How To Avoid Conflict
Notes
Transcript
Good morning. Did everyone enjoy the break away from James last week? Beth didn’t get a break, I preached from James 1 last week.
Pray
Last time we talked about conflict among believers. James gave us reasons we have conflict in the church. He pointed out the sins in our lives that cause us to not play nicely with others. His list is not exhaustive it is just the major issues that cause fights between believers. This week we are going to look at some ways to avoid these conflicts. James is going to give us some imperatives (commands) that will help us have the correct focus and mindset to avoid the fighting that has plagued not only the church of James’ day, but the church through out history. The infighting that has plagued the church and hindered its ability to be effective in the communities that they are in. We must stop the fighting and be focused on the task that was given to us. Be the light and spread the Good News. Lets read our verses and see what James gives as ways to avoid conflict.
Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”? But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” 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. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.
In verse 5 James is back to his old tricks of asking questions that only have one answer, no. Nothing in the Bible is written without purpose. Every word in the Bible is inspired by God. Every word tells the story about God and how He sent His son to bring salvation to wretched, sinful man. If we don’t give the Word of God the respect that is deserves, then it won’t have an affect on our lives. It is the most important book that has ever been written, ever. We are at a point in history were we are the most biblically illiterate that we have ever been. The bible is not important anymore especially in America. We must get back to the days when the bible had authority and was above anything else. In the last half of this verse James is telling us that God desires for the His Spirit in us to do its good work in us. When we are letting our flesh have control we begin to quench the spirit. The Holy Spirit does not just come into us and take over, the same way that God does not force us to choose Him. The Spirit in us prompts us and is a guide to us, but never takes control against our wills. That is why we must die daily to ourselves and daily carry our cross. We must not let our flesh get strong again, we need to allow the Spirit to have its way in us and to lead us down the path of sanctification. God is a jealous God and since the Spirit in us is God in us, it is jealous also. It desires for us to choose Him and to be obedient to Him. We were created to glorify God. When we do anything else, we are choosing sin. When we choose sin we are grieving the Holy Spirit in us and our God. We must chose to live a life that is righteous. We will continue to sin until we stand before God, but we must strive to live a life that is honoring to God and more and more Christ-like every day. We need to have a sensitivity to the Holy Spirit that is in us.
Verse 6 is a wonderfully beautiful verse. The grace of God is poured out on the humble. God’s grace is more bountiful than the sin of man. We can never out sin God’s grace. God’s grace is like a river flowing down to the ocean. It flows down to the lowest point. It washes over the high points until it reaches the lowest point. God’s grace flows over the proud and selfish and washes down to the lowest point where the humble are. God’s grace is unending to those who humble themselves before Him. It is like Niagara Falls. Niagara Falls has only dried up twice in recorded history. Once due to an ice dam that formed due to strong winds and once due to man damning it up. It has never run out of water. In the same way, God will never, and can never, run out of grace. As long as we remain humble we will be soaked in the grace of our God. We can never out sin the out pouring of the grace of God to His humble children. When we become proud we dam up the river of grace flowing from heaven. The proud are like rocks in the river that the water just washes over and doesn’t soak into. They get wet but the water doesn’t penetrate deep into it. The humble are like sponges that soak the water and swell up with the contents of the river. When we remain humble we become full of God’s grace.
In the first half of verse 7, we are told to submit ourselves to God. Just like children are to be submitted to their parents, we are to be submitted to our Father. One big difference is that our earthly parents are sinful. Our heavenly Father is perfect and will always do what is good. knowing that our heavenly Father is good, we should not have a problem submitting to him. But, our flesh is proud and resists submitting to anyone. In our world today, submit is a bad word. No one ever goes to a seminar to learn how to be submitted. Instead there are countless number of ways to learn how to be more aggressive and to get ahead in the world. There is not a section in the book store labeled How To Be More Submitted. To the world being submissive is to be weak. God makes the wisdom of the world folly. As believers, we should be glad to submit to God. We know that He is good and that He is our eternal Father, but just like children, we rebel against our parents and cause conflict. When we are submitted to God, we are in a good place. While we are submitted to God, the devil will attack us. In the last half of this verse, James tells us to resist the devil and he will flee from us. The devil has no power over a child of God. If we will resist the devils temptations, he will flee from us. Every sin ever committed, man has chosen to do it. The devil cannot make us sin, he only entices us to the act. Just like he had no power over Jesus when he tempted Him in the desert. We need to take note of how Jesus resisted the devil. He used the Word of God. He quoted scripture to the devil and then he fled. The devil doesn’t like the truth, the truth is that he is defeated. He has no power. The only power he has is to deceive and mislead people. As long as we are studying the Word and thinking of the things not of this world, the devil will flee when we resist. The devil may flee but he does not give up. If the devil is anything, he is persistent! The only time he will not attack us is if we are not in God’s will. He has no reason to mess with us if we are not doing what God commands us to do. But as soon as we start to get focused on God’s will and the plan that He has for our lives, watch out, because here comes the devil and his army of demons. The will not stop until one of two things happen, either we stop being focused on God and His will or we stand before God. Those are the only things that will permanently stop the devil from attacking us. He will flee for a time, but he will be back. We can take heart in knowing that he has no power over us. We know the truth, he is defeated and we are heaven bound!!
