Fights and Quarrels

the following message by aleister begg is made available by truth for life for more information visit us online at truthforlife.org james chapter 4 and reading from verse 1. 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 towards 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 us more grace that is why scripture says god opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble amen just a brief prayer together as we turn to the bible we pray o god that you will help us to love what you command and to desire what you promise for the sake of your son jesus in whose name we pray amen well if you've kept your bible open uh you know that we are continuing our studies here in this letter of james this last two or three studies has focused on the distinction between the wisdom which comes from heaven which is heavenly obviously and is displayed with a humble heart and in the quality of life and contrasted with the wisdom in verse 15 which is described as being earthly and unspiritual and of the devil that wisdom as we saw last time reveals itself in envy and in selfish ambition and the upshot of it is that where that is prevalent then you find disorder and every evil practice he finishes chapter 3 in the 18th verse describing a wonderful harvest of righteousness that is the experience of peacemakers who sow in peace peacemakers being the wise ones who go on quietly sowing a harvest of righteousness first in their own lives by god's enabling and then in the lives of other people and i think it is the closing verse of 13 although we recognize that there are no chapter breaks in the original but it is the closing verse of verse 18 that makes the opening verses of chapter four uh quite striking i think you would agree peacemakers sowing in peace a harvest of righteousness and then immediately the next sentence what causes fights and quarrels among you has james launched off in an entirely different direction did he go away for breakfast as it were and come back later in the morning and decide to take another attack entirely now i don't think so i think it follows directly and uh fairly obviously peace the kind of peace that is represented in verse 18 is far from what is described in the opening parts of chapter four and indeed the distinction is so very very clear he's he's essentially saying that the events that i'm now about to address with you coveting and quarreling and misplaced affections and wrongful desires they certainly do not fit category one they are not an embodiment of the wisdom that comes down from heaven but rather the picture that he gives to us is the antithesis of that it is a description of lives that are marked by unfulfilled desires and by a restlessness that is liable at any time and in any place to break out in fighting and infusing in fact i think the humility factor which runs really through the whole book of james may actually be far more of a key to understanding it than i've even given any consideration to the notion that humility coming from wisdom in verse 13 works itself out in a certain way and the absence of that and the presence of pride in another it seems to make just a melodic line that runs through at least a significant number of these verses because it is the humble individual who recognizes that father knows best it is the proud individual that says god didn't give me this and i'm going to have to go and get it for myself it is the humble individual who says my life is very brief as we read in the old testament psalm and as james reminds us here in the second half of chapter four you're you don't know what will happen tomorrow you're you're a miss that appears for a little while the humble person recognizes that the proud person says no i'm actually in charge of my destiny and in charge of my life and tomorrow i'm going to go and do this and i'll spend a year here or there and i will get profit and i will carry on business and i will make money for myself not that the making of money is in itself wrong but a preoccupation with money and with self-aggrandisement is representative of earthly wisdom and not heavenly wisdom and so james as he comes from this little section that we know as the end of chapter three into chapter four he's making it clear to his readers in the words of john lennon that life is very short and there is no time for fussing and fighting my friends that's what he's saying really isn't it i need to talk to you about fussing and fighting i need to talk to you about feuding and quarreling and i want you to know that life is going by very very quickly and there's no time for this kind of foolishness it's not unique to james you find paul doing the same thing at the beginning of first corinthians in the third chapter where he says by this time i should be addressing you as adults i have to address you as babies because you're worldly how do i know that you're worldly because there is still fighting and feuding among you and this just gives me the indication that all is wrong with you he does the same thing as he gets to the end of his second letter in chapter 12 of second corinthians and identifies these individuals as living just like men of the world well you say has he then in chapter four identified a new audience is he addressing people different from those whom he has been addressing in chapter three and two and one and the answer is clearly no his target is still according