Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] You're listening to a live recording from Westside Church in Bend, Oregon. Thanks for joining us.
[00:00:06] Good morning, everybody.
[00:00:08] I'm Ben Fleming, one of the senior pastors here. We are in James, Chapter four, part three of this sermon series. As we go all the way through the book of James, and anytime we go all the way through a book, which we do several times a year, it's in order to try to get a greater understanding. So we're not just taking little scriptures out of context, but we're trying to understand it in the full context in which it was written. And James is an interesting one. It. It's kind of a pop out in the New Testament. It's certainly not one of the gospels. And it doesn't sound like John's letters or Peter's letters. It definitely doesn't sound like Paul's letters. It's very much his own kind of voice. Now John to me has kind of this hippie vibe sometimes when you read him, you know, John loves poetry and like really, really big imagery and stories. And Paul likes to talk in lists, right? He's planting churches and he's trying to make them sustainable. And James sounds to me, after I've heard Evan do the last two weeks and read through the scriptures together, James sounds to me like a really loving and concerned and wise mother.
[00:01:11] That's the image that comes to mind when I hear him talk. Because James is very much like, we need this faith that we have to not just be mental or just inside of us, but instead it needs to become something that's real to our world. And it made me think of one of my favorite movies, which won't surprise you, the Sandlot. Any Sandlot fans in here?
[00:01:31] Yeah. Great mom in that movie, Scotty Smalls, mom, who's played by Karen Allen, who's also in the Indiana Jones movies, for those of you who are wondering.
[00:01:40] I could go on and on and on, but it's actually this moment, right? This is concerned and loving mom face right here.
[00:01:47] It's an image from that movie. And if you know anything about the movie, this is a time where she gives this kind of short speech to Scotty because they've just moved to this new city and he's playing with his erector set inside of his bedroom all alone. And it's summertime and there's all this potential fun to be had. And she comes in and she gives him this little speech and she says this. She says, I don't want you sitting in here all summer fiddling with this stuff like you did last summer and the one before.
[00:02:12] I know you're smart and I'm proud of you.
[00:02:16] I want you to get out into the fresh air and make some friends. Run around, scrape your knees, get dirty, climb trees, hop fences, get into trouble, for crying out loud.
[00:02:26] Not too much, but some.
[00:02:29] You have my permission.
[00:02:31] I think if James were to stand in front of Westside Church today, he might sound a little bit like Scott, Scotty Smalls, mom in the Sand Law.
[00:02:40] And he would look at the church and he would say, I know you're smart and I'm proud of you, but unless you're going to go outside and you're going to scrape your knees and you're going to breathe in the fresh air and you're going to get into a little bit of trouble, I'm not sure what this faith is worth, Right. He says earlier in the book that faith that works is dead.
[00:03:02] And it's this challenge to us here today, Right? And I think one of the biggest mistakes the church can make is to really create something great that happens on Sunday mornings and happens in these seats, in this room. And then the impact of it is never actually felt inside of the community.
[00:03:18] We're not out there scraping our knees. We're not out there getting a little bit bloody. We're not out there trying to care for this world how God has intended us to care for it. Because from this incredible faith that we've received from Jesus, all of a sudden our world is supposed to feel this dramatic and incredibly loving and caring impact.
[00:03:36] And so I would challenge us to say that because of what James is telling us to do, that we should probably be the kind of people that are spending time with folks that others are a little bit afraid of, that we should be out there doing things and helping with projects and things that don't necessarily give us notoriety or more power or influence, but instead, they simply just care for the most vulnerable people.
[00:03:56] If we're not out there breathing in fresh air and scraping up our knees as a church, then I'm not sure we have much faith in all. And so that's the challenge of this book. And so James takes that conversation not just into helping the people around us, but he also takes it into conflict. Because James knows that if we are going to actually go out and we're going to care for the world around us, that when we are with the people in the world around us, there will be conflict.
[00:04:24] And so it could be tempting to say, okay, fine, finally, James is going to talk about this, because he's talking about, like, helping other people and stuff like that.
[00:04:31] What we need to do is convince the people that we're right.
[00:04:36] And this is a version of Christianity that's been around forever, but I feel like it's taken on greater volume, especially over the last couple years, is that the good Christians are the ones with the best arguments that can fight the people the hardest and the longest in order to win the battle out there on the field.
