Conflict Among Us, War Within Us • 10.15.23
Nick Lees   -   October 15, 2023

Conflict Among Us, War Within Us
James 4:1-10

Understanding the heart of conflict and the path to peace

  1. External fighting comes from your internal battles
  2. Your sinful desires reveal a bigger problem
  3. God’s grace provides a path to peace
  4. Submit to and humble yourself before God to make peace

Good morning, church family! It has been a joy to worship the Lord with you this morning. For those who are new, welcome. My name is Pastor Nick and I have the privilege of studying God’s Word with you this morning. This is week 3 of 5 in our study on biblical communication and conflict resolution called Blessed are the Peacemakers. Today our emphasis is on getting to the heart of conflict. If you’ve missed any of these sermons, I’d highly encourage you to review them online, as they do tie together and build upon one another.

Dismiss 4th + 5th Graders (both services)

Ushers + Bibles (James 4; page ___)

Last week, as we evaluated the power of our tongue, I referenced James 3 for its metaphors of the tongue being like a rudder of a ship or spark that began a forest fire. Both communicated the idea that our tongue is small but mighty, capable of setting the direction of our life and causing incredible devastation when used incorrectly. As we prepare to study James 4 today, I want to provide some context from James 3:13-18. Follow along as I read it aloud:

James 3:13–18 (ESV)

13 Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. 14 But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. 15 This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic.

16 For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice. 17 But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. 18 And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.

I start this passage because it helps us understand what comes next in chapter 4. The people James is writing to were struggling with the desire to be considered wise and elevated to positions of leadership and teaching within their church community. But the danger was that many of their desires were not godly but fueled by bitter jealousy and selfish ambition. The difference between these motivations is made clear here. Those who are ruled by selfishness and jealousy will produce disorder and every vile practice. Their sinful desires lead to a particular ungodly outcome. Conversely, those who have godly desires will produce a much different type of fruit. They will be peace makers who bring forth a harvest of righteousness. This beautifully ties into everything we’ve learned over the past two weeks.

Now, as we continue to chapter 4, notice how James again uses pointed questions to reveal the heart of conflict. Listen to how strongly he rebukes them and the direction he commands them to pursue if they are going to have peace in their midst. Here we go…

James 4:1–10 (ESV)

What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? 2 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. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. 4 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. 5 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”? 6 But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” 7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.

This is not the kind of letter you write when all is going well! There were some serious concerns about their conduct and what it communicated about their relationship with God. Last week, I shared with you this diagram: Fruit to Root Tree

The behavior that is being observed in these people, with their fighting and quarreling, is evidence of a deeper root issue. There are desires within their heart that are awry. That is what we are focusing on today. The sermon’s title is Conflict Among Us, War Within Us and our goal today is…

Understanding the heart of conflict and the path to peace

I am convinced that these are some of the most important concepts for every Christian to grasp. God has given us valuable insight into the human condition, and he has provided answers for how we can have real peace in our relationships. If you are tired of struggling with sin and want to have victory over conflict in your life and relationships, then please pay attention! This is not going to be an easy lesson, but it is an important one. If you’re willing to consistently apply what God teaches you in this passage, I believe you will see increasing levels of peace and victory over sin in your life. My hope is that as you experience this, you will also share it with others. We need to be teaching these biblical principles far and wide.

Let’s dig into what God says about the source of our conflicts! Our first lesson comes from verses 1-3 and it is…

  1. External fighting comes from your internal battles

Or to put it in the same words as the sermon title, there is conflict among us because of the war within us! Listen again to the logic presented by verses 1-3:

James 4:1–3 (ESV)

What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? 2 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. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.

There are a number of crucial observations here. The first is that your own desires are at war within you! I love that God’s Word presents a detailed analysis of humans. In this passage, God reveals that each one of us has a tremendous amount going on in our inner-man/woman. We spoke a bit about this last week.

The Bible presents humans as comprised of two distinct yet mutually significant essences – material and immaterial. The material is called by terms such as bones, flesh, body, etc., while the immaterial is called heart, soul, spirit, will, and mind. The inner-man or heart, as I am referring to it, is the control center of our life.

James, directed by the Holy Spirit, writes that within each one of us a war is raging! Did you know that about yourself? If not, now you do! The war raging within you is one of competing passions or desires.

