Faith that works No.3

Now let's turn to the book of James and the fourth chapter. What causes fights and quarrels among you? Well, you would think that he was addressing the countries who were lined up in the Gulf War, but actually he's talking to a local church. Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don't get it.

You kill and covet but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight, you do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive because you ask with wrong motives that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.

You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred towards God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Or do you think, Scripture says without reason, that the spirit he calls to live in us envies intensely, but he gives us more grace? That is why Scripture says God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Submit yourselves then to God.

Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners.

Purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom.

Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will lift you up. Brothers, 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. 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? Now everybody reading to the end of the chapter.

Now listen. We will live and do this or that. As it is, we shall boast and brag.

All such boasts can be seen. Anyone there who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins. You'll see that this chapter actually breaks into three sections, which is rather convenient.

And I don't think that that's me doing it simply because I try to be a preacher. I think that that is a very natural division. Now what's happened to the book of James? I just shook my Bible and it's gone from me.

But it was there last time I was looking at it. Just before Peter. Is it the New Testament? I don't tell you how to do your decorating.

First six verses. I don't like drinking out of cracked cups. Do you? If you don't have any objection, then take a cracked cup, have a look at it under a microscope, and you'll see things that will perhaps persuade you not to drink from cracked cups.

But what about when the church is cracked? What about when the body of Christ is splintered? For in the first six verses of this chapter, that's actually what you are confronted with. What causes fights and quarrels? No, he's not talking to Saddam Hussein. Neither is he talking to any colorful American general.

He's talking to Christian people. Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? Now, remember that the man who wrote this is none other than our Lord's brother. And our Lord Jesus said something about things that come from within.

Can we have that first reading, please? Matthew 15, 16. Go on, please. So, James is repeating what he must have heard his brother say, that the origin of all conflict comes from within.

When the self is split, when the mind is broken, then you get a fractured relationship, a fractured self. But not just fractured self, but fractured saints. Let's stop down to the next verses, because there we get reference in the plural.

You want something, but don't get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight.

He's talking now about the Christian community. Have you ever thought that peace in a local church is not something that you can take for granted? The Lord Jesus says, blessed are the peacemakers. So, it's the responsibility of each one of us, as it was the responsibility, but they didn't do very well with it in James Day, the responsibility of every Christian to try to keep peace within the local fellowship.

Well, let's listen to what our Lord had to say in the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew 5, 21 and 22. Whoever's got it, please speak up loudly.

You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, do not murder. And anyone who murders will be subject to judgment. But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment.

So, you see, James here is not exaggerating when he talks about fightings and quarrels, is he? In as much as our Lord Jesus indicated that there are things that are equal to murder that can take place in a Christian society. If we hate, if we bear animosity, then our Lord Jesus indicates to us that in the sight of God, that is a great sin. Let's hear the point again.

1 John 3, 15. So, hatred towards our Christian brother or sister, it amounts to what James is here speaking out. So, he is reflecting, isn't he, the teaching of his brother when our Lord Jesus was on earth.

So, if you've got a fractured self, which leads to fractures amongst the saints, it also means that your relationship with God, the sovereign, is fractured. Look again, you do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive because you ask with wrong motive, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.

And that is tantamount to living in a relationship with God that causes him to suggest that actually you're adulterous people. When your relationship with God is fractured, it's just like having a broken marriage. And in a broken marriage, there's broken harmony.

Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. So, the relationship which you have with God, which should have been one of companionship and intimacy, that is severed. And as a result of that, not easy to translate actually from the Greek, but I think it's reasonable to summarize it without going into the textual difficulty this evening, it results in a broken heart.

Or do you not think, Scripture says without reason, that the spirit he caused to live in us envies intensely? I wonder if they should have capitalized the spirit there and if the reference is to the Holy Spirit and the possibility of grieving the Holy Spirit of God. So, fractures in the church community, they're seen in terms of the self and the saints and ultimately it leads to a fracture in our relationship to the Lord. But there is a resolution.

You can repair the fracture. Look at verse 6. He, that is God, gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.

He gives us more grace when the burden grows greater. Our God, even when you act in such a way that brings Him heartache, nonetheless, still is prepared to relate to you as your heavenly Father and as you come and ask Him for forgiveness, so He's prepared to do that. So, the Christian community can be fractured, yet by grace of God the self can be repaired, communion amongst the saints can be restored, and our relationship to the Sovereign can be made anew.

