The Battle Within: Navigating desires

Music.

Thanks for listening to the Generations Church Podcast. Today,

Pastor Jeff continues our series from the book of James.

If you have your Bible, we will examine James chapter 4, verses 1 through 7.

James 4:1–7

And now today's message, Controlling the Tongue.

The purpose of the book of James is to correct the false belief that a person

can have faith without a change of behavior,

as well as to give practical instruction regarding the Christian life.

Because you cannot claim to be a Christian if your life doesn't match up.

And it's a big problem now, not just in churches, but it was also a problem back then.

People name the name of Jesus and claim that they love Jesus,

but their life doesn't reflect a heart and a will that submits to Him,

or a heart and a will that submits to the authority of His Word, the Bible.

So this morning, we're going to be studying James chapter 4,

James 4 · chapter mention

which has all kinds of practical practical insight that I want us to be able

to put into our lives and put into action.

It does us no good if we just have a bunch of head knowledge and we don't have any action.

It's that faith and works that we talked about in week one.

And if you happen to miss any of the messages, you can always go to our Facebook page or our website.

We have a Generations Church church sermon podcast that's available.

You can subscribe to it on iTunes, on Spotify, on iHeart.

Whatever your favorite streaming platform is, and just download it,

share it with people, not because we want to promote Pastor Jeff or Generation Church,

but no, we want to get the Word of God to more people than just us that are

in here. We want the Word of God to go forth.

Each week before we have been diving into the message and into the text,

I've given you a big idea,

but James 4 is packed with so many great application points that I've decided

to break it down into two sections today.

And so we're going to have two big ideas for the day, if you're all right with

that. It doesn't matter because that's what we're doing anyway.

Just being nice. I'm just Just kidding. So in verses one through three,

the big idea is that the outward conflict in our lives comes from our inward desires.

The outward conflict in life comes from our inward passions and desires.

And then in verses four through six, we're going to see that the big idea is

this. you cannot be both a friend of God and a friend to the world.

You cannot be both a friend of God and a friend of the world.

Before we dive in this morning, would you just go to the Lord in prayer with me?

Father, we love you so much.

We're here to seek your face and to seek your heart.

And And we're not here just to sing some songs and to see some friends and to

go. We're here to meet with you.

So do what only you can do and meet with each person individually.

As we open up your word, as we study your word, it's what you have to say to us today.

And so we cleanse our hearts and our minds and our lips. And we just say,

we want to be obedient to what you speak to us through your word this morning.

Help us to put your words into action this morning. We love you.

And all God's people said, amen.

You know, all throughout history, we've seen fights, wars, and quarrels break

out for all kinds of reasons, right?

Some of them have been started by jealousy, like the very first one between Cain and Abel.

Cain was jealous of Abel's offering before the Lord and his status before the Lord.

And so what did he do? Cain killed his brother Abel.

The Old Testament is filled with wars and battles and fighting and disputes.

Yes.

And today, it's no different. If you turn on the television or you turn on news

radio, it seems like we're on the brink of World War III.

Out of curiosity, I did a research and just searched on Google because everything

on Google is true, just like Facebook and the rest of the World Wide Web.

But I wanted just to see how many combat-related deaths, like how many wars

are going on? is it just, are we the only war?

Like, Israel, is that the only war? How many wars are going on?

And so I found this map. Go ahead and put this map up here.

Major wars in the last year, and these are deaths for wars.

There's been 10,000 deaths.

Then there was one that was labeled just wars, not major wars, just wars.

And they all had between nine and 10,000 people die.

And then there were major conflicts and they were all over the map and they were in orange.

And each one of those, each one of them had up to 999 deaths.

And then the last one they called squirmishes. I don't know about squirmishes.

That's something we have in our house, but squirmishes and clashes,

and they were in yellow, and the map was full of them all over the globe.

And for each one of those was up to 99 people that had died.

These didn't include everyday crime, violence, gang disputes, wars.

They were just ones involving the government.

Government there's been a lot of wars throughout

history a lot of them on good solid principles

and defending people's rights but there's also been some over the most small

minuscule minuscule and ridiculous things for instance let me give you just

two i want to read about these too.

