James No.9 Fractured Relationships

We're reading from chapter four. In light of Tom Ward's intent that we may consume it, a text near Delford's on a day-to-day basis, may we note that the frontiers of the world prefer ever, therefore, the spirit that dwelleth in us less to surrender, more grace. Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble.

Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Ye are now to God, and he will go now unto you.

Cleanse your hands, ye sinners, and purify your hearts, ye devil-minded, ye afflicted, and mourn, and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up.

Speak not evil one of another, brethren. He that speaketh evil of his brother, and judges his brother, speaketh evil of the Lord, and judges the Lord. But if thou judge the Lord, thou art not a doer of the Lord, for thou art thou that judgest another.

Go to him now, ye that say, Whether today or tomorrow, ye will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy, and sell, and get gain, whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. So what is your life? It is even a vapor, that appears for a little time, and then vanishes away. For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, or do this, or that.

But now ye rejection of those things, all such rejection is evil. Therefore, to him that knoweth to do good, and those that know, to him it is sin. Now if you join with me again in God's word to the kitchen of James, on the fourth chapter, I read to you, and I'm sure that you feel it, six verses.

What causes spikes and troubles among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but you don't get it. You fear 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 are doubtless 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. Now do you think that it is because of that reason that the spirit we force to live in us comes towards envy, but he gives us more strength? That is why, six verses, God opposes the child that gives birth to the hungry. Now as we continue this series on the efficiency of dreams, it becomes very obvious as we look at the last verse of the previous chapter and move into the thought that the atmosphere has changed considerably.

After all, in chapter 3 verse 18 reference is made to peace, righteousness, and truthfulness. Here is a picture of harvest. Here is a picture of beauty.

But when you move into the first and second verses and indeed work your way down to the fifth verse of chapter 4, you are in an entirely different situation. Mention is made of war, of fighting, of sorrow, of lust, of enmity, of adultery. And we have to ask ourselves, has dreams changed the subject matter? Because before, if you remember, in the 17th and 18th verses of the previous chapter, he's been describing the ideal characteristics that will be evident amongst God's children.

He's spoken about peace and submission and love and consideration and becoming a peacemaker. But now it seems as though he's making political comments, maybe on some situation in the Middle East. This is the sort of language that we might conceive Pastor James would employ if he were looking down on El Salvador at this very moment.

War, fighting, sorrow, dispute. Has he changed the subject matter? The answer is no. He's still speaking, if you please, about the Christian church.

He's predicting a picture, in fact he may be describing an actual example of certain conditions that exist in Hebrew Christian communities in his day. If he therefore gives you his overstatement can you really say that there's a Christian community to be described in terms of fights and quarrels? I have an allergy to flat cups. It's very difficult in India to get yourself a cup of tea in a cup that's not flat.

And I have to overcome this peculiarity of at my pace can drink whatever is there in whatever utensils they employ because there is no option. Now if you imagine a flat cup, say a flat china cup, and you hold it up to the light, you can work out because the tea has left its stains in the flat, and it's that that always picks me up, those stains, everything you and your household make tea cups not flat. You can work out the stain, can't you? You can work out its source, you can work out its allergen.

It's that very pleasant. Let me suggest that that picture of a flat cup with the stains of the tea leaves helps you to grasp what James is here referring to. He is saying that there is within Christian communities scratches, cracks, stains, and yet he has defined religion in his opening text in the final verse as being a space which allows the adherent, the believer, to keep himself unstained and status on the world.

But Pastor James, because he's an Amish man, has to concede that there are times when the Christian spirit or segments of it are anything but unstained, unstructured. They're flat. They're slick.

The spirit should be like the delicate, beautiful, nice to handle, so to speak. But at times, it's fractured. And there are three particular facts it fractures.

It seems to me you can highlight, if you want to grasp what he's getting at in these opening verses of the fourth chapter. To put it simply so that you can remember it, he talks about fractures amongst the self. The self.

