Battle Cry, Week One

1. Read James 4:1-10. What hit you most from this passage or the sermon today?
2. According to James 4:1, who is to blame when there is conflict among you?
3. Where do your passions or your hedonism get in the way of you serving others?
4. How ok are you when some of your needs go unmet or when you don't get your own way? Try to think of some recent examples and how you could have handled it differently.

Prayer + Practice:

Pray this week about what barriers keep you from going deeper into community and ask God to remove them. What next step could you take to go deeper into community.

We're making our way through the book of James, and James is trying to describe the kind of life we should see and live. Actually, you know, if you've trusted in God, and James calls this some new operating system, maybe is the best way to understand how wisdom is operating here. It's multifaceted, but it's basically when we look at reality, well, God helps us see reality, and then somehow we're able to see how God sees reality and then act in it the way he would want us to. That's what wisdom is. That's really what it is.

Faith, on the other hand, is trusting that what you see is the right way and that God's way is the right way. So wisdom sort of lays out this path that you act on. Faith is the trust you have in God, that the way he sees reality is the way you ought to see reality in everything. So it's truly God's intention that we actually become the kind of people who actually walk in that wisdom and live that way. Now, as we saw last week, James is showing us that one of the ways, one of the key ways, this is a new testament reality, that that new life shows up in you applies to, to how you relate to other people, how you relate to one another.

And Leonard Sweet said, all spiritual practice leads to relationship. And I've been pondering that for a while, and I'm trying to see what the holes are in it. I don't know that there really are any. And I think this passage will help us see that.

And what I think is really happening in this text, and that's why I'm going to sit in it. There's two options in this text. Technically, I'd really love to be able to go through all ten verses right now because I think hearing them all together would be really terrific. The problem is I just can't get past the first five verses without really us sitting in it a little bit and really trying to find our way through it so that the next five verses make sense. So, you know, we're just going to see it.

And at the end of the day, what we're all just really trying to say here, because we all look at this differently, is, are we willing to see community the way God does?

Are we willing to do that?

Now, we saw, where is it here? We saw last week that there is this harvest of righteousness that's sown in peace by those who make peace. And this is the picture. So we're peacemakers. This is the text visualized.

We're peacemakers. This is about relationship. We sow into relationship, and out of that comes this massive harvest of righteousness, which is so many wonders that come out of life transforming things that don't happen. If you don't have this kind of sowing, if you're not relationally minded, and if you don't jump into relationship and sow and do the hard work of relationship in community, then you can't have this sort of harvest. And the harvest is basically the transforming of you and the transforming of the community.

They sort of both happen at the same time. So that's what we're talking about here. So we go from peace to war, the very next verse. So James is saying, you know, there's this real commitment to relationships and peace, and what I'm seeing among you is war.

That's a pretty radical problem that James is showing us. So obviously, we're having to figure out what this means and what's going on here. So let's talk about this piece for a minute.

So what are you doing if you're not a peacemaker? Well, then you're making war in this text.

So we would use, you know, James is thoroughly jewish, and you can see it in almost, almost every verse. You could see it come out. And one of them is this idea of shalom, which would have been ringing in James's ear, which is just this beautiful picture of just universal health and wholeness and delight and human flourishing. Everything going the way God wanted it to go, would want it to go. That's what that is.

And so platinga in his book on sin starts out basically his book, by saying, all sin is a vandalism of shalom. All sin is a vandalism of shalom. In other words, it's a disruption of harmony. It's a disruption of the way God would want things to go. And everything sin touches, it destroys.

And so you get this. What we're seeing in chapter four and one is the vandalism of Shalom. Here is this Shalom God wants us to have this peace, this relational, this social harmony. And what you get is the vandalism of it in chapter four.

Now, as we come into chapter four in this community, let's just go ahead and go. What causes the quarrels and the fights among you? And then there's obviously this very, very self centered war going on inside of you that's making all this external conflict. And I want to just say something about this, because what we're talking about here is what we're talking about here, social conflict. So we're talking about, how do you deal with community?

