James 4:7-12

5 Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us? 6 But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: “God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.” 7 Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up. 11 Brothers and sisters, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against a brother or sister[d] or judges them speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it. 12 There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you—who are you to judge your neighbor?

First James called us to come face to face with the truth that conflict comes from our desires that battle with us. We love to point to others as the source of conflict but as long as we do we pass the buck instead of taking personal responsibility, and end up participating in the blame game.  We end up trading peace for pretending, because we buy into the lie that the source of our conflict resides outside of self.  We become convinced that it’s an external problem which leads us to behavior based on our belief, but the truth is that selfishness, covetousness and spiritual adultery reside within.  James doesn’t stop at just helping us to understand the cause of conflict he also gives us the cure. He reminds us that the war with worldliness is winnable.

• The Cure for Conflict

Recognizing the problem is only part of the solution, doing something about it is much more difficult. James starts in verse 6 by bringing us to the heart of the problem, pride by revealing the cure, humility. Humility involves having a heavenly view of the heart, an honest assessment of self in light of the Savior. Then in verse 10 James again brings us back to the cure as he hits home the need for a heart of humility.  The Bible is filled with stories of people who in their proud self-sufficiency tried to exalt themselves above God, Lucifer, Pharaoh, and Nebuchadnezzar just to name a few. God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble and not just grace but more grace. Hemmed between the humility we see a series of instructions that heal and humble the heart.

Relinquish control – First we are called to submit ourselves to God. Submit here is a military term that means to put in proper order or rank, to subject oneself to another, to obey. As we submit to God we start to serve His will over our wants, departing from our destructive desires. To submit really means to yield control to Christ, to stop fighting our heavenly Father and face the facts about our sinful self. It comes down to control; will our lives be driven by a desire for the things of God or dominated by the devil and his destructive desires? A heart controlled by self doesn’t see the need for personal change, so we go through life trying to control and conform everyone to our ways and wants, and it becomes about our wishes and will. But when we submit to the Savior we are no longer controlled by self’s desire to change everyone else but are concerned instead with Christ conforming our heart. Freed from wasting our efforts trying to change others, we have the time and energy to work on us. When we find ourselves in conflict with others, self wants to fight and argue, to prove it’s point and put the person in their place. But if we have put God in charge then we view conflict from His perspective of peace not proving our point and promoting self. The only way to deal with the conflicting desires that want to drive and destroy our life is to give control to Christ, to keep coming to the Lord in submission so that we serve out of His strength not self. Submission is the voluntary act of placing yourself under God’s authority, it’s what happens when we pray “Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Submit means much more than a passive acquiescence, it’s signing up for service. It is our pledge of allegiance to serve our sovereign Savior by fighting under his banner. You have a choice, you can surrender the free will of self to the Savior and live a controlled life or continue to live a conflicted chaotic one. C. S. Lewis said “there are two kinds of people, those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, “All right, then, have it your way.”  The great hymn “I Surrender All” was written by American art teacher and musician Judson W. Van DeVenter, who subsequently became a music minister and evangelist. He said the inspiration for the words came from his struggled between developing his talents in the field of art and going into full-time evangelistic work. “At last the pivotal hour of my life came, and I surrendered all, a new day was ushered into my life. I became an evangelist and discovered down deep in my soul a talent hitherto unknown to me. God had hidden a song in my heart, and touching a tender chord, He caused me to sing.”

All to Jesus I surrender;

All to Him I freely give;

I will ever love and trust Him,

In His presence daily live.

I surrender all,

I surrender all;

All to Thee, my blessed Savior,

I surrender all.

All to Jesus I surrender;

Humbly at His feet I bow,

Worldly pleasures all forsaken;

Take me, Jesus, take me now.

All to Jesus I surrender;

Make me, Savior, wholly Thine;

Let me feel the Holy Spirit,

Truly know that Thou art mine.

All to Jesus I surrender;

Lord, I give myself to Thee;

Fill me with Thy love and power;

Let Thy blessing fall on me.

All to Jesus I surrender;

Now I feel the sacred flame.

Oh, the joy of full salvation!

Glory, glory, to His Name!

So what song are you singing, is it the song of self, like Frank Sinatra who sung, “I did it my way,” or the song of surrender? Who have you signed up to serve, self or the Savior?

Resist – Second we must resist the devil, this is the other side of the same coin. You submit to God by resisting the devil and you resist the devil by submitting to God. C. S. Lewis said: “There is no neutral ground in the universe; every square inch, every split second, is claimed by God and counter-claimed by Satan.” Satan constantly seeks to lead people into self-centered worldly attitudes and activities. He wants to subvert our service to the Savior. If you won’t submit yourself to God then trying to resist the devil is pointless. We are at war with the wicked one who is out to slay and enslave, he wants to trick and trip us anyway he can in order to get us off track and away from trusting God. The best way to resist is to respond in submission to the Savior. This is a two-pronged approach to peace, and these two principles come with twin promises: Resist the devil and he will flee from you, draw near to God and He will draw near to you.