[00:04:50] It's like, man, this is not. I'm not sure this is what I had in mind. And then James comes around in chapter four, and he starts talking about conflict. And I'm like, oh, no, what are we gonna learn? What are you gonna tell us, James? Like, you gonna give us. Anybody ever listen to, like, a podcast or a news bit? And you're like, I'm gonna retain all of this information in order to convince the people around me that they are idiots and I'm smart.
[00:05:10] Anybody else? Am I the only one? I'm the only one that's ever done that.
[00:05:13] Good. I'm the only one. Great. This church is way more mature than I thought it was. Fantastic.
[00:05:19] And so James starts talking about conflict, which makes my stomach hurt just a little bit on the surface. But he teaches us something that is incredibly pertinent for us today, because conflict kind of feels ever present right now. Right. People can make a lot of money off of conflict. They can get a lot of views off of conflict. We can kind of get high off of conflict. Some of us maybe even are addicted to it. Right. And sometimes disagreements erupt in our families, and there's, like, tension that we have between friends that we can't always speak to or understand. There's always been conflict in church communities especially.
[00:05:54] Have you ever noticed that a small comment can actually kind of create this massive reaction and result in conflict? And we're left wondering, how did we get here? And James is trying to help us understand what to do when we get there. And so, James, chapter four begins with this question. What causes fights and quarrels among you?
[00:06:12] Now, as I'm reading this, I can look at James and go, oh, okay, hold on right there. Let me tell you. What causes fights and quarrels among us?
[00:06:18] Them.
[00:06:21] Well, who's them? Well, just whoever. My enemies.
[00:06:25] The bad people out there. Church people love to say this phrase. They love to say the world.
[00:06:31] The world, you know, and we don't. We don't really know what we mean. Well, we know what we mean. I think we like to define the world exactly, kind of however we like to define it, you know, you know the world, the conservatives, you know the world, the progressives, the world, the bad people out there that are clearly my chosen enemies right now. But maybe you would define the world a little bit differently than I do. But we could answer this question to James really quick. Who causes the fights and quarrels among you?
[00:06:59] My enemies.
[00:07:01] But he doesn't go there.
[00:07:04] He asks that question, and then he continues to answer his own question.
[00:07:10] And he says, don't these fights and quarrels come from desires that battle within you?
[00:07:19] So James says there's this war that happens beneath this conflict and beneath this war, right? He doesn't start by blaming everything around us or the circumstances. He doesn't blame other people's personalities, their politics, their backgrounds, or the people all around us. He doesn't blame the world around us. Instead, James highlights the battle within each and every single one of us. First.
[00:07:43] So before there's conflict between you and me, there is conflict within me.
[00:07:50] And then he continues, he says, look, you want what you don't have, and so you scheme and you kill to get it. You're jealous of what others have, but you can't get it. And so you fight and you wage war then to take it away from them.
[00:08:03] Now, most of the people reading James letter, by the way, are not murderers. Okay?
[00:08:07] What James is describing is what happens when our desires actually become disordered, right? We want something, we don't get it. We have feelings about that. It's easy to become angry and resentful and jealous and defensive and controlling. Hello, elbow somebody that's controlling. Don't do that, don't do that.
[00:08:25] But something inside us becomes all these things. And now I want you to know, because this is also a little bit of a Christian tendency that I've noticed is that when we get into this position, sometimes the tendency to say, okay, well, my desires, having desires is the problem. And I can eliminate having desires in kind of this masochistic kind of way. Then all of a sudden, I'll become holy and I'll be able to deal with conflict the right way. But I gotta tell you that the problem is not that you have desires. Desire in and of itself is not evil.
[00:08:58] We desire to have love, and we desire security. We desire respect and belonging. We want and desire meaningful and purposeful work. We desire to be understood, and we desire justice.
[00:09:10] These desires are good. And often actually, they're incredibly holy things.
[00:09:16] Not just, okay, things that exist in and of themselves in the world, but they're actually God breathed things.
[00:09:22] But the problem becomes when our desire becomes this ultimate demand, okay? Because there's a difference between saying, I'd like to be respected and I have to be respected by you.
