Speaker 1: James is saying to these believers, you are cheating on God with your desires. You are in covenant with God through his son, Jesus Christ, the new and beautiful covenant, and you are cheating on him. You're trying to be in the world and friends with the world and do the things of the world and express your passions and your pleasures of the world while also trying to balance this relationship. And here's the thing. He is a what?
A jealous God. That
Speaker 2: Hello, friends. Welcome to the Life Tabernacle Church podcast. It's an honor to be with you today. This podcast serves as our church's weekly sermon archive. Tune in each week to hear what God is speaking in our community.
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Speaker 3: Good morning, everybody. Praise the Lord. How many's looking forward to that day? Amen? Amen.
The apostle Paul said that he said I have fought a good fight, kept the faith, finished my course. Henceforth, there's laid up for me a crown of righteousness against that day. Amen. And not just to me, but to all those who love his appearing. How many is looking forward to the appearing of Jesus Christ?
Amen? Amen. It's good to be here in Virginia today, and, good to be able to worship the Lord with all of you and to see you again. I'm gonna read the text for today's message, which is found in the book of James chapter number four verses one through 10. James chapter four verses one through 10 says, what causes fights and quarrels among you?
Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? Your desire, but do you not have, so you kill. You covet, but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive because you ask with wrong motives that you may spend what you get on your pleasures?
You adulterous people, you don't know that friendship with the world means enmity against God. Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Or do you think scripture says without reason that he that he jealously longs for the jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us? But he gives us more grace. That is why the scripture said, God opposes the proud, but he shows favor to the humble.
Submit yourselves then to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God, and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double minded. Grieve, mourn, and wail.
Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourself before the Lord, and he will lift you up.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Bishop Coleman, would you give it up for my father-in-law? Good to see you. Picked him up from the airport last night. We can thank God.
The storms last night were wild. Right? There's a there's a strike of thunder, and I think I left my skin in my house. I had literally came out. I had one of the kids with me, and I thought I dropped them.
It was it really got me there for a minute. So pleasure to have my in laws with me today. Still praying for them with the loss of Lori's mother. So thank you so much for being here, thank you for reading our text this morning. Speaking of my father-in-law, let me tell you a story about my father-in-law.
Alright? You ready for this, Dan? Alright. I remember about eight years ago now, I had this feeling in my heart that God told me that Emily Elizabeth Coleman at the time was my wife. Okay?
And when you begin to say stuff like that, you gotta be real sure that is God. Am I right? I had a feeling though that God said this to my heart, and God had said the same thing to her and Emily and I's first date. Okay? At the end of the first date, we've been drinking coffee for three hours.
I finally just said, I'm gonna find out if this is God. I said, Emily, I don't need to tell you what God told me last week. You are my wife. And she said, well, God told me too. I said, oh, wow.
I said, I feel like we're supposed to get married soon. And she said, well, me too. I says, July 26 sound good next year? She said, sounds good. And then we hugged each other, and it was like, wow.
But then two weeks later, I had to go before this man. This man of God who's been in ministry for longer than I've been in life, and I had to tell him to his face. Hey, Bishop Coleman. God told me, you know, your sweet daughter, who is in her freshman year of college, who just moved to Texas, is my future wife, and we're going to get married very, very soon. Right?
How do you think I felt? Because he had taken me to a steak dinner. We went to Saltgrass. Have ever been to Saltgrass? It's a delicious steak house.
We ate steak. We had a great time. Went back to the house. We're eating ice cream cake, celebrating Emily's birthday. And after a couple hours, Dan finally looked at me and said, you're here to talk to me about something, aren't you?
I said, whoo. And, thankfully, that conversation went well. And nine months later, Emily and I got married. So thank you so much. Right?
But I will say this, brother Coleman, dad, whatever I can call you today, and Laurie, when I first married your sweet daughter, I never thought and, like, when we were engaged in dating, I really never thought her and I would ever ever get in an argument. Ever. You know, she was just so sweet. I'm like, there's just no way that we're gonna argue. Right?
And I remember, I remember it. Married couples in the room. Do you remember that first big fight you had? Think back to it. Okay.
Here we go. I remember, I think it was around March or April 2020 COVID just happened. And Emily and I were trying to figure out how to work a budget. And we know that finances is a touchy subject within a marriage. Right?
