Seeking for the help of the Lord,
I direct your prayer for attention to James chapter 4 and reading
for our text verse 7. Submit yourselves therefore to
God, resist the devil and he will flee from you. James chapter 4 and verse 7. Right from the very beginning,
when Satan came to Eve and tempted her to turn from the commandment
of God and to take the forbidden fruit, there has been the enmity
that has been between the seed of the woman and Satan's seed. The adversary is always against
God and the people of God. We read in Peter, your adversary,
the devil. And really throughout life for
God's children, they will know something of the relationship
with God and relationship with the devil. In unregeneracy, at
peace with hell, with God at war. When called by grace, then
they have the adversary against them. And how they react to him,
and how they react to God, is very, very important. And that
is really what is in our text. It is our reaction to God, submission
to God, and our reaction to Satan and his temptations, which is
to resist him. And that will be known by the
children of God right through their lives, right through their
experience. I want to look this afternoon firstly
at the therefore, the reason, the reason why we should submit
to God and why we should resist the devil. Our text says, submit
yourselves therefore to God, and it joins what has gone before,
the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, really the gospel of our Lord. And then we have the two exhortations. In our second point, submitting
to God, and in the third, resisting the devil. Whenever the Lord gives an exhortation,
warnings to His people, there will always be a foundation to
it, a reason why they are to do as He is exhorting them to
do. My mind goes to the account of
the book of Esther, when through Haman, There had
been the decree made that all the Jews should be destroyed
on a certain day. Then the Jews had great sadness
that that should be so. The decree had come from the
King. He had signed that decree. Later on there is another decree
made. It didn't disannul the first,
the first still stood. But in that second decree, it
gave permission from the king for the Jews to stand up and
resist, fight against all that would fight against them. There was still the first decree. There was still going to be those
rise up against them. The day was still coming. But
we read that the Jews then had great joy and great gladness. What was the difference? Now
they had the king on their side. Now they had authority to rise
up and to resist and to fight. And we have that through our
Lord Jesus Christ, the authority to stand against Satan. And it comes because of that
first promise, the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's
head. The hymn says, our captain stood
the fiery test and we shall stand through him. All what the Lord
would speak to His dear people to do is all based on what He
has done, what He has accomplished. At Calvary, our Lord Jesus Christ
suffered. In that sense, His heel was bruised. It was not without cost, great
cost, of what the Lord went through. to deal a head blow, a death
blow to Satan, to take away his power, take away his authority,
take away that sentence of death for the people of God, to give
unto them eternal life. No man is able to pluck them
out of mine hand. And Satan, not able to take those
that are purchased with the precious blood of Christ, When Christ
died, then the accuser of the brethren was cast down, who accused
them night and day. What did he accuse them of? All
of those brethren from Abel's day unto Christ, that they were
in heaven, that they had been saved, but the blood had not
yet been shed. It was all upon promise. If we
were to go to a shop, and especially if it was to be buying things
that are consumables, food or something like that, we say to
the shopkeeper, I promise to pay you for these. You don't
pay, you take them home, you eat them, they're gone, you can't
take it back, but you haven't paid yet. And people could accuse
you, you've had, you've been eating at this shopkeeper's expense
and you haven't paid anything except a promise to. Of course
we sometimes can't fulfill our promises. But our Lord promised
that He would pay the debt, He would come, He would take the
punishment due to His people, He would suffer, He would shed
His blood so that theirs be not shed. The redemption price would
be paid. and all through the Old Testament
showed in types and shadows that this promise stood still. You know, if there is ever a
reason why in these gospel days, when the gospel is preached,
we can rely on the promises of God, is to just think of that
first promise in Eden, and how many years went by, how much
happened, but the promise seed came. and he did what he said
he would do, and he rose from the dead, and that power of Satan
taken away. The great power of the Holy Spirit,
the authority given from God, and the great miracle, a greater
miracle. You know, in the early church,
you have the instance of the man that was lame from his birth,
carried for 40 years into the temple, And Peter came in and
he healed him through our Lord Jesus Christ. Instant healing
is leaping, jumping, praising God. Something you could never
perform medically, even today. That's an instant healing. And
when that happened, then they all came running together to
see what had happened. And Peter was able to preach
to them the gospel. And many were brought to believe
and to be saved. And we would say there is a greater
miracle that souls were saved and plucked from Satan, from
his kingdom to God's kingdom, than that man that was made to
walk. Because Paul tells us in Ephesians
chapter one, He tells the Ephesians that the same power was wrought
in them that believed as what raised Christ from the dead.
