JAMES: What Causes Arguments?
JAMES
What Causes Arguments?
September 4, 2022
I. The cause of arguments:
James 4:1 - What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you?
Three Desires
A. The Desire to
James 4:2 - You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God.
James 1:17 - Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.
B. The Desire to
James 4:3 - When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.
Spend means: completely use up
Pleasures means: thrill of the moment
C. The Desire to
James 4:1 - What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you?
Desires means: Pleasures, from which “hedonist” and “hedonism” are derived.
The desire to fulfill these pleasures comes, of course, from selfishness, which is opposed to God and the Word of God.
Proverbs 13:10 - Pride only breeds quarrels…
Why Aren’t Our Desires Fulfilled?
James 4:2-3 - You want something but don’t get it… 3 When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.
*We don’t
James 4:2-3 - …You do not have, because you do not ask God. 3 When you ask, you do not receive…
*
… because you ask with wrong motives…
*
James 4:4-6 - You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. 5 Or do you think Scripture says without reason that the spirit he caused to live in us envies intensely? 6 But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”
Adulterous people means: He is not talking about sexual but spiritual infidelity.
Friend means: To describe intense and deep affection for the evil world system.
World means: It refers to the self-centered, godless value system of fallen mankind.
II. The remedy for arguments:
James 4:6, 10 - But he gives us more grace…10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.
A.
James 4:7 - Submit yourselves, then, to God.
Submit means: To rank under
Colossians 3:15 - Let the peace of Christ rule in your heart.
B.
James 4:7 - Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
2 Corinthians 2:11 - in order that Satan might not outwit us. For we are not unaware of his schemes.
Luke 4:5-8 - The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. 6 And he said to him, “I will give you all their authority and splendor, for it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. 7 So if you worship me, it will all be yours.” 8 Jesus answered, “It is written…”
C.
James 4:8 -Come near to God and he will come near to you.
Isaiah 26:3 - You will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in you.
D.
James 4:8 - … Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double minded.
James 4:9 - Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom.
GOD’S PROMISE!
James 4:10 - Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.