Please join me at James 4.  We are moving forward in our study of James’ letter.

James has been giving us examples to help us think through how we’re living and what that says about our faith at the heart level - not just what we say we believe but what we actually do believe - actions speaking louder than words.  James helping us to think through our relationship with God in real time.  And to see the huge opportunities for our lives - our relationships - as we learn to have real faith in real time.

Coming to chapter 4 we are going on in the section we began last Sunday and this theme:  Real faith in real time produces real humility.

James 4 - verse 1 - James begins with a question and an answer.  First the question:  What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? 

Isn’t that a great question?  Everyone one of us experiences this.

Quarrels translates the Greek word “polemoi” which is where we get our English word “polemics.”  Which means...  I had to look it up. 

Polemics describes the art or practice of disputation - especially when it comes to politics and theology.  Ongoing arguing and controversies on a large scale.  Think nations and denominations - battles and warfare.  The kind of quarrels that lead to crusades and lots of people getting killed in the name of religion.

“Fights” translates the Greek word “mache” - kinda like Star Trek’s Maquis - but different.  “Mache” is more personal.  Disputes, contention, personal attacks.  What goes on between individuals.

Question:  What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you?

Answer:  Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you?

“Passions” translates the Greek word “hedonon” which is where we get our English word... “hedonism.”  The belief or practice of living only for pleasure.  Happiness is the highest good.  Which - with respect to John Piper - hedonism is good if our greatest pleasure is God.  God actually desires for us to be happy - blessed.

The desire to be successful - or to excel at using our gifts and talents - to experience fulfilling relationships - to eat tasty food - to have rest and leisure - to actually enjoy life - those are all good things.  God may hugely bless us with all of that and more.

But James writes that the source our struggle is within... you - us.  “We have met the enemy and he is - who?  Us.”  Our own self-serving attitudes and desires.  Our pleasures are at war within us.

In chapter 1 - James wrote that the source of our temptation and sin is our own lust (1:14).  In chapter 3, James wrote that disorder and evil conduct result from our own jealousy and selfish ambition (3:16).  In the same way - when it comes to quarrels and fights - we need to take responsibility for our own hearts.

Passion is good if its God focused.  As soon as passion becomes self-focused Satan is going to have a field day with our lives.  As soon as something or someone steps between us and fulfilling our passions we’re going to be in conflict within ourselves and with others. 

Cain kills Abel because Cain was not Abel.  (Genesis 4:1-8)  And we’ve been at it ever since.  There’s encouragement in that.

Who is James writing to?  The church.  Mostly Jewish Christians scattered throughout the Roman Empire.  Think first century - way back when.  Jewish Christians who had all kinds of issues - quarrels and fights - going on between them and their fellow Jews.  Between them and the Gentiles.  Amongst themselves in the church.

But let’s remember that there was also ongoing conflict.  The church at Ephesus looked great on the outside - doctrinally and theologically sound.  But inside had drifted from their first love of Jesus.  Think warfare.  Philippi was a tremendously generous church that was being torn apart - sides chosen - divisions created - because of a fight between two women.

Corinth was spiritually dysfunctional.  They were tolerating - ignoring -  blatant sin.  A man was shacked up his step-mother.  They continued to use the temple prostitutes.  Their potlucks and communion services were ego-fests.  People were excluded - humiliated.  They’d divided into camps over who their favorite teacher was.  Some were teaching that there was no resurrection.  They were arguing over dietary laws.  They were suing each other.  Their emphasis on the gifts of the spirit were all about them and not the Spirit. (1)  

The encouragement in all that is this:  We’re no more messed up than any one else has been.  2,000 years of church history proves that.  We’re no less or more spiritual.  What James is writing is just as crucial today as it has been since the day God inspired James to write it.

Which means that what were about to look at it is timeless - true - proven and helpful.  And behind what James writes is God who is faithful and still hangs in there with His church - with us.  There is nothing broken here that God can’t and won’t fix - if we turn to Him.

So we can be honest.  We all struggle with this.  The scope of what James is describing touches every human relationship - from nations down to communities - our neighbors - to relationships at work or school or in the church - to families and marriages - parents and kids.

We can learn from God what it takes to work through issues together - in the church - even at home - without tearing each other to shreds.

