Open your Bibles to James chapter four, and let's start with a word of prayer if we can today. I know we've prayed several times, but I don't think you can pray too much, right? Father, pray for us as we listen today. It's an exciting day. It's Father's Day. Grateful for our fathers. Lord, in a society, in a time where they attack masculinity, they attack fathers, Lord, I just wanna pray for our fathers today that are here. Lord, I wanna thank you for them, the real men, the real men that stand up for you, that stand up for their families, that protect their families. Lord, thank you for that. And yet, Father, I also know that in every home and in every situation, there are challenges, and I pray for those challenges today. I pray for those men as they face them and those wives as they face them, and even the children as they face those challenges. Lord, I pray that you would teach us today about conflict, Lord, that we would maybe leave here with a little bit more information. but not just head knowledge, but heart knowledge, Lord. In Jesus' name, amen. You know, James has been talking about qualities of a godly person, a disciple, what do they look like, how are they supposed to act, and the last three weeks you've had to kind of bear with me and listen to me three weeks in a row, but we talked about the tongue, we talked about wisdom, and today we're gonna talk about the exciting, joyful, subject of conflict, so, today. I got, I was talking to Jack this morning, Lorraine got him a Father's Day card, I didn't know that Jack was that old, but, no, I'm kidding. And she said that, and he said he opened it up, it was kinda nice on the front, and it had some nice words and all that, but when he opened it up that he got one, one time that he gets to win an argument and he can pick it. But she said, just one time is he gonna get that. You know, folks, I know that conflict is gonna be a part of our life. You think about conflict in the New Testament, it's all over. In the Old Testament, it's there. The Corinthian church said they were fighting in public meetings, and the Galatian church were biting and devouring each other, and the Philippian church, which was one of the better churches, two women were going after it. So we see that there is conflict in the world. Now I think about this. Jesus, who was perfect, faced conflict all the time. So for us to think that we can control conflict totally is impossible. I just want to say something. I bet that there's been conflict in the past. I bet that there'll be conflict in the future. It's going to happen. Now, folks, I think we can learn to deal with it. And we can work on that and we're gonna look at some sources of conflict today. In James chapter four he says, what causes quarrels and fights among you? And then he answers that question with three sources. The first one is submission to our inward passions. cause conflict, friendship with the world causes conflict, and judgment and evil words cause conflict. So I wanna look at those today as we go ahead. Submission to our inward passions causes conflict. Look what it says in verse one through three. What causes quarrels and what causes fight among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions. What does it mean by passions here? Because he says that it's our submission to our passions. The Greek word means a pursuit of pleasure. In context, passion refers to selfish desires, pleasures, pleasure-seeking impulses, ungodly cravings that come from within and drive a person to conflict. both with others and within themselves, and of course, even with God. Here's a short list of passions. I can't give them all, but envy is a passion, wanting what others have, resenting others' blessing, Greed is a passion. A constant craving for more can cause conflict in our life. Pride, self-exaltation, refusing to submit to God or others. Lust, impure thoughts, desires can cause conflict. Anger, you didn't know that one, did you? Can cause passion. Covetousness can cause Selfish ambition can cause conflict. Wanting to be first, to be recognized, can cause conflict. Unforgiveness, I just don't want to forgive you. I know I'm supposed to, but I don't want to. I want to hold on to that, can cause conflict. And then a controlling spirit. We want control of whatever's going on. Maybe it's in the home, or maybe it's in the church, or maybe it's at work, and we can cause conflict because we want to control everything. James gives us two examples of our passion causing quarrels and fights in this passage of scripture. He says, you want something so badly, you kill for it. In verse two, you desire and do not have, so you murder. Now we know that Cain murdered Abel because of the desire he had that God would accept his sacrifice, and he was, of course, covetousness of that. But I want to remind you that we don't have to murder to murder, right? Hatred is murder. And I think that when we think about our resentment towards others, it is that idea of causing conflict. This is what I find. Whatever is inside me, as hard as I try to hold it down, it comes out. And if there's hatred inside of my heart, it will come out and it will cause conflict. He says the second thing here is he gives another example. He says you covet what you can't have so you fight and quarrel. Look what it says in verse two. You covet and can't not obtain so you fight and quarrel. We see four steps towards conflict here. The first step is we passionately want something. We look to others to give it to us. We try to get it by our own devices, and conflict happens. Marriage conflict, we think about mama passionately wants her