Draw Near to the Devil and He Will Draw Near to You

Good morning everyone. Swallowed something down the wrong pipe in there. Right while I'm talking about seeing Jesus.

Praise the Lord. We're going to be in the book of James today. Fourth chapter.

As you heard already, James was the half-brother of our Lord. And he grew up in the same family, of course, as Jesus did. And what a godly family it was.

You know, we never think about that much. Joseph and Mary were godly people. And the other brothers grew up in that atmosphere as well.

Not to mention having Jesus Christ in their midst. Of course, they didn't know that at the time. And it shows in the book of John, I think it's chapter 5, where you see the skepticism coming out of the brothers towards Jesus.

You know, they grew up with him. They knew he was a good believer and a godly young man. But it's a big jump from being a godly older brother to claiming you're the Messiah that the entire nation has been waiting for for hundreds of years.

That's a big jump. And that would be hard to swallow, right? It's not, you know, James was skeptical of Jesus. But I mean, you know, you've got to kind of cut him some slack on that.

That would be a tough thing to embrace. And, you know, that's probably where Jesus, you know, when he said a prophet has no honor in his own home, he experienced that. He lived with that.

And the wonderful thing is there's a happy ending with James. James is with the Lord now, of course. In 1 Corinthians 15, it tells us, Paul tells us that the Lord appeared to James and his brothers.

What a blessing that is. You know, that he came to them after he had been resurrected and showed them what they had been missing. That's just such a blessing to me.

And then 50 days later, as the closest followers of Jesus Christ on this earth, 120 of them are gathered seeking God for several days for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. There's James right in the midst of that group. What a blessing.

James was a godly man. You know, before any of this happened, he was a godly Jew. In fact, they called him James the Just later on in his life.

And of course, he eventually became the elder of the Jerusalem church. That put him in authority over Peter and the other disciples. Paul, you know, he was a godly man.

And scripture tells us that Saul, the Pharisee, started persecuting the believers in Jerusalem, and many of them left Jerusalem and fanned out across the Roman Empire. And that is the group of people that James seems to be writing to in this epistle. Those Jewish Christians that had left Jerusalem.

And it's apparent that he's been getting negative reports about how they're living their lives. And that's why he sat down and wrote this epistle. Now, in this epistle, there are 46 imperatives, which included some pretty powerful statements, like 122, But be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.

He's telling these people this. He probably knew many of these people he was writing to. And verse 27 of the first chapter, he says, Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this, to visit orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained from the world.

That's a powerful, powerful statement. You could build your entire Christian life on that statement alone. What is in that statement that we hear about every Sunday night? The mercy of God, right? And to keep yourself unstained from the world.

And then in chapter 2, verse 13, For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment. Jesus had said to the Pharisees, Go and learn what this means.

I will have mercy. His brother did that, apparently, and figured it out. In 217, he said, Faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

Powerful, powerful statement to be spoken to the Jewish believers of the first century. And then towards the end of chapter 3, he goes into this, he starts talking about wisdom. And he says, If you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, this isn't God's wisdom, which is full of peace and restfulness and contentedness.

If you have that going on in your heart, you are not in the peace of God. And he says, That kind of thing is earthly, unspiritual, demonic, for where jealousy and selfish ambition exists, there will be disorder and every vile practice. Just the kinds of garbage you would expect from the devil and those who follow him.

So that brings us to chapter 4. And of those 46 imperatives in the book of James, 10 of them are in these first 10 verses. And that's what you've been hearing already this morning. And these 10 verses, I mean, this is like the climax of what's in his heart to write to these people.

And it just comes pouring out of him like a spiritual torrent. Just one thing after another just coming forth as he expresses what's in his heart. In the first six verses, he's really talking about the kind of lustful striving that occurs with anyone who loves the world.

Because that is what the world provokes in people. And the word hedonism is expressed twice in those verses. And hedonism is pleasure.

So he's saying that this agitating, demanding, never satisfied lust for pleasure is what's causing all this strife in your fellowships. And the discernment of this is what's behind this powerful statement in verse 4 that we've already heard also. You adulterous people, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

James is not messing around. I mean, he tells it like it is. And no wonder the Jewish leaders martyred him later on.

He's basically saying that the reality of a person's spiritual life is in the way that he's living his life, not in what he professes necessarily. And there's one more thing I'll say about James. He was the one that the Lord used to establish a wall in the early church to hold back the licentiousness of people who were twisting the words of Paul about God's grace.

