. That system is all in accordance, which means it's in agreement with Satan. He's the spirit, the driving force at work in the rebellion. And Paul calls everybody who's under that sons of disobedience. That's the quintessential essence of rebellion, isn't it? How can you get more rebellious than being a son of disobedience? You're literally disobedience's child, rebellion's child. This is why Jesus told the Pharisees in John's gospel that they were of their father, the devil. And in that, when we were that way, when we were submitted to that, In that we submitted to the powerful cravings of our lust and our flesh and our mind, which makes us then by nature children of wrath." In other words, people who rightly deserve the wrath of God. Those who would have rightly received the righteous wrath of God for our sin. James says, that's what you want to resist. Resist that. Stand opposed. Stand in rebellion to that. Be a rebel against the rebellion. Paul says it this way in Romans chapter 12 verses 1 and 2. He says, Therefore I exhort you, brothers, by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a sacrifice, living, holy, and pleasing to God. So we present all that we are. as a sacrifice offered up to God, right? Everything that we are, all of ourselves, all of our actions, all that we do, it is a sacrifice to God. And then he goes on, which is your spiritual service of worship? Listen, worship isn't just what you come to do at church on Sunday morning. Worship is your entire life. If you think I go to church to worship and then I leave to live my life, you've got it all wrong. Your entire life is to be an act of worship and submission and obedience to God. That's what Paul is saying here. And then he goes on, so there's that aspect. So everything that I am and to be is in worship to God. And then he says, do not be conformed to this world. The word there for conform means to be pressed into its mold. Don't be shaped after it. Don't become like it. Don't be that way. But, Paul says, he goes on, be transformed by the renewing of your mind so that you may approve what the will of God is, that which is good and pleasing and perfect. So Romans 1, verse 12, we present our bodies as a sacrifice to God, that is submission to God, that is worship. Verse two then, don't be conformed to this world, don't be pressed into its mold, don't be conformed to its way of thinking, that is resistance to the world, isn't it? Instead, we wanna be transformed out of that by renewing our mind, that is submitting our minds to the word of God. Submit to God, resist the devil. Now, how do you do that? Well, you follow the example of Christ. As powerful as Satan is, he can be defeated. You can resist him and his temptations. And if you do that, he will flee. Now, first of all, that's a profoundly comforting thought, the idea that he can be defeated. As powerful of an enemy as Satan is, He can be defeated. You can have victory over his temptations and over sin in your life. You are not helpless. In fact, you are far from it. So first we resist the devil simply by obeying God's Word. That's the most obvious way to do that in the context of James chapter 4. Second is to resist him by what Paul said in Romans chapter 12 verse 2, which is to renew your mind. This gives us some incredibly practical help. How do you do that? How do I renew my mind? Listen, it is by the daily intake of scripture. You want your mind governed by God's thoughts. I mean, think about this. If you spend your life and your day listening to the unsaved world and watching their TV and their movies and you're dominated by that, what are you filling your mind with? You're filling your mind with the world's way of thinking, the world's way of doing everything, aren't you? How in the world do you expect to fill your mind with the world's way of thinking and then be submissive to God? You can't do that. So you want your mind governed by God's thoughts. Where do you get those? The Bible. You're holding it in your hand. This is the word of God, the thoughts of God. The mind of God is revealed in the scripture. And so you take it into yourself by the reading and the understanding, the comprehension of the scripture. And the more of the Bible that fills your mind, the more that it dominates your thinking. You want your patterns of thought to follow God's patterns of thought. And the more you do that, the less susceptible to temptation you will be, and the less attractive the world will be to you, and it will gradually become more and more, sin will gradually become more and more utterly disgusting to you. And you won't be tempted by it nearly as much, you will now abhor it. And the more his thoughts are in your brain, the more repulsive sin in the world will be to you. But there's one last piece of the puzzle that you need to resist Satan and to resist your own sin. And that's the power to endure. Where does that come from? That comes from the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit. He's the one who empowers you to do all that God has commanded you to do. Paul talks about this significantly in Romans 8, in the ministry of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Romans 8, verse 