We don't fight the wrong fight, we don't fight the wrong enemy, in order to remember God's goodness and God's grace. Otherwise, we sit in the wilderness and we say, I wish we were back with the taskmasters in Egypt. We sit in and say, I wish that we were back building pyramids again. I wish we were back with our babies getting thrown in the Nile. We don't recognize the oppression of sin. I'll just sum this up by saying, yes, Lord, yes, to your will and to your way. Take your Bibles and go with me to James chapter 1, or chapter 4, I'm sorry. And I'm going to read down through verse 5 there in chapter 4. I challenge you, I'm going to be in a few scriptures this afternoon, I challenge you to stay with me in the scripture and look at the message God has for us as well as hear it. In James chapter 4 and verse 1, it's a familiar scripture to us. It says, From whence come wars and fighting among you? Come they not hence even of your own lusts that war on your members? Ye lust and have not, ye kill. and desire to have and cannot obtain, ye fight in war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not, ye ask and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lust. Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? Whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God. Do you think that the scripture say it in vain the spirit that dwelleth in us lusted to envy? We looked at a title in the bulletin is resisting quenching and grieving the Holy Spirit as I Started to put this more together. I realized that I was only going to be able to preach on resisting the Holy Spirit today. I Got the too many pages of notes to go on but It's amazing what God has put in the Bible for us here. Have you ever resisted the Spirit of God? And you go, oh pastor, no, who would ever do that? Have you ever got down to the invitation and the Spirit of God said, hey, you've got some business to do, and you were like, You talking to me God? You mean right now? Can I go home and do it just as good as I could do it here in church? Or you saw someone and maybe there was a problem and God's Spirit said, you do something about that. And you were like, it'll keep. We'll take care of it tomorrow. Or, the Lord said, hey, I want you to give this. And they're like, explaining to God all the reasons why you can't afford to do that. The truth is, all of us resist God. And our first resistance is our resistance to accept the grace of God toward salvation. and resistance continues unless we have submission. Submission is when we just give God His way. We acknowledge that His way is better than ours. His way is higher than ours. I want to look at resisting the Holy Ghost. And here in James we have a portion which talks about infighting and not getting along. And where does it come? It comes from your lust. It comes from the flesh. It comes from immaturity. It comes from selfishness. It comes from us being concerned about number one. My first point is fighting the wrong fight. And here at James we have wars and fighting amongst our members in the body of Christ. We're fighting the wrong fight because we're fighting one another. And God has designed a sense of harmony for us, a headship of Christ, a common care one for another, that we would have a cohesion. Cohesion is how a material sticks together. My wife was telling me a story about Danielle having a room in her house and she has painted it several times. And she can go to the wall and get up a spot and pick it out and it will peel off in one strip, all those paints. There's a cohesion between the layers of paint but there's not an adhesion from the paint to the wall. Sort of peel off like a sheet of wallpaper. What could it be? And I thought about it, and what can it be? Sometimes we have no adhesion to the things of God, we have a better cohesion to our own selfishness and our own desires and what we want, and we don't see what's important in the big picture of everyone, of others. So here, the first thing that is a problem with fighting the wrong fight is selfishness. The second thing is, we're fighting the wrong fight because we're fighting with fellow believers. Do you think God likes to look down and see his children not getting along? In perfect harmony? those, that brother or that sister for whom Christ died. We end up fighting against family. We fight the flesh, we fight the fellow believers, and we fight the family. And our last fight here is friendship with the world, is enmity with God. Ultimately, our fight is with God the Father. with Jesus Christ, and the Spirit that dwelleth in us lusted to envy. It says, hey, let me have preeminence. Let me have control. Let me drive for a while. In Psalm 78, verses 40 and 41, we have the children of Israel and a picture of them in the wilderness. That's Psalm 78, I might give something away. That's real close to my mom's age. Psalm 78. We have a picture of the children of Israel in the wilderness, and we have God's goodness and his grace to them, and how they responded, and they did not respond well, and therefore they got to die in the wilderness. We know that overview. Let's look at these verses in 40, and it says, How oft Did they provoke him in the wilderness? and grieved him in the desert. Yea, they turned back and tempted God and limited the Holy One of Israel. The children of Israel fighting the wrong fight, they fought God, they provoked Him, they grieved Him, they turned back and tempted Him. And we follow their example many times. Look with me in Acts chapter 7. We find a message being preached here, and it didn't end well. the message preached to the nation of Israel, and we can take some of that on ourselves today in Acts 7 and verse 51. We see Stephen the deacon preaching this message. He says in 51, Ye stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost. As your fathers did, so do ye. Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? And they have slain them, which showed before of the coming of the just one, of whom now ye have been now the betrayers and murderers, who have received the law by disposition of angels, and have not kept it. If we resist God, If we fight the wrong fight, we end up fighting with the wrong people, and it becomes habitual to us. I'll say that. We'll say inside ourselves that we will hear the scripture, rationalize the message, and negotiate with God on how we're going to carry it out. and God's intentions are that we would hear the scripture, we would receive it with joy, and that we would do it. He talks about the nation of Israel hardening their neck. My wife was involved in an accident where a vehicle struck her from behind, and she recognized that everyone was coming to a quick stop. She looked in the rearview mirror, and she noticed that this vehicle was not going to be able to stop and that it was going to hit her, and she tightened up her neck. She tightened up her body, and there was a jolt. We tighten it up because he's expecting a blow. She said the last thing that went through her mind was, I wonder how much this is going to hurt. We sometimes get to a habit of resisting God, and every time that we're going to hear the Word of God, we kind of tighten up and get ready for the blow. And it becomes habitual. And we resist God, and we resist God, and it's our first nature to resist God. We resist the leadership. Here, they did not follow the Holy One of Israel. Hebrews in Acts, the stiff-necked and uncircumcised of heart and ears, always resist the Holy Ghost. They had Jesus Himself in front of them, and they betrayed and murdered Him. Look with me in Galatians chapter 5. We've looked at these verses a few times. I want to look at it again in 5, 16, and 17. It says, This I say then, walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. for the flesh lessens against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh, and these are contrary one to the other, so that you cannot do the things that you would. The Apostle Paul put it a little different back in Romans. He said, when I would do good, there's evil present with me. He said, if you have the body of death, the old man, and the flesh in us is stronger than we'd like to admit, No, we are crucified with Christ. We put that old man to death. He's buried in baptism with us so that we could be resurrected to walk in newness of life. But then in Colossians we see that we die daily. We put the old man to death. We have to put off the old man and put on the new man. We have to put on the new man that is created in Christ Jesus that we can walk in the Spirit. You know how it is. when everything's right, and you have joy, and you have peace, and you have comfort, and God is there, and then you get out of sorts. And because you're out of sorts, everything is out of sorts. One way of being out of sorts is being angry. Another way of being out of sorts is having, a great sadness, or having something that clouds your mind and your thinking, and when you get out of source, everything is wrong. We look here at the source of conflicts, and it comes down to, it is you. In 3,100 years of recorded human history, the world has been at peace 8% of the time. a total of 286 years. Over 8,000 treaties have been made and broken. During this period, there have been 14,531 wars, small and large, in which 3,640,000,000 people have been killed. Years ago, they built a large statue of Christ, and it was between Argentina and Chile. Right down there in Rio de Janeiro. And they built this statue of Christ in likeness or a graven image as we would say. And it's a humongous thing. And it's a point of both countries taking some pride in having built this. And it was built as a monument of peace between the two nations. As long as this statue stands, there is going to be peace between Argentina and Chile. And then the statue was getting more into place and everything. And they started to look at the statue and they looked at the maps and the lines of the countries. And everybody from Chile said, the statue is turning its back toward our country. We have a statue for both countries, but the statue is facing Argentina, it's not facing Chile, and there was a growing, a growing war of words over the peace statue of Jesus Christ. An editorial article went into the papers that said the people of Argentina require more supervision and more watching than the people of Chile, and their war was averted. So we have the wrong fight and then we have the wrong enemy. I think everyone would freely admit that they fought the wrong fight. That they at one time or another picked the wrong person to fight. They fought someone who was supposed to be family. They fought someone who was supposed to be in God's family. They fought against God Himself. You look at the wrong enemy, you know, we see, be sober, be vigilant, your adversary, the devil, our enemy, the world, the devil in the flesh. But here's what happened to the children of Israel. in Isaiah 63, verses 7 through 10, and I will mention the loving-kindnesses of the Lord. And the praises of the Lord according to all that the Lord hath bestowed on us, and the great goodness toward the house of Israel which he hath bestowed on them according to his mercies, and according to the multitude of his lovingkindnesses. For he said, Surely they are my people, children that will not lie. So he was their Savior. And all their affliction he was afflicted. and the angel of his presence saved them. In his love and in his pity he remembered them and he bared them and carried them all the days of old. Well, we got a good start here, don't we? Loving kindnesses, mercies of God, he remembers his people, he's carried them, he has been a blessing to them, he says, they're my people, he's their Savior. In their affliction, he's afflicted, he's with them with the angel of his presence. In verse 10, but they rebelled. and vexed his Holy Spirit. Therefore he was turned to be their enemy, and he fought against them. I say, he carried them, and he had loving kindness, and he bestowed goodnesses and mercies, and they responded by vexing him and rebelling against the Holy Spirit. I would say, that's not a response that we want to have. When you get in a fight, you don't want to look over on the other side and see that you have picked your fight against God. In Nehemiah chapter 9, we have the same thing. In verse 16. Nehemiah 9, 16. and they and our fathers dealt proudly and hardened their necks, and