Sermon Transcript 

0:00:14.0

Good morning, friends.  Last week we happened upon a subject in our study of the book of James that most of us wouldn't choose to tackle.  It is the subject of conflict.  Most of us don't like to be in conflicts.  We don't like to talk about conflict.  We don't like to get conflicted about our conflicts.  We would rather just kind of brush our conflicts under the proverbial rug, if we please.  But James does not let us do that.  In fact, he forces the topic upon us in James 4:1 by asking a provocative question.  And that question is, what is the source of quarrels and fights and conflicts among you?  James assumes that in our everyday life there are conflicts that you and I experience.  He goes right past the question, “Is anybody experiencing conflict,” right to the source of the conflicts.  And last week we took a look in the mirror, didn’t we?  And from the text of scripture James identifies the source of those conflicts as our selfish desires, number one.  That's an ouch, isn't it?  Remember, I want, I want what I can't have, and I can't get what I want.  It’s that internal conflict that goes on inside of us that may be the very source of the conflict that we might be experiencing with a neighbor or a friend or even in our marriage relationship.  And then he goes a step further.  And he says being a friend of the world and the world system may be the source of the conflict as well.  And he compares and contrasts the idea of being a friend of God with a friend of the world.  He said this- you can't be a friend of God and embrace the things of God, and then turn around and borrow the wisdom of this world and the philosophies of this world to live your life or to solve your conflicts. And then he happens upon the subject of pride, if that wasn't enough; pride and the devil.  We've gone from the flesh and the world to the devil and pride, which was the root of the devil's problems.  And this was the look we took inside the mirror, wasn't it?  And we took a hard look at ourselves and at our conflicts, and asked the question, “What is the source of those conflicts?”  And we left it kind of there.  Verse 6 introduces us to the grace of God, God's greater grace that is available to those of us who need His grace in times of conflict.

0:02:42.7

But we said we’d come back this week in a two-part series of messages titled The Truth About Conflict, having identified the fact and the truth that conflict can happen at any time, anywhere, and in any one of our lives. Now, we need to address the solutions to our conflict that James gives us in  verses 7-12. And James delivers these solutions kind of in a rapid fire away. They're short, almost terse, rather point-of-fact commands that he gives us.  We’re going to find, oh, six or seven different imperatives in these verses, commands, things that we are to do that are part and parcel of God's wisdom when it comes to resolving conflicts.  And just as we might have been a little bit surprised last week about the source of our conflicts, we might be a little bit surprised this week about how we solve our conflicts God's way.  There are six things that I want to highlight this morning from the text here.

0:03:43.3

The first is we are to submit to God's Authority.  This is where change begins in verse 7. And let's take 2 of these imperatives, two of these rapid-fire commands.  In verse 7 James says, “Submit therefore to God.  Resist the devil and he will flee from you.”  Circle the word “submit” and circle the word “resist”.  We need to submit to God and to His authority, and simultaneously we need to resist the devil, because the devil is very much about the business of stirring up conflict in our lives as we eluded to last week.  Now, these two terms, submit and resist, you may be interested to know, are military terms.  Submit certainly implies or suggests the idea of submitting to someone's authority, to the commanding officer, saluting the commanding officer and saluting the commission and placing yourself, yes, under the protective authority of the commander.  And the word “resist” here is also a military term, which carries the idea of standing against.  They need to be thought of together, submitting to God, resisting the devil.  But let's talk about both of these individually, and then see how they work together.

