We're turning to James chapter four, and we'll take the reading from the verse five. We welcome you. Thank you for joining with us. We trust that the Lord will bless your heart. And for those who join with us online or in the church car park, again, we welcome you and thank you for your presence. And may the Lord help and instruct us through his word. James chapter four, and beginning our reading at the verse five. Word of God says, do you think, that the scripture saith in vain, the spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy, but he giveth more grace? Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble. Submit yourselves therefore to God, resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners, and purify your hearts, ye double-minded. Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep. Let your laughter be turned into mourning, and your joy to heaviness. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up. up. We'll end our reading at the 10th verse of the chapter and let's again briefly pray. Loving Father, blessed Spirit, come we cry to Thee and bless O God our hearts, fill this preacher and every hearer with Thy Spirit and grant dear God Thy good blessings to be upon the preaching of the word. Lord, I ask this in the Savior's precious and worthy name. Amen and amen. The word of God reveals to its readership that the Christian is troubled by deadly foes who will show them no mercy nor relaxation in their efforts to destroy them. Last Wednesday night we thought about the three-pronged attack that the Christian is faced with in the spiritual battle that they are engaged with. The world, the flesh, and the devil are ferociously opposed to the soldier of Jesus Christ, doing all in their power to wound and then to fail the child of God on the battlefield of this world. Having identified the enemies of the Christian last week, I want to show you how we can overcome this trilogy of evil. And I want to do that in a message that I've entitled, Securing Victory Over Our Enemies. Securing Victory Over Our Enemies. Now in the portion of God's Word that we read this evening, James employs four imperatives. or four statements of command that I believe identify and inform us how victory can be secured over the world and the flesh and the devil. You see James just doesn't identify our enemies, but rather as practical as he always is, he gives to us counsel on how we can overcome the enemy of the world. flesh and the devil and so we want to think about these four imperatives that if followed will help us to be more than conquerors through him that loved us the first thing that we are to do if we want to secure victory over our enemies is that we are to submit ourselves to God James 4 and the verse 7 submit yourselves therefore to God now These words of James come directly after James speaks about, I suppose, one of the greatest fleshly enemies that the Christian faces in their life. That enemy is the enemy of pride. Look there at verse six, but he giveth more grace. Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace to the humble. And in light of this matter of pride, He then encourages the child of God to submit themselves to God. The mention of this enemy of pride in verse 6 indicates that pride is often the enemy of the child of God. It was obviously a problem in the lives of these individuals, and it is, if we were honest, a problem and an enemy to all of us in our Christian lives. Richard Baxter, the Puritan, wrote, self is the most treacherous enemy and the most insinuating deceiver in the world. Of all other vices, it is both the hardest to find out and the hardest to cure. Jonathan Edwards, he said, Pride is a person having too high an opinion of himself. Pride is the first sin that ever entered into the universe and the last sin that is rooted out. Pride, he said, is the worst sin. It is the most secret of all sins. There is no matter in which the heart is more deceitful and unsearchable. Alas, he said, how much pride the best of us have in our hearts. Pride is God's most stubborn enemy. There's no sin like pride. No sin like pride. It is a secret sin. It is a subtle sin and it appears in so many guises within our lives. So often undetected and unsuspected, pride so often arises in our lives. Another preacher said pride was the first sin to destroy the calm of eternity. It was the pride that cast Lucifer from heaven and was pride that caused our first parents their place in paradise. Pride is the first sin to enter a man's heart and the last to leave. No sin is more offensive to God than the sin of pride. Pride has been referred to as the complete anti-God state of mind. It militates against God's authority, God's law, and God's rule. Pride assaults God's throne and asserts its independence in an attempt to dislodge God. as the sovereign of the universe. God has much to say about pride in his word and his estimation of it. In Psalm 138 in the verse 6, it says, Lo, the Lord be high, yet hath he respect unto the lonely, but the pride he knoweth far off. Proverbs 6 verse 16 and 17. These six things doth the Lord hate. Yea, seven are an abomination unto him. On top of the list is a proud look. Proverbs 16 verse 5. Everyone that is proud in heart is an abomination unto the Lord. Proverbs 21 verse 4. A high look and a proud heart and the plowing of wicket is sin. I hope none of us Deceived by the sin of pride. It is a sin that we all struggle with. How do we overcome it? How do we get the victory over our pride? Well, James tells us that if we want to get victory over this enemy or any other of the enemies in our lives, we are to submit ourselves to God. Submit, what does it mean? Well, the word submit here is that Greek word hypotasio, and