26, just a real quick summary of a little bit of this. Romans 8, verse 26, Paul tells us that the Spirit helps our weaknesses. He helps our weaknesses. Then in Romans 8, verse 32, Paul says, He who indeed, speaking of God, He who indeed did not spare His own Son, Now the context of that verse is that God is at work to conform us to the image of Christ. That's Romans 8, verses 28-30. It's a very familiar text. That's why I'm not reading it because I know that the vast majority of you know it so well. All right, and so that is true all through this life until we stand with Christ in heaven and we're glorified. God is working to conform us to his image. Romans 8, verse 31, the text tells us that God is for us. Then in verse 32, it tells us he gives us all things. Paul says, look, if he's given you Christ, how will he not give you everything? If he's already given you the fullness of Christ himself, how will he not give you everything else? And you say, well, what does that mean, everything else? Well, what does he mean by all things? What things? The answer is everything needed to sanctify you. Everything needed to sanctify you. That must, of necessity, include the power to resist Satan. And the Holy Spirit is the one who supplies that to you. Listen to me, Christian, you already have that. You say, oh, I just don't have the power to resist. Yes, you do. Because if you're saved, you have the Holy Spirit resident in you. You have the power to resist the devil. You already have that. The question this morning is not whether you have it. The question is, do you believe it? Do you know you have it? It's like owning a Lamborghini and driving 10 miles an hour. There's an enormous amount of power under the hood, but you don't even realize that you possess it. And I submit to you, as long as you truly believe that, as long as you truly believe that you have the power to be victorious over Satan, you will be. Why? Because the Holy Spirit supplies you with it. Do you trust God that way? So you need the word of God to bring your thoughts into subjection to God. You need the word of God to renew your mind and you need the spirit of God to empower you. So I asked you this morning, since you have all those things, what don't you have that you need to obey God and to resist Satan? Well, the answer is nothing. God has given you everything you need. And you say, but then why is it so hard? Because your flesh craves it so much. Yes, you are that bad. But you do that, you submit your thinking to the word of God, you obey God's revealed will in the scriptures and you trust that he has given you the Holy Spirit to empower you to defeat Satan, you will be able to resist him and Satan will flee. Not to get too Martin Luther-like, but he will run away like a whipped dog. Submit to God, resist Satan, and he will flee. He must. All right, so number one, humility requires submission. Humility requires submission. Number two, humility requires nearness. It requires nearness. Look at verse eight. James writes, draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. This is a reference to intimate fellowship with God, which is fellowship and worship of God. And once we're saved, the pursuit of our lives is God Himself. And we do that so we can glorify Him by becoming like Him. That was the pursuit of the apostle Paul's life. In Philippians chapter three, verse 10, Paul writes, that I may, he's talking about his salvation in Philippians chapter three, he saved. Verse 10, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to his death. Paul really tells us here three things about drawing near to God. He tells us that he wants to spend his life in pursuit of the intimate knowledge of Christ. That's not just a factual knowledge, it's relational, it's personal knowledge. In fact, that word to know there that's used in the text is so personal that it's used in the Bible of a husband knowing his wife with regard to marital intimacy. Paul's saying, I want to be one with Christ. I want to know everything that I can, not just factual information, but all that there is in relationship to him. That's what I want to have. And this is knowing who God is by how he's revealed himself to us. That is done through his word again. I want to rejoice with God in the things that he rejoices in. I want to love the things that he loves. I want to hate the things that he hates. I want to please him in every single way that I possibly can. I want to know better the power of his resurrection than Paul says. That's the demonstration of the pinnacle of Christ's power. This is His actual victory celebration, the resurrection. We just celebrated it last Sunday. His actual victory celebration over sin, over death, over Satan, over the grave, and the celebration of the salvation that He's purchased for His people. It is to be united with and rejoice with Christ in His greatest triumph. And then Paul says, I also want to share in His sufferings. Now, we all want to line up for the first two, but the third one we're not so quick to line up for, are we? This is communion with Christ and what He suffered. What do you mean, Pastor? How can I experience the sufferings of Christ? Well, the world persecuted