[00:09:35] And there's a difference between saying, I want people to understand me and say, people have to understand me or I will seek revenge on them.
[00:09:44] There's a difference between saying, I hope this goes my way and this has to go my way for me to be okay.
[00:09:53] And it's in that tension, right, where desire becomes demand. That's where that demand then produces that conflict that we're seeing that James is talking about.
[00:10:02] And then that becomes the ground, the field in which manipulation and pressure and criticism can grow. This is where all of a sudden we decide to gossip against other people instead of having conversations with them. This is where we withdraw into our own solitude to think our own terrible thoughts about others. Instead of going unto them so that we may understand them, we punish people with silence. Sometimes in these places, we replay conversations in our minds. We meditate on the bad behavior of someone else, anybody else love to spend time at 10 o' clock at night and 2 in the morning and then again at 3 in the morning meditating on someone else's horrific behavior that has hurt you.
[00:10:44] Again, just me. Lovely. This is great.
[00:10:50] I have this tendency in me. I love to build arguments in the middle of the night, all by myself against someone else. I love to meditate on these things instead of actually giving them a phone call and asking them questions.
[00:11:03] I'd love to do anything else, but actually do the thing that creates a solution in interpersonal relationships with other people.
[00:11:10] I would love to hate them and criticize them instead of simply speak to them and understand.
[00:11:19] And in the end, we usually say something like this, right?
[00:11:23] I'm angry because of what they did.
[00:11:27] I'm angry because of what they did.
[00:11:31] And the difficulty of this passage from James and the beauty of it is that he insists that we look deeper within ourselves to understand how conflicts work.
[00:11:42] And so I would ask you the questions today. You know what it's like to be in conflict.
[00:11:46] You know, those family dynamics that are difficult for you right now are those work dynamics, those friendship dynamics. And I hope that you can ask this question along with me as I ask it today. You can ask it of yourself.
[00:11:57] What do you want? And what are you afraid of losing?
[00:12:01] And can you identify that when conflict happens, what was it in that conflict that you believe that you absolutely had to have?
[00:12:10] Was there a desire that's central to what you believe to be your identity? That you felt threatened in, in the middle of that conflict because we have to pay attention not to just what someone else did, right? That's the easy route and that's a real thing. But we also have to understand what about their actions actually disrupted our innermost being. What threatened our identity?
[00:12:34] Because maybe what I actually wanted was not just the outcome that I'm thinking of, but maybe what I really wanted was control or approval or comfort.
[00:12:43] Maybe I just wanted to win. I love to win.
[00:12:49] But often in a pursuit of winning, we can completely avoid the real truth of what is happening there. I learned this lesson like five months after we had had our first kid. My wife's a nurse and back at this time, she was working in an emergency room. She had been about a month back, I think she took three months off after Joel was born, and then she went back to work in the emergency room.
[00:13:14] And she had given me, while I was taking care of Joel all by myself, She had given me a, let's call it a treasure trove of pumped breast milk, okay?
[00:13:33] And she came home after a 12 hour shift at work and there was about 2 ounces of that in a bottle on the counter that had not been consumed by a small child.
[00:13:47] And she walked in the door and she held that up and she went, what is this?
[00:13:54] And I had no idea the fight we were about to have.
[00:14:00] And I'm looking at her, I'm like, it's some leftover milk.
[00:14:06] She's like, leftover?
[00:14:09] Do you know what I went through? You know, I'm like, look, it's been a long day over here, okay? Your kid likes the temperature of the milk, to be very specific, you know, And I got all my feelings about where I'm coming from. And it's been a 12 hour shift over here today too, sister.
[00:14:29] Not that different from an emergency room situation. A little less blood, but a lot of screaming, you know, and we are both entered into this conflict completely exhausted and having zero interest in what the other person has been through in order to understand the kind of situation that we're having.
[00:14:52] And so she knows what she's been through in order to create this food for this small child. And I've got all these feelings about how this day has gone and why he didn't consume the last 2 ounces even though I wanted him to. And bam.
[00:15:06] And I remember having zero interest. It was one of the very few times in an argument that, and I wouldn't recommend this inside of a context of a marriage where I just walked away and I was like, I'm not doing this.
[00:15:18] I'm not listening to you.