Whatever this peace and this peacemaking and this harvest of righteousness, there's got. Community is a central element to it. And in his book on sin, Plantinga talks about two kinds of ways to be sinful, two big sort of categories. And it's basically flight. You can run from obligation or you can attack.

You can flee or evade, or you can invade. One of the two options, I mean, that's how we're all sinning every day. So in this first one, the way you would mess this up, you say, man, I don't want to mess up that whole system. You say, okay, well, the first way you would do that is to flee from community. You say, I don't want anything to do with it.

Then just count me out. And this is how he describes the sin of avoidance.

You evade, you somehow go AWol. These are the words he uses.

You minimize community. When you do that and you cocoon, you retreat into kind of a small world. And he says, don't overlook that. It's laziness and cowardice, where you're just self protective of your soul. So you avoid community.

And we've talked about that. You somehow come up with your own way to get community. You know, for the first time, probably ever, it was the very first time some months back, we used the digital fireplace on our tv. And I've never done that before. And it loops, you know, it's this looping thing, sort of trying to create some kind of coziness in the room.

And I've got a really. I got a working fireplace and chose. We had people coming over and we had this thing on. You know, it looks like a fireplace. Sounds like a fireplace.

No heat, no warmth, nothing. It's just sort of make believe. And I think somehow that's how. How we think about community. It's a little bit too hard to work.

And so I think I just prefer the comfort in some easy way to attain. And maybe you get it digitally, just like that's how I get my community. Yeah, there's no work in that. There's no transformation, no heat. And so there's just the kind of interaction, the kind of rub that's necessary to really challenge you or somebody else never really happens.

And so you. Basically, what he is saying is you've just chosen the easy way out. It's lazy and cowardice. Now, listen to the language that he uses to describe this, because that's one of the benefits of the book, is you start to see your sin in a way, you would have never thought about it this way. So if you avoid community, hear this.

This is what you say to God. He writes, you have made nothing of interest to me, and you've redeemed no one of consequence, no one worth my energy.

That's what avoidance is. In fact, he says, I cannot think of a good reason to do what you're asking.

Then he writes, to fail God and our brothers and sisters is to shrink from our own role in the great drama of redemption and cut some of the lines that attach us to its center.

And he says the results by refusing his calling, he extracts his own core, hollowing himself out to a shell of a human being without weight or substance. Spiritually, he begins to move out into that cold and desolate night.

That's what it looks like when you say, God, I don't care what you're doing in there or over there or in through that. I'm out.

And there's a verse in verse 17. You and I have all, we all try to figure out exactly what God's getting at when he says it, because it comes right in this text. Whoever knows the right thing and fails to do it, to him, it is sinhouse vandalism of shalom.

You've created nothing of interest to me and nothing of consequence.

James is trying to tell you this is what happens when you don't have use wisdom and you don't see reality the way God sees it and you don't approach life the way God wants you to.

And I guess what I would want to communicate to you about this text and what I find so interesting about it that we're going to look at is the spiritual dynamics that are going on in this text can't even apply to you if you've avoided it. I mean, whatever James is going to say over the next six, seven, eight verses, you're going to have to say, well, I'm out on those. Whatever's going on there, I'm out because I've chosen to be out of community and there's just no way to apply them any other way.

So it's that significant now. You can evade it, you can flee, you can say, I'm running from whatever it is God wants from me, or you can get in there in community and do what's happening in this community and just attack people, people and go the opposite way. And he's going to use very, very extreme language here, fights. All of these words used every time they're used, they were talking about very harsh this is violent language. As if physical fights have broken out.

All that language, you murderous. It's very, very violent language. So whatever. Whatever James is describing here, I think it's safest to say that actual murders weren't going on there. But we all know the kind of social and relational pain and hurt that comes to us, where we feel like we feel like death.

