August 21, 2016
Authentic Community for the Haves and Have Nots (James 4:1-12 NIV)
INTRODUCTION
Authentic Community for the Haves and Have Nots (James 4:1-12 NIV)
Ivy Island Story for PT Barnum
1810, Conneticut, Phineas’s grandfather deeded five acres of “valuable” land called Ivy Island to him at the start of his schooling. Phineas could see it when he was ten years old. Everyone in his village and school heard about how “rich” he now was. Phineas tried to take it in stride. At ten, the grand journey to see Ivy Island. He could not contain his excitement as the wagon got closer. He ran to the edge to look and saw…five acres of snake infested marshland. His grandfather congratulated himself on having created such a great practical joke. His family laughed. Phineas became the laughingstock of his school and village. Phineas’ deep humiliation led him to set out to prove that there is a sucker born every minute. Phineas created the Greatest Show on Earth. Phineas was P. T. Barnum, the founder of the Barnum and Bailey circus.
BACKGROUND
James, a dysfunctional brother in Jesus’ family (Galilee) (John 7:2-5)
James’ Audience: the dysfunctional Jewish brothers and sisters of Jesus’ family (Asia
Minor/Turkey)(if “Dispersion” = same “dispersion” of 1 Peter). James has gotten past his jealousy of Jesus and now challenges his followers of Jesus to get over their jealousy within the Body of Jesus called the church.
James’ community = Jews and Jewish proselytes = meeting in a Jewish synagogue (2:2) and
who call their regular assembly an ekklesia (5:14), which is usually translated “church” in the rest of the NT.
FOREGROUND: JAMES 4:1-12
James 4:1-12 Addresses Dysfunction within a Spiritual Family. We call that spiritual family a church/congregation.
James helps us to understand how our spiritual family, called Northgate Baptist Church, can free ourselves from individual and collective dysfunction so that we prevent the buildup of inauthentic community and thus free ourselves from having to hide from each other, mistrust each other and deceive one another. In other words, James helps us to see how we as the family of Northgate can avoid becoming a three ring circus that is full of drama queens. James clearly describes and mandates Authentic Community for the Haves and Have Nots (James 4:1-12 NIV)
James 4:1-12 What Causes Fights and Quarrels Among You?
Pastor Bob highlighted last week that the disorder is produced in spiritual families by the false wisdom that comes from envy (3:16). James makes it clear in chapter four that false wisdom leads to fighting. Throughout the first twelve verses of chapter four, James looks at what causes fights and quarrels among God’s people.
The Greek words that James uses in v. 1 indicate that James is not talking about disagreements-.
- James is not talking about healthy conflicts that should be expected in a church whose ministries are expanding and adapting to new opportunities and challenges.
- James is writing about fighting. Fighting among Christians is "earthly, unspiritual, of the devil" in origin, and he will call its perpetrators "you adulterous people" (4:4). Strong words. Strong WORDS that point to a deep-seated problem. STRONG WORDS that point to the need for STRONG MEDICINE to cut out the deep-seated problem. What is that deep-seated problem? It is an insidious disease that has deeply seated self-centredness on the throne of a person’s life. James will eventually move his readers towards a transformational commitment to seating God on the throne of their life. In other words, James STRONG MEDICINE is the God the SOUL DOCTOR for every single person in God’s creation. James challenges his church community to move from Self-Centred living to God-Centered living (James 4:7).
- When we as Christians find ourselves embroiled in fights with each other, we should examine what we are doing in the light of this paragraph. James gives us great help by answering three questions that are hard for us to face.
THREE QUESTIONS Related to the Primary Question: What Causes Fights and Quarrels Among You?
1. Don’t’ you Know What Fighting is Really About? (4:1)Unexpressed Expectations
2. Don’t’ you Know that Self-Centred Desires Lead to Fighting? (4:2)Unexamined Feelings that result from unexpressed expectations (i.e., choosing not to examine what expectations underly my primary feelings and thus feeling justified in venting the anger that builds up from those Unexamined Feelings)
3. Don’t you know the Choice that Really Needs to be Made? (4:4-12)Misdirected Devotion that underlies our Expectations (Friendliness/Friendship with the World or Fellowship with God?)
