Good evening, it is good to be here with you once again. As we come to God's word, would you turn with me to James, the letter to James. The bulk of our message this evening is James chapter four, verses one through 10, but we will begin our reading at chapter three, verse 13. James chapter 3 at verse 13. Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet 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 wrongly. To spend it on your passions, you adulterous people. Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you suppose it is no purpose that the Scripture says he yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us, but he gives more grace? Therefore, it says God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Submit yourselves, therefore, to God. Resist the devil. and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you. Thus ends the reading of God's word. Would you pray with me again? Our gracious God in heaven, we pray that you would bless now not only the reading of your word, our God, but now it's preaching. That Lord, you would open our ears, that we would be those who are attuned to the work of your spirit in us. And our God, as we come to a difficult portion of your word, a portion that challenges us with harsh words, that our God you would be gentle and kind and draw us close to yourself. We ask in Christ's name. Amen. Now before we make our way into the text specifically of chapter four this evening, I want to set the stage for you. This is a book that we've been going through in Westminster for some time now, and it's just been a few weeks ago that I brought a message to that congregation, the congregation I serve, here from James chapter 4. And so I want to give you a little context to get you up to speed to where we are in James. I'm sure you're familiar with it, of course. But what we have here before us is really a dramatic part of James' letter. And so I want to set us up for James' dramatic and really his spirit-empowered plea to the 12 tribes of the dispersion. That's what James calls the churches to whom he writes. His plea here, I would argue, is repent. His plea is repent. Verse 10, humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you. And as a response to the untamed tongue, the forked tongue of chapter 3, the first part of chapter 3, James calls for wisdom from above to be evident in his hearers. That's what we find at the end of chapter 3. He calls for a wisdom that is not earthly, unspiritual, or demonic in its nature. That is a wisdom of this world, a wisdom of the kingdom of Satan, we might say. For the only thing this wisdom produces, in James' estimation, is jealousy and selfish ambition, disorder, and all sorts of evil within this community of believers that James names here as his brethren, over and over again throughout this letter. Brothers. Brothers and sisters, really. In opposition to this evil kind of wisdom, James urges the church to have a wisdom that is spiritual. To have a wisdom that is from above. which is in accord with the position that the church has been given. As you as believers should have wisdom that speaks the work of Christ in your lives. By being pure, peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere, that is without hypocrisy. James is saying these people ought to be a people without hypocrisy. Wisdom that is earthly, unspiritual, and demonic leads to instability, double-mindedness, doubting, and the inability to endure trials, which James tells us right at the very outset of this letter, we ought to consider all joy. The Church of Jesus Christ, who longs for her Savior, must maintain her walk without hypocrisy so that you will remain pure in heart, single-mindedly devoted to our glorious Lord Jesus Christ and good fruits as evidence of your genuine faith. James places demands on you to have wisdom and a walk unto the profession or the confession that you have declared, whether before this congregation or another, but especially before the church triumphant before God himself. His direction, his exhortation, is pastoral that we might persevere, that we would endure. Now, as we consider chapter four, some consider the exhortation here in this chapter to be the very purpose for James' letter. And you read these words and you see how emphatic James is about his concerns for the church. In it, you see he changes his tone, and I think you can hear it. Even if you haven't read through the letter of James recently, you can hear a tonal change. As you read these words, you see how emphatic James is about his concerns for this church. He addresses the church in ways that he has not done thus far. In fact, James addresses them with a sense of righteous indignation. He is disturbed by the way in which this church is conducting herself. It almost seems as though he has been building up to this point in his exhortation to these churches in the dispersion, and he sort of lets loose, warning them with brief remarks throughout, yes, but now about how they should live as Christians in a foreign land. Yet at the same time, recognizing the church's failure to follow the commands of Jesus throughout this letter. And as a result, now in chapter four, James makes this dramatic plea for the church to repent and humble herself before God. Note verses eight and nine, especially he writes, cleanse your hands, you sinners and purify your hearts. You double-minded be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. These are words we should consider well. You may know from your own exposure to the book of James back in chapter 3 verses 12 through 18. You can look there quickly and James describes how disorder and chaos and every evil thing arise from jealousy and selfish ambitions and the result of earthly wisdom at work. Now at this point in chapter 4, James takes it one step further in his exhortation, we might say, to show what that disorder and what that chaos of chapter 3 actually consists of, what it looks like in the church, of how it works out in the real world of the church, and it's really not very pretty at all. He writes in verse 1, what causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this that your passions are at war within you, that is in your members? First, he states the question, then he gives an answer. Essentially, he says, is not the source of your wars and fightings, the