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Fights
and Quarrels |
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Pocket Paper ______________________ Message by Robert J. Morgan, Senior Pastor The Donelson Fellowship 3210 McGavock Pike 615/871-4769 www.donelson.org Today we’re continuing
our series of messages, Faith
in Action, from the
book of James, and we’re coming to the subject of “Fights and
Quarrels.” Have you ever
been in one of those? James
begins chapter 4 of his book by asking, “What causes fights and
quarrels among you?” I have
a little video here to introduce the subject. [Following video]: There you have the whole problem with
this world—two boys and one remote control. That is a story that has been played
out over and over again on the sands of the lands of the Bible, throughout
history, and in our modern world today.
We’re selfish by nature and even vindictive by nature; and our
inner nature leads to endless conflict.
Well, let’s read what James had to say on this subject in James,
chapter 4: 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 is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of
the world becomes an enemy of God.
Or do you think Scripture says without reason that the spirit He
caused to live in us envies intensely?
But He gives more grace.
That is why Scripture says, “God opposes the proud but gives
grace to the humble.”
Submit yourselves, then, to God.
(James 4:1-7a). 1. Improper Desires Attack Our Souls
(v.1) One of the things that I have noticed in
studying through the book of James is the writer is very concerned about the
conditions within the congregations that he is addressing. James wrote this letter because he
wanted to have healthy churches and holy churches. He began his book in chapter 1, verse
1, by saying: James, a servant
of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes scattered among the
nations. Now, we believe that James was the
Bishop or the leader of the congregations in Jerusalem and throughout Judea,
and so he worked primarily with Jewish people who had accepted Christ as the
Messiah. I think that this letter
was especially addressed to various churches that were largely Jewish in
their ethnicity. He had a burden
for the Jews and for Jewish evangelism and for the health of Jewish
Christians as they assimilated into Christian congregations. And one of his trademark words is
“Brothers.” He keeps
addressing his readers as “Brothers” and
“Sisters.” And he
warns them about attitudes and behaviors that will damage fellowship and
harmony in the church. So in chapter 1 he talked about
charity. In chapter 2 he dealt
with prejudice and discrimination.
He devoted chapter 3 to the damage that can be wrought by the tongue
and by foolish words. Here in
chapter 4, he’s going to talk about how the unity and love of our homes
and churches and relationships can be damaged by improper desires. And the first thing he says is
that as Christians we battle improper and inappropriate desires that are
warring within us. What causes fights and quarrels among
you? Don’t they come from
the desires that battle within you? The word “desire” that James
uses here is the Greek term “ἡδονή”
(he’do-na), from which we get our
English word “hedonism.”
Every one of us has desires and lusts and passions and feelings and
temptations that are inappropriate and unhealthy. James talked about this in chapter 1,
if you remember. He said: When tempted, no one should say,
“God is tempting me.”
For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He tempt anyone; but each
one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it
gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full grown, gives birth to death. Now, here in chapter 4, he picks up the
same theme, talking about the desires that battle within us and how it can
hurt others. Every one of us has
some drives and desires and addictive behaviors in our lives that are
unhealthy. Even the apostle Paul battled this
problem. He spoke in Romans 7
about the battles he had with his desires. He said, in effect, “What I want
to do, I don’t do; and what I don’t want to do, that’s what
I do. There is a war raging within me.
It’s as if there’s another person inside me, battling
against my better self. Oh,
wretched man that I am.” Paul said in Galatians 5, “So I
say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful
nature. For the sinful nature
desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to
the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not
do what you want….” He goes on to say, “The acts of
the sinful nature are obvious:
sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft;
hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions,
factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that
those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.” (The problem, of course, is that our
entertainment industry is feeding all these things.) Paul goes on to say, “But the
fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness,
faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control….” So our hearts and minds are
battlefields, and we all struggle with unhealthy desires that war within
us. Think for a moment of any
unhealthy and inappropriate desires that are battling within you. It may be some desire or lust that is
clearly wrong. Or it might be
some innocent or commendable desire that just isn’t right for you at
this time and which doesn’t represent God’s will for your life. James begins here with the
presupposition that we have improper desires that battle within us, and
that’s a presupposition that few of us would debate. We know it’s true. 2. Improper Desires Cause Our Quarrels
(v. 1-2a) Now, here is his second point. These improper internal desires are at
the root of most of our quarrels and fights. Look again at James 4:1-2: 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….” I read this week in the newspaper about
a couple who got into an argument about an engagement ring. The man had given her a ring, and she
had accepted it; but he was sort of hotheaded, and she began having second
thoughts. They went out for
dinner and on the way home he noticed that she wasn’t wearing the
ring. When they got back to the
apartment, they got into a terrible fight about it and he picked up a pair of
scissors and now she’s dead and he’s behind bars. Well, I think this one passage
explains why we have so many prisons in this country. In his book, The Faith, Charles
Colson talks about visiting a prison in Orange County, California. Huge roles of razor-sharp barbwire
surrounded the facility, which is made up of a complex of one-story
buildings, like so many chicken coops.