What causes farts and quarrels? Verse 1. Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? Fractures within the self. And verse 2. Fractures within the saints. Because if you have a fracture inside, then it's going to affect your relationship to other brothers and sisters.

And so you get that very unhappy description of broken relationships. You want something, but you don't get it. You're chilling.

You're covered, but you cannot have what you want. Here is a troublesome situation presented by James as he describes broken relationships in the church. But if the self is fractured, and there's fracture within the relationship amongst the saints, then the third thing is obvious.

There's a fracture in one's identity connection with the Savior. And so from the fourth to the fifth verses, references made of this in particular. Adulterous people.

Enemies of God. Shame, hatred towards Him. You see how stern, how somber, how severe is this language of James.

He's taking the Christian fellowship. He's holding it up to the light. And he says, I see breakages there.

There's a fracture in the self. There's a fracture amongst the saints. And it all comes to its most important point as it indicates the gate that there is in the relationship between you and God.

What a mess. What a despondent glimpse you get of some of the early Christian communities as you read these opening verses. But before we proceed for a moment, let me make another comment.

And I do so by dipping you back, so to speak, to the 18th verse of the previous chapter. Go back to that, will you? There we read, the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace. Let me give it to you in the NIV.

Peacemakers who sow in peace raise a harvest of righteousness. Listen to J.A. Moshew in a brilliant small commentary. Get his thoughts on this verse.

Righteousness, says Moshew, is consequent upon peacemaking and peacekeeping too readily the estimate that it is in the hastiness too readily the estimate that it is in the hastiness of the ill-temper of the other person which now swallows it. Too readily we expect to find peace whilst fit to cause it to make it. Too readily we overlook and excuse in ourselves the leaping causes of dissension.

That's a very interesting comment. Too readily we expect to find peace whilst fit to cause it to make peace. What was lacking in some of these early Hebrew Christian communities? Well, they didn't have many in the ranks of peacemakers.

There were those who came along and they expected always to find peace. Whereas God called you, if you belong to Jesus Christ, to make that type of commodity. Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall inherit the kingdom of God.

So as we're looking negatively into James' speaking at the moment, as we're putting the china cup up to the light and seeing the facts, bear in mind that James is saying you shouldn't constitute, you shouldn't help to break the cup at all, to cause the factions. Rather you are to be a peacemaker to repair the damages. Well, let's move in and consider what he has to say about factions in the self.

What causes factions and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? There was a psychiatrist by the name of William James, or rather a psychologist by the name of William James, a couple hundred years ago. He was reckoned to be the founder of modern psychology. But the historians have said it wrong.

The founder of modern psychology said to speak with James, the brother of Jesus, and he said it speaking from Jesus himself. For when James says that quarrels and fighting and those things that cause people to split from one another come from a basic mental attitude is dead right. If there's a prison, if there's a faction within the church community or within the community at large, its origin is within the heart.

That's what Jesus had to say. And you remember when he was putting down similar teaching which James here takes up. And he says, Don't you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body.

But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart. And these make a man unclean. For out of the heart comes evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.

These are what make a man unclean. What causes fracture in the body of Christ. Well basically it comes back to what you are in your mind, what you think in your heart.

Listen to this which I take from some documentation produced by UNESCO, the United Nations body. Since wars begin in the mind of men, it is in the minds of men that the defense of peace must be constructed. James is talking about the facts in the Christian community.

Three facts in particular. And he says the first one is placed at its source to what goes on in your mind, in your heart. And those who have a selfish mind, those who claim to belong to the Lord, and yet they are giving them to their own desires, in concern to establish their own self-esteem.

They're really double-minded men. And James has told us before that the double-minded man is unstable in all his ways. A double-minded man can't control his time.

And he gives from his heart fuel to his tongue, which he then uses wrongly, as James makes so very clear in the third chapter. So, when psychologist James examines what causes bleak in Christian relationships, he identifies, first of all, a structure within the heart. He talks about lust.