It can cause a little tension, whatnot. And I remember we're sitting down doing our first budget together, and I began to get really frustrated. Because I was trying to explain to Emily what I wanted to do with the money. I'm like, I wanna put the money here, and if we do that, that's gonna free us up to have some money there. And she's like, no.
No. No. That doesn't make any sense. Can you explain it to me again? By the end of the conversation, I jumped up out of the couch.
I got so upset. I walked out our apartment door. I slammed the door, and I walked out of the apartment complex. Alright? Revealing my scars to you today.
Alright? And I walked back in, and I'm like, I'm so sorry. Can you forgive me? You know? And and she's like, yes.
I can. I love you so much. Right? And I like to say that was the last time we've bickered about money, but it's not. Alright?
Because Emily's a saver. Raise your hands if you're a saver in the room. Alright? I'm not. Okay.
Raise your hands if you're a spender. I like doing a little bit of both. I see you, pastor Tino. God bless you, brother. I like we gotta do both.
But Emily likes to save, and and I like to pay stuff off. I'm like, we got this thing, we gotta pay it off. Well, if we pay it off, then we can have money. And she's like, no. No.
No. If we save money, then we can pay it off later. I'm like, no. No. No.
No. And we've just disagreed sometimes about it. And and to be honest with you, the reason why we've disagreed is not because of her. Because she's pretty much perfect. Right?
That's what the husbands probably should say to their wives. Almost perfect. Right? You're welcome. But the real there you go.
But the real issue is this. The real issue that we fought over the years and will fight is because of my pride. Because I want Emily to see it my way. Because I think my way is better. Right?
I have pride within me, and I think it's better, and I think it should be this way or no other way. She's gonna teach you different. Yes. She's gonna teach me different. You are right.
That's right. I mean, I was like, years down. Hey. We'll pray for you right here afterwards. Okay?
But isn't this the reason why any of us have fights, whether it's in our marriages, our friendships, with our leaders, bosses at work, family members. Because we all have family members, right, who do stuff that we disagree with, and we would do it differently. And we kinda wanna let them know about it. And sometimes it can cause issues, disagreements, fights, and even quarrels. This is why our politicians in Washington, God bless them, are unable to make decisions that would actually benefit everybody.
Because you got one group of people who say, oh, we should do this with the money. We should do this, that, and the other. And the other groups, I know that's a that's a dumb idea. We should do this, that, and the other. Nothing really feels like gets accomplished.
Right? Because there's this pride on both sides, and they begin to quarrel and continue to do so more so and over and over. And even worse, sometimes these fights actually happen within churches. Right? One group of church members thinks we should do this about this.
Board members bickering about how money should be spent or what direction the church should go in, brother Coleman. Dad, can you attest you've seen some quarrels in your time as a leader? Okay. Thank you so much. That was such a dry response.
God bless you. Yes. He's seen plenty of fights. He's told me plenty of stories. Right?
Even church organizations sometimes tear in two because the two sides are unrelenting to let go of their pride. And we get my mom's always asked me, why do we have all these denominations? And denominations aren't necessarily a bad thing, but some of them have really been derived from people's pride. Well, I think it's tongues and only tongues, but I don't you know, this side doesn't think so. And so we split and we divide over and over and over.
But this isn't just a modern problem. This is an ancient problem problem, brother Lewis. Even from the beginning. Everybody say the devil. Whatever you call him, the devil.
I mean, the devil started out as a beautiful thing that God created. Yet pride was found within him according to the Old Testament passages in Isaiah and Ezekiel. And he sought to himself. He thought to himself, I'm going to exalt myself above God. I'm gonna do it my way, and I'm gonna fight.
And we know how that turned out. God cast him and a third of the angels down to the earth. Then we see this figure, the devil, what my daughter calls the sneaky snake. Okay? We see the sneaky snake reappear in Genesis chapter three.
And unfortunately, we know how the story goes. God creates this big, beautiful world, places humanity, Adam, Eve, in it to tend to the garden. And then here comes this slithering little snake that begins whispering half truths. Begins whispering lies. And really, he's just trying to convince Adam and Eve, you should listen to your desire.
