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James 4 -7 says, Submit yourselves therefore to God, resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Now that doesn't mean that we engage Satan and he will run away. It means we glorify God and Satan will not be able to have his way with us when we understand the text.
You're listening to When We Understand the Text, committed to the sound teaching of the Word of God. For questions and comments, email whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com. And don't forget our website, www .utt .com.
Here's our host, Pastor Gabe.
Thank you, Becky. And greetings, everybody. We're in James chapter 4 again today. If you would open up your Bible there to James chapter 4. We still have some of the chapter to finish up, but I want to come back to a couple of verses that we looked at yesterday.
Verses 7 and 8, James says, Submit yourselves therefore to God, resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. The only way to resist the devil is by submitting to God and drawing near to him.
That is the only way. Yet there are a lot of teachers out there, particularly in charismatic and Pentecostal circles, the Assemblies of God church, I know is one of them as well, that will tell you that to resist the devil involves engaging him.
You have to talk to the devil. You have to specifically rebuke him and say these words. I'll give you an example of this. Here is a sermon clip from Joyce Meyer, where she is teaching that very thing.
How many of you have a tendency sometimes to just get a little bit lazy and passive? Come on, be honest. Well, you know, that's the worst thing that you can do if you ever want to defeat the devil, because that's exactly what he's looking for.
Somebody that just will kind of be passive and hope he goes away. The devil is not ever going to leave you alone just because you wish he would or hope he does. You are going to have to rebuke, resist, and stand against him.
You got to do your part. The devil loves an inactive, passive, lazy, lukewarm Christian. How many of you know if you wait to feel like doing what you ought to do that you're likely to be defeated pretty fast?
You got to stay active. You got to be involved. You got to be committed. Why do you think so often when you get involved in a church and you get hurt? Why does the devil arrange for so many people to get hurt when they start getting involved with people?
I can tell you exactly why. Because he wants us to back off in our wounds and not, well, I'm just not going to get involved. I'll just go and I'll go home, but I'm not going to get involved. He doesn't want you to really live the life that you're supposed to live as a church member and being part of the household of God.
You need to be involved. You need to stay active. You need to get to church. You need to read your Bible. You need to pray. You need to open your mouth and tell the devil to shut up when he starts lying to you.
Some of you don't talk back to the devil. And before I'm done with you today, you are going to learn that you are going to have to talk back to the devil or he is going to have you for lunch.
Very popular sermon of hers. I grabbed that clip off of YouTube. It's been seen hundreds of thousands of times, millions of times when you throw in that it came from her television program. And all of that sounds pretty good, right?
Well, of course, in order to resist the devil, we go to church. We spend quiet time with God. When you listen to more of the sermon, she also talks about putting on the full armor of God. Well, what's wrong with that?
All of that stuff is entirely biblical. Here's the thing. She's talking about doing those things to resist Satan, not glorify God. And yet that's the very reason why we go to church together with the saints, not resist the devil, but to glorify God, to draw near to him.
It is by drawing near to God that we resist Satan, not by personally engaging Satan. And yet she's saying you need to rebuke, resist and stand against. And she's not even saying those things metaphorically.
She means literally you have to talk back to the devil before we're done tonight. I am going to teach you how to talk back to the devil. That's not how we resist Satan. If we are drawing close to God, if we are submitting ourselves to him, if we are glorifying in God, then there's nothing the devil can do to us.
Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Remember what the apostle Paul said to the Romans, Romans chapter eight, beginning in verse 38, for I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers that talking about demons, the devil there, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, our Lord.
So if our focus is on the devil, we're not focusing on God. And you know what? The devil's okay with that. To be quite honest with you, the devil is not intimidated by you one bit. If you were to talk to him, he's thinking to himself, sure, you can rebuke me all you want.
At least you're talking to me and not talking to God. How is it that we resist Satan by drawing near to God, by glorifying in him? And then there's nothing that the devil can do to us. And that's really what James is saying here.
Submit yourselves to God in submission to God, in glorifying him and obeying his commands. We are resisting the devil and he will flee from you drawn near to God and God will draw near to you. I was on Twitter, uh, scrolling through Twitter not long ago, which by the way, you can find me on Twitter, uh, twitter .com slash pastor underscore Gabe.
That's where I'm at. If you want to follow me on Twitter. And I came across Beth Moore's periscope. I don't really follow Beth Moore with any kind of regularity. Sometimes her stuff pops up when somebody else reposts it.
