Active Faith (Part Fifteen): The War Within

Transcript

JRNT 15
03/12/2023
Active Faith (Part Fifteen): The War Within
James 4:1-3
Jesse Randolph


“Now . . . you in the North, who are out of the reach of the noise, excitements and hardships incident to an Army life, cannot begin to realize what war is. As I have said, here lies two great armies within sight of each other. Their whole study and object is to destroy one another. They watch each other with an eagle eye. Daily we hear the rattle on musketry as the scouting parties meet each other. And no hour of the day passes that the heavy boom of the cannon is not heard, and the screaming of the shell as it flies
through the air, and its final thundering explosion as it bursts, scattering its death missiles in every direction.” --Ely Parker

“A hundred yards before we got to the hill we ran into a strong line of rifle pits swarming with Johnnies. They caved and commenced begging. The pit I came to had about 20 in it. They were scared until some of them were blue, and if you ever heard begging for life it was then.”--Charles Wills

“As I stood by the colonel I was close to Captain Jordan, who had the reputation of being one of the bravest officers in the regiment. I watched him with curiosity to see how this approach to danger affected him. To my astonishment he was digging his nails into the palms of his hands, and his lips were white under his clenched teeth. Then I knew that he was more scared than I was; and I realized that he ought to be, for he had more at stake.
If my poor little candle were snuffed out nobody would notice that it had grown any darker, but he was a husband and a father.”--Charles William Bardeen

“I remained perfectly still, and in a few minutes I saw a young Yankee lieutenant peering through the bushes. I would rather not have killed him, but I was afraid to fire and afraid to run, and yet I did not wish to kill him. He was as pretty as a woman, and somehow I thought I had met him before. Our eyes met. He stood like a statue. He gazed at me with a kind of scared expression. I still did not want to kill him, and am sorry today that I did, for I believe I could have captured him, but I fired, and saw the blood spurt all over his face. He was the prettiest youth I ever saw. When I fired, the Yankees broke and run, and I went up to the boy I had killed, and the blood was gushing out of his mouth. I was sorry.”--Samuel Watkins

What I have just read for you are excerpts from the journals of four Civil War era soldiers, some representing the Union Army, some representing the Confederacy, with each describing the travails and the terrors of war. You hear it—fear, anxiety, worry, grief, despair, anguish, uncertainty, fatigue, regret, violence, hatred. It all comes through these journal entries. And for anyone who has spent any time in a war zone, whether as a soldier or as a civilian, there is a continual and genuine and right concern for the battles that rage all around -- as they hear the sound of bullets whizzing by or as they hear the sound of the cannons being fired all around them, or in modern context as they hear the sound of screaming fighter jets as they pierce the sky overhead.

As we continue on in our study of the book of James this morning we're going to see that whether or not any of us has ever lived in or walked in or experienced a physical war zone, the reality is we are all very familiar with war. We are all very familiar with a war that is raging and terrifying and immensely destructive. It's not an external war I am speaking of though, like what we saw with these Civil War era journal entries. Rather it is an internal war, a war that has been raging since the Garden of Eden and a war that will continue on until glory. A war that rages in the hearts of Whites and Blacks and Latinos, a war that rages in the hearts of toddlers and young adults and the middle-aged and the elderly, a war that rages in the hearts of the most hardened street criminal and a war that rages in the hearts of the most devoted church attenders. The war I am speaking of is the war within the human heart.

Turn with me if you would in your Bibles please to James 4, we're going to be in verses 1-3 this morning. And let's read our text, James 4:1-3. God's Word reads as follows, “What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? Is not the source your pleasures that wage war in your members? You lust and do not have; so you commit murder. You are envious and cannot obtain; so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.”

Now right away I'd like us all to notice something about what James is doing here. He has gone in this section from making all of the broad statements that have been addressed to a variety of different people and a variety of different groups in the first three chapters of this letter—to the twelve tribes who are dispersed abroad, James 1:1; to the double minded man, James 1:8; addressing the brother of humble circumstances, James 1:9; to the blessed man who perseveres under trial, James 1:12. He addresses the beloved brethren in James 1:19. He says if anyone is a hearer of the Word and not a doer, James 1:23. He addresses anyone who claims himself to be religious in James 1:26. He says for whoever keeps the whole Law but fails in one point in James 2:10. He says we all stumble in many ways, James 3:2. And no one can tame the tongue, James 3:8.

Those are statements in which James is casting a wider net with terms like “anyone” and “no one” and “whosoever.” But as we're going to see today, James is about to get a lot more personal and, frankly, a bit more severe beginning with this section of his letter. And a key way that he is going to do so is through the use of shifting heavily into the second person. I'm going to read the text again and this time with a bit more emphasis on what James is highlighting here and what I'm trying to highlight for you as we read this text. He says, “What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? Is not the source your pleasures that wage war in your members? You lust and do not have; so you commit murder. You are envious and cannot obtain; so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.”