Him. I'm called to suffer for Christ in this life now, aren't I? And the more I'm made like Him, the more the world will hate and persecute me. Jesus told us that. They will persecute us simply because we belong to him. And there are texts in scripture that basically tell you they will persecute you in place of him. Because he's not here and they can't persecute him anymore, they'll attack you instead because you belong to him and have associated yourself with him. Paul says, I want to know the fellowship of his sufferings. I want to suffer with Him. Now, in the most practical of ways, this drawing near also involves prayer. This is in addition to His Word that brings us directly into the presence of God, prayer does as well. In His Word, God speaks to us. In prayer, we speak to Him. In his word, he reveals his will to us in prayer, as we talked about earlier, we submit our will to his. But that drawing near to God has to be genuine. Listen to Psalm 145, verse 18. The psalmist writes, Yahweh is near to all who call upon him, to all who call upon him in truth. That is with a sincere undivided heart, You're not calling on him for your selfish purposes. You're not praying to have your own lusts fulfilled, as James talks about in verse three of chapter four. Listen to how King David instructed his son Solomon to approach the Lord. 1 Chronicles chapter 28, verse nine. David says, as for you, my son Solomon, This is a great example of a father teaching his son. As for you, my son Solomon, know the God of your father. Serve him with a whole heart and a delighted soul. In other words, whatever Yahweh says, you do. You serve him in that way and you take delight in doing that. Oh, that Solomon would have listened to that. Why? He goes on, for Yahweh searches all hearts and understands every intent of the thoughts. Hebrews chapter 10, verse 22, the writer of Hebrews puts it this way. He says, let us draw near with a sincere heart, that's a whole heart, right? In full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. That's a heart with no duplicitous motives. Now, I want you to look, I want you to see what James is doing here. Look at the second half of verse eight. Draw near to God, he will draw near to you. Now look at the second half. He says, cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Pay attention to that. You look at that while I read Psalm 24, verses three and four. The psalmist writes, David writes, who may ascend into the mountain of Yahweh? Who may draw near, we could ask, right? Who may ascend into the mountain of Yahweh? Who may rise in his holy place? He who has innocent hands and a pure heart. Do you see what James is doing? He says, draw near to God. This is fellowship and worship of him. Now who gets to do that? David asked in Psalm 24. Answer, the one with clean hands and a pure heart. James is mirroring Psalm 24 here, isn't he? This is exactly what James is doing. It's exactly what he's thinking about, what he's talking about here. In other words, you're not going to draw near to God with a life of sin born out of a double-minded heart. You will never draw near to God that way. And to the believer that is proud, in other words, the believer that is following afterworldly wisdom, for you, you need to cleanse your hands and purify your heart. The hands are an indication of your external activities, the things that you do outside of your mind, the things that you do with your body. The hands indicate that. And the heart is what they flow out of, those actions flow out of. So you stop your sin, you cleanse your external activities, how? By purifying your heart. And isn't that what humility does? What you do with your hands is your testimony to the outside world, that's what they see of who you are. It's what the world sees, it's what your fellow Christian sees. How do they cleanse their hands? Well, you could just say, okay, stop doing sin. That's good. But if that's all that you've done, that's just behavior modification. So you can stop sinning externally while your heart, this may sound like a verse you've heard, is far from God. You don't just want behavior modification, you need to go deeper than that. If all you do is make the hands clean, you haven't addressed the real issue of an undivided heart. And isn't that what Yahweh says in His word that He wants over and over and over again? In fact, if you've done that, if you've made someone obey externally and not internally, all that you've done is created a really good Pharisee. There's been different times throughout the course of my ministry that people have said, Pastor, you're way too involved in your preaching, just tell me what to do. Here's my response to that, Mark 7, verse 6. And he said to them, this is Jesus speaking, rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it's written, this people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far away from me. Oh, you can do what's right externally. and have a heart that is as far away from God as it can possibly be. So you need to purify the heart, don't you? See, James isn't saying just do one or the other, or to do one first and then the other second. He's saying do both at the same time. And