Respond to relationship, third we are called to come close to God. The goal of the Christian life is not following the rules but fellowship with the Father, rules restrict relationship revives. We tend to make it about doing but James reminds us it’s about being.  But in order to come close we have to come clean, to sever our ties with sin because sin always separates. This reminds us of Adam and Eve’s walk with God’s in the garden as well as the sin that severed their close communion.  James calls us to see and take sin seriously, less we are seduced and our relationship severed. This is a call for clean hands cleansed hearts, a washing of both our attitudes and actions. What are your hands handling, what is it that your mind meditates on? Are you pondering the pure or the polluted? God’s plan is for us to live in the freedom of forgiveness not in the futility of sin. God’s plan brings purpose and true pleasure, where sin like poison slow spreads through our bodies, bringing pain, punishment and prison. When we fall into folly, and stumble in sin, we do not have to live with the stench of the pig pen we can come clean. We need to. We should respond to sin in our lives with remorse and repentance, we need to distance ourselves from the disease of sin. God’s children should relish righteousness and be repulsed by sin because it brings suffering and sadness not satisfaction. When we refuse to come clean we not only compromise our relationship with God but we enter into conflict with others. Sin doesn’t just affect us it afflicts others. Sin causes us to be jerks and judgers, setting us up as superior to others. As we focus on the faults of others we fail to see our own sin and start to see ourselves as right and others as wrong. Judging others leads to a sinful attitude of prideful superiority where we set ourselves up as judge, jury and punisher. Instead of doing good we take the place of God, pronouncing guilt instead of grace.  It may give us the illusion of feeling bigger or better, but it comes at the expense of beating and belittling others. When we become preoccupied with pridefully pointing out others sin, conflict and chaos are the unavoidable results. But when we respond with a humble heart God gives grace and what we do with this gift of grace determines the direction of our relationships. When we give grace people get God’s love in their life but when we keep it we kill the very life of our relationships as lust takes the place of love.  So are you a grace giver or a grabber? Are you surrendering self to the Savior? This is the call to chose, the same call that Joshua challenged his people with in Joshua 24:15 “But if you refuse to serve the LORD, then choose today whom you will serve. Would you prefer the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates? Or will it be the gods of the Amorites in whose land you now live? But as for me and my family, we will serve the LORD.” Like Joshua I have set my heart on serving the Savior, what about you, which side will you serve?

James 4:1-6

“What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. 5 Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us? 6 But he gives us more grace.”

Isn’t it amazing how prone to conflict we are? We can find an excuse to escalate things to the point of conflict. Just pick up the paper and it doesn’t take long to see that most of the casualties revolve around conflict. There is conflict among nations and conflict within our own nation. Locally we deal conflict in our cities and towns. Even our churches, places that should promote Christ’s peace, are often marked by conflict. Over the last decade how many denominational disputes and divisions have there been? Unfortunately even in the family of God we find fighting. Then there is the issue of the nuclear family which is fraught with hurt feelings, broken relationships and divorce. Without God our default is a destructive one. As we turn to James chapter four James not only raises the question of what causes conflict, he answers the question, giving us both the causes and the cure. Today we will look at the reason for conflict followed later by the peaceful prescription for its remedy.

• The Cause of Conflict

Instead of beating around the bush James comes out and tells us that the cause of conflict is our conflicting desires. You see when my desires conflict with yours and one of us does not get what we want, then the battle begins. Once the fire is lite all it needs is the fuel of unforgiveness and it can rage for years. It’s easy to blame others for the things that rip and tear at the fabric of our relationships, but blame begins because we refuse to take personal responsibility for our people problems.  We refuse to forgive because we think we are not at fault. While we might like to find fault in others James confronts us with a hard truth, we need to look within ourselves for the source of conflict. Its time to stop hiding behind the blame and start being honest with ourselves. Pointing to other people as the problem may feel good to our flesh and free us from facing the painful facts but it doesn’t cure our conflict. Within every follower of Jesus Christ is the foul “old man” that dark and selfish side with a very capable capacity for sin. Deep within, in the mud of a man’s heart, lurk the lies that it’s everyone else’s fault. If we are unwilling to dive in and deal with this deceptive deceit we will always see our relationships disintegrating into dust. So why do we keep up the pretense that the problem resides in other people? Pride, because if we admit that we are the problem then we have to change to cure conflict. Its more comfortable and convenient to put change on others doorstep than deal with self. Yet what if we worked as hard at healing as we do harboring hurt feelings? Selfishness, when observed in others is obvious and ugly. Yet the sin of selfishness, that is malignant within us, can be neatly surrounded with rationalizations. It’s easy to make excuses for self’s shortcomings and dismiss our own deficiencies. But James describes us as people who want something, but don’t get it, and therefore we are unhappy. Why are we restless people, dominated by discontented because we are driven by pleasure, the “desires that battle within you.” The more we are driven by the pleasure principle the more likely we are to be participants in quarreling and fighting. Abrasive words and abusive actions are expressed to one another because we are not at peace within ourselves. The word for “fights” is also translated “war” means a continuing state of hostility and “quarrels” are outbursts of active animosity. We tend to think that peace is our natural state, and that conflict is unnatural, yet the reverse is actually true. James brings us face to face with three concepts that lead to conflict.