It's one thing to preach in first person plural statements—aren't we just a bunch of sinners? Aren't we just a bunch of people, beggars, trying to find bread? It's another thing to speak in first person singular statements—I am the chief of sinners, oh wretched man that I am. It's another thing to preach in third person statements—they are wrong, he is right. But it's entirely another thing to lift one's finger from the page and to point it at the people you are addressing and start saying, what about you? And what about you? And what about you? And what about you? James does this here, he uses this second person “you” and “your” thirteen times in just these three verses. And this is about as direct and confrontational as a person can get. It ruffles feathers, it offends sensibilities. But there are times where we all need to hear this sort of finger-in-the-chest sort of instruction, which is what James is going to do in our section for today.

The title of this morning's message is “The War Within” and we're going to be working verse by verse through James 4:1-3. And as we do so we're going to see first “The Problem,” that's in verse 1, which is the source and the root of the war that wages within. Second we're going to see “The Progression,” that's how the war within escalates and heightens in intensity. We'll see that in the beginning of verse 2. And then we'll see “The Product” at the end of verse 2 and leading into verse 3 where we see what the war within leads to, namely, a disconnected and misdirected prayer life which is reflective of a heart whose affections are not set chiefly on God but on self. So again the outline for this morning is “The Problem,” “The Progression,” and “The Product.”

Now as I've already mentioned, in one sense James here is taking a different approach with the grammar of these three verses which are replete with these “you” and “your” second person statements. But at the same time we have to remember that James here is writing a singular letter to these early Jewish Christians. And what James writes here in the first three verses of James 4 fits seamlessly within the broader context of this letter as a whole. And as James delivers the words that we're going to be going through here in verses 1-3, we have to remember that he is building upon the thoughts he has already expressed earlier in the letter. And he is leading up to the thought that he is going to express in the verses we'll get to in the weeks ahead.

I bring this up because as we turn to our study of James 4 this morning I don't want us to lose sight of where we last were in this book and where James left us in the final two verses of chapter 3. Look at James 3:17-18. He says, “But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy. And the seed whose fruit is righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.” Those words that I just read provide such peace and comfort, don't they. I mean, those are the types of passages of Scripture which end up on coffee mugs and on picture frames. Those are the types of verses from Scripture which end up needlepointed or sewn or cross-stitched somewhere. And of course, because they are Scripture these words are true.

Peace is a hallmark of Christianity. The Christian is the one who has been offered terms of peace by God through Christ; the Christian is the one who has accepted those terms of peace by trusting in Jesus Christ; the Christian is the one who is called to “be at peace,” Romans 12:18, “with all men”; and the Christian is the one who is called to deliver “the gospel of peace,” Ephesians 6:15, as an ambassador of Jesus Christ. So we've been offered peace, we have peace, we are to pursue peace, we are to proclaim peace. In other words, peace is to be at the heart of who we are and how we live. But that's not always how it works, is it? That's not always the reality of the situation for us, is it? No. But we are to be marked by peace. The reality is we often can find ourselves being marked by war.

Which brings us to our first point for this morning—“The Problem.” Look again with me at verse 1. He says, “What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? Is not the source your pleasures that wage war in your members? Again as we went through in some detail last time, James relies heavily upon the use of questions throughout this letter, and specifically rhetorical questions to make his point. We've seen this already all over the book of James, have we not? And we've usually seen it where James is attempting to call out some sort of serious sin or some other serious incident of wrongdoing. James 2:4, “have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil motives?” Or James 3:11, “Does a fountain send out from the same opening both fresh and bitter water,” speaking of the tongue. James is doing something similar here in James 4:1 through the use of these two rhetorical questions. He is making a point. And as we are going to see and as is customary in James, he is going to make his point with some salt and some sting to it. The point he is making in James 4:1 is that there were quarrels and there were conflicts in this early group of believers that he is addressing. But the source of these quarrels and conflicts was not external, it was internal. The problem wasn't their upbringing or their circumstances or the culture or their conditioning, their problem was them. Let's chip away at our text line upon line and verse upon verse.

He starts with the first question here, “What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you?” Now this is one of those hidden gems of biblical Greek that I think is worth bringing up here. Many of you know the New Testament was written in koine Greek and that language has a uniqueness and a complexity to it which allowed the biblical authors, the authors of the New Testament, to communicate their thoughts in unique ways. Here we have one of those situations. In the original Greek sentence here in James 4:1, James has completely left out any verbs. A verb, let's go back to English class, a verb is something that is used to typically state an action or communicate an action or a state of being. In the original Greek text here though, there is no verb. James here doesn't say, why do you quarrel? Or what are the reasons for your conflicts? Those statements, those questions, would include verbs as I just stated them.

