STUDY THEME: BEING A PEACEMAKER. 5-13-07

“ACCEPT RESPONSILITY.” MATT. 7: 1-5; JAMES 4: 1-3, 6-12.

MATTHEW 7:1-5; JAMES 4:1-3, 6-10, 11-12.

PLEASE OPEN YOUR BIBLE TO MATTHEW 7.

We learned last Sunday that the first step in “being a godly peacemaker” we must desire to please and honor God in conflict situations. Today we learn that in conflict situations, as believers, we are to accept responsibility of our attitudes and actions that contribute to the conflict; and then confessing our wrongs with a commitment to change our sinful attitudes and actions.

When adults are in conflict situations, they often blame others. They try to focus on the attitudes and actions of others and to justify their own actions. Such responses usually prolong or escalate a conflict. When maturing disciples acknowledge and accept responsibility for the part they have had in conflict, they open the door for resolution.

Conflicts can be resolved when all those who are involved confess their part in it.

Jesus told His disciples not to pass judgment on others, especially when they have unconfessed sin in their own lives. They were to remove the obstacles for their own lives before seeking to help other clean up their own lives.

Sinful desires cause conflicts between believers and affect their relationship with God. Using ten imperatives, James called his readers to submission and repentance. He warned that Christians who speak evil against others set themselves up as judges and assume a position that belongs only to God.

The three points of today’s lesson outline the answer to the Life Question; “How do I accept responsibility for my part in a conflict situations.”

1. PLEASE READ MATTHEW 7: 1-5.

In Matthew 7: 1 Jesus took the attitudes of “Judge not kingdom citizens or believers and contrasted the righteous living which He expects with the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and their followers as set forth in Matt. 5: 10.

The first example deals with prayer, then fasting, wealth, anxiety and the sixth example judging others. Critics of others must stop short of final condemnations, for men cannot judge motives, as God can. This command does not relieve believers from making moral distinctions.

There are three great reasons why no man should judge another.

1. We never know the whole facts or the whole person. Long ago Hillel the famous Rabbi said, “Do not judge a man until you yourself have come into his circumstances or situation.” No man knows the strength of another man’s temptations.

2. The man with the placid and equable temperament knows nothing of the temptations of the man whose blood is afire and whose passions are on hair-trigger.

3. The man brought up in a good home and in Christian surroundings knows nothing of the temptation of the man brought up in a slum, or in a place where evil stalks abroad.

4. The man blessed with fine parents knows nothing of the temptations of the man who has the load of a bad heredity upon his back.

The fact is that if we realized what some people have to go through, so far from condemning them, we would be amazed that they have succeeded in being as good as they are.

No more do we know the whole person. In one set of circumstances a person may be unlovely and graceless; in another that same person may be a tower of strength and beauty

In one of his novels Mark Rutherford tells of a man who married for the second time. His wife had also been married before, and she had a daughter in her teens. The daughter seemed a sullen and unlovely creature, without a grain of attractiveness in her. The man could make nothing of her.

Then, unexpectedly, the mother fell ill. At once the daughter was transformed. She became the perfect nurse, the embodiment of service and tireless devotion. Her sullenness was lit by a sudden radiance, and there appeared in her a person no one would ever have dreamed was there.

It is almost impossible for any man to be strictly impartial in his judgment. Again and again we are swayed by instinctive and unreasoning reactions to people. Only a completely impartial person has a right to judge. It is not in human nature to be completely impartial. Only God can judge.

But it was Jesus who stated the supreme reason why we should not judge others. No man is good enough to judge any other man. Jesus drew a vivid picture of a man with a plank in his own eye trying to extract a speck of dust from someone else’s eye. The humor of the picture would raise a laugh, which would drive the lesson home.

Only the faultless has a right to look for faults in others. No man has a right to criticize another man unless he is prepared at least to try to do the thing he criticizes better.

Every Saturday the football stadiums are full of people who are violent critics, and who would yet make a poor show if they themselves were to descend to the arena. The world is full of people who claim the right to be extremely vocal in criticism and totally exempt from action. We would do well to concentrate on our own faults, and to leave the faults of others to God.

2. PLEASE READ JAMES 4: 1-3.

Commenting on this passage, C. Leslie Mitton wrote: “Sometimes we tend to think that peace is the natural state of man, and that strife is the unnatural element which disturbs it. Quite the reverse is true. Strife is characteristic of human life, and where lasting peace exists in a community, it is the mark of a great work of God’s grace.”

The Bible and human history testify to the truth of this statement. Wars and rumors of wars have characterized history. Strife and conflicts occur between rival groups and individuals. Families often experience conflict and churches are not immune.

Psychologists, sociologists, and historians have tried to analyze this fighting spirit in human beings. The Bible analyzes it from a moral and spiritual perspective. James 4: 1-3 is among the key passages.