What's in you and not God. Just do what feels right inside you, and everything's gonna be okay. And as a result, our world is in the condition that it is. Everywhere you look, there's chaos, there's brokenness, there's death, there's destruction of all types. And it ultimately stems from the issue of pride.
Look at your neighbor and say pride. Pride. We also know the opposite of pride is what we need and what the world needs, which is humility. Now look at your neighbor and say, humility. Humility.
Jesus himself, our precious lamb of God. Jesus has always been God. John one says, in the beginning was the word. Jesus has always existed. He is God himself.
But in God's divine plan, in the father's divine plan to save broken humanity, he sent his one and only son, Jesus Christ. And this is what it says of Jesus. Remember, Jesus is God. Fully God, fully man, yet the scripture says this in Philippians two verses six through seven, one of my favorite passages of scripture. It says, who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage.
Rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant being made in human likeness. That phrase, rather, he made himself nothing. Another translation puts it as he humbled himself. Why did God need to humble himself? He's God.
There's no pride in him. There's no sin in him. There's no darkness in him. Yet our precious and beloved messiah humbled himself, came out of his heavenly clothes, if you will, and put on these earthly clothes. He dwelt among us.
He went around preaching the good news of the kingdom. He was eventually killed. But three days later, by God, he was raised from the dead. Our Lord and savior Jesus Christ humbled himself. Lewis and I were talking this week, and and I and I I'm a proponent to believe this, that humility is really the cornerstone of all Christian character.
We all know the scripture says that love is like the most important thing. Yes. But if we don't have humility as the base and humility coupled with love, it's not gonna be built right. Because even before we grow into persons of love, we must find ourselves humbly before the Lord. And that's what repentance is.
You remember when you came to salvation in Jesus. Right? What is it? It is a humbling of yourself before a holy God, recognizing I am a sinner. I live in darkness.
I am on the path of destruction. In Jesus, I am in need of saving. My friends, that is what humbling yourself really looks like. We all start our Christian lives in that position, in a position of surrender, of submission, of humility before the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's what James in this passion passage that Bishop Coleman just read for us, wants us to get after.
He wants us to grow into and imitate humility. Look at your neighbor one more time and say humility. Humility. We know that he is clearly telling us this, that he's talking about this humbling of ourselves and humility of what he says in verse six. So look back at James four six with me.
He actually quotes from a Old Testament passage. He quotes from Proverbs three thirty four. And he says this, God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble. Proverbs thirty three thirty four says, he mocks proud mockers but shows favor to the humble and oppressed. And as I told you at the beginning of this thing, James derives a lot of his inspiration for his writing from the teachings of Jesus and from the wisdom books.
And Proverbs is one of those. So it's no surprise that we find him quoting an Old Testament passage and presenting it as something important for us New Testament believers who are living in God's newfound kingdom. This is something we ought to pay attention to. And remember, James is writing this to who? Christians.
Brothers and sisters in Christ. And what he gets ready to say starting in verse one should alarm us because he's not writing this to the world. He's writing this to Christians. Let's look back at verse one together. James four one says this.
What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? Let's pause there. Now spouses, listen up. Spouses, friends, whoever it is.
This is applicable to everybody. Alright? In James in verse seven, he's gonna talk about the devil. And he we we can blame the devil for some of the fights in our lives. Right?
The devil likes to cause havoc. He's like a lion seeking to devour any of those he can. Okay? We'll talk about the devil in a minute. But what James just said should bring us great attention because he said what causes fights and corals among you?
Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? My friends, it's not just the devil that's causing the issues in your life. It's you. It's you. You got desires within you that are not compatible with God's kingdom, that are more compatible with the kingdom of the world.
And that's what's causing all your fights and bickering and issues. He says it's you and your desires. Say desires real quick. Good. He says desires.
This word, I'll butcher the pronouncement. It's hidone, which is the word we get hedonism from. It's this simple idea. He's saying that your desires or your pleasures. Okay?
Let's talk about pleasures for a minute. Lord knows, and everybody in this church knows, and everybody in the world knows, I love what? Ice cream. I love ice cream. And I love coffee.
And I love ice cream. Okay? That's one of my pleasures. It's a guilty pleasure. And and and I'd like to eat it almost every night.