In verses 2 to 4 James describes Our Quarrels and Fights.  Let’s read these verses together:  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 now 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.

Let’s go back and unpack what James writes.  First James writes about unfulfilled insatiable desire.

You desire and do not have, so you murder. 

Skye Jethani in an article that got passed around a few years back - maybe some of you remember the article - Skye Jethani makes a great point about how advertisements have changed.  Ads were originally designed to inform people with needs of the availability of a product.  Now ads are designed to convince people that they need what’s being sold.  Every day we’re exposed to 3,500 desire-inducing advertisements promising us that satisfaction is just one more purchase away.

Jethani writes, “This constant manufacturing of desires has created a culture of overindulgence.  Obesity, sexual promiscuity, and skyrocketing credit card debt are just a few signs.  Although lack of self-control has always plagued humanity, for the first time in history, an economic system has been created that relies on it.” (2)

That’s kind of a scary thought.  Our entire economic system is based on  the insatiable self-serving desire for more.

Having stuff is not necessarily wrong or bad.  Would you agree with that?

Stuff is not bad.  But when we desire - James writes - and we become frustrated in our attempts to obtain what we insatiably desire after - we want what we don’t have and so we murder to get it. 

Which is along the lines of what Jesus taught - in the Sermon on the Mount.  Murder in our hearts.  Murder with our lips.  Everyone who’s angry with his brother - whoever insults his brother - whoever calls his brother a fool - is liable - is judged as a murderer.  (Matthew 5:21)

Shredding people is about taking out people who are in the way of getting what we deserve.  Nothing personal.  Just our own self-pleasure run amok.  Murder means we don’t care what our self-gratification is costing others. 

Parents who are off pursuing careers and relationships and lifestyles that are all about them - while the kids are left to fend for themselves growing up learning that life is really about what we can grab for ourselves.  Parents who want trophy kids to put on display so that they - the parents - look good.  Doing all kinds of things for their kids and pushing their kids forward - because of what the parents want for themselves or because we don’t want to feel guilty. 

Mortgage the future with credit card debt.  Fudge on our stewardship.  Live off the system.  Buy now figure it out later.

James goes on:  You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel.   

Do you remember Jacob and Esau?  The brothers ben Isaac.  The conflict between these two is legendary.

Esau - who brought tremendous grief to his parents and got himself into a lot of trouble - especially with who he married - because he only cared about fulfilling his own selfish desires.  And Jacob - whose name means “supplanter” or “one who takes the place of another by force of treachery” - who would name their kid something like that?  But it fit. 

Remember the whole soup thing?  Esau selling his future riches and blessing to Jacob who’s stewing over what Esau has.  Gratification of desire.

Then the whole gamey I’ve got your goat blessing thing with father Isaac.   While Esau’s out hunting Jacob dresses up in goat skins and gets Isaac to give him the blessing that should have been Esau’s.  (Genesis 25:19-34; 27:1-46)

This goes on and on - intrigue and deception - fights and quarrels.  Their lives are full of this.  The source is their own selfish desires - envy - wanting what rightfully belong to the other.

James says we struggle with this coveting what we cannot obtain by legitimate means.  Keeping up with the Jones.  Present company excluded.  Wanting what others have.  Purpose being to fulfill our passions - whatever the cost.

Then James turns to prayer - to our relationship with God.  You do not have, because you do not ask.  If we’re murdering and fighting and quarreling its because we’ve failed to turn to God for what we really need.

Jesus was teaching about prayer.  He said this about God.  “If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!” (Matthew 7:11)

There’s an old story about a man who stood up in a prayer meeting to pray one of those long, windy, theological prayers.  He introduced it with, “Oh, Thou great God who sittest on  the circle of the earth, before Whom the inhabitants are like grasshoppers.”  A lady seated behind him began to tug on the back of his jacket and said, “Just call Him ‘Father” and ask Him for something.” (3)

God is our Father who wants to meet our needs - to bless us tremendously.  He wants us to ask Him.  Meaning - instead of fighting we ought to be on our knees in prayer.

Jesus told His disciples:  “Until now you have asked nothing in my name.  Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.”  (John 16:24)

Someone “might” say:  “Well, I’ve asked God for stuff and He still hasn’t given me what I want.”