way, and daddy passionately wants his way, and boom, conflict happens. He talks about here the reasons why our passions never get fulfilled. Verse two, you do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions. He says, first of all, you are going to others for your needs. You know, I read a book. And the book had a test in it, and it was like these questions. And it was written by a non-Christian, but he said that these questions in your life are gonna, you'll have like a one question that really is, kinda drives you as a person. You know, one of those questions is, I wanna be safe. Some people, that's their main question. But mine was, that I wanna feel important, that was my question. Now, I hate to even tell you that, but that's what came out, and I have to admit that there was a little bit of that in me. I wanna feel important, but guess what? If I rely on Tracy to make me feel important, every once in a while, she can make me feel important, but guess what? Three hours later, if I wanna feel important, she can't keep it up, right? I can't keep going to that well, right? I can't keep doing that. If I'm looking to you to make me important, that will never fulfill me. It will never fill me. I have to look to the Lord to fill that. You're going to others for your needs. That's why your passions never get fulfilled. When you do go to God in prayer, you're asking with a selfish heart, he says. You know, we sometimes do go to God, but sometimes those passions inside of us don't get fulfilled because they're just selfish. They're just selfish. I wanna give you an example of passion causing conflict. A husband and wife are both exhausted. They just put the kids to bed, and they decide to nestle down and watch something on TV. He wants the remote to watch the game. She wants the remote to watch a movie. At first, it's kind of playful. She says, you always get the remote. And he says, you weren't even watching it. but soon it turns more personal. She says, you never think about what I want. He says, well, maybe if you were more grateful, dot, dot, dot, answer that. What starts as a tiny disagreement spirals into a full-blown argument. Both of them go to bed angry, not because of the remote, But because of passion, he wants to be in control. She wants to be right and feel heard. And yet neither one gets their passions fulfilled. Submission to our inward passions causes conflict. Friendship with the world causes conflict. In verse four and five, You adulterous people, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity towards God? Therefore, whosoever wishes to be friends of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the scripture says he yearns jealousy over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us? What does he mean by friendship with the world? People who have turned their affections from God and fallen in love with something, someone, or some intellectual concept of this worldly system. In the Old Testament, they had a word for it. It was called idolatry. It was called idolatry. It's loving something more than God. We can love sex, money, popularity, acclaim, pleasurable activities, our jobs, our kids, more than the Lord. This friendship is with the world. What does friendship of the world do to us? In verse four, he says, it puts us at odds with God. He says, you become an enemy to God. It also says that it makes God jealous. I think that's interesting concept. And I realized that the Lord gave us a spirit. And his desire is that our spirit communes with his spirit. But when our spirit is communing with someone else, or something else, or we have something before him, he is jealous towards that. Let me give you an example. I know of families that their kids are wayward. and their kids have left them, and they are saying, they're kind of putting their hands up and saying, we don't want anything to do with you. And those parents' hearts are yearning to have a relationship with this son or this daughter, and they want this son or daughter to have a relationship with them, and even a little jealous that maybe there's others out there that have a relationship and they don't. That's how God feels with us when we make idols of this world and things of this world. What does friendship of the world do to us? In verse four he says, it puts us at odds with God. It makes God, jealous, and it causes conflict with others. You know, when there is disunity in a family, when there is disunity in any relationship in a church, it begins with disunity with God. Let me just say this, when you're fighting with your wife or your children, and you're in the wrong, you stepped away from your relationship with the Lord, which causes you to have conflict with your spouse, your children, your coworker, someone in the church. He says, he gives us a solution to this friendship in the world. It's found in verse six through 10. But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Submit yourself therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your heart, you double-minded. Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourself before the Lord and he will exalt you. He says in verse 6, we need to humble ourselves before God. admit that we have a problem, and it's sin. When we are in conflict, we have to go, not, it's my wife's fault, it is maybe something in my own life. And we got to be willing to admit, humble ourselves before God, and to listen to what God has to say. Now I would say, Jesus had conflict, and he wasn't in the wrong, and that can happen, but I want you to know that in most cases, It doesn't happen with us. The second thing is we need to submit to God and resist the devil. We gotta say no. to the ungodly affections and the idols in our lives. We need to draw near to God, prioritize our walk with the Lord. If you're struggling in your marriage, if you're struggling in your relationships at work, if you're struggling with your relationship with your children, let me just tell you how you can get that, you can get that solved. Get with the Lord. Get your heart right with Him. And He'll even give you the wisdom, James chapter one, to figure out how to navigate that. We know that there are relationships that will never be mended because of the other side. We understand that, but we need to do all we can to make things right. He says in this passage of Scripture, not only draw near to God, but truly repent of your sins. Let me read this one more time in verse eight. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your heart, you double-minded. Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourself before the Lord, and he will exalt you. Now folks, he doesn't say, just say you're sorry. He says, repent. And you know, when you listen to those words, you almost want to get on your face before God and say, God, it's me. It's me. It's my sin that is causing this conflict. It's my attitude. It is my idolatry in my life. It is my passions that are causing this. God, I confess that sin and I want to get it right. I don't want you to miss this last part of getting right with the Lord. Remember God is a grace-filled God. Look what he says in verse six. But he gives more grace to the humble. Maybe today you're struggling with friendship with the world. Maybe you're struggling with your passions. And I wish that I could say that it's one and done. You deal with it once, it's gonna be done. But I want you to know, I promise you this, that there'll be another day, maybe even this afternoon, where you're gonna struggle with those again. You're gonna struggle with conflict again. But guess what? There is grace. to anyone who is humble before the Lord, who is humble before his family, who is humble before the other person that we have wronged. Friendship with the world causes conflict. Submission to our inward passions causes conflict. A judgmental and evil words cause conflict. Look what he says in verse 11. Do not speak evil against one another, brothers. The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother speaks evil against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law, but a judge. There is only one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor? The command here in verse 11, do not speak evil against or judge your brother. You know, in this context, it seems like that these saints that James is addressing are speaking evil against each other. and they're judging others. Now folks, I wanna just talk about a little bit about judging and being judgmental because I think here he's talking about being judgmental. We are supposed to make judgments. And I wanna just talk about that real quick because there's a difference and I wanna talk about that difference. Here he says, don't judge, but in 1 Corinthians 5, Paul judges. Look what it says. There was a man, an immoral man in the church, and he says in verse three, for though absent in the body, I am present in the spirit, and as if present, I have already pronounced judgment, there's that word, on the one who did such things. When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus, and my spirit is present with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord." Here Paul makes a judgment against a man, who was immoral in the church, and he said, you need to, as a body of Christ, the Corinthian church, you need to say, if you're gonna continue to do this, you need to come, you need to live outside this body of believers. He made a judgment there. What does it look like to make godly judgments? Jesus says, do not judge by appearance, but judge with right judgment. This means we are to judge rightly, not superficially, hypocritically. There are people living in open sin, and we need to judge those things and confront those things. In Galatians 6.1, it says, brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Judging, making good judgment means using discernment based on God's word. Sometimes we just have to say it's against God's word. This is wrong. There is time to do that. We speak the truth in love, Ephesians 4.15. We speak the truth in love. That is what we're asked to do. And we're always aiming to restore not condemn. Even Paul, his goal was to restore this man, not just to condemn this man. What does it look like to be judgmental? I think we in our minds kind of know, but in Matthew chapter 7 it says, Judge not that you be not judged, for with the judgment you pronounce, you will be judged. You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eyes. Jesus wasn't saying we should never address sin. He was warning against hypocritical and self-righteous judging when we condemn others while ignoring our own sin. This kind of judgmentalism, I'll use that word, is focusing on others' fault and ignoring our own. It embodies in a lack of grace, humility, and compassion. It elevates ourselves so we can feel like we're above others. Jesus is not warning against every kind of judging, and James here also, but against hypocritical, self-righteous, judgmental attitude. He says there is a reason why you shouldn't have this kind of attitude. The reason behind the command to not speak evil or judge others is because you take the place of God, he says in verse 11 and 12. When we speak evil and judge our brothers, we speak