0:05:01.7

The word submit, friends, is one of those words in our culture that is sort of like fingernails on a chalkboard, isn't it?  We don't like to hear the word submit.  And to hear the idea of submitting to God or submitting to the human authorities in our life sort of collides with the philosophies of the world.  This wisdom from God runs contrary to the philosophy of the world, which says to assert yourself.  Don't submit yourself; no, you need to assert yourself, especially in the midst of conflict.  You need to demand your rights and assert your rights.  And James comes along here, and he says, no, you need to submit to God.  In light of everything I've just said about the source of conflicts, he says, you need to submit to God's Authority.  Now, the Bible uses the word submit in variety of contexts in the New Testament.  It tells us in Romans 13 to submit to government authorities.  It tells us in Hebrews 13 that we are to submit to the spiritual leaders that God has placed over us.  It tells us in Ephesians 5 in a very general sense, verse 21, that we are to submit to one another.  Maybe a lot of conflicts would be solved very easily if we preferred one another and submitted to one another's opinions or thoughts or ideas.  And then, of course, the most controversial use of this word in the New Testament is also found in Ephesians 5, where the Bible instructs wives to submit to their husband's authority as unto the Lord.

0:06:36.7

Now, in every one of those instances it's far easier to submit to the human authorities that God has placed under us or over us, and in doing so He places a protective umbrella over us.  When we are under authority, we are under God's protection as well.  But it's much easier to do that to the human authorities that are over us when we have submitted and yielded our wills to God Himself.  Throughout most of my ministry...and I've been in the ministry now for going on 17 years.  In every one of the churches I've served, God has surrounded me with at least one person from the military.  Now, He multiplied that many times over here at Immanuel.  And sometimes somewhere around 30% or more of our congregation is either active or retired military.  But in the previous two churches that I served, there was either a retired military person on my board or on my staff.  And one of things that I've noticed about folks in the military is that they really understand authority and respect for authority.  Something that is lost in our culture abroad.  Children have lost their respect for parents.  They’ve lost respect for teachers.  But there is something about the training in the military that really builds this character quality into a person, this idea that we're submitting to and respecting authority.  And those in the military learn you can't be over unless you learn to be under.  That's a principle in scripture as well.

0:08:20.8

Now, Jesus was equally impressed with those in the military in the first century.  Remember the time when a Roman centurion came to Jesus in a bit of a panic because one of his servants was sick and near death back in his house?  And he came to Jesus and he said, “Jesus, would you heal my servant?”  And Jesus said, “Why, of course.  I'll go with you to the house.”  And the centurion looked at him and said, “No, I'm a man in authority, and I am not worthy for you to come under my roof,” a place of authority for him.  “If You just speak the word where You are, then he will be healed.”  And the centurion went on to say, “I am a man in authority, and I have soldiers reporting to me.”  He said, “If I say to this one, ‘Go and do this’, he goes and does this.  If I say to this one ‘Come over here’, he comes over and does this.  If I say to one of my servants ‘do this’, my servant does this.”  And the Bible says that Jesus marveled at this.  I just picture Him with His jaw wide open.  And He turned to the centurion and to the disciples, and He said these words.  He says, “I have not found such faith in all of Israel.”  Interesting, isn't it, that somehow he connects faith, faith in God, with this counter-culture ability to submit to authority.  And James says the first thing we need to do as we are trying to resolve our conflicts is to place ourselves under God's Authority.  It’s a place of protection isn't it?  Wives, when you submit to your husband’s God-given authority and leadership in the home, it's a place of protection.  That's the way God designed it.  When we submit to God’s authority.  When we say to ourselves, “I'm done with trying to call the shots in my life.  But, God, I yield myself to You.  I don't know how this conflict is going to resolve itself, but, God, the first thing I want to do is humbly submit myself to You, my commander-in-chief.  And whatever You want to do, in whatever time You want to do it, however You want to do it, I'm submitting to Your authority here.

0:10:38.5 

Now, simultaneous to this, James tells us to resist the devil.  Why is that?  Well, because the devil wants us to submit to his authority, and he's working hard to start conflict in our lives.  And all the way back to the time when the devil was Lucifer himself, one of the high-ranking angels in heaven, he couldn't submit to God's Authority.  Pride got the best of him, and Lucifer fell.  Satan fell like a thousand stars in heaven falling to the Earth, and he took one third of the angelic force with him.  And now he leads a highly organized hell with demons and fallen angels.  And he's stirring up conflict and stirring up controversy.  And he wants us to submit to him.  James says as you submit to God's authority, and simultaneous to this we need to resist the devil.  We need to stand against every effort of the devil to stir up conflict in our lives. 

