James 3:13 - 4:10
Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.
What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”? But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.
We continue in James this week a book that explores how the message of Jesus impacts our everyday lives, while the text talks about all kinds of things, it's central message focused on the relationships and commitments that we are called to practice as the church. Some I wonder, Is it really necessary to focus our message on this? But if you really think about it, we realize that true connection real fellowship in a church or in any community, no matter how nice it looks on screen or in theory, isn't always easy. It certainly doesn't happen on its own. It requires effort and willingness to commit to what it takes to nurture that connection, and that's what we're going to be talking about this morning. Let's start by remembering the importance of Christian Fellowship. Verse 18 says in a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. What is James talking about here? Righteousness is a special word in the Bible. To be righteous, justified is to have been declared reconciled with God, and this righteousness, this reconciliation with God, also affects our relationship with our neighbors. Now that we have been reconciled with God by