Outward conflict has its origins in the heart

July 22, 2002

BaptistWay Bible Study for Texas lesson for Aug. 11

Outward conflict has its origins in the heart

_James 4:1-12
___¹What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? ²You 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. ³When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.
___⁴You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. ⁵Or do you think Scripture says without reason that the spirit he caused to live in us envies intensely? ⁶But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble."
___⁷Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. ⁸Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. ⁹Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. ¹⁰Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.
___¹¹Brothers, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against his brother or judges him speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it. ¹²There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you--who are you to judge your neighbor?

_____By Paul Corder
___All of us probably have heard the phrase, "Familiarity breeds contempt." Many of us have experienced the truth of this cliché.
___We meet someone; we form a friendship or a romantic relationship and our friend or loved one can do no wrong. Their every word and gesture seems perfectly tuned to our needs. Then comes the moment when we plan a trip with that person, and by the end of that trip, our perception has drastically changed after spending hours locked in a car or plane with them.
___The little personal quirks of that person that at one time were so cute have become insanely annoying. Then we realize we did not know the person as well as we thought, and we do not want to spend another minute with them.
___How would you feel about living at your church with all of the church's members as your roommates? Surely no other environment would test our patience and our resolve to live the command to love other Christians as this.
___Now imagine multiplying that feeling by a hundred times. This is what any monk must experience during a lifetime lived out in the continual presence of other Christians.
___The first solitary monks that fled to the deserts of Egypt did so to escape the world and its evils. As others began to join them and they formed communities, they found evil had followed them into the desert. It was in their hearts, minds and desires. Surely they often recalled the words of James 4:1-3. There James has much to say about the source of our quarrels.
___Tradition says the Epistle of James was written by James the brother of Jesus, who was also the pastor of the church in Jerusalem. This theory of authorship is strengthened by the similarity between many passages in James' and Jesus' teachings.
___If this is indeed the James who wrote the epistle, then he surely was very familiar with the teachings of Jesus. He either heard them from Jesus himself or from the apostles.
___The teaching of James in verses 1-3 closely echoes the words of Jesus in Mark 7:1-23. In that passage, Jesus teaches that the heart of a person--one's inward being--is the place from which evil comes.
___Some of James' original audience may have been so consumed with satisfying their own desires that even their prayers had become tainted. They may have been asking for the right things, but their motives may have been the satisfaction of their own desires and not focused on the advancement of God's kingdom.
___As a child, I wanted to be a famous Christian musician. I knew it would be hard to achieve growing up in a West Texas town of about 700 people. So I prayed God would bring Ed McMahon to our doorstep with a sweepstakes check for my parents. Then we could move somewhere closer to "civilization" where I could be "discovered" and make a living playing music.
___In my mind, this was a great plan. Wouldn't God be pleased with my making such an impact on the world for him? Of course, my real desire was not to see God's kingdom realized where I was, but to have God remove me from a situation where I thought I could not serve him.
___Apparently, James' original readers were not merely motivated by childish fantasies such as mine, but by purposefully evil motives, because James rightly condemns them in the harshest tones in verse 4. Their attitude of selfishness made them "friends of the world" and constituted spiritual adultery against God.
___What can combat these desires that come from the very core of our being? The attack, according to James, is twofold: the grace of God and our humility. As suddenly as he condemned his readers as spiritual adulterers, he pointed them back to the grace of God in verse 6.
___James here agreed with Paul, "But where sin increased, grace increased all the more." We can never sin more than God can forgive. However, this grace is not poured out except on those who are humble, as James illustrates with a quote from Proverbs 3:34.
___Humility allows us to resist the devil since the devil's main weapon is our pride. In his book "Wisdom of the Desert," Thomas Merton tells a story that circulated among the desert monks to illustrate this principle.
___One day, Abbot Macarius was returning to his hut, loaded down with a bundle of reeds. On his way, he found the devil, standing in the path as a grim reaper. The devil failed at striking out at the monk and said, "I suffer great violence from you, Macarius, because I cannot overcome you. For see, I do all things that you do. You fast, and I eat nothing at all. You watch, and I never sleep. But there is one thing alone in which you overcome me." Abbot Macarius said to him: "What is that?" "Your humility," the devil replied, "for because of it I cannot overcome you."
___How can this humility be realized in our lives? By submitting ourselves to God and realizing just how unclean our sins have made us.
___This submission is to be accompanied by "washing our hands" of our sins and purifying our hearts. The construction here is reminiscent of Psalm 24:3-4, "Who may ascend the hill of the Lord? Who may stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart."
___The image of Jewish worship is continued in verse 8, where James recalls the image of the high priest coming near to God in the Holy of Holies in the Temple. The priest did not come near to God in arrogance of his position as priest but in humility that comes from recognizing his place as God's servant.
___James has moved us from our outward actions (quarrels and fighting) to its root source (our selfish desires). James has shown us the way to change this internal struggle is by submission to God through humility.
___Now James moves us back from internal attitudes to external actions in verse 11, where we are admonished not to slander or speak evil against other Christians. The lack of humility will produce the desire to slander. Psalm 101:5 speaks of God's attitude toward the slanderous and proud: "Whoever slanders his neighbor in secret, him will I put to silence; whoever has haughty eyes and a proud heart, him I will not endure."
___In the original Greek, James uses a word play to illustrate the seriousness of this slander. The noun, "diabolos," used for Satan in verse 7 means "slanderer" and the same word in verb form is used in verse 11.
___In Matthew 22:34-40, Jesus taught us the law is fulfilled by loving God with all our heart and loving our neighbors as ourselves. Similarly, James shows us that if we slander our brother we have ignored the law and its admonition to love others. We have made ourselves the judge of the Law.
___This is a dangerous position for humans to assume. There is only one Judge of the Law, God. This is the ultimate arrogance-- to place ourselves in the judgment seat of God.
___One can almost hear the sarcasm in James' response to the absurdity of this situation. "But you--who are you to judge your neighbor?" All of us are under the same condemnation of sin and we will all be accountable for the things we say.
___The center of James' teaching in this chapter is our slanderous behavior comes from our lack of humility and submission before God as sinners.
___The desert fathers realized that even the Christian community was prone to slander. They also realized such behavior would destroy the fellowship they sought to create. Therefore, much of their teaching centered on teaching humility.
___How do we react when others hurt us or do something we disagree with? Do we bear with them in humility, or do we slander and place ourselves arrogantly in the position of judge?
___Christian humility runs counter to our human nature as well as our American culture. We tend to want to stand up for our rights at every opportunity. We seek to be "No. 1" and to have others submit to us.
___This has proven to be at the root of so many divisions within families, churches and denominations. These have needlessly sapped the resources and energies of those individuals and relationships involved. And what a terrible witness this has been to each other and to the world.
___However, the New Testament model is for Christians to submit to one another (Ephesians 5:21). And in our passage here, James calls us to submit our speech to God and practice humility in our speech with other Christians.
___The consequence of ignoring his commands is further damage to our families, the body of Christ and our witness to a world already torn by sin and pride.
___Paul Corder is a graduate of Hardin-Simmons University and is a master of divinity student in the university's Logsdon School of Theology