When somebody mistreats us severely, we know anger and relational disharmony feel like death. James has raised the language, the sin of this so high, and you say, well, it's just metaphor. Let me tell you something about metaphor in scripture so that you understand how to deal with it. If I tell you it's hot as hell, you start to think, well, what's hell like? And then you go, well, if it's similar to that, I don't care what it is.

I don't want anything to do with it. You see what I'm saying? So if you were to say to me, I don't think hell has literal flames, I would say, okay, it still sounds like a place that's that hot. Do you still want to go?

You see what I mean? Metaphorical or not, that's a horrible existence. That's all James is saying. We have this relational conflict, and it's basically James way of saying, this is how God looks at your relational attacks.

Like you've just killed somebody.

So they express real kinds of pain, which many of us have felt. So it's graphic and extreme on purpose. I read an article this week. You might have saw it, actually. It was last week, and the title of the article was old Hollywood celebrities who literally destroyed each other's existence with words alone.

Just words. Most of you haven't murdered somebody, and clearly you haven't been murdered.

But many of us have felt like we have been killed by something or someone, relationally. Now, it's very possible that you, right here, will go, well, Pete, that's the reason I avoid community. Uh huh. I hear you. That's the reason I avoid community, just to stay out of these attacks.

And I feel so noble.

I feel so noble. I feel so above everybody else. Cause I don't get into the relational conflict in any church I've ever been in. I just attended stay on the fringe. I avoid that.

I don't need this. And essentially, people are the problem.

James won't let you do that either. I'm sorry.

Because he says, where are the problems?

They're in you. And you certainly aren't going to solve them. You're not going to be transformed. If you flee, you're going to have to get in there and you're going to be exposed when you get in there.

That's what happens. You get exposed. All of us who are in community, we get exposed every now and then in some way, shape or form.

And what James is trying to say here is, you know, man, I guess we are actually inwardly armed to do battle. When we relate, we're just capable of battle.

One writer said, we have warring human instincts, and the results are these war crimes, which are basically just relational crimes, murder and adultery, which we'll see in a moment. And here's the unique way James is bringing those two together. The murder is what we do to each other. The adultery is about our relationship with God. So at the same time, we're screwing up community.

We are murdering each other and we are becoming unfaithful spiritually to God, and they are related. And that's why community is so important all the time. You just can't have this dynamic going on with God and not with community or with community and not with God. They're just, they go together so they're linked. And so a lot of us will pit spirit, God and others against each other and we'll say something like, well, yeah, I'm not going to get in community because I know all the problems that come with being involved with people.

And then somehow you ignore the idea that that's adulterous to God. That attitude is adulterous to God. Or if you get in community and you start treating people the way the world treats each other, that's adulterous. It's murderous to people and it's adulterous. It's like it's the strongest language you can use for social violations, murder and adultery.

And any one of us in here would say, well, lord, if you don't want me to, you don't want me to commit murder, do you? And you don't want me to be adulterous, do you? How do you want me to think about community then?

That's all James. That's what James is trying to say.

What am I doing that's creating relational disharmony? Am I avoiding it or am I causing trouble in it? One or the other. And so James reveals this sort of selfishness and these passions, you know, that are inside us, that are at war. Literally, this is the word for we get a hedonist from.

We're over concerned for self. So when you're in community, the biggest problem that's happening is there's an over concern for yourself, glorification, self exaltation, self gratification is just yourself, and there are very harsh forms of that, and we've all felt them. When somebody talks bad about you, that's a harsh form where they're unforgiving and they won't let you off the hook for something that you did that's harsh.

Or they attempt to hurt you or use you or dominate you. These are big ones. And I know when you hear language like murder and adultery, you think, man, those are big things. And sometimes we do those big things to each other.

But I guess I want to focus. They'll surface. The big ones are obviously, I want to surface for a minute something underneath that, though, in community, because I think most of us are selfish in very, very subtle ways that destroy community.