This is a real war. The Cake War of 1821.

You heard me right. It was about cake.

In 1821, Mexico achieved independence from Spain.

And as always, in times of political change, this caused a certain amount of civil unrest.

In the years that followed, there was often fighting between government forces

and rebels, which resulted in damage to properties of the Mexican people.

One of these properties near Mexico City belonged to a French pastry chef.

The chef was unhappy that his bakery had been ransacked.

And all of his sweets had been stolen by sweet tooth looters.

He applied to the Mexican government for compensation, but the government said

they had way too many bigger problems than to worry about his sweet buns and

they sent him packing. I'm just reading the article, guys.

That's what my wife calls me.

Just kidding. The chef, however, was a man of resolve and he decided that as

a French citizen, he would appeal directly to the King of France for help.

As it happened, the French government were none too pleased with Mexico over some other things.

So France demanded that the Mexican government pay a hefty compensation to the chef.

Mexico refused. So in 1838, over cakes and pastries, the French Navy began to

blockade ports all along the Gulf of Mexico and the United States.

States lent France a hand in case they ran out of ships.

When the blockade did not produce results, the French began to bomb Mexico.

We're talking pastries here.

I mean, they're good, but they're not that good. Mexico then declared war on

France in order that all able men be conscripted. Fight.

The French, however, were better organized, and within days,

they had captured the entire Mexican navy.

Mexico rallied and began to drive the French troops from Mexican soil back to

their ships, and the fight went on.

Finally after three months

mexico agreed to pay compensation to the

chef and the french forces withdrew this

three-month war racked up listen to this 360 casualties 32 dead 60 wounded for

their french 95 dead and 129 wounded for the mexicans the french withdrew their

forces released the blockade,

but Mexico never did pay a cent. It was all for nothing.

We're talking pastries and we've got the whole Navy dispersed. Come on.

What about the War of the Pig? Ever heard of that one?

Famous war. The Oregon Treaty of 1846, which marked the boundary of America

along the 49th parallel, caused something of a problem for the island's Vancouver residents,

especially the island of San Juan, which lay at the mouth of the channel and

which was strategically important.

Both America and Britain laid claim to San Juan, but for a while,

British and American settlers coexisted peacefully on the island.

Until, until one day in 1859, when a pig wandered from the British side of the

island and helped himself to some potatoes planted by a neighboring farmer on

the American side of the line.

The American farmer shot the potato rustling pig, which happened to belong to

an employee of the Hudson Bay Company.

The pig owner demanded justice.

The farmer offered him $10. The pig owner, however, was not satisfied and he

reported the murder to the British authorities who threatened to arrest the farmer.

And then it says things really got weird as if they weren't weird enough already. ready.

The American got up a petition demanding the protection of the U.S.

Military and a company of the 9th Infantry Battalion was sent to the island.

The British countered by sending three warships and a tense standoff ensued,

a Bay of Pigs type incident involving actual pigs.

The standoff lasted one month.

By the time the warring parties were said to number three warships,

84 guns, and over 2,600 men,

the British then ordered to land their troops on San Juan Island and engage

the Americans in battle.

Battle, at which finally common sense prevailed and Admiral Robert Baines refused

to obey orders saying he would not involve two great nations in a war over a squabble about a pig.

Why do we fight over such stupid things?

Every day in most of our households, there are arguments and battles that take

place over the dumbest things.

I could sit here and give you examples, but I wouldn't want to embarrass our

children or their mother and father.

But relationships and families fight.

They abandon each other and families become broken.

There's fights between fathers and sons, fathers and daughters,

mothers and sons, mothers and children, grandparents and their children,

grandparents and their grandkids.

We go to war against one another, even in the local church.

How many of you ever heard of a church split? How many have heard of church

hurt or abandoning the church?

We're going to look at James chapter 4. If you have your Bible with you today

James 4 · chapter mention

or your favorite app, they're also there in your notes for you.

This is what James 4, 1 through 7 says. Read this with me.

What is the source of wars and fights among you? James starts off.

Don't they come from your passions that wage war within you?

You desire and do not have. There it is right there. You murder and covet and cannot obtain.

You fight and wage war.