Questions for thought and discussion
___ In what ways have you hurt others with your speech? How were your words motivated by desires to satisfy yourself?
___ What examples can you think of that illustrate how popular culture teaches us to speak to others? Are these examples contrary to the teachings of James or in harmony with his teachings?
___
___ How does your church handle conflict? Is the conflict constructive? Or does it tear down relationships? What ways can you think of to make conflict in your church more constructive?
___ How does your family handle conflict? Is the conflict constructive? Or does it tear down relationships? What ways can you think of to make conflict in your family more constructive?
___ How do you feel when someone else gains something good? Are you happy for that person? Or do you feel the need to speak against that person to lessen their accomplishment? How would you respond in obedience to what we find in James 4:1-12?

Learning activities
___ Give each student a 5X7 note card. Have each student list three people whom they have hurt or may have hurt in a quarrel or with malicious speech. Under each person's name, have the student list two or three ways to make that relationship right. Ask for volunteers to discuss their responses with the class. Have a short time of prayer for all the relationships listed. Suggest each student keep the cards in their Bibles as prayer reminders.
___ Many of the ideas in James 4:1-12 parallel teachings of Jesus. Divide the class into two groups. Assign one group James 4:1-6 and the other James 4:7-12. Ask each group also to open their Bibles to the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7). Ask the groups to identify verses from Jesus' teaching in the Sermon on the Mount that parallel their section of James 4:1-12. Ask each group to share what they have found. Ask the entire class to discuss what ways James expands on the teaching of Jesus.
___ Divide a chalk board or a sheet of butcher paper on a wall into two columns. Head one column "Popular Culture". Head the other column "James." Ask the class to list examples of how popular culture views or uses malicious speech and write these under the appropriate heading. Then ask the class to how James suggests we view or use our own malicious speech. Ask the class to compare the two lists. Discuss with the class which list most closely reflects the way we talk to others and why. Ask the class to identify ways Christ-like speech could help avert quarrels in a family or in a church.

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