hearkened not to thy commandments. They refused to obey, neither were mindful of thy wonders that thou didst among them, but hardened their necks, and in their rebellion appointed a captain to return to their bondage. But thou art a God ready to pardon, gracious merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, forsookest them not? Yea, when they had made them a molten calf, and said, This is thy God that brought thee out of Egypt, and had wrought great provocations. Yet in thy manifold mercies forsookest them not in the wilderness. The pillar of cloud departed not from them by day to lead them in the way, neither the pillar of fire by night to show them light and the way where they should go. Thou gavest also thy good spirit to instruct them, and withheldest not thy manna from their mouth, and gavest them water for their thirst. We know the provocations of the children of Israel, and the sins that they did. The people ate and drank, and they rose up to play, and they committed all kinds of sins, and they had a great day of reckoning. Say, who's on the Lord's side? And twenty and three thousand of them were slaughtered in a punishment as they chose to follow sin. In Acts chapter 5, verse 35, said unto them, Ye men of Israel, take heed yourselves. What ye intend to do touching these men? I mentioned this a little bit this morning. They took Peter and they took John and they held them in confinement. They held them in jail. And their group of elders met And one man who was respected stood and he addressed the group. And he said, we've seen splinters off of Judaism before. And he said, here's this fella and he rose up and he had 400 that followed him. And when he died and was off the scene, all of his members spread out and there was nothing to his beliefs. He said, you know, if these guys who believe in Jesus Christ are another splinter group, he said, we just leave them alone and they'll dissipate and they'll just blow into the five winds and they'll be gone in a generation. But if they're of God, we do not have a chance to fight them. Let me read it for you out of the scripture here. He says, Take heed what you do to these men. In verse 38, And now I say unto you, refrain from these men, and let them alone. For if this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to naught. But if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it. lest happily ye be found even to fight against God. We have the wrong fight, we have the wrong enemy. We look up and we say, and who's over there? And it's God. Jonah found himself in this circumstance. Ended up in the belly of a well, spit back out to do God's work as He was instructed. And many have found themselves on the wrong side of God. And it's not because God was on the wrong side, it's because they were on the wrong side. I tell you, we have a tendency to always think we're right. And I'll tell you why. It's natural and normal. Because if we thought we were wrong, we would run over and get on the other side. If we were over here with the ones and we thought the ones were wrong and the twos were right, we'd run over and get over on the two side. If we got over to the two side and we started listening to them for a minute and we thought that the twos were wrong and the ones were right, we'd run back over and get on the one side. I still think that I'm right. most of the time. That's an affliction. But if I think that I'm right and I discover I'm wrong, I run over and get on the other side. Because I'd rather be doing right than to be right. Now it's not a perfect cure. It doesn't always find me on the right side. And sometimes I look up and I see that I have become too much of a friend of the world and an enemy of God. We'll fight the wrong fight. We end up fighting with each other, fighting with God's family, fighting with the things of the scripture. We end up fighting the wrong enemy. You ever really fought a good fight? You know. fought a good fight, I kept my faith, I finished my course, here's my sword, and find out that we're fighting in the wrong direction. I'm running as hard as I can in the wrong direction. We fight the wrong fight, we fight the wrong enemy, and we forget the goodness and grace of God. In Genesis chapter 6, God is looking at mankind and saying, I must confess man is a mess. I'm sorry I ever made man. He says in verse 3 of chapter 6, And the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he is also his flesh. Let his days be 120 years. Now here's what happened. They were coming off of guys living to be 900. They were coming off of guys living to be 700. They were coming off of people living nearly a thousand years. It's amazing when we think about it. It's beyond our conception. And God said, no, they ain't gonna be doing that anymore. They took all that extra time and they just had nothing but evil imagination. And they took all the extra learning and all the extra energy and all the extra life that I gave them and they did not glorify me. I've got to wipe them off the face of the earth. And he builds an ark. Here's now, he says, man's gonna neck down. His years are gonna be 120 now. It's a punishment to man. Your body is capable of living those 700 years, but nobody here is gonna reach those 700 years. without the grace of God intervening, the Lord coming back, or something of those natures, because we are affected by sin. And man's life here was necked down to 120 years. It was further necked down to 3 score and 10. In verse 4, there were giants in the earth in those days. And also, after that, when the sons of God came unto the daughters of men, and bare children unto them, they became mighty men, which were of old, men of renown." Here they had the godly line from Seth replacing Abel. And we have the daughters of men from the line of Cain. The way of Cain, which was to choose sin, choose works over faith. And we have the mixing of these two lines. Now there's all kinds of other guys that take and they say angels came down and they procreated and they had giants in the land and these men of renown were half angel and half human. The Bible does not give us that. That's somebody really taking and spending the Bible so they can have some fun with it. It's