Well, this past week in our daily Bible reading as a church family, we finished this book of James, and the book has always been one of my favorite books in the New Testament. It was the very first book that I taught through when I led a Bible study when I was in college. The very first Bible study that I ever led was through the book of James. So it has a special place in my own heart for that reason. In fact, I still have the note cards from that study. I made sure this weekend to look up, do I still have those? And I've kept them after all these many, many years, because they're precious to me. Not because they're so good, but because they're precious to me. But that was the very first book, this book of James. But it's also one of the first books I preached in this church, to this congregation. I started with the Gospel of Mark, and right after that I went to the book of James. Because it is such a practical, And this is the other reason why I love this book so much. James calls it like it is. It doesn't hold anything back. He's straightforward, down to earth. One of the men at that time, back at the beginning of our ministry here at this church, one of the men jokingly told me, he said, if I ever preach through James again, I'm leaving the church. It's just too personal. Unfortunately, a couple years later, he left the church under a dark cloud. Had he applied the lessons from James, he would have dealt with his family conflict, and there would have been peace in his marriage, in his home. It would have restored peace instead of disorder. And I firmly believe that had he put into practice the lessons in James, Especially what James teaches here in James 4, that he'd still be married and he'd still be in our church today. Most of you already know that I grew up in a pastor's home. I literally, in my 60 years now, I have never known any other life than the life of a pastor's home. Even when I was in seminary, I lived in the basement of a pastor who rented out his rooms. There's been no other life that I've ever known than the life of a pastor's home. And there are an abundance of blessings. growing up in a home in which the dad has given his life to the proclamation of the gospel and to help people grow in grace. However, there are constant conflicts that have to be addressed. Some begin in the home. After all, the pastor and his wife are merely people, humans that also are sinful, that also make mistakes, that also sometimes fail. But there are also many conflicts that are thrust into the home by people who are either seeking help or seeking harm. Now, please understand, I'm not trying to put myself forward as an expert on resolving conflict. I despise conflict, to be honest. I'm the type of personality that I want to flee away from it. I don't want to have to deal with conflict. But as a pastor, it gets thrust upon you So many times, and sometimes it's not about anything, it's just helping them resolve a conflict they're having with somebody else. In 60 years, I've seen practically any type of conflict that you can imagine. But that doesn't necessarily mean that I can solve every conflict. However, I can point you to the most reliable source that will provide the solution to every human conflict, the Word of God. So today, I point your attention to James 4. And here in these verses, we see the cause of conflicts as well as the cure to conflicts. But let's begin with the cause of our conflicts, the difficult side to this. James says, you desire and don't have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. I think that ESV turns these two words around by mistake, maybe, or just I think it's a poor translation. Because the word they translate as desire is actually the word for covet. And then they use the word for covet, which is actually better translated as to envy. But either way, it's the same principle. To covet is to want something, to desire what someone else has. To envy is to not want them to have it either. They don't deserve to have it either. I want it and they don't get to have it. You're envious, you don't want them to have it. So in general, to covet or to envy is basically to desire what somebody else has. It's all about self-gratification. It's for your own desire to be met. You don't care about them. You cover what they have. You don't care that they have it. You envy it. You don't want them to have it. You want to have it. It's self-gratification. We are driven by the question, what is going to make me feel good? Conflicts are the fruit of that. Conflicts within the church This might be surprising to some, but they're inevitable. They are going to happen. Every Sunday there are conflicts all scattered throughout this sanctuary. I'm not pointing to individuals on purpose. You're in a conflict with someone in your family, there's a conflict at your work, there's a conflict in the church maybe. There are conflicts spread all throughout our church every week. Now, not all rise to the level of potentially dividing a church or causing severe damage to the church, but sometimes they will. Conflicts are inevitable. They come on a consistent basis. Sometimes it feels like there's