Submit to God | James 4:1-12

What Kind of Clay are you? Moldable or Not?

Submit to God, The Divine Potter

Imagine that you are a piece of clay in the hands of the divine potter, your heavenly Father. What kind of clay are you? God’s goal is to shape believers into the image of His Son and to make them vessels He can use to accomplish His plans. Do you harden your will, are you unmold-able, and refuse to bend? Or do you yield to the pressure of His hand?

I want to talk on how can we live our lives in submission to God.

James 4:7 ⁷ Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you

The meaning of the word ‘submit’ is “to obey, submit oneself unto” This word in Greek was used as a military term meaning “to arrange troop divisions under the command of a leader.” Submission to God means to arrange our life under the command of God rather than to live according to one’s own way.

Now you maybe telling me that pastor I am submissive to God, otherwise why would I come to church? Let’s read the qualities of a person who is non-submissive to God.

James 4:1-12 Submit Yourselves to God

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,^[a^] 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^[b^]? ⁶ But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: “God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.”^[c^] Submit to God and the devil will Flee from you 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^[d^] 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?

Remember James is addressing this passage to the church going Christians and he brings out the qualities of a non-submissive Christian here.

Believers who do Not Submit to God

11. Fight and quarrel among one another. v1
    b. They have evil desires that battle in their heart. v1
    c. They always want something but they do not get it. v2
    d. They will do anything against a person – Kill, covet, fight, and quarrel. v2
    e. They never pray. They are too proud to pray. v2
    f. When they pray they pray with wrong motives. v3
    g. Proud. v6
    g. Very quick to talk and slander one another. v11
    h. Quick to speak and judge. v11. They are not judging people but judging the law.

Listen, The key reason as to why people exhibit non-submissive behavior is found in James 4:4 You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.

Friendship with the world, they are believers but still living in their old lifestyle. Such people are called adulterers. People who practice the above commit spiritual adultery. Such people cannot possess your promise. God has promises for them but their lifestyle does not permit God to bless them.

How are we to Submit to the Lord?

1. Submit by resisting

James 4:7 ⁷ Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 

In order to submit to someone we need 2 qualities, submission and resistance. You need to be submissive to God and resistant to the devil. Listen, being resistant to the devil is not rebuking the devil. Many believers feel if they rebuke the devil will flee.

Illustration

Indians are known to be lovers of sweet and suppose you are having a Jilabi and accidently you spill some of the juice into the floor. Sure the sweet is going to attract ants and flies. How much ever you try to resist and rebuke them, they will still come. But if you clean the floor you can keep the insects away.

Therefore, if we need to resist the devil we need to stop sinning. Sin gives the devil the foothold on our life. It is only if we take a voluntary decision to stop sinning can we truly submit to God and resist the devil.

How can I stop sin when I am living in a body? Many say it is my weakness. Let’s see what the Bible has to say about sin and a believer.

Romans 6:12 ¹² Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires.

Don’t allow sin have control over you. This is something that we must do. Providing salvation is something that Christ has done for us but to resist sin is something that we must do for ourselves. We must take a decision to resist sin, remember God is always there to help us. See salvation is a free gift but to live holy and to be holy takes work and effort.

Romans 6:11-12 ¹¹ In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. ¹² Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires.

a. A believer is dead to sin

When you accepted Christ as your savior not only did your relationship to Christ change – but your relationship to Satan and the world has changed. You are now dead to sin.

Romans 6:1-3 What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? ² By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? ³ Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?

Illustration

One of the things I know about dead bodies is that dead people stop doing the things they have done before. Can a smoker who died continue to smoke? Can a drunkard who is dead walk to the bar? Or can a gossiper gossip after death? He stops eating, breathing, moving. A dead person is no longer alive to do everything he was doing before. So when we are baptized we are no longer alive to sin – we have died to it. If we have died to sin – stop sinning.

b. A believer is buried with Christ

 Romans 6:3-4 ³ Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? ⁴ We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

Not only are we dead, we are also buried.

When we are baptized we are saying to the world – “I am no longer alive to sin, my sinful man is dead and now buried with Christ.” Can a buried man get up and do anything? A buried person cannot keep relations with the people of the world.

c. A believer is no longer a slave to sin

Romans 6:6-7 ⁶ For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with,^[a^] that we should no longer be slaves to sin— ⁷ because anyone who has died has been set free from sin.

A condition of slavery was that the slave was to do what their master told them to do. As a Christian you are no longer to be a slave to Satan. When Satan comes knocking on your door let him know that you don’t work for him anymore.