[00:15:20] I'm not curious about how your experience has been. I don't understand what you're talking about, and I don't want to.
[00:15:27] And that is not the greatest way to deal with conflict.
[00:15:34] Now, I would love to tell you that as our marriage has gone on, I've always matured and I always handle conflict exactly how I should.
[00:15:41] My wife's not in this service, so we're going to go with that.
[00:15:49] What I didn't ask in the moment, I guess, is what I'm trying to tell you is what's going on within me.
[00:15:57] Because I would love to blame her tone or her volume level or whatever, and I was disinterested in, okay, what's really going on? What am I threatened by? What am I upset by?
[00:16:08] And by the grace of God. What we are encouraged to do as we follow in this faith after Jesus, is we're trying to allow Jesus to transform what's actually happening within us.
[00:16:19] Because the difficult thing that we have to understand is that we ultimately can't control other people, try as we might, but we can allow God to do something within us.
[00:16:30] And so James continues, He says, you don't have what you don't want because you don't ask God for it. And even though you ask, you don't get it because your motives are all wrong.
[00:16:38] You want only what will give you pleasure. And so James is telling us, sometimes you don't pray, and then other times you think you're praying and you're not doing what prayer is actually asking and requiring of you.
[00:16:50] There's a laundry list of things I'd rather do first, right? Like I said, I'd rather scheme against other people or worry or have anxiety or argue or manipulate and exhaust myself. And then maybe if I come to the realization that none of those things have worked, worked again, I'll come back around to prayer.
[00:17:06] But then sometimes when I actually do pray, prayer becomes just this other way of trying to get what I want.
[00:17:12] The question that I'm still refusing to ask, and this is important, in the middle of conflict again, is, God, what do you want to do in me?
[00:17:19] But I like to start with God. Let me give you my case so that you know that I am right.
[00:17:25] And then you can talk to my wife, and then you could talk to my boss, and then you can talk to this idiot youth sports coach that I'm completely sick and tired of, because you could communicate really well in this way.
[00:17:40] Am I talking about a very deeply personal thing in a really shallow way to confuse you. Yes. I'm going through a lot right now, but I want this transactional spirituality with Jesus, right? And James is saying that is such a waste of time.
[00:17:58] He's saying it's possible for you to pray without actually surrendering to God.
[00:18:02] And so maybe if we're going to take the time to pray, we should take the time to surrender.
[00:18:09] And so I came up with this kind of prayer, and I hate it, but maybe you'll appreciate it like I do.
[00:18:18] I wonder if sometimes the prayer that we can start with or the line that we can start with when we're in the middle of conflict is, dear Jesus, this person has hurt me.
[00:18:27] But before you change them, I invite you to search me instead.
[00:18:33] I'll say it again because it's terrible. You ready for this?
[00:18:37] Dear Jesus, this person has hurt me. But before you change them, I invite you to search me.
[00:18:49] Jesus prayed this way in Gethsemane, right? Some of you are familiar with the story. Jesus, before he's about to go to his death, he prays in this garden. And he says, in essence, Father, this is what I want. And if it's possible, I would appreciate if this cup or this sacrifice I have to make would pass from me. It's this kind of honest prayer.
[00:19:07] And then he finishes it up with, but it's not my will, but your will be done.
[00:19:12] That is surrender in the form of prayer.
[00:19:16] And that's what our prayer, our Christian prayer, is designed to be. Honest desire that's held inside of a deeper trust. That's how we're called to pray.
[00:19:28] And then Jesus goes on. Jesus. James, the brother of Jesus, goes on to say, you adulterers, don't you realize that friendship with the world makes you an enemy of God? I'll say it again. If you want to be a friend of the world, make yourself. You make yourself an enemy of God. So this sounds like it's going against what I said earlier, but it's not. James is not saying that Christians should hate the people in the world so that we then get permission to withdraw from the world around us. Because that would eliminate everything that James has already said in the previous three chapters. So that's not what he's saying. The world in this passage refers to this way of a life being organized without God at the center of it.
[00:20:05] And so it means this system built on pride, our. Our base appetites and desires. Pride, rivalry, envy, selfish ambition, status, power and control. The world is teaching us these selfish Desires teach us to protect ourselves, to promote ourselves, to compare ourselves, to prove ourselves, and then defeat our enemies. And ultimately, if we're really good at life, we get even.