Because they got a hold of that, God's grace, yeah. And even though Paul continually preached against sin, I mean, he made some very, very strong statements against sin. If you do these things, you will not inherit the kingdom of God, he says.

Paul said those things, but it doesn't matter. Because if you don't want to hear it, you just shut your ears to that and you grab a hold of what your flesh wants to hear. And that's what carnal Christians have always done.

But James was one who stood against it. And he said, let me tell you what faith is. Faith expresses itself in mercy and being unstained from this world.

And you see that, especially in chapter 2 and in Acts 15, how he withstood that corruption of Paul's teaching. So then we get to verse 7 here. And my sermon is going to be built on two statements here.

Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. So all those wonderful things we've already heard, we're kind of surrounding these passages here, which really are a summation of man's existence on earth.

This is really what it's all about. You're going to go one way or the other. You know, you are either going to be all in with God and following after him, or you're going to go all in with the enemy.

But people insist there's a middle ground and they're constantly trying to find it. But there is no middle ground, really. So the title of my message is, Draw near to the devil and he will draw near to you.

Now I chose that title purposely because it's kind of unsettling. But actually it's the second point in my message. I'm just going to go ahead and give you these four points.

Number one, resist the devil and he will flee from you. Number two, draw near to the devil and he will draw near to you. Number three, draw near to God and he will draw near to you.

And number four, resist the Lord and eventually he will flee from you. So we have two plain biblical statements here and also two antithetical statements that are implied with those. So let's just get right into them.

This first one, resist the devil and he will flee from you. Someone said, you may plead with man, you may reason with God, but you must resist the devil. But my experience in the church is that not a lot of people really do that.

Most Christians that I've had been around over the years seem to know very little about resisting the enemy. You know, in occupied European nations in World War II, there were those people who resisted the Nazis. They felt like this German army, they were intruders into their countries and they didn't belong there and they fought against them quietly, subversively.

They were constantly trying to disrupt everything the Nazis did. They would try to slow down the transportation, disrupt production, and create confusion in the Nazi war machine. And, you know, they were, they loved their nation, whichever one, whether it was Holland or France or whichever of those nations that were being occupied.

They loved their nation and they didn't appreciate these Nazis and what they were doing. What a contrast, though, were those sympathizers who coddled up to the Nazis to get something for self out of them. And, you know, after the war was over, it went bad for them.

You know, women who had affairs with Germans and so on, they would shave their heads and stuff like that. You know, and it basically boiled down to, they were either going to be resistors or collaborators. And it really is that way in the church today.

Because we are at war with the enemy. That's what we're supposed to be at, anyway. We're supposed to be at war with him, not collaborating with them.

So Jesus is calling on Christians to resist the enemy's attempts to pull us in to their thinking and so on. But, you know, you tell a sexual addict that he needs to resist the enemy's temptations and it can seem like an impossibility. How many of you know what I'm talking about? You know, remember back in the day, at least before you came here, and your pastor would be preaching a mighty sermon about you need to resist the enemy and say no to the devil and stuff, and it just flew over your head because your reality was something different.

You would try to fight him, you would try to resist, but it just felt like you had no strength inside you to say no to those temptations. Well, that's because you were doing it in your own strength. And you're being taught here and helped to learn how to live your life in the strength and the power of the Holy Spirit and by his grace.

This battle that goes on between a believer and these demons is all occurs in the unseen realm. And, you know, when a believer wins one of those battles, that demon pays a price. And that's why they flee when they, once they understand that a man means business with God and he's going to fight in the strength and the power of the Lord, they flee because it costs them something to bring those temptations.

I don't understand it. I just know it's true. There is a price to pay.

And so that's why once they see that someone means business, they are, they just give up. They can't handle fighting him. John MacArthur takes this statement here, this passage to, he refers it to salvation.

He said this, there's no middle ground. You're either under the lordship of Satan or under the lordship of God. And that means you take your stand against everything that he stands for, everything that he perpetuates, everything that he propagates, everything that he instigates.

You take your position against Satan, against his system. You must change your allegiance. Get that guys, you must change your allegiance.

I know you all been in church. You probably grew up in church. You think of yourself as a Christian.

You have probably always thought of yourself as a Christian. But the reality shows in the way that you are actually living your life, not in what you're professing. It is a battle.

It is a battle. And I know many of you get discouraged, but I want to tell you who really has cause for discouragement is the enemy. He is on the losing side and he knows it.