0:11:49.8

Hold your place here in James and turn with me to the book of Ephesians.  If you have any doubts about the devil's activity level in your struggles and your conflicts, let me eliminate some of that doubt with the words of the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 6, where he peels back the veil, as it were, and gives us a glimpse into the invisible realms of darkness.  And he says in Ephesians 6:12, “For our struggle,” our conflict…now, the translations says, “We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.”  Paul says if you think your conflict with your spouse, you're looking in the wrong place.  If you think your conflict with another person, what you need to understand is, no, the devil has picked a fight with you.  Behind the veil in the invisible realms of darkness, there is a conflict.  There is a struggle going on.  And the devil wants to destroy your marriage.  He wants to destroy this relationship.  He wants to upset this relationship in the church or in the home or in the workplace.  And as we submit ourselves to God's authority, we need to simultaneously recognize the spiritual conflict that is going on in the invisible realms of darkness.  Our struggle and our conflict is not with flesh and blood.  It's not with the other person.  Look behind all that.  Now, I'm not asking you to look for a demon behind every bush, but let’s not go to the other extreme and totally ignore the very real efforts of the devil and his minions to stir up conflict in our lives.  As you read on an equation 6, Paul used is words like be strong.  Stand firm and resist.  And how do we resist the devil?  We put on the armor of God, don't we?  Paul talks about that in Ephesians 6.  We don't have time to talk about all the pieces of the armor; but it's the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the helmet of salvation, the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God,  those gospel boots that make our feet ready and prepared to share the gospel on a given moment, and prayer.  These are the spiritual weapons that we use to fight a spiritual conflict.  And it becomes increasingly more difficult to fight that battle in the invisible realms of darkness if we are not God's authority.  So James begins by saying submit to God- as countercultural as that sounds- submit to God.  Submit to the human authority He has placed over you, is the further implication here.  And while you're doing that, stand against the devil.  Pick up your spiritual weaponry.  Clothe yourself in the armor of God, and understand where the conflict resides.

0:14:54.7

Now, he goes on secondly here to suggest, not only to submit to God's Authority, but also to pursue intimacy with God.  Let's read on in verse 8 here.  He said, “Draw near to God,” listen to this, “Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you.”  Now, those are strange-sounding words, aren't they?  The implication here is the closer we get to God, the clearer we will see, maybe, the way to resolve our conflict.  And James encourages us to move closer to God.  Now, in the Old Testament it was the high priest and only the high priest who was able to really draw near to God in the holy of holies.  And he had to cleanse himself and purify himself, and it was kind of a restricted intimacy.  But Hebrews 7 tells us that there was a better hope that came through Jesus Christ.  And as believers in Jesus Christ, we now have access to God. And we are able - and this is the phrase in Hebrews- to draw near to Him.  What a fabulous idea that is, this idea of drawing near to God.  And it seems so strange to us, doesn't it, this idea of intimacy with God.  Some of us, quite frankly, are afraid of intimacy in our personal relationships.  And so we, you know, we put up walls and barriers.  But, you know, it’s even possible to be afraid of intimacy with God.  You want to keep a safe distance from Him.  You don’t want to get too religious now, you know.  So the idea of drawing near to God is sort of strange.

