If you'd open in your Bibles to James 4, verse 6, I'm going to give a little eye exam this morning. I want you all to focus your eyes on the 6th verse of the 4th chapter with me, and we might even go so far as to read a few of those words together. The last half of the 6th verse is our eye exam, and it says that God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble. The I that I'm talking about is not these physical eyes, our optical receptors that send signals electronic to our optic nerve and that cables into our brain, which actually we see everything from the inside of a dark, closed-in, windowless room, which is our brain. But I'm talking about I as in the capital letter I, I as in myself, my ego, my pride. That's a little exam we want to do, and the two parts that I want you to think about this morning, especially for those of you that kind of tune in and tune out, is this. God said his warfare this morning is he is personally resisting pride wherever he sees it. God resists the proud. But the good news is God gives grace to the humble. OK, so now look up for our eye exam. Let's get it, OK? Repeat after me, God resists the proud. Here we go. God resists the proud. Now that's all of us. This morning we were speaking briefly in the elders' meeting that all of us were born proud. Nobody has to teach us that. Nobody infected us except our forefather Adam. God resists every time pride shows up in our life. It's a promise he's made. It's something he campaigns against. Some people don't like anybody to smoke, and some people don't like anybody to hurt animals, and other people are really opposed to this or that, and that's their thing. God is personally warring against pride. But the second part is he gives grace to the humble. God gives grace to the humble. God will give grace to us if we'll humble our hearts before him. God resists the proud. but God gives grace to the humble. Let's say the second half, God gives grace to the humble. God gives grace to the humble. Now, humility is not something that just happens. It's not a spiritual gift. It's a choice. And I hope this morning that in our time of looking at the Word of God, examining portions we're going to look at, that you will do an eye exam and see whether or not you've brought in, whether or not I've brought in, any budding and growing pride. in our lives. It's very dangerous. We're going to see this morning all the horrible byproducts pride in our lives brings. But James chapter 4 and verse 6, and as you're turning there and staying there, I'm going to tell you a little background to this, and then we're going to go through the whole passage down to the twelfth verse, 1 through 12. But God is in an all-out war against pride this morning. He wants to stamp it out in our lives, and as he examines us today through James, he wants to give us the cure to the eye problem. that all of us were born with. In the angelic hosts of the Lord God in heaven, above the archangels, higher than the seraphim, above all the cherubim, there is one that God chose to be the crown prince of them all. His name? Lucifer, the star of the morning, the leader of the hosts of heaven, the guardian of the throne of God. And into Lucifer's hands was committed all that the Lord God had made, and all that the angels of his hosts, created in their wonder, were to follow. He was beautiful, he was perfect, but in his beauty and perfection, he said in the pride of his heart, I will be like the Most High." I want to read to you, and you might jot next to verse 6 on our little eye exam here in your Bible, Isaiah 14, because Isaiah 14, 12-15, is Satan's downfall. Satan, who was closer to God, who knew more of God, who saw the perfections of God, who was above all of God's created world. Satan, who hovered over, Lucifer actually, who hovered over as the covering anointed cherub, over the very throne of God, who continually basked in the radiance of the eternal glory of God. Satan became enamored with his created perfections. And this is what he said in Isaiah 14, verses 12 to 15. How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning? How art thou cut down to the ground, who didst weaken the nations? For thou hast said in thine heart, and pride stems from a heart choice elevated a view of ourself that we make, and it radiates out from there. But Lucifer, in his heart, never verbalized this. This was just the thoughts of his heart as he was over God's throne, covering God's throne. Thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven. I will exalt my throne above the stars of God. I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation in the sides of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds. I will be like the most high, yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit." Satan didn't want to be greater than God. Satan didn't want to overthrow God. Satan didn't want to shove God aside. He just wanted to join him. I want to be like you, God. And in his pride, he fell. and sin entered into the cosmos. And by his temptation, sin entered into the world and death to the universe