But He gives more grace. Therefore He says: “God resists the proud, But gives grace to the humble.” Therefore submit 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. Lament and mourn and weep! Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up. (Jam 4:7-10)

It was only in the 19^th century that churches began doing what is called the altar call. That is, after a sermon, people were asked to walk to the front to pray a prayer at what was then called the mourners bench, or the anxious seat. It became so popular through the revivalism of Charles Finney and then later Billy Sunday and Billy Graham, that for many people, a church isn’t really being a church if it doesn’t give an invitation. But here’s the thing, invitations are not the same thing as altar calls. People have confused the two, thinking they are the same thing. But the altar call is a new phenomenon. Preachers throughout history have given invitations during their sermons for sinners to turn to Christ, for believers to draw nearer to God. And preachers have been giving invitations like that because the Bible itself is filled with invitations. Moses said to Israel, “I have set before you life and death, now choose life.” Jesus said, “Come to me, all you who labour and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.” Peter gave the invitation to his hearers to repent and be baptised in the name of the Lord.

Scripture is filled with invitations. And perhaps one of the clearest and strongest invitations in the entire Bible is our text this morning. This is an invitation, a call to its hearers to respond, to act obediently to what God says.

I believe what we have in this section is really the climax of the book. James has been telling us the difference between pure and undefiled religion, and the phoney kind. He has been telling us the difference between a faith that is real, and works, and brings forth fruit, and does not just hear, or assent, or agree. He has been telling us the difference between a genuine, God-devoted faith, and a double-minded, worldly faith. And he showed us what that looks like in different ways – how we hear and respond to the Bible, how we treat people different to us in the congregation, how we use our tongues, how we deal with disagreements and conflict. In each case, James told us that there is a way you can deceive yourself and think you are right, when you really aren’t – when you just hear the Word, when you say to the needy, be warmed and be filled, when you bless God with the tongue and curse men, when you claim to be wise, but have bitter envying and strife.

James has been testing our faith not by our profession, but by our actions. And he still has some more tests after this section – how we speak of each other, how we plan, how we spend, how we wait on God, and how we pray. So what do we do if we have failed some of his tests? What if we go through trials and there is no endurance? What if we are hearers only, but seldom doers? What if we are very partial in our faith? What if our tongues are unphased by how dangerous, fickle and destructive they can be? What if the ‘wisdom’ we use is actually filling our lives with destructive conflict? What if we are controlled by desires that are not God’s?

If so, there are two possibilities. The first is that we are not genuinely Christians. We may not have been truly regenerated by God, given a new nature, with new tastes, new loves, and a new enablement. We might be in church, we might be singing hymns, we might agree and assent to all kinds of truths, but we are not in Christ.

The second possibility is that we are genuinely saved, but we are often failing to act according to that new nature. We are citizens of a new country, speaking the old language, sheep who are keeping some of the goat habits.

Now for both possibilities, there is one remedy, and it is in this passage. The remedy for an unbeliever who wishes to become a true believer, and the remedy for a true believer living falsely, is the Gospel. Whether you are doubting if you are saved, or whether you are grieved that you are living as if you are not, the Gospel is the solution. How so? Because not only will the Gospel when believed bring about regeneration, but the very same approach you make in the Gospel, when applied by a Christian brings about great change. The Gospel is not merely the door through which we enter the Christian faith. The Gospel is the house in which we are to keep living, and keep using its principles for the Christian life. Someone put it this way, when he said, “Live the Christian life the same way you got it.” Colossians 2:6 says, “ 6 As you have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, (Col 2:6)

Contained in the Gospel we received is the pattern for the rest of the Christian life. And here from verses 6 through 10 is one of the clearest and most elegant calls to repentance and faith in all of Scripture. The Bible has many verses which are pure invitations, but seldom are they as detailed and explicit as this passage. Here James is calling for a response to all he has said, and the response is, believe the Gospel, if you have not already, and adopt the same posture you had on day one of your Christian life if you have fallen back into old habits.

This passage is a rapid-fire of ten commands, ten imperatives. But we can group them together as the Gospel’s posture, the Gospel’s procedure, and the Gospel’s promise.

I. The Gospel’s Posture

But He gives more grace. Therefore He says: “God resists the proud, But gives grace to the humble.” Therefore submit to God. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up.

The command here in verse 6, submit to God, and the command in verse 10, humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, are really two ways of saying the same thing. They bracket off this section. And everything in between is an enlargement on this idea – the posture you take when you come to God.