I think this was one of those times. And so I clicked on her periscope. If you don't know what periscope is, it's like a little video feed where she does a devotional or something like that. Several people do these kinds of things.
I don't have a periscope. I've got enough to do, but anyway, uh, at the beginning of this devotional that she was doing on Twitter, she stands up in front of the camera and says, you know, so-and-so sent me this shirt today.
And so I wanted to show you that I'm wearing this shirt and the shirt said not today, Satan. And she said, so you see, like the devil is going to leave me alone because I'm wearing this shirt. I don't really think that's the devil's response to that shirt.
I think he's going, thanks for wearing my name today. That's probably what the devil is thinking. We do not resist Satan by personally engaging him. That is not threatening to him at all. And yet you will hear this prevailing teaching out there that you need to personally engage the devil.
And though, and those who will say such a thing will probably use a passage out of Jude where Michael and, uh, the devil were contending over the body of Moses. And so, because Michael said, the Lord rebuke you, then that's our model.
That's our example for the way that we need to rebuke Satan. In fact, in this particular clip from TD Jake's, he says that very thing, whatever you've got.
To do to fight you, you've got to arm yourself with the understanding that you, you don't get in the ring with the enemy. I want to remind you that the book of Jude teaches us that Michael, who was carrying the body of Moses, when he was carrying the body of Moses back to glory, Satan came to steal the body of Moses out of the arms of Michael, the arch angel.
Now, you must understand that Michael is not just an angel. He is in fact an arch angel. He is the captain of the brigade. He is in charge of all of the other angels. And face to face with the devil, angels are so strong that angels rolled the stone away from the grave of Jesus, a stone that men could not move by their own power.
Angels are so strong that they flap their wings over the Red Sea and the Red Sea stood at attention. Angels are so strong that they are the security system of heaven, but when the enemy came up against him, he didn't fight him himself, but he said, I dare not bring a railing accusation against you, but I choose rather to say, Satan, the Lord rebuked thee.
The devil would rather you say anything. I'm ready for you this morning, let's do it. The devil would rather you say anything than to say the Lord rebuked thee. He would rather you fight him with willpower and mind power and attitude and positive thinking and new age philosophy and meditation and yoga and everything else you want to fight.
But I dare you to get backed up in a corner and say, wait a minute devil, the battle is not mine. It belongs to the Lord and I'm going to submit my way unto the Lord and I know that God is going to bring me out.
Touch somebody and tell them God is going to bring you out of this.
Now just like the clip with Joyce Meyer, all of that sounds pretty close, right? I mean, Jake's even goes to calling out satanic things. The devil would rather you battle him with your own will or new age thinking or yoga.
Man, I know Baptist preachers that won't even call out that stuff. And the way that he began the clip by saying that you can't step into the ring with the devil, you will not win that fight. And that clip was much longer.
He preceded that by talking about if you try to tussle with the devil on your own, he's going to punch you in this way and punch you that way, put you in a full Nelson like this. So instead of getting in the ring with him, you need to stand outside the ring and hurl scriptures at him.
And he quoted some scriptural passages. But the ironic thing about that is though he says you can't engage with the devil one on one and win that fight. How is it that he tells you to resist Satan by engaging with him, right?
The magic words that the devil doesn't want to hear you say is the Lord rebuke you. You can say that all you want. It really will have no effect on Satan unless you draw near to God. That's how we resist the devil.
By drawing near to God, neither Joyce Meyer nor TD Jake's nor anybody else who gives you these instructions on engaging, Satan will say that they will not say that you need to draw near to God and he will draw near to you.
The instruction that James gives, submit yourselves therefore to God. And that's how we resist the devil by glorifying God. When we try to engage Satan and we think that doing all of these things is how the devil stays away from us, then what we're submitting ourselves to is a works based righteousness.
You go back to what Joyce Meyer says, you need to go to church, you need to attend Bible study, you need to get involved, you need to do this, this and this. All of that is righteousness by works. We do these things and then the devil will leave us alone.
But that's not that's not how we resist the devil's schemes. We draw near to the Lord, the devil will flee. Now let's consider the example of the temptation of Jesus in the desert. He responded to the devil with scriptures, right?
So shouldn't we respond to Satan the same way? Well let me I'll give you a response to that as we look at it. So Luke chapter four, Jesus full of the Holy Spirit. This is right after the baptism of Christ in the Jordan River by John the Baptist.
He returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness for 40 days being tempted by the devil. And he ate nothing during those days. And when they were ended, he was hungry. The devil said to him, if you are the son of God, command this stone to become bread.
And Jesus answered him, it is written, man shall not live by bread alone. And the devil took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment in time, which has always been a curious phrase to me.
Was it at that particular time or did Satan actually transport him to another time and show him kingdoms of the world? Or was it a lot of kingdoms all at once at one period of time? Anyway, I've always been curious by that statement.
And the devil said to him, to you I will give all this authority and their glory for it has been delivered to me and I will give it to whom I will. If you then will worship me, it will all be yours. And Jesus answered him, it is written, you shall worship the Lord, your God and him only shall you serve.
And he took him to Jerusalem and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, if you are the son of God, throw yourself down from here for it is written, he will command his angels concerning you to guard you and on their hands, they will bear you up lest you strike your foot against a stone.
Now notice something there in verses 10 and 11. Satan is quoting scripture to Jesus. In verse 12, Jesus answered him, it is said, you shall not put the Lord, your God to the test. And when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from him until an opportune time.
So just as Jesus engaged with Satan, they're using scripture using the word of God. Don't we engage with the devil the same way? The answer is yes and no. If you are being tempted, that's a great way to respond to be filled up with the word of God.
But that's for you. It's not for the devil. You don't talk to the devil with the word of God. You can say the scriptures to fill yourself up to remind you of the promises of God that are written in his word, and it keeps your mind fixed on the Lord again, drawing near to God, not engaging with the devil.
And so, yes, saying those scriptures will prevent the devil from being able to be successful in tempting you. But those scriptures are for you, not for Satan. Notice that the devil was responding to Jesus with the scriptures.
He knows the scriptures. In fact, it was by twisting the word of God that the devil was able to tempt Eve into eating the fruit that Adam and Eve were commanded not to eat. Did God really say the first words that we read of Satan in the Bible?
In Genesis chapter three, we are introduced to the serpent in the garden with him saying to Eve, did God really say that you must not eat of any tree in the garden or you will die? And of course, that wasn't what God really said.
And Satan knew that. But it was twisting those words and making Eve have to think about it, that he was able to tempt her with that fruit, that it looked pleasing to her, that she was convinced there was something else that she needed to be fully satisfied that God had not yet given her enough.
And that's what happens when we sin. Every one of us, we are willing participants in Adam's sin. There is something that we think that we need in order to truly be satisfied. And James described sin in this way earlier in his letter.
But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire, when it is conceived, gives birth to sin and sin, when it is fully grown, brings forth death. So every one of us have it within us to desire something other than what God has provided for us, something apart from God, something that we think we need in order to truly be satisfied.
And it's rebellion against God. It's saying that God's ways are not good enough. I need my ways and that's how I will be fully satisfied. This is the devil tempting us in our flesh to do what is opposed to God.
And we are enemies of God. So it is by drawing near to the Lord that we're able to resist the work of Satan, filling ourselves up with the words of God, being reminded of his promises, knowing that God has done the work.
There is no work that we can do to earn us favor with God. Because once again, who can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, our Lord? The work has been done in glorifying in God, knowing that he has loved us and with his grace has poured out everlasting life on us through Jesus Christ by his death on the cross, his resurrection from the grave.
Then we do the things that we do, whether that is spending time with the Lord or attending church and all this because of what God has done, because of what he's accomplished, not because we need to do something in order to resist Satan.
We draw near to God and glorify in him. And Satan has nothing to do with us, can't get anywhere near to us. I want to share one more story with you here in conclusions. We kind of bring all of these things to wraps.
There was a young man who came into my church. This was during my interim period. I was not yet the senior pastor of the church at the time. And he said that he was looking for an exorcist. Said he had been to several other churches in town.
They wouldn't help him. He even went to the Catholic Church and they said that they didn't do exorcisms anymore. Something about lawsuits. And so he asked me if I could do an exorcism. And I said, well, I'll be honest with you.
I've never done one before. That doesn't mean I'm closed to having to do one. But why don't you tell me first why you think that you need an exorcist? And he said that he had these two friends, a boyfriend and a girlfriend who live together.
And in recent months, the girlfriend started exhibiting some bipolar behavior or even some multiple personality disorder. She got extremely depressed. She had these feelings of paranoia that there was always somebody watching her.
And no matter what her friend or the boyfriend did to show her that there was nobody there, she just couldn't shake the feeling that somebody else was watching her, was haunting her. And she even started talking about harming herself or harming others.