0:16:37.1

When our country was founded, deists like Benjamin Franklin believed that God created the world, wound it up like a clock, and then distanced himself from creation and just let the creation and us sort of fend for ourselves.  That God was watching us from a distance, they would say.  But that’s contrary to what the scripture teaches, isn’t it?  God is near us.  He created the world.  And then we learn in the early chapters of Genesis that He walked in the cool of the day there in the garden with Adam and Eve.  Now, when he formed a relationship with the Israelites, God was intimate and personal with them.  He led them by a pillar of fire by night and a pillar of cloud by day.  He gave them a law to guide them and lead them.  He taught them through prophets and through priests.  He dwelled in a tabernacle and later in a temple.  God was near to His people.  And then you move into the New Testament, and God came near in the incarnation.  He became Immanuel, God With Us.  He took a giant step toward us because He wanted to have a relationship with us.  And so God is not watching us from a distance.  He is God With Us.  He is Immanuel.  We are the God With Us church.  We believe in the intimate presence with God and that we can have an intimate relationship with Him.  That if we draw near to Him, He will draw near to us.  But there have been times in the scripture where He took the first step and He came near to us.  But James is talking about us taking the first step here.  And there are times in the Bible where God would have us take the first step toward Him, and then He follows by moving closer to us.

0:18:23.6

Hold your place here in James and turn with me to the book of 2 Chronicles.  This might be a test of your Bible knowledge and where the books of the Bible are in the Old Testament.  You have 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles.  2 Chronicles 15, we come upon a prophet named Azariah, who has a conversation with a king named Asa.  2 Chronicles 15 beginning in verse 1.  It says, “Now the Spirit of God came on Azariah the son of Oded, and he went out to meet Asa ( 0:19:00.1) and said to him, ‘Listen to me, Asa, and all Judah and Benjamin: the Lord is with you when you are with Him.  And if you seek Him, He will let you find Him; but if you forsake Him, He will forsake you.’  And for many days Israel was without the true God and without a teaching priest and without law.  But in their distress they turned to the LORD God of Israel, and they sought Him…”  Now, listen to this, “…and He let them find Him.”  Isn’t that a great thought?  They sought Him, and God let them find Him.  Have you ever played hide-and-seek with your kids or with your grandkids?  And isn’t it fun as parents and grandparents to let your kids find you as they’re seeking after you?  This is what happened in the Old Testament.  In the book of Malachi, the prophet Malachi, the Lord says through him to the nation of Israel, “Wayward Israel, (0:20:00.0) return to Me, and I will return to you.”  Take the first step toward Me, and you’ll find Me running after you.  James picks up on that idea.  And he says, in the midst of your conflicts, this is the time to move closer to God than you’ve ever been.  Draw near to God.  You need the nearness of God and the closeness of God in your life to see through the fog and the mist that this conflict is creating, so you can see clear how to reconcile the relationship.  You need to draw near unto God.  Draw near unto Him.  And this remarkable promise- If we draw near unto God, He will draw unto us.  One author put it this way.  “Inch toward God, and He’ll step toward you.  Step toward God and He will run towards you.”  Run toward God, and He’ll pick up an F-16 and fly fast to you.  I added the F-16 part.  That wasn’t what the author says, but you get the idea.  Draw near unto God, and He’ll, in turn, draw near unto you.

0:21:11.5

There’s a beautiful picture of this in the story of the prodigal son.  Remember that famous story that Jesus told?  The prodigal had finally come to his senses, the scripture says.  And he started to go home.  And the scripture says that his father saw from a distance that his son was coming home.  And the father picked up in a gallop and ran toward him.  And when he met him more than halfway, he embraced him.  And he kissed him.  This is the picture of a heavenly father who receives home a wayward son.  It’s a great picture.  You inch toward God, He’ll step toward you.  You step toward God, He’ll run toward you.  You run toward God, and He’ll pick up and fly towards you.  I don’t know what kind of a conflict you’re experiencing right now, but this is the time to draw near to God.  Maybe this is a time to draw apart as a couple, for a season, so that individually you can draw near to God and get the mind of God and be in the presence of God.  And then come back together and see what God has taught you about the conflict that you might be experiencing right now.