Okay? When I was in Michigan, I missed a few nights and I didn't feel the same. Okay? But I have a pleasure within myself, and I love to eat ice cream. But all of us have different pleasures.
No. So it can be something as funny as sweet or savory or something spicy or sweet, all those things. But we have different pleasures within us. Different things that we unfortunately have a proclivity to be bent towards. Right?
Some of us maybe have more of a proclivity to be bent towards using our mouths to slander or mock others. There's a desire in us that's not good, that when we talk bad about others, it makes us feel better about ourselves. Or some of us have a desire that in us that is that takes our sexuality and distorts it. That is not in God's design, whether it's a heterosexual sin or a homosexual sin. Right?
We have these desires and pleasures that that really just rage war within us. And because of these things because of these things within us, when they're left unchecked, when they begin coming out towards others, it causes fights and quarrels. Like I told you when I began just telling that story with Emily and I's fight, we have different desires. Had a desire to spend money. She had a desire to save.
And that's what's causing these quarrels within us. And here's what happens if these desires, these pleasures within us are left unchecked. Look at verse two with me. James four two says this. You desire, but you do not have, so you kill.
You covet, but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. Here's the scary part about this verse. There is a split decision among biblical scholars whether James is literally meaning that these Christian brothers and sisters are literally killing each other. There's a group of believers, and there's a there's there seems to be reasonable evidence to believe that he's talking with exaggeration.
Hyperbole. That because you got all these desires in you, and they're competing with one another, you're literally killing one another. That's more like a metaphorical thing. You're killing the relationship. You're killing your reputation with your outer community.
And they're looking at the Christian community, you're like, wow. That looks like the world. And you're murdering that type of thing. But there's also a group of scholars who are convinced based on the the language of what he's using, very strong language, that there's literally some fights that came up within this early church, and they have literally killed each other over them. Either way, I think we get the point of what James is saying.
When these desires within us are left unchecked, when we have this pride within us that we're unrelenting to let go, and we're not willing to humble ourselves, it clearly begins to do what? Hurt others. Right? It hurts our brothers and sisters in Christ. We fight.
We quarrel. We call each other's names. We hurt each other's feelings, and the list goes on and on and on. These brothers and sisters are violating one of the main commandments that they should have known. They did know by heart that's written in the 10 commandments.
I love what it said. It said that you covet, but cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. Exodus twenty seventeen says this. It says, you shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not cover your neighbor's wife or his male and female slave or his ox or his donkey or anything belongs to your neighbor.
The word covet here means to be jealous for. A word that is related to this is to lust after. And this desire within us, all these different desires and opinions and pleasures that we have that we want to see come to fruition because they're within us. The problem is when our desire goes unchecked, it it begins to turn good things into objects of worship. That's why he begins to say something like this.
Look back at verse two, and then we're gonna go to verse three. He says, you do not have because you do not ask God. Right? Interesting verse. Then he goes to verse three and says this.
When you ask, you do not receive because you ask with wrong motives that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. Ah. A reason why you don't get what you pray for is because you're not asking with the right motives. You're asking with a self serving, sinful desire that seeks to worship the gifts of God and not the gift giver. That's why I loved how we lingered in worship this morning.
What were we we were singing, Jesus, we want nothing else but you. Yet so many of us trade Jesus for the things Jesus can give to us. Jesus, just give me good health. Jesus, give me a good job. Jesus, give me a raise.
Lord, Jesus, give me this, that, or the other. And now you sound like my daughter's asking for a popsicle at 8AM this morning. Right? We just ask God for all these things. And and some of them are decent things.
Right? Because sometimes we're asked, hey, God, bring healing to my friend of mine. Or God, would you do this? And some of them are actually, good things. But the problem is, why are we praying them in the first place?
What is the motive? And many a times, just pray with selfish motives that are self seeking. He's saying, you don't get what you ask for because you ask with wrong motives. And I thank God. I can say this now.
I can thank God he hasn't given me everything I've asked for. Right? Because if he had given us everything we prayed for in our lives, none of us would probably be in this room together. None of us would be on the path of the straight and narrow. There's no telling where we we where we would be.