to verse 18 of chapter one those who are believers in the lord jesus christ those who are followers of jesus those who according to god's purpose he chose to give us birth through the word of truth the story of the gospel as revealed in jesus so that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created those are the recipients of the letter it's not written to a place it's a more general letter than that which would be written to the believers in corinth or whatever it might be and indeed it is the very generic nature of it which helps us to understand just how applicable it is to each of us this morning no the person he's addressing here in chapter 4 is the believer who has been making an attempt to sit on the fence the individual who's trying to have it both ways the person who wants to love god and to love himself the girl who wants to pay attention to what the bible has to say but only in selected areas of life and the fence sitter is about to discover that this fence is actually shaky it's wobbly it's painful and inevitably one will come down on one side or on the other if their hearts are humble then they will acknowledge that god knows and he knows what's best for his children if the heart is not humble and fails to accept what god the father in his sovereign purposes is doing then in the pursuit of pleasure or in the pursuit of profit these individuals will discover that solid joy and lasting treasure is actually beyond their reach it is this preoccupation with the desires from within now what i'd like to do is simply suggest to you that we can look at verses one to three under the heading the problem of conflicting passions the problem of conflicting passions because that is what he's referencing in these desires the word here for desire as we have it in the niv which may be lust if you have an older english translation is the word he done in greek hedodone which gives us our english word hedonism and it is the internal selfish orientation towards that which is apart from god and distinct from him james makes this clear by beginning with two rhetorical questions what about these feuds and struggles he says or these fights and quarrels where do you suppose they come from and then rhetorically can't you see that they come from inside don't they come from your desires that battle within you the heart of man is desperately wicked that's what the bible says it's not a politically correct statement and it is challenged on multiple fronts on a daily basis explanations for the condition of humanity are offered to us uh consistently from all quarters many of them failing to pay any attention at all to the idea of man being warped from the inside and indeed from the very outset of his existence choosing his own selfish way rather than gods when a person comes to trust in jesus discovers jesus to be a savior and a friend that sinful propensity has its status changed so that sin no longer reigns in the life of a believer of a christian but it remains in the life it is not that its presence is eradicated but it is that its status is altered and this is of vital importance if we're going to understand what is happening in our lives when we seek to follow jesus if we think that in becoming a follower of jesus we have enjoined a house party or a tranquil experience or we're going to just enjoy some easy existence for the rest of our lives then of course we have been sold a bill of goods that has nothing at all to do with the bible we immediately discover that the westminster confession of faith is of great help to us when it announces the fact that the christian is involved in a continual and irreconcilable war a continual and irreconcilable war my wife and i have been watching programs from britain now for a few weeks called foils war and i can recommend them to you you can watch them uh with impunity they're said detective stories set in the context of hastings in the south coast of england in the framework of the second world war between 1941 and following and one of the recurring themes in it is of course the fact that there is a war on so that when somebody says something about deprivation or about the absence of eggs or the inability to get butter somebody will say but don't you know there's a war on and it is because the war is on that these things are part and parcel we need to understand if we are christians today that there's a war on that the same grace that reconciles us to god antagonizes us to the evil one and the war is waged the bible tells us on three fronts against the world against the flesh and against the devil the external elements are clearly the world and the devil and the internal factor is our flesh or if you like our sinful nature and it is on account of our propensity to sin that the devil is able by means of all kinds of attractive propositions to worse away from our professed affection for jesus and our professed desire to love god with all our heart and all our soul and all our mind and all our strength why says somebody is it so difficult to do this answer because there is a war on and we fight a royal battle daily and consistently by the enabling of god's spirit through the instruction of god's word to be free of the clutches of our own sinful nature and john in 1st john chapter 2 puts it in this way do not love the world or anything in the world if anyone loves the world the love of the father is not in him for everything