Many years ago, I made this very detailed graphic in MS Paint to depict this war. (The War Inside) This is intended to depict our heart with the throne representing the primary desire that is ruling our life. As you can see, there are a number of other desires fighting to be on the throne. These are examples and they may be different for you at any given moment. But were you even aware that this is what is going on inside of you? Most of us have not been taught to think this way about ourselves. Nor have we been given the tools to analyze our own heart to determine what is going on in there! The result is that we are ruled by whichever desire is strongest or most important to us in the moment. What kind of lifestyle do you think that produces? Chaos! Our words/thinking/emotions/actions are all informed by that ruling desire…

Last week I put it this way, “Why do I do what I do or say what I say?” The answer is because “I want what I want!” This passage is where that comes from… Here is another graphic to show this (Ruling Desires). Whatever desire rules your heart will exercise inescapable influence over your life and behaviors. You will treat people and situations differently based on what rules your heart!

Example: Leaving work for the day, expecting to come home and kick up your feet to relax for a bit. Instead, you walk into absolute chaos in your home. How do you respond if your ruling desire is “rest/ease”? How do you respond if your ruling desire is “pleasing Jesus”?

Example 2: You approach a friend/loved one to discuss something that is weighing heavily on your mind/heart. Rather than listening well, they simply try to fix it or end the conversation as quickly as possible. How do you respond if your ruling desire is “to be understood”? How do you respond if your ruling desire is “pleasing Jesus”?

In any given moment or situation or relational interaction, we need to be able to analyze our hearts. “What desire is ruling my heart right now?” aka “What am I wanting?” This is an acquired skill. It requires intentionality and effort to self-diagnose this well. As time progresses and you are faithful to do this, you will likely get faster and faster at it. You may need to ask someone who has been doing this for longer to help you. “What do you see? What desire is ruling my heart?”

Why would you go through the effort to do this? Because as James 4 points out, selfish/idolatrous desires are the source of our conflict with one another and with God!

Verse 2 put some very heavy words to it… “You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel…” When selfish desires rule you, you get sinfully angry when those desires are not met. And when you covet what you do not have and pursue it but don’t get it, you will turn to fighting and quarreling!

The honest evaluation of our sinful hearts is that we often are ruled by the wrong desires. And when you are ruled by the wrong desire, you will treat people in one of two sinful ways:

  • You are helping me get what I want! (Resulting in me using you)
  • You are in the way of what I want! (Resulting in me running over you)

Now, so far, we’ve only talked about YOUR selfish, sinful desires. But what happens when you put two people with selfish, sinful desires ruling their hearts in contact with one another? Conflict occurs! Suddenly we have two people who are each dealing with their own internal battles now struggling to relate well to one another… the war within us has led to conflict among us.

Without stealing the thunder of next week’s sermon, which is entirely about conflict resolution and forgiveness, I do want to give us some direction and hope for how to handle this conflict we’re seeing within us and among us. Earlier in his letter, James had given some insight into these desires:

James 1:14–15 (ESV)

14 But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. 15 Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.

In order to have victory over the battle in your heart, you need to deal honestly with your own desires. You need to become an expert at analyzing what desires are warring within you. And, most importantly, you must learn to replace inappropriate ruling desires with the desire to please God. As we heard last week from 2 Corinthians, the ruling desire of a Christian’s heart must be pleasing God.

2 Corinthians 5:9–10 (ESV)

9 So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him. 10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.

A ministry friend of mine puts it this way, “You should want to please Jesus as badly as you want to breathe.” And how badly do you want to breathe?

To get there you must be willing to confess your sinful desires that lead to conflict and ask God for help in having the right desire rule you. Secondly, stop blaming others for your problems/conflict. As you have heard in James 4, you have your own set of warring desires to deal with in your heart. So, before you point the finger at someone else, deal with your own heart first. This is an application of Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 7, and it is a teaser for the type of material we’ll cover next week:

Matthew 7:3–5 (ESV)

3 Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? 4 Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.

When each person is focused on addressing their own internal battles first, that allows them to redirect their own heart and desires, thereby creating an environment for peace to be made and kept.

Now, for the sake of time, we need to move on to a second lesson in understanding the heart of conflict. This one comes from verses 4-5, which said:

James 4:4–5 (ESV)

4 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. 5 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”?