It is a power of God that quickens a soul into divine life. And it needs authority from God
that it should be so. It needs the payment, it needs
the price paid and settled. And Satan had to be dealt with. and justice needed to be satisfied,
and the payment paid, and that was done. He know the grace of
our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes
he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be made rich. And so we read in the verses
before our text, but he giveth more grace, whereby, he saith,
God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble."
There's saving grace, there's grace to help in time of need,
there's grace to be imparted to the people of God so that
they live gracious, kind, godly lives, that which we don't have
ourselves. Learn of me, for I am meek and
lowly in heart, ye shall find rest unto your souls. So there
is a therefore, there is what goes before, God dealing with
Satan, God dealing with sin, God meeting the price of redemption
for his people, is the foundation for all that he says and all
that he exhorts his people to do. He has accomplished, he has
fought the fight, and he gives his dear people that authority
to do the same. There's two sides to it, and
that is what is in our text. But this first point, this therefore,
and you'll find it many, many times in the word of God, that
there's a truth of God set forth, and then joined to it, there's
a therefore. Because this has happened, because
God has done this, then these things can happen. We think of
in the revelation of those that are before the throne, Those
that came out of great tribulation have washed their robes and made
them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore are they before
the throne. That is why, that is the reason
why they are there. All of what God has done will
have fruits flowing out of it. There will be An effect, my word
shall not return unto me void, it shall accomplish the thing
whereto I sent it. God does not waste his energies,
waste his work. He has a purpose, an effect,
and his word will come to pass. In the creation he spake, and
it was done, it was effectual. And in all what the Lord does,
in all His will, in all His works. His word is powerful, His work
is effectual. So I want to look at the exhortations
of this text. The first is a submitting ourselves
to God. Submit yourselves therefore to
God. That is something that our first
parents did not do. God had given them the commands,
he'd given them what they could eat and what they should not
eat, and yet they did not submit to going with his commands and
his directions, but rebelled against him. And so in the submitting
It is a putting ourselves under God. How different that was with
Pharaoh, who is the Lord, that I should serve him. And he would
not submit again and again. He refused to let the children
of Israel go. And the Lord sent one plague
after another. that all the earth might know
the power of God and God's might. What a difference it would have
been if he had have submitted to it. We think of Naaman the Syrian. He was a leper. He wanted to
be healed. The servant-maid pointed him
to the prophet that was in Samaria. He went to Samaria, he went to
the king first, and then he was directed to the prophet. But
he had in his own mind how he should be healed. And it wasn't
like that. So at first he would not submit
to what Elisha told him to do. to go to the river Jordan and
to dip seven times. And he says, I thought that he
would surely come out himself. He'd only sent a servant. And
that something dramatic would be done. And he wondered why
the waters that were in Syria, Damascus, weren't they better
than Jordan? Why did it have to be Jordan?
And he went away in a rage. If he had remained like that,
in a rage, not submitting to the simple directions of the
Lord through his servant, he would not have been healed. But
his servants came and they reasoned with him. And really their whole
aim of talking to him was this, submit. Do, do what has been
told you to do. And he did. And he washed in
Jordan, dipped seven times, and came as flesh as a little child.
In spite of his rebellings first, when he submitted, the blessing
was upon him. How easy we can do the same.
