The Peace-Stealers - Part B

We are the bride of Christ.

He is the bridegroom of the church. So if you're a friend of the world, if the world is more important and the values of the world are more important to you, you are making yourself an enemy of God. There's one main cause for all the strife and conflict we see these days. Connect with Skip Heitzig today as he gets to the root of the war among and within people and shares how you can find peace from that conflict. But first, we want to let you know about an opportunity for you to visit the ancient land of the Bible. Take a trip to experience Israel, not just the historic landscapes and delicious food, but the spiritual significance. In 2022, you have the opportunity to join Skip and his wife Lenya to worship and study God's Word in the very places Jesus taught, preached, and healed.

Find out more at inspirationcruises.com. Now, we're in James chapter 4 as we dive into the teaching with Skip Heitzig. One thing about D.L. Moody that people noted, he was not a polished speaker. He was not a highly educated individual like a lot of clergymen at the time were.

He's sort of like a simple person, packs a punch, you know, street level kind of a guy. So, he didn't always say things perfectly and people noted that and often criticized him because of that. Now, he was not naive. He understood that people were talking smack about him. So, he addressed it.

Look at what he said. You may find hundreds of fault finders among professed Christians, but all their criticism will not lead one solitary soul to Christ. That's powerful. I never preached a sermon yet that I could not pick to pieces and I find fault with. I feel that Jesus ought to have a far better representative than I am, but I've lived long enough to discover that there's nothing perfect in this world. If you're waiting until you find a perfect preacher or a perfect church, I'm afraid you'll have to wait till the millennium arrives. First of all, can I just make note that he believed in a millennium, literal millennium.

Way to go D.L. Moody, old dead guy that I really like. But what he's saying here is powerful. Here's what he's saying. He's saying, look, they're criticizing. I'm evangelizing. They're pouting. I'm preaching. They're using their words for evil. I'm using my words for good. And that's why I say use your mouth to heal and not to hurt. We could do that.

We could decide we're going to do that. He said, well, no man can tame the tongue. You're right, but you're filled with the Holy Spirit. You're filled with the Holy Spirit.

This can happen. You could use your mouth to preach the gospel. You could use your words to encourage people.

You could use what you say to bless, to instruct, to equip, to inspire. So that's the war among us, but there's a second war. In fact, the reason for the first war is because of the second war, and that is the war inside of us. Let's look at what he says. He says, where do wars and fights come from among you?

We already went through that. Now he answers it. Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? Now when he uses the term in your members, he's not saying in your church members. He's talking about in your body, the bodily members of your person, the different parts of your body, your makeup, that are vying for attention and affection.

That's what he's talking about. And then he continues, you lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight in war, yet you do not have because you do not ask.

You ask and do not receive because you ask amiss that you might spend it on your pleasures. Let me sum that up and then pick it apart. Here's the summary. The reason there's a war among us is because there's a war inside of us. It's the war inside of us that is fueling the fires of the wars among us. That's what he is saying. The war inside the heart was fueling the war inside the church.

That's the real source. So just keep this in mind. If you're struggling with other people, that struggle could be generated by the struggle within you.

Some of you have no clue what I just said. You're going struggle within me. I don't have a struggle with me. I love me.

I'm not struggling with me. I love me. I'm my own best friend. I love me. I'm my own best friend. I get along fine with myself.

I give me whatever I want. Bingo. Therein lies the issue. Because you'll notice in verse one the word pleasure. Do they not where do these things come from?

Where does the war among us come from? He says do they not come from your desires for pleasure? Very interesting and important word. The word pleasure here is the word heydanon. And heydanon is the word from whence we get our word hedonism. Ever heard of hedonism? A hedonistic person? It's a philosophy of life that says my personal pleasure is my highest goal. That's hedonism. I live for pleasure. A pleasure seeker. Now I'm going to push the pause button.

Okay I'm pausing the sermon because I want to say something before we get back into this. There's nothing wrong with pleasure per se. God created us with a very amazing intricate nervous system with pleasure receptors so that we would find enjoyment in life.

