“Contrite Submission” – James 4:1-10

Unless you have been under a rock for the last week or so you have heard the name of US Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.  He is the soldier captured by the Taliban and held in Pakistan for 5 years.  We don’t really know for sure what the circumstances are surrounding his time in the military, his capture or his release but it seems to be pretty clear that the young man was somewhat disillusioned with the war in Afghanistan and his role in it.

I will state right up front that I never served in the military and I so appreciate those who do.  If you are a veteran you have my highest appreciation for your service, whatever branch and whatever job you had.  Maybe you have seen combat and maybe not but I don’t believe that anybody who has ever served in wartime in almost any capacity could say they were anything but disillusioned with war.

If you can go to war and not see how horrible it is then you are either shielded from the truth or delusional towards it.  Nobody faces real combat and says at the end, “Well, that wasn’t so bad.”  War is a horrible, horrible thing and I pray that our political and military leaders have great wisdom about placing our men and women in harm’s way.  I’m not saying it should never be done but if lives have to be risked and parents are taken from kids and kids from their parents, not to mention the financial, physical, and emotional burden it places on people, then you can expect war to be awful.

Whatever definition you look under you are going to find words such as conflict, battle, bloodshed, struggle and fight.  The very definition of the word assumes difficulty much less disillusionment.  A group of academics and historians has compiled this startling information: Since 3600 B.C., the world has known only 292 years of peace!  Think about that.  In all those years, there has been war going on somewhere on the earth with somebody killing somebody else, some parent is killed or some child is killed in war every year except for 292 years.

And that is just figuring up the countries that are at war with each other.  That is not accounting for the minor skirmishes within a country, not to mention the families that war against families or individuals against individuals.  We even have companies that go to war with each other trying to put the other out of business.  Granted, most of the time nobody dies in those types of wars but they do include conflict, battle, struggle and fighting.

We sometimes even find ourselves at war with those we love the most.  Turn on the news any day of the week and you will hear how somebody got mad and killed a member of their own family.  Why is that?  It’s obviously not something that has happened just in this generation.  Evidently, it has always been this way.  But the question is, why?  And that is a question that people have asked since the beginning and that includes our beloved Pastor James in his New Testament book with his name.

So, turn to the book of James, if you will, as we continue our study of this powerful little book.  We are moving right along through the book, not coming close to doing it justice but seeing just the same some practical ways that mature Christians can become even more mature.   James is between Hebrews and 1 Peter and we are in the fourth chapter.  James was the pastor of the church in Jerusalem and was writing to them but every word seems like it could have been written to Christ Fellowship just last week.

Let’s start with James 4:1-10.  “What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? ² You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. ³ When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. ⁴ You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. ⁵ Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us? ⁶ But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: “God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.”  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.”

Well, don’t look at me like that.  I didn’t write it.  Another pastor wrote it to his church some 2000 years ago.  But James was a pastor who loved his church just like I love this one.  And James felt like I do that he would rather risk offending somebody by using some very strong language like the words “adulterous” and “enemy of God” and warning against being proud than to tickle their ears and let them waddle out of there with lives unchanged.

Be mad at me if you will.  Be mad at James if it makes you feel better.  Say the 3 most popular words anybody says as they read through James: “But that’s hard!”  But know that you are hearing truth from the Word of God and know that if we can do what God tells us to do through His servant James then we will be more mature believers and we will look more like Jesus in the end.  And I hope that is our goal today.

James starts by asking the question, “What causes fights and quarrels among you?”  Now, if he were to ask any one of us that individually, we would probably say something along the lines of, “Well, he won’t do what I want him to do.”  Right?  We want to get what we want and somebody else wants to get what they want.  And they don’t understand that we are right and they are wrong.  And that is why there have been thousands of books written on how to get what you want.

I literally just googled “books, how to get what you want” and there were pages and pages of them.  And do you know what the title of most of them was?  “How To Get What You Want.”  Somebody needs to write a book on how to give your book a unique title.  That’s what we need.  Because we don’t need to know any more about how to get what we want from somebody else.  We don’t need to know how to be a better debater or arguer.  In fact, James tells us that the problem is not between us and another person at all.  The problem is our relationship with God.