evil against the law, and in turn, put ourselves in the place of God. You know, I find this in my life. When I'm in odds with people, I project motive on them. You did this to me because of this. And what I know about me is I don't know why they did that. I don't know. And to be honest, I don't know all that's going on in their life. And when I am judgmental, I'm putting myself in the place of God. To speak evil of a brother and to judge a brother based on partial evidence and probably unkind motives is to sin against him and against God. We need to stay away from judgmentalism. It causes conflict. James talks about three sources of conflict mentioned in this passage. The first one is we are submitting to our inward passions. I want what I want. I want what I want. I don't, sometimes it comes out like this. I don't deserve to be treated like this. Like, I deserve that, right? It's a passion that has been crossed. We have idolatrous friendships with the world. Folks, when we, our relationship with God is severed, our relationship with man will be severed. The reason we should get up every morning and spend time with God is so that we're ready to love our wives, to love our children. We're ready to submit to those we work with. But it begins with our relationship with God. A third source of conflict is we have a judgmental heart or evil words come out of our mouth. I said this, I said, if you have something in your heart, you can suppress it for a while, but it comes out. It comes out. And you might say, well, I didn't really mean that, but it's there. It's there. How do you deal with it again? I just wanna go back to what he said already. Humble yourself before God. You know, this is what I find when I'm in conflict. I can't fix the other person, but I can fix me. With the Lord's help, of course. Humble yourself before God. Submit to God and resist the devil. Sometimes God says, go apologize, even if you don't feel like you have that much to be apologized for, but you apologize for your part, because that's what God wants you to do. Say no to Satan, of course. Draw near to God. Let me just say this, you can't draw near to God without a relationship with him. You gotta know him, you gotta know him. And I hope today, if you don't know Christ as your Savior and Lord, you would pursue that relationship with Him. I'd love to talk to you about that today after the service. I think we draw near to God, of course, by reading His Word. We draw near to God by just getting away and praying. but we need to draw near to God when we're in conflict and get close to Him. And once we get close to Him, then He will give us the wisdom on how to proceed in our conflict. He said in verse 8 to 10, I read it again, but He said, truly repent of your sin. You've heard it, you had two kids and they're fighting and you say, you apologize to your sister. And of course, he apologizes with, you know, tears and, you know, no. He says, I'm sorry. You know, I'm sorry is not repentance, right? It's not repentance. Remember, finally, that God is a grace-filled God. When it comes to conflict, you have failed in the past, you will fail in the future. And God's always there waiting for you. Always waiting for you. I don't wanna share this word without doing what I did for the second graders. Let me just say this. You're a lot easier to talk to than the second graders. I had the first and second graders all week. I'm not kidding you, I lost even more hair this week. That's a tough crowd. I mean, they were great kids, smart kids. I mean, smarter than I ever expected. But it's not me, I just want you to know. But somehow, my mouth said, I will teach in vacation Bible school. And all week I'm thinking, man, after 47 years in the ministry, you need to learn that lesson. No, I'm kidding, I had a great time. But I shared with the kids how to be saved, and I wanna share that with you. John 3.16 says, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life. The Bible says, this verse tells us what we need to know before we can be saved. That we need to know that God loved us and that he sent his son Jesus to die on the cross for us. What do we need to do? John 3.16 talks about that. We need to believe, we need to believe that Jesus Christ came to die for our sins, and that God loves us that much, and we need to receive, have everlasting life. The Bible says if we call upon the name of the Lord, we shall be saved. I told the kids this week that you need to A, B, C, you need to admit. that you're a sinner. You need to believe that Jesus Christ came to die for your sin, and you need to call upon the name of the Lord, and he will come into your life. I pray that if you haven't done that today, I pray you would. Lord, I pray, and I pray today, that if you're struggling with conflict, first go to the Lord, and then deal with your conflict. Let's pray. Father, thank you today for your word, God, thank you for the people that are here. Lord, every one of us have faced conflict in our life and maybe even came to church today in the midst of conflict. All of us have done that too. Father, I just want to pray that you would help us to stop looking at the other person and start looking at ourselves. Start trying to fix the other person and start fixing ourself with your help. In Jesus' name. Amen. I'll be in the back prayer corner with my wife after the service, love to pray with you. If you've never received Christ, I'd love to talk to you about that. Need to be baptized, I'd love to talk to you about that. Or if you just need someone to pray for you, I wanna pray for you if you would want us to do that. So let's all stand.