in the world the cravings of sinful man the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does comes not from the father but from the world the world and his desires pass away but the man who does the will of god lives forever of course it would be very possible for us to push this out to an extreme and to adopt a posture which sought to isolate us from the very world in which we've been set but jesus cleared that up didn't he in john 17 where in his high priestly prayer he says father i don't pray that you take them out of the world but that you keep them from the evil one what james is saying and what john is saying here about worldliness is not a call for some kind of isolated experience whereby we are not engaged with the nature of the world in which we live or whereby we have no friends of those who do not share our view of the world and so on no it's not that at all but it is that we face the continuing presence of indwelling sin which is a base of operation which is a quizzling in the human heart every sin is an inside job every sin is an inside job we cannot take the tom sawyer out the devil made me do it and paulie the answer is no he didn't no he didn't if you are a christian the holy spirit who lives in you is greater than he who is in the world and although he may make so very appealing and alluring to us attitudes and activities that would drive us away from god every time we go that road every time we make that choice every time we take that path we take it we take it and it is by means of our own sinful desires now that is important to understand otherwise we're not going to really get what he's saying here concerning these conflicting passions and the conflicting passions come out very straightforwardly the punctuation is difficult throughout all of these verses that i've just read and not least of all verse 1 b and 2. let me translate it for you the way i think is best you desire and do not have so you kill you covet and cannot obtain so you quarrel and fight you desire and do not have so you kill if luke's could kill the flukes could kill the earthly unspiritual devilish wisdom which is revealed in envy and selfish ambition which creates disorder and every evil practice is well familiar with the murderous gays with a glint in the eye that says i would never physically do it to you because i don't have the guts but i wish you were dead you desire and do not have and so you kill you want stuff and you cannot obtain so you quarrel and fight it's very very painful isn't it i mean it surely was a prophetic word when we began james 1 1 and i said this is probably going to be one of the more painful journeys that we've taken as a church family is every sunday after sunday is the most uncomfortable experience to turn again and again to the bible and here we find that a dissatisfied heart is never at peace with god with itself or with its fellow man a dissatisfied heart is never at peace with god or with itself and it won't be at peace with his spouse and if you have somebody who is constantly disruptive and detrimental divisive who flies off the handle at the slightest provocation who comes in on a monday morning to the office and she or he is just totally and already out of control animosity abounds from them then you can safely assume that there is something that is going on in private and that is unseen that is produced what is now obvious and reveals itself in the community experience and that is exactly what james is saying if you want to know why there's fights and quarrels among you don't they come from your desires that battle within you so you see the progression within you among you within you among you it's not from the outside to the end it's from the inside to the out the issue is not circumstantial the in the the issue is the desire of my heart when the desire of my heart is wrong then that which flows from my heart will be equally wrong and will produce this kind of animosity well so somebody i can i can answer that i i think all you have to do is pray surely prayer is the answer well prayer may be the answer but it doesn't appear to be the answer according to james here does it in verse 3. you don't have because you don't ask god in some instances you don't even pray about it at all but when you do ask you don't receive because you ask with wrong motives so james actually goes right to the level of motivation and he says you wouldn't be thinking of just asking god for this would you and why not because you know you'd be asking for what you have no right to for your asking is in the wrong spirit you only want to satisfy your own desires i think about this for just a moment it's it is not of an unfamiliar experience for me to be told by members of the congregation and people that i meet that the issue that they're tackling they've prayed about and absolutely nothing has happened as if somehow or another by the reciting of certain words and phrases they can make it all go away or everything will be fixed and james is pointing out that unless prayer is a genuine expression of submission to god is a genuine willingness to say god you are sovereign and you must do according to what your word says in order to deal with me and to deal with my predicament unless prayer is that then it frankly is irrelevant because god hears prayers psalm 145 he hears the prayers of those who call upon him to though he hears the praise of those who