Here’s the sobering lesson:

  1. Your sinful desires reveal a bigger problem

James issues a strong rebuke to his original audience! Their patterns of sinful desires had put them at war with God. He went from calling them “my beloved brothers” to “you adulterous people”. This was intended to wake them up to their need for repentance.

When James speaks of friendship with the world, he is not talking about friendship as casually as we do nowadays. Friendship in their culture meant sharing all things in a unity both physical and spiritual. Though they professed Christ, they were living like the unrighteous world around them. This put them at odds with God, making God their enemy. They were in grave danger and needed to realize it.

There is an important lesson here. You cannot claim Christ and live in unrepentant sin. They are incompatible. Doing so is living at war with God. It is spiritual adultery. You are cheating on him. Christians are supposed to be the bride of Christ and it will not do for us to be intimately intertwined with the world.

Beware making God your enemy. He is jealous for you. He created you to be his alone. Living in unrepentant sin is a dangerous path. This is the same warning we heard last week. Our outer man reveals the true nature of our inner man. Put another way… fruit reveals root. If my behavior is consistently sinful, then it may reveal that I am not made new in Christ and God will judge me by my desires and lifestyle. If that describes you this morning, I encourage you to confess your sin and believe in Jesus for forgiveness and the salvation of your soul.

Consider the warning we heard when we studied 1 Peter earlier this fall:

1 Peter 4:17–19 (ESV)

17 For it is time for judgment to begin at the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God? 18 And

       “If the righteous is scarcely saved,

what will become of the ungodly and the sinner?”

19 Therefore let those who suffer according to God’s will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good.

Repeatedly, the call of Scripture is for us to evaluate our own profession of faith to make sure we are in the faith. There should be evidence of the claim we make to follow Christ. This is not meant to paralyze you in fear, but rather to free you up into assurance of your salvation and to protect you from a false profession of faith. If you are stuck in a sin that you are unwilling to turn from, then you ought to be concerned for your soul! Reach out for help! Don’t stay in that position. Our pastors, your SG leader, or our biblical counselors would love to help you.

Conversely, if you are willing to confess and repent when sin occurs in your life, then praise God for that! You are giving evidence of genuine salvation! But may we never make peace with sin. Let us never say, “My sin is no big deal. I don’t need to change. My desires are what they are… I enjoy living this way…” Friend, do not make yourself an enemy of God.

Thankfully, the third lesson is not sobering but joyful! We now get to learn about the path of peace from verse 6:

James 4:6 (ESV)

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

Our third lesson is…

  1. God’s grace provides a path to peace

This verse comes like a refreshing blast of cold air on a hot day. In the midst of this rebuke from James, he holds out the glorious grace of our God – in the face of your sin, God’s grace is greater! When the weight of your sin and the conflict it has brought into your life seems overwhelming, remember God’s extravagant grace that is extended to you in Christ Jesus.

We can join with his original audience in praising God for his glorious grace! I couldn’t help but think of songs like His Mercy is More which rejoice in this kind of truth:

Verse 1

What love could remember,

no wrongs we have done

Omniscient all knowing,

He counts not their sum

Thrown into a sea without bottom or shore

Our sins they are many, His mercy is more

 

Chorus 2

Praise the Lord, His mercy is more

Stronger than darkness, new every morn

Our sins they are many, His mercy is more

 

Verse 2

What patience would wait, as we constantly roam

What Father so tender is calling us home

He welcomes the weakest, the vilest, the poor

Our sins they are many, His mercy is more

 

Verse 3

What riches of kindness, He lavished on us

His blood was the payment, His life was the cost

We stood ‘neath a debt, we could never afford

Our sins they are many,

His mercy is more

Whether it is this song or Amazing Grace or All I Have is Christ or many others like them, we are reminded by them and by the Scriptures that apart from God’s grace we would be stuck in our sin. But thankfully, he loves us and meets us in our brokenness to provide help in time of need. Whether it is the grace of salvation, or the grace of repentance, God’s grace is essential for our holiness. How do you respond to the amazing grace of God? With awe and worship or with indifference and apathy?