We can pit our own thoughts as to what is right against the
Lord's. Or like our first parents, what
Satan says is right against the Lord's. And instead of bowing
before the Lord and laying aside our reasoning and our way, submit
to the Lord's way. No doubt as children, there's
many times you have a practice of submitting. When your parents
want you to do one thing, you want to do another. How easy
it is, especially when we get to teens, to not want to submit. We want to do our own way. And
it's a hard thing to actually do then what is required by the
parent, instead of what you want to do. And it is a bowing before
authority, it's submitting to one who has an authority over
you, and to doing what they are asking you to do, not what you
perhaps are wanting to do. Well here the exhortation is
submitting yourselves therefore to God, submitting to God, submitting
to His sovereignty. Shall not the God of all the
earth do right? Who is he that saith, and cometh
to pass, when the Lord commandeth it not? Sometimes before it comes
as a submitting to God's sovereignty ourselves, we can find it a struggle
to submit to His sovereignty over others. We might hear of
someone that has had a terrible illness, or an accident, a so-called
car accident, or something has happened in their lives. And
I know those who have made profession of faith, and that faith has
been completely lost. It's been a cause of them turning
aside from their profession, even though baptized, because
of something that has happened to another. In one case, it was
a member of the church that they were at, she got murdered. And
the reaction of that other member was, if God can permit that,
and allow that to happen, I don't want this God. And it proved
their faith completely wrong. And we can hear things, we can
hear things in the news, we can have things that happen They're
not us, but we see God sovereignly doing them in the earth, and
we find our hearts rising up as if we do not want God to have
a sovereign right to do what he will with his people and with
the world. God is the ruler over all of
the earth. Man will bring God to his bar
and say, We have the standard of what is morally right, and
you don't come up to that standard, and they blame God, they go against
God for that. And it is a submitting first
to God as having an absolute sovereign right. We lost anything
that we had to stand before God when the sentence of death was
passed upon us. If you were to go to those on
death row in some American prisons where they'd committed murder,
and where they're sentenced to death, they lost all of their
right to life. They, under the sentence of death,
by that which they'd done. God said, in the day that thou
eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die. And every thing that we
received out of a deserved hell is a mercy of God. The reason
why so many find it so hard to submit, because they start off
with a, I deserve this, and if God gives me that, then he's
a terrible God, because I'm a good person, I'm a charitable person,
and I deserve better than that. And very often we can think,
and someone else, look at what they've done, and they're doing,
and I'm doing so much better. And it's all the time the idea
that we deserve something good at the hand of God. But when
we realize that as sinners, the word says that the law was given,
that all the world might be brought in guilty before God, all have
sinned and come short of the glory of God. There's none that
doeth good, no not one. It is that we are all under condemnation. The beautiful word in Romans
8 verse 1, there is therefore now no condemnation to them that
are in Christ Jesus, can have the opposite. Outside of Christ
we are under condemnation. We have the sentence of death
upon us. And the Lord is sovereign as
to who He saves and who He does not, what He does in the earth,
how He does it. He didn't need to bring any way
of salvation. He didn't need to give any promise
as He did to our first parents. He didn't need to, but He did.
The Lord sovereignly did so. None can stay His hand and say
unto Him, what doest Thou? We need to be very mindful of
the way our hearts react to the sovereignty of God. Then there is the word of God,
the Bible as we have it, from Genesis to Revelation. A more sure word of prophecy,
where unto you do well to take heed. or scripture given by inspiration
of God. This is the only word of God
to man. This is our authority. No supposed words given to religious
people that go against the word of God should hold any weight
at all, should never ever be believed or given any countenance
at all. The Lord warned the children
of Israel in Deuteronomy about those that rose up in their midst
that even brought things to pass, miracles came to pass. He said
that if they were then to, by those miracles, turn them away
from the true and living God and away from his word, they
were not to follow them. The Lord gave those people power
to do those miracles and to do those things to test the children
of Israel, whether they would believe the word or not. And
of course, the Lord said to the, in the account of rich, the Lazarus
and the rich man, when the rich man wanted a miracle to be sent,
as one sent from the dead, Lazarus sent to his brethren, lest they
come into this place of torment. The Lord said, they have Moses
and the prophets. If they believe them not, neither
will they believe, though one rose from the dead. And he has
exalted his word above all his name. He says, heaven and earth
shall pass away, but my word shall not pass away. To the law
and to the testimony, that's what must be. And the Scriptures
are of no private interpretation. We're not to be like some that
would take part of the Word, suit it to what they want, and
say it furthers their cause. Like the thief that the judge
said to, he said, don't you know that in the Word of God it says
thou shalt not steal? He says, but he says I've no,
He said, yes, I know. He says, thou shalt steal. And
the judge said, no. He said, thou shalt not steal.