He, they, they know where they are headed. It is only a matter of time and that time is drawing near. You talk about a depressing life.

I mean, there's no hope of even turning things around. It is certain it has been written. They are headed into an eternity of the most horrible hell imaginable.

That is certain. How depressing would that be? All right, number two. Here's our title, Draw Near to the Devil and He Will Draw Near to You.

This is the antithesis of what James said. You know, resist the devil. And this is the opposite, but it's also true.

If you draw near to the enemy, they're going to draw near to you. You're opening the door to their involvement in your life. You know, their desire is to get everybody in their camp, especially they're focused on professing Christians.

They want to get us into their camp, you know, but they know they have to be subtle about it with Christians. They can't just come at us full on. So they quietly, you know, subtly work and try to lure us in.

And their message is basically, you can indulge your lust and live for the pleasures of this world. Just keep up your outward facade of living near God and no one will be the wiser. That's what they're constantly propagating.

Just play the part and it's okay. It's okay what you're looking at in private when no one's looking. It's okay.

As long as you're in church, you keep saying you believe in God, everything's okay. That is the message straight from hell. And this is why James is confronting these people, because they basically were buying into it at some level.

The spirit of this world is Satan's influencer. You know, like for instance, in World War II, you had Joseph Goebbels, who was the mouthpiece of Adolf Hitler. He would go out and he was constantly trying to propagate the message of the Nazi cause.

And that's what the spirit of the world does. They use these, what seemingly are innocuous pleasures and stuff, just little by little to draw people in to their realm of influence. But you know, when you loiter in their atmosphere, you're going to be affected by it.

Your values are going to change, your desires are going to change, and it could be that your destiny changes. It's very dangerous. And the more cozy you are with the world, the more you're drawing near to the devil.

It's just the way it is. Now, God loves it when we draw near to him. I mean, it's like, well, I see Rolando back there with little Josie, and his face just brightens up any time he sees that little girl.

You know, that's a picture really of the Lord with his children. He just loves it when we want to be near him. But you know who else loves that? The devil.

The devil loves it when you want to be near him. When you want to act like he acts and value the things he values. He loves that.

The difference isn't in the fact that they love it, either God or the devil. The difference is what motivates them. God is motivated by pure love.

He desires to be with us because he loves us. The enemy wants to be near us because they want to ruin our souls. They want us to spend eternity in hell.

Listen, that's all they have left is the hope of bringing people into hell with them. They have nothing else to live for. And you know, when a Christian stops resisting the enemy, it's like a neon sign in the spiritual realm.

I am open to your message. Come on in. The door is open.

You know, and to think that we can draw near to sin or to places of temptation and think we're not drawing near to the darkness is just, it's crazy. You know, because they're all packaged together. They just are.

So the enemy is constantly trying to get us to draw into their realm. But they have no answer for the man who's willing to submit himself to God, humble himself before God, and desire to be near to the Lord. They have no answer for a man who shows by the way that he's living his life that that is the great desire of his heart.

They have no answer for that. Alright, number three. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.

And we've already heard some about this this morning. What a blessing. Draw near to God.

What an invitation. You know, I wish we could just wipe out a lifetime of religious listening and hear that with brand new ears. That the creator of this earth, the creator of the universe, the creator of heaven actually desires to draw near to us.

I wish we could really grasp that and see it for what it really is instead of, you know, just oh yeah, God wants to be near us. Why do we think that way? Because we've sat in church year after year after year with hard hearts. That's what makes us hardened to that tremendous offer.

You know, the heart of God has always been to dwell with His people. Why do you think Rolando's up here every other weekend? Because he wants to see his granddaughter, that's why. The Lord walked with Adam and Eve in the garden.

What a thing. He walked with them. What does that mean? Well, I'm pretty sure that was a theophany or a Christophany, I should say.

Jesus himself walking and talking to Adam and Eve. Think about that. That is a tremendous thought that pre-incarnate Christ actually came to earth at times and spent time with people.

He really did. And throughout the Old Testament, you can see those instances when he did that. He dwelt in the tabernacle with the children of Israel.

He loved it. He loved being in the midst of them and the pillar of fire being there and people knew that he was there and Moses would come near and his face would be all lit up, radiating the glory of God. The Lord loved to be right in the camp with his people.

And then in the New Testament, you know, as we heard already, that the Lord made a way for people to have the Holy Spirit actually indwell us. God loves that. And of course, those who really know him will one day spend eternity with him.