Actually the subject is introduced in 3: 13-18, which sets the stage for the question---From whence come wars and the fightings among you? Or what is the source of the wars and the fights among you? The word translated wars refers to prolonged conflicts; the word translated fightings refers to shorter conflicts, battles, or skirmishes.

The words were used of literal warfare of nations, but they also were used of conflicts and strife within families or other social groups. Thus the words themselves do not clearly identify the meaning of among you.

If James used the word you in a general way, he was giving a general account of the source of conflict. If he used the word personally, he was including strife among Christians. Perhaps he had both in mind. The focus was church people, but their conflicts are an expression of strife in society as a whole. It’s a sobering thought to realize that the words wars and fightings can refer not only to wars and battles and barroom brawls but also to church fights!

Vs. 1 has a second question, which in the King James Version is a kind of answer to the first question. Most translations see a separate second question. This question raises three questions for Bible students: (1) What did James mean by lusts? (2) Was the struggle within each person or among the members of the church? (3) Was James referring to church people or to society as a whole?

Lusts translates a word from which we get our word hedonism. The word means “pleasures,” and it often referred to lusts for sinful, sensual pleasures. However, the word can refer to the desire for just about anything. In other words, it is kin to envy, covetousness, and greed.

One nation has something another country wants, so one goes to war to get it. On a human level, consider two preschoolers at play. One has some toy that the other wants. The one without the toy tries to take away the toy. A struggle ensues.

The text of vs. 1 literally is “in your members.” Some interpreters assume that this refers to struggles among church members. They point to the Church at Corinth in 1 Cor. 1:10-11. They point out that the entire passages in James 4: 1-12 is dealing with conflict among people. They also point to contemporary examples of church fights. Other interpreters assume that James was thinking of the inner struggle of individual Christians.

Peter wrote in 1 Peter 2: 11 “Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul.”

A number of Bible interpreters have proposed a different punctuation of vs. 2a. This is possible since the original manuscripts had little punctuation. The proposed change is designed to reposition the word “ye kill.” “You lust and do not have; so you commit murder. You are envious and cannot obtain; so you fight and quarrel.” Regardless of the translation, the difficult words to explain are ye kill or you murder. These words puzzle Bible students. Did James intend to say that his readers and other Christians were murderers?

War is the fruit of illicit wants. Lust brings about murder. Covetousness results in the frustration of not obtaining the hotly pursued desires. It all leads to the “quarrels” and “fights”, that “battle” against people, mentioned in vs. 1.

One way of responding is to take James words figuratively; that is, that he was thinking of murder as something less than actual murder. Jesus broadened the sixth commandment by including abusive anger in Matt. 5:21-22. And John wrote in 1 John 3:15, “Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer.” Other Bible students believe that we should take the word literally. Human emotions can get out of hand, even in the lives of church people. Many murders are committed by people who know their victims. All too often, we are members of the same family.

Vs. 2b-3 have to do with the relation of prayer to conflict. The last part of vs. 2 deals with the spiritual source of selfish strife: “ye have not, because ye ask not.” One of the symptoms of a wrong relation with God is a failure to pray.

“You do not ask from God who gives to all liberally.” Envy is a sin against God. It flows from a lack of gratitude toward God. James probes the cause of divisions among the saints. They are caused by evil desires.

James was not saying that Christians should make selfish requests in prayers. His point was that prayerlessness is a mark of a life out of focus. True prayer seeks God’s will and the coming of His kingdom, not the selfish ambitions of the person praying.

God refuses to grant our petitions when they proceed from evil desires. To pray from wrong motives is not to pray in faith.

In vs. 3 James corrected a possible misunderstanding of what he had just written. It identifies a second fault of prayers. Many don’t pray; those who do pray sometimes ask only selfish things. God is not a genie in a magic lamp who can be summoned to give us whatever we want.

3. PLEASE READ JAMES 4: 6-10.

In James 4:6 James contrasted the sinful human spirit and the abundant grace of God. God feely gives His grace to those caught in sin’s deadly snare. James quoted Prov. 3: 34 to illustrate an important deadly snare. Prov. 3: 34 says, “Surely He scorns the scornful, but He gives grace to the humble”. Elsewhere we are bidden to come boldly to a throne of grace, that we may find grace for seasonable help.

God offers His grace, but receiving His grace depends on being humble. Proud people are not looking for God’s grace. They think they have life under control. They receive no grace because they are not open to receive any.

By contrast, the humble know they are dependent on their Creator and Father. Their trust is in Him, not in themselves. This openness to His grace enables God to pour it out to them. Submit requires a willingness to accept the authority of God. We are under His authority whether we submit to it or not. To “submit” means to obey.