0:22:22.8

So we submit to God’s authority.  We pursue this new level of intimacy with God.  And then, thirdly, we cultivate an inward purity.  These are character issues, aren’t there?  Let’s read on here in verse 8.  James says, “Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded.”  Now, up to this point James has been rather cordial and collegial with us.  He call us brethren, implication being, “Hey, brothers and sisters in Christ.”  Now, he call us sinners and double-minded people.  And he comes back to that harsh reality.  He wants us to understand the seriousness of the situation we may be facing with our conflicts.  The particular word translated sinners here implies the hardening of the heart.  And, friends, nothing has the potential to harden our hearts like unresolved conflict.  And then he uses the word “double-minded”.  It’s a term that he’s been familiar with and used before.  In James 1:5-8 he talks about if you lack wisdom, ask of God.  But ask in faith and don’t waiver like the waves of the sea, believing one minute and not believing the next minute.  That man should not “expect that he will receive anything from the Lord, being a double-minded,” or a double-souled person, “unstable in all of his ways.”  And James picks up that word again, uses it in chapter 4 here.  And in the context, the implication is a double-minded person is one who thinks he can be a friend of God and a friend of the world at the same time.  Somebody who thinks that he can come to church on Sunday and hear a sermon and go to a Bible study class, and then Monday through Saturday borrow the world’s wisdom to live life and solve conflicts.  He says “you sinners”, people whose hearts are hardened by the conflict you’re in right now.  You double-minded people who think you can be a friend of God and a friend of the world at the same time.  It’s time to clean up our act.  And, furthermore, if I could just kind of expand James’s thoughts here a little bit, it’s almost as if he’s saying you cannot act upon your selfish desires.  You cannot be a friend of the world.  You cannot think you can call your own shots.  You cannot play with the devil and be full of pride.  You can’t live a polluted life and keep a safe distance from God and expect to resolve your conflicts, let alone have life go smoothly for you.  By using these harsh terms in the context of a terse command, he’s really giving us a wakeup call.  It’s time to clean out the closets.  It’s time to clean up our acts, to cleanse our hearts, and to purify our hands.

0:25:17.0

Now, I’ve noticed these past couple of weeks our staff around here at Immanuel Bible Church is cleaning out some closets.  We’re getting prepared for the start of construction, Lord willing, in September, which is good news.  But some of our staff, recognizing the impact that the construction will have on some of the spaces that we use around here, said maybe we ought to clean out some of our closets.  And you wouldn’t believe some of the stuff that we found.  Or maybe you would, because you have a closet or two in your house or an attic or a basement or maybe a garage that is meant to park cars, but your car hasn’t seen the garage for a long time.  You know what it’s like to have clutter in a closet, clutter in an attic, clutter in a garage, in an extra room.  And the filth and the dirt that begins to, you know, pile up on that. The dust.  You know, what’s true in our houses, what’s true in our church closets, what’s true in the natural realm can also be true in the spiritual realm.  James is saying, “Hey, do you have any spring cleaning you need to do?  Are there any moral closets in your life that you’ve kept locked up over here away from anybody else to see? You’ve tried, as you will, even to hide it from God, although all things are open to Him.”  He says, “Now is the time, even in the midst of the conflict, to take inventory of your lives, to cleanse your hands, you sinners,” he says, “hardened hearts by the conflict you’re in, and to purify your hearts.”  He says now is the time to do this.