James’ response:  “You ask and don’t receive, because you ask wrongly.  You’re asking to fulfill your own passions - asking God to give what you’re desiring and coveting after.  What you’re willing to murder and fight and quarrel over to get.”

Praying with self-seeking motivation is like trying to get God to join us in our sin.  Why would we ever expect God to go along with that?  Can you hear God?  “Let sin with you!” 

The apostle John balances out James’ teaching.  John writes:  “Whatever we ask we receive from him - God - because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him… and this is the confidence that we have toward him that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us.” (1 John 3:22; 5:14)

James warns against prayer motivated by pleasing self.  John encourages prayer motivated towards pleasing God.

Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane:  “Father, this is what I want.  But, not my will.  May your will be done.”  (Matthew 26:39). 

Check our motivation.  God isn’t a vending machine.  Put in a prayer and out comes a blessing.  This isn’t about us.  Life is about... God. 

James takes us deeper - verse 4:  You adulterous people! 

That’s pretty blunt… and helpful.

Can you imagine if your wife went to the man next door for advice - or they went off together for a weekend at the coast.  Or, if your husband bought a $10,000 diamond necklace and gave it to the woman next door - or spent hours listening to her pour out her heart.  Wouldn’t you wonder just a tad about their commitment to your marriage?

When we go to the world for our needs - rather than our Heavenly Father - we’re being adulterers - we’re being unfaithful to God.

Remember Burger King?  “Have it your way”? 

(Bloom County cartoon)

“May I help you?”

“Yes.  I’d like a herring burger with loads of mayo.”

“Herring?  As in fish?”

“Yes.  Penguins are big on fresh raw herring!”

“Look… this is weird.”

“Sir… your sign said I can have it my way, and my way is a herring on a bun with lots of mayonnaise!”

“Herring Whopper, heavy mayo.”

“Hold the head.” (4)

That’s the world.  Go for the gusto.  Because you’re worth it.  You only go around once in life.  Grab what you can for as long as you can while you claw and scratch your way towards the top of the heap.

Behind all that - the world is being manipulated by Satan to lure us in - to trap us - to move us away from God - to destroy us.  The bait is anything that we think will satisfy self.  The hook is the lie that we can get it all by our own whit, wisdom, and working.

The world system - under the control of Satan - is at war with God and His children.  James warns us - when we ally our selves with the world - when we flirt and fornicate with the world - going to the world for our needs - with its focus on self - we put ourselves in the position of being an enemy of God - we’ve allied ourselves with the wrong side in the war.

That worldliness shows up in the church.  Playing politics - putting dollars ahead of ministry - focusing on numbers and not disciple making - looking to be entertained verses following Jesus in service - replacing God’s truth with our pet peeves - a heart level devotion to Jesus with following a religion.  It shows up in our homes and work places and schools as we’re living out there when we’re living for ourselves and not God. 

Bottom line:  James’ description of our quarrels and fights is all about motivation - serving our passions.  A self-serving motivation that divides churches - destroys ministries - divides homes - destroys our testimony.  A heart beating to the rhythm of the world that is a total disconnect from what God has for His people.

By God’s grace - coming to verses 5 and 6 - James gives us God’s solution.

Let’s read these verses together:  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.”

God yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us.  What does James mean by that? 

The bottom line takes us back to James’ blunt statement in verse 4:  You adulterous people!   Meaning God desires - yearns jealously for - the faithfulness of His children - the Bride of Christ - the one’s in whom He - God - the Holy Spirit has come to dwell.

The implications of that are astounding.

God’s Solution Part 1 - is that God yearns for us.  God yearns - desires - longs - to control our lives by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Have you driven one of those Autopia cars down at Disneyland.?  Or watched a child drive one of them?  We’re steering the car.  The steering wheel is actually turning the wheels and the car is kinda swerving down the road.  But the car - thankfully - stays on the road because there’s a track down the center that is what’s ultimately steering the car.  In reality, the car would probably travel better down the road if we weren’t steering at all. 

That’s the kind of control God desires to have in our lives.  If we would stop trying to steer based on wherever we want the car to go - steering our lives after our own selfish desires - our own self-focused will - if we would release control of our lives to God - to the Holy Spirit - He’d be the one guiding us through life a lot better than our efforts of bouncing along down the road.  He’d make sure we’re steering straight.