through Adam. In our text this morning, starting in verse 1, I want to take you on a journey, again, as James tells us, how to recognize genuine Christians. In this next section, James tells us that a genuine Christian recognizes and turns from pride and its evils wherever they might show up in their life. A genuine Christian recognizes pride and is always scanning for it. A friend of mine, to help me out, gave me a disc with a copy of a dissertation that shows a format for understanding how Dallas Seminary likes their material to come. So I jammed that little disk into my computer and immediately the screen went red and the sign across the top was virus warning. This disk, and it said each file in it is infected with the AMD something blah blah blah. And it says what do you want me to do? Repair it? Destroy it? Or go on? And I said oh repair it. And so it went in and it isolated out that virus and saved the rest of the file. I thought what a friend. send me a little virus to tear up my dissertation. But no, that's not really it. Obviously, he wasn't aware it was on there. But I thought about how whatever it is, that program that you have that's always on inside your computer, it's always on the lookout for a virus, a known virus. You have to update it all the time because they change. And I thought about that spiritually as I saw that red screen just come out. I mean, it stopped everything. It froze everything and put that warning up. And until you chose what to do, nothing else was operable. Did you know that's what this portion of Scripture, these twelve verses says, it says, put on a virus alert, but only have it looking for one thing. Have it looking for pride in every one of its nefarious forms that shows up in our life. Have it alert you for it, and then stop everything in your life until you decide what to do. And sadly enough, we can just say, go on. But God says, there's some horrible things that will happen, and that's what this text Because like inkblots on a lovely white wedding dress, the verses we look at this morning in James stain his words to those first century Christians. Why? Because when Satan comes into the scene, as Jesus said, he comes to kill, to steal, and to destroy. Satan's calling card is pride, but the effects of pride are so soiling to our lives. Let me just show you what I mean. Look at verse 1. What will pride do if it's allowed to seep through in our lives, if the virus scan of God's grace doesn't immediately alert us and we deal with it? Well, the first half of verse 1 tells us pride will poison my relationships. The last part of verse 1, it says this, pride will pollute my life. And we'll see all these in just a moment. Thirdly, in verse 2, pride produces anxiety. If you are anxious, at the root of anxiety is pride. We're anxious that we be accepted. We're anxious this works out. We're anxious on the timing. We're anxious on our security. We're anxious on our appearance. And some people just get so riled up inside their anxiety because of pride dictating their lives. Verse 3 tells us that pride will plunder my prayers, robbing them of their effectiveness, of their direction, of their power. Verses 4 and 5, pride will provoke God's enmity. If you want God to be your enemy, be proud. If you want God to be your enemy, persist in letting pride seep through. Verse 6, the first part, pride finally will prevent my spiritual growth. One of the most common laments I hear is people saying, I just don't feel I'm growing. Well, you know what stunts spiritual growth? Then at the second half of verse 6, we start looking at what pride resisted. When the virus alarm comes up and we start saying no to pride that poisons our relationships and pollutes our life and produces anxiety and plunders our prayer and provokes God and keeps us from growing, what happens when we resist pride? What will humility do? The second part of verse 6 tells us that humility prompts the grace of God. You want to just get a dump of grace? You want to just get a washing over your spirit of God's grace? Resist pride somewhere in your life and God will just firehose you with His grace. It prompts an overflow of His grace into our life. Secondly, humility, we'll see, provides deliverance from God. It makes us victorious, in verse 7. In verse 8, it will prosper our intimacy with God. If you want to get really close to God, be humble. He likes humble people to be near Him. The second part of verse 8 and verse 9, humility will promote cleansing in our lives. And finally, humility, in verses 10 through 12, prepares us for success through God in every part of our life. And we'll see that. Back to verse 1. Look at pride poisoning my relationships. This is what he says, verse 1, Where do wars and fights come from among us? That's the poison of our relationship. Why are there wars and fights? In fact, if you look at the root, and there are people that have cataloged all the wars of human time, all that stems down to pride. That's my land. I want those resources. I don't want those people here. I want to control things. Pride is at the root of