It is California’s primary correctional drug rehab
facility. As Colson entered the
complex, his mind went to the hundreds and thousands of jails and prisons and
correctional institutions across our country and he wondered how it could be
that a nation as advanced and educated and prosperous as ours could be
packing so many men and women into prisons every single day. He went inside where three or four
hundred excited inmates were jammed into the chapel. Five minutes into his talk, Colson
asked a question that had struck him this morning: “Okay, now, you
fellows that are in here, you are the experts. Why is it that we as a nation are
filling so many prisons?”
Almost immediately a chorus of shouts came back, but it was the same
word. All the inmates had the
same answer. The one word
response was: Sin! Colson was stunned. He said, “I can’t imagine
any other audience where, if I asked that question, I would get that answer. These men have lived it, though. They know the truth.” (Charles
Colson and Harold Fickett, The Faith (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008), 75.) This passage tells us why we have so
many broken homes in the world today. It explains why we have so many
broken relationships today. The whole history of the world is
explained in these verses. But we
can bring it down to our own lives.
When I was a student at Columbia International University, I took a
course on marriage and family life taught by James Hatch, who was the
greatest professor I ever knew.
He talked about what a miraculous thing marriage is. You take a man who is intrinsically
selfish and self-centered and has been that way all his life; and you take a
woman who is the same; and you put them together under the same roof with the
understanding that they are to love each other and to care more for the needs
of the other than they do for themselves. It’s only by the grace of God
that this works! Some years later, after I had taken that
course, I read an interview with Professor Hatch in a magazine and he said
something that I had never heard him say in class. He was asked about his own marriage,
and he said, in effect, “When my wife and I have a problem, it’s
usually not really a problem between her and me. It’s usually a problem between
me and the Lord. And if I can get
my own heart straightened out toward God, my problem with my wife
disappears.” Well, that’s the point of this
passage in James. First, he tells
us that we all have improper desires that battle within us, and then he says
that these same improper desires cause problems for us in our relationships
and in our world. They cause wars
and quarrels among us. 3. Improper Desires Hinder Our Prayers
(vv. 2b-3) So our improper desires will battle
within us, they will cause quarrels and hurt our relationships, and, third,
they will hinder our prayers.
Look at the passage again: 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. One of the most enlightening Bible
studies you can pursue is the subject of what the Bible says about hindered
prayer. Prayer is the most
powerful force in the world, but there are some things in our lives that can
hinder our prayers and render them powerless. There are a number of verses about
this: Psalm
66:18-20 says: If I had
cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened; but God has
surely listened and heard my voice in prayer. Praise be to God, who has not rejected
my prayer or withheld His love from me! Isaiah
59:1-2 says: Surely the arm of
the Lord is not too short to save, nor His ear too dull to hear. But your iniquities have separated you
from your God; your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He will not
hear. According
to Peter, not treating your wife in a considerate way will hinder your
prayers. We read in 1 Peter
3:7: Husbands, in the same way
be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as
the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so
that nothing will hinder your prayers. But no one in the Bible deals with this
subject like James. If ever there
was an authority on prayer, it was James. He is known in church history as
“Old Camel Knees” because he reportedly had knees as callused as
a camel’s due to his prayer life.
Well, James gives us three reasons for an ineffective prayer life. The first is lack of faith. That’s in chapter 1: If any of you lacks wisdom, he
should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it
will be given him. But when he
asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of
the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.