What an awesome thing that is. This is really the great call of God. To draw near to him.

It really is. That's why I decided to preach on this message. Excuse me.

It was like, draw near to God. I mean, that is the call of the Bible. No, really.

Asaph said, but it is good for me to draw near to God. Moses said, you will find him if you search for him with all your heart. Isaiah said, seek the Lord while he may be found.

Call upon him while he is near. And the Lord said, Zechariah 1, return to me and I will return to you. Exactly what we heard earlier.

And in Proverbs, I love those who love me. And those who diligently seek me will find me. The Lord will make himself real to those who care enough to seek his face.

And that's really the great question that you are going to leave here with when you graduate. Did I really desire him? Or was I just doing a program? I just wanted to get this pesky little problem out of my life. I, you know, just can't wait to get back to my old way of doing life.

I hope that's not true, guys. Because you're going to be in for a great disappointment. If that's what's in your heart.

Drawn near implies intentional movement on our part. No one accidentally just becomes close to God. It's because we have responded to the Lord.

It's an invitation that is sent out. Draw near to me, the Lord is saying. But we have to respond.

And respond means more than just going to church on Sunday. John MacArthur questions if anyone is actually a believer. If they haven't shown some kind of hunger for the Lord.

He said, we have made such a shallow pseudo reality out of the call to salvation. We talk about being saved or accepting Christ in such shallow terminology. That rarely do we ever say, is there a longing in your heart for communion with the living and true God? Is there a longing in your heart to bow the knee and worship and adore the true God? He's got a point there.

And what Jesus said to the people of his day really could be said to the American church of our day. Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites as it is written. This people honors me with their lips but their heart is far from me.

Frightening words. Frightening words. And you know the wonderful promise to what James is saying here though is if you have drifted away from the Lord, the way back to Him is always the same.

It's always the same thing. Just draw near to the Lord. And He will gladly receive you.

Man it's just amazing after we treat the Lord the way we treat Him. With indifference or even worse just outright defiance. If we just turn to Him.

That's all He asks. Just repent and turn to me. If we will just do that.

Man it's just amazing. But this brings us to the final sad statement we must examine. Resist the Lord and eventually He will flee from you.

It's just a reality in scripture. If a person persists in rejecting the Lord, forsaking the Lord, going after sin, going after the world. Eventually the Lord is just going to hand Him over and leave Him to Himself.

He will not always strive with us nor will He keep His anger forever. If we resist and quench and grieve the Holy Spirit, the time comes when He withdraws His grace. And as I said the last time I preached, there's a line out there.

You know and you can just do that for so long. Eventually the Lord just lets you go. The question isn't if God desires to be near us.

James has already told us that He does. He does desire that. He greatly desires it.

He desires it so much that He sent His Son to die on a cross. So that it would make it easier for us to draw near to Him. There's no question that God desires to draw near to us.

The question is will we stop resisting Him? Will we actually start pursuing Him? With some kind of hunger and passion. And not just this apathetic, just go to church on Sunday response. I'm going to read this passage out of sexual idolatry.

It's kind of lengthy but it really does kind of grasp all this. One of the terrifying realities about this being Yahweh that we serve is that He will give people what they have shown they desire. This can be seen over and over again in Scripture.

Consider the time the Hebrews were wandering in the wilderness. God was trying to reveal His marvelous ways to them. But instead they repeatedly demanded to have the carnal lifestyle of Egypt.

They didn't want to be delivered from the darkness of Egypt. They just wanted to be freed from physical slavery. When they left the land of the Nile they quickly forgot the horrors of slavery and focused their memories on the scanty benefits they had occasionally enjoyed.

They longed for the flesh pots of Egypt. Quoting them, Oh that someone would give us meat to eat for we were well off in Egypt. Why did we ever leave Egypt? That's what they said.

And how many guys I've dealt with that have had that same attitude buried in their hearts. They don't say it in front of me usually. But I can see it.

Continuing on, After having endured this attitude for so long, God finally became angry and said, You shall eat, not one day, nor two days, nor five days, nor ten days, nor twenty days, but a whole month until it comes out of your nostrils and becomes loathsome to you, because you have rejected the Lord. They were given exactly what they wanted. God is extremely long-suffering with His people, but a time will come, if they continue to resist His promptings and insist on sinning, that He will give them over to what they desire.

And you guys, read this book, At the Altar of Sexual Idolatry, because that's exactly what you have done. And, you know, praise God, you can come out of that, you don't have to stay in it. But it is true, if we persist in pursuing our own desires, the time is going to come that He's going to leave us to ourselves.