never a time that someone isn't upset with someone else. Humorous example, but maybe lighten it up a little bit. I prefer, obviously, to wear a suit and tie on Sundays. Not every Sunday. When it's really hot in the summer, sometimes I don't wear a tie. But it's my preference. I prefer that. I prefer the pastor dress in a suit and tie. It's just a preference. It's not a command. It's my preference. I also prefer hymns. I prefer the thermostat set below 70. I have preferences. Maybe your preference is to wear jeans and a nice shirt. Maybe your preference is a little warmer in the sanctuary. Maybe your preference... We all have preferences. All right, is there a potential for conflict? Absolutely. Absolutely, yes. When we elevate our preferences above the needs of other people, there's the potential for great harm. Potential. Whenever we elevate our fleshly desires, our personal preferences, even when they're good, we run the risk of harming a brother or sister in Christ. Now, it's very easy, it's very easy when we visit other churches when we're on vacation, they don't do things the way we do things. We still enjoy worshiping God with our brothers and sisters in Christ. We worshiped at a very different church in some ways than ours when we were in Boston, but we heard a really good message. You can put aside personal preferences for the sake of unity, for the sake of loving the body. So again, to covet is to desire what someone else possesses, and to envy is to not even want them to possess what they want or what we want. As sinful human beings, we are driven by an abundance of desires that are constantly making themselves known. But what makes a desire sinful? That's an important question in this passage. What makes a desire sinful? Because obviously there are godly desires as well. When does it become coveting or envying? Well, basically, when it's motivated by selfishness. Any desire motivated by selfishness can quickly become a sinful desire. James describes this vicious cycle of coveting and envying like a bottomless pit, always looking for more but never able to be satisfied. He says that the reason for your conflict is that you want something but don't get it. I think we all know the old saying, no matter how much you have, it's never enough. That's the kind of mentality that brings conflicts into the church and into a family. But we're all like that. As long as we have something, there's something else that we want more. It's a natural desire that has to be humbled and put under constraints. But it's not that what we want necessarily is sinful. It's our selfish expectation behind it, the selfish motive that creates it or that causes it to become a sinful desire. In our relationships, whether in the home or in the church or at work, people will always fail to meet your own expectations and selfish desires. Eventually, they will always fail. The end result, James says, is that we attack one another. We fight and we quarrel and we even murder. Now you may immediately think that James has probably gone a little too far there. It's been a long time since I've murdered anybody. But remember how Jesus applied the law in the Sermon on the Mount. To lust after another woman in your heart is the same as committing adultery with her. To hate someone in your heart is the same as committing murder against them. Most of us, if not all of us, are prone to attacking one another in our hearts. Most of us, a vast majority of us, know how to control that and we don't act on it, but it's there. The bitterness, the anger, the envy, the coveting is there in the heart. It's got to be rooted out. It's got to be put to death. It's not enough merely to keep from acting on it. It's still a sinful desire in the heart that needs to be put to death. And this is what James is after when he talks about being a judge of other people. It's easy to look at the actions of others and accuse and judge and not address your own heart. There's only one judge. Other people Well, again, Jesus on the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew 7, he said, do not judge or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged. And with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. In other words, a judgmental heart is like a boomerang. It's going to come back and strike you. We must be slow to judge others. Now, this is speaking in terms of the general relationship of brothers and sisters in Christ. God has designed the government of the local church. He has designed elders and pastors to lead the church, and they have to at times judge a person at the command of God. Even so much so that there are times in which excommunication must be the action of the session, of the elders. Thankfully to my Knowledge, we have never in the 20 years excommunicated anybody. I think in the history of our church, there's only been a handful. But that's an action that God has given to the elders that they have to do for the protection, but it's not one elder. It's a body of men serving together, holding one another accountable, and it's a slow, slow process. But this passage is about the general relationship to the whole body. That's a