That's the word he's giving in the NIV. Desires. The lust and the desires themselves may not necessarily be wrong.

But if they just spin around the fashion wheel of self, if the concern is just to achieve and to satisfy your own desire and ambition, then it can cause disharmony and discord, because the Christian's first concern should be to make the Lord his God, the direction of his life. So, if there's a structure in the self, if there's a structure in our personal life, it's going to affect a lot more encompassing our relationship. Jesus said, My will is to do, or my desire is to do, the will of Him to satisfy.

Now, that wasn't the case with some of these early Hebrew Christians. They wanted to fulfill their own desires. And as a result, there's a structure, there's a break in the cup of their testimony, if one can use that analogy.

So, first of all, James identifies a structure within the self. But then there's a structure amongst the saints. Look at him again as he spells it out in the second and third verses.

You who are only satisfied to, you who are only concerned to satisfy your own desires, what happens when you expose your selfish personality to one with another, then there's problems. You lust, or you have not. That's what he's saying.

You kill, and you desire to have, and cannot have chance. You fight and war, but you have not because you ask not. And so he goes on.

Thy wars, or battles in the NIV, is meant to lend animosity by fighting seven rounds. And here is James saying that the selfish person who listens to the serving the Lord but is really satisfied with his own desires when he's exposed to someone else in the Christian family, he often finds that fellowship is broken because he wants to expose himself over somebody else. And as a result, there's disharmony.

I say again, is James really overstating the case? So listen to the Apostle Paul as he writes to the Corinthians, and he says at one point that he's looking forward to seeing them. And then in a later letter, he has to say, well, that's not quite true because when I reach you, I might find things present in your family life that I don't like at all. Listen to him, to Corinthians 12, and verse 20.

For I am afraid that when I come, I may not find you as I want to be, and you may not find me as you want me to be. I fear that there may be swallowing, jealousy, outbursts of anger, factions, slander, gossip, arrogance, and disorder. I'm afraid that when I come again, my God will humble me before you, and I will be pleased over many who have sinned and not repented.

Pastor James and Pastor Paul have the same problem. They're attending to people who, when they are Christian, sometimes discover that down in the depths of their hearts, there are still a mental tendency. They haven't quite learned what it's really like to be peacemakers, and they're swallowing, and they're fighting, and as a result of that, their testimony is stained, and their word loses some of its credibility.

Do you remember how old Abraham and Matt were moving into the land that God was giving the patriarchs for which difficulties in the camp, amongst the men of these two leaders? And Abraham said, let there not be strife between you and me, and your uncle, you're my nephew. They shouldn't be quarreling, and he said, right, they shouldn't. Not amongst the Christian family, not amongst the Old Testament Hebrews, but it's a fact of life that within our own hearts there is an inbuilt selfishness, and if that selfishness constantly surfaces, even within Christian communities, it causes fracture, and fracture in the self creates fracture amongst the same.

But you say, James, this really overstating your case. Are you really suggesting that there was murder in the early church? Look at verse 2. You want something that you don't get it. You kill and shove it, but you cannot have what you want.

You dare to go around murdering one another? James is repeating the teaching of Jesus, his elder brother, and do you remember what the Lord Jesus once had to say when he was laying down his teaching on what we call the Sermon on the Mount? He speaks about relationships going wrong, and he speaks about using wrong words and accusing people with enmity and anger in your heart. Listen to this. It's a sobering passage.

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. Again, anyone who says to his brother, Lachah, that synonymic term of insult, is answerable to the Sanhedrin, but anyone who says you fools will be in danger of silence. John, in the epistle that bears his name, says that the man who is angry with his brother without cause has in effect committed the sin of murder.

It's scientific, but it's not mine. It comes from Jesus. It's developed by James.