Are we together?  We’re still in the car going down the road.  But the control of the direction and how we’re getting there is God’s.

God’s Solution Part 2 is that God gives greater grace.  More is greater.  The Greek word is “megas.”  God gives mega-grace.  Greater than our self-will - our self-serving passions - our inability to let go of the wheel - control of our lives.

Our temptation is what?  We see the guard rail coming.  We’re gonna drive off the bridge.  Panic and reset to self-mode.  We’re grabbing back control of the wheel instead of relying on the track.  Instead of trusting that God really can steer the car.  Daily - even minute by minute - we need to choose to keep trusting God.

Which is hugely difficult for us.  To let go of our self-centered, molded by the world, self-serving passion.  To let go of our own seeking after what we want and to humble ourselves before God.

But its God who gives mega-grace.  James writes:  God opposes us in our pride - when we act like His enemy - tightening our grip on the wheel.  God isn’t going there with us.  But He gives greater grace to the humble.

Grace that’s greater than all our sin - all our pride - all the dents in the car.  God has a limitless supply of grace He’s yearning to pour into our lives.

Long ago in a church far far away - I conducted a church choir.  We sang this hymn.  The words have stuck in my mind.  Maybe you know this:

He giveth more grace when the burdens grow greater,

He sendeth more strength when the labors increase;

To added affliction He addeth His mercy,

To multiplied trials, His multiplied peace.

His love has no limit, His grace has no measure,

His power has no boundary known unto men;

For out of His infinite riches in Jesus,

He giveth, and giveth, and giveth again. (5)

Grab onto God’s solution:  God’s desire is to move us through life in ways that are infinitely better than our own.  And God’s desire is to give us greater grace.  To supply to us everything we need to go there.  Our heavenly Father - desires to bless us - to meet our needs - to bring peace and end conflict in our lives.

We have a - at the core of who we are - we have a choice as to where we go to have our needs met - self or God.

Coming to verses 7 to 9 - James gives us two practical steps.    How we can go there with God - living God’s solution.

Let’s read these together:  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.

First practical step:  Submit yourself to God.  That’s an imperative.  A command.  Detach from the wheel.  Stop resisting God.  Instead relinquish control to God. 

Are we willing to let God be God?  He’s the potter.  We’re the what? clay.  (Romans 9:20,21)  Are we willing to be clay?  To let Him mold us.  For God to determine our economic level.  Our marriage state or unmarriaged state.  Our health.  Our job situation?  The path of our lives?  Whatever.

With that - hand in hand - comes resisting the Devil.  Which means turn to God and stop pursuing the world.  Either we’re submitting to God or we’re not.  We can’t do both.  We can try.  But that don’t work so well.  Right?

Satan has no ultimate power over us.  Its a lie that we need to act like the world acts.  As tremendously powerful as Satan may seem - he can be resisted.  But we can’t resist Satan under our own power.

So, James begins with submission.  God is graciously standing right there ready to empower us.  We’re His.  If we choose to give God free reign over our lives - if we choose to trust God - choose to go to God with our needs - to resist Satan and all His self-serving lies - Satan will flee from us because the power of God upon our lives is too mega-much for him.

Second practical step:  Draw near to God.

Let’s be careful.  Its almost sounds like a formula.  The more we draw near to God the more God will draw near to us.  Exponential closerness.  The reality isn’t that God has moved.  Its that we move closer to God who yearns for us to draw even closer.

How do we draw closer to God?  James gives us four steps that take us closer to God.

One:  Cleanse your hands you sinners.  Meaning stop doing sin.

Two:  Purify your hearts.  Meaning stop thinking sin

We need to make choices -  to not go to where we once went - to let go of people we once hung out with - to not participate in things we once participated in - to change what we listen to and what we watch - to learn to think differently.  To choose to think about God’s stuff not Satan’s stuff.

As we’re doing life we’ve got to be asking ourselves:  “Is this drawing me closer to God or drawing me away?”  There is no neutral ground.  If its moving us away from God - drop it like a hot rock.

Step three:  Be wretched, mourn, and weep.  Which is about feeling sorry for our sin.