Instead, the text here in the Greek in verse 1 literally reads, “from where wars and where fights among you?” Doesn't sound right to us in English, does it? But it works in the Greek. In Greek this is signaling that James is doing something intentional here, he is speeding up the way he is speaking almost as though he can't get the words out fast enough. This compressed way of expressing himself suggests that James has something on his chest and he really wants to get it out quickly, he just has to get it out. Have you ever been in one of those conversations where things are getting animated or possibly even heated and rules of conventional grammar fly out the window? You know, where you are starting to rearrange your words in a way you might not otherwise do and you are starting to stress certain words or emphasize certain words, you're starting to make up new words? That's what is happening here, albeit under the perfectly controlling direction of the Holy Spirit, so it is sanctified. The thoughts are just flying here in verse 1 through James' pen. The matters he is addressing are of such seriousness and urgency that his language matches the urgency of the situation.

And what is the situation? Verse 1 tells us, there are “quarrels and conflicts among you.” He starts with this question, this rhetorical question that is assuming that there are quarrels and conflicts among his audience. He asks, “What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you?” Now that word “quarrels” refers to a long state of hostility, a dug-in state of animosity. The word there in Greek is “polemos,” the word from which we get our word “polemic,” as in contentious rhetoric or argumentation. And the word he uses there for conflicts refers to specific outbursts of hostility, specific flare ups, isolated dust ups, outbreaks of disagreement and contentiousness. Conflicts, you could say, refer to the battles while quarrels refer to the war. So he identifies the problem here in verse 1. We're going to get to it in a second, the source. And note he uses this plural form of quarrels and conflicts, it's not an isolated quarrel he is referring to, it's not an isolated conflict he is describing. No, it's quarrels and conflicts. Apparently the clashing and the disputing was a continual condition for James' audience. He wasn't addressing an isolated occurrence, rather he was addressing a chronic problem, a protracted state of hostility. Now we don't have a clear indication from the text what these specific disputes and arguments were about, but James is soon going to show us where these quarrels and conflicts came from.

And then note the next words at the end of the first question here, “among you.” The quarrels and the conflicts which James is calling out here are being described here as being among you. James didn't write a letter here to the culture, he wasn't writing a letter to the rulers and authorities, the civil magistrates of his day. No, he was writing in his original context, as we've seen throughout this letter, to this early gathering of newly converted Jewish Christians and broadening it out a bit. James is writing not only to that initial gathering who first received his letter, but he is writing to the Christian church across continents and across the centuries, meaning his words apply to us just as they did to his original audience. And what is it that he is warning against here in verse 1? He is warning against “quarrels and conflicts among you,” within a body of believers, within the community of faith, within the church.

I suppose now would be as good a time as any to remind us all that this status here, meaning quarrels and conflicts in the church, in the body of believers, was obviously never meant to be part of God's design. There wasn't and isn't supposed to be conflict in the church. Jesus made very clear how His followers ought to conduct themselves in John 13:34-35. He says, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” Paul wrote to the Corinthians and pleaded with them in 1 Corinthians 1:11-13 not to be of that I-am-of-Paul and I-am- of-Apollos and I-am-of-Cephas mentality. He also wrote to the Philippians, Paul did, and urged them to pursue spiritual love and unity for one another. Philippians 1:27, “Only conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or remain absent, I will hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind, striving together for the faith of the gospel.” Or in Philippians 2:1-2 he says, “Therefore if there is any encouragement in Christ, if there is any consolation of love, if there is any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and compassion, make my joy complete by being of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose.”

That's the template of life in the body of Christ, that's the model, that's the blueprint—unity, rowing in the same direction, modeling faithfully what our Lord has commanded us to model. And yet even with that template laid out for us, even with the blueprint of Scripture right in front of us, conflict among believers and conflict in the church has been a sad reality from the earliest days of its existence. Paul called out Corinth in 1 Corinthians 3:1, he says, “And I, brethren, could not speak to you as spiritual men, but as men of flesh, as to infants in Christ. I gave you milk to drink, not solid food; for you were not able (yet to receive it). Indeed, even now you are not able for you are still fleshly. For since there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not fleshly, and are you not walking like mere men?” He wrote the Corinthian church again in 2 Corinthians 12:20 saying, “For I am afraid that perhaps when I come I may find you to be not what I wish and may be found by you to be not what you wish; that perhaps there will be strife, jealousy, angry tempers, disputes, slanders, gossip, arrogance, disturbances.”

It wasn't just Corinth, though, it was Galatia where Paul in Galatians 5:15 highlights the perils of biting and devouring one another. It was happening in Philippi where Paul had to single out two women, Euodia and Synteche, who couldn't get along. So Paul in Philippians 4 encourages them to live in harmony in the Lord. There have been many who throughout the years have said that we need to return to the purity and the simplicity of the early church. I'm not sure what early church they are referring to. See, James' audience, just like Paul's audience there in Corinth and Galatia and Philippi, this early gathering of believers, a group which should have been released from the structures of Judaism and was now supposedly living under the gentle yoke of their Messiah, were openly quarreling and bitterly disputing.