Alright, I'm going to start wrapping up now. I want to finish by talking a little bit about what comes along with the one that we follow, whether it's the Lord or the devil. And we'll take a look at what the enemy brings with him, the package deal, which he doesn't tell us about.

Going in, all he does is present the temporal little pleasures that he offers, but listen to some of the things that comes with the enemy, some of his friends that he brings. He brings us lust that is never satisfied, never satisfied, always demanding more and never reaching the place of fulfillment. He brings bondage, like Jesus said, everyone who practices sin is a slave of sin.

He brings guilt and shame, which just increases insecurity and destroys a man's confidence. He brings fear, fear of being discovered, fear of consequences, fear of judgment, because, as the Lord said, there's no peace for the wicked. He brings confusion, sin clouds judgment.

People begin calling evil good and good evil. And, you know, when you follow that path, you can actually get to where you're just becoming irrational, irrational in your perspectives of the Lord and the spiritual life. He brings emptiness and misery.

You know, sin just strips us of everything good in life. He brings broken relationships. Why? Because sin always brings about deeper selfishness.

And the more selfish you are, the more you hurt other people. He brings hardness of heart to where you can't even hear the voice of the Holy Spirit. He brings despair and hopelessness, because all you can see out ahead of you is more darkness, more misery, more shame, and all of it.

And ultimately, he brings death. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. Who in the world wants to live with all of that for just a paltry little bowl of porridge? Really, think of it as it actually is, man, instead of just caving every time a temptation comes along.

Oh, I've got to have it. No, you don't have to have it, and neither did I. God's got the strength for you to say no to those temptations. You don't have to just cave in.

Just think about what comes with it. Okay, so you're going to enjoy yourself for a couple of minutes. Then what? Then what? You guys know the answer to that.

You know it well. You know it so well that it made you so miserable that you had to come to Kentucky to try to find help, right? Well, the Lord also brings things with him. He has his own friends.

He brings peace, the peace of God which surpasses all understanding. He brings joy in your presence, this fullness of joy. That is the truth.

I just want to say that is true, that you can get to a place in life with the Lord where you just are so fulfilled and happy and content that all those things the enemy is constantly trying to draw you into just don't interest you anymore. He's going to bring you to that place, guys, but you have to fight. He brings contentment.

He brings rest. You know, come to me and I will give you rest. The opposite of that striving lust that is never satisfied.

The opposite of that strife. He brings purity and holiness. Think about it, man.

Think about how much you feel shame and guilt over what you carry around in your mind and your heart and what it would mean to you. What a blessing it is to have a pure heart, to have a pure mind, to not dwell in all that filth and garbage. What a blessing that is.

He brings freedom, freedom from the devil's control, freedom from sin, freedom from all the guilt and the shame and all that goes with it. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. He brings hope.

You don't have to live in despair. You can have hope for your future. He brings love.

If we abide in Him, His love is going to grow inside of us. Love for Him and all that that means, but also love for others, supposed loved ones who you haven't loved very well in the past, but you can. He brings life.

He didn't promise mere existence. He promised life and life abundant. Praise God.

That's the simple little equation that James gives us. I love James' style because he's so practical and just everything is simple in his presentation. Just do this or do that.

He does that all through his epistle as we've already heard. So there it is. Two paths for you.

This is just more of what you guys hear on a regular basis here. Just a simple message of obey the Lord and things will go well with you. All right, let's pray.

It actually is very simple, Lord, and I thank You that You make it so simple that a child can understand it. Even children understand what it means to obey You, Lord, and to turn away from sin. Even children can understand that much.

I thank You, Lord, that You've made it that way for us. I thank You, Lord, that no one who's pursued the enemy and the ways of the enemy and the things the enemy offers, no one who's gone down that path is hopeless because he can always turn around and start pursuing You and following You, Lord. Thank You, God, that You have extended that invitation to everyone Everyone is welcome in Your home, Lord.

Everyone is welcome in Your home. But they do need to turn to You. So we pray, Lord, that this message will speak to these men, help them in the days ahead when they start facing those temptations to think about the Aharit, to think about what's going to come if they give over and to think about what will come if they win that victory.

Just to send the demons fleeing from them. What an awesome thing. Thank You for meeting with us this morning, Lord.

We bring all this to You in Jesus' name. Amen. God bless you.

You're dismissed.