Let us not overlook the second half of the verse. God opposes the proud, but his grace is given to those who are humble. There is a requirement for us to respond in a particular way to our sin and circumstances. This reminds me of a very similar truth that we learned at the end of 1 Peter:

1 Peter 5:5–6 (ESV)

5 Likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”

6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you,

Submission and humility are required responses from God’s people if they want to walk in holiness and make peace. One commentator I read put it this way: “God’s gift of sustaining grace is enjoyed only by those willing to admit their need and accept the gift.” Does that describe you? “God, I need your grace!” This brings us to our fourth and final lesson for today.

  1. Submit to and humble yourself before God to make peace

This lesson comes from James 4:7-10, which was absolutely loaded with commands. I’ll read it again:

James 4:7–10 (ESV)

7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.

There are some strong commands here! Verses 7 and 10 bookend this segment of commands and contain similar concepts – submission and humility before God. Both are required to make peace with God and one another. Both are elaborated upon by the other commands that come between them. Let’s dig into these now.

It begins with submission to God. To submit to God means to place ourselves under his lordship, and therefore to commit ourselves to obey him in all things. It is recognizing, “I do not have the ultimate authority in my life, God does.” When he gives a command, I obey him. This is the posture of humility before God. To realize that all things are from him, through him, and to him and life is not about me!

With submitting to God comes the call to resist the devil. There is only one Lord of our life and Satan is not him. Believers are called to reject the temptations of the enemy and to say no to the selfish, sinful desires that tempt us. This is part of the war that we discussed earlier. Learning to identify the competing desires of our heart is part of learning to resist the devil. We resist the devil when we recognize sinful desires and prayerfully and humbly fight against them. A wonderful result is promised from this – he will flee from you. He knows he cannot win over a man or woman who is submitted to God. The devil’s power over Christians has been broken by Jesus. Hallelujah, thank you, Jesus!

… However, if you’re here today and you’ve never confessed your need for Jesus as your Savior and trusted in Him to save you, then I have bad news for you. You are not free from the devil’s power. You are standing outside of God’s hedge of protection. You need Jesus. Not only to protect you, but even more importantly to save you. Save you from what? Your sin and its consequences. We all rebel against God and go our own way. From the moment you entered this world you were a rebel. And that makes you an enemy of God. You need peace with God! That is only obtained through faith in His Son Jesus Christ, who lived a perfect life and died a perfect death, in your place (in my place). Your response to Jesus matters! Will you turn away from your sin and follow Him? Or will you continue to go your own way? I’m pleading with you to choose the first response. Choose to turn away from your sin and follow Him. That is how you can submit to God and resist the devil today. *pause*

Following this is the command to draw near to God with a resultant promise that he will draw near to you. This is a beautiful reminder that God is not far off, nor does he desire to be separated from his people. The further unpacking of the commands in verses 8-9 reveals that we are to take sin and holiness seriously. As Christians confess and repent of their sin, they will find that God is ready and willing to forgive them. The parable of the prodigal son from Luke 15 comes to mind. Even though the younger son had treated the father shamefully, the father was still waiting for the day when his son came home in humility and repentance. And when that day came, do you recall how the father acted? Did he wait for the son to come crawling and groveling up to him? No, instead he did a rather undignified thing for the male leader of the home, he gathered up his robes and ran to the son and embraced him! He joyfully welcomed him back into the family, despite how shamefully he had acted!

That parable is an incredible reminder of the love and forgiveness of our Heavenly Father towards sinners who repent and return to him. Sinners like us! Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. TAKE SIN SERIOUSLY. Pursue both internal and external purity. Put sin off in your inner-man and your outer-man. We are after a transformation in both our fruit (behaviors) and our root (desires).

James is challenging the readers of his letter with this teaching! But what about you? How do you need to repent of your external behavior? In what ways are you living/acting/speaking that are not pleasing to God?

Maybe for some of you, it’s getting into constant conflicts – you fight and argue and get sinfully angry. For others perhaps it’s more internal – you agonize over your appearance, you fall into self-pity, you  compare yourself to others. Still others might struggle with finding their identity in the approval of man, or in their possessions, climbing the corporate ladder. Whatever it looks like for you, where are your behaviors (your fruit) needing to change to be pure before God? I want to encourage you to identify these things and craft a plan to change them! Apply the Word to your life!