hedonistic pleasures and desires that wage war in your members? At the close of chapter 3, James suggests a connection between jealousy, selfish ambition, and disorder. Now he specifies more clearly what he means by that disorder and portrays the way it is produced by jealousy and other desires here. In the place of disorder, we now read words of war and battles that are going on in the church. That's what quarrels and fights are there. Wars and battles. The situation looks grim according to James' description of things. Those who have taken to themselves the name of Jesus are at war with one another. Either physically or verbally, these brethren are not acting like brothers and sisters. And although James sees these dear people who are dispersed abroad as his brothers and sisters in Christ, their actions to him are speaking other things. They are saying otherwise and so He is urging them in the most earnest of ways. As the coming of Christ is near, for James it is always near. The last day is always before the people of God for James. As the coming of Christ is near, they are now to turn from this course of action unto God and true repentance and true faith, true righteousness, that there would be peace sown in their midst. The situation is even more perilous though. Consider James language, consider the word there for pleasure in verse one. It's, it's the same word that has come to us in the English is hedonism. which always has a negative connotation in the New Testament as sinful, a self-indulgent pleasure. Imagine the situation now then. A war is taking place within the souls of these people causing terrible strife in the community of the believers for when James says that it is your pleasures that wage war within you. What he has in view is similar to the way in which Peter describes the battle against fleshly lusts in chapter 2 verse 11 of his first letter. Peter writes, Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and as exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh which wage war against your soul. And so the point that I think James is making here to this congregation is that the sinful pleasures that you are indulging in as an individual member of the body is causing a war among your brethren as well. The internal war is causing an external war in the church corporately because you are satisfying your fleshly pleasures and desires. And that's what James sees happening in this congregation in the dispersion to whom he writes. This internal war within the soul of the person is similar to what is meant by the double-minded person he writes about in verse 8. This is seen in their lust and covetousness of the brethren. They go so far as to commit murder because of their lust, James tells us. This is the church of Jesus Christ. Because of their evil desires, they become angry and quarrelsome and kill. They lust and envy one another and thus they are at war and fight with one another. As long as they want and do not have, there will be no peace sewn within this household of faith. Their motivation is evil and they're asking for such things in prayer and with wrong motives is like not asking at all. And according to James at verse three, you see, they ask only for the satisfaction of their pleasures. They ask with self-centeredness, self-exalted, and self-pleasing pleasures and desires in mind. This language and context is a direct expansion of what James wrote earlier in this letter in chapter 1, verses 7 and 8. That's what James does. He sort of sets some things out, minuscule little bits and pieces in the beginning, then he opens them up throughout the rest of the letter. Back in chapter 1, verses 7 and 8, James calls those who ask wrongly, that is, ask without faith, he calls them double-minded, he calls them unstable, which is why they lack wisdom and therefore have no peace, but are at war with each other, because the flesh and the spirit within them are waging war. Now, dear saints, these things we would expect from the world, but in the Church, in the Church. The Church of Jesus Christ cannot be a place of warring against one another. You see what James is getting at? You cannot fight among yourselves. Whether theologically sophisticated or simple in the faith, we cannot war with each other. It ought not to be so. Because of the situation in this church, James makes this dramatic plea to his brethren, to his brothers and sisters. That's how he's written to them so far, brothers and sisters. He's called them throughout, but no longer. Not here, not in verses one through 10. Now he addresses them in the way in which he sees them acting. He addresses them in accord with their behavior. He addresses them according to the way in which he sees them living. You adulteresses, he says. You adulterous people. Adulterers and adulteresses. Adulterers, those are four different ways in which the English has been translated, or the Greek has been translated. And doing so, deliberately. He harkens us back to the days of the adultery of the former Twelve Tribes Israel, the wife of God. James, in Old Testament prophetic fashion, characterizes the Church and the dispersion, the Twelve Tribes and the dispersion, that's how he addresses the Church, as the unfaithful people of God. In the same way we've seen Jeremiah characterize Israel, The prophet wrote, surely as a treacherous wife leaves her husband, so you have been treacherous with me, O house of Israel. Jesus uses the same language, this Old Testament imagery of Israel as the wife of God when he calls those who rejected him an evil and adulterous generation. Now most likely this adultery was not an overactive idolatry and running after some other god. It was not likely an outright rejection of God and some self-conscious decision to follow the world instead of following the Lord. But what James is saying is that their selfish ambition Their jealousy and unrestrained passions exhibited earthly, unspiritual, and demonic attitudes amounting to unfaithfulness to her husband, the church's unfaithfulness to Christ, her bridegroom. And this unfaithfulness is similar to apostasy in James' thinking. Look at the two diametrically opposed estates of existence that James speaks of. You are either a friend of the world or excuse me, a friend of God or a friend of the world. Listen to how one author describes this. Even the