In fact, our real problem is not that we can’t get along with our enemies.  Our problem is that we are enemies with God Himself.  And realize again that James is not writing to a bunch of unchurched, unsaved heathens.  He is writing this to the first church in Jerusalem filled with believers.  And he is writing it to Christ Fellowship.  He is writing this to me!  How dare he!  Who does he think he is?

Well, I don’t know who James thought he was but I know God thought he was the one to share this truth and so I am listening when James speaks here.  I am listening because I am tired of the fights and quarrels in my life.  Now, most of you have known me for quite a while and I would dare say that almost none of you have ever seen me in a fight or having a quarrel with somebody.  It takes a lot to get me mad and when I do get mad, most of the time it is short-lived and easily remedied.

But I am listening to James here because I am tired of the fights and quarrels that go on in my own mind.  Somebody else may never know that I am fighting with them in my thought life.  My mind is racing thinking of what I’m going to say next and what I should have said and how I should have done this and said that and next time I’m gonna…And pretty soon my joy and my peace , not to mention my witness, are gone. 

I may even pray for the other person.  And you know how that prayer goes.  “God please give them wisdom.”  In other words, give them wisdom to know that I am right and they are wrong.  “God give them the ability to give me what I want.”  That’s what I’m saying to God.  And James says in verse 3 that we do not have because we ask with wrong motives that we may spend what we get on our pleasures.

I warned some of you to wear your steel-toed boots as we go through James to protect your toes from being stepped on.  I want you to know I have needed my boots and a helmet and shoulder pads this week preparing this sermon.  But, thank you Lord, I have learned from James that there are 3 things I need to do to keep this from being a problem.  The solution is not being able to win friends and influence people.  Nor is the solution just allowing people to walk all over you when you want something. 

The solution is not being an enemy of God.  Now that sounds pretty simple.  I love God.  I’m not His enemy, right?  But James says that anybody that is a friend of this world is an enemy of God and there are 3 things we need to do to make sure that we are not friends of this world.  The first one we see in verse 7.  It simply says to submit to God.  Submit to God.

“Submit” is originally a military term that means to put yourself under, as in ranking.  I have used my Uncle Bill as an illustration several times about different things.  He’s quite the character and it’s pretty easy to find illustrations from his life.  And most of the time I use him as a positive example of what to do and how to do it.  Not so today. 

As a young man my uncle had a problem submitting to authority.  And while that is a problem for anybody it is especially problematic for a private in the army.  Uncle Bill had only been in the army a short time but he had been there long enough to get bored, evidently.  So, when a batch of brand new recruits came to the same camp where he was, Uncle Bill decided to have a little fun.

He went over to the barracks they were in, in the middle of the night, woke them up, screaming at them that he was Sergeant Klinglesmith, although he was only a private just like them.  He got them all up and outside and commenced to drill them, one, two, march, march etc.  Finally the noise woke somebody up and lights come on and my uncle just walked off leaving the new recruits standing there to get in all kinds of trouble.

The MP’s put all the new recruits in the big gymnasium and started to question them and they all tell the same story.  Sergeant Klinglesmith had them out there but they don’t know where he went.  “Sergeant Klinglesmith?  We don’t have a Sergeant Klinglesmith!”  So they go looking for my uncle and finally found him and brought him into the gym where every soldier on base was now.

They put a full-length mirror in the middle of the gym and made my uncle salute himself and drill himself over and over while every man in the place laughed at him.  And you would think that would have made him be more submissive but just stay tuned until next week to catch the next installment of Uncle Bill tales.

See, when a private tries to act like a sergeant there is going to be a problem.  Unless the private will acknowledge in his mind and in his actions that he is under the one who outranks him then that soldier is not only disobedient but he is worthless to the cause.  He can’t be used for anything.  He might as well be fighting for the other side.  And that is how James is describing us when we are proud.

And some of you are right now thinking, “Amen Pastor Todd!  You preach to those proud people.”  But let me just say one more time that James is preaching to US proud people.  If you were to ask my uncle he would say that he was just bored; just wanting to have a little fun.  He wasn’t trying to hurt anything.  He knew he wasn’t a sergeant.  He was just playing.