Converting – This is a carnal craving for more, a sinful, self-indulgent pleasure, driven by our desire to satisfy the flesh. It comes when we choose to pursue pleasure rather than God’s plan. It is driven by the desire to acquire and have, but it can never be satisfied because it is an unquenchable thirst. Covetousness causes conflict because it leads us to lust after life from the perspective of self not serve, taking us to the point that we do whatever we must to get what we want. It the lust for power, popularity, prestige and pleasure. Covetousness leads to fighting because we get frustrated by not getting what we want. Converting consumes us, taking charge and making our goal getting not God. All human conflict is ultimately traced back to the frustrated desire of wanting more than we have, and being resentful of what others have, whether it is position or possessions.

Careless – James says, “You do not have, because you do not ask God.” If you are like me it’s easy to make the mistake of turning to self instead of the Savior.  We need to get over our “I’ve got this God” attitude. Until we come to the realization that we are dependent on the Savior we will always default to self. When I try to get it usually leads to sin, but when God gives it always results in success. Even though we are children of God, who have been promised that He hears and helps when we pray we often don’t practice pray. Many times we simply view prayer as a tool to tackle our problem because we are preoccupied with our own plans and have run into a roadblock. We see prayer as a way to detour past the difficulties so we can get on with our walk our way. We are either so busy taking things into our own hands that we fail to pray entirely, or are so greedy that we pray with improper motives. Prayer is the way to experience our hearts’ desires, but real satisfaction is found only when focus on what the Father wants. James reminds us that, “…you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.” God will not allow us to use prayer simply as a means to our own selfish ends. Genuine prayer leads us away from preoccupation with ourselves and toward His plan. It aligns us with God’s purpose rather than promoting our own cause. Prayer is not about bending God for your benefit. We have not for two reasons, one, we are seeking the wrong source and second we seek with selfish motives. James reminds us that some of what we desire is good and legitimate, but we don’t receive it because we don’t go to the source we are too busy trusting in self.  But James also reminds us that asking is not the only step, we must also ask with the right motives. Many of us are still making it more about our wants than His Will, like the name it claim it approach to prayer. Greedy prayer is not Godly. Yes we are encouraged and entitled to bring any and all request to God, but our prayer must be in the spirit of Jesus’ who prayed in Luke 22:42, “But not my will, but Your will be done.”  Next we see that a distorted prayer life leads to a deception spiritual life.

Cheating – The final word that describes what we face is the word adultery. If we are not careful we will become cheating Christians. For many our immediate reaction to this word is to recoil from it because the word brings to mind vivid pictures of sexual adultery. Which selfish, pleasure seeking, covetous, and carless living can lead to. However, at the deepest level, James is talking about spiritual adultery in which we are unfaithful to God. Throughout the Old Testament, God is seen as the husband and Israel is His bride and in the New Testament Jesus is the bridegroom, and the church is His bride. When we are having an affair with the world we are being unfaithful to our heavenly spouse. Instead of prayer there is prostitution, instead of dependency on God there is defilement.  Today there are a growing number of American Christians who are embracing their self-indulgent values making them the foundation and center of their faith. Instead of challenging the self-preoccupied living of a secular society, we have accepted and elevated it as the new norm for Christian living. This decision to place self and our egoistic interests at the center of the gospel stands Christianity on its head. We have a perverted and prostituted cultural faith, sleep with the world on Saturday, serving God Sunday then back to the world on Monday. Too many Christians try to live the American dream with a little Jesus overlay, like it all fits together. We are trying to fit the pieces of two different puzzles together, clashing Christ with our culture and trying to be content. We are sprinkling a little Savior into our secular and trying to find satisfaction. But James reminds us of a theme that is ever present in the bible and that is that God is a jealous God. He will not share us with sin. God reacts with holy jealousy and passionate pursuit when we whore after the world because He loves us. The facts are that faith should not flirt with filth. So are you willing to deal with what causes conflict in your life, your unhealthy heart that hungers for the carnal instead of Christ?