He said, I've no use for that word not. And so he just dropped
that word out and made all the difference, just changed the
whole meaning completely. And we can be the same as well,
but Peter tells us, no private interpretation, the word tells
us what God means to tell us. It has a message, one message,
a message that we are, especially in the ministry, to discern what
that message is, and not put words in the Lord's mouth as
what we think it should mean. And so it is submitting to the
Word of God, comparing Scripture with Scripture. That is absolutely
vital. You may mention that again later. One thing I'll mention regarding
submitting ourselves to God. We use the illustration with
the children, their parents, and you might be told, well,
go up and clean your room. And you don't want to, you'd
rather go out and play. We say, all right, I'll go and
clean it, You go up to your room and bang, crash, and you're in
a bad mood, and you might say, well, you submitted, you're cleaning
the room, but your spirit is really angry. You don't want
to do it. So in one sense, you might say
you're submitting by actually doing it, but the spirit is wrong. The spirit that you're doing
it in is not in a submissive, willing spirit. And we need to
be very careful on that. that we don't actually do something,
but it is in a completely wrong spirit, especially in submission.
The submission to the Word, submit yourselves therefore to God,
is submitting to the will of God. You might say, well how
is that different to the sovereignty of God? Well, the will of God
is that which is recorded in the Word of God, and it's that
which is unfolded in providence. Providence unfolds the book and
makes his counsel shine. In this chapter, at the end of
it, we read about those that say we'll go into a city and
continue there a year and buy and sell and get going. And that
you ought to say, if the Lord will, we shall live and do this
or that. In another place, Paul, he uses
this word, if God permit. If God permit. Puts it in a slightly
different way, doesn't it? You know, when we make engagements,
when we have special services, usually put, if the Lord will. I wonder how many of us in business,
when we are making arrangements with the world that knows not
God, will do the same. The world gets used to it when
they're used to getting emails from you or letters from you
and you still use the same language to them as to the church. You still put, if the Lord will.
They don't understand it. But it is honouring to God that
we do. Quite often in our lives we put
compartments, we use a certain language amongst the people of
God, and we use a different language before the world. But we're to
be salt and lime, and to be acknowledging the Lord. Does the Lord only
have his will if the Lord will, when it is something to do with
our churches, or our religion, or our faith? Or does that apply
to our job, our schooling? If the Lord permit, it's a good
word to think of, because sometimes when we've made arrangements,
when we had a preaching engagement, and we've been sick, we've been
unwell, or the car has broken down, we might say the Lord has
not permitted it. If the Lord permitted it, it
would be so. And sometimes it can be a great
comfort where we may be very tried, tempted in our minds,
and the Lord does foment it. And especially I feel in the
ministry sometimes that, well, I have been brought here, I have
been given health and strength, I have been given the word, and
we may think how easy the Lord could have stopped it. Maybe
something that has happened in our lives and you get reminded
that the Lord could so easy stop and hinder. And so it is a submitting
to the will of God when the Lord's will is different to ours. I think Paul was talking about
one of the brethren coming to him and he wanted him to come,
I forget who it was now, but he uses the word, but it was
not at all his will. And the brother wouldn't come.