A posture is a physical pose or position we adopt for varying situations. Running requires one posture, balancing a basket on your head requires another, while playing the violin needs yet a different posture. But to come to know and love God calls for a particular posture of the heart: If we are to receive the Gospel, or live it out as Christians it requires a certain stance towards God, a way of thinking and acting and feeling.

Without this posture, you are a non-starter. It would be like trying to ride a bicycle while lying on your back, or trying to look up a telescope while lying flat on the floor. So unless you adopt this posture that the Gospel demands, you cannot get anywhere with God.

What is the posture? Verse 6 says, submit to God, verse 10 says, humble yourself before God. The same idea is in both. The word for submit means to fall in under, to come under the authority of another. It is to be conquered, to be mastered, to give over the direction of your life to another. You are not in the driver’s seat of your own life, you are not in the command chair, you have given up independence for dependence, self-rule for submission.

Humble yourself is the same idea. It means to be brought low, to be placed in a bowing posture before a superior. So if we could summarise it, the idea is that you recognise the absolute Lordship of God, His right to rule you as Creator, and as Redeemer, and as Lord of the Universe.

Look at this as an example:

4 “I persecuted this Way to the death, binding and delivering into prisons both men and women,
5 “as also the high priest bears me witness, and all the council of the elders, from whom I also received letters to the brethren, and went to Damascus to bring in chains even those who were there to Jerusalem to be punished.
6 “Now it happened, as I journeyed and came near Damascus at about noon, suddenly a great light from heaven shone around me.
7 “And I fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to me,`Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?’
8 “So I answered,`Who are You, Lord?’ And He said to me,`I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting.’
9 “And those who were with me indeed saw the light and were afraid, but they did not hear the voice of Him who spoke to me.
10 “So I said,`What shall I do, Lord?’ And the Lord said to me,`Arise and go into Damascus, and there you will be told all things which are appointed for you to do.’

When Paul came to understand who Jesus was, his first question was “what shall I do?” “What would you have me to do?” At the very heart of the conversion experience is submission to the Lordship of Christ. You come to see Him, and so you are responding in humble submission. Phillip Brooks said “The true way to be humble, is not to stoop until you are smaller than yourself, but to stand at your real height against some higher nature.”

Now why is this so important? It’s important because this is what the Gospel is really about. The Gospel is not about social renovation. The gospel is not primarily food to the hungry, money to the poor, employment to the unemployed, social advance for the oppressed. It might result in such benefits, but such things do not constitute the intention or purpose of the gospel. Similarly, the gospel is not about liberation – revolt against political tyranny or oppression. The gospel may bring about social or political change, but the good news is not promised liberation from bad government.

The gospel is not a psychological remedy of sorts. The gospel does not provide some kind of internal therapy to affirm “the self” or to liberate you from “misplaced shame.” Nor is it a celebration of personal worth, a re-formulation of self-esteem and self-help doctrines with a Christian veneer painted over. The gospel cannot be reduced to moral influence. The gospel is not simply a revelation of God’s love teaching people to sacrificially love one another. The gospel is certainly not a key for obtaining near-unlimited health and wealth, or about realizing your divinity.

What is the Gospel about? The Gospel is a holy, glorious God who made man for Himself, and man rebelled. Instead of destroying man as rebels, He set about reconciling man to Himself. But that reconciliation does not mean God comes to tolerate our rebellion. It means God forgives us and changes us from rebels to followers.

7 For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself.
8 For whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord: whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord’s.
9 For to this end Christ both died, and rose, and revived, that he might be Lord both of the dead and living.

(Rom 14:7-9)

At the very beginning of coming to a true faith, or even of returning to a true faith is humbled submission to God’s right to rule. Let me ask you, when you believed the Gospel, or thought you believed, was there an acknowledgement that you were giving up your independence? Did you yield to a transfer of authority? Did you understand that God was not simply delivering you from Hell, but was doing so by buying you to be His slave?

If you can day after day defy the commands of Scripture, resist God’s Word, shrug your shoulders and remain indifferent to His Word, why call Him, Lord, lord? If His Word does not constrain you, restrain you, limit you and direct you, then how can you be in any biblical sense, a Christian? He is not then your Lord, He is your insurance for the next life, your private consolation for feelings of guilt, your comfort that you have placated the religious sense within yourself. But a Gospel encounter with Christ is one where He wins and you lose.