different sermon all on its own. James says that when you don't get what you want, you kill, fight, and quarrel with one another. One of the clearest ways that we can see that we commit this, this murder in the heart, one of the clearest ways that we can see it is by the joy or gladness that you have when that person leaves our church? Why in the world would we be glad if a brother or sister cuts themselves off from our church? We should not rejoice in that. We should weep, we should mourn. Now, I fully understand. Again, it's another sermon for another day as well. Romans 12, 18. By the way, the Wi-Fi password of our church. Romans 12, 18. If at all possible, but as much as it depends upon you, be at peace with all people. There's two qualifications of that. Some people don't want peace with you. But we should not rejoice if a brother or sister cuts themselves off from our church family. It should break our hearts. should humble ourselves. James says that we kill, fight, and quarrel because it's a spiritual problem in our own hearts. And he adds, we don't pray to God with the right motives. We pray to him with selfish desires and become frustrated and angry. And when those selfish desires are left unchecked, they will result in attacking our brothers and sisters inwardly and outwardly. So again, the cause of conflict is our own sinful heart. And it reveals how desperately weak and in need we are of God's pouring of his grace upon us. But the good news that James gives us is that God has not left us in this condition. That's the hard part of this passage. Now we get to see the grace of God being poured upon his people, the cure that God provides to our conflicts. James gives us several principles in rapid succession that if we apply them, they will assist us in dealing with conflicts within our homes and also within our church. The first one, very simple and straightforward, as James is, submit yourself therefore to God, resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Verse 7. Now, we've got to back that up to the very beginning, though. If a person has not submitted himself to the rule of Christ and has been saved, if they have not found salvation, there's going to be conflicts in their lives. A person will always seek sinful desires until they've been made alive by the Holy Spirit. The flesh will always seek to satisfy the flesh. And they won't care about the needs of others unless it benefits them. And so, first of all, you have to first submit to the Lordship of Christ. Acknowledge that He is the resurrected Lord. He is the Savior. And having done that, Well, it doesn't mean that your life is going to be easy. It doesn't mean that you're always going to get along with everybody else. Once you're saved, it doesn't mean that now you'll never have another conflict the rest of your life. We all know that's not true. We still have the responsibility every day to humble ourselves and to submit to God's revealed word. Submitting to God sounds good, sounds easy. Every Christian should acknowledge, yes, I want to submit to God. That sounds easy. Sounds good. Well, it sounds good. We all know it's not easy. Because those selfish desires are still within us. Those sinful passions are still within us. And that's what James talks about at the very beginning. There's a war within us of our passions. We want to be like Christ, but we still have the old flesh still at war within us. And we give in to those selfish passions. That's the cause of our conflict, our sinful heart, our sinful passions. But if we submit to God and turn away from temptation, and that's the second half of this principle, submitting to God and His Word, and resist the devil, and he'll flee from you. Paul told the Philippians in chapter 2, verse 3, do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit. But in humility count others more significant than yourselves." When we do not humble ourselves and we elevate our own selfish desires or are envious, we fight and quarrel. But, James says, when we humble ourselves and submit to God, the second half of this then comes into play. Resist the devil. When James says to resist the devil, it means that we stand our ground against him, against his temptations. I've known a lot of people throughout my lifetime, especially during my dad's years as a pastor, that they just loved conflict. They loved a good fight. And there's people like that. They just love conflict. And when there was one man that was a wonderful elder in many ways at the beginning of our church, but when there was peace, he was like itching for a fight. It's like, can't you just enjoy the peace? There doesn't have to be a fight all the time. But anyway, James says we need to resist those temptations and submit ourselves to God. I think one of the temptations that we face today in our church family, there's many I'm sure, but one that I think has been so prevalent is the sin of gossiping. It creates a wedge between brothers and sisters that inevitably is going to lead to conflict. I've seen people convince others that church leaders have made a decision that led that other person to become angry at the leaders, and the