So they took her to some doctors who prescribed her some medications. The medications didn't make it any better. In fact, it made her situation worse. So this friend approached his two friends and said, would you guys be open to the possibility that this might be a demonic possession and we might need to do an exorcism?
And they said, sure, we would be open to that possibility. And so he said to me, do you believe my story? And I said, well, I don't have any reason to not believe you. And he said, well, great. Can you help me?
And I said, well, you know, we can do what we need to do. But can I show you something first? So I took him to the book of Luke and open up chapter 11, where Jesus tells the story of an unclean spirit.
In Luke 11, beginning in verse 24, when the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest and finding none. It says, I will return to my house from which I came.
And when it comes, it finds the house swept and put in order. Then it goes and brings seven other spirits more evil than itself. And they enter and dwell there. And the last state of that person is worse than the first.
And I looked at this young man and I said, would you agree with me that your two friends, the boyfriend and the girlfriend are living in sin? And I knew that I could ask him this question. He would know that I was talking about because he said he had a background in church.
And he said to me, do you mean that I think that, do I think that they're living in adultery by sleeping together outside of marriage? And I said, right. And he said, yeah, I would have to say that's the case.
And I said, so here's the situation. I could come to their house and I could do an exorcism. We could lay hands on her and pray. We could anoint her with oil. We could bless the house, whatever it is that we need to do.
And it might even work. You might see an improvement in your friend. And it would be successful and it would drive away whatever spirit has been haunting her. But according to this, this story that Jesus says, that spirit that is oppressing her is going to come back.
And it's going to be an even stronger attack than it was the first time. And her condition will be worse than if I had never done anything at all. And I came back to that passage again in Luke chapter 11.
Let me show you what Jesus says here. And in verse 27, as he said these things, a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts at which you nursed.
But Jesus responded, blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it. So here's the thing I said to this young man, if you want to be able to resist this attack from Satan, it's going to take more than an exorcism.
It means that this young woman needs to repent of her sins, her boyfriend and her, they have to move out. They can't live together and sleep together any longer. They cannot be living in sin. They need to be doing what is right in the eyes of God.
What God has commanded. They need to repent of their sin, believe in Christ Jesus, the Lord, and obey him. As it says in Luke chapter nine, verse 23, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.
Whoever would save his life, we'll lose it. But whoever loses his life for my sake, we'll save it. And I said to him, you know, the Lord's prayer, right? And he said, sure. And I said, we'll quote it with me.
So we quoted it together. Our father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day, our daily bread. And I was sure that he understood daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. I said daily bread. And notice here in Luke chapter nine, verse 23. Once again, it says that if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow after me.
It takes more than a one time thing for you to be in Christ and secure and be able to resist the schemes of the devil. You must be in Christ every day with your whole life, everything, loving the Lord, your God, with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.
And the devil will not be able to touch you. And he was elated, overjoyed by the words that I shared with him. And I was sure to tell him, you must repent of your sin too. You can say these things to your friends.
You don't need me, but you need to repent of your sin and trust in the scriptures and be in church with a body of believers, growing in righteousness and holiness, being held accountable by your fellow saints.
And he took the Bible that I had. I gave it to him. I also gave him a book of scriptures that applied to certain topics and things like that. Scriptures that deal with this situation or this kind of circumstance.
I gave him that book. I never saw him again after that. Really never saw him again. I don't even know where he came from, whether he was from my community or another town. But he did come back to the church sometime later and said something to my secretary.
And she gave me the news that he said, everything that I said worked and it was great. And he thanked me for taking the time to talk to him and show him what it was that the scriptures said. Pointing out to him that it is not by an event or a circumstance or saying magic words or doing this, that, or the other that we are able to resist the devil.
It is trusting in God and the work that he is accomplished by Christ on the cross. As it says in 1 John, the reason the son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. Christ did all of that with his death on the cross and his resurrection from the grave.
Draw near to God, submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you because we glory in God. Not because we engage with the devil. Our Lord God, I pray that you draw us near to you through your scriptures.
That we know the hope and the promise that has been given to us through Jesus Christ, our Lord. That by these scriptures, we know you all the more. That we meditate upon the Lord daily. That we seek after you with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength.
And in doing these things, we know that we will be able to resist temptation. Not because of any work that we have done, but because of the work that you have done. So let us glorify in you in these things.
And we pray this in Jesus name, amen.
Gabriel Hughes is the pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas. Find out more online at www .utt .com.