21 “Not everyone who says to Me,`Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven.

(Mat 7:21)

Now for the Christian, we have to repeat this, again and again. My starting question for every decision, should be, does this please God?

Christian, is there a dominant sense in your life that you live under authority? Is there a constant awareness that your decisions and thoughts and actions must be referred to God for permission, before you do them? Is your life about the glory of God?

Here is the first thing we do when we are coming to God for salvation, and it is the posture we return to as Christians: “Lord, not my will but thine, be done. It is the Lord, let Him do what seems good to Him. Speak Lord, your servant is listening. Lord, what would you have me to do?

Our wills are ours, we know not how;
Our wills are ours, to make them thine.

This is the posture we must begin with. But what do we actually do when we come to God in the Gospel? What are the actions and affections we are to have?

II. The Gospel’s Procedure

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. Lament and mourn and weep! Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.

Here we have a set of commands that show us both a negative and a positive action we take in the Gospel. We turn away from something and we turn towards something. We resist and we draw near.

The Gospel has two actions, which are two sides of the same coin, repentance and faith. Repentance means to turn away, to change your mind and heart about something. Faith means to turn towards, to trust, to embrace with a new heart, and a new action.

Look in these verses for the first action and attitude – repentance.

Here’s the first way it is described: resist the Devil. This means to oppose, set yourself against, withstand. This has nothing to do with binding or rebuking Satan, giving him announcements, casting him out, or anything of that nature. What is the context here? It is submission to God in the Gospel. You resist Satan when you repent of sin. When you refuse his lies, his temptations, his system of rebellion to God, and say, I am not with this any more. I don’t want to be in his family, or live according to his family’s values. I’m turning from that.

Look at the second description of repentance. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded.

Hands speaks of actions, and hearts speaks of thoughts and desires. Sin in both action and attitude must be cleansed and purified. The language here is the ceremonial language of Israel, where God gave His people all these pictures of sin in the laws of cleanness and uncleanness. You didn’t want to touch what was unclean, you wanted to be away from it, because it would defile you and limit you, sometimes for days. You would then need a sacrifice and a ritual washing in water to be clean. So the idea is, all sinners, all afflicted with a double-mindedness, split between God and the world, we are coming to God wanting to be clean of sin, wanting to get away from it, wanting our sins to be remembered no more.

Notice James shows that repentance is not simply turning from the sinful actions. Repentance is also changing our whole attitude towards sin. Lament and mourn and weep! Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.

In repentance there is not merely recognising that an action is sin, it is coming to see the sinfulness of sin. In repentance we begin to feel revulsion, horror, deep regret. These words, lament, mourn, weep, are found almost nowhere in modern Christianity. Everything in modern Christianity must be chipper and cheerful, upbeat and happy, positive and smiley-face. You’ll hear churches say, “We don’t want to judge people, or make them feel condemned. We’re here to uplift.” Now I’m happy to tell you that this passage speaks explicitly about being lifted up, but it is not something we do to ourselves, and apparently it is something that happens after we have felt some serious revulsion at our sin.

Now how does this come about? We can’t fake our tears. I think part of the answer is in Isaiah 6.

Isaiah 6:1 In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple.
2 Above it stood seraphim; each one had six wings: with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew.
3 And one cried to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; The whole earth is full of His glory!”
4 And the posts of the door were shaken by the voice of him who cried out, and the house was filled with smoke.
5 So I said: “Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; For my eyes have seen the King, The LORD of hosts.”
6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a live coal which he had taken with the tongs from the altar.
7 And he touched my mouth with it, and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; Your iniquity is taken away, And your sin purged.”

(Isa 6:1-7)

What happens here? Isaiah sees a vision of God in His glory, and he responds with profound repentance. He says that he is a man of unclean lips and feels completely ruined before God’s holiness. Isaiah was not faking his horror at his own sin. Isaiah probably had the cleanest lips in Israel, but once confronted with God, he saw his mouth as filthy. He mourned, he lamented, he wept, his laughter turned to mourning, his joy to gloom.

When the Spirit is working in us, He will show us the ugliness of our sin. If we do not fight that, and resist Him, and justify ourselves, and hide in the trees, and make fig-leaf coverings for ourselves, we will feel the beginnings of what God feels towards sin. We will begin to hate what God hates, and even a drop of His hatred for sin, will fill us with mourning, lamenting and sorrow.

But it will not stay there.