You do not have because you do not ask. Verse 3.

You ask and don't receive because you ask with wrong motives so that you may

spend it on your pleasures.

You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God?

So whoever wants to be the friend of the world becomes the enemy of God.

Those are strong statements right there. Verse 5 continues, or do you think

it's without reason that scripture says the spirit he made to dwell in us envies

intensely, but he gives greater grace.

Therefore, he says, and he's quoting scripture here from the Old Testament,

God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.

Therefore, submit to God, resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

Here we see James in verse 1 address the wars and the conflict and the quarrels

that were occurring there in the local church.

Church and he traces these battles to a rise in dominance of passions or desires, a.k.a..

Also known as, if you didn't know that, sinful desires or selfishness.

Often in times in churches, there's a lust for power or popularity or authority,

and it was causing quarrels in the local church there in the New Testament.

And James says, you have desires, verse two, but you don't get them fulfilled.

And in other words, you're wanting something, but you're not getting your way.

And so I've put together just a list of a few takeaways from James chapter four.

And if you're taking notes, here's the first takeaway.

Wars, quarreling, and fighting are a direct result of unsatisfied evil desires and passions.

It's from inside of us. It's our evil desires and our passions.

But what evil desires and passions is James talking about here?

Well, Paul talks about it in Ephesians 7, the same passions,

those same desires that we all have.

And he says in verse 22, this is Paul saying, for in my inner self,

like in my head, in my heart, in my desire, I delight in God's law.

Isn't that true most of the time of us? Like we want to do the right thing.

When it comes down to it, we really do have a heart that wants to honor God, wants to obey God.

We really do want to do what God wants us to do.

But then Paul says in verse 23, but I see a different law in the parts of my

body, waging war against the law of my mind and taking me a prisoner to the

law of sin in the the parts of my body.

He's saying my sin nature wages war against my mind and my body.

So although I know I want to do the right thing in my heart and in my mind,

something stops me and I keep myself from doing the right thing.

And it's our sin nature. Our sin nature, our evil desires, Our sinful passions

and desires are at war with us, inside of us, at all times.

In verse 24, he says, what a wretched man I am.

You see, when you understand that you sin or you're failing,

you want so hard to be obedient to the Lord, but then you don't.

So many times we come down on ourselves and rightly so like,

God, I just can't do it. I just can't obey.

And he says, I'm such a wretched man.

Who will rescue me from this body of death?

And he doesn't leave us hanging. Paul's got an answer in verse 25.

He says, thanks be to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord.

So then with my mind, I myself am serving the law of God, but with my flesh, the law of sin.

Isn't that true that we do both of those things? There's a constant battle.

Paul later says, he said, those things I want to do, I struggle to do.

And we're all there. We all are fighting that battle.

And James says here in James 4 that we have to get our desires and our passions

under control because we don't want the body of Christ to suffer.

And we have to stop living for ourselves and start living in accordance with with the Holy Spirit.

Start living according to God's Word. That's why it's so important.

That's why we want to get the Word of God into our kids and into our families and into our children.

It's so important because it will change your life.

James moves on at the end of verse 2, and he says, you do not have because you do not ask.

You ask and don't receive because you ask with wrong motives so that you may

spend it on your pleasures.

If we're honest, a lot of times our prayers kind of look like a genie, right?

Like I've found a bottle and I got a genie and I got three wishes.

Lord, give me this. Lord, I want that. And Lord, do this.

James is saying, no wonder you don't see answered prayer.

We have to ask with godly motives. How did Jesus teach us to pray?

Father, not my will, but your will be done.

We have to pray in accordance to God's will for our lives, right?

We have to pray. Father, give me wisdom in dealing with this situation.

Help me learn what you want me to learn while I'm in this situation.

Help me deal with these difficult people instead of allowing our passions and

our desires to take over and move us to a place of war and fighting with others.

The second takeaway this morning is that the strongest battle you will ever

encounter is the battle of whose desires you will serve.

In other words, am I living to serve the desires of my own heart,

or am I living to serve the desires of the Lord?

And when it comes down to it, this is simply a question of obedience.

I'm going to warn you, going into verse four, James is going to just straight

up and he's going to punch us in the face. He's going to punch us in the nose.