1. Don’t You Know What Fighting is Really All About? (4:1) Unexpressed Expectations
1 What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you?
IVP COMMENTARY ON JAMES: “Honestly facing what James says here is one of the most decisive steps of faith in all of a person's life. For it requires tearing oneself away from self-justification and redirecting oneself toward self-examination. This is a violent uprooting of our selfishness. We try to justify our role in fights in terms of the high ideals, the critical issues and the injured rights we are supposedly defending.”
- James does not countenance such talk. He emphasizes that fights are, at their essence, about personal desires.
- An important self-examining question for Christians in conflict is "What personal desire am I trying to protect or to gain?"
- James does not give specific examples of the personal desires he is challenging. But they are inside us, battling against us for the purpose of destroying our souls.
Types of Desires Behind Group Conflicts (IVP Commentary)
Conflict in group relationships such as within a church:
(1) Inflexibility about issues (from a desire to have one's own way) my way or the Highway
(2) maneuvering for position of authority (from a desire for status and admiration within the community)
(3) criticizing others (from a desire to make oneself look good)
Types of Desires Behind Individual Conflicts (IVP Commentary)
Examples of desires that lead to destructive behaviour in marriages
(1) constantly exchanging hurtful words (from a desire to get even) or
(2) carrying out sexual infidelity (from a desire for selfish pleasure or simply a desire for another spouse).
All of these happen in Christian churches and Christian marriages; they are all immoral.
REFLECTION MOMENT: Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal to you what types of desires are battling against you inside of you.
- Within the church I need things my way, I need an increase in my influence, I need to improve my status.
- Within my marriage, I need to get even, I need to find pleasure with someone other than my spouse.
The Expression of your inner desires leads to at least Three Levels of Social Interaction:
Dialogue (We; active): Let us talk about us and our possibilities
Monologue (Us; passive): Let me tell you about us and my needs.
Diatribe (You; reactive): Let me tell you about me and my hurts.
In verse 2 James identifies how we can move from Diatribe to Dialogue.
- In the first part of the verse James identifies the motivations that spill over into personal attacks of people: self-centred Desires.
- In the second part of the verse James identifies the key strategy that promotes Dialogue among people of differing opinion: Trust God to provide what you think you really need.
2. Don’t You Know that Self-Centred Desires Lead to Fighting? (4:2) Unexamined Primary Feelings
2 You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God.
In verse 2 James highlights a second reason for the fights and quarrels Christians have among themselves.
JAMES’ intent is to draw a straightline connection between desires and behavior: He creates a clear Cause and Effect relationship: Covetous desires lead to murderous fighting.
Instead of trying by human false wisdom and by humanly motivated means to get what you want, James invites his readers to focus their attention upon God and ask Him to provide what they really need not simply what they want.
MURDER: Many commentators have found the verb kill (more precisely "murder") in 4:2 incongruous--too extreme for the context, especially when followed in sequence by the less violent sin of coveting. Since elsewhere in his letter, James makes frequent parallels with Jesus' teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, it is quite possible that when James speaks of MURDER in verse 2 that is alluding to Jesus teaching in the Sermon on the Mount that (Matthew 5:21-22) the sins of hatred and insult are treated in the same category as murder. Douglas Moo suggests that "it is simplest to take `murder' straightforwardly and to regard it as that extreme to which frustrated desire, if not checked, may lead" (1985:141).
REFLECTION MOMENT: Take a moment now, close your eyes, and ask the Holy Spirit reveal to you what you are coveting right now. Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal to how you have treated others on your pathway to getting what you are coveting. Confess to the Holy Spirit those sins.
2.1. What Is It That Is Going Wrong? (4:2B-3) Unchallenged Necessity Claims
(i.e., if I had not taken up that cause, it would never have been achieved): the End Justifies the Means= you not challenging your claim to be indispensable in helping God make wrongs right. This leads to power plays where Truth/rightness is allowed to trump over Love/respectfulness.
2B You do not have because you do not ask God 3 When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures
To recap, in verse ONE James identifies the origin of fights within his congregation: it is our desires. In verse TWO James exposes the immorality of certain actions. Now in VERSE THREE James talks about yet a third way in which we justify our role in fights--by claiming necessity.