officers never made that decision. But they present it so convincingly that you believe it, and you hold it against them, and it drives a wedge into the church family. The only sure and reliable cure to conflict is to submit to God's word and resist temptation. You can prevent conflicts and you can cure and restore peace that was damaged by a conflict, which leads to the next principle that he gives. This is really more on the prevention of conflict. You submit to God and resist temptation. But when we don't submit to God and we don't resist temptation, we're faced with our own sin, aren't we? And James says to prevent it from escalating any further and causing more severe damage, we must be willing to repent. Now I'm confident in a church like this that most of you have been well taught in regard to repentance, but just in case you need a reminder, to repent simply means to willingly and joyfully turn away from our sin and turn to the glory of God. Think of it this way. Well, it's very similar, isn't it, to what James already said? Submit to God or resist temptation. Turn to God, don't turn to temptation. But that's the preventative side. Now, when you have fallen, when you have given in to the temptation, now you need to turn away from the temptation and turn to the glory of God. Look at what he says in verse 8. We'll come back to, especially the first part of this, but draw near to God and he will draw near to you. But then he says, 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. Repentance in its simplest form is synonymous with turning or changing. And James is calling us to change. Change your laughter. Turn from laughter to mourning. Don't laugh over sinful conflicts. Mourn over it. Don't rejoice. Turn your joy over these conflicts to gloom. Repent. Change. Now let's go back for a moment to earlier in the service and our call to repentance when we read from Psalm 51 verse 15. Well let's start at verse 16. For you will not delight in sacrifice or I would give it. You will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are what? A broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. And as I pointed out earlier in the service, God has always wanted his people to humble themselves and draw near to him. He always wants our heart more than our outward sacrifice. The sacrifices of the Old Testament were merely a shadow of the glory of Christ that was to come. They were always pointing toward Christ. They were a shadow of the greatness of our Savior. The animal that was offered to God as a substitute for that sinful Israelite was given as a means that justice would be displayed. But it was to be done away with. once Christ came and offered himself once and for all to pay the price of justice because of our sin. Humble yourself and draw near to Christ. The sacrifice is complete. The debt of sin has been paid in full. However, In the book of Romans, after Paul spent an extensive amount of time explaining that no one can be accepted by God by their own obedience to the law, you can't gain righteousness by your own obedience. There has to be an alien righteousness, we call it, a righteousness that is not your own, applied to you. And Paul goes through an extensive argument in chapters 1 through 11 on how God justifies his people, people that cannot justify themselves. But then listen to what he says in Romans 12.1. God still wants a sacrifice. But listen to the twist. He says, I appeal to you, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. God expects us to draw near to Him in humble repentance every day. turn away from our sin and purify our hearts. Humility is an absolute necessity for repentance and offering ourselves to God if we're going to be living sacrifices. Humbling ourselves, we yield what we perceive to be our rights and we are entrusting ourselves to the will of the Father. So how does this relate, this living sacrifice, to preventing conflict? Well, I'm glad you asked. And this is leading us to the final point, which is really just a lengthy conclusion, really is a two-point sermon with a little bit longer conclusion than normal, but not longer than the main point. So I'm almost done, in other words. Remember, the cause of our conflict is our own sinful desires. that insists on having our own desires met. However, by repenting of our sin and offering ourselves to God, we're not insisting that our own desires be met. We are seeking what God wants. So how can we possibly repent and offer ourselves like this on a daily basis? It seems like an almost impossible task. Well, it's absolutely necessary that we learn more and more how to discipline ourselves and make use of the means of grace that God has provided. God has graciously given us all that we need to grow in godliness. He has graciously poured upon us what we need to grow in grace. The Church for centuries has recognized that the ordinary means of grace are His Word, prayer, and the sacraments, and some would just broaden that to worship. These are the ordinary, He can use extraordinary means as well, but these are the ordinary means that God has given to us by which He will pour His grace upon us and enable us to