That's us right here in this room. And so I don't want to just focus on the big ones. I just kind of want to focus on the little ones. And I think John Stott is right when he says the problem is not just the very, very big kinds of sins, he writes, but there's very ordinary kinds of things that we do. Just pleasures, desires, and needs, seeking and demanding self, he says, very ordinary stuff.

It's not just a notorious or outrageous insistent demands that we have our own way.

The root of it is just much more of a subtle, selfish heart. And I think one of the problems that we all have is we're just not very aware of where we're being selfish.

It's not always easy to know, because sometimes when you're standing up for yourself or wanting something, you feel right, you feel noble and you feel smart.

And so I just want to dive into this a little bit with you and see if it can help us. So there's a family in our church. I mean, this is a very common thing, but in a family in our church who's hurt pretty badly, and, you know, I'll get, you know, I get waves of those like you do. You get. You get messages of people who are hurting all the time, and sometimes they just.

It just devastates me. Well, there's. So when that happens, like when I hear Kirk's head of Hurricane destroys house, I got to figure out, well, how much am I giving to them?

Knowing and loving him is going to cost me something.

Just does. So this family, you know, I thought I'd been talking about it for a couple days, praying and, you know, talking to them with them on the phone through their situation, and then just. Okay, well, I gotta do something. And so, you know, I'm busy like you, and I'm running around trying to do things. And Monday I was running around and I thought, well, maybe on the way home I'll stop and grab something.

And I'm driving home and I missed the exit to get off, get something for them and then get home. And so now I'm thinking to myself, well, I gotta go to the other exit. And this is just how it works. But I didn't necessarily detect it like this. Well, I guess I'll just go home and then maybe tomorrow it'll be easier to figure out how to get around back over there.

This is me saying, I gotta save a little time. You know, I'm trying to save minutes.

And so I'm driving, and God's not letting me off the hook on this. He's saying, no, no, no, you get over there. This is not one you can wait till tomorrow on. And I'm going, oh, yeah, my heart is completely going out to this family, but there's this internal struggle that I've got to save minutes and maybe dollars. And so I have to make this U turn and I go back and I go to the place where I'm on the way there and I can stop and get, you know, a gift card or whatever I need to get.

And then I get over there when it was all said and done, you know, standing at their house, praying over them, over the house, because I couldn't see them, and I left there and I said, you know, it cost me 40 minutes and $150 to make that u turn.

I could have felt very noble about saving both of those.

You don't have 40 minutes. Who has 40 minutes?

You got to give something up in community, but you'll fight. Do you see? I just want you to see the battle and how subtle it was and how easily I could have let myself off the hook. No, it's the day somebody said it's the daily bread and butter of the self pleasing life. I just have myself as the focus.

That's what it looks like to destroy community.

Just dozens of changes in interactions. They'll happen in here, a host of selfish acts. Selfish acts will happen today. Just in our little gathering like this, just in our little. We'll avoid somebody we don't want to talk to.

I will say, get out of here. I don't want to hear their problems.

And so I thought I started listing a bunch of the ways we do this. We don't say something to somebody that needs to be said.

We certainly don't want to praise anybody because somehow giving praise to somebody diminishes me. If I praise you for something that maybe I'm good at, does that make me less than you? And then I'm being selfish again, or I can't even praise you because somehow it diminishes me. That's what selfishness looks like in community.

I could listen or I could talk or I could ask you something that would. Just putting yourself out for community. Maybe you attend something that would be hard for you to attend, or you linger at something so that you can serve somebody else.

Tolerate each other's differences. You know, sometimes we can only think of how hard things are for us.

And let me tell you something. There's a handful of people in here that embarrass you about how hard things are for them. Flat embarrass you. If you think your life's hard, and if you don't interact with those people, you'll continue to build this little world where you just have it so hard, and you just blame everybody that you don't get the things that you need.