[00:20:29] That's how this transaction works.
[00:20:33] And so James is saying, look, there's. There's bad people out there. You have to hide from them. That's a terrible way to do church. And I insist that we do not have anything to do with that.
[00:20:42] But what he is saying is that there's these appetites and these desires that exist within you. I preached a sermon a few weeks ago on the sermon, the topic the story of Samson and Delilah. And I referenced the fact that so often there's this idea that Delilah is this kind of villain in Samson's story, but the villain is that Samson simply cannot resist every single temptation and prideful appetite that he has.
[00:21:06] That's the enemy in the story.
[00:21:09] And we want to villainize individual people and things and cultures and groups. And James is saying, just like the writer of the story of Samson and Delilah is saying, look, the real enemy is these appetites that we always continue to give ourselves into.
[00:21:25] We can't live like that and give into those things and find ourselves being fully surrendered and connected to God.
[00:21:36] And so in this, he's saying, God doesn't want some kind of small religious corner of your life, but instead he wants your heart. It says in verse five, it says, God is passionate, that the spirit he has placed within us should be faithful to him. This isn't God having some kind of insecure love connection with us. Instead, it's God being jealous for our real freedom in life. He's jealous for your wholeness.
[00:21:58] He knows that when our lives are fueled by envy and pride and comparison and selfish desire, you'll never be at peace. And so God wants to call us back to this greater kind of existence in living that he offers us.
[00:22:11] And then James, after all of these bits, gives us probably the most hopeful statement in the passage where he says, he gives grace generously.
[00:22:23] Now, you could listen to this teaching and you could hear me.
[00:22:27] Maybe the subtext would be, so you got to really get your life in order. You got to go ahead and make sure that you go to therapy and you do it exactly right, and you do it often. All these things are great. I hope you get your life in order. I hope you have good habits and good systems in place. But I want you to understand that the thing that ultimately will cover all of the difficulty that you have in conflict and in life is simply more grace. That is only truly offered by Jesus Christ, so that when your desires are disordered, you need to know that he gives more grace.
[00:22:57] Grace is greater than your failure and your pride. And you're going to have both of those things continue to exist to some degree when you walk out these doors.
[00:23:05] And grace is the thing that will ultimately help you apologize and forgive and give you the courage to tell the truth to yourself and to other people. Grace is the thing not that just makes us feel good on a cloudy day, but grace is the thing that makes reconciliation with the people around us possible in the first place.
[00:23:25] And it comes through this beautiful thing called humility. And so James actually quotes Proverbs 3, verse 34, and he says, God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.
[00:23:36] Pride resists grace because pride insists that I don't need help, while humility opens the door and looks at God and says, I know that I can't do this on my own.
[00:23:53] And so then James gives a series of commands.
[00:23:57] Humble yourselves before God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Come close to God and God will come close to you.
[00:24:03] There's a reason that all these movements and these kind of things go together.
[00:24:08] It's because submitting to God means releasing our claim to be in charge.
[00:24:13] It means placing our lives under the authority of someone else. And that is the loving authority of Jesus.
[00:24:19] I think one of the greatest prayers that you can pray is simply saying, jesus, you are God and I am not.
[00:24:28] And then often our prayer is fashioned in a helpful and purposeful way. If we begin there now, the devil specifically in this passage refers to. It means slanderer or accuser.
[00:24:43] And the devil loves to whisper these things.
[00:24:46] This is what the church has to resist, you guys. We have to resist this temptation because it's great for every single one of us.
[00:24:54] The devil loves to whisper. They are your enemy.
[00:24:59] They don't deserve mercy.
[00:25:02] And the devil loves to whisper to you. And maybe this is where you're at today, that you have every right to hold on to the bitterness that you feel right now.
[00:25:13] Don't fall for the trap.
[00:25:18] James wants you to resist.
[00:25:21] And so maybe you find yourself in there today. And look, I know James is calling us to look inward. He's saying what's happening within us. And that's not me saying. And so look, nothing bad has ever happened to you. You've just reacted the wrong way. Things of bad have happened to you. You've been hurt, you've been broken. People have come against you and they've done it on purpose.