But Psalm 10:4 says, “In his pride the wicked man does not seek him; in all his thoughts there is no room for God.”  We don’t want that to be said of us.  We don’t want to be at war with God.  And yet we all struggle with pride.  Pride is the root of all sin and until we submit ourselves to God and acknowledge in our minds and in our actions that we submit to Him then we are at war with Him.  We have to submit everything we have and everything we are to His will.

Next James tells us in verse 8 that we have to draw near to God.  “⁸ Come near to God and he will come near to you.”  Well, how do we do that, James?  How do I draw near to God?  The act of drawing near is just the opposite of the word James uses earlier in verse 4.  Drawing near is the opposite of “adulterous.”  You know what adulterous means.  Drawing near is the act of making yourself chaste and becoming clean.

Wash your hands, purify your hearts.  But do it completely.  You hear a knock on your door.  You go to the door and it’s Jesus.  “Oh, hi, Jesus!  Come on in.  I just finished cleaning my house.  You picked a great time to come over.  Let me show you around.”  So Jesus steps inside but stops as you step over the dead squid that is there in the hallway. 

He says, “Todd, my friend, there is a dead squid on the carpet.  That’s gross.” 

“Oh, don’t worry about that little thing.  Just step over it and come see how nice the rest of my house is.”

“But, Todd, it’s nasty.  It’s a putrid, festering, maggot-infested pile of dead fish bait that is stinking up the place.  I’m not going past it.  In fact, I’m leaving.  I don’t care what the rest of the place looks like.  You obviously don’t want me here.  Your house is not clean.  It’s offensive!”  And He leaves.

And just like that dead squid, your little pet sin is offensive to God.  You know that thing you like to do or that attitude you have.  It’s been there so long you don’t even think about it anymore.  And you wish God would just look over it.  Get past it.  Go on to the rest of your life but He can’t.  He can’t draw near to you if you are not clean and chaste and pure.  Almost pure is not pure.

A.W. Tozer has an essay called “Nearness is Likeness.”  To be near God is to be like God.  And the more we are like God the nearer we are to Him.  Is God almost pure?  Is He nearly holy?  Does He tell us to be sort of holy as He is sort of holy?  That is offensive to God!  We pray, “God please help me!  Give me peace, joy and wisdom, grace and mercy, please!  Don’t mind that putrid, offensive sin right there.  Just help me.”  And then we wonder why our prayers go unanswered.

Submit to God in everything you do and have.  Draw near to God by exposing all of your sin and asking His forgiveness for it.  And lastly, we see in verses 9 and 10 that we are to humble ourselves before God.  “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.”

As most of you know, King David is one of my favorite biblical characters.  I grew up reading about him growing up and now I feel like we are almost friends.  And since he is my friend I always hate to point out anything bad about him.  But I want you to turn to Psalm 51 for just a minute.  All I have to do is say, “Psalm 51” and most of you know it is the psalm of repentance that David wrote after his sin with Bathsheba was found out.

For almost a year David had been at war with God but he finally submitted when Nathan confronted him.  He drew near to God right after that and here we see him humble himself before God and before the world.  Look at verses 1-4:  Have mercy on me, O God,
    according to your unfailing love;
according to your great compassion
    blot out my transgressions.
² Wash away all my iniquity
    and cleanse me from my sin.

³ For I know my transgressions,
    and my sin is always before me.
⁴ Against you, you only, have I sinned
    and done what is evil in your sight;
so you are right in your verdict
    and justified when you judge.

Verse 10: Create in me a pure heart, O God,
    and renew a steadfast spirit within me.

And verses 16 and 17:  You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it;
    you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.
¹⁷ My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit;
    a broken and contrite heart
    you, God, will not despise.

He says he comes to God with a broken and contrite heart.  “Contrite” means to be repentant and deeply sorry.  If you are wondering just how sorry you have to be to qualify as “contrite” then I can assure you that you are not there yet.  But you will be.  Charles Spurgeon said, “Every Christian has a choice between being humble or being humbled.”



But I have good news!  “Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”  Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you (1 Peter 5:5-7).”



I even have more good news.  Not only should we humble ourselves but we can with the help of Christ.  And not only will we be exalted by God when we do but we also have a model for how to do it. “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2:5-11).”



When you realize who Jesus really is…and who you really are…then you will submit to Him, draw near to Him and humble yourself before Him.  Will you do that today?