He did that. That's how we are created. So there's nothing wrong with enjoyment. There's nothing wrong with pleasure per se. There's nothing wrong with say enjoying a fine meal together or a day in the sun where you feel like on a day like this oh I feel so good that warmth on my skin.

You don't have to feel guilty because of that. A nice barbecue in the backyard with friends and family. A golf game especially when you're hitting it really well and you're finding pleasure and that's like wow it went right down the fairway.

It's so good. A healthy sex life in the covenant of a marriage relationship. God created you to enjoy those things. But when those desires become the passion of your life that is they drive us they control us so that life is one continuous search for pleasure.

That's a problem. It's a problem when we become like what Paul described in 2 Timothy chapter 3. Those people who are lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. When we become like the seed sown that Jesus spoke about in Luke chapter 8 and he said that they were choked with the pleasures of this life. Or when we become like what Paul described in Titus 3. Those who are enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures.

You get the idea driven by, enslaved by, controlled by. Okay now pause button off. Let's go to verse 1. Look at the second part of it again. Do they not come from your desires for pleasure?

Now notice this. That war in your members. The pleasures are waging war inside of you.

Those pleasures are like little rebel soldiers demanding satisfaction and when they do not get satisfied they declare war. That's the war inside you. When a person is victimized by their own desires their inner life becomes a battleground. And when that happens relationships around them get hurt. Because people at that point are collateral damage. It's like I'm sorry but it's all about me right now.

I'm sorry that you I'm hurting you but really I want to get my pleasure fulfilled. See so when you are that focused people around you don't matter. And so you have diminished their importance and they get hurt. So the war inside of us is what is causing the war outside of us, among us. But look at verse 2 now. He gets a little heavy.

You know James is up front kind of like D.L. Moody just in your face kind of a preacher. But he says this, you lust and do not have. Look at the next sentence. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. Okay whoa. That's sort of a shocking statement.

Imagine having your Friday morning ladies Bible study group. Gather them all in your home and go well good morning murderers. It's like what? What did you just call me? So he is he's calling them murderers. What does he mean by this? Well most people think it's a metaphorical statement. Just like Jesus said if you hate your brother you've committed murder. He could be that. I'm not going to disagree with that. But some scholars actually believe that he was not being metaphorical.

He's being actual, being literal. That there was a case of a church where somebody killed another church member. It became known. It became a scandal. And one of the reasons that caused James to want to write this general letter was because of incidents like that. That's a possibility. I don't know.

I can't tell you. I can tell you that if you were to look up in your Bibles of the life of King David, the man after God's own heart. There's a record of how he treated a woman named Bathsheba and her husband named Uriah the Hittite. And if you go look at that story it is almost word for word verse two and three.

An adulterer, a murderer. It's like he acted these verses out in real life. Whatever the case, James' point is taken. The struggle inside of you is real. But that real struggle is ruining relations around you and ruining your testimony for the gospel. It's all about, you know, I want this and I want this. And if I'm not getting what I want. So if you get five people together and they all want what they want only, there's going to be a war in that room. Is that right?

There's going to be a war in that room. I read an article this week I wanted to share with you. There's a biologist from Purdue University named William Muir.

Purdue is in Indiana. He's a biologist and he was doing an experiment or doing research on chickens, which I know it's a foul thing to research. But I wanted to see if you're listening and you are. Chicken foul.

Good, good, good, good. You're tracking. Okay, so he's studying chickens and he decides to find out how they reproduce over time. So he divided these chickens into two groups. Let's call group number one the average chicken group. And let's call group number two the super chickens.

And I'm going to give you a little warning. And let's call group number two the super chickens. The super flock. So he found chickens that were extraordinarily individually productive and put them all in the same group. And just put regular chickens in the other group. And watched them over six generations.

So after six generations of reproduction, this is what he discovered. The first group did just fine. They were plump, fully feathered. Their egg production increased.

All good. What about the second group? What would you imagine? What he discovered is that all of the chickens in the second group except three were dead. They killed it.

They pecked each other to death. Now I see a corollary. Sometimes that happens.

You get a bunch of super achievers together, right? Because it's like, no, no, no. My plan's better. Oh, no, no. You're an idiot. My plan. You're a. And it's like clash, clash. Right?

That happens a lot. So the war among us is, according to James, because of the war inside of us. Now keep following his line of thinking here because at the end of verse two he says, you do not have.

Here's something you want, you want, you want. But you don't have it because you do not ask. And the implication is you don't ask God. You don't pray about it. You're not talking to God about it. You're not asking God, should I have this?

Should I not have this? Can I have this? Verse three, you ask and you do not receive because you ask amiss that you might spend it on your pleasures. Without unraveling that too much, let me just put it to you this way. Selfishness leads not only to wrongdoing, it leads to wrong praying. Because you see, when you're self-focused as an individual, you become self-sufficient.

Self-focused people often become self-sufficient. And last time I checked, self-sufficient people don't pray. I don't need to pray. I got this. I'm strong enough. I'm smart enough. I don't need God to help me on this.

This is like easy stuff. Self-sufficient people don't pray. And self-focused people, when they pray, it's just praying sort of all about them. That's the greater point here. Now let me close this before we move on by saying, whatever it is you think you need and you want in your life, you need to understand that what God wants for you is far greater than anything you could want for yourself. So when it comes to just enjoying life and having pleasure, keep that in mind.

Number two about that, even if following Christ is hard sometimes, the very worst that God has for you is better than the best that the world has for you. It is. It's better.

It's a better plan. So the war among us is caused by the war inside us, but there's a third war, and we're going to close with this, and that is the war above us. And oddly, often this really is the issue of war. It's because people are fighting God. So look at verse four, adulterers and adulteresses. Again, thank you, Pastor James.

God bless you too. Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever, therefore, wants to be a friend of the world and makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you think that the Scripture says, in vain the Spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously, but he gives more grace.

Therefore, he says, God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Therefore, submit to God, resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Do you know that a person can declare war on God? You say, oh yeah, unbeliever can. Sure, unbelievers shake their fist to God all the time.

No, no, no. He's writing to brethren, speaking to fellow believers. You can declare war on God.

You want to know how? You can declare war on God by getting too close to God's enemy, fraternizing with the enemy. When you move from God toward God's enemy more and more, you are in effect making God your enemy.

You're declaring war on God. And the enemy he's speaking of here is not only the devil, but he mentions the world. The world. You probably know, I hope, that when the Bible talks about the world, it's not necessarily referring to the world of people. We're to love them. Not referring to the world of plants and animals.

We're to enjoy them. It's the world of ideas. It's the system of values that is opposed to the values of God and his kingdom.

That's the world. To be a friend of this world. And notice that he compares friendship with this world to adultery.

And why would he do that? Well, simply because we're married to Christ. Romans chapter 7 says that we are married to Jesus Christ. We are the bride of Christ.

He is the bridegroom of the church. So if you're a friend of the world, if the world is more important and the values of the world are more important to you, then you are making yourself an enemy of God. So this begs the question, how do I know I'm a friend of the world?

Well, I've jotted down a few general ideas. You know you're a friend of the world when your personal pleasure is more important to you than spiritual pleasure. If that's happening, if you're tending toward that, pretty good indication you're a friend of this world. You know you're a friend of this world when you care more about what unbelieving friends and family think about you than what God thinks about you or knows about you.

I'll put that a better way. You know you're a friend of this world when you care more about what unbelieving friends and family think about you than what believing friends and family think about you. And you know you're a friend of this world when you disregard Scripture. Twice in this passage James is quoting Scripture. He's referring to Old Testament passages. But if you're the enemy of God, or if you're hostile toward God, you don't care what he has to say in his word. That's not important. You disregard it. Yeah, okay, the Bible's a book God wrote. It's important.

Tell me what it means from time to time. I'll listen to it every now and then, but they disregard it. So what's the solution? The solution is verse 7. I love it's so simple. Therefore, here it is, submit to God. Isn't that simple? It's not complicated.

It's not easy, but it's pretty straightforward. Therefore, submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. He's writing to a group of people that have resisted God and submitted to the devil. Now he's saying turn that around. Submit to God and resist the devil.

Submit to God because God is fighting for you. Now I want you to look at verse 5. We're gonna close with this. I'm done.

Almost. Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, the Spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously. Now the idea behind that verse is simple. It's this, God is passionately pursuing you. He's put his Holy Spirit in us because he jealously desires a relationship of intimacy with us. That's his heart.

And he proved on the cross he was willing to go to any extent to rescue you. So if you don't mind, I'm gonna close with a movie clip. Can I do that? I know it's like, I know it's church. Maybe I shouldn't do that. I'm gonna say something.

Maybe you don't want me to say this. I'm gonna talk about a favorite movie. Maybe a preacher shouldn't have a favorite movie, but I'll tell you why. This is one of my favorite shows. It's about a father who loves his daughter so much nothing will stop him from rescuing her.

And that to me is the heart of God. So in 2008 this movie came out. It's called Taken. Liam Neeson was a CIA operative and he finds out that his daughter is abducted by child, by sex traffickers in Paris, in France.

And they're gonna sell her. So he flies all the way over to France, inspects the crime scene. Now he's a CIA guy, ex-CIA guy. So he knows his stuff.

He inspects it, finds his cell phone, makes contact with the abductors, and has this conversation. I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you are looking for a ransom, I can tell you I don't have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career.

Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you. I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you. I will find you. And I will kill you. Good luck. Yeah, yeah, good luck.

They need good luck. You know how the movie ends. He finds his daughter, rescues her. He's beaten up. He's bloodied. But he rescues his daughter. His daughter collapses in his arms and says, Daddy, you came for me. And he said, I told you I would. That's the commitment of a father. And I, and look, I'm not advocating take the law into your own hands and go kill people by them.

Obviously. But any daughter would love to have a father like that who will stand up for her and protect her and go to the ends of the earth for her. So I did that because that's that's a picture of this verse. God's jealous love for you is I'm willing to take on the devil and all his thugs and go to the cross and get bloodied and beaten because I love you.

I love you. That concludes Skip Heitzig's message from his series Give Peace a Chance. Now we want to share about a special resource that gives you incredible insight into what's going on in the Middle East and why it matters for you. New York Times best-selling author Joel Rosenberg is now based in Jerusalem and he's releasing the new nonfiction book Enemies and Allies.

I've traveled with Joel to Middle East cities to meet with kings and crown princes. We sat together on the east lawn of the White House for the signing of the historic Abraham Accords and I previewed his new book Enemies and Allies. I can tell you it contains never-before-published quotes from behind closed-door meetings with some of the most powerful and mysterious leaders in the Middle East. You will want to read this book. Enemies and Allies by Joel Rosenberg includes insights and analysis from the author's conversations with some of the most controversial leaders in the world.

This is the first book of its kind. Almost nobody's ever had that chance to not just meet one of these major leaders but to meet almost all of them and then they get to tell the story in first-person language. Come with me into the palace into the motorcade and come meet the most interesting consequential and controversial leaders in the entire Middle East.

Enemies and Allies by Joel Rosenberg includes insights and analysis from the author's conversations with some of the most controversial leaders in the world. We'll send you a hardcover copy of Enemies and Allies as thanks for your gift of $35 or more. To give, visit connectwithskip.com or call 800-922-1888. Hearing the good news of Jesus can make an eternity of difference for someone who's never heard it before. Jesus calls you and me to take that good news into the world and with your gift today you can answer his call by helping listeners worldwide hear the gospel through broadcasts like the one you're hearing today. Visit connectwithskip.com slash donate to give a gift now and keep these encouraging messages coming to you. That's connectwithskip.com slash donate or call 800-922-1888.

800-922-1888. Thank you. Tune in tomorrow as Skip Heitzig shares with you about a coming time when there will be peace on earth. Make a connection, make a connection at the foot of the cross and cast all burdens on his word. Make a connection, a connection. Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.