5 For His anger is but for a moment, His favor is for life; Weeping may endure for a night, But joy comes in the morning.

(Psa 30:5)

After Isaiah is broken by his sin, an angel flies with a coal and cleanses him, and from there we see the other side of repentance.

Here is the flip side. As we resist the devil, turn away from sin, desire to be clean of it, we then turn to something, towards something or someone. The text describes faith this way: Draw near to God

That literally means, approach. Come near. It is interesting how often faith is described as coming to God, approaching Him, going towards Him.

Hebrews 11:6 But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.

Joh 6:37 “All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will by no means cast out.
28 “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

(Mat 11:28)

Perhaps we need to stop thinking of faith as mere mental agreement, and think of it as the Bible describes it – an approach to a Person, drawing near to a Person for all that He is. Coming closer, for forgiveness, for righteousness, for enablement.

What does this look like for the unbeliever? You realise that God is Lord, and you have lived as a rebel, and you wish to surrender to Him. So you turn way from the world, and Satan, and yourself, and you want your sin off you, and cleansed from you, both in deed and in thought. And the Holy Spirit is laying on you not only the danger of Hell, but the ugliness of sin, the grief it is to God, and you feel genuine sorrow and guilt and pain, and shame. But you don’t stay there, you draw near to Christ, to go to Him, those arms stretched out on the Cross are a welcome to repentant sinners. You go to Him, knowing He will cleanse, and forgive, and give you a new heart.

What does it look like for a believer? You also realise He is Lord. And you come under conviction that something is displeasing or disobedient in your speech, or in your relationships, or in your attitude to the Word, or in your finances, or in your thought life, or in your prayer life, and you realise you have been acting like a runaway slave, from the only Master who has ever truly loved you.

And you want to come under Him, and take your right place before Him, and so you allow the Spirit to show you the sinfulness of sin, because if He doesn’t, there’s a higher chance you will go back to it. So you spend time before Him, letting Him show you why it is lamentable, why it is grievous and painful, and you seek His cleansing. You ask Him to wash you of it, because you don’t want it. But then you draw near, not away, desiring to be more like Him, to please Him more, to have His Word more deeply in you. You believe He has cleansed you, and from that place of acceptance you seek to draw nearer.

So what then if we do this? It seems like death to humble yourself, submit, repent. What promise is held out to us if we do so?

III. The Gospel’s Promise

Here are four promises for those who humbly repent and believe:

• But He gives more grace. Therefore He says: “God resists the proud, But gives grace to the humble.”
  God’s power. The grace you want, the grace you need comes to the humble. God’s grace is allergic to pride, and the prouder you are, the more destitute you will be of God’s favour, and God’s enablement. Get into this position of submission, and you become a lightning rod for grace.
• Resist the devil and he will flee from you.
  God’s freedom. Satan will not have dominion over you. Those who belong to the Shepherd leave the devil’s family, and he has no power over their lives. The fear of death is gone, and whatever power he has on unbelievers is gone. So too, as a believer, a repenting believer sends the Tempter from you.
• Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.
  God’s love. God will come to you, and answer your faith with salvation. For the believer too, He will come with His presence, and His enablement. God will not remain passive, or distant or uninvolved. Here is God’s Word, bank on it, if you approach God, and come to Him, He will give you the enablement you need, the obedience, the power, the comfort, that you need.
• He will lift you up.
  God’s vindication. You give up seeking first place, give up seeking exaltation, give up seeking your own life, and God, in His own way, will give it back to you. He will give you godly promotion, godly strength, godly beauty. Seek the low place, and God will promote you. Be weak and foolish in the world’s eyes, and you will be shown to be wise in God’s, be surrendered before God, and He will give you victory, be dead to your own life, and He will give you life and life more abundantly.

God knows there is a war within. Before we submit, and humble ourselves, we experience a huge tussle. It feels as if repentance is going to kill some part of us, and take us with it. But unless we let God do this, we will stay on the other side of unbelief and pride, where sin thrives. So God promises us – on this side of submissive repentance and faith, you will find grace, and freedom, and love, and vindication.

Now I don’t know what part of James the Holy Spirit has already particularly put His finger on in your life. But here is the major invitation in the book of James, and perhaps the clearest invitation in the Bible. God has grace for the humble, and He lifts you up if you come. So turn, hate your sin, abandon the world, submit to Christ, ask for cleansing, draw near to Him and He will draw near to You.