Asking with the right motives. James is concerned that we are trading the gift giver just for the gifts. And my friends, it's not supposed to be this way. Because he's already given us a relationship with his son and has filled us with his spirit. Is that not enough for us?
Like, if God didn't do anything for else for us in our life, he didn't answer any of the prayer requests that are in this moment, if he didn't do anything else for us, he's done plenty for us. He saved us from our sins even if our lives were complete hell. That would be okay because he is our reward. Because on that glorious day when we get to see him, we get him. He is the reward of the Christian life.
We look back about a month or so. We talked about the crown of life. What is the crown of life? It's everlasting life with Jesus. He is the goal.
The question, though, is isn't that enough for us? And apparently not. Apparently, not that's not enough because of what he says in verse four. So just relax a minute. This is some really tough language for us to listen to.
He says, James four four, you adulterous people. James is writing to brothers and sisters in Christ. You adulterous people. Don't you know that friendship with the world means enmity with God? Therefore, whoever chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.
You adulterous people. What a harsh condemnation. He's saying, look. James is saying to these believers, you are cheating on God with your desires. You are in covenant with God through his son, Jesus Christ, the new and beautiful covenant, and you are cheating on him.
You're trying to be in the world and friends with the world and do the things of the world and express your passions and your pleasures of the world while also trying to balance this relationship. And here's the thing. He is a what? A jealous God. That's why he says right here in verse four, five.
Or do you think that the scripture without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit that he's caused to dwell in us? Look at me, my friends. God loves you more than you will ever love him. God desires to spend time with you more than you desire to spend time with him. The very spirit he gave you in your body when you were saved and filled with the Holy Ghost, he wants that back just because he loves you.
He jealously longs for you. I love how another translation put it, that the spirit he caused to dwell in us envies intensely. My friend, God wants all of you. He wants all of your attention. I know I've upset my wife when we're having a conversation and I'm not paying attention.
And I have a reason to. I got four kids, you know, crawling around doing their thing. Right? But when I'm not giving her full attention, she knows. She knows I'm not getting my husband's full attention right now.
I'm not feeling loved the way I need to. And I have to remind myself, even in the chaos of our home with having kids and everything in life, I need to remind myself, I need to give my full attention to her. I need to listen well. I need to actually hear what she's saying. I need to listen to what she's saying instead of developing a response to fire back to what she's saying.
And that's the same thing God wants, but even more. My friends, he wants all of you. He wants all of your heart. He wants all of your devotion. He wants everything.
He jealously longs for you. Let me put this note here. He says, he says, don't you think the scripture says that the spirit can you say spirit? Spirit. Now, in English, this gets confusing.
But in the original languages of this beautiful book, Hebrew and Greek, they had a better word for spirit. In the Old Testament is the word Ruach. And in the New Testament is the word, or, however it's pronounced. And the word means spirit, wind, and breath. Right?
So it can mean wind, like the literal wind blowing through the trees. Right? Right? It can literally mean spirit, wind, breath. It can literally mean the breath.
K? Or the spirit, that's inside you. But here's the point of why I say that. When you hear you see the word spirit in the Old Testament, it's not just talking about the wind or talking about the holy spirit. It's talking about all of it.
And when you get that idea that everybody take a let's do a exercise so you understand. Everybody take relax real quick. Everybody breathe in. Breathe out. You just breathe in the Ruach of God, and you just breathe out the Ruach of God.
And he says, I want every single one of those. I gave you. Literally, he's given us his holy spirit that dwells in us, but every single one of the very breaths that we take is from him. And he gives it to us freely, and he also gives it to those all in the world who hate him. And the point though is every breath that we take is an opportunity for us to come back to him.
That every time you say a word you breathe in, you're about to say something. You're like, is this gonna go back to him and please him? Right? As you look at your budget, are you you're about to spend some as you breathe in, you think, is this going to bless him? My friends, he jealously longs for you and me.
He loves us more than you will ever imagine. And my friends, even though all of us have this desire to give all of our breaths back to him, we don't have enough willpower in the world to do it. All of us have failed at a diet, a new trend, a New Year's resolution, because you just don't get the willpower to do it. Sometimes we do. I remember one year I said, I'm gonna quit soda for a year, and I did.