it translates to mean to subordinate, to be under obedience, to be subject onto, to be put in subjection to, to submit oneself to. We're to come under the control of God. If we are to be an overcomer instead of being overcome in our lives. You know in prayer we often hear people praying these words, resist the devil and he will flee from you. But as I said last week or a few weeks ago, the devil's not one bit afraid of you or I, in and of ourselves. However, When we submit ourselves to God and we give our lives over to God, what we're doing is that we are bringing God into the conflict. And the devil is most certainly afraid of our God. When we submit ourselves to God, as one person put it, it leaves the devil face to face with God. This reminds me of that such a familiar illustration of the little girl, who when the devil came knocking with temptation, she said that she sent Jesus to the door to answer the door. And the devil came knocking at the door of her heart and life. She sent Jesus to answer the door. And that is in its most simplistic terms what it is to submit ourselves to God. And we have such an example, such a exemplary example of someone doing this and thank God securing victory over the devil. And that was none other than our Lord and Savior. Jesus Christ, there in Gethsemane's garden, the Son of God submitted himself to God when he prayed these words, nevertheless not my will. but thine be done. He was submitting himself to the will of his Father. It was supremely, this submission that James speaks of here, is supremely exemplified in the life of the Savior. Coming not to do his own will, but the will of the Father. And let's remember that the servant is not greater than his master. And if Christ submitted himself to the Father, Well then, you and I ought to submit ourselves to God. Unconditional surrender to God is the only way to complete victory over our enemies. Thomas Manton, he wrote, to submit to God is to give ourselves up to be governed by his will and pleasure. Our thoughts, our counsels, our affections, our actions must be guided according to the strict rules of His word. That's how we submit ourselves to God. I wonder, have you submitted yourself to God? Did you submit yourself to God today, going into the day? with all of its uncertainty and all of its unknowns. And you were coming against the world and the flesh and the devil. Did you stop just a little moment? Did you spend time with God in prayer and in the word? Did you submit yourself, your family, your time, those things that you were going to do? Did you submit your life to God? Did you submit your will to God? wonder are we those who just rush into the day without submitting ourselves to God and then we wonder why we find ourselves in defeat. Coming under God's authority resigning ourselves to live according to his word will lead us to victory when we follow him into the fray. Thank God Christ goes with us. There can be no victory in the Christian life without this practice of submitting or surrendering ourselves to God. And so James tells us, you want no victory, this is the first step, submit yourself to God. But having submitted ourselves to God, the second imperative that James issues is that we are to resist the devil. Submit yourselves therefore to God, verse seven, resist the devil and he will flee from you. Take a look at that word resist. It's a word that speaks of the Christian being on the defensive foot. It doesn't mean that the Christian is to be on the offensive. People think that that's what this word resist is. And there is a time when we do take the battle to the gate, but there is a time also that we must, as it were, stand against the devil. We must stand firm, stand fast. We must be on the defensive. We must stand against, that's what the word means, to oppose, to withstand this imperative. is the complete opposite of his first command. For while we are to yield to God in all things, we are to yield to the devil in none. While we are to yield to God in all things, we are submit ourselves to God in all things, in every area of our lives, in no area of our lives are we to submit ourselves or allow ourselves to be yielded to The devil, we are to resist, we are to oppose him in whatever way he may come to approach us, whether by sins, allurements, whether by flattering promises, whether by the fascinations of this world, whether by temptations, whether by doubts, whether by threats, we are to resist the devil. If we do not resist the devil, we will be taken captive by the devil. Verse Peter 5, verse 8 and 9, be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary as the devil, as a rowing lion, walketh about seeking whom he may devour, who resist, Peter says, who resist steadfast in the faith. Now God never gives his children a command. He doesn't ask us ever to do something that we are unable to do. With every command, He furnishes and empowers us with the grace and the strength to carry out that command. And it is no different here. The Christian has a formidable foe in the devil. How can we know victory over him? Well, we're told in 1 John 4 verse 4, that greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world. You turn there to 1 Peter or 1 John, 1 John and the chapter 2 and the verse 13 and 14. We read about individuals here who overcame the devil. 