And you might say, well, does he surpass the will of the Lord? Well, in providence, it's got
to be both sides, isn't it? We might say, I like that job.
I want that job. The position is advertised. But
the boss doesn't offer it to you. He gives it to someone else.
You say, well, that was the boss. That was his will. He was choosing
who to give it to. But when we look above that,
and we see the Lord's hand, and we see that's His will, and what
the Lord has done through another, they're submitting to the will
of God. Maybe you've got things in your
life already as you come this afternoon, or maybe there will
be things in the next week that you will have to submit to, or
be set before you in your Heart will resist and not like that. But here is the exhortation for
the people of God to submit to God. Submit to his providence,
to what the Lord orders, to bow before him. I've marveled at
Joseph's spirit in all the things that Joseph went through. You
know, the Lord was with him. But what a submissive spirit
and how vital that we bow before the Lord. I marveled at Aaron
when his two sons were smitten before the Lord because they
offered strange fire. Can you imagine as a father seeing
two sons killed before the Lord? And we read, Aaron, he held his
peace. He held his peace. How easy it
could have been angry with the Lord, fight against the Lord,
and yet he was submissive to it. What about submissive to the
way the Lord saves his people? The word is very clear, by grace
ye are saved through faith, that not of yourselves, it is the
gift of God. How easy it is to say I want
a different way of being saved. I'd rather be able to put my
hand to it. Our natural flesh always wants
to do something. That is, all the religions of
the world is do something in our hand, our control. Paul says
of those in Romans 10, his countrymen, ignorant of God's righteousness,
going about to establish their own righteousness and have not
submitted. themselves and to the righteousness
of God, have not submitted to the gospel, to be willing to
be saved by grace, willing to be saved by another's work and
what another has done and another has accomplished, and all the
time you're wanting to be able to earn it, to pay for it. It's like someone being given
something very expensive, just given it. And they turn around and say,
I want to put something towards that. And you think, well, what
is a thousand pounds towards something that's worth 19,000
pounds? But all that desire is to be
able to have some part in it, to deserve it in some way. And
so it is in the way of grace, except we receives the salvation
of God as a hell-deserving sinner upon the ground of mercy and
grace, we will not receive it at all, not of works lest any
man should boast. And yet by nature we all the
time rise up against this. We do not want to be as sinners. One of our hymns, I think it's
710, It says about this state and condition of our own heart,
nor are men willing to have the truth told, the sight is too
killing for pride to behold. Men do not lie, we do not by
nature lie to submit to be told that we are hell deserving sinners
and we need mercy. That God is just to condemn us
to hell and to sentence us to eternal banishment. And when
he sets before us salvation that's completely free, then even that
we resist. We do not want it free. We want
it at cost. We want to be able to pay for
it. And so it's vital when we have
submit yourselves to God, that he is submitting to his plan
of salvation through grace alone. through Christ's work on Calvary's
cross. There's also a submitting to
the ordinances of God. Baptism, the Lord's Supper. Yes, do in remembrance of me. And interestingly, in my case,
when the Lord blessed my soul, it was the ordinance of the Lord's
Supper that was made most attractive to me, because that so set forth
the blessing that I'd had, and I so desired. And it was through
the words of Mr. Oldham, in one of the cheering
words I was reading in me, in the lunch hour at work, under
that blessing that I'd had, why do you hesitate, humble believer,
to partake of the emblems of Christ's
dying love. Why do you hesitate? What think
you of them? And I knew what I thought of
them because they so beautifully set forth his shed blood, his
broken body. But I knew from the word of God
that the way to the Lord's table was baptism. And that is what
then was used to bring me to baptism. And it is seeing the
Lord's order and submissive to that order, submissive to His
way. John, he said to our Lord, I
have need to be baptized of thee. But the Lord says, suffer it
to be so now. And then he suffered him. He
submitted to doing it. But may we also, if we have been
blessed with this Spirit opening up the way of salvation through
Christ being buried, dead, raised again, to walk in that beautiful
ordinance that sets it forth, buried with Him by baptism into
death and risen again in newness of life. And to submit to that. Submitting, submit yourselves
therefore to God. Before we leave this point, remember
the previous verse. We read, he giveth more grace,
he giveth grace unto the humble, We might see something that we
really desire to be submissive to, and yet we struggle with
it. We struggle to submit. Well,
may this Word be an encouragement to you and I to seek grace from
the Lord to submit. And our prayer being, Lord, do
give me submission. Do give me submissive grace. Do bow my heart. Make me willing. And you know many times in our
lives we'll be that. We'll see what the Lord sets
forth. We see what his will is for his
people. We see what is the right way.
