Satan's Back And God's Face - James 4:7 Series

James 4:5 Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he caused to live in us? 6 But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” 7 Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.

Introduction

How many of you are currently dealing with a serious financial problem? How about a major relationship problem with someone? How about a significant health problem? How about this – raise your hand if you’ve got a sin problem in your life. A passage of Scripture that teaches on the topic of how to deal with sin in our lives is guaranteed to be relevant for every soul that walks in the door. They say two things in life are certain – death and taxes, but more certain than either one of those is having a sin problem. We talk a lot about how to avoid sinning in the first place, which is great. But no matter how much progress we make there, every last one of us is going to have a sin problem until the day we die. And so one of the most crucial things you can ever learn is how to deal with sin. What should you do after you have sinned? What do you do about those besetting sins that you just can’t seem to get rid of? How do you deal with guilt and regret? If we don’t know how to deal with the sin in our lives we are missing one of the most basic, essential parts of living the Christian life.

Review

We have been studying verse by verse through the book of James and we left off last week in chapter 4 verse 6 - God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. That’s that gravity of grace principle – just as water always flows down to the lowest places, so God’s grace flows down to the lowliest hearts. There’s a reason why humble people have so many graces in their life, and the people with a lot of graces in their life are the humble people. You observe people and think, “Why can’t I have faith as strong as his?”

“Why can’t I have self-control like her?”

“Why can’t I have delight in God like that person?”

“Why can’t I be a peacemaker like them?”

When you find yourself saying that, isn’t it almost always a humble person you are talking about? Why can’t I have faith like him? Because in an argument, I have to win. In a conflict, I have to get my way. And so I forfeit the grace that could have been mine to give me strong faith or self-control or perseverance or whatever virtues I am lacking, because I refuse to let go of my pride. The only way to get more grace from God is to become more humble. But that left us with the question last week – how do I become more humble?

Repentance

The one word answer to that is repentance. That is also the one word answer to the question of how to deal with sin in your life – repentance. But James is going to give us more than just one word. I love this passage because it is so specific. James doesn’t just tell us, “Repent!” He is going to show us the need for repentance with two strong rebukes, then he is going to give us no less than 10 commands to show us exactly how repentance is done, and on top of all that he is going to give us four amazing promises to motivate us.

This paragraph is the climax of this whole section that started in 3:1. In fact, you could make an argument that it is the climactic point of the whole book. Throughout the book he points out all kinds of sins and errors, and here is where he calls the readers to repentance for all of it. This passage is priceless, because it shows us exactly how to deal with sin in your life in a way that will leave you clean in the sight of God and in your own conscience, and that will make you much stronger and more able to resist that sin in the future, and that will give you much greater intimacy with God.

The Motivation for Repentance

So let’s look at the motivation. He gives us four amazing promises.