This gathering of early believers did not reflect the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Rather, they reflected the attitude of murderous Cain who because of his jealousy and bitter rivalry led him to murder his brother Abel. This gathering of early believers resembled a hornet's nest, buzzing with dissension where believers were biting and devouring and burning and stinging one another, they were shot through with strife. Such a pathetic witness for Christ and not a true representation of what life in the body of Christ ought to look like.

But this happens, doesn't it? Not just in James' day but in ours. So-and-so gave me the cold shoulder outside a church service fifteen years ago, I'm so now done with her. That Bible study leader was so condescending in how he addressed my questions a few nights ago, I'm finding another Bible study. The leadership of this church rejected one of my ideas a few months ago, I'm just going to sit here and seethe. We may be far removed from James in terms of the number of decades and centuries that have passed by, but we certainly are not all that far removed from James experientially.

So how does it happen? Where do the conflicts and the quarrels, the battles and the rivalries originate? In other words who starts it? What starts it? Where does it come from? Certainly not from those who are wise and understanding. Certainly not from those who are showing by their good behavior, their deeds, in the gentleness of wisdom. Certainly not from those who are seeking wisdom “which comes down from above.” Certainly not from those who are “pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, (and) without hypocrisy.” Certainly not from those who “make peace” and “whose fruit is righteousness.” Rather, the quarrels and the conflicts that exist in a church context typically swirl around those who “have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in their hearts,” those who are “arrogant and so lie against the truth,” (I'm quoting James, by the way, when I rattle all these off, if you haven't noticed), to those who pursue so-called wisdom which is “earthly and natural and demonic,” and to those who cause “disorder and every evil thing.” It is truly sad when churches and the members of the body which make up those churches become embroiled in bitter controversies like these, whether it be about the color of the carpet, the hours of the bookstore, or the children's ministry check-in policy. Or anything else.

Next, James takes us to the source of these quarrels and conflicts which he does by throwing out another rhetorical question in the second part of verse 1. He says, “Is not the source,” meaning the source of your quarrels and conflicts, “your pleasures that wage war in your members?” Now the first couple of words in his second question here where he says, “is not,” they compel the answer, yes, it is. Meaning what James is communicating here is the source of your quarrels and conflicts are the “pleasures which wage war in your members.” The source of the quarrels and the conflicts, then, rests at the heart level, in the pleasures which wage war in our members. There is a lot to unpack in just this single part of this verse and we're going to do our best here to take it idea by idea and word by word.

First, are the pleasures which James speaks of here. That word “pleasure” translates the Greek word “hedone.” The wars, the battles, the quarrels the conflicts that we wage and fight are all rooted in our pleasures, in our “hedone.” That word “hedone” is the word from which we get our English word “hedonism,” which has become the religion of the culture today, if you haven't noticed. This is the golden calf that the masses now bow down to. This is the belief that self-gratifying pleasure is the chief good of life, that whatever is right for you must be right because you think it is right for you. If it feels good, it must be good. If it is pleasing and exciting and fun and pleasurable, then it must be pursued.

Now that word “hedone” is fundamentally a neutral term. Obviously there are pleasures that we experience in this life as a matter of God's common grace that are good and noble. You can experience pleasure in watching a basketball game or a baseball game or holding hands with your spouse or bouncing your grandchildren on your knee or reading a book or fishing on a quiet morning at a local lake. Not all pleasures, not all desires, are evil, the Bible clearly confirms that. Psalm 73:25 says, “Whom have I in heaven but You? And besides You, I desire,” similar word, “nothing on earth,” speaking of desiring God, craving and seeking God. Philippians 1:23 says, this is Paul, “I desire to depart and be with Christ.” That's a noble desire. Or 1 Timothy 3:1, speaking of the aspiration to the eldership, “If any man aspires to the office of overseer, it is a fine work he desires to do.”

But the specific word that James uses here, “hedone,” always has a negative connotation when we see it in the Greek New Testament. It consistently has a negative meaning, a negative connotation. For instance, in Luke 8:14 Jesus uses that same term to describe those who hear the Word of God but then they go on to be choked out by the worries and the riches of this world and they pursue the pleasures, “hedone,” of this life. Titus 3:3, Paul there refers to Christians who previously in their old unregenerate state were once “enslaved to their various lusts and pleasures” hedone, 2 Peter 2:13, there Peter refers to false teachers who “count it a pleasure,” hedone, “to revel in the daytime.” In other words, when James here in verse 1 refers to our pleasures, he is referring to the dark side of desire, he's referring to forbidden pleasure, to immoral pleasures, to evil desires, to self-centered plans, to wicked thoughts, those sinful, self-seeking desires for satisfaction.