It's underlined by John. That cruel, callous word which was unmercifully in the sight of God is judged as being akin to murder. Sometimes, in our assessment of sin, we allow ourselves to kick and chew, and we put into certain severe categories what the Bible acknowledges as being bad sins, but we reduce to a lesser level those sins which the Bible puts in the first category.

And a man who slanders, the man who uses his tongue unwisely, the man who assassinates his brother's character, is guilty of murder in the sight of God. That's the teaching of Scripture. Well, then, test this out.

Have you ever said anything about somebody in this fellowship that you wouldn't have wanted them to hear? Have you ever said anything about a group of people within our fellowship that wasn't really nice, nor honest? Have you ever borne for a week, or a month, or a year, or a decade bitterness in your heart towards anyone else? You say, that's a very dramatic way of making the point. I don't apologize for so doing, because, you see, of the gravity of James's teaching here, when words are wrongly used, when attitudes are contrary to the personality of Jesus, when we're doing what He would be doing, then we're guilty of sin, of causing sanctity within the body of Christ. The psalmist says, who can ascend into the hill of the Lord? He that has a pure heart and clean hands.

Unless there's an inward purity, unless there's discipline in the words that we use, then we find that even our spiritual activities are unacceptable before the Lord. Firstly, when you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. Here are people who have not been disciplined in their personal relationships, and when they come before the Lord, what they ask for they don't receive, and in any case, the lack of what they request is wrongly methodical.

You see the force of this teaching. Here's the text again, and one of the texts goes direct to the heart. It starts in the south, a double-minded man.

Another of the texts can be traced to the church fellowship, when things are said wrongly amongst the saints, and hurt and hurt and harm is the result. Two parts in the final text which stands for the local church. Something that should be balanced between beautiful, mild, and sane, but what's the truth? Well, there's a breach in our relationship to the Savior.

Look from the fourth through to the sixth verses, this becomes very, very clear. Here are Christian people described, and yet James is using pretty harsh language, though he himself is a very gentle man, so his teaching must be highly important, or else he wouldn't employ such words. You are doubtless, people.

Don't you know that friendship with the world is hopeless towards God? What do you mean by friendship with the world? Well, the world is essentially selfish. Oh, but you see, the Christian person can be essentially selfish. That's why he's flattered.

That's why he's following. It comes from within him. And if there's self on the throne in his heart, then it's going to break not only the relationship that he has with his fellow believer, but the relationship that he should enjoy with God.

So James gathers up his teachings and he says the most important fracture that's caused by the previous two is that that breaches your relationship, that marks your contact with the heavenly father. And he shows us again the seriousness of his teaching by using three different ways of approach. He speaks of a broken marriage and then a broken harmony.

And thirdly, verse five, a broken heart. A broken marriage? Well, look at the opening verses, the opening words of verse four. You adulterous people.

You adulterers. Now then, he's speaking to Christians. In what way? Is he suggesting that they have committed adultery? Not on the sexual level.

He has the language of Corzier at the back of his mind. Corzier, the Old Testament prophet, depicts a picture of God and his people in terms of man and wife. And Corzier says that we Israelites have all committed spiritual adultery because they went after false gods.

When Paul writes to the Corinthians, he says, espouse Jesus Christ. He replies that when you do things which hurt your husband, when you engage in spiritual immorality, then you fall to the lowest of the lowest of the lowest of the lowest of the lowest of the lowest of the lowest of the lowest of the lowest of the lowest of the lowest of the lowest of the lowest of the lowest of the of the lowest lowest of the lowest of the lowest of the lowest of the lowest of the lowest of the lowest of the of the lowest of the lowest of the lowest of the lowest lowest of the lowest of the lowest of the lowest of the lowest of the lowest of the lowest of the lowest in this verse, what becomes very apparent as you look into the original, is that the heart of God is grieved. It's grieved because he has a jealous concern for those who have trusted him as Lord.