In the first half of verse 8, we are told to draw near to God. Did God move away from us? No, God never leaves us, we leave him. Just like the prodigal son, we walk away from Him and want to live our lives, our way. When it doesn’t work out and we realize what we have done, we start back to Him. Just like the father in the parable, when he see the son far off, he runs to him. As soon as we start to come back to God, He starts to us. Even though it wasn’t Him who left, it was us, He comes to us when we make the turn back to him. The word used for draw means, to bring near, to join one thing to another. We need to stay near to God, close enough to seem joined to Him. This is a difficult thing for believers. Our flesh wants to run and be free to sin. We must keep our flesh crucified and stay near to God. We must fight the temptation to believe that we can do it on our own. We cannot. We will fall right back into the sin that dominated our lives before. We must stay near to our Lord. When we are away from God, we are weak and vulnerable to the attacks of the devil. We make life infinitely harder than it needs to be, because of our bent towards sin. We must stay as close to God for as long as we can, and when we notice that we have strayed away, turn and run back to Him. He is faithful to always run to us and greet us with open, welcoming arms. We serve a just and loving God, that abounds in grace.
The last half of verse 8, we are told to cleanse ourselves. James’ reference to washing hands was to the cleansing ritual that the priests had to do to cleanse themselves for service to the Lord. We must live a life of righteousness before the Lord. We cannot just live life as we want. We need to cleanse ourselves of our pride and selfishness. Purify our hearts. We must not have unclean things in our lives. What are we listening to, watching, saying in our lives? Are they clean things? If you are watching TV, I would say that there is a very high chance that it is not something you would watch if Jesus was sitting next to you. There is not much on TV that is good to watch. What kind of music are we listening to? Is it music that glorifies the Lord? The music of the world is not something that is going to draw you nearer to God. How is our speech? What about when we are not around believers? We must purify our hearts because what is in the heart is what motivates our actions. If we are motivated by things of the world, then we are going to have actions that are worldly. If our heart is filled with things from above, then our actions will match. It is a struggle to not do things that put the world in our hearts. I know for you music lovers, it is extremely difficult to only listen to christian music. Same goes for those of you who like to watch TV. There are very few TV shows that I would consider to be acceptable in the eyes of our Lord to watch. Those of us who work in secular industries, it is extremely difficult to have Godly speech. I work in the construction industry and I have to be on guard constantly about my speech. I still fail today in that area sometimes. Our goal should be to only have inputs that are pleasing to God. The more we are successful in this the more Christ-like we will become.
James tells us in verse 9, that we should be broken by our sin. When we sin and realize it, it should bring us to tears. There can be no joy in sin in a true believers life. That is why it is impossible to have salvation and live a lifestyle of sin. We cannot be comfortable sinning. Sin should not be taken lightly. God is not saying here that we should never laugh or have fun, but we should never laugh at sinful things. Some sin may be fun for a moment, but in reality it is deadly. This is a major problem in the world we live in today. The motto of the world is"live you best life now!” If this is our best life, then heaven is not worth it. If this world and life is the best that God can do then we need to close the churches and stop. But we know that is a lie straight from the devil. There is nothing in the world that can even come close to comparing to heaven and eternal life with God. Paul got to see the third heaven. I believe that is part of why he was able to endure so much suffering for God. The things that God has done in my life, I know without a doubt that heaven is worth whatever I have to endure to get there. In James 1:2
Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds,
We are told to count it all joy. James is telling us to add up all the trials and tests that we go through and no matter what math you use, heaven is always better and worth everything. All the sin, suffering and hard work that we have to do to try and live a righteous life is worth it. We have a goal of a pure heart and clean hands. We must strive to live a life above reproach. Live like heaven depends on it.
In our last verse, James tells us to humble ourselves before the Lord. We need to have a proper understanding of who God is. When we have this, there will be no other way to approach God than humbly. We can boldly approach our God because we are His children, but we must do it with respect and humility. There is a series of videos on YouTube by RC Sproul called The Holiness of God. I encourage everyone to look these up and watch them. If we do not have a right view of who God is, then we will never have the right attitude towards Him. God is the creator of everything, and He did it by just speaking. He never had to lift a finger to make anything. He has no creator, He has always been, and will always be. The world has the audacity to tell God what they are going to do. The creation has no right to tell the creator anything. We must come to Him in submitted humility. James tells us that if we do this then God will exalt us. When we lower ourselves and humbly come to our Savior, He will lift us up. We should never be trying to lift ourselves up, when we do that we are being prideful. We are not good. The bible says that no one is good, no not one. We have no right to be prideful. We should all have bad backs and knees from lowering ourselves to our rightful place. Only God can exalt someone, only He has that right. None of us deserve to be exalted, but because of the unending river of grace, God lifts up His children. What a comforting verse, to know that if we will submit to God and humble ourselves, He will lift us up.
So what can we take from this and apply to our lives?
Nothing in the bible is there by just chance. Every word is inspired by God. We must be studying it and applying it to our lives.
We must not grieve the Spirit that is in us. God’s desire is for us to listen to and follow the prompting of the Spirit He has put in us.
We cannot out sin God’s river of grace. If we humble ourselves, God’s grace will cover us.
We must be submitted to God and His authority. Being submitted to God is not a bad thing. He is the good Father
Resist the devil. Do not give in to the lies and temptations of the enemy.
Draw near to God. Strive to stay right next to God and His goodness.
Cleanse ourselves and our hearts. We do everything to keep the world and the devil out of our hearts.
Our sin must devastate us. There can be no happiness in sin. We can not be comfortable living in sin.
Be humble. If we get this right, the rest will begin to fall in place.
Let’s pray