fights and wars, family fights and wars, personal fights and wars, international fights and wars. Pride poisons my relationships. It's the incessant pursuit of pleasure that drives people to abandon their partners, to abandon their families, to abandon their homes, to abandon their churches, to abandon honor, integrity. It's the incessant pursuit of personal pleasure which is at the root of pride. Here's a verse to turn back to. Keep your finger in James, go back before Hebrews to Titus, remember it goes Timothy, Titus, Philemon, Hebrews, Titus 3.3. I remember distinctly, I mean I had memorized this verse many years ago, but I remember distinctly the first time it smacked me right in the face. And it was a man that came walking into our church, he was our local power walker, and he's a dear friend of mine now. This was in New England, and I used to see him when I'd drive, and he had the most just disgusting outfit. He had the shortest shorts on. I mean, people shouldn't wear that short of shorts. And then his shirt, he had it all torn. It was one of those muscle kind, but he made it himself, and his whole body was covered with tattoos. And he used to power walk for about three hours until he was just glistening with sweat, and he carried fire bells with him, and he'd just walk like this. and just bulging muscles, disgusting. I mean, he was just showing off. And I remember, I'd see him walking by our church all the time. He had about a ten-mile circuit that he would walk, and he would go right by, you know, and just glisten by our church. I thought, why don't you buy yourself a pair of sweatpants, you know, and a normal shirt and look normal. Well, one day he came barbelling right into the office. And he said to the secretary, who was a New England conservative, who looked away from him because of the way he looked, he said, I must see the Father. He was Roman Catholic and he called me the Father. And before he could say a word, he pushed right by her with his barbells and walked right into my office. And he put his barbells down and he said to me, I want whatever it is the people here have. And he got down on his knees in my office sweating. He says, I walk by your church every day. I walk by it several times on Sunday. He says, I look at the people coming in and out of this place. He says, and I don't have what they have. And he put his barbells down. He says, I want it. And right there in my office, sweating, this tattooed, disgusting man, who was a very, very vile, well-known bar fighter, womanizer, everything else, got saved right in my office. And I gave him a Bible, a little paperback Bible we give him out in the Discovery Room still. And he read that thing through in a week. And he came to Titus 3.3 and looked there with me. And he came to me at the end of the week for our first discipling session and he said, There's a verse in the Bible about me. He says, I found it. He says, for we ourselves were also once foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving various lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another. He said, that's me. He says, I'm a black belt in martial arts. He says, I used to go to bars and pick fights just because I loved to pummel and to beat up people at the bars. And I would pick the guy with the girl I wanted and I'd beat the tar out of him and get the girl. He says, I love to fight. And he says, I love the pleasures of immorality. And he said, that verse is about me. But he said, you know what happened last week? Verse 4, when the kindness and the love of God our Savior toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved me through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit, which he poured out abundantly on us through Jesus Christ our Savior." He said, that's what happened to me and I thought, Wow, this guy's theology, just like that, came... I mean, not very often people get it that fast, but he got it, and he was baptized a few weeks later, and that's exactly what he shared in his testimony. And you know what he's saying? And back to James chapter 4, he said that pride had poisoned the relationships in his life. He was living governed by pride. He was full of enmity and hatred and various lusts and pleasure. He was an exhibitionist person, flaunting his body because of the lust of his heart. But when God's grace appeared to him, he humbled himself, he laid himself prostrate before the Lord, and he asked for the cleansing, regenerating, renewing work of the Lord. Pride will poison our relationships. The only cure for pride is the grace of God as we humble ourselves. Look at the second part of verse 1. Pride also pollutes our life. It says, Do they not come, these fights, from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? God's Word declares that the essence of sin is selfishness, and the selfish pride of our heart pollutes everything that comes out of us. Listen to how Isaiah puts it. You can just mark this down, another very important verse, Isaiah 53.6, because Isaiah distills down all sin to one universal indictment of mankind, and this is what