How to resolve conflict

Good morning everyone, I am again so happy to be here this morning. This past week we went over to Wheaton and we got Collin officially moved into his dorm and all set up. It was a great weekend with him where we got to hear some about what God has been doing in his life over the last couple of weeks. So it was a busy week, but we are so glad to be back here this morning worshiping with our family and seeing everyone here in person.

For those that are joining us online, as always we are honored that you have chosen to worship with us, and we would love to see you in person. Every single Sunday morning we join together in person for live worship and teaching as well as some great Bible study groups and the most amazing hot coffee right served to you right here in the LRBC living room. So, if you are in the area we would love to encourage you to join us anytime.

Now, we have been talking about culture and conflict these last few weeks. We talked about how we are in the world but not of the world. We talked about how we are living in our current culture, but we are also called to be counter cultural is much of our Christian life. If you recall a few weeks ago we saw that Paul said to,

Destroy every argument and every impressive opinion that is voiced against the knowledge of God and then to take captive every thought to obey Christ…— Paul

Then we talked about how to not just survive in this culture, but to thrive in this culture that we are living in. We saw that throughout Scripture I am called to recognize God, praise God, and humble myself. Then just last week we were confronted with this concept of conflict and the realization that conflict actually begins inside of ourselves…What do we do about that? How do we manage to be in the world but not of the world, when we are also balancing our own sinfulness and prideful conflicts? That is really the question isn’t it?

Well, since we looked at the cause of conflict last week, I thought we should look at the cure to conflict this week. Or at least a pretty good treatment for conflict. Like, when we are in conflict, how do we manage to resolve conflict in a way that is pleasing to the Lord? Last week we ended with me giving you an assignment. I asked you to ask yourself a question when you were in the midst of a conflict, or as you thought about a particular conflict. The question was, what do I want? What do I want is a pretty important question to ask and if you remember I said that how you respond in conflict reveals your pride. Well, the same is frequently true when you answer the question about what you want. Frequently the answer to that question will reveal your own pridefulness. Now, if our conflict is largely a result of our own pride, then how do we combat that? Like, how can we remove pride from our life, or at least how can we lessen the effects of pride in our own lives. Well, what is the opposite of pride? Humility…So, to put it plainly, how do I resolve conflict? the answer is, humility.

Listen, I have told you this quote before, but Im going to give you a broader quote here from Pastor Tim Keller of New York. Pastor Keller says in his sermon turned book, The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness,

“The thing we would remember from meeting a truly gospel-humble person is how much they seemed to be totally interested in us. Because the essence of gospel-humility is not thinking more of myself or thinking less of myself, it is thinking of myself less.” —Tim Keller

Now, did you catch that? Gospel-humility shows others that you are truly interested in them. Now, this is not something you can fake, this is not some pretense to get out of a conflict, but it is a true interest in other people and their situation. This is the essence of gospel-humility…Actually thinking about the other person or the other situation instead of being so focused on yourself and your situation. So, how do we get there....that is what I would like us to focus on this morning, and to do that we are going to read some more of James 4 to get us thinking about humility.

Last week we ended with

James 4:6 ESV

But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”

You see, here James is bringing our focus into the need for humility as a response to our conflicts that we are experiencing with yourselves as well as with others. What I love is that James immediately begins to tell us how to do this. So, James instructs us on,

How to embrace humility.

This is really what we want to understand becuase the more we understand how to embrace humility the more we can actually resolve the conflicts that we will find ourselves in. When we strive to embrace humility there is a change in the way we interact with people, not just in day to day conversations, but also in the midst of conflict. When we embrace humility we may find a mid-sentence awareness of pride that results in a change in tone or even a change in what you are saying, or an immediate repentance of what you just said that causes a conflict to lessen or actually just disappear. So, in order to understand how to embrace humility lets go ahead and look at

James 4:6–10 ESV

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 this passage we see that the first step to embracing humility is to

1. Submit to God

OK, this seems like a bit of a no brainer, but if that where true, then James would not have felt the need to write it down would he. So what does it mean to submit to God? Well, first thing is that in order to submit to God you have to know ho God is, right? Second you have to willfully put yourself in subjection to him, that means that you must stop resisting him altogether. That means you must stop worshiping your idols and return to worshiping your God. As we return to worshiping our God we are able to see that he does not desire us to be in conflict with anyone. He does not desire that we will have relational tensions with other believers, or with non believers for that matter. Therefore, I must submit to God in order to remove conflict. Theologian Kurt Richardson says,

“What James was saying was that conflicts with one another are symptomatic of conflict with God. All conflict resolution should begin by a renewed submission to God by the internal act of submission to him.” —Kurt Richardson

So we see that Embracing humility starts with submission to God. The next step to embracing humility is to

2. Resist the Devil

Ok, well if I am going to submit to God, a natural consequence is to resist the devil, so that makes sense. However, there must be a little more to it otherwise James would not have said that this is something that we need to do. We are starting a new school year, and kids are going to school and they will be faced with various temptations and various desires from students, and even from teachers and administrators. So, what does it mean to resist the devil when those around you are encouraging you to agree with what is going on with the culture around you?