so Jesus, as we just read in Mark 7, verse 6, is saying you can't even worship God rightly if you have right actions, but you have a hypocritical heart. And what does that tell you? It tells you that he does not accept that kind of worship. Do you hear that this morning? And so what James has in view are truly clean hands that are the result of a genuinely pure heart. He's talking about change from the inside out. And that's what it takes to draw near to God. That's what humility requires. Now you need to understand that James wants them to take this seriously. And they had to see that repentance must be now. It must be now. And that's why he used these two terms in verse eight, the terms sinners and double-minded. Those two terms are normally reserved in scripture to refer to the unsaved. James is trying to jolt them to see how serious their actions were. He's using these terms for shock value. This is the epitome of how James often wrote. We see this repeatedly throughout the book. He's trying to shock them into realizing what they've done, because so far nothing that anybody's said has worked, and so he's trying to get them to the point where they will finally understand. to shake them from their lethargy and their complacency, and he's telling them that the way that they're behaving is so serious, you look like the unsaved. And the idea is repent, and you need to do it now. You're acting like a fool because you're not following godly wisdom. You're serving yourself on a silver platter as an offering to sin, and you've become a plaything for Satan. You're destroying your testimony. You're pulling yourself further away from God. And so he's saying, stop it now. Or maybe I just need to call you an unbeliever to get your attention. So you obey God. You resist the devil, you draw near to God by purifying a double-minded heart which changes your external actions. But James presses the case further. In case they don't listen, he even ratchets up the appeal beyond that. Humility requires submission, it requires nearness, but third, it requires repentance. These last two points go very quickly, don't worry. We'll have you out in time for the meeting. Oh, I'm excited about the meeting, Pastor. Number three. Good, you're still with me. Humility requires repentance. Look at verse nine. Be miserable. Mourn. Cry. Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom. See, what James says here is a right message, and he uses a powerful trio of words. First, he says being miserable means to feel awful. It's the inner attitude of repentance. Awful because you followed after the world's wisdom. Awful because you committed spiritual adultery, as we saw two weeks ago in verses one through six. And because you've done those things, there should be misery. There should be distress. This is not a reason for happiness. Because you've essentially been unfaithful to your Lord. So he says, because of that be miserable second. He says, mourn. Mourn over your condition, mourn over what you've done. And this word describes a mourning, the word itself in the original describes a mourning that cannot be hidden. It's the attitude that rightly images death. Mourn. Because when repentance happens, a death has taken place. It's a death to sin. Mourn your sin. Mourn what you've done. And that sorrow and that misery will drive you to repentance. Third, cry. That's exactly what you think it means. You don't need much description there. It's the physical expression of mourning. See, again, James isn't just interested in external behavior and external expression. because he knows that no amount of tears is going to pay for sin or make atonement in any way. But by the same token, when someone has godly sorrow over their sin, when they're broken, they will often weep. It's a right response when a believer realizes how they've sinned, how they've grieved their Lord. This person has been enjoying the pleasures of sin and committed spiritual adultery, and James says, stop it, stop laughing. Stop finding joy in that. You can almost feel James' disgust at their sin. James says, you're still in that. You won't repent. You should know sorrow, not joy. Because you see, our sin brings our God grief. And when we know his grief, it should bring us grief. Just a few examples of this. You need to see these. Psalm 32, verses 3 and 4. David writes, When I kept silent about my sin, my bones wasted away. I was miserable. When I kept silent about my sin, when he refused to repent. When I kept silent about my sin, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me. my vitality was drained away as with the heat of summer. Psalm 38 verses 17 and 18, for I am ready to fall, and my sorrow is continually before me, for I confess my iniquity and I am full of anxiety because of my sin. Lest you think this is just an Old Testament thing, Luke chapter 22, this is the night, or rather the day of Jesus' trials, the night before he was crucified, and Peter had just denied the Lord for the third time. And it says, and the Lord turned and looked at Peter. And Peter remembered the words of the Lord, how he had told him before, rooster crows today, you will deny me three times. And he went out and cried bitterly. 