All right, fractured relationships. Let's go on to the second part of the chapter. And I'm calling it God and My Neighbor, and it's from the 7th verse through to the 12th verse.

God and My Neighbor. If I get that a little crooked, you'll adjust it, will you? Because I can't see it out of the back of my head, unfortunately. I used to wish I could when I was a school teacher.

Sometimes I wish I could when I was a pastor. God and My Neighbor. Look at verse 7, or rather, look at verses 7 to 10, and you'll see that little section that we're dealing, the whole section is 7 to 12, but 7 to 10 talks about our relationship to God, and verses 11 to 12 are relationships to men and women.

So we can call it God-ward and man-ward. Applying the corrective. Applying what's there in verse 6. Applying the grace of God.

There's a fourfold plea, and that is that those who have caused God heartache are to repent by submission. Submit yourselves then to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

And submission means, in effect, it's followed quite logically by communion. Communion with the Lord. Communion being restored.

And if your communion with God is restored, then what is described in terms of washing your hands, that's symbolic, also happens. In other words, you engage in your ablutions. Did you ever hear the story of a couple of monks who went into their monastery, into the cloakroom one day, and they discovered that there were three taps.

Hot, cold, and holy. Hot water, cold water, and holy water. Well, we don't believe in holy water, but we do believe in holiness.

And when we submit to the Lord, and our communion with God is reinstated, then, in effect, we've washed our hands, we've washed our hearts, because of the grace that verse 6 refers to, that he gives in such a generous fashion. All this is dependent on the same attitude as the prodigal had. What did the prodigal do when he came to his senses? What was his reaction when he realised what he was like? Luke 15, 18, someone's got it.

I will set out and go back to my father and say, I have sinned against heaven and against you. In other words, an attitude of contrition. Now, it doesn't matter how you have fractured your relationship with yourself, in terms of your spirit, with your neighbour, and with your God, this plenteous grace, which was referred to in the sixth verse, is able to cover all our problems, and as a result, deal with our difficulties.

So you see, although these thoughts seem to be disconnected that James shares, nonetheless, he does link them all together. It's like threading pearls on a string. In fact, that was a way that the rabbis used to teach, putting one subject on a string, after another subject, after another subject, and then linking them all together.

And James is teaching here a typically rabbinical style of presenting truth. So, God and my neighbour, applying the corrective God-word, but what about applying the corrective man-word? Because if you're right with God, then the next thing, of course, is you need to be right with one another. Now look at the first verse, the first word in verse 11.

That describes what the Christian church should be like, and it's a far throw from what you find in the first verse, isn't it? What causes fights and quarrels amongst you? Verse 11, here's the corrective, brothers. This is how we are to live. When the relationship is put right, then we treat one another as a Christian family.

And we recognise that there is a royal law. Anyone who speaks against his brother or judges him speaks against the law and judges it. If you pit yourself against the law of God, you just injure yourself.

Campbell Morgan, a very great Bible teacher, who ministered in the 1930s and 40s in the centre of London, certainly in the 1930s, he argued in a book that he wrote on Hosea, that actually you can't break the law of God. He said the law of God is inviolable. What happens is that you break yourself on the law of God.

Of course, that's quite right, isn't it? The pitiful example of the rabbit who's got myxomatosis. He tries to relieve his pain, sometimes by bashing his head against a tree trunk. Now, when you hit yourself against God's law, when you try to break God's law, what actually happens is that you break yourself.

God's law was given for your benefit and for my benefit. When we break the law of God, we injure ourselves. So, James highlights four things.

How we ought to live in the Christian family. How we ought to respect the royal law. And then he brings us to consider the judge.

There is only one lawgiver and judge. And to him we're all accountable. Therefore, we're not to judge one another, certainly not in a vindictive sense.

Because ultimately, the way that we have judged cruelly and callously is the way that we will then be judged ourselves. We judge, we are judged in the way that we judge. We are repaid in the way that we repay.

So, look at the contrast. James is really bringing the members of the congregation down to size. Do you really feel that you're spiritually mature? There's almost sarcasm in that twelfth verse, isn't there? There's only one lawgiver and judge.

The one who is able to save and destroy. But you, who are you to judge your neighbor? In other words, don't have too high an opinion of yourself. That's what James is warning against.

So, what have we looked at? Just by way of revision thus far, we've checked what James has to say in terms of fractured relationships. The self, the saints, and the sovereign. And you repair the relationships by the plenteous grace of God.