There is a book called “Renaissance: The Power of the Gospel However Dark the Times”, by Os Guinness. In this book Mr. Guinness argues that

“Legalization of any practice, and then it’s normalization through numbers, need never mean a revaluation of what we know to be wrong because God says so, simply because the majority opinion now holds it to be right.”— Os Guinness

You see, what he is saying is that as a Christian we are called to resist the devil in the midst of a culture that is openly accepting of sinful behavior. In order to embrace humility we cannot accept the cultural truths that are in opposition to the Gospel truths. Embracing humility includes resisting the Devil.

So as we submit toGod and resist the Devil the next step of embracing humility is to,

3. Draw near to God

What does it mean to draw near to God? That’s an important question isn’t it? Does it mean that I attend more Bible studies and I give more money to the church? Well, no, it doesn’t. Drawing near to God is more than actions, it is a heart. Do you remember that last week I said that God was more concerned about our inward motives than our outward actions? Well, that same concept continues here. Drawing near to God is not some list of things you must complete in order to draw near to God. There are other religions that would teach that, there are other Christian denominations that would teach this as well. They would say that you must do certain things in order to draw near to God. Well, if God is more concerned with the inward heart, thenDrawing near to God starts with the heart, not the hands.

So what is drawing near to God, well, this would start primarily with repentance…Repentance of our own sin and our own pride. I love what Douglas Moo says,

“James is urging that we repent of our sins and seek God as an important aspect of his overall call to “submit” ourselves to God” —Douglas Moo

Now, there are actions that you will do as an outpouring of drawing near to God, but these actions are guided by a heart that is actively drawing near to God. The actions without the heart motive is simply another expression of pridefulness and believing that you are a good enough person that God is lucky to have you...

James also tells us that the result of our drawing near to God is that he will draw near to us. Moo illustrates it this way,

“Like the father of the prodigal son, God stands always ready to welcome back his children who turn from their sinful ways.” —Douglas Moo

As we are drawing near to God we must remember that,

Drawing near to God embraces humility.

James goes on to show us the practical implications of embracing this humility and expresses for us how we do this. James tells us that we are called to wash our hands and purify our hearts. In other words, in order to embrace gospel humility we must repent of both the external behavior (washing our hands), and the internal heart attitude (purifying our hearts) that leads to our behaviors. It is not enough to simply have self control and not do something, we must purify our hearts by drawing near to God so that the heart attitude reflects God’s heart as well. There is a Psalm that I would like to look at briefly, join me in

Psalm 24:3–4 ESV

Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to what is false and does not swear deceitfully.

King David here tells us that the one that is unified with the Lord is the one that has embraced gospel humility and confronted pride.

“He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to what is false and does not swear deceitfully.”—King David.

This is the person that can be near to the Lord…this is the person that can stand in his holy place. This is exactly what James is talking about as he writes his letter to Christians in the New Testament.

So, all of this is happening and basically what James is telling us to do is to

Exchange our hearts for the heart of Christ.

These words are easy to say, but much more difficult to do, right. This is something that calls for radical repentance…that means you are commited to not holding back from the Lord, but you are actually willing to fully submit to him in every aspect of your life. Every. Aspect. Of. Your. Life. ...That means that you are embracing humility — over pride…in everything.

Now, In verse 9 James is giving us a vision of the prophets in the Old Testament as they would grieve, mourn and wail over God’s judgement. For us today James is calling us to grieve and wail and mourn, in other words, stop enjoying our pride, stop thinking its all ok and just a joke and realize that there are real consequences to our pridefulness. James here is continuing to take the readers back to the OT as he refers to laughter. You see, Laughter is often used as a mark of foolishness throughout Jewish literature and in the O.T. Scripture. The fool is the person that continues on with a life of laziness and pleasure, or in other words, the person that continues in prideful selfishness...

So, stop being the fool and and begin humbling yourself before the Lord…stop being prideful and begin to embrace gospel humility. How do we deal with conflict in our lives? How do we deal with the issues that we are having at home or at school or at work? Well, the first step is to ask yourself what you really want. In other words the first step is realizing what your part of this conflict really is and where your own pridefulness is causing this conflict. But that’s not where it stops. You see, in order to resolve any conflict after you realize your own part of this conflict, you must repent of your pride and embrace humility.

I love how James continues this section where he tells us to humble ourselves before the Lord. We are told to embrace, not just humility, but gospel humility. That means we must recognize our own spiritual poverty and acknowledge our desperate need for God’s help and submit to his will for our lives…Listen, embracing gospel humility means that we do not resent any suffering we may experience, thinking something like “I don’t deserve this”. You’re right, you don’t deserve to be going through this health crisis, or this financial hardship, or this relational stress. You don’t deserve this...you actually deserve much worse! The wages of sin is death!!! Gospel humility recognizes your own sin and submits to the will of the Lord.

When we embrace gospel humility, look at the promise that we are given.

James 4:10 ESV

Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.

So how do you do that this morning? How do we exchange our heart for the heart of Christ? It all comes back to repentance. This morning if you are here or joining us online, and you are struggling with this idea in some way, then I want to encourage you to reach out to me or to one of the Elders here to discuss what it looks like for you to follow Christ and for you to exchange your heart with the heart of Christ. Reach out if you would like to get together and discuss a bit more personal conversation about the conflict that you are personally experiencing, and how we can bring the Gospel into your situation. But more than anything, this morning join me in prayer as we submit ourselves, as a church, and as individuals seeking to humble ourselves before the Lord.

—Prayer—