he said, we have turned everyone to our own way. That's the essence of pride, my way. My way, my time, I want it. My way, my time, right now, and I won't wait. And selfish pride pollutes every part of our life. The desire for pleasure that wars in our members. Well, thirdly, not only does pride poison and pride pollute, but pride produces anxiety. Look at verse 2. You lust and you don't have. You murder and covet. You can't obtain. You fight and war. You don't have it because you don't ask. Can you just see the frustration, the anxiety and the stress of that life of just going this way and that doesn't work, so we go that way and that doesn't work, we go that way and we grasp and we hold and as Lee Iacocca said, he said, I get to the end of my life, I have everything but I have nothing. He said, I don't even know why I'm here. That's the stress, anxious life apart from the humbling grace of God. God ended the ten words or the ten commandments with this final commandment, thou shalt not covet. Colossians 3 says coveting is like idolatry. It's when we want something so bad we'll do anything to get it. God says don't covet because covetousness can make us murder. David murdered Uriah to get his wife. It can make us tell lies. Achan told a lie to Elisha to get well We can go through all the biblical stories. It can make us dishonor our parents. Samson dishonored his parents because he wanted a woman, because of the coveting of his heart. It can make us commit adultery. David committed adultery because he coveted someone else's wife, and he had so many of his own. That last commandment of coveting and longing for things, if broken, is an open door to a person eventually violating all of God's law. Selfishness begets war on the inside, and if unstopped, that selfishness breaks out into war on the outside. And that produces stress in our life, when we're always at war, when we don't think our job is good enough, and our place in life, and what we look like, and what we have, and what we get, and nothing is good, and we're full of strife inside, because pride will produce anxiety in my life. Look at verse 3, it goes on. It will also plunder our prayers. You ask and you don't receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures. Jonathan Edwards used to put it this way. He says, even in our thanksgiving, we are not honoring God, because we're thanking God for the things we like. And many of the things we should thank God for are the things we don't like, because God refines us through the nose, and through the pain, and through the suffering, and through the disappointments of life. Because there are no disappointments for Christians, only the appointments of God. And we should thank him for those. Pride will plunder our prayers. Look at verse 4. Pride also provokes God's enmity. Adulterers and adulteresses, he says, don't you know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever, therefore, wants to be the friend of the world makes himself the enemy of God. Or do you think the Scriptures say in vain? The spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously. God is jealous. God says, I have betrothed you to me as my bride. And I want you to not be anxiously polluting your life with pleasure. I want you to be presenting yourself to me pure and chaste and holy. Listen to what Paul said in 2 Corinthians 11. He says, Oh, that you would bear with me a little in my folly, for indeed you do bear with me, for I am jealous, Paul said, for you with a godly jealousy, for I have betrothed you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. One thing to think about, you know why Jesus never married here on earth? Not because marriage is awful and sinful and he couldn't be involved in all that physical stuff. I believe Jesus never married on earth because he was engaged to us and he's waiting to get married to us. and he wanted to show that he would endure loneliness and struggle and all the woes of this world without someone to share them with because he was going to wait for us. He said it. He said, you are my bride and I am going to prepare a place and I'm going to come back and get you and as your groom I'm going to take you home with me and we're going to be married. I don't know about you, but if you're engaged to someone You think about that person, you wait for that person. You don't want anybody to think that you have any interest in anyone else, because you want to be just for them, and you just want to wait for them. And the Lord says pride in our lives makes us seek after other suitors, even though we're engaged. And God says, that will provoke my enmity against you, and I will fight against you. Finally, in verse 6, God says pride won't just poison and pollute and produce anxiety and plunder your prayers. and provoke his enmity, but it will prevent our spiritual growth. It says he gives more grace, therefore he says, God resists the proud. And this word resists is the word, a military term, and it means to battle against. I mean, it's one of the strong, I mean, God arrays himself in battle against us when we're