James series – “The Litmus Test for life”

James 4:7-12

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. ¹¹ Brothers and sisters, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against a brother or sister or judges them speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it. ¹² There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you—who are you to judge your neighbor?

After looking at the symptoms and source of selfish pride James now reveals:

• The solution to selfish pride – 4:7-12

So, what are some practical solutions for selfish pride? Well, James gives us three and he lists them as conditional statements under the umbrella of submitting to God. In other words, to destroy selfish pride in your life, you must humbly submit to God. And here are three conditional statements that clarify what it means to humbly submit to God. 

1. The first practical solution is to resist the devil. 

Isn’t it interesting that to destroy the pride that lives inside your own heart, you have to resist the devil who lives outside your heart? Go back to the Garden. If Adam and Eve had resisted the lies of satan, they would not have given the pride in their heart a foothold. But by listening to him, they allowed him to play on the pride that he knew was in their hearts, just waiting to be fed. When the devil tempts you resist him. When he plays on your selfishness resist him. When he tells you you’re too good to do that job resist him. Because when you obey God and resist him God promises that he will flee from you. Resist the devil and he will flee. On the cross of Calvary not only did Christ cancel our sin debt, but He engaged the enemy and disarmed the principalities and powers. It doesn’t mean he’s obliterated; it means he’s stripped of His authority and power. The hold that the devil has over someone is their sin. But if the sin has been washed away by the blood of the Son, then the devil has nothing upon which to cling. Once forgiveness is understood and blood is appropriated, the powers of darkness are defeated and rendered as powerless as a lion who has lost his teeth. Because of forgiveness you don’t have to live in fear, for while the devil loves to roar there are no teeth in his jaw. Because Christ crushed the enemy on the cross we don’t have to be slaves to Satan we can resist him.

• The second practical solution is to draw near to God. 

How do we do that? In the days prior to Christ coming and dying on the cross the High Priest would enter into the presence of God in the Holy of Holies and offer up a sacrifice for the sins of the people. This offering would close the gap between God and man which was created by sin. Yet this offering was only temporary. When Jesus died on the cross He paid the permanent price for sin as Hebrews 9:12 says: “With his own blood, not the blood of goats and calves, he entered the Most Holy Place once for all time and secured our redemption forever.” James tells to “wash our hands” and “purify our hearts” that means to confess our sins and come clean before God. Repentance is not just recognizing sin it is turning away from sin and doing the things that the Lord has commanded you to do. If you do, God will draw near to you. 

James series – “The Litmus Test for life”

James 4:1-6

What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? ² You desire but 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. ³ When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. ⁴ You adulterous people^] don’t you 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. ⁵ Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us?  ⁶ But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: “God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.”

After looking at the symptoms of selfish pride James now reveals: 

• The source of selfish pride – 4:6

What is the primary source of selfish pride? Verse 6 makes it abundantly clear that pride doesn’t come from God. As a matter of fact, He is completely and totally opposed to it. The word that’s used for opposed here is actually a military term, that pictures a full army lined up locked and loaded for battle. Back when I was in college my roommate was called up to go and fight in the first Gulf War Operation Desert Storm. But leading up to that was another operation called Desert Shield. For weeks coalition forces shipped their military equipment and people to the desert to wait for the call to invade. This is the picture that James paints of how God resists the proud. He lines up all of His heavenly army to stand in opposition to our pride. Why does He do that, why is it that offensive to Him? Do you remember the reason that Satan fell in the first place? God had created him as an angel of light, but his pride attempted to elevate himself above God. Adam and Eve’s sin was rooted in pride. Satan told them that if they ate of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they could be like God. Out of their pride, that’s what they wanted. They wanted to be autonomous. They didn’t want anyone telling them what to do. That’s pride. And pride has been at the core of every sin ever committed since then. The very word itself conveys that. The original comes from two words put together. The first is the word we get our word hyper from. The second means to appear, or to be made manifest. When you put them together, they mean the act of arrogantly elevating yourself until you appear to be above others, even God. But in reality its all an appearance, because there is no way we can truly elevate ourselves above God. God is God and we’re not. There was no way in the Garden that Adam and Eve could truly become like God, as they quickly found that out. So where does it come from? If it’s not from God, what is the source of pride? Well, this is one that we can’t blame on the Devil. While he can tempt us to give in to pride, pride is something we come up with all on our own. Satan tempted Adam and Eve with fruit, he lied to them about what it would do for them. But the fact that they wanted to eat the fruit to become like God that was all on their own. The source of pride is our sinful heart. It happens when we elevate our heart to a place that only God should occupy. Which God won’t tolerate, He stands opposed to it with His complete arsenal. He just hasn’t pulled the trigger yet. That will happen in the judgment. We’ve seen the symptoms of selfish pride as well as the source of selfish pride so what’s the cure? How can we escape such a judgment? One word grace. God gives grace to the humble.