It's that sort of hedonism that Paul would call out in 2 Timothy 3 when he is describing the last days. In 2 Timothy 3 starting in verse 1 he says, “But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited,” and then he gets to verse 4 and says they'll be “lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.” It's those pleasures, James says here, those types of pleasures which will mark the lives of godless unbelievers in the last days which wage war in the life of the believer. And James of course is not the only New Testament author to use war terminology to describe the spiritual battles we all face. He's not out on an island or unique in the way he approaches this. Paul said in 2 Corinthians 10:5 that “we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.” He also said in Ephesians 6, Paul did, Ephesians 6:11, that we are to “Put on the full armor of God, so that we can stand firm against the schemes of the devil.” Peter said in 1 Peter 5:8 to “be on the alert.” Peter also said in 2 Peter 3:17 to “be on your guard.” Warlike terminology. And now James here says that it is our “pleasures that wage war.”

And our pleasures wage war where? He says “in our members.” That's not referring to members like in the church polity context, not like members of a church. That's referring to our bodies, the members of our bodies. Our pleasures wage war in our bodies. The same idea comes out in James 3:6, we were there a few weeks ago. Look over at James 3:6 when he is speaking of the tongue. He says, “And the tongue is a fire, the very world of iniquity. The tongue is set among our,” there is the word, “members as that which defiles the entire body, and sets on fire the course of our life and is set on fire by hell.” In other words, back in James 4, he is once again stressing that the problem is within, the problem is internal, the problem rests with us, the problem is us.

Now those words “wage war” here in verse 1 are fascinating. They come from a Greek word which can literally be translated an armed camp, which is a fitting translation because our hearts are truly like a battleground. On one side of that battleground we have our flesh with its self-seeking focus on our personal source of pleasures which our enemy, who “fishes in the troubled waters of our discontented hearts,” as Thomas Watts once said, knows of and seeks to capitalize on. And on the other side we have our new nature from which we strive to honor Christ as we seek to “walk by the Spirit,” as Galatians 5:16 tells us. There is this ongoing battle happening between these two sides and the battle rages, doesn't it? That's exactly what Paul said in Galatians 5:17 when he says, “For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another.” Which is why we need to heed the words of Peter who said in 1 Peter 2:11 that we are to “abstain from fleshly lusts which wage war against the soul.”

James here is painting a picture of a Christian community that is deeply divided. It's divided not over matters related to truth and doctrine, those matters are worth fighting over and oftentimes dividing over (James fought those battles in fact back in Acts 15 at the Jerusalem Council). Instead, this community was divided because it was full of people who were calling themselves followers of Christ but who otherwise had become so overcome with jealousy and selfish ambition and slander and anger and a variety of other issues. So what James is getting at here is that fights out in the hallway, slights over being overlooked or perceived oversights or grief about unreturned Tupperware have no place in the church of God.

Well, in verse 1 we have seen “The Problem” and the problem is us and our internal passions. Next in verse 2 James identifies “The Progression” of sin, how it takes form, how it takes root, how it grows, and then what it leads to. That's our second heading for this morning, “The Progression.” Look at the first part of verse 2, he says, “You lust and do not have; so you commit murder. You are envious and cannot obtain; so you fight and quarrel.” Here we have two sins being called out, lust and envy, and we have one problem which is the root, again which is the selfish human heart, even when it is a redeemed heart.

We'll take these one at a time starting with these words, “You lust and do not have; so you murder.” “You lust and do not have; so you murder.” What kind of church is this? These are shocking words. He says you lust. That's a word we saw back in James 1:14 where he says “each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust.” That word there is from a form of the term “epithumia” which means to long for, to strongly desire, to crave. Now cravings and desires can be good, can be evil, can be morally neutral. A craving for a grilled cheese sandwich can be any one of those three, depending on the day and the person and the heart constitution. But here the use of that word—cravings, desires, lust—clearly has an evil connotation. The people that James was writing to were after some sort of sinful self-gratification, some sort of sinful self-satisfaction or self-advancement. They weren't getting what they wanted. “You lust,” it says, but what? “do not have.” They weren't getting what they wanted, they weren't getting whatever it was they were craving, whatever it was they desired. Their self-seeking desires were being frustrated and their failure to get what they want stirred up this horrifying reaction.

Look what it says in the next part of verse 2. “You lust and do not have,” and then what does it say? “So you commit murder.” Now is James here referring to some actual historical event? Is he referring to a murderous melee that broke out after a church potluck? I don't think so. I don't think we are reading here of an incident of first degree murder that took place within the church. Rather, what James is doing here is warning his readers about just how far their lustful, envious desires can lead them if not kept in check. So while James here is not referring to a literal case of knife-in-the-back murder that had taken place within the Christian community, that doesn't mean we don't have reason to be concerned here, not only as we evaluate the assemblies of James' day but also ours. Because what James is referring to here is just as deadly; he's referring to the progression of sin. We have to remember that James, as we often do as we work through this book, is the half-brother of Jesus, an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ. And always running in the background of what James is instructing us in here are the words of our Lord who as we know in Matthew 5:21-22 said if you have anger in your heart you are already a murderer.