attempt, whether conscious or not, to cultivate the world is disastrous. For that inner disposition constitutes one not just as a compromiser or a poor Christian, but as an enemy of God. In hearing this, don't think James is unique in what he is saying here. You might remember the words of John. He wrote in his first epistle, do not love the world nor the things of the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the father is not in him for all that is in the world. The last of the flash and the last of the eyes and the boastful pride of life is not from the father, but is from the world or in accordance with Jesus own words. No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will hold to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and mammon. Because the church may not always be self-aware enough, spiritually sensitive enough to realize that her behavior is actually unfaithfulness, this adulteress may very well be compared to the adulteress woman of Proverbs 30, verse 20. There the scripture says, this is the way of an adulteress. She eats and wipes her mouth and says, I have done no wrong. Another author explains the point for James is not just the idea of infidelity, unfaithfulness, but also the manner of the sinner. The adulterous woman, the church James is addressing, commits her deed and feels no remorse. She is detached from any consequence of her evil way. She has lost or is suppressing the spiritual sensitivity that should characterize the friend of God. And by drawing out the ultimate consequences of this worldly behavior in this way, James, what he is doing here, you get it, right? He is seeking to prick the consciousness of the consciences of the church. He wants them to know what they are doing. He wants to stimulate them to understand that they are guilty and that they need to repent. And so in accordance with the Scriptures, James wants you to hear that God is jealous to have His bride back at His side. For He has made His Spirit to dwell within us. Verse 5, turning us from darkness of bondage and sin. James addresses the church in this way, to prick their consciences, to turn them back. He has created the church anew, implanting his word in us, and he gives us a greater grace to persevere, a grace that is stronger than any evil desire or temptation. He beckons us to repent of these wicked ways. He calls us, the church, to submit to him. You see, God is jealous that his church be his, that we be his. Not just in mere words that don't add up, but in concrete actions. We must humble ourselves, as Proverbs 3.34 says, and Psalm 138.6 saying, the Septuagint for God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble. That's what James is quoting from there. This is the point that James has been building up to in this letter. To bring these people that he writes to, to their knees. Verses 7-10 there, look at how they flow out of James quotation of Proverbs 3 and Psalm 138. God is opposed to the proud but gives grace to the humble. In verses 7-10 we have in essence, in my understanding of James here, his teaching on repentance. James comes to the point of turning this church of sayers, those who say they have faith, but their actions and their life call such confessions of genuine faith into question for James. They seem to have no harvest of righteousness in their lives, so he has come to the point of calling them to account for their sins. He is saying, you must heed my words. But James doesn't just say it to them, he says it to all of us. You must heed my words. In James' mind, repentance begins with humility, which is what he writes about there in verses seven through 10. Look at those verses with me there. Verses 7a through 10 are basic commands. I want to look at these few verses just specifically for a moment. And so if you have your Bibles, do open them up so you can see those before you. Notice how the beginning of verse 7 and verse 10 are two basic commands there. And those commands surround verses the second half of 7 through 9. And those internal verses are three short couplets. So you have in verse 7a, submit yourselves therefore to God, and then these three short couplets again, resist the devil, draw near to God, cleanse your hands, purify your hearts, be wretched, let your laughter be turned to mourning, followed by again, humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you. Submit yourselves therefore to God, humble yourselves before the Lord. How do you do that? Resist the devil, draw near to God, cleanse your hands, purify your hearts, be wretched, let your laughter be turned to mourning. This is repentance for James. And he urges the necessity of it to the proud twelve tribes of the dispersion. And as such, it is necessary for Christians to resist the devil. The devil's primary purpose is to separate God from man. He continually endeavors after driving a wedge between God's people and himself. And so James writes that we must resist the devil. We must. Whatever power Satan might have, you can be absolutely certain that you have been given the ability and the spirit of Christ to overcome that power. Because of the greater grace given to sustain you in your walk here in this foreign land. But with James' structure in mind of these verses, we don't just simply resist the devil and simply go on our merry way. We must draw near to God. We must draw near to God. This little couplet explains that brief definition of repentance that we may have all learned. I learned it when I was first coming into the Reformed Church. Repentance is a turning from sin or the devil. and turning 180 degrees in the opposite direction. Very simple. And that 180 degrees in the opposite direction, where is that? That's to God. Resist the devil, draw near to God. Instead of succumbing to Satan's desire to separate us from God, we should draw near to him. How do we do that? In worship. and word and prayer and fellowship. James promises that God will draw near to us. That's his promise. When you sincerely repent and return to God, you'll find him. You'll find him like the father of the prodigal son, eager to receive you back into his household. He's not going to stand there at the door making you knock. He's going to rush out and hold his arms out for you and embrace you in love. But James continues ever the more serious, ever the more serious as he addresses this church once again in these two new ways, making sure that the people to whom he writes knows the seriousness of the matter. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded." Calling this church adulteresses and now sinners and double-minded, James is speaking to them in this way because they are so very close to apostasy. James does not call the church to pick themselves up by their own bootstraps or anything of that sort and to get on being holy. That's not what he's saying at all. Rather, he appeals to them to humility. Don't exalt yourselves thinking you, you are okay. And the Lord, when you have so grievously turned from him is James meaning here. Purify your hearts. You double-minded. shows James' desire to call you into the consecration of life to God for His ends alone, not the world's. And this throws light upon the meaning of double-minded here. James entreats you to purify your hearts from a false compromise, from having two things, God and mammon. The world and God, thinking you can have the best of both. When Jesus said, blessed are the pure in heart, he meant the single-minded, the wholehearted whose devotion was free from any worldly motive or self-interest. The double-minded are sinners though they may not think themselves to be. And this is why James speaks so harshly, because in their sin they divide themselves among the world and religious things. They divide their interests between God and the world. And James pleads with this church now, as another writer put it, instead of being contented and cheerful in your worldly self-satisfaction, instead of your gaiety and laughter, mourn. Mourn sadly over your sins. James speaks like a prophet of old, be miserable, lament and wail over your sins, turn your scornful laughter into mourning. Humble yourselves, James says, submit yourselves to God and he will exalt you. By the Lord's wonderful grace spoken of by James only in one verse of this letter, grace once in verse six. By this grace, he will exalt you. Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you. Here James continues to prove himself to be a student of his brother Jesus, as well as to the Old Testament literature he is so well known for. Once again, in this letter, he alludes to Jesus teaching here. For example, we might think of the Pharisee and the tax gatherer. The tax gatherer was standing, you remember, some distance away and from the pride of the Pharisee. and not even able to lift his eyes up toward heaven, right? Do you remember this scene? And beating his breast, he says, God, be merciful to me, the sinner. And Jesus said that that man went home justified because everyone who exalts himself shall be humbled. But he who humbles himself shall be exalted. God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Jesus, wisdom incarnate, says these same things elsewhere in similar language like, the last shall be first and the first last. James does not merely teach the things Jesus taught. Now, James is actually expositing, I think, Jesus himself. I think he has the work of Jesus in view. You know the familiar words of Paul from Philippians 2 where he says that Jesus humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross, and therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name. It is this work and teaching of Christ that James is setting before the church in the dispersion. that seems to have almost apostatized by the way in which James speaks to her. In their pride and arrogance they have become worldly and enemy of God even, fighting and warring against one another, desiring all sorts of possessions and not having the spiritual know-how, not having the spiritual know-how to turn from these evil and perverse activities. James exhorts them to resist the devil's temptations to worldliness, to easy living. And do you understand this? That the devil does not want you to humble yourself. The devil does not want you to humble yourself. It's too hard of a lifestyle. Repenting day in and day out. Who needs that? A continued life of trials that I'm supposed to count all as joy? The devil does not want you to humble yourself. But humility, according to James, must be in you. Humility must be seen in Christ. Humility is the natural mark of a Christian and Christian fellowship, serving God and serving one another, because you are born of Christ with wisdom from above. That's what James tells us. You're not to war and fight in jealousy and selfish ambition, but being gentle and full of mercy and good fruits. Unwavering, without hypocrisy or double-mindedness, you are to be like your Savior, whose opposition to pride and submission to humility not only meant His exaltation, but yours as well. His humility means your exaltation. You get that, right? He humbled Himself so that He can be exalted, yes? but that so you could as well." The evil things that James writes about should not be in this church. They're not in keeping with the heavenly dwelling place in which you have been raised to, nor are they in keeping with our Savior's life of humility unto death. And though he had no need of repentance, Christ humbled himself as though in a repentant posture for you. And this he did so that you would be exalted. And so may this church, you dear saints, never look more like the world and its wars and battles, never. But rather, may you be those who show your love for one another that peace has been sown in you and sown among you by the peacemaker himself in reconciling you to God and you to one another. Let's pray. Our gracious God in heaven, Lord, do be merciful to us as we pray that we might be those who are humble before you. We admit, O Lord, we oftentimes exalt ourselves in ways we ought not. Forgive us of our sins. Grant to us that peace, that peace that you have given to your people. Grant it to us in great measure. Fill us with Your Holy Spirit, our God. Bless this body, a body that shines the light of Jesus Christ in their love for You, O Lord, and in their love for one another, and their love for their neighbor, and even their enemies. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. Would you turn with me to our closing hymn in the Psalter hymnal, hymn number 443, Come Unto Me, Ye Weary. Hymn 443. We'll stand as we sing. Come unto me weary and I will give you rest. The blessed voice of Jesus which comes to hearts of men.