1 John 2 verse 13 and 14, I write unto you fathers, because ye have known him, that is from the beginning. I write unto you young men, because ye have overcome the wicked one. I write unto you little children, because ye have known the Father. I have written unto you fathers, because ye have known him, that is from the beginning. I have written unto you young men, because ye are strong, and the word of God abideth in you, and ye have overcome the wicked. And so there is, thank God, the possibility, yes, and God equips us with the ability to overcome the wicked one. We don't have to be overcome by the devil and by his temptations. Here were young men, yes, young in the faith, And yet they knew what it was to live the victorious Christian life, because they had submitted themselves to God, and by the grace of God, they had resisted the devil, and not only had they resisted the devil, but they had overcome the devil. And oh, that we were such individuals in our day-to-day lives. How do we resist the devil? We're told here to resist the devil. How do we resist him? Well, there are a number of ways that that can be done. We resist the devil by giving him no place in our lives. Ephesians 2 verse 26 and 27, be ye angry and sin not, let not the sun go down upon your wrath, neither give place to the devil. This is how we resist him. We give him not an inch, not a millimeter, not a centimeter in our lives and his approaches when he comes to us. We give him no place. We reject the temptation. We flee the place of sin as Joseph did in his day. We give him no room within our minds or within our thought life. We resist all those places in our lives and all those vehicles by which sin can approach our lives. We have done with them. We put them to death. We give the devil no place. We also resist the devil by living lives of sobriety and vigilance and prayerfulness. 1 Peter 5 verse 8, be sober, be vigilant because your adversary the devil as a roaring lion walketh about seeking whom he may devour. We resist the devil by arming ourselves with the armor of God. Ephesians 6 verse 11, put on the whole armor of God that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. We resist him by the belt of truth and by the gospel of peace. I am by the shield of faith and by prayer and by the word of God. Word of God. Yes, and the gospel as it's preached. We resist the devil by arming ourselves with the armor of God. Yes, we resist the devil by the infilling of the Holy Ghost. By the infilling of the Holy Ghost, our Savior met the devil, resisted the devil, and overcame the devil through the infilling and the leading of the Spirit of God. Matthew 3 verse 16, And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water. And, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting upon him. Matthew then 4 verse 1, Then was Jesus led off the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. And after his days of temptation were told that the devil left him for a season. Christ resisted the devil with the infilling of the Spirit of God, anointed with the oil of gladness above his fellows, filled with the Spirit without measure. Christ went out against the devil and triumphed over him in his temptation and in his death. And thank God he continues to triumph over the wicked one, all enemies being brought under the Savior's feet, and the same Spirit The same Spirit of God that enabled Christ to successfully ward off the devil in the wilderness has been given to all believers. And brother, sister, you'll be able to resist the devil when God fills you with His Spirit. Yes, and do something else. Remind the devil of God's Word. can resist the devil in that way. Matthew 4 verse 3 and 4, And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son, command these stones to be made bread. But he answered and said, It is written. Remind the devil of the word of God. You've got doubts. You've got fears. Remind the devil of the promises of God. Remind him that you're standing on the promises and not just on the premises. Thank God we can overcome the devil. Thank God the devil can be resisted and overcome because we are fighting with him not from a position of defeat, Oh, brethren and sisters, no. We're not fighting from a position or from a place of defeat. We're fighting with the devil from a position of victory. Christ has triumphed over the enemy. For this purpose was he made manifest, that he might destroy the works of the devil. Christ has made a show of him, triumphing over them in it. He is destroyed and he is destroying the works of the devil. Stand into the victory of Christ, brother, sister. Don't be living in defeat or despair. Live above that. Live by faith. Believe in Christ. Thank God Christ triumphed over the wicked one. He crushed the tempter's head. the place called Calvary, and by faith we stand in, and we share in His victory, what Christ has done for us. Thank God is ours. He lived for us. His life is ours. He died for us. His death is ours. He rose for us. Yes, His rising is ours. Yes, and His victory over the devil, that's ours too. Through Christ, the devil will flee from us. The third imperative that James tells us that will help secure over our enemies is that we are to draw nigh to God. James 4, verse 8, draw nigh to God and he will draw nigh to you. I've already mentioned this fact, but none of us are able to overcome our enemies in our own strength. Divinely imparted strength and power. is required if we're going to overcome the world and the flesh and the devil. And thank God, such power and strength can be obtained from God. Do we not read in Isaiah chapter 40, verse 31, but they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings as eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint. The word renew, I've said it before in the verse, is the word substitute. That's the word. The word substitute, it's a thought of strength being exchanged. My strength being exchanged for God's strength. Or let's put it in the proper way. My weakness exchanged with God's strength. as I wait upon him in prayer as I draw nigh to God in prayer his strength takes the place of my