But we have to ask the Lord, Lord, make me willing. Do give
me grace to walk this out. And though I might be Submissive
outwardly, Lord give me grace to submit with the right spirit
in a right way. So this is the first exhortation
here. Submit yourselves therefore to
God. The second is a resistance of
the devil. Resist the devil and there's
a promise here, and he will flee from you. Not because of any
power in us or any ability in us, but because of the authority
that God has over him. Now I say here, may we really
believe that there is a devil. How easy it is to underestimate
the adversary of the people of God. We cannot see him. But we're used to a lot of things
we can't see, and yet we fear and take precaution against,
don't we? We had the coronavirus. We couldn't
see it. We know the effect of it. If
someone would come into the chapel and say, I've got coronavirus,
I don't think we'd be rushing to shake hands or to get close
to them. But you can't see the problem,
but you understand it from its effects. There's so many things
with God himself. He is a spirit, we cannot see
him. One of the youth in the town
some years back They casted me outside the chapel and said,
you believe in God? I said, most certainly I do.
They said, why, you can't see him? And so I pointed to her
phone that was in her hand. I said, you can't see the signal
going to that, but you believe it's there, don't you? Oh. And
we had them for an hour in the chapel talking to them on the
things of God. But you see, the thought, because
you cannot see it, then it can't be real, can't be present. But
the scriptures speak very clearly that we wrestle not against flesh
and blood, but against spiritual wickedness in high places. The spirit and the devil is very,
very real, very powerful, unseen. We're told, as we read in Peter,
who goeth about seeking whom he may devour. When we are in
unregeneracy, as we are born into this world, Satan does not
know who are the people of God and who are not. He does not
know. He may suspect, and rightly upon
the word of God, that those who are brought up under the sound
of the truth, that they may well be, as the Lord has said, the
promises unto you and your children, even as many as the Lord thy
God shall call. But until they begin to show
signs of interest, of prayer, of seeking, of concern for their
soul, he doesn't know. But as soon as he sees those
signs, and he can read, he can notice, he can notice the difference
that is made when one suddenly starts to have an interest in
the things of God, they start to pray in their closet, they
are concerned for their soul, they start reading the things
of God instead of going on everything else, he notices. And he will then tempt, he'll
lay his baits, he'll send his distractions, he'll do everything
he can to turn aside that person from the right and good way.
Remember with our Lord when he was baptized, he was driven by
the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. It
had to be proved that the second Adam could stand the temptations
that the first Adam fell under. And so the first Adam fell on
what he could eat, what he shouldn't eat. So the first temptation,
or the temptation after 40 days in the wilderness being tempted,
the first recorded temptation, If thou be the Son of God, command
that these stones be made bread. For a man that already had hungered
forty days, what a temptation that was! And the ant had thought,
that by doing so I shall prove that I am the Son of God. But
our Lord answered from the word of God, that man shall not live
by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth
of God. So then Satan immediately turns
and he starts to use the Word of God to tempt the Lord. He'd
do the same with us as well. Takes him up to the pinnacle
of the temple. Cast thyself down from hither,
for it is written, he shall give his angels charge over thee.
They shall bear thee up in their arms, lest thou dash thys foot
against a stone. And the Lord said, it is written
again. He compares scripture with scripture.