James here is describing the outcome of unchecked evil desires in a person's heart which have the potential always to lead to murder. Matthew 15:19 says, “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders.” For those of you who have been with us throughout this study of the book of James you may recall that this isn't the first time that James has warned us about this progression, this escalation of sin. In fact, turn with me back to James 1:14, he says, “But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death.” We see this progression play out in the account of Cain and Abel. When desire was conceived it gave birth to sin, and that sin once fully grown gave birth to death. We see this progression play out in the account of Joseph and his brothers. Desire was conceived, it gave birth to sin, and that sin once fully grown gave birth to death. We see this play out in the account of David and Bathsheba. We see desire conceived, it gives birth to sin, and then that sin once fully grown gives birth to death. We see this play out in the events surrounding the crucifixion of our Lord. Consider even the events surrounding Judas' betrayal of Jesus. Desire is conceived, thirty pieces of silver, it gives birth to sin, and that sin once fully grown gives birth to death.

Back to James 4 though, he is not done yet. Next he says, “You are envious and cannot obtain; so you fight and quarrel.” The recipients of James' letter were envious, they were covetous, they were the types of people described back in James 3:14. They were demonstrating bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in their hearts. And that word in James 3:14, bitter jealousy, by the way, comes from the same word that is translated envious here in James 4:2. Envy, covetousness, jealousy. I mean, those are some of those hidden sins of the heart which so often get overlooked and so often get a pass. We want that bigger house or more acres like our neighbor has. We want that higher paycheck that our boss or our manager has. We want that Disney vacation that our friends took last summer. And revealing our wickedness, we find ways to justify our feelings of jealousy. We give minimal thought or attention or worry to our own feelings of covetousness. We make very little effort to repent of those sinful thoughts. We push those thoughts and those feelings down, we stuff them down, we let them linger often with a ‘my sin is not as ugly as that guy's sin’ sort of attitude. But it is ugly, it is just as ugly, and we know it is ugly because God's Word speaks so clearly on this subject of jealousy and envy and covetousness. The Ten Commandments… one of the commandments listed prohibited covetousness. Jesus spoke against covetousness; Mark 7:22, He lists the “deeds of coveting” as among those things which “defile the man.” Paul linked the Old Testament prohibition against coveting to how he himself became aware of his sinful condition. Romans 7:7, he says, “I would not have come to know sin except through the Law; for I would not have known about coveting if the Law had not said, ‘You shall not covet.’ ”

Turning back to James he is describing here someone who wants their way, someone who is unwilling to yield, someone who lives by the creed, ‘my way or the highway,’ and someone who is willing to turn their unfulfilled desires not only into a battle, but into a war. He says, “You are envious and cannot obtain; so you fight and quarrel.” The person who is envious doesn't get what they want in this context and they cannot obtain it, and what happens? In reaction to what they don't receive it says, “you fight and quarrel.” We don't get what our selfish desires and passions crave, we don't get what we want, we don't get what they have and so what happens? We start going after the one who has what we wish we had. We find ways to disagree with them, we find ways to cut them down, we find ways to criticize them. And before we know it we are quarreling and fighting. Paul noted the heart level nature of covetousness, envy, jealousy. In Colossians 3:5 he described evil desires and greed as idolatry, pure wickedness. James is doing the same thing here, he is performing heart surgery. And what he is exposing in this passage are deep heart-level sins that exist in the deepest recesses of our hearts.

So as we consider these words of James we again need to remember that James' words were addressed to this early assembly of Jewish Christians, but they are also written to us sitting in this auditorium halfway across the world all these centuries later. So with James having done his surgical work on us this morning, not so much with a scalpel but more so with the blunt edge of an ax, I have to ask, do you have these types of passions and desires warring within you today? Do you have these thoughts of anger that are not just angry, but murderous? Do you have these covetous thoughts which lead to fights and quarrels specifically in the body of Christ? All sinful desires are danger, but these types of desires specifically are not just dangerous, they are divisive and potentially even deadly. So if you find yourself struggling with these specific temptations and sins, what you need to do is examine yourself. Confess your sins to God, knowing that your sin has already been paid for at Calvary. You need to repent of the pattern of sin that you find yourself in. You need to cleanse yourself and your mind and your heart through the life-altering Word of God. You need to pray for the wisdom that only comes from above. You need to seek accountability from a faithful brother or sister in the Lord. You need to resolve with the Spirit's help to put that pattern of sin to death.