That grace is given freely to all who come to God in the spirit of self-judgment, seeking the needed strength to so behave ourselves as to glorify Him. He, whose we are and whom we should ever serve, is ready always to supply the needed strength that we may rise above the allurements of the world. But we must approach His throne in lowliness of spirit, for God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the lowly,” as David witnesses in Ps. 138: 6, and Solomon likewise in Prov. 3: 34.

As with the repentant hearts we bow in submission to the will of God we obtain the grace needed to triumph over every foe. We need not even fear the great arch-enemy of God and men, the devil. We need not run in terror from his assaults or faint in fear when he seeks to overcome us. All we need to do is stand firmly on the ground of redemption, resisting Satan in the power of faith.

Notice how James and Peter agree in this as they write under the guidance of the over ruling Holy Spirit. Here James says, “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”

Peter declares: “Your adversary the devil as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour: whom resist steadfast in the faith.”

By the use of the Word and in dependence on God in prayer we become impregnable against the assaults of the evil one. The old saying is true, “Satan trembles when he sees, the weakest saint upon his knees.”

In “Pilgrims Progress,” Bunyan wrote, “It was at ‘Forgetful Green’ where he was taken off-guard that Christian was on the point of being defeated by Apollyon, but when he regained the sword of the Spirit, the foe fled.”

The only ray of hope in man’s spiritual darkness is the sovereignty of God, which alone can remove man from his propensity to lust for evil things. That God gives “more grace” shows that His grace is greater than the power of sin, the flesh, the world, and the devil.

The word “humble” does not describe a special class of Christian but encompasses all believers.

Several intensely practical admonitions follow in the next three verses. “Draw night to God, and He will draw night to you.” He never refuses to meet the one who sincerely seeks His face. Surely we can each say with David (Ps.73: 28) “It is good for me to draw near to God.”

To fail to avail ourselves of this privilege is to wrong our own souls as well as to dishonor Him who invites us to draw night.

But if we would thus approach Him we must come with clean hands and pure hearts, for He detests hypocrisy and double-mindedness. We must come, too, with chastened spirits; so we read, “Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness.

Far too long we have been careless and unconcerned. The place of repentance and sorrow for our many sins becomes us. God has been dishonored by our levity and worldliness; but as we take the place of confession and self-judgment before Him, He is ready to grant us forgiveness, cleansing, and strength for the conflict before us.

His promise is definite, and He will never retract it. He says in 1 Cor. 11:31, “Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He shall lift you up.” He will not upbraid us for our past failures, for when we judge ourselves we shall not be judged.

He is ever ready to reach out the hand of help when we come to the end of ourselves.

Vs. 10 is a series of 10 commands that reveal how to receive saving grace. These vs. 7-10 delineate man’s response to God’s gracious offer of salvation, and discloses what it means to be humble.

In vs. 10 this final command sums up the preceding 9 commands, which mark the truly humble person. “Humble” comes from a word meaning, “to make oneself low.” Those conscious of being in the presence of the majestic, infinitely holy God are humble.

4. PLEASE READ JAMES 4: 11-12.

If saints are to walk together in mutual respect and fellowship there must be no indulgence in evil speaking. So we read, “Speak not evil one of another, brethren.” To do so is to reflect on God Himself, who in His infinite love and mercy has received us all and put us into this place of holy fellowship one with another.

He is the supreme Lawgiver to whom each one is accountable.

If I pass judgment on my brethren I am speaking evil of the law and therefore reflecting upon Him who gave it. Each is to answer for himself before God. I cannot answer for my brother, or he for me. We are all alike called to be doers of the law—that is, to render obedience to the Word.

Evil speaking is in itself disobedience. So if I indulge in and speak disparagingly of my brother, condemning him for disobedience, I am utterly inconsistent, because I am disobedient also.

Each must give account directly to God “who is able to save and to destroy.” What right then have I to judge another? Paul’s words are apropos here, “Therefore, judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the heart: and then shall every man have praise of God.

Our Lord Jesus Himself has commanded us in Matt 7: 1, “Judge not, that ye be not judged.” How easily we forget such admonitions!

Including vs. 11-12 with vs. 1-10 is appropriate. How many conflicts are started by some thing bad one person says about another person? And once the fight begins, both sides say bad things about the other.

Speaking evil of others is one form of passing judgment on them. People who pass judgment on others usurp the place of the only One qualified as “Lawgiver and Judge.” As we noted in studying vs. 1-3 only God has the character and the knowledge to judge. We do not have all the facts, and we lack the perfect justice and mercy of God.

If believers submit themselves to God, they can successfully resist the Devil.

NEXT SUNDAY FROM MATT. 18, AND GAL. 5 AND 6 WE LEARN TO RESOLVE CONFLICT WITH SOMEONE BY CONFRONTING THEM IN A LOVING MANNER. altav@swbell.com http://www.theweeks.org/av