Why We Fight

Introduction

James: Letter to the church

Addresses specific things happening in the church not to bust their chops, judge, or give them a list of don’ts but to help them live life as God intends.

James audience missing out on this life in a few ways: they did not do what they were taught, bless and curse, heated arguments with each other.

If you’re checking things out, are skeptical, Watching the news lately - honest Christians will tell you

some days are better than others

In some things, we’ve been known to not do what Jesus teaches

We’ve had some pretty brutal battles with ourselves

Truth is, because this is a human problem, we’re still working on it.

Why We Fight

James 4:1–12 ESV

What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. 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. 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. Do not speak evil against one another, brothers. The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother, speaks evil against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. There is only one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor?

What are you known for?

Conflict: The War within the soul

Conflict = goals that are in direct opposition to one another.

Competing wants, desires, ideas

Source of conflicts - the pleasures that battle among you/between you.

Reality TV

The question to ask: What drives what we chase after in life?

Want something or someone to make you happy (fulfill you) in some way

It doesn’t

You trash others for not giving you what you want/fulfilling you with what they have

Fight/argue, slander

MSG - v2: you're willing to kill, do violence to get your hands on what you believe will satisfy you.

Throughout history, the church of Jesus has been known for this.

The seventeenth-century Jewish philosopher Spinoza observed: ‘I have often wondered that persons who make boast of professing the Christian religion—namely love, joy, peace, temperance, and charity to all men—should quarrel with such rancorous animosity, and display daily towards one another such bitter hatred, that this, rather than the virtues which they profess, is the readiest criteria of their faith.

Frustrated Desire

Jealousy and frustrated selfish desire leads to this.

Desire/Passion

General - what is pleasant to the taste; what gives pleasure; the desire for pleasure. That which kindles desire or pleasure (ex: good news).

Passions (hedone) - gratification related to indulging ourselves often at the expense of others.

a thirst for honor, rivalry, overindulging in everything - food, things, etc.

Frustrated desire most often happens when we can’t have what someone else has that we think will make us content, happy, satisfied.

It is more concerned with getting, taking than giving.

Chan: emptiness with deep desire to gain fulfillment...I've got to have it. The things are just things; it's not the things we want, it's the fulfillment we think the things will bring.

Relationships, marriages, work, church - because it’s a human issue that God wants to heal.

-Three biblical images describe how selfish desire operates: conflict, slavery and thorns.

1. It brings constant conflict instead of peace.

2. If we don't deal with and overcome them, Selfish desires will own us, tell us what to do, how to act. Bondage.

3. Like a thorn chokes a seed, selfish desires will destroy us emotionally, spiritually, and sometimes, physically.

Cobra Kai: Strike First

It isn’t concerned with how the want is acquired.

Frustrated desire leads to violence.

Covet but can't have what you want so you fight

So far they were only arguing but if the situation continued to escalate, the threat of violence and even loss of life was very real.

v4 - If all you want is your own way and you flirt with how the world operates on how it gets it, you're cheating on God and are really not his friend.

The source of all conflict and violence is frustrated desire to want more than we have, what we don't have, and to be envious of those that have it whether it be possessions or position.

This is a powerful analysis of human conflict life NOT as God intends.

Bad character

Not hitting/missing intellectually or morally.

Far from God

Even the believers needed a new relation to God.

Two Kingdoms Are Calling

Double-minded: Trying to live in two worlds or kingdoms.

World

kosmos. To set in order, decorate; the universe God designed, created, and ordered which includes earth and all of mankind that lives on it.

God’s Kingdom

Kingdom of God (life as God intends)

Values, beliefs, way of living/morals for our good

World System

Kingdom of the world system (life as WE intend).

Values, beliefs, and morals are different/opposite/opposed to God, his kingdom and life as he intends. Rooted in selfishness.

Loving those values, beliefs, puts us at odds with God (1 John 2:15-16).

James’ message: By their jealousy, selfish ambition, unrestrained selfish passion, they chose another way than Jesus' way; the promises of life according to another Kingdom.

5 - It makes him jealous. Why?

Selfishness is an attitude/heart and behavior that makes us friends with the values of the world system and enemy of God.

God’s desire that his people be wholly and unreservedly his; to live in the way of Jesus; to do what he taught.

James is not saying to fix the problem by separating or isolating ourselves but rather to do the heart work.

Be IN the kosmos - Be vibrant and actively participate in this world living as God intends (values, beliefs, morals) and NOT adopting NOT it's values, beliefs, morals.

Can be friends with people who adhere to the world system but not the world system.

Thanks for Asking

It’s not bad to want or ask for something.

Seek and find, Ask it it will be given to you, knock and the door will be opened.

Why is the desire to have frustrated?

Motive for asking matters

You remain unfulfilled because you ask in order to use what's given on your pleasures that are the source of the battles between you

The asking requires a seeking of God's kingdom - life as he intends it; not to be indulged with pleasures that are at war with our souls.

God gives in answer to prayer what we can enjoy that contributes beyond itself.

Seek Life As God Intends (Kingdom)

Repent

Get serious

Can have all the bible knowledge in the world, but if we by bad living (recent pastors and Christian leaders) not pleasure in the general sense but losing control, etc, we will not experience the joy that comes from living life as God intends that comes from life in Jesus.

Calls the church unfaithful, double-minded, unfaithful

Don't flirt with the world system and its consequences for their relationship with God.

Called to repent both of behavior (hands) and attitude (heart).

Lament

grieving the loss of something, someone. Losing their connection, relationship with their Father.

Lament and mourning/grief is not being sorry. Sorry is regret.

Set a New Course

Have to walk away from the selfish, self-serving attitudes from before.

Stop the sarcastic, taunting jokes and laughter and take this seriously because the consequences are steep.

7-8 - Letting go while taking hold of. Not, let go and then...happens at the same time. It's a process. Repentance is a process. Talking to Christians here.

Humility

10 - How? humble yourselves.

v7 -8 - Submit - let God work his way in you. You can't date two people. Pick one. Pick him.

humble ourselves; receive and surrender to the claims of Jesus on our lives; his ways.

Augustine: God gives what he demands. Called grace.

11 - Bad mouthing each other gives God's way a bad reputation.

12 - Honor the message by honoring one another.

Make clean - prune away, clear the ground of weeds; clear a building site making it pure/ready to build.

Drawing near to God, making ourselves clean, single minded - Isaiah 1:15-17

Resist and Flee = Humility

Resisting is not fighting

Building a spiritual immune system by drawing near to God, being honest about our selfishness, who we’ve hurt.

One of the enemy's primary purposes is to separate us from God and one another. This separation is what we must resist. How do we do that? Draw near to God.

Flee

disappear quickly, become invisible

Result

Result is the opposite of the beginning of this section. No more jealousy of each other, no more trashing one another, no more battling each other.

11- Wrapping up a pretty hard to hear correction and call to change by reminding them they are his brothers.

selfish attitudes led to arguments in the church handled without restraint and awful things were said.

These are the values of the world's system that we have to resist. Not saying be a doormat. Speak with honor, respect, reason. This is life as God intends.

Follow the love command as told in Jesus' teachings - it's the value and law of the Kingdom.

And God will satisfy