weakness and by that imparted strength I am able to overcome mine enemies what does it say in Philippians 4 in the verse 13 I can do all things through Christ, which strengtheneth me. And brethren and sisters, included in that all things, and it is an all-encompassing phrase, I can do all things, encompassed in that phrase, all things, we have the thought that Christ's strength enables us to have victory over the world and the flesh and the devil. We wrongly think that we are only to draw nigh to God and it comes to seeking him for salvation. But this drawing nigh to God needs to happen every day. Thomas Manton again, he said, drawing nigh to God is not the duty of an hour or in season only at first conversion, but the work of our whole lives. Drawing nigh to God. We need to constantly return to our God. He is the source of all strength and all grace, and we are to draw from Him, and by that, we will be equipped to face the foe and successfully triumph over everyone. And as we draw, and as we draw nigh to God, We then need to follow the instructions of verse eight and nine, because as we draw nigh to God, we are to cleanse our hands, we sinners, and we are to purify our hearts, ye double-minded. We're to be afflicted and mourn, and we're to weep. We're to let our laughter be turned to mourning, and our joy into heaviness. In our drawing nigh to God, we come confessing our sin. How I am become seeking the purifying of our hearts by the blood of Christ. And such must be marked by this contrition and this godly sorrow that is identified in the verse number 9. With us then being brought into that right spiritual state and following this course of action. this confession of sin, this cleansing of our sin, this contrition over our sin, this repenting of our sin, then we are brought to that right spiritual state that will then enable you and I to draw an eye to God. and he in turn will then draw nigh to us. Think of that. Here we are, these enemies, the world, the flesh, and the devil, and yet if I draw nigh to God, he will in turn draw nigh to me. Just think of the tremendous repellent that God is when any of our enemies come against us and they see God with us. God's standing at his right hand. What did Paul say? Whenever he preached the gospel, he said, at first no man stood with me, but he said, the Lord stood with me and strengthened me. And oh, what a sight that is to have God with you, to have God with you in the battle, to have him with you in the place of skirmish upon the battlefield of life. Surely as the enemy comes against us and they see God standing with us, they must surely think if God before them, who can be against them? Is God with us? Is God with his church? Oh, to have God with his people. I care not who the enemy would be then. To have God with us. Brother, sister, could your defeats this week be traced back to the fact that you failed to draw nigh to God before engaging with the foe? Did you fail in the last seven days because you neglected in drawing near to God in prayer and Bible study and coming to the house of God? You know, if Peter had a drew near to God, On that fateful night when he denied his Lord, it's most certain that he would never have become a casualty in the skirmish with the world and the flesh and the devil that night. Oh, then let us draw near to God and lie to God. Because whenever we do, do you know what we do? We secure the assistance of God. We secure his assistance. The final quick imperative that will enable us to secure victory over our enemies is to humble ourselves in the sight of God. Verse 10, humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord and he shall lift you up. You know, it takes great humility in the part of the believer to confess that they're unable to secure victory over their enemies in their own strength. We like to think that we can, but we can't. And so each day we should enter the day saying, Lord, I cannot face my enemies alone. I'm weak, I'm feeble, I'm prone and susceptible to making wrong decisions, bringing dishonor on my name. And so help me and strengthen me. and God go with me. No folks, that's the language of the person who has humbled themselves in the sight of God. In the face of the enemy, they're humble enough to admit that without God, it would be spiritual shipwreck. And note the accompanying promise. Because with the commander comes the comfort of the promise, because those who humble themselves in the sight of God, it says God will lift them up over, the Lord will lift them up over their enemies. And he shall lift you up. Those who stumble in the battle, those who are wounded by the foe, are enabled to fight another day, and they humble themselves in the sight of God. God is humbling us. May he lift us up. And so as we come to face our enemies, let us practice in our lives the counsel that is contained in these four imperatives. Let us submit ourselves to God, Let us resist the devil, let us draw nigh to God, and let us humble ourselves in the sight of God, and in doing so, we will become more than conquerors through him that loved us. May God help us to know victory over our enemies, even in these days, for Christ's sake. Amen. Let's bow briefly in prayer. Father in heaven, We thank thee for the counsel received from thee. How simple it is. James doesn't make it complicated. Lord, we're people of simple minds. We don't need to be confused. Oh God, with regard to what we are to do, so help us therefore to submit ourselves to thee, to resist the devil. Yes, Lord, to draw nigh to thee. and then, dear Father, to humble ourselves before thee. And we rejoice that thou hast promised thou wilt lift us up. Bless thy word, we pray these prayers in Jesus' precious name. Amen and amen.