call upon him in truth in truth so it takes us back to augustine's great line doesn't it oh lord make me pure but not yet god does not hear that prayer oh god fix this but don't fix it in a way that challenges me confronts me is painful for me god is not interested because god will do what god does according to his revealed will and purposes and if we are are smart enough to know what god has said in his word about certain things and we are actually coming to ask him to do something that runs contrary to his word then it's a complete waste of time it's an exercise in complete futility because we ask not in order that we might receive but in order that we might receive in order we might do what we want and since god knows that's what we want he says turn turn channel 3 off turn channel 3 off begs on again he's on with the same thing but i know his heart i know he has a stony heart the lord hears the cries of the penitent he hears the cries of the penitent so if i don't have a penitent heart he doesn't hear my cry if i pray like the pharisee who was praying remember on the street corner with the tax collector beside him if i pray like the pharisee then i might as well just stand up and say hickory dickory dock the mouse ran up the clock the clock struck one it's it's irrelevant i thank you that i'm not as other men and certainly not like this fella that's here god this guy he does nothing i do everything i pray i fast twice a week i give my stuff away i thank you and the publican wouldn't even look up to heaven and he smote his breast and he said god be merciful to me the sinner and what did jesus say said this man went down to his house justified why because god hears the prayers of the penitent what causes fights and feuds among you why all this animosity comes from inside why don't you pray about it well i should but you better not pray about it he says unless you mean what you're saying because you can't have it both ways see james is addressing essentially the backslider here james is addressing the individual who has stepped out on the road to follow jesus and a great affirmation of faith has accompanied him i'm going to be the man that lives for christ and along the road gradually surreptitiously it has begun to eat away his conviction has been eroded a little i don't think this matters as much as i once did i don't think it really matters about really listening to the bible or listening to all of the bible or paying attention all of these things and so on before the person knows where he is he's in bypass meadow or he's in doubters castle or he's definitely at war with apollyon this is all pilgrim's progress he's worldly wise man he's talkative he's backslider he is to quote a country western song a walking contradiction partly truth and partly fiction and god who searches the hearts knows you see the conflicting passions here have to do not simply with our processes or our application but with our motivation and so we don't bring our lives before god to have him sort them out because we don't really want them sorted out and god knows that you go to the doctor the doctor does the diagnosis you tell him this is a problem here he says that may be the presenting problem but i'll tell you what the problem really is and let me tell you what's going to be involved in fixing this and then he lays out the treatment plan the person says i don't i don't like the treatment plan so do you want to be cured or do you want to live with it i think i'll just live with it then the surgeon says go live with it and die with it we come before god asking him to fix things and sort things and god knows our hearts i often say my prayers but do i really pray and do the feelings of my heart go with the words i say i might as well bow down and pray to gods of stone as offer to the living god a prayer of words alone that's why we began by praying help me oh god to love what you command and to desire what you promise help me to love what you command and to desire what you promise because otherwise i'm i'm stuck here in verses one to three in the realm of conflicting passions verses four to six the problem of divided affection the problem of divided affection what a striking beginning to verse four you adulterous people or are you adulterers and adulteresses don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred towards god what is he talking about here he's talking about disloyalty in the old testament the picture of god's people is that of his betrothed he has loved them and he sends his prophets to them again and again to say you shouldn't wander away from me you shouldn't have affections with other gods you shouldn't bow down at these little shrines you belong to me and so the prophets come and confront the people routinely in the realm of their spiritual adultery you have been betrothed to god therefore for you to do this is for you to be disloyal and adulterous as christians the same is true we belong to the lord jesus christ we have been united with the lord jesus christ that's what's happened to us we haven't adopted a program you can adopt a program and not be a christian not be united to jesus we haven't just decided to sing a certain bunch of songs as opposed to other songs we used to sing what has happened to us is that we have been organically woven into the very fabric of godhead in the lord jesus christ we have in our baptism expressed this we were buried with him