So as we read this, get ready. Here we go.

He's going to come right at us. James 4.4, you adulterous people.

Don't you know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God?

In other words, those of you who are living for your own desires and your own

self-fulfillment, he says, you are committing adultery in your relationship with God.

He continues, so whoever wants to be a friend of the world becomes the enemy of God.

Verse five, or do you think it's without reason that the scripture says,

the spirit he made to dwell in us envies intensely.

See, when you're bickering and you're fighting with each other, we're adulteresses.

We're a friend of the world. We're choosing the ways of the world when we don't

yield our will to Jesus Christ.

When we don't yield our will to the word of God, we are putting ourselves at enmity.

We're putting ourselves at odd. We're putting ourselves, making ourselves enemies of Jesus Christ.

You're choosing the world before Christ.

And James says, whoever wants to be a friend of the world becomes the enemy of God.

Listen to what this theologian said. His name is Gordon Jordan Keddie,

and he wrote a book entitled The Practical Christian, A Study on James.

He said this, Selfishness and love of the world are to be seen as spiritual adultery.

Christians are, by their own profession of faith, collectively the bride of

Christ. We're the bride of Christ.

But by their squabbles and hatreds, they show themselves to be wandering off

God's straight and narrow way in practice.

This is adulterous because it is a betrayal of professed love for the Lord and

a covenanted commitment to faithful discipleship.

Friendship with the world is sin because it is ultimately the denial of God

and of his power to save us from our sins.

Is incredibly powerful. See, it's easy for me to point at others and say,

they love the world. That's an adultery.

What about you talking to your spouse and being selfish?

I was deeply convicted about something kind of small the other night.

Addie had a friend over and I was tired and exhausted and I was already on the

bed and was heading to sleep and she needed to be dropped off or taken somewhere.

I think she had to go home and get clothes. She was staying with us for a few days.

And Jen asked me to take Addie and her friend.

And I just said, it's been a long day. I don't want to do it.

I could have been serving her. God gave me an opportunity to serve her and to love her.

And I was like, no, you're going to have to do it, babe. And she left.

And then, of course, I was convicted after she left.

And I texted her. I'm like, I'm sorry. I should have done that. Will you forgive me?

But every time that we are selfish, we're at odds with God.

Did you know that? Now, worldliness, let me give you a definition for that.

Worldliness is the attitude and pattern of life which arises from open rebellion

against God. What is rebellion against God?

It's simply sin. It's choosing my way over God's way.

God says, hey, I want you to give a 10th of your income.

Maybe I'll do it after I pay my bills. And if I got anything left,

God, you can have it. It's sin. It's sin.

Go on and on and on and on of the ways that I sin because I choose self over God.

We are selfish by nature. When James is telling us that if we want to be friends

with the world, we're choosing to be enemies with God.

But Pastor Jeff, aren't we supposed to love the world? Yes, absolutely.

We love them, and we will do anything and everything short of sin to rescue

them from the state that they're in.

We don't love them in order to join with them in their offenses.

We don't join with them to join in in their sinful lives because that would

make us adulterers in the eyes of God.

God so loved the world, so we better love the world. all. We will do anything,

absolutely anything to reach people.

God's commanded us to reach people and to love people.

But the end goal is that they know that Jesus died for them and that they long

to be in a saving relationship with them.

Verse 5 says, do you think it's without reason that the scripture says the spirit

he made to dwell in us envies intensely? What does that mean?

Well, we know that Scripture teaches that the Holy Spirit indwells every believer

at the moment of salvation.

And James says that believers who are friends with the world are at odds with

God, and they grieve the Holy Spirit.

Every time we choose to live by our ways and our selfish desires,

we grieve the Holy Spirit. and the Holy Spirit yearns jealously with love.

God is a jealous God.

It's not a sin. He created you to be in relationship with him,

and he desires for you to put him above all other things.

That should encourage you. The God who spoke creation into existence is jealous

for your time, is jealous for your attention.

He wants to walk with you through everything you go through.

James 4, 6-7 says this, but he gives greater grace.

Therefore, he says, God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.

Aren't you thankful for grace this morning?