And then Lewis and Stephanie showed up in my life, and they bring me those Mexican Cokes in a glass bottle, and they taste delicious. Thank you so much. Right? But we know willpower is not enough. It's not enough.
But that's why he begins to pivot here in verse six. Look at this. I love this. James four six, but he gives us more grace. Look at your neighbor and say, more grace.
More grace. Look at your other neighbor and say, I need more grace. I grace. Yes, you do, brother Kenny. Yes, you do.
More grace. It gives us more grace, but there's a caveat. There's a key in order to accessing that grace. It's right here. He says that is why the scripture says, God opposes the proud, but shows favor or grace to the humble.
Therefore, the key to accessing this grace, that all of our lives, what can be completely directed to him in a manner that is holy and right. The key to that is that we humble ourselves. That's why he begins to pivot here to verse seven. He begins to give us a list of solutions in order for us to humble ourselves. No one likes to hear that.
Humble yourself. No one wants to hear that. Right? That's something that we all need. He starts to help us here in verse seven.
Let's look at verse seven together. James four seven says, submit yourselves then to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. James gives us a clue here as to why all these issues are within us in the first place. Remember, we got all these competing desires and pleasures within us that are causing the fights and quarrels and issues in our life.
Okay? And he reveals here that the devil is a a a a one of the reasons why we have these issues. Right? It's not it's the devil and our desires and then working together. And in order to begin working out of that, we have to do this.
We have to submit. Look at your neighbor and say submit. Okay? Submit. The Bible talks about submission.
Okay? I've never was much of a wrestler. I didn't like wrestling. I felt uncomfortable, so I didn't wrestle. Okay?
But when I did wrestle, part of the reason you wrestle is you want to basically take your opponent and you wanna submit them in a position of being pinned on on on the wrestling mat. Right? And they've submitted to you. They've said that you've they've lost and they're submitted to you. And the Bible talks about wives being submitted to their husbands and husbands loving their wives.
The idea of being submitted to to one another or to God, to our works is is simply the idea of humbling ourselves. Another way to say submit yourselves is humbly yourself. And you'll see that he brings us back together in a little inclusio here in a minute. But he says, submit yourselves then to God. Remember he just told us how adulterous we were and how we are have these disordered desires?
And he says, the solution to this, if you want to receive the grace, submit yourselves to God. Give yourselves wholly over to God. You're giving into those temptations which the devil and his little demons are putting before you. A way you begin to resist him is submit yourself, And then it says what? Resist the devil.
Look at your neighbor and say, resist the devil. Resist the devil. Look. The devil, you don't need to fight him with, like, a nine millimeter and a r 15. Okay?
You don't need that or a machete. Like he's not gonna pull up at your house and you're not in, you're gonna have to, you know, use your concealed weapons to take care of it. Okay. That's not the way it works. You fight though, being submitted to God.
That's the resistance. Right? We are are completely submitted to God so that when temptation comes in your life, because the devil and his demons do tempt us, temptations do come. When we are tempted, we begin to risk resist by our submission to God. We're tempted sexually in our lives.
What do we do? We help. I'm submitted to God. I'm wholly given over to him. I'm not gonna do anything out of the parameters of this relationship that would hurt or hurt God's reputation or hurt my life.
I submit to God, and that's how I resist the devil. You submit you resist by submitting to the Lord, ultimately. And and and the New Testament writers give this invitation or this exhortation many times. In Ephesians six thirteen, very famous passage, Paul says this, therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may able to stand your ground, having done everything to stand. That idea of standing your ground is the idea of resisting.
And we resist with the full armor of God. First Peter five nine says, resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings. The devil's wreaking havoc in your life? Stop it. You can stop it.
Submit to God. And I'm not saying that every single issue in your life, every single thing that you're going through is is something that you can fix. Because there's some things going on in our life that we can't fix ourselves. But for the most part, because he's talking about these pleasures and desires within us, if you submit yourself wholly to God, you you denounce and you push away those evil desires, and you submit yourself to God and his word and what he says. The Bible says, that is resistance, and he will flee from you.
He will flee. I like guarantees. He says, he will flee. So if you want him to flee and be a fly and fly away, okay, you need to just submit to him. That is the resistance.