grow. James 8 says, or verse 8 in James 4 says, draw near to God and He will draw near to you. How do we do that? By utilizing the means of grace. If you want to get close to someone, you've got to spend time with them. You've got to open the doors of communication wider and wider if you want to grow close to someone. I can never say enough about the need for personal time and prayer and the study of God's Word every day. Because if you consistently draw near to Him in His Word and in prayer, then He will supply you the grace necessary to live at peace with other people, to resolve conflicts, I have seen far too many times in my own life that the less that I am in God's Word, the more I am prone to seek selfish ambitions or just selfish desires. By submitting to God, By turning from temptation, by repenting of sin, and offering ourselves back to God, by drawing near to God through His Word and prayer and worship, we will become more and more like Christ. I know it sounds like a Sunday school answer, but this is the means that God has truly given you to become more and more like His Son. And it's effective. The ultimate goal of preventing and resolving conflict is not just that we'll be a happier people, that we'll have a happy home or a happy church. I mean, that will come, obviously, as a result. But the ultimate goal is that Christ will be glorified in us, that he receives the glory. Our actions demonstrate whether we want Him to be glorified or we want our own sinful desires to be met, whether we have a big Savior or a big self. If we don't focus on glorifying Christ, then we inevitably will focus on ourselves. Years ago, I mean many years ago, when we started having children, Wendy and I had multiple conversations over our goals as parents. What do we want to see our children become? Not in terms of career or what have you, but as people. What were our expectations? For me, I remember admitting, I have very few expectations in that regard, but I have two high priorities. One, and I'd probably put them in reverse order as they should be, but one, I said, I do not want our children to be whiners. It drives me nuts to hear whining children. And a second one is I want them to learn respect. And now we understood those are actually the same thing. Because a whining child is just disrespecting the authority that's over them and trying to get them to do what they want. It really is about respect. And then we started learning that there are a lot of ways in which they can show respect, a lot of areas in life where they can demonstrate respect. And one that we emphasize often, though sometimes we fail, no doubt, was to the respect of people's personal property. When one of our sons, and I won't tell you which one, it probably won't be hard to figure out, but when one of our sons was in high school, we caught some kids attempting to decorate our lawn with toilet paper. Now, granted, at the time, our front yard needed new landscaping, but Charmin wasn't on the list. In response, he and some of his buddies returned the favor. And they went to this girl's home and they, by according to the pictures, they did a far better job, to be honest. But because of the Kansas winds, some of their artwork blew over into an elderly gentleman that lived next to them, not into him, onto his property. I got an email in the morning from the mom alerting me to that. and how it had affected their elderly neighbor and he's not able to clean up his own yard. And so I quickly responded to let her know that our son would be coming over to their home and I would go with him that day to help with the cleanup. After I explained to him the rationale of preventing further conflict and allowing it to escalate with our friend and then our friend and her neighbor, He actually humbled himself and helped clean up their yard. He was reluctant to go, I'll admit, but he also made sure that his friends were there as well. But by God's grace, and absolutely purely by God's grace, he recognized the responsibility of making things right with our friend, and especially with regard to her neighbor. This was a prime opportunity though somewhat humorous, this was a prime opportunity for a personal conflict to escalate. His own desires far outweighed his desire to humble himself and serve his friend. But by the grace of God, we did humble ourselves and we went and served. We could have easily said, your daughter, her friends, tipped our yard first. and we would have been just in a way. But it was far better for the relationship with them that we humble ourselves and go clean up the mess and help them. Whatever conflict you're going through, I'm sure it's far worse than that. The cause is sinful hearts. It may be conflict that has been thrust upon you, that you have not been the source of it. But now you're in the midst of it. It's still helpful to recognize that we're prone to sin, too. The way to prevent conflict is to submit to God and resist temptation. And the cure is to repent and to turn back to Him, to humble ourselves and seek His glory, and seek to become more and more like His Son. May God have mercy upon us and grant us such grace. Let's pray.