1 Corinthians chapter five, verse two, Paul is writing the Corinthian church about sin that they celebrated. Paul says, you have become puffed up and have not mourned instead, so that the one who had done this deed would be removed from your midst. Don't be puffed up. Don't be proud about this. Mourn. Hate it. Mourn it. Let it die. Paul in his own life. Romans 7, verse 24. wretched man that I am. I'm a wretch, Paul says. He's mourning his own sin. Who will deliver me from the body of this death? The good news is the very next verse, the Lord Jesus Christ does. That's what grief over sin looks like. We grieve over our sin. Not because we got caught or because we must endure some type of discipline or punishment for the sin that we've committed. We grieve because our sin grieves Yahweh God, who we love. We've grieved him. We've hindered our fellowship with him. And that should bring us pain. Humility requires repentance. Fourth, humility results in exaltation. Here's the result of humility. Look at verse 10. Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and he will exalt you. When we are grieved over our sin, when we've rightly mourned it, and we've sought God's forgiveness, and when we turn from it, God responds. And the text tells us that he exalts the humble. And so by definition, the humble then is the one who has repented. It's those of us who are regularly repenters. And that exaltation is first in our fellowship with Him. Because we need to rightly humble ourselves when we sin. Once we've confessed our sin, once we've sought forgiveness from God and turned from it, we are completely restored with our Heavenly Father. Listen, 1 John 1.9, if we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Listen, beloved, what God has forgiven and cleansed is forgiven and cleansed. Don't go back and beat yourself up over something that God has already forgiven. Once you have mourned over it, once you have genuinely repented of it, once you have asked God for forgiveness or whoever else you've sinned against that you need to ask forgiveness from, you know that it is in your past and it has been forgiven and cleansed. And when that happens, the guilt and the shame and the hindrance to our fellowship with God and with everybody else who we've sinned against is gone. And then there's the exaltation and the joy of a right fellowship with our Father restored. That is nothing but joy. And so there is the general truth that God does exalt the humble. But I think in this context the exaltation of full fellowship with God being restored is what James has in mind. Now I need to give you a warning as we come to the end of this passage. As I've made really clear, I think this is speaking about a saved person, but I need to say this. The one who claims to be a believer and continues to live this way, the one who claims to be a believer and refuses to repent, the one who claims to be a believer and is not miserable over their sin when it's pointed out to them, and they persist in that condition, is giving solid evidence to the fact that they're not saved. And they show that by not only their manner of life, but their refusal to mourn their sin. And so I think, well, I think James is describing a believer following worldly wisdom. But I also need to say that if that person hardheartedly refuses to repent, then first of all, their church needs to place them under discipline. And if that doesn't turn them around at some point, it becomes clear that they are not saved. And now you have a target for the gospel. One last thought. This is the conclusion. Look at verse 10 again. James says, humble yourselves. Humble yourselves. Isn't it true that often we're not humbled until God humiliates us? Until he humbles us? By him bringing some external circumstance or consequences of our sin upon us. And it's then that we realize what we've done, and after he has humbled us, how much better would it be if we were sensitive regarding our sin, if we realized and confessed what we did before God, before he has to humble us? So again, James says, and you need to notice, he says, humble yourselves. Recognize your sin before the consequences come. Recognize your sin before you have to be disciplined by God. Be sensitive to the conviction of the Spirit of God and repent before he must do more to bring you to repentance. Because is it not true that often our God drags us there? Your God is holy. His people will be holy. The world will see him as holy through us. So this morning we need to be sensitive to the Spirit's conviction upon our hearts. We need to confess our sin and turn from it. We need to humble ourselves in the presence of our God and he will exalt you. We need to reject our pride and pursue the path to humility. Heavenly Father, this morning we thank you for your word that speaks so clearly to us about matters that are so practical. Father, help us to be people who are repenters, people who are known by our repentance. And help us, Father, to humble ourselves before we have to come under discipline. that the humility of Christ might be seen and known through us, that we might be an example and testimony to him. For it's in Christ's name we pray it, amen.