But that’s not all, what about your internal desires? Your heart! How do you need to purify it? Your external purity is directly connected to your internal purity. If you don’t have a healthy root, you won’t have healthy fruit. Like I said earlier, become an expert in evaluating your desires and make sure your ruling desire is to please Jesus! That may require much prayer and wrestling with God through His Word each day. But it will be worth it!

James said, “Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.” He is speaking of responding to sin appropriately. The idea is that Christians should not take their sin lightly. You shouldn’t laugh at sin and receive enjoyment from it.

It is right to be troubled by sin. It is no laughing matter. Unrepentant sin makes us friends of the world and enemies of God. No man or woman should want that. Can I ask you, what happened after you trusted Christ and chose to follow him? Did you stop finding sin funny? Did you stop enjoying it? Or are you still living the same way? If we who profess Christ continue to live in sin and enjoy it, we need to dive to our knees in confession and repentance. “Lord, forgive me and help me to change! Help me to think about these things in the same way you do!”

Because I am also a sinner who is still growing just like the rest of you, I want to level with you. I don’t think we can do this on our own. Nor do I think God intended us to! That’s why he gave us the Holy Spirit to convict and equip us. And He also gave us the body of Christ! We are in this together and we need one another to protect each other from the deceitfulness of sin. So I want to close out our sermon by asking…

Are you in the regular habit of inviting accountability into your life? Is there at least one person who really knows you? The real you? The parts of your life and struggles, especially the internal ones, that no one else does. We need that level of vulnerability and transparency if we’re going to live out this calling. How else will we grow and overcome our sin? We need at least one person who has authority and permission to call us out and help us to be convicted and repentant. This is for our good and God’s glory. Who is that person for you? Figure that out this week. That will go a long way towards helping all of us honor God with our desires and grow in being peacemakers rather than peacebreakers. *pause*

As we’ve heard today, at the heart of your conflict are your own desires. We need a renewed heart with new desires if we’re going to live for God and be near to him. Praise God that he promises that renewed heart through His Son Jesus Christ. We have an answer for our struggles in Him. And to help us remember and give thanks for all that he has done, we’re going to end our services with the Lord’s Table.

Communion

This is an opportunity for Christians to remember all that the Lord has done for us through his death, burial, and resurrection. It is an opportunity to cultivate humility and submission to Him.

We will celebrate by partaking of both the bread and the cup as a symbol and reminder of Jesus’ body broken in our place and his blood shed for the forgiveness of our sins. Communion is an opportunity to remember how great a price was paid so that we could be saved from our sin. It is a sobering, yet joyful celebration for Christians. Sobering that the Son of God would give himself for us as a ransom. Joyful that he did, and the result was a living hope that cannot be taken from us! Jesus is victorious; therefore, we have the hope of heaven with Him!

At this time, I’d like to invite the ushers forward with the elements.

Before we pass them, I want to share the biblical requirements for joining in this celebration.

This celebration was given by Jesus to his followers. We invite anyone who has trusted in Jesus Christ alone for salvation to join us in this celebration today. If your faith is not in Jesus Christ alone, then we would encourage you to let the elements pass by you and simply consider what you’ve heard so far during the service this morning and reflect on what is keeping you from trusting him.

The second requirement we see in Scripture is a call to examine ourselves. This is the idea of making sure that you’ve confessed any known sins and sought to turn away from it. It would not be wise to partake of the table if you have sin in your life for which you are not repentant. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 11 that taking the table while living in sin is eating and drinking judgment on yourself. I would ask you not to do that, for your sake and the sake of God’s glory. Instead, I would encourage you to use this time to confess that sin and make a plan to address it right away. If you know you need to be reconciled to someone else in this church, please take care of that during this time. The table is time to protect the unity of the church.

The ushers are going to pass the elements now as we have a time of silent reflection and prayer to prepare for the table. Please use this time to reflect on all that we’ve talked about today and to prepare yourself to take communion by confessing and repenting of any known sin. After the elements have been passed, I’ll lead us in prayer and taking communion together.

Ushers pass elements

Silent prayer. Corporate prayer.

1 Corinthians 11:23–26 (ESV)

23 For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”

Take bread.

25 In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

Take cup

Hallelujah, thank you, Jesus!