in baptism and we were raised with him to newness of life and in our baptismal services it will follow this evening we were declaring that jesus christ is lord that he is lord of all he's not lord of part he's lord of the totality all my money all my hopes all my dreams all my future all my sexuality everything belongs to him and therefore for us to engage in activity or to adopt attitudes which mar that relationship is to be guilty of spiritual adultery and that's what makes it so telling peter says in your hearts set apart christ as lord what does that mean well it means this that i have no freedom to believe about anything anything other than what my lord has given me to believe i have no right to determine where i belong apart from where my lord says you belong and i have no right to behave in any way that i choose because the lord jesus is the one who determines my behavior and all of this on the basis of friendship friendship remember jesus says i call you my friends you adulterers people don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred towards god we have become the friends of god we weren't god's friends god's wrath was revealed against all the wickedness and godlessness of man he was opposed to us and we were opposed to him how could we ever get together because of jesus so that when he dies upon the cross he bears god's righteous judgment against sin which is the meeting out of his wrath and he pays the penalty for our sin as only he who as a man could do and only he who was god could provide is an amazing and a wonderful truth and because he has gone to such extent to make us his friends isn't it painful to see your face under the heading you adulterous people what do you think you're doing he says when i allow self and my own selfish desires to take the place of my submission to god i make myself inevitably a friend of the world and therefore an enemy of god i have if you like walked out of the armies of the living god and walked over into the enemy's camp and i may even be tempted to wear some of their uniform so that like the 60s on the kings road in chelsea people who by that time were in their 50s and 60s had the strange experience of seeing the trendsetters in the hippie years wearing their old clothes wearing stuff that they had got rid of a long time ago and now in this strange paradox the hip we're in the old stuff but isn't that from the old days oh yes but it works quite well with the new days isn't that language from the old days yeah isn't that animosity and envy from the old days isn't that some of your old clothes isn't that some of you the wardrobe you used to have before you knew christ yes well then why are you wearing it now do you think jesus likes to walk out with you wearing such an ugly outfit do you really think it is possible to combine all that is represented in galatians 5 in terms of the works of the flesh with all of the beauty of the fruit of the spirit and dress yourself up like some strange ugly person and walk out into the community and not confuse the world about what it means to be a follower of jesus james is saying you can't do it because ipso facto you cannot be both the friend of god and the friend of the world simultaneously jesus said it you cannot love god and money either you will love the one and hate the other or you will cling to the one and desert the other but you can't love them both somebody somebody wins dylan got it right didn't he you gotta serve somebody and james is saying here you adulterous people do you honestly think that you can be a turn-cut do you honestly think that you're gonna choose to adopt a spirit of opposition to god that you can cultivate attitudes which are opposed to god that you can engage in activities which are contrary clearly contrary to his will and not become his enemy it can't be done where something is clearly revealed in the bible as wrong it is wrong wrong always wrong and when i willfully look that in the scriptures and turn my back on it and do my own thing i choose to make myself an enemy of god isn't that what james is saying you adulterous people anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of god it's spiritual adultery it's like breaking your marriage vows it doesn't mean necessarily the end of your marriage but it sure makes a royal mess sure changes everything all of the intimacy and the friendship that was wrapped up in that wonderful relationship has now been fractured i spent the last week reading a book that i started and so i decided to finish it but my wife told me said i never seen you so depressed reading a book in my life and i was reading a book written by the girl who was married in the 60s at one time to george harrison and then to eric clapton and then to someone else one of the saddest books i don't recommend it to you at all you may be depressed along with me one of the saddest books you could ever read because it is the story of profligacy and adultery and absolute mayhem and underneath all of the superficial rock-and-roll jamboree is the brokenness and the wretchedness and the torn-ness and the disappointment and the sadness and the emptiness of life lived contrary to the purposes of god we cannot have it both ways but listen and listen carefully and with this we finish why is all of this so very important because of the nature of god's love for his children he doesn't abandon those 118 to whom he has chosen to give