the daughters of men with the sons of God. So they came together and the result of it was not that the sons of God converted the daughters of men and they had a godly culture on earth. It was that the daughters of men corrupted the sons of God. And by the time they were done, they had thought of evil continually. They thought about doing wrong, and then what they were going to do wrong after that? It's like they were at a buffet of sin. They're like, this time I'm going to go up and get chicken wings, and then I'm going to go up and get some meat, and then I'm going to go up and get some mashed potatoes, and then I'm going to try some of that chili, and then I'm going to get some nachos, and then I'm going to get some ice cream, and then I'm going to get something to drink, and then I'm going to get some bread. They're like, we're going to go do this sin, and then this sin, and they all thought about evil continually. And we get down to about verse 8 there, and Noah finds grace in the eyes of the Lord. And God saw the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of thoughts of his heart was evil continually, only evil continually. And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him in his heart. And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth. Both man and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air, for it repented me that I have made them. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. One more place I want you to look is Romans chapter 2. We get done with Romans chapter 1, and we see all of the corruption and the sin of mankind, and the sin in entertainment, and the sin in taking pleasure in those that do those things against God. And here we come to chapter 2 and verse 1. It says, Thou art inexcusable, O man. whatsoever thou art that judgest. For wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself. For thou that judgest doest the same things. But we are sure that the judgment of God is according to truth against them which commit such things. And thinkest thou this, O man, that judgest them which do such things, and doest the same, that thou shalt escape the judgment of God? Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness, and forbearance, and longsuffering, knowing not that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance? But after thy hardness and impenitent heart, treasureth up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God. Jim and I were talking the other day about you see somebody driving crazy, and you say, where is the policeman when you need it? And then later, you're driving a little crazy, and you're like late, and you're in and out of traffic, and you're like, God, if you could just send all the policemen over to North Portland, and open up a few of these slow cars in front of me, and let me speed down the road like crazy. And days earlier, we're like, where is a policeman when we need one? And now, everyone else is watching you drive and saying, where is a policeman when we need one? We want grace and mercy for ourselves, and we want justice and judgment for everyone else. We typically see our own faults in others first. As parents, when we see our children display our faults and our weaknesses, we come down on them harder for that than anything else. And the Bible says that we're judging others and we do the same things and we're treasuring up with a hard and impenitent heart, wrath against the day of wrath. we see clearly, forgiven you shall be forgiven. And if we don't forgive, then God doesn't forgive us. There's a story, I mentioned this in Sunday School, the Rabbi is walking with some of his students, and they said, Rabbi, when should a man repent? And the Rabbi said, repent on the last day of your life. And they said, but we can never be sure which day will be the last day of our life. And it was the answer he wanted from them. And he smiled and said, the answer is very simple. You should repent every single day. The person with the most tender heart who is the closest to God will repent over the smallest offense and it'll be greater to them in their seriousness and in their walk with God than a grave, clear offense. to a hard-hearted, impenitent believer. There's been times when I preach very hard, direct, to a specific subject because I was aware of a problem in the church. I watch a person with that sin problem completely shake it off like water off a duck. And some dear saint who's walking closer to God than this person could ever imagine, comes up and they're all broken before the Lord. Because they take their sin seriously. and repenting, we need to reject God's enemy, the devil. Resist the devil, he'll flee from us. We need to resist the philosophies that he has for our life. He wants us to live by his standards. We need to realize our own weaknesses and be on guard. The devil is trying to destroy you. He's not trying to help you. He's not trying to help you really live. He's not trying to free you from the bondage of scripture and unreasonable parents. And we need to recognize the devil. And we say the devil. Many people think of a guy in a red suit with a tail and horns. he shows up in ways you don't expect. When you're tempted to substitute other things or activities for God is when the devil shows up. Resist him, do not give in. Resist the devil and he'll flee from you. I want to leave us with one last thought. We don't fight the wrong fight. We don't fight the wrong enemy. And we remember God's goodness and God's grace. Otherwise we sit in the wilderness and we say, I wish we were back with the taskmasters in Egypt. We sit in and say, I wish that we were back building pyramids again. I wish we were back with our babies getting thrown in the Nile. We don't recognize the oppression of sin. I want to just sum this up by saying, yes, Lord, yes, to your will and to your way, yes, to the Holy Spirit of God, that we don't stay in the habit of resisting him. You've been listening to a message from the pulpit of Town Center Baptist Church in Happy Valley, Oregon. We invite you to come visit us at 10505 Southeast 85th Avenue in Happy Valley. If we can be of help to you, please call us at 503-659-4494. We wish you God's very best.