That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord. The second reason for unanswered prayer
is lack of asking. James 4:2
says, You do not have because you do not ask. Maybe you have a need in your life,
but somehow you have never really thought to bring that need before the Lord
and to make it an earnest matter of prayer. You have not because you ask not. The third reason for unanswered prayer is asking for the
wrong motives. James 4:3 goes on
to say: When you ask, you do
not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you
get on your pleasures. 4. Improper Desires Destroy Our
Spirituality (vv. 4-6) And that leads to the fourth
problem with our unworthy desires—they battle the soul, they harm our relationships,
they hinder our prayers, and finally they destroy our spirituality. You adulterous people,
don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward
God? Anyone who chooses to be a
friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Or do you think Scripture says without
reason that the spirit He caused to live in us envies intensely? That last sentence is a
little perplexing. What did James mean by that—The spirit He caused
to live in us envies intensely? Commentators
agree that this might be the most difficult sentence in the whole book to
translate and interpret correctly. There are two basic
possibilities: The Holy Spirit that God has placed within us is
jealous for our godliness and intensely yearns for us to live godly lives;
and as we humble ourselves we can draw from the grace of God and overcome
these sinful desires. The human spirits that God placed within us have
fallen into sin and are full of envy and jealously; and we need to humble
ourselves and draw on the grace of God to overcome them. The NIV comes down on the
side of the second option. Notice
that the word spirit begins with a small s. God made us body and soul. We have a spirit within us. It was created by God who placed it
with us. In the book of Genesis,
we read that God created Adam from the dust of the ground and breathed into
his nostrils the breath of life, and Adam became a living soul. But this spirit within
us—our human spirit and our human nature—is full of envy and
jealousy and evil desires. But
God gives more grace! How do we
access it? How do we win the
victory? How do we mature and
grow in Christ? James gives us a
wonderful process here, which we’ll look at in greater next
Sunday. But let me just outline
it for you. 1. Humble yourself 2. Submit to the Lord 3. Resist the devil 4. Draw near to God That is why Scripture
says: God opposes the proud but
gives grace to the humble. Submit
yourselves, then, to God. Resist
the devil and he will flee from you. Come near to God and He will come near
to you. Someone was talking to me
about this passage this week, and he said, “How can I do that? I know these verses, but I still keep
giving into those desires that war against my soul. I know I should submit them to God,
but I keep falling into sin. How
can I get this passage from my head down into my heart and my life?” Well, you have to come to
Christ and give yourself fully to Him.
You have to claim these Scriptures and ask God to make them real to
you. But I think it also helps to
visualize this passage and see yourself in your mind’s eye obeying this
passage. Meditate on it and
visualize yourself as the kind of Christian that you want to be. I told my friend about Laura
Wilkinson, who is a dedicated Christian with a very public testimony. She’s also an athlete, a diver
from Texas who wanted to be an Olympic champion. For many years, she worked hard to be
able to qualify for and to compete in the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney,
Australia. And then, as she
prepared for the event, she broke three bones in her foot in a training
accident and was in a cast for months.
She was unable to dive or to be in the water. Being unable to work out, she did the
next best thing. Several times a
day, Laura used mental imagery to practice her dive. She visualized herself climbing up to
the 10-meter platform and walking through the motions of her complex high
dives. She would see each
split-second of her approach, posture, position, dive, entry into the water,
and swim to the side of the pool.
Her cast came off just before the Sydney Games, and she went on to
compete and to win the first Gold Medal for a female American platform diver
in nearly 40 years. I believe that God expects us
to take this passage from James 4 and to visualize it and to personalize it
and to make it real in our minds and in our hearts. See yourself a winner for Christ. I believe the Lord Jesus can give us
victory, for He gives more grace.
God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Submit yourselves then to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee
from you. Draw near to God, and
He will draw near to you. Copyright StatementWe grant permission for any edition of The Pocket Paper to be photocopied for use in a local congregation or classroom, provided no more than 1,000 copies are made, the material is distributed free, and the copies include the notice: "Copyright (year) The Donelson Fellowship."For any other use, advance permission must be obtained from The Donelson Fellowship church office.Other messages are available from our website. Just click on the Pocket Papers link on our home page for a list of available messages. |
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