And you know what? You see how ugly you become in that.

You better get around some people who got it harder than you.

Let me give you a feel at Hillside, how this looks sometimes.

I told you I wanted to dive into it. I just want to dive into it. So a lot of. Let me just give you a simple one, a little broader one, and then I'll give you a little more detailed one. First one is about, like, people that come to Hillside and they want to serve somewhere.

Let me tell you the kinds of things that we get encountered. We encounter. Oh, that's too early. I can't serve then.

Oh, okay.

I don't want to miss songs one day a month. You might have to miss worship.

I don't want to be on that team. The shirts they wear aren't my color. Oh, you don't think that happens?

Wake up.

I prefer to stand at this spot instead of that one. Is it.

Oh, yeah. This is. I only want to serve with them. Like, I don't want to do it with them.

This is what it looks like. I'm just trying to surface what it looks like so we know what God's talking about, because you and I think some of those things are noble.

Do you know what I'm saying? We don't even identify our selfishness. How about the people who don't think they should try out for the worship team? They should be led on it. Why do I have to try out?

Well, because you might stink. And we'd like to know that before you get up here.

That's the reason we have volunteers around Hillside who plan their vacations around their serving here.

You see the difference in those.

If it puts you out, you're out. And that's what hedonism is. That's all James is describing. The war is in you. The war is not out here.

What is relationship. Let me give you some relationship things, because whether you're in your small group or whether you're, you know, I went out to dinner with Gail, and I were out to dinner with Jeff and Carolyn this past week. This happens in a number of relationships, but we happen to be especially close to them, and they wanted to take me out for my birthday, so I was just. All I did was, when I was done with that, I went home that night and I slept after our time together, and I just thought, wow, this is what happens in community. And I just started listing all the things that happened while we were together, and there were times when we were affirming each other.

First of all, they let me pick the restaurant, okay? And I'm very boring. Not going anywhere too special. That's the first thing they're gonna pay. That's sacrificial.

They said, we're taking you. It's your birthday. We're gonna do that. So. So they wanted to go when I might, when I wanted to go.

They. They accommodated me when I wanted to go and where I wanted to go, and they were even gonna pay.

This is what happens when you're in community. You. You give up rights to somebody else. Sometimes they give them up for you, sometimes you give them up for them. Then during the conversation, which is very healthy in so many ways, give and take, there was encouragement.

We were sharing things. We were reading. We were sharing perspectives on issues from political to personal.

Some of the things that were said, we were able to correct each other on and push back on. You say, well, no, that's not exactly how the best way to look at it. This is what happens in community, and you need it, by the way. I need it.

There was sympathy. You know, you're sharing some things that are going on in your life, and we're able to say, man, sorry, that's going on with you. How could we help? Same thing back toward us. This is what happens in community.

This is why you need it. All these little dynamics are happening and exchanges that are healing and that keep you from being too self centered. And they're all tiny. They're all things you wouldn't recognize. I had to go home, lay in bed and think of every single one of them.

And I still have a host of them that I could share you with you. That's all going on in community. They even had a pie brought to the table and it was a, you know, I told the waiter who I'm friends with and he said, yeah, this is on me. And he gave it to me and it was a pecan pie. And I don't, I don't eat dessert pretty much ever.

That's really being honest. But here I am with friends and they said, it's your birthday, step out of your little I'm too good for sweets world, your high and mighty place. You sit and eat. And so we all took bites and I took three or four. I said, wow, this stuff really is good.

I'm not going to get very far in this talk because I'm just having fun with you on this. Are you hearing what I'm saying in some of these? I just want you to hear the impact of community. Listen to.

We're going to have to stop sooner than I wanted to, but I just want you to listen to GK Chesterton says, whoever lives in a small community lives in a much larger world. You see how the world shrinks when it's just about you and you're the biggest person in ithood. You get really distorted by that. Do you realize you become something that's not very lovable when you do that?