Illustration

One day Augustine was approached by a woman who had been his mistress before his conversion. When he saw her, he turned and walked away quickly. She called after him, “Augustine, it’s me! It’s me!” Quickening his pace, he called back over his shoulder, “Yes, I know it’s you, but it’s no longer me!”

A dead man has nothing to do with sin. We cannot do what the world does or cannot do what our friends do. We sure have the right to do whatever we want to do, but since we are in Christ we submit that right to him. I have died to sin.

If I want to really be submissive to God – I must resist the devil, don’t allow sin to have control over you.

Illustration

Bangalore city is getting dustier by the day. You have a very good shower, put fresh clothes, walk outside for 20 minutes, come back home and wipe your face. You will find dust all over your body. The sins of this world can easily entangle a believer. When we find sin in our lives, grieve over it and ask God to cleanse us.

2. We submit to God by grieving

James 4:9 ⁹ Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom.

a. Grieve, mourn, and wail – Repent

The big idea is that we must take sin seriously and repent. “Grieve, mourn, wail” all convey the same idea.

The command to grieve conveys the idea of being broken and feeling miserable because of sin. In

Romans 7:24 ²⁴ What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?

Paul used this same word to describe the sinful tendencies that he continued to struggle with. This is the attitude that we must have toward sin – Know that we have sinful tendencies and grieve for sin.

The command to mourn conveys the idea to mourn in the same way that someone would mourn the death of a loved one. Christ gave us a model of this type of repentance in Luke 18. The tax collector stood at a distance from the temple. He would not even look at heaven but beat his breast and said, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” Christ tells us that the result of this repentance was that he was justified before God.

The third command is to weep. It is the outward demonstration of the first two commands. One of the best examples of this can be found in Mark 14 when Peter understood the weight of his sin of disowning Jesus 3 times. When the rooster crowed Peter remembered the words of Jesus and broke down and wept in repentance.

James 4:9 ⁹ Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. 

James is not condemning laughter and joy. Remember the context of our passage; James is addressing believers who desire friendship with world above God. So, when James says “Let you laughter be turned into mourning and your joy into gloom” he is talking about the laughter and joy that these people had from their sin. The question that we must ask ourselves is what are we laughing about and what brings us joy? Is our laughter at the expense of other people? Does our joy come from the wrong that we do? Do we have laughter for the inappropriate things that we see on TV or in movies? Where does your joy come from? If your laughter and joy are coming from the wrong things then you need to “let you laughter be turned into mourning and your joy into gloom.”

The truth of the matter is that all people will eventually mourn over their sin. If people have not already done so, trust me, they will. You can keep putting it off until it is too late and mourn over your sin in eternal judgment. Or, you can mourn now, repenting of your sin and the Lord will give you grace. So we submit to God by Grieving.

3. We submit by moving

We submit to God by moving close to him. Once we know that we have sin in us, we need to take a deliberate step to move close to him.

James 4:8 ⁸ Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 

Moving is pain. We know the difficulty of moving from one house to the other. It’s a lot of work. And moving from where we are to where God is also a lot of work. In fact, it’s so much work that most people don’t want to do it. They know what they are doing is wrong, but they do not want to leave and move to God.

James is giving us 2 ways how we can move closer to God 

James 4:8 ⁸ Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 

a. Wash your hands

Once you know that you have sinned and you grieve over it, ask God to cleanse you.

Isaiah 1:18 “Come now, let us reason together,” says the LORD. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.”

Wash your soiled hands. Understand your sins and be cleansed from your sins in the blood of the Jesus.

b. Be single-minded

James 4:8 8 Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 

Have a mind that totally trusts in God alone. Who is a double-minded believer? In James chapter 1, he mentions the definition of a double-minded believer.

James 1:6-8 ⁶ But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. ⁷ That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. ⁸ Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do.

Believers, who come to church, worship God, listen to the Word, pray but doubt what is said in the Word or what is being spoken by God, are double-minded believers. When we come to the presence of God, when we pray and worship, we must come with the boldness and confidence that God has answered my prayers. My God is on my side. Such people draw close to God and are submissive to God.

Are you willing to be the Clay in God’s Hand?

God has kept a good life for you. He has a great year for you, your breakthrough is coming. But how many of you are willing to believe the Word of God. Believe that God has called to prosper you. Are you willing to resist, repent, and move to God? Does any part of your life need transformation? Have you withheld any area from the Lord? Let’s submit ourselves as clay in God’s hands. Allow God to mold you into the vessel he chooses to be. Let’s Pray.