But there are some of you who as you hear these words might be experiencing a bit of a different type of divine pinch as the Spirit pricks your conscience and reveals to you this morning that you have an unregenerate heart. Your life, if you are being honest, is not only marked by, but defined by, the very sins of which James speaks here—lust and envy and anger and hatred. If that describes you, meaning if you are totally enslaved and totally given over to one of these sins, you cannot confidently say that you truly belong to Jesus Christ. You cannot confidently claim that your sins have been forgiven, or that your hope of heaven is secure. And that doesn't matter how loud or bold or documented your profession was however many years ago. If your life is marked by envy and vicious fighting and quarreling and anger and hatred, that again might be a sign that you haven't had the change of heart that you think you have. You can claim to be a Christian all you want but the Lord was very clear that His followers will be known by their fruit. So if your life is characterized by the types of behaviors James is calling out here in verses 1-2, it's not time for anger management or any other form of human self-improvement. It's time to do some soul searching, some honest evaluation of your life, your patterns and your proclivities and to get real with God about where you stand before Him. And if you haven't really trusted in Jesus Christ, to trust in Him today, to believe in His death and His resurrection, to trust that the only thing that saves the soul of a wretched sinner like any one of us is His finished work on the cross, and to repent of your sins and to truly give your life to Him today.

With that we turn to our third and final point for this morning where we see “The Product,” end of verse 2 into verse 3. When I say the product as in when our passions and desires are left unchecked, what do those unchecked passions and desires produce? What is their product? James gives us the answer to those questions at the end of verse 2 and in verse 3. The product of our unchecked desires is being disconnected from God and specifically being disconnected from God in prayer. And James is going to bring out this idea of a person with this disconnected relationship with God in two ways. First, he is going to describe the person who never asks God for anything in prayer, and second, he is going to describe the person who asks but asks for the wrong things. Let's look at the text, end of verse 2 and carrying over into verse 3. He says, “You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives so that you may spend it on your pleasures.”

Let's start with those words “You do not have because you do not ask.” Think hypothetically with me for just a second. If there were someone, one of us, one of you, who was guilty this morning of harboring these sorts of unchecked passions and desires, the kind of unchecked passions and desires that James is laying into here in verses 1-2, what would a right and reasonable solution be, assuming the person is a Spirit-indwelt and Spirit-guided follower of the Lord Jesus Christ? The response would be to pray, “God, help me. I confess my sin, I confess my unruly passions and desires to you, Lord. I'm resolving right now to repent of this sinful way of living and to live in a manner that reflects Christ and honors Christ.” Prayer would be the natural solution.

But that's not what we see here at the end of verse 2. Instead we see these words, “You do not have because you do not ask God.” Not only was James' audience sliding downward into the wisdom of the world, which we saw at the end of verse 3, rather than seeking “wisdom from above” as James 3:17 calls them to, to help them get out of their spiritual tailspin -- they weren't seeking the Lord at all. I wonder how many of you can relate to what is being described here. You are stuck in that sin struggle. You are wrapped up with whatever sin problem you are wrapped up in. You call yourself a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ, you think of yourself as someone who has been restored to a right relationship with God the Father through the blood of God the Son. You consider yourself to be someone who has the Spirit now living inside of you and directing you and comforting you and convicting you. You know that you have direct access to God the Father. You know what the Bible teaches specifically in Hebrews 4:16 that as a child of God, as a joint heir with Christ you are someone who can approach the throne of grace with confidence, but you don't do so. You don't go to Him, you don't pray. It's radio silence. Maybe it's shame, maybe it's fear, maybe it's pride. Whatever it is, it's wrong. It's the wrong approach. What does James say here? “You do not have because you do not ask.” “You do not have because you do not ask.” Now during His earthly ministry our Lord said something that very clearly connects with what James is saying here. In Matthew 7:7 Jesus says, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.” Those are unconditional promises that our prayers will be answered. But what is the built-in assumption that undergirds those unconditional promises? We have to ask. You cannot receive if you do not ask. It's a simple concept.

But James' thoughts don't end there. Look what he says in verse 3, he says, “You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.” So James has already described the person who doesn't ask at the end of verse 2, now in verse 3 he is describing the person who asks for the wrong things. They do ask, it says, but they do not receive. And why? “Because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.” Pleasures. Here we go again. James has just finished admonishing his audience in verses 1-2 by showcasing for them that their motivations are off because they are so passion- and desire-centered.

And here in verse 3 we see the same theme continues. The passions are at work again as there are some there in James' audience who were praying with wrong motives. God wants us to pray in all circumstances, He wants us to pray without ceasing. These are truths we know from God's Word. And we know from James' letter here that there is a specific type of prayer he commends, which is praying for wisdom. James 1:5, “if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him.” The one who lacks wisdom, the ones whose motives have otherwise been skewed, the one who is in a tailspin of passions-focused selfishness, can always pull out of that tailspin by seeking wisdom from God through prayer, by asking God for that wisdom that comes from above, by asking God for that wisdom that comes only from Him and then watch how He helps turn things around.