[00:25:47] But the place that you can't go. I'm telling you that you got to hold on to this. The place that you can't go. If you want to continue to find this purpose, if you want to find real redemption and not just reconciliation between you and someone else, but even reconciliation inside of your own heart and soul, you cannot fall for the trap that says you have every excuse to continue to be bitter about this for the rest of your life. Don't do it.
[00:26:08] You can. You've earned that right, I would say, in many cases. But you don't want to live that way.
[00:26:15] After all the grace that you've received from Jesus, again, you have the opportunity. You can live bitter, but you don't want to. That's not the way to live. That's not how you want to spend the rest of your life. That's not what you want your mind to go to every single time you have a quiet moment. And so we are offered the opportunity to extend grace into forgiveness, even to those who don't deserve it. Because ultimately, that's the story of the cross. Jesus doesn't come and die for the sins of a group of people that have done so well and so right that they've earned the opportunity for God to give themselves up for Him. No, it's a wretched people that find ourselves separated from God, that have actively been against him and actively against each other, flying in the face of everything that he commands us to do. And it's in that place God chooses not to perform in bitterness, but in instead of unrelenting and impossible love.
[00:27:06] That's the gospel.
[00:27:08] And now you're presented with the same opportunity when your mind would tell you that you have every single right to hold on to bitterness. We can be a people that do not do so.
[00:27:26] Okay, I'm going to try to finish up with these points. There's too much.
[00:27:33] James continues on. And if you've read chapter four all by yourself, this is a weird piece of the scripture. It says in 4, verse 8 through 9, it says, Wash your hands, you sinners. Purify your hearts, for your loyalty is divided between God and the world. Let there be tears for what you have done. Let there be sorrow and deep grief. And let there be sadness instead of laughter and gloom instead. Instead of joy.
[00:27:57] I don't know about you guys, but I've never sung that worship song before. You know, there's like 25 songs out there like, he Turned My Morning into Dancing.
[00:28:08] And James is like, let there be sorrow and deep grief.
[00:28:13] Bring on the Gloom instead of joy. You know, this is tough stuff, man. Sounds really severe.
[00:28:23] But James isn't saying that Christians should be permanently and chronically miserable. You need to understand this.
[00:28:32] What he's doing is he's confronting what I would call the silliness of shallow repentance.
[00:28:39] Because again, we love the idea of having forgiveness without actually having to be honest ever.
[00:28:46] And we will love grace without ever naming for ourselves and for God what we've done.
[00:28:52] We want to just continue to grieve in this bitterness that we've nurtured. And we want to grieve in the judgments that we've made, right?
[00:29:03] And James is calling us to grieve the way that we have loved being right more than we have loved our actual neighbor.
[00:29:11] And so again, James is not inviting us into some kind of biblical self hatred, but instead he's inviting us into surrender and agreement with God so that we might understand what Jesus has done for us and then experience true humility. And James says, humble yourselves before the Lord and he will lift you up in honor again. The world, our nature, our selfish desires, they would tell us we have to do everything within our power to lift ourselves up.
[00:29:44] Now humility doesn't mean that we're worthless. Humility doesn't mean, excuse me, it does mean that we're being honest about who we are before God. We're loved, we're deeply loved. We're completely dependent.
[00:29:55] We're gifted, but we're not self made.
[00:29:58] We're valuable, but we're not at the center of our own universe. This is humility. We're capable of of good, but we're also capable of self deception and understanding that creates a humble heart because we then know that we need grace just as much as every single other person in this world.
[00:30:19] And so the proud person enters a conflict, asking, how can I prove that I'm right?
[00:30:25] And the humble person asks, what is it that I might be missing?
[00:30:30] A proud person asks, how can I win? And a humble person asks, how can I love?
[00:30:36] The proud person says, they need to apologize. And the humble person asks themselves, is there anything that I need to own?
[00:30:45] And I hope this so much for our church. The proud person assumes the worst, but the humble person remains deeply curious.
[00:30:56] So I want to encourage you today. Don't hold on to bitterness. Don't grasp for some kind of worth that is unnecessary. And don't fight for your identity.
[00:31:07] We don't need to destroy someone else in order to establish our own selves. But we have to be confident that in our humility that we don't know it all, that God in that place will lift us up. Amen.
[00:31:17] Amen.