0:27:00.2

And I wrote down this little thought this week as I was thinking this through and trying even to apply it to my own life.  A clean life and a pure heart is of more use to God than great talent.  Did you know that?  We have a lot of talent in this room.  We have a lot of talent on our staff.  But a clean heart, clean hands, and a pure life is of more use to God than great talent.  Isaiah the prophet figured this out.  You know, before he became the prophet of God and spoke the prophecies from his lips, he had to clean up his lips.  David understood this, the psalmist in the Old Testament.  He said, “Before I can ascend the holy hill, I’ve got to have clean hands and a clean heart.”  And James here tells us that we are to have clean hands and a clean heart as well.  The apostle Paul in his letter to Timothy said this as well.  You don’t need to turn there, but I just want you to listen very carefully to what Paul says to timothy in 2 Timothy 2:20.  He says, “Now, in a large house there are not only gold and silver vessels, but also vessels of wood and of earthenware, and some to honor and some to dishonor.”  Just picture some of those vessels in the closets of your house.  “Therefore, if a man cleanses himself from these things, he will be a vessel for honor, sanctified…,” that means set apart, “….useful to the Master and prepared for every good work.”  Do you want to be set apart for God’s purpose?  Do you want to be useful to the Master?  You know, some of us run the risk of literally being put on the shelf ‘cause God can’t use us because our life is not clean and our hearts are not pure.  Paul said to Timothy, if a man cleanses himself of these things, he’ll be useful to the Master and prepared for every good work.  A clean life and a pure heart is of more use to God than great talent.

0:29:11.0

And so even in times of conflict, it’s time to do some spring cleaning, some moral spring cleaning.  We submit to God.  We pursue intimacy with Him.  We cultivate inward purity.  Fourthly, we maintain godly sorrow.  Let’s read on here in verse 9.  And James says some strange words here.  He says, “Be miserable and mourn and weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom.”  What is that all about?  And what a strange thing to say to a group of Christians.  You need to get that smile off your face and start to frown more.  Actually, that reminds me of a story.  First church I ever served, I remember a particular conflict that we had on our small elder board.  We were meeting at my house.  And one of the elders just turned the temperature in the room.  And he looked at me, and he says, “Pastor, you need to get that smile off your face on Sunday morning.  People are hurting out there.”  And he took the next 15 or 20 minutes to just light into me like I’ve never been lit into before.  We learned the next day that he was having an affair.  And, well, that kind of told the whole story there.  But as Christians we’re not to get the smile off our face.  I mean, a joyless Christian is an oxymoron.  Solomon said that laughter is good medicine for the heart.  And even James, when he starts his letter, James 1:2, he says choose joy.  He’s writing to a group of people who are in the midst of trials and difficulties.  And he says, “Consider it all joy, my brethren.”  Three chapters later he says be miserable and weep and mourn.  It’s like, James, what is that all about?  If you were running for political office, we’d call you a flip-flopper.  Come on now.  Choose joy in chapter 1.  Be miserable and mourn and weep and turn your laughter into sorrow.  What’s that all about?

0:31:20.9

Well, before we can ever experience the joy of the Lord, friends, we first have to experience sorrow for our sin.  This is a principle of scripture.  Before the gospel is ever good news, it is the bad news of our sinful condition before God, that all have sinned and fallen short of His glory.  And, in effect, James is asking the question, where are the tears?  Where’s the sorrow over sin?  As you look the mess that your life is and the conflict that you’re in right now, is there anything in there for which you need to sorrow for, for which you need to mourn and weep because of whatever you have done, whatever sin you might have committed to bring about this conflict.  It’s a call to repentance, is what it is.  Not unlike the call to repentance Jesus made in the Beatitudes when he says, “Blessed, blessed are those…”  Happy are those who mourn, “for they shall be comforted.”  He’s talking about mourning over our sin.  You can never truly experience the joy of the Lord apart from an initial sorrow over our sin.  And I would beg to say that any conversion to Christ, a genuine conversion to Christ, comes with a conviction of sin and a sorrow over that sin.  The danger for us as Christian is we can literally sear our conscience.  We can sear our conscience.  And we can have a, sort of, shallow laughter and a shallow joy, even in the midst of living in sin.  That’s a very dangerous place to be.  It’s not the true joy of the Lord.  It’s the shallow joy.  James says, is there is something you need to repent of to resolve this conflict?  Now is the time to do it.  Submit to God’s authority.  Cultivate an inwards purity.  Pursue intimacy with God.  Maintain this godly sorrow and repent of your sins.

0:33:24.2

And then he goes on a little bit further here.  And he comes back to the subject of humility, which we touched on last week.  He says, “Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you.”  Again, part of the contrarianism of the Christian life, you know, the world says to search yourself.  The Bible says submit yourself.  The world says be proud, be aggressive.  The Bible says humble yourself, clothe yourself in humility.  Go back to verse 6.  James begins this idea in verse 6 when he says, “But He gives a greater grace.  Therefore it says, ‘God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.’”  Grace is like a river, isn’t it?  Rivers flow downward, don’t there?  Grace flows downward to the lowly and humble of heart.  And what we need in times of conflict, as we said last week, is a measure of God’s grace.  He brings greater grace when we clothe ourselves with humility.  It’s probably going to require some measure of humility on your part and my part to resolve the conflicts that we’re in.

0:34:29.5

And then, finally, he returns to one of his favorite subjects.  And this is the matter of our tongue.  And he really encourages us to discipline our speech here.  Verse 11 and 12, “Do not speak against one another, brethren.”  He’s back to that collegial term there.  “He who speaks against a brother or judges his brother, speaks against the law and judges the law; but if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge of it.  There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the One who is able to save and to destroy; and who are you who judge your neighbor?”  Why does James return here to the matter of our speech and the tongue?  Because when you’re in the midst of a conflict, there’s no easier way to sin than by speaking against your neighbor.  And there are a lot of different ways we can do that.  We can do it by lying, through gossip, through slander that just sort of heightens itself in the midst of a conflict.  You can speak the truth about a person, but do it in a way that paints that person in a negative light, and speak against that person.  And James just says don’t do that.  When we do that we become judges.  And we break the royal law.  Do you remember the royal law?  Love God with all your heart, soul and mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.  James mentions your neighbor at the end of verse 12 there.  Who are you to judge your neighbor, to speak against your neighbor in some way?  That neighbor might be your spouse.  It might be a friend.  It might literally be your next-door neighbor.  He says don’t break the royal law and speak against your neighbor, and don’t put yourself in the place of God.  He says there’s only one lawgiver and judge.  There’s only one who is able to save and to destroy.  It’s as if to say, “There’s only one God, and, guess what?  You ain’t Him.”  And I ain’t Him either.  So let’s be careful how we speak.  Sometimes the best way to resolve a conflict is to just button our lips and just be silent and not speak against the other person.

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I don’t know what kind of conflict you’re in right now.  I said last week you’re either in one, coming out of one, or one is right around the corner.  Maybe this week, just as we raised the subject in the text of scripture, you found yourself walking into a family conflict that you didn’t expect.  Friends, take the wisdom of God’s Word and apply it this week.  Look into the mirror, give an honest assessment of the source of the conflict, and then take these rapid-fire commands that James gives to us.  Pray through them on your way to resolving your conflicts.  Let’s pray together.

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Father, thank You so much for Your Word.  And we thank You for the book of James.  Thank You for giving us, not the wisdom of the world, but heavenly wisdom that is always so much better.  Father, help us to be people of the Book.  Help us to be people who take the truth and decide to be doers of the Word, and not just hearers of it.  And, Father, I pray for my friends here as I pray for myself.  As we talk about this subject, we think of conflicts that we’re experiencing right now that have yet to be resolved.  And we ask for a greater measure of Your grace.  We submit to Your authority.  We place ourselves under your protective care.  We thank you for the armor of God that you’ve given to us. Help us to do the spring cleaning that we need to do.  Help us to move closer to You, not further away from You.  Help us to be full of that godly sorrow and that genuine humility that helps us to resolve conflicts.  And, oh Father, would You help us to discipline our tongues and not to speak against one another?  I pray that You would be glorified in every conflict that finds resolution today, next week, and in the months ahead.  And we pray this in Jesus’s name, amen.

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