proud. And I'll tell you what, God doesn't lose. He always wins. He will chasten, he will smite us with his chastening rod, He will get our attention one way or another until we say yes to him and humble ourselves. What happens when we do that? Just let me trace through these because I believe they can really help us as we prepare for the Lord's Table. Humility will prompt God's grace. God gives grace to the humble. He says, humble yourselves under the hand of God. He'll lift you up. Humble, humble yourself. Humility is a choice. It's a choice we say in our heart. God, I will resist pride. The virus detector says that my irritability or my impatience or my whatever is going on in my life is at a root problem coming from my pride, and I will say no to that. And I want to clothe myself with the humility of Christ. Did you know it's a choice? And if it's not a spiritual gift, it's not automatic, then it's something we have to do all day long. It's something that we should do before we come to the Lord's house. It's something we should do at the start of every day. It's something we should do. That's why in the ancient world they didn't, like David and Daniel, they didn't just think they could have one little time with the Lord evening and morning and at noon and at night. He said, My whole day, I end the day with the Lord. I start my day with the Lord. I continue my day with the Lord. I end my day with the Lord. I start my day with the Lord. They just totally surrounded their life with the Lord. Why? Because they knew they needed Him. And we do too. Humility prompts His grace. Therefore, submit to God, resist the devil, and he will flee from you. This seventh verse starts a whole series of commands. There are ten heiress imperatives, which, if followed, will bring us humility and holiness in our lives. And what he's saying is there, humility will provide deliverance from God. He will deliver us from all of Satan's fiery darts he throws at us, from all the temptations, from all the landmines, he puts the personal landmines along the roads of our lives, he'll deliver us from those. If we'll say no to pride, if we'll resist it in our life, if we'll let the virus detector show it, and if we will, by choice, humble ourselves under God's hand, and if we will clothe ourselves with the humility of Christ, God's grace will be showered on us, his deliverance will be ours. It will also prosper intimacy with God. Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you. It's one of my favorite verses. I don't like to load you down with grammar and tenses and everything, but it says, Draw near to God is a continuous action. If you and I will be constantly drawing near to God, He will, once and for all, draw near to us. It's just such a beautiful, beautiful verse. If we will make it a choice in our lives that we're going to draw near to God, God is going to be as close to us as we can ever, ever imagine. He will get as close to us as possible. He will make it His desire to be intimate with us. If we would just take that move toward Him, if we would just say with my heart, I will say no to my pride and I will say yes to you, He will be just radiating His intimacy upon us. What a wonder it is how God wants to fill us with his intimacy and draw near to us. The second part of verse 8 says this, cleanse your hands, you sinners, purify your hearts, you double-minded. Formerly double-minded, we were proud, we were humble, we were humble, we were proud. We're double-minded, we don't know which we want. Humility will promote cleansing. Look at verse 9. This is very graphic. This word is a word for an army without food and shelter, exposed to the ravages of a storm. That's how it's used outside of the Bible. James uses this word lament or affliction as a call for our voluntary abstinence from anything in life that would cause us to not be humble. What he's saying is, make it a choice. Lament. Afflict yourself. It's like the concentration of study that makes a scholar, or the rigorous training that produces an athlete. It's a chosen way of life under the Holy Spirit's fruit of self-discipline that will produce the spiritual giants that are humble before God. You know what he says? Afflict yourself. Lament. Ask God to humble you, and in the process, agree with him. The word picture is beautiful. Be like an army that goes out without enough food and not enough shelter because they're in the army, and they go out there and they don't run home to mama. They endure the rainstorm and the hunger because they're in the army. That's self-imposed discipline. And you and I have to be afflicted. We have to do whatever it takes. One of my heroes, Hudson Taylor, when I was little I used to read all the missionary biographies I could about China, and I used to read about Hudson Taylor. And I remember when my mom caught me doing this, I got in trouble. I tried to not let her know, but Hudson Taylor used to always sleep in the winter with his windows open on the floor, so I thought, I'll do that. So I opened the windows in Michigan. He didn't live in Michigan. And I was laying