Now, now that we have submitted to God, now that we have resisted the devil and he's he's flown from the presence, This is what we do next. Verse, James four eight. He says, come near to God, and he will come near to you. Wow. Come near to God, and he will come near to another translate.
Draw near to God, and he will draw near I can't tell you how many times my mom quoted this verse to me growing up, and I thank God that she did. It says, now that you've submitted to God and you're putting away those sinful desires, come close to him in worship, in adoration, in praise. My friends, what we were doing this morning as we were praising God and worship team, y'all killed it today. K? As we were praising God, we were drawing near to him.
And if you were sensitive, and I think many of us were, you could feel him drawing near to us. And he draws near to us because we submitted ourselves to him. And he wants to come and and dwell his people with his presence in special ways. And we draw near to him. And we draw near to you.
That's a guarantee. Then he says here, this kinda sounds odd, but it's important. He says, wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double minded. James is urging that we repent of our sins and seek God as an important aspect of his overall call to submit to our lives. Main way we submit, we resist the devil, we draw near, is we we confess sin.
I love you. Talked about that last week. Great job. Bless you. Give up for Stephanie last week.
I didn't even get to talk about that. Shout out sister Sullivan. Well done. Talked about confessing sin. And then after end of service, y'all all came up here, and y'all pressed in, confessed sin.
It was a wonderful time, it seemed. I missed it. I'm so sorry. It was great. This idea that we're washing our hands, it says, you sinners, and purify your hearts.
This is simply just us confessing the sin in our lives. All of us sin. And and it's an unfortunate reality of our lives. And sometimes because maybe because we're Protestants, because we believe the blood of Jesus is powerful. Amen?
Right? We believe Jesus has washed us clean, but what we have lost in that process is what other traditions like Catholicism and ortho the Orthodox church practice is the confession of sin. They're like, yes, we're saved. I'm covered by the blood, but but sometimes you still sin. And you still need to confess it.
Right? Like, you're in relationship with God, and sometimes you still jack it up. So you need to acknowledge with your mouth, with your heart that I have sinned against you. That's why he says wash your hands. It's this idea that you've you've remember, he's saying that you kill and you quarrel.
You're fighting with your hands. Wash your hands. They're full of blood. They're full of sin. Get them clean.
Purify your hearts. Not only wash your hands, but wash your hearts. Confess sin. Repent. Get right with God.
And we have the promise that God will always come near to those who come near to him. Right? I like that the story of the prodigal son. God's always ready to welcome his children back from their sinful ways. He's always ready.
He always has more grace to give us. We don't abuse his grace. Right? Scripture's clear that we're not abusing his grace, but we can always run back to him and confess and and resubmit our lives to him. Let's move to verse nine.
James four nine says this. He then says, grieve, mourn, and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Now next week, if I said, hey, next Thursday night, we're gonna have a great service. We're gonna have a grieving, mourning, wailing service.
Where there will be no joy, there will be no laughter. Stop laughing. There will be no laughter. None of that. Okay?
And we're just gonna show up, and we're just gonna grieve and mourn and wail. I don't think that's probably gonna go over well. Like, that's probably not a lot of things people are gonna come to. Right? Let's just have a whale session.
Sounds good. But that's what he says. It's change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. What do you think he's saying? Some of us literally need to to mourn over the sin and things we've done in our life.
Right? And this is these are some of my best memories of being around the church. Many of you all many of you saints in this room watching you all pray. I'm like, why are these folks praying at the altar? Why are they crying?
Why are they mourning? Why are they wailing? What what what went wrong in their lives? Because when a holy God shows up and you're submitted to him and he begins to reveal himself to you, you say, oh, well, I'm a sinner, Lord. There's levels to this, Lord, and I and I don't want that.
So that's why all these saints would tarry around the altar. They'd cry, they weep, and they wail. Some of the best revivals that have ever happened in human history have really been gathered around God's people weeping and wailing and getting serious. That's the point. Getting serious about their sin.
Because we serve a holy God, and we should treat him that way. We should take God seriously. That's what James is say is saying. Now, again, I'm not gonna have a morning session next Wednesday. Okay?
You can do it in your own time. But the point is take God in this relationship seriously. Even a small sin. Even a small sin can ruin the whole batch. So take God seriously.