You know, as a dad and as a mom, we want our kids, I think one of the the biggest

things that we want is we want them to own their stuff.

If you make a poor decision and you are humble about it and you come to us and

say, dad, mom, I made this mistake.

I'm so sorry. I was wrong. I'm convicted about it. Will you forgive me?

Are we going to have incredible grace and forgiveness and love for that child?

Absolutely. Because they owned it and because their stance before us is humility.

And I think the Lord loves. Well, I know the Lord. He gives grace to us when

we come in complete humility, knowing that we've sinned.

We know what we've done. We know our standing before God.

He gives grace. Own your stuff. Be honest and open with him.

He already knows it and seek him.

Resist the proud, but he gives grace to the humble.

Verse 7, James says, therefore, and we know that when we see that word therefore,

we ask what it's there for, and it's pointing us to the previous point, the previous sentence.

So therefore, based upon the fact that God will resist you if you're proud,

but give grace to the humble, therefore, we submit to God.

It's incredibly hard to submit to the authority over us if we're full of pride.

In order for us to submit to our parents or our grandparents or to our bosses

or to one another just in life, we have to come at each other in complete humility.

Humility. Ephesians 4 says it this way, don't give the devil an opportunity.

Don't give the devil an opportunity. When you're prideful in your talking,

when you're prideful, siblings, when they're prideful with each other,

they're giving the devil an opportunity.

We don't want the devil to have an opportunity. We've got to stay humble.

We've got to stay humble.

Takeaway number three, and then we're going to be done and we're going to move

into communion. communion, when you

are proud, you are giving the devil an opportunity to work in your life.

My desire is that the Lord works in my life. Not that the devil works in my

life, but if I get puffed up or if I'm full of myself or if I just want my way.

The devil has an opportunity to work and to get a foothold into my life and into yours.

Andrew Murray in his autobiography said this about pride.

He said, A man needs above all to be saved from what is the root of all sin,

his self-will and his pride.

Above all, we need to be saved from what is the root of our sin,

our self-will and our pride.

How would your marriage look if you did away with pride?

How would your relationships look if you did away with pride?

Pride siblings brothers and sisters how would it look like if you did away with pride.

Went running this week i ran a bunch this week and easton rode his bike with

me a couple times and i always am trying to speak into him easton if you don't

know he's our youngest he's nine,

and i said you know he was talking about siblings two in particular and i said Dad, you know what?

That kind of reminds me of what I've been studying in James chapter 4 this week.

James 4 · chapter mention

And I'm, you know, I'm running and I'm out of breath and he's riding his bicycle, just cruising.

And I said, James starts James chapter 4 and he says, you know,

James 4 · chapter mention

where do, where do corals come from?

It's like, do you know where corals come from?

Well, Dad, coral comes from the ocean. Right.

Quarrels, like fighting. What if you went into the living room,

family room, your sister's watching TV and she's watching something?

What if instead of stealing the remote from her and wanting your way,

what if you just went in and were like, hey, I'll watch what you want to watch.

No, this is a process. It's not going to happen overnight.

But what would our marriages look like? What would what our kids' relationships look like?

What would our jobs look like? What would churches look like if we gave preference

and priority to the other person and we were about serving one another?

We are the bride of Christ and we need humility today in every aspect of our

lives more than ever, in every relationship.

And James says, resist the proud.

Resist being proud.

Resist it. We're the bride of Christ, yet some of us, we've been cheating on him with the world.

And James just wants to remind us today that we cannot be friends with both

God and the world. God is jealous for you.

Let me tell you something. He wants all of you. He wants every part of your life.

What would our lives look like if we got rid of ourselves, we got rid of our

pride, and we just yielded in surrender, complete surrender and said,

thy will be done, not mine.

Your will, Lord. Your will in my relationships.

Music.

Your will in my job. job, your will in this area, your will in this area,

the world would be different.

We walk in humility, pursuing hard after the Lord this week.

You've been listening to the Generations Church podcast. Be sure to check back

next week as Pastor Jeff continues our study on the book of James.

If you'd like more information about Generations Church, feel free to get in

touch with us at info at generationschurch.us or head over to our website.

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