Those of you who are following the NIV version of the Bible, I suggest that you use the comments down at the bottom of the page for a better translation of that verse. The picture in verse 5 is of God who has been offended by the man who has come after distance, first at the sea. Go back to Hosea, you get it very clearly in Hosea chapter 8, God speaks with them and he says, how shall I give you up, Israel? He says, I'm jealous for you, I'm concerned for you, and yet I'm hurt because of the way that you're behaving.

That's precisely the case here in James chapter 4. When you chase after the world, when you engage in relationships which are comfortable to what Jesus would commit, then God jealously longs for the spirit that he made to live in you. That's the best translation. God jealously longs for the spirit that he made to live in you.

So here you've got a picture of the Lord God in a state of heartbreak because our relationship with him has been severed. A broken marriage, a broken harmony, a broken house. Here then are these three factors and they all converge to show the seriousness of what it means, first of all, to have a fracture in the self which causes fracture amongst the saints, which ultimately causes fracture with the Savior.

These fractures are fabulous. And you say, well that's a very negative thought on which to send us away this morning. Well, true it is.

But there's one redeeming thing that I can add which will send you away not bemoaning the study, not being sorrowful that you've gone through it, but rejoicing in the fact that there's a corrective. Look at the first part of the 6th verse. He gives us more grace.

He gives us more grace. Hold the time that has come up to the right. You have to say, I can see those fractures in my life.

I can see the self issue. I can see that amongst the saints sometimes I don't behave rightly. I can see that with God sometimes my relationship is broken.

I acknowledge that this is the true picture of my life. What am I to do? My friends, he gives more grace. He gives the ability to put right what is wrong in your life.

Again, Mosiah says, this is one of the most comforting verses in Scripture. It tells us that whatever we forfeit, when we put self in the place of God, we cannot forfeit our salvation. No matter what we do, God is not beaten.

Even when we've broken his heart, God comes to us again and he says, my son, my daughter, I've got the grace that will repair the cracks. I'm not just patching up. I'll make it perfect.

You who have not been a peacemaker for a long, long time, give yourself back to me and let me apply again to your heart the love and the grace which I've showed, illustrated in the Lord Jesus Christ. The supply, it never runs out. He gives more grace.

His resources are never at an end. His patience is not exhausted. His initiative never stops.

He gives more grace. You sometimes be known the fact that spiritually you're broken. That you have not been consistent in the way that you've lived your life.

You have to admit that you have been out of thought for a long time with some of your brothers and sisters in Christ. You've said things that you shouldn't have said. And your only relationship with God has been impaired for a long time.

I've known Christian people ten years be out of a true relationship with God because of bitterness in their heart towards their fellow brethren and sisters. I tell you that there's no exaggeration at all. Then what's the answer? He gives more grace.

Lord, I share my heart with you. Make it right. Cover up that ugly fracture, that stain of selfishness.

Lord, I've broken down relationships with one of my brothers and sisters, with several of them in this fellowship that teaches more grace. You can put it to right. Lord, I've never really appreciated a relationship with you for a long period of time because of these two deficiencies in my life.

He gives more grace. He repairs. He renews.

He professes. Thank God for the honesty of Jeremy. Thank God for the firmness with which he gives this particular teaching.

It's absolutely necessary because it brings us back to what he's been saying in the 18th verse of the Jesus Christ, that peacemakers will so in peace raise a harvest of righteousness. And that's what we want. We want harvest.

We want fruitfulness. We want accord. We don't want anarchy.

We don't want injury. We don't want prejudice. Within our Christian family here, let us apply James' message to our own Christian families.

Amen. Father, we're reminded from Jeremiah how once he went into the potter's house, and he found there a vessel that was very made, and yet there was a crack. But the potter didn't show this clay away.

He just put it back onto his wheel, and he made it again. Father, there are some of us who have fractured in our cup, so to speak, fractured self, fractured amongst the saints, fractured in our relationship with the Savior. Put it back on a wheel, and make it delicate and beautiful, the Jesus Christ.

Amen.