Four:  Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy into gloom.  Which means stop making cheap jokes - excuse for our sin.  “Excuse my French.  I don’t think God will mind.”  Probably God is not amused.  Sin is still sin.  Stop trying to pretend it isn’t.

What James is talking about here is desperation.  As Christians living in America this is really hard.  We have so much its hard to understand how spiritually needy we really are.

We have everything we need to experience life together in Christ - to serve Him - to grow individually in our relationship with Him.  A plethora of churches to choose from.  Christian radio - television - publications.  The internet with instant everything.  In all that - which can be so easily distracting - in all that what we’re often missing is desperation for God.

We get caught up in doing the Christian life - and we forget our dependence - our desperate need for God.  Remember the song, “I’m lost without You.”  We miss the depth of that.

The kind of misery - mourning and weeping - James is writing about is like the Prodigal Son - who returns home - having wasted his inheritance - having done everything possible to grieve his father and earn his scorn - who returns destitute and begging for the smallest kindness to be shown to Him.

Submitting to God - drawing near to God - at the heart level that only comes as we realize our desperation for God.  We really are destitute - condemned in sin - unworthy - utterly dependent on God’s greater grace and mercy.  Only He can rescue us.

Instead of merrily going our way - with laughter and joy - we need to get a grip on our spiritual poverty - acknowledging our spiritual bankruptcy before God. 

James’ Conclusion comes in verses 10 to 12.  Read these with me:  Humble yourselves before God 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 it 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?

James’ last question is way to the point.  Who are you?  Who are you to act like God - judging your brother?

When we focus on ourselves we loose sight of God.  We become a law unto ourselves - our own standard of self-serving behavior that allows us treat others as somehow less deserving than us - less enlightened than us - less spiritual - less anything than us.  People who just get in our way as we’re desiring and coveting what we deserve in order to have our needs met.

The same self-serving - self-righteous - self-focused attitude that causes quarrels and fights is the source of slander and criticism and inappropriate judgment. 

James’ conclusion:  Humble yourselves before God and he will exalt you - in His way - in His time - for His glory.  Not yours. 

Let me leave you with two “where can we go from here” thoughts for as we head out there.

Robert Sumner, in his book “The Wonders Of The Word Of God” tells about man who was severely injured in an explosion.  The man’s face was badly disfigured and he’d lost his eyesight as well as both hands.  He was a new Christian and one of his greatest disappointments was that he could no longer read the Bible.  Then he heard about a lady in England who read Braille with her lips.  Hoping to do the same, he sent for some books of the Bible in Braille.

When the books came he discovered - sadly - that the nerve endings in his lips had been too badly destroyed by the explosion.  He just couldn’t read that way.  But, one day as he brought one of the Braille pages to his lips, his tongue happened to touch a few of the raised characters and he could feel them.  He realized, “I can read the Bible using my tongue.”

At the time that Sumner wrote about this man he’d already read through the Bible four times using his tongue. (6)

I’m not suggesting that to humble ourselves before God means we all need to read through the Bible with our tongues.  What is a challenge is the example of what desperation for God will bring us to if we’re willing to humble ourselves before God.

How many - having been Christians for years - having reasonably good eye sight - how many Christians have never read through the Bible even once.  How desperate are we for God?  How humble are we before Him?

Last thought.  Very brief.  Stay with me.  Don’t miss it.

Last week on Facebook a friend of mine posted a quote from G.K. Chesterton.  Here it is:  “How much larger would your life be if your self would become smaller in it?” (7)

Question:  What would it be like for God to exalt you?

________________

1. See Larry Osborne, “Accidental Pharisees” pages 128-129 for a great summary of the issues in the early church.

2. Skye Jethani, “All We Like Sheep,” Leadership, Summer 2006 

3. David Roper, “War And Peace” - sermon on James 4:1-10

4. Bloom County - Berkeley Breathed - pub. date 01.28.1982

5. Annie Johnson Flint, “He Giveth More Grace” © 1969, Lillenas Publishing Co.

6. Quoted in The Temple News, August 2006

7. G.K. Chesterton, “Orthodoxy,” Ignatius Press, 1995

Additional reference:  Charles R. Swindoll, Insights on James, 1 and 2 Peter - Zondervan, 2010

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®  (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.  Used by permission.  All rights reserved.