He's also showed us two things. How we are to correct the relationship as far as God is concerned, and how that will affect our relationship with one another. Finally, from verses 13 through to 17, you come across what Matthew Henry calls two brats.

A brat is a naughty child. Two sins. The difficulty is that actually we have an inadequate doctrine of sin.

Let's listen to Romans 7 verse 13. Did that which is good then become death to me? By no means. But in order that sin might be recognized as sin, it produced death in me through what was good.

Through the commandment, sin might become utterly sinful. And as my friend Len will tell you, the authorized version has got a much stronger rendering there. The exceeding sinfulness of sin.

How many of us would have called presumption and omission sins? Well, maybe some, because in the Old Testament, you do get reference to the sin of omission. But the sin of presumption, what is it? Well, I've used the old-fashioned language of Matthew Henry and said, there are two brats here to which James refers. But perhaps it's easier or it will shock you more if I say that presumption is actually the sin of private enterprise.

It's the sin of going it alone. It's the sin of Adam, it's the sin of Eve, it's the sin of you and me. Private enterprise says today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.

There's a threefold assumption. One, that we'll have the time. Two, that we'll have the choice.

And three, that we'll have the ability. But you can't take that for granted. You can't assume that you'll have the time.

No one can guarantee that President Clinton, is that his name? Is going to last the full term. That's why they've got a vice president. They say in the States that the vice president is only one heartbeat away from the White House.

You can't presume on your time. You don't necessarily have choice. You may not have the abilities that you think you've got.

So we could put a cross against all those three. When in an arrogant fashion, we feel that we can dictate what we do in our lives, and control our circumstances, then actually there's only one conclusion that we can make about our attitude. And that's found in Luke's Gospel chapter 12 and verse 18.

So let's have that read. Luke 12, 18. Either somebody is shy or I missed writing it out.

But you're also well versed in the New Testament, that without looking it up, don't cheat, some of you will be able immediately to say what I'm referring to, because the context will have given it you. Who was the man in the New Testament who felt that he had time to expand? To make choices? So there's only one conclusion which can be drawn to someone who baptizes themselves, so to speak, in private enterprise. What are they? They are a fool.

Private enterprise, the sin of presumption. I can do this, I can do the other. No recognition that actually the center of gravity of life is found in God and not in man.

I mean that's basically what we've been told here, isn't it? Verse 14. You do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that vanishes for a little while, that appears for a little while and then vanishes.

Instead, you ought to say, if it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that. See what I mean? It's a change in the center of gravity. This is what the Christian represents.

Handing over, to shift the metaphor a little bit, handing over the steering wheel of your life so that the Lord is in control. We sing a song, don't we? It's taken from a scripture in the Old Testament and indeed there's a reflection of it in the New Testament. In Him we live and move and have our being.

That's right. The center of gravity has shifted to Him and the Christian recognizes that. But there are occasions when the Christian forgets, with a net result, that all the tragedy that's been spelt out in the earlier verses of this chapter alas becomes our experience.

Rudyard Kipling wrote a very famous poem, did he not, called If. If I can do this, if you do the other. And you remember, it's really directed towards a young man and the father wants this young man to develop in such a wonderful fashion that the day will come when he'll be a real man, my son.

You remember the poem, you probably did it at school. Well, the Bible has an if. But the if is not centered in the person.

The if is centered in God. If it is God's will, I will be able to do this, that and the other. I should apportion my time, make my choices, recognize my enablings, as though I appreciate that everything that I do is as a result of God's gifting.

Praise God from whom all blessings flow. With the net result that the apostle Paul, who of course is a great teacher, not just a theologian, he's also a man who applies his theology, he gives us the corrective, he gives us the example. 1 Corinthians 4.19. Someone's got that.

Alright, here's Paul and he's not too sure when he will go to the church at Corinth. But if it is the timing of God, then says the apostle, I'll be there. 1 Corinthians 16 and verse 7, a similar sort of instance.

Let's hear what that has to say. I do not want to see you now and make only a passing visit. I hope to spend some time with you if the Lord permits.

Again, if the Lord permits. So James is in effect asking us to get rid of the brats. The brats of presumption and omission.

Or if you like, expel the ugly brothers from the Christian community. We're not talking about anyone by name. We are talking about principles which are unhelpful.

So there we have it. James chapter 4, reduced to three main headings, which you can take up and discuss next week in your groups. The first few verses, he deals with fractured relationships.

The second few verses, he deals with God and my neighbor. And the final verses, he deals, as we've just learned, with presumption and omission.