And so like Jordan Peterson, I think, even has some great wisdom on this. You listen to his twelve rules. I love some of the things he says about conversation in community. And just listen to this. People organize their brains around community and conversation.

And if they don't have anyone to tell their story to, they'll lose their minds. They're like hooters. They can't unclutter themselves. Isn't that a great picture? Unless you have somebody to interact with to make you hear and feel and sense things.

So he says, the input of community is required for the integrity of the individual psyche. It's how we organize our worlds and our thinking and our perspectives come from other people.

So healthy mental function has to do with the reaction of others to keep our complex selves functional. This is so utterly true. And when you're sitting in community, you get sympathy for things. When you're talking and sharing your life with somebody else, somebody looks at me and goes, man, I'm sorry you're going through that. You need that.

But then you also get to look at somebody else and offer it to them. You need to do that.

Now this is really interesting. And all I'm going to do is tease it because we got to be done. And I'm sorry that I have no ending or conclusion for this sermon because it's way before I wanted to end. And I'm not going to try to cram one in here for you, but I just want you to just be prepared for this.

This is what James is going to say next, okay? We got this whole community relational thing going on. And then he says, you desire and you don't have and you murder. And here's something to consider this week. How well do I manage to my life when I don't get what I want?

Because whatever it is God's doing in your life, if you're going to do this, you are going to have to manage that life didn't go your way and that people didn't perform for you, and that it's not about you today.

And I don't know that most of us are mentally healthy enough, spiritually healthy enough to have our wives say no, to have our husbands say not today, to have a friend say, can't get there or to not get something you crave out of somebody. Is it possible? Is it possible? I think that's a great question. Is it really possible that it's okay if we don't get our way?

I think sometimes we think we're going to die if we don't.

Right? You want, you can't get it. So this is what you do. Whatever this is, it's all a result of you not being able to manage something you didn't get. Even if you think what you need is right to have now without.

If you were asking me to write this, if God were giving me the words to write this chapter, I would have done this if I were James, and this is where we'll end. I would have said, okay, looks like we're changing subjects here. You do not have because you do not ask, okay. James includes that into this process going on inside of me. Like it's so connected.

There should be no really big leap from what's happening to me and what I'm doing to people because I'm not getting my way. There should be no big leap to. Now, let's talk about what that means for you spiritually as it relates to how you talk to God about things he doesn't. If I were him, I would have started that down. Here you a whole new verse.

Let me change subjects on you. No, no. Somehow there is a spiritual dynamic going on at the same time so that James can say, not only are you murdering people because people aren't coming through for you, but let me tell you something about how you're relating to me when you do that. You're not just a murderer. You're an adulterer.

We need to talk about what's going on there, because if you think it's just about you and people and that you and God are okay.

Nope. There is another spiritual dynamic at work.

And I would have loved to have talked to you about that today, but I'm sorry I didn't get far enough.

But at least you can say, hey, this week I got to think about, where am I running from? Community. Who am I attacking in community? What fight am I fighting? And what underneath there is the selfish thing that I wish I was getting out of this and why I keep the fight going.

And then, hey, God, can we have a conversation this week about what it looks like for me not to get my way and me be okay about it? Is that enough application for you for right now? Is that enough? Okay. We have some more to discuss.

I love this stuff, but it is beating me to death.

Lord, do we sit in awe at your word, the way it diagnoses, the way it just points to our heart so clearly. And we're sorry that we don't even see sometimes how evil we can be, how destructive we can be to one another, how many times we think we're right in doing what we're doing.

And that's just scary.

We want to understand the dynamic, the spiritual relationship that we have with you in a way that allows us to give ourselves over to other people, to live with the fact that our needs don't always get met by people.

That's what we want the most. And nobody demonstrated that. Like your own son, who actually died on a cross, took the sins of the world on himself, died for others. There's no greater example of that than you. So teach us, Lord.

Really, really, really teach us. In Jesus name. Amen.