Peace

Click here for the audio message of James 4:1-10

In today’s portion of scripture, James tells us where the sources of disagreement come from and where the source of peace comes from. He starts this at the end of chapter three and continues on into chapter 4. Of course, when he was writing this letter, he didn’t use chapters. Just like we wouldn’t use chapters in any of our letters to friends either.

James writes of earthly and heavenly wisdom. Wisdom is not simply intelligence or knowledge, rather wisdom in general is the effective application of the truths you know. Wisdom is yet another test of a believers faith.

There is man’s wisdom and there is God’s wisdom. The wisdom of man seeks his own and has no saving relationship with God.

“The wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy.” (Chapter 3 Verse 17)

Purity, that is something that many of us are missing today. This is spiritual integrity and moral sincerity. Having pure motives. This comes from truly loving others as you love yourself. Being gentle means having power under control. Reasonable, mercy, good fruits, unwavering: these are all traits of a person with heavenly wisdom. Wisdom that comes from God.

Earthly wisdom, on the other hand, is bitterness, selfishness, boastful, lying, envy, and deceitful. This is the harsh attitudes that you see in other people, maybe you even see it in yourself once in a while. This is seeking your own agenda, your own pleasure, and your own goals at the expense of others.

You can see then why earthly wisdom provokes people to conflict with others. It is focused on themselves, not the love and concern for others that God commands us to have. Think about this past week and about some of the different situations that you saw.

Did the conflicts happen because of heavenly wisdom or earthly wisdom? More often than not, the people operating with Heavenly wisdom do not get involved in too many conflicts, especially over earthly matters.

Now that doesn’t mean that Christians are to be a doormat for abuse either. For example, if a husband is physically beating his wife. The wife should not just take it and try to live at peace with him. She needs to protect herself and that may involve defending herself as needed.

However, we have the police and other agencies that are available to help. So maybe the guy goes to jail for his actions. The wife shouldn’t feel bad or sorry for that. Everyone has to suffer the consequences of their actions.

James continues in chapter 4 talking about the sources of quarrels. Here James is referring to conflicts within the church. Again, these disagreements come from our own selfish desires taking control. This is especially true when we cannot tame our tongue as we talked about last week.

James tells us to simply ask God to deal with our desires. If we are in tune with God’s will, then our desires will be His desires and he will give us what we want. It gets no clearer than Psalm 37:4, “Delight yourself in the Lord; and He will give you the desires of your heart.”

We need to ask God from a pure heart, not of our own selfish desires. See we always think we can do things on our own. We need to stop and ask God what He wants done and reflect and meditate on His answer to us as give to us in His Word.

James says that we don’t receive what we ask for from God when we ask with the wrong motives. When we seek God’s honor and glory, then we have the right motive. The people of this world have the wrong motives. They do not submit their lives to Christ. They do not even acknowledge their dependence upon Him.

Being a friend of this world is therefore being hostile to God. Christian living involves separation from the contaminants of this world. Christians need to live in this world but not be of it. That is a very hard thing for us to do. In fact, it is impossible for us to do by our own power. That is way we need to rely on the strength of God.

Philippians 4:13, “I can do all things through [Christ] Him who strengthens me.” We must disdain the things of this world and not get caught in the deceptions of Satan. We must draw nearer to God and humbly submit our lives to Him. We must truly mourn over our sin.

This gives us the humble spirit that we need to continue our maturity in the faith and grow closer to our Lord. We realize the wrong sinful things that we do and we are truly sorrowful for them. We submit to God and it knocks our worldly ego’s out. It aligns our motives and will with God’s.

Some people get on James’ case here a little bit and say he sounds a little harsh or a little rigid with his writing here. I don’t. I think he is right on target.

Make no mistake about it, everyone gets into arguments. Sure some people more than others. But look at the sources of those arguments. They come from our ego’s. They come from our envy of others. They come from our own greediness.

The solution is to be humble before God and others. In the sermon on the mount, Jesus said blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the sons of God. To be a peacemaker, to be called a son of God, you need humility.

We are to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. If you profess to be a Christian but your heart is still proud, arrogant, and self centered, then you are lying to yourself. You may have even fooled yourself and others around you. But you cannot fool God. He knows your heart.

Strive for a pure heart. Strive for peace. Be gentle and reasonable. Be full of mercy and good fruits. Be unwavering in your faith and attitude and of course, be without hypocrisy.

Ask the Lord, for heavenly wisdom and the strength to be his servant, his friend, and his son.


Closing Prayer

Heavenly Father, we thank you for our time in your word this morning. Help us to humbly come before you, filled with sorrow over our sin. Help us to turn from this world and its desires. Strengthen us to be pure like your Son.

Give us the humility to serve you each and everyday of our lives until you return again to us and for us.

We ask this in Jesus’ name.

AMEN