"I had to do that, or else .......... would have happened!" We assume our own indispensability, forgetting that only GOD can claim indispensability.
God is a recourse greater than our own humanly focused courses of action: God’s makes His resources available to us through one divinely focused course of action: PRAYER.
Two Stage Argument of James: in VERSES 2 and 3
The conclusion for us is that our fights reveal a wrong relationship with God which is manifest in our prayer lives. Either we do not pray, because we do not trust in God's GRACE, or we pray with wrong motives, because we do not trust in God's GOODNESS to provide us with what we really need.
I Pray you do not give in to the temptation to consider yourself a HAVE NOT who must scheme and fight to GET what you want at home, at work, in your extracurricular commitments, and especially from your church family.
3. Don't You Know the Real Choice that Needs to Be Made? (4:4-12)
Beginning with Verse FOUR James poses the third question found in verses ONE to TWELVE:
James has placed the problems of selfish ambition and fighting under his spotlight in 3:13-18 and 4:1-3.
Now he addresses what to do about the problems. In light of the preceding paragraphs, a choice must be made between fellowship with God and friendship with the world.
3.1. The Significance of the Choice (4:4-5)
4 You adulterous people,[a] don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.
5 Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us[b]?
Not unlike Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, James also places two contrasting choices before his readers. Jesus told his disciples that one cannot chase after worldly possessions and privilege and remain a friend of God. James challenges the Christians who meet within a Jewish synagogue that they must choose between friendship with the world or fellowship with God.
The seriousness of friendship with the world is made clear by James in his use of some jarring terms: you adulterous people, hatred toward God, an enemy of God. Why does James use the word Adulterer?
As Christians we are married to Jesus Christ; He is the Bridegroom and we are the Bride (Rev. 19-21). If we chase after the values and priorities of the World such as a self-focused lifestyle, then we adulterers. For we are betraying our heavenly Husband, by giving our deepest and most intimate selves to someone other than Jesus Christ, the second person of the Godhead.
James says that harboring bitter envy and selfish ambition, with the actions of fighting and quarreling, makes us adulterous people who even end up treating God with hatred and enmity.
In verse FIVE James seeks to persuade his readers to choose fellowship with God instead of with the world. He cites scripture to remind his audience that God himself is jealously longing for intimate, unreserved fellowship with those He created.
RALPH’S LISTENING TIME: Fellowship with the Holy Spirit (Feb 5, 1992) (read out the PDF copy).
What does it mean for us to have Fellowship with the Triune God? I will read you one of my listening times that I have had with God over the last 25 years. This listening time is one that I wrote down in 1992 on the Fellowship of the Holy Spirit. My listening times are like stream of consciousness writing. I pray and ask the Holy Spirit to speak. I then write down the first phrase that comes to mind. As I am writing that phrase the next phrase comes to mind and so on. Once it seems like I am done, I review the full listening time and then evaluate and compare it with what I understand of what the Bible says. I am surprised at how many neat biblical insights into God’s character and purposes for my life that I receive from my listening times. During my listening times God has a way of taking the timeless truths of scripture and applying them very personally to my life situations and contexts. Allow me to read what the Holy Spirit shared with me about His fellowship with redeemed humanity.
READ OUT LOUD PDF COPY OF “FELLOWSHIP OF THE HOLY SPIRIT”
Although God Jealously desires intimate fellowship with us, we must respond to God’s desire with action. We need to humble ourselves before God by submitting to God completely and fully and daily. As we submit to God and draw near to him, we automatically end up resisting the devil who is trying to pull us away from God.
3.2. Steps to Be Taken Toward God (4:7-10)
6 But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says:
“God opposes the proud
but shows favor to the humble.”[c]
7 Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
8 Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
9 Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom.
10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.
James has a problem: his readers are being corrupted by bitter envy and selfish ambition leading to fights and quarrels. He has a goal: to help them learn to live in love and at peace with each other. Therefore he has a prescription for them: repentance.
The whole paragraph is a portrait of repentance. Repentance is an act of humble submission to God which includes a choice to resist the devil and to draw near to God, a commitment to moral purity both externally and internally, and a genuine remorse for one's sin.
8. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
9 Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom.
10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.
REPENTANCE IS A 180 Degree Turn. Previously Going to the Devil and Automatically Away from God; Now Going to God and Automatically Away from Devil
Thus James has put this entire section in terms of knowing the choice to be made: friendship with the world or friendship with God, opposing the devil or opposing God.
7 Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
8 Come near to God and he will come near to you.
Don’t resist temptation, flee it. Don’t flee the devil, resist him.
STORY: RALPH AND KATHY MARITAL COUNSELING WITH PASTOR SIEG.
When was the last time God broke you? I replied “too long ago” and God graciously broke me then and there. I felt so cleaned out and so free. It was wonderful and transformational. But it was not the last time. There have been numerous times where I have humbled myself and God broke me with deep sobs of repentance and deep sobs of joy and overflowing release and relief.
Submitting our whole personhood to the Lord is freeing. God breaks us so that He can break through to us and through us to the others around us.
REFLECTION: When was the last time that God broke you?
Let’s take some moments to stand before the Lord and let him break us.
3.3. Don’t you Know you have to take Intentional Steps Toward Others (4:11-12)
11 Brothers and sisters, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against a brother or sister[d] or judges them speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it.
12 There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you—who are you to judge your neighbor?
We also can see here another allusion to the Sermon on the Mount.
Matthew 7:1-12 Judging Others
1 “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2 For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.
3 “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4 How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.
6 “Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.
Ask, Seek, Knock
7 “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.
9 “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? 11 If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! 12 So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.
The essential meaning that underlies the word "judging" (Greek verb krino is one of distinguishing or making a distinction. It is important to distinguish between good and evil. James himself is does not hesitate to point out evil in peoples’ lives. This type of discerning judgment helps people to see their next step of growth and to repent from those sins that are preventing them from becoming who they already are in Christ Jesus.
James is here though is challenging those who judge others for the purpose of condemning them, not for the purpose of freeing them.
Two Key Relationships that James Focuses on
First James focuses on our relationship with each other.
- Again the Sermon on the Mount seems to underly James comments. He calls those who would be judging brother (4:11) and neighbor (4:12). Jesus too used those terms. He used brother in his when warning against judging (Matt 7:1-5), and he used the term neighbor in the great commandment to love (Matt 22:39).
- These two terms remind us that we are all family and that we need each other’s discerning judgment to help us move out of dysfunctional attitudes and behaviours that condemn, doubt, and envy one another. We treat God’s goodness with contempt when we, who have received mercy choose not to extend mercy but rather condemnatory judgment against those God also loves, our brother and sisters, our spiritual neighbours.
Second is the relationship with the law.
- James insists that we are to be doers under the law, which is contradicted when we try to be judges over the law.
- Given James's determination that the teachings of Jesus are the royal law of the kingdom (chap 2), it seems most likely that he also has in mind Jesus' specific command against condemnatory judging in Matthew 7:1
- James's KEY Point: if we accept God's mercy through Christ, then we place ourselves under Christ's law. Christ’s law of love commands mercy.
- If we then judge others instead of being merciful toward them, we reject Christ’s law of love and thus set ourselves up as judges over the law. This contradicts our mandate to be a people of grace who are DOERS (love and grace) of the law of love.
- If we then judge others instead of being merciful toward them, we reject Christ’s law of love and thus set ourselves up as judges over the law. This contradicts our mandate to be a people of grace who are DOERS (love and grace) of the law of love.
- James's KEY Point: if we accept God's mercy through Christ, then we place ourselves under Christ's law. Christ’s law of love commands mercy.
CONCLUSION
Authentic Community is Missional Living (our Third priority as a Church)
The Haves (those who have come spiritually alive in Christ, and who have Christ living inside their body) need to build authentic community with the Have Nots (those who do not know the joy of life with God)
- Let us help “have nots” discover that God shaped vacuum that desires to know and to be known by God and by othersthat is missional living. A no strings attached commitment to offering community to anyone that the Lord in His sovereignty brings across your path or into your social network and a no strings attached commitment to God to be Christ with those God has placed into your sphere of influence.
- That’s it: if Jesus Christ is living in you, then you just have to let Him live out through you.