birth through the word of his truth in order that he might make them a first fruits of all that he has created he's going to he's going to persevere with us and enable us to persevere and how does he do this well he gives more grace and the very difficult verse 5 means perhaps this that we should look into verse 5 and see god longing if you like by his spirit with a passionate jealousy that we might be all his that we might be his alone so that when he sees us linked with an affection for ourselves or for our stuff or for our earthly passions and our feeble pleasures then he doesn't say well i'm done with him because after all look what he's done look what she's done no he yearns after us he is jealous for us to be all his he pursues us he comes after us he drops the port cull us to make it as if we will never meet him or hear from him again so that in that sense of lostness and in that sense of emptiness we may cry out for him do you understand he doesn't come immediately to make us feel good about our predicament to make us feel good in our sin so they might say oh i love it in the pigsty this is quite a nice place to live i'm sure maybe more people would like to live in a pigsty no he brings us to the pigsty in order that we might say oh this is ridiculous this is absurd how could someone who had loved me to such an extent look at me in this mess i will go back to him and i will say i've sinned against heaven and in your sight and the father says come on that's exactly what i'm talking about and how does that happen because he gives more grace he yearns for us he'll do all that it will take in order to persevere with us in order that we might become the very first fruits of all he has created loved with everlasting love led by grace that love to know spirit breathing from above you have taught me it is so oh what perfect peace oh what grandeur all divine since i know is now i know i am his and he is mine and because i know that i am his and he is mine it is absurd and ridiculous that i should be involved in these fights and squabbles and i know why it is because in my own heart i'm trying to sit on the fence and i haven't been praying about it because i don't want him to fix it but i'm going to have to go to him and say what the prodigal said and when you do transformation absolute transformation not necessarily instantaneously but begun and will be completed because you see the future comes in at the rate of 60 seconds a minute and this kind of issue is not resolved once in your life it is constantly constantly the issue when i was small and they taught me all my choruses for which i remained always grateful they taught me to sing i met jesus at the crossroad do you remember this one where the two ways meet and satan too was standing there and he said hey come this way lots and lots of pleasures i will give to you today well when i was six and i learned that you know what would that be i don't know satan was standing there and he offered me lots of pleasures you know like 44 packets of starbursts i don't know i don't know what it could be when you're 17 you got a better grasp when you're 27 it comes out in different ways when you're 55 it's still the same crossroads it's still the same question it's still the same come on hey come here you don't have to stay there you don't have to obey that you don't have to pay attention to this come here satan 2 was standing there and he said come this way lots and lots of pleasures i will give to you today but then we had to move over to the other side of the room but i said no there's jesus here that's it i said no there's jesus here do you realize that jesus sits in the pews sits in every single pew hears our singing knows our hearts there's jesus here just see what he offers me down here my sins forgiven and up there there's a home in heaven that's it that's the way for me it's easy at six it's important at 6 30 necessary at seven o'clock and indeed the continual irreconcilable war into which we have been plunged as a result of god's grace uniting us to his son is a sore trial it's a sore trial because any dead fish can go downstream any dead fish can go downstream but it takes a live fish enlivened by god's truth enabled by god's spirit well the pathway is the pathway of humility and the process he describes in verses 7 8 and 9 and if god spares us then we will look at verses 7 8 and 9 next time father thank you for the bible thank you for your amazing grace which not only saves but keeps us despite our stumblings and our bumblings forgive us our fights and our feuds forgive us our contradictions and our backslidings thank you for that wonderful phrase reminding us that you give more grace and to become a recipient of your grace is in part at least to bow down in the awareness that we don't deserve it amazing grace grace that is greater than all our sins may the grace of the lord jesus christ and the love of god our father and the fellowship of the holy spirit rest and remain with all who believe now and forevermore amen this message was brought to you from truth for life where the learning is for living to learn more about truth for life with aleister begg visit us online at truthforlife.org

Channel: Alistair Begg

Views: 28

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Backsliding, Idolatry, Wisdom

Id: qHY6xDJklUY

Length: 42min 25sec (2545 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 12 2021