That's what I started to say before. You must compare scripture
with scripture. And the Lord said, written again,
thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. And the Lord continued
every time when Satan came to resist him and not go in the
path he wanted him to go in. And he resisted him with the
word of God. May we pray the Lord give us
the spirit and may we remember the word of God and be brought
back to our remembrance to be lifted up as a standard against
Satan. He comes in many disguises. Peter says that we are not ignorant
of his devices as many devices and ways. But we must expect,
we will expect, that he comes with baits. Those that are expert
in fishing, if they're aiming for a certain type of fish, they
know they've got to use the right type of bait. Those of you that
are trying to catch a mouse in a shed will know that you can
put some things on a trap and the mouse doesn't go for that
at all. But you put something else on
and that'll work. And Satan knows, and every one
of God's children is different. What will be a bait to one is
not a bait to the other. He knows our frame, he suitably
lays his baits, and watch that we take it and go along with
it. And so we are to take the whole armour of God, fighting
against him, the sword of spirit, which is the word of God. And
prayer, how often, how often we neglect prayer. I say it of
myself. We now have formal prayer, but
may we never think that prayer is not a powerful weapon. It
is a powerful weapon. You think of the next chapter
in James here, and we have verse 17. Elias was a man subject to
like passions as we are. He prayed earnestly that it might
not rain, It rained not on the earth by the space of three years
and six months. He prayed again, and the heaven
gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit. How vital that
in everything, by prayer and supplication, we make our requests
known unto God. And especially in our dealing
with temptation, don't deal with it in our own strength. Don't
resist in our own strength. It is to cry unto the Lord, to
ask the Lord to help us, to lift up a standard against Him, to
give us grace, to give us the willingness, to give us the hatred
for what He is tempting us to, and to give us the love of God
and the love of the things that are pure and holy. Because whenever
Satan comes, they're not pure, they're not holy, they're lies,
they're deceits. Prayer. Prayer is a weapon for
the feeble. Weaker souls shall wield it best. So James has the exhortation
here, and it's to a people that he's writing to, that they have
fighting among them. They have many things, and even
in prayer, they're asking but receiving not, because it's just
to consume upon their own lusts. and yet he points them to this
path of grace, path of the blessing from God in submitting ourselves
to God, resisting the devil with the promise that he shall flee
from you. May the Lord use this word this
afternoon. Maybe there's particular temptations
that you're under now, or that shall come in this next week,
and this word will be a word in season for you, or maybe it's
a path that is already set before you and you are not submitting
to it. You will not submit to the Lord's
hand, the Lord's providence. And sometimes these are, they're
hard things. We're taken by surprise with
them sometimes. You think of Samuel, when the
Lord rejected Saul, And Samuel, he mourned for Saul every day.
He found it a real hard thing to submit that the Lord had finished
with Saul. He rejected him, cast him out. And you think, Samuel, why can't
you just let this go? But he struggled with it. And
then the Lord gave him to anoint David. And he went and anointed
him. Sometimes these things catch
us out. Things we never thought we'd
struggle with, Things we thought we'd easily be able to submit
to, and we can't. And we need to cry to the Lord,
and cry to grace, that we bow before the hand of God. If ever
Satan would get an advantage over us, it is when we are not
submitting to the will of God, because he'll bring in something
else. And so the order here, very important. Submit yourselves
therefore to God, resist the devil and he will flee from you. Just disclosing example that
comes to mind with Cain and Abel. God was not pleased with Cain's
sacrifice and Cain's face fell. The Lord said to him, if thou
do us well, shall not thou be accepted? But rather to submit,
to God's way of a blood sacrifice instead of his way of the fruit
of his hands from the field, he killed his brother. Sin lay
at the door. What are two ways? One, submitting
to the will of God. When he didn't submit to the
will of God, it then ended up with him being a murderer and
killing his brother. May the Lord give us grace to
submit in all things. Amen.