on the floor. Oh, it was so cold, but if that's what it takes to get to China, I thought, I'm going to do it. And the cold air was coming out from under my door. It hit my mom when she was walking by, and she opened the door and said, What are you doing? Shut the window. Get in bed." And I thought, I was just trying to go to China as a missionary, Mom. She says, yeah, you'll go and be buried there. She says, now get in bed. But you know what? It's that affliction where we say no to, don't open your window in the cold and lay on the floor, but we say no to the things in life that promote pride, and we say yes to the things in life that promote humility. And mourn. I mean, this is just one word. Look at the next word. Be afflicted and mourn. This is so beautiful, and this word, when John Wesley was preaching on this in front of the Kingswood miners, the coal miners in the 18th century, he started telling them that they should mourn for their sins, and he took his Bible and he was just preaching about the holiness of God, and as he looked up at those miners who had come out from their shift working in the bowels of the earth, he said he could see on their black faces white streaks as the tears washed the coal dust. And then he stopped and he said, that's the mourning that God loves. When we see ourselves as God does and when our mourning prompts the grace of God that wipes away the blackness of our sin and the pure white shows through. Have you ever mourned for your sin? The Lord's Table is a good place to start. James says to his first century luxury loving unconcerned and unmoved churchgoers, let God rend your heart until you mourn over sin. And weep. These are tears of sympathy moving us to action. Let your laughter, it says in verse 9, be turned to mourning, your joy to gloom. What he's saying is, see how awful pride is. See it like God does. Humble yourself in his sight. Well, to conclude this, humility prepares us for success. How is that? Well, godly humility is such a promoter of God's blessing on our life. It says, and here's another verse, last one you should write down, this one's great, Isaiah 57, 15, let me read it to you, listen. For thus says the high and lofty one who inhabits eternity, whose name is holy, listen, I dwell in the high and holy place with those who have a contrite and humble spirit, and I will revive the spirit of the humble, and I will revive the heart of the contrite. God says, you want to come in to where I dwell, the high and holy one that inhabits eternity? He says, I let in the humble and contrite. Put yourself under my humbling hand and agree with it and I'll lift you up. What will that do? Well, immediately the first result in verses 11 and 12 is it will make us turn our criticism into healing. We will no longer slander We will no longer be involved, as it says here, speaking evil of one another. Pride speaks evil. Humility doesn't. We will not speak evil of a brother. We will not judge a brother. We will not speak evil of the law and judge the law. If we judge the law, verse 11 says, we're not a doer, but a judge. And there's only one lawgiver. He can save and destroy. Don't take his place. He says, don't criticize. Let our words return to healing. Well, what's the cure for the eye problem? A chosen personal humbling of ourselves, partaking of God's grace, as verse 6 says, God will give grace to us. There was a day in history when two kings confronted one another for the first time. One was a proud earthly king. He sat that day at the pinnacle of his power. His name was Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great. His father, Herod the Great, had slaughtered the babies of Bethlehem in his desire to exterminate Christ. And now Antipas was no better. He beheaded John the Baptist, and Jesus called him a fox in Luke 13. Antipas had everything he wanted. His income was in excess of six million dollars. All the pleasures of life were his, and if anyone stood in his way, their life meant no more than the babes of Bethlehem meant to his father. The motto of Herod Antipas' life was, What will it profit me? And just before Jesus was crucified, Pilate sent Jesus to face Herod Antipas. The other king that day was Jesus. He was the king of kings. He didn't look like a king. He stood in humble clothing, rejected. In an hour he would die a felon's death. Jesus, if he had wished, he could have called legions of angels. But he didn't want a throne until you and I could share it. And so to make that possible, he died. Herod said, What does a prophet mean? Jesus said, What can I do that will be of the greatest possible benefit to my brethren? Herod went on with his revelry from that day, but soon was banished to Lyon, France, where he died in misery. Jesus died, was resurrected, and today he lives, enabling us who believe on him to behave as he did. There is a choice before us this morning to go Herod's way what can profit me the most in life? Or to go Jesus' way, how can I profit God and his kingdom the most? The answer is, a choice we make to humble ourselves. And that humbling brings God's grace.