Well, that's not what was happening in this gathering of believers that James is addressing here, those weren't the type of prayers they were offering. Rather than asking God for wisdom to help them battle through their quarrelsome spirits, they were asking for more of what their passions and their desires and their flesh wanted. He says again, verse 3, “You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives so that you may spend it on your pleasures.” Now, right away there is a clue about what is going on here. That word in verse 3, “ask,” that verb “you ask” is in the middle voice and when a verb is in the middle voice it is typically referring to bringing action upon oneself. Which in the context of prayer is saying, you are asking for yourself, meaning the individuals that James is addressing here were selfishly asking for more of what they wanted, more of what their passions insisted upon, more of what their basest desires craved.

And that word “wrong,..” It says “You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives.” That word “wrong” isn't as mild as it sounds in our English Bibles. The word “wrong” there is more like in the wrong way, or you could even strengthen it a bit to say in an evil way, meaning this wasn't a matter of using the wrong words in prayer, just the right magical incantation. No, this was a much larger issue of asking God with evil motives in an evil manner with evil desires. It wasn't that the formulations of their words were right when they prayed, it's that their hearts weren't right.

And that's brought out further in the next part of verse 3 where he says, “so that you may spend it on your pleasures.” That word “spend” means to use up, to spend freely. It can literally be translated to squander. In fact, that same word is used in Jesus' account of the prodigal son where He is describing the lost son as squandering his entire estate with loose living there in Luke 15. And what is the source of their squandering here back in James? He tells us at the end of verse 3, it's their pleasures, same word, “hedone.” Those who are being described here failed to receive what they craved because they were asking wrongly. Their motives were shaped not by God's wisdom but instead by their own evil desires. They were not at all interested in being guided by God's Word or His will, but instead by getting what they wanted. Some of them weren't going to God in prayer at all, but some who when they did go to God in prayer were only going to Him in prayer to get more of whatever it is they desired, whatever their passions craved. These were self-centered people who were praying in a self-centered manner. Their prayers were marked by their pleasures. So here in verse 3 James is saying, yes, some of you do ask but you ask wrongly, you ask with selfish motives and it's for that reason you don't receive.

See, God is not in the business of satisfying our selfishness. He is not an outlet for supplying us with our basest cravings and desires. He is not a divine vending machine or a cosmic lottery ticket. He is not obligated to heed what we ask Him simply because we append the words “in Jesus' name” to whatever we ask Him. He will provide for our needs, we know that, but He is under no obligation to, nor does He, give us everything we may selfishly want. All too often the prayers of Christians are characterized by the attitude, give me, give me, give me, amen. Well, the Lord is under no obligation to satisfy each of our gnawing cravings. I appreciate how one commentator put it, he says, “A pleasure-driven prayer life finds Heaven made of brass.”

Well, taking this section as a whole, what we see here in these three verses was very sad. Rather than being a people who committed themselves to God as humble prayer warriors, these were people who were committed to biting and devouring each other, wrangling and arguing with each other, and doing so with these angry and bitterly jealous hearts. What a tragic indictment of a group of individuals who called themselves followers of the Lord Jesus Christ. It brings to mind the words of the 17th century Jewish philosopher, Baruch Spinoza, no friend of Christianity, who once said this. He said, “I have often wondered that persons who make boast of professing the Christian religion—namely love, joy, peace, temperance, and charity to all men—should quarrel with such
rancorous animosity, and display daily towards one another such bitter hatred, that this, rather than the virtues which they profess, is the readiest criteria of their faith.” What an indictment, what a travesty, what a shame. What a reminder though to all of us as the body of Christ here at Indian Hills to be mindful of how we be evaluated. Should a guy like Baruch Spinoza or a brand new visitor or the Apostle James himself show up to church here, would he find us living out lives that are pure and peaceable and gentle and reasonable and full of mercy, good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy? Or would he find us to be clamoring as we pursue our own selfish, sinful pleasures that wage war in our members, lusting and being envious, not praying, and when we do pray, praying for the wrong things. I pray it's the former.

Let's pray. Our God and Father we thank You so much for Your Word. We thank You for the Apostle James and the ways in which You worked in him and through him and the wisdom You supplied him as he gave us the words that we have worked through today. These are difficult words, they are hard words to take in, but we know it comes from Your Word and we thank You for the convicting work of Your Spirit whenever we approach texts like these and see still how we fall short. It makes us long for glory and surely makes us thankful for the cross of Jesus Christ. Thank You for sending Your Son into the world to die on our behalf so that we would have eternal life notwithstanding the sin that so clings. Help us to see the sin that is still there, to battle, with the Spirit's help, that sin, and to honor Christ with our lives in all that we do. It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen.