The Point 151: I invite you to stand as we read scripture this morning and begin with the word of God. James four one through ten. Submit yourselves to God. What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet, but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us? He gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says, God opposes the proud, but shows favor to the humble. Submit yourselves then to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God, and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn, and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up. This is the word of God. Praise be to God. Friends, you may have a seat. With all this talk about Christmas, let me begin with a little bit of a question. Those of you in the room who are raising kids, show your hands, 18 under. Anyone? Awesome. Everyone who didn't put their hand up, what was remember being a kid. Okay? I want you to go back that time. Maybe you're seven, maybe you're eight in your mind, okay? Who had a sibling? Okay. Now, when it comes to siblings. They sometimes get along, but mostly they what? Fight, argue, bother each other, just I I swear that's why we call them brothers, because they just drop the R. Because that's all you do is you just bother them. You just bother your brother all the time. And what happens when siblings fight? I mean, it's not all the time. It's only 129 times a day. The rest of the time they're fine. But the other 129 times a day, all they're doing is fighting and fighting, going back and forth, this, that, and the other. And when it gets a little too loud, mom or dad's in the kitchen or trying to watch Ohio State lose to USC. And let's just let's just address it and let's move on. We're heartbroken, but the playoffs will be fine. Anyways, when it gets a little too loud, mom and dad say, Hey, knock it off. Quit that fighting, right? And there's always one sibling that wants to defend themselves. Sometimes both, but at least one. It wasn't my fault, or they started it. Here's my favorite. Our eight-year-old says this about our three-year-old. She made me do it. She made you do it? Okay. And then mom and dad hit you with this classic. I don't care who started it, I'm stopping it, right? In the Holmes household, we w knew we were in trouble when Barb said this phrase. I brought you into this world. Take you out. Nothing like the veiled threat of murder to get you to straighten up and fly right. How about this one? Maybe you were in this household. Wait till your father gets home. And you're like, what what needs done? I'll clean the baseboards. I I've been meaning to put that room back together, you know, for a while. That you're trying to like soften it, well, he was, but then he, you know, he straightened up. This is what siblings do. This is what children do. This is what humans do. It might start in the sandbox, but it doesn't end in the sandbox. It goes to the senior home, doesn't it? Human beings have a way of just doing this, right? Just getting into these conflicts all time. The time, and we don't need to be taught to do it. We have a friend who has a little one. they were describing the situation. I think their little one was about 11 months old, and the 11 month old is old enough that they're mobile, and where are they most mobile towards? Towards what their older sibling is playing with. Mine, they can't even ask to go to the bathroom or their time, but they know. If they've got it, I want it. We don't have to teach kids to be selfish, right? We have to teach them to not be selfish. It just seems to be something within us that we are. Born with. It's in all of us. It is a universal truth. This is not something that is separated by any religion, culture, language, socioeconomic class. Every human being has this within themselves: that they want what they want when they want it. Right? And they have these desires within their heart. Friends, we are in the book of James. That's our fall sermon series. And here's how I've described the book of James before. Some people get it, some people get uncomfortable with it, but here's what I've been saying, because it's been my experience. James is an MMA fighter. He punches you in the throat as soon as the bell rings, and while you're gasping for breath, he jumps on you and continues punching you in the face. Before you read the book of James, you think you're a good person. And then you read the book of James and you're like, I don't even know why God lets me live. Because I have so many problems in my life that need addressed. The book of James is not mean, it is not cruel, but it is a mirror. And it doesn't sugarcoat it. What James is doing is holding up a mirror that cuts through the self-deception to say, here's what you're actually like. Might be a little better than you think, but it also might not be. It would be cruel if that's all he did. If all he did was point out our faults and failures all the time and said, Thus say it the Lord, that'd be the least popular book in the Bible. And it'd be the reason most people say, I hate reading the Bible. But that's not what the book does. What the book does is it gives us a mirror, but then it also says, here's an image to go towards. Here's a model of what works. Here's what's broken. Here's what needs to happen. In the last few weeks, I've been experiencing some car issues. Would I trust my mechanic if I said, hey, I'm having some issues, and he said, bring it in. And then he looks at it and says, Everything's fine. And then I continue to drive my car knowing something's wrong. I'd fire that mechanic. Instead, when the mechanic finds what's wrong, I might not be happy. But I'm glad they found the solution, right? Because then I'm like, okay, let's save up, let's fix it, so I got this figured out. That's what James is doing, pointing out, hey, here's where things have gone wrong. But here's the solution. So, in a few words, this is what he's doing in this passage. What he is addressing is the conflicts we experience in our relationships with other people. That how do we go from being the kind of relationships that kids have where we're like, it's their fault, they made me do it, I didn't, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, pointing fingers at everyone else. Instead, James says, look inside yourself and see if there's any. Anything that needs to be addressed, work on that. Because when we're quick to point fingers at everyone else, we're also a few steps away from cutting out everyone else. I had a friend a few years ago in high school. I just watched him churn and burn relationships. Sometimes it was justified, big deal, and sometimes it was the smallest slight of a misworded text. I'm done. I'm done with them. And never for the longest time were they willing to look inward to say, is there a common denominator here? And there are times where there is wisdom to create some distance with others. But in my humble opinion, it is often overused. Because what happens is we just say, cut them out. Be done with them. We disagree, we're done. Instead, let's look inward to say, is there something in me that I need to address? Why is it they are bringing this out of me? At the risk of becoming a prop preacher, as Pastor Chase calls me, I have a prop. Good, I'm so glad I got your approval. Imagine this container is a person. Don't you see it? It's a person. It's a person. In this scenario, you can see everything going on inside this person. Okay? Inside this person are all kinds of desires. Everything is just living within them, okay? So what might be living in them? Okay, we've got we've got some good desires. We've got some not so good desires. Let's live in some of these not so good desires. Okay, maybe we got a little bit of pride living in that person. Ooh, maybe got a little bit of jealousy living inside that person. Ooh, we got some insecurity. They don't really care for themselves very much. Ooh. Got some greed. They want a little more than they need. None of us, but you know, this person. Then, ooh, red. They kind of fly off the handle a little too much. Just they just can't really control that anger. Something they saw online, they take it out on the face. You this is all mixed up in here. This person has all this in here. They don't pay attention to it throughout the day, usually. You just kinda go about your day because it's in here, because it's contained. Are you with me? They go about their day, they go, they go, they go throughout the no problems. They're just by themselves, no problems. They might sense something a little mixed up, something a little off, but they don't think there's any problems until another person with all of their same stuff gives them a little bump. sorry. Just a little just a little you kind of mix some stuff up in them. Happens all the time. kinda had a weird interaction with that person in the conference room. Or they they kinda said something to meeting and I just ugh kinda got under my skin a little bit. Anyone? Just these little, kinda mixes it up. But then maybe you have relationships with some people and you're like, I have to see them all the time. Maybe it's a family member. It's an ex spouse. These things just keep popping out of us, and we're like, I keep getting into conflict. They are bringing out the worst in me. Ever use that phrase? And what we'll often do is say, I just need to get away from that person. And then try this on for size. If the shoe fits, wear it. The older we get, the more we say, I need to get away from all people. I don't like people at all. And I get it. World's hard. People are broken. It's very difficult. It's easy to just keep it here. And you don't have to see it spill out of you if you don't have people you're interacting with. But That doesn't address the root problem. The root of the problem isn't that that person brings it out of you. The problem is that the worst was already in you. And they just exposed it. And we don't like to be exposed, do we? Dare I say, friends, it can be a gift of God when the worst in us spills out and we see what's actually going on in our hearts. It can be a gift from God. How? Because then you know what's really going on. That's really in me. I have greed like that. I'm insecure about this? I have lust for that? I I'm greedy in this area, or I'm insecure over here. That doesn't feel like a very good gift. It is a gift when you know what to do with it. That's where we are going this morning. How do deal with The desires within us that have been broken, twisted, and marred by sin that we were born with. How do we address these and transform them to become more like Jesus? Now, some of you might be saying, Pastor, this makes sense, but we're a Bible-believing church. Where is this in the Bible? Let me point to you the third and fourth human being ever put on planet Earth. We don't call them three and four, we call them Cain and Abel. Friends, we're gonna read from the King James Version of this one. I don't think I've ever read King James in this room before, but there's just too many great words and liners in this, so that's what we're gonna read. Okay, if you have your King James Version Bible with you, feel free to open up. If not, it'll be on the screen. Here we go. This is right after being removed from the Garden of Eden, like the next verse. Okay? They are east of Eden is the direction they're moving. It says, and Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain and said, I have gotten a man from the Lord. And she again bore his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. So that's just their occupations. And in process of time it came to pass that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord. Let's pretend Cain, right here. All of his stuff mixed up. And Abel also brought of the first slings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering. So they both come before God, like that, as humans walk. And they bring an offering to God. I brought you this, I brought you this. And God says, Abel, good job. A plus, Cain. C plus you could do better. Okay? Weird. What's going on? But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect, and Cain was very wroth. Wrath, wrath. He was angry. This came out of him when he saw that his brother's offering was accepted more than his own. And the Lord said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? Why are you acting like this? Why are you feeling this way? I see everything. I know what's going on in your heart. You came to give me an offering, and I didn't accept it. Why are you upset? We're gonna talk about it in just a second. And why is thy countenance fallen? If thou dost well, shalt thou not be accepted? And if thou dost not well, sin lieth at the door. Sin lieth at the door. I'm gonna say that one more time. This coming out of Cain wasn't the sin. Sometimes we think it is. When we're angry, when we're upset, we think, I've just sinned. No. When it crosses the boundary, the line, that's when it goes into sin. God is warning him: why are you wroth? Sin is near. It is knocking on the door of your heart. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him. Other translations. You will Rule over sin. And Cain talked with Abel his brother. So he says, Okay, I just talked to God, kind of got an issue with you. Let's go talk. It doesn't go well, because here's what happens. And it came to pass when they were in the field that Cain rose up, came up out of him, and up against Abel his brother, and slew him. And the Lord said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not. Am I my brother's keeper? And he said, What hast thou done? What have you done? What have you done? The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground. What have you done? This came out of you, and I warned you, and you didn't listen, and instead you Let this rule you instead of ruling it. And now your brother is dead. Now your brother is no more. His blood lays on the ground because you didn't rule over what came out of you. Few insights. Why was God not pleased with what Cain brought versus Abel? Is God a bad parent? Who plays favorites? We know that's not true. So why is he like this offering's great? This one's not so good. It's a little hidden, but it's in the text. It says that Cain brought an offering, no adjectives needed, nothing described, just an offering. Abel brought the best. He brought what he thought God deserved. He brought God the best of what God had given him. Abel realized that everything he had in his flock had first come from God. And he says, You know what, God? I'm gonna give you the firstborn, I'm gonna give you the fattest one, I'm gonna give you the best, because this is what I think about you. And Cain says, I'm gonna give you the ordinary, because this is what I think about you. It wasn't the offering, it was the heart posture, it was behind the offering. One wanted to give God his best, the other gave God what was the rest? What was left over. The motivations were different, and that's what God's pointing out. And Abel, instead of looking inside when he's upset, when he's wroth, I'm gonna use that word at least twice today. I'm gonna find a reason to use wrath. Probably with Austin and Hannah. So one for each. But instead of saying, why are Wrath, what he's saying is you should look inside. Is there some selfishness in you? Is there some greed in you? Is there some insecurity in you where you didn't want to give me your best? You don't trust me enough. Abel trusts me, which is why I accept everything he gives me, because I know his heart. Cain, look inward. Deal with this. Instead, he doesn't deal with it, he lets it come out, and it grows into murder. Because it's easier to just cut someone out to remove them than it is to look inward and say, Is there something in me I need to address? This is the conversation that has been happening between God and every human being for all of eternity. You could take it out on your brother or sister. But your brother or sister's not really the problem. You need to look inward first. Is there something in me that is coming out when I'm butting heads with my siblings? Is there something in me that is broken when I butt heads with my parents? Is there something in me that is broken when I butt heads with my spouse or my children or my coworkers or my friends? And it's easy to say, we just, we just cut them out. But that doesn't heal this. That stays in there. It doesn't get transformed. It just gets transferred to the next relationship. On and on and on it goes. We must begin by looking inward and saying, Is there something in me that I need to address before the God Almighty? This is a difficult teaching. This is a very difficult teaching. But you can see. Now we have the problem. And it's a universal problem. I love this story of Cain and Abel because it helps me understand other people, but really me. Because I'm Cain. I'm not Abel in the story. Jesus Christ says, if you hate someone in your heart, you as good as murdered them. Well, friends, then I'm a murderer by those standards. I'm Cain by those standards. I also love this story. Of scripture because it inspired my favorite novel of all time, East of Eden. Anyone remember senior year in high school reading East of Eden? Has anyone here read East of Eden? Has anyone watched the show? Your homework for this week is to watch the movie or read the book. They're about twenty-five hours long each, so you pick. Anyways. It's the best book ever written outside the Bible. You guys just read it. So The story follows a family called the Trask family. And it's about sibling rivalry, okay? You've got Charles, who plays the Cain character, and Adam, who plays the Abel character. And these boys are pitted against each other because they have a harsh, broken, bad father. And Adam gets favored over Charles. So Charles, the one who is not favored, becomes jealous and rises up and attacks his brother Adam. Repeating the story. And then Adam grows up, he had he gets married, and he has kids. He has twin boys. And in the process of naming his twin boys, his neighbor comes over and says, Okay, let's think about some names. With your name being Adam, let's avoid, I don't know, Cain and Abel. Let's avoid those names for your kids. Instead, let's find some good biblical names. So they find Aaron and Caleb, A and C, to repeat. The generation. But in that conversation, they begin to talk about the Cain and Abel story. What is it about this story that has captured our imaginations for generations? And there is this servant named Lee, who is like the wisest voice in the entire book. And Lee speaks up after doing some deep research on the story. Like they have a fall conversation, it's incredible. Read the book. But he has this. Follow-up conversation where says, I couldn't get the story of Cain and Abel out of my mind because it seemed to be the human story. It seemed to be the story of the world. And if we can understand what's going on between Cain and Abel, we can understand ourselves, we can understand everyone else. So he's like, I did years of deep study, and here's what I've come to find. I read every translation of the Bible on it. I went to the Hebrew, I talked to the monks, and here's what I've discovered. I'm gonna put it on the screen, because this is the meat of the conversation that we need to look at when it comes to our relationships. Lee says it like this. It says, Lee's hands shook as he filled the delicate cups. He drank his down in one gulp. Don't you see, he cried, the American Standard Version orders men to triumph over sin, and you call sin ignorance. The King James translation makes a promise, thou shalt, meaning that men will surely triumph over sin. But the Hebrew word, the word Timshul. Is thou mayest. The word that God said to Cain is Timshul. Thou mayest triumph over sin. That gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world that says, the way is open, that throws it right back on a man. For if thou mayest, it's also true that thou mayest not, don't you see? When these things come out of us. You may triumph over sin, but you also may not. It's a choice. You have to choose what to do when these things come out of you, when greed comes out of your heart, when jealousy, when insecurity, when all of that junk comes out. You have a choice. Stuff it back in and avoid everyone, and it stays in there, or deal with it. The conversation I will be having with John Steinbeck in Heaven is this. I know you all came to church curious what the pastor is going to say to John Steinbeck in heaven, but here it is. We have the choice, but not the ability. We have the choice, but not the ability. Because the Apostle Paul points out correctly that each of us is dead in our sin, enslaved to our sin, unable to do otherwise. This is why the gospel message is that Jesus entered into the world, not to make bad people good, but to make dead people alive. That we were enslaved to the things we didn't want to do. And they were leading us astray from God. Instead, He came and gave us a new heart, transformed our desires from the inside out, saying, You want this, but you can't control it. You don't have the ability. You're choosing it, but I have the ability. So the actual choice isn't to triumph over sin or not, it's to say, I trust the one who already triumphed over sin. That's the choice. When all this comes out of us, we can either stuff it back in or say, God, what is this? Where did this come from? I don't want this in my heart. I need to give this over to you. I don't want to be a greedy person. I don't want to be a jealous person. I don't want to be insecure. I don't want to be anxious. I don't want to feel all this. Help me. That's the choice. That's what the scriptures say. We come to Him as we are and say, Heal me from the inside out, make me new again. Some of us think that the solution is to do what I just did, just empty ourselves. Well, I just won't want anything. That's Buddhism. That's not Christianity. God gave us our desires, they're good desires. But they've been warped by sin and normalized in a broken world. Instead, we take our desires to God and we say, Will you transform them? Will you make me like you? I don't want to get rid of these desires. I want them to become in line with you. I want your heart. I want to see people the way you do. I want to treat them the way you've treated me. And then, as a Christ follower, When you've got that heart that's being renewed and you're going about your day, you might not even notice all that God's done in your heart until you have a conflict. And then what comes out of you is Jesus. What used to come out of you maybe was wrath. But when you give your heart to God, what comes out of you is forgiveness and patience and gentleness and grace. Hey, I used to be like that. I used to be like you, but now I can't get him out. Now, what comes out of me is Jesus. Have you noticed, friends, that conflicts and pain and problems bring out the worst in people, but they can also bring out the best in people. Have you ever had someone in your life when you're like, I don't know how they're doing that? How are they praying for their enemy like that? How are they trusting God through cancer? How are they forgiving their ex-spouse? How are they because their heart's been transformed? They've been made new. That's the trick. If you can transform the heart, everything that comes out, even in a conflict, is of Jesus, not of yourself. So the question is: will you trust him? Will you trust him? That's the choice. And you say, Pastor, then how do we do this? Like I said, James doesn't leave us guessing. James 4, verses 7 through 10. Here's what you do when you realize your heart's a mess. Seven through ten. Submit yourselves then to God. Resist the devil. He will flee from you. That sin that's crouching at the door won't remain. Come near to God. He'll come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners. Purify your hearts. Desire what God desires. Grieve, mourn, and wail, change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord and He will lift you up. Why such sad language? It's not because God wants us walking around all depressed all the time. Here's the thing: when we see this stuff come out of us, God says it's not a laughing matter. It's not something to take lightly. It's something to say, God, I don't want this. I'm gonna take this seriously. If I don't rule over sin, it'll rule over me. But God, you conquered sin. So I'm giving it to you because I don't want to conquer me. It's not a joke. It's not a laughing matter. It's not cute. It's not a personality trait. It's something to get out of you. Would you say to your to your doctor who discovered cancer, you know, it's just a part of me. It's been there for so long. No, it's killing you. It's poison. You would want it out by any means necessary. That's what James is saying. When it comes out of you, bring it to God. What a gift that when it sprouts out of you, you're like, pull it out by the root, because I want this. I want my heart to be clean, made pure, made new. That when I bump into people, I'm not just taking all my anger out on. I'm not taking all my frustration out. I'm not getting insecure. I'm not doing any of that stuff. I'm just giving them Jesus. I'm giving them grace. I'm giving them love. It's a gift when it comes out because that's exactly where you can say, do your work in me. Make me new. Make me brand new. I want to be more like you, Jesus. I want this out of me. The question, we'll put it on the screen, is will you allow God to change you? That's the choice. Or do we want to just keep doing this? Stuffing it back in. Will we allow God to change us? Pain, tension, conflict, suffering can bring out the worst in us or the best in us. But the choice is ours to give it to Him or keep doing what we're doing, to choose to be redeemed by grace, to choose to be made new. That's what we can choose. Humble yourself. Submit to God. He's the only one that can do it. Here's maybe your prayer. God, I want to want this. Ever prayed that prayer? I want to want this. I know it's not good, but I still want it. I want to want what you want. It's a very acceptable prayer. Draw near to God, He will draw near to you. That's what the passage says. Then and only then, when you have those conflicts with other people, everything downstream of your heart being changed will be different. What comes out of you will be Jesus over and over and over. And what a testament that is. When we react different than the rest of the world, because our hearts have been changed from the inside out. In short, What we're doing is we go from this to this because what first happened is we bumped into Jesus. And what came out of him was grace and forgiveness and love and mercy. He didn't treat us the way we treat other people who wrong us. He didn't cut us off. He didn't exile us to hell. He didn't send us off to hopelessness. What came out of him was love and sacrifice and joy, and now that's in us, and we give it to others. We are a reflection of what God has done in our hearts. That's the prayer. That's the choice. So, with that being said, friends, here is our prayer for this morning. We're going to put it on the screen. What desires or attitudes in our hearts might God be asking you to surrender to Him? What keeps crashing out of you? God, I need work here. I need to give it to you. I can't seem to get control of it. I trust you with it, Jesus. Give it to him. And he is faithful and true to make you new. Let us pray as we prepare our hearts for communion this morning. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we're thankful for this mirror. It's painful. But if it leads to freedom. That's what we're after. If it leads to repentance, repentance, repentance leads to healing, that's what we need. We need you, Jesus, to do what only you can do. So we give you our hearts, we give you our desires, we give you what's broken, asking you to make it new. And when we come to the table, we come as we are, not as we should be. We come broken, messed up, and needy, and we know those are your favorite people to work with. We love you, Lord. True name we pray. Amen.