Worship team as you make your way. Let's go to our last verse here. He wraps it up for us. James four ten says this. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he Can you say he?
Good. Will lift you up. James connects us back to the beginning. Remember? Starting in verse seven.
He said, submit then yourself to God. Then here at the end, says, humble yourselves before the Lord. In the Bible, when you have these two ideas with stuff in between, it's called an inclusio. But the more fun way to say it is called sandwiching. Is anybody like sandwiches here?
Okay. So what a sandwich is, you have a piece of bread up here and a piece of bread down here, and you got all the good stuff in the middle. Right? You know, prosciutto and ham and turkey and my wife likes Colby Jack and mayonnaise. Mayonnaise is anybody like mayonnaise here?
Okay. You get the idea. You got everything else in between. But what biblical writers do and what James is writing, he's trying to show you. He's saying submit yourself.
He gives you these other commands to do, and then he brings it all back together and says humble yourself. It's the same idea that helps reinforce the same idea. And if you begin looking for this in scripture, it's everywhere. All over the passages. And it helps you just get the main idea of what he's saying.
And what is the main idea of what he's saying here in this whole passage is this. He's saying we need to have humble submission before God. I wanna read this quote to you. It'll be on the screen behind me. It says, to humble ourselves before the Lord means to recognize our own spiritual poverty, to acknowledge consequently our desperate need of God's help, and to submit to his commanding will for our lives.
My friends, none of us are where we want to be. If you've arrived at perfection, let me know. I want you to write a book for me. All of us are still on the path of growing in Christ likeness. But the problem is many of us get caught up along the way by our desires and our passions within us, and somewhere along the road, hearts get hard, we grow prideful, and we stop humbling ourselves before God.
My friends, we must recapture that today. Because not only do we need that in this Christian community, the church, to be able to be humble towards one another, instead of fighting and quarreling that we're being generous with one another, we're being courteous to one another, We're loving one another with humble spirits, just as our Lord Jesus is humble. My friends, that's what the world needs to see from us. That we're humbly submitted to God, and we walk in humility. Sometimes I didn't understand as a teenager how many times I needed to come to the altar to repent of sin.
And even it's a small sin, I've learned in my life, I just need to keep coming back to the altar. I just need to come back, and I just need to remain humble that no matter where I go or how good I think I am or thinking that I've made it, that I'm still just a humbly submitted servant before him. That no matter how old I get, that I will continue to remain in this humble This is the position right here. Right here. That we just remain in a That's what it means to humble ourselves.
Literally, the word humble means to be brought low before our glorious and beautiful king. My friends, we need humble submission. And I can promise you this according to this text. If we humbly submit ourselves, he will give us more grace. Would you stand with me this morning?
If you're able, if you're not, stay where you are. Just wanna provide an invitation before we leave today. I want you to find a place at this altar. Place in your seat on the floor. If you're the type of person who likes to walk around and pray, I'm an active prayer.
As you can see, I'm all over the place during worship. I'm moving. Whatever you need to do for the next few minutes, I wanna invite you. I think the Lord wants to invite you to humble yourself. To humble ourselves before God.
So close your eyes with me. Let us pray as the worship team just ministers. I just wanna invite you to humble yourself before God. Lord, we thank you for this beautiful morning, for your glorious presence in this place. Lord, we thank you for your word that seeks to help us to become like you and become the kingdom community that you desire.
We recognize that we have desires and pleasures within us that should not be there. Lord, we sin against you. We hurt others. We hurt one another. Yet, we are invited, in this moment, we are invited over and over and over again to come back to you and humble ourselves.
Lord, help us to humble ourselves. Help us not to think, what are other people gonna think of me if I confess this? And what are what are no. All we need to do is focus and humble ourselves and submit ourselves to you, Lord. Lord, that we would take you seriously.
That we would take the sin in our lives and the pleasures that are derailing us from growing in Christ. And we would take you seriously. That we would take you seriously enough for all we want. Our only real desire left inside is for you and your kingdom. Nothing else, but just you and your kingdom.
And so, Lord, help us. Give us the boldness to just take you seriously. Lord, you take us seriously. So help us to do the same to you. Give us the boldness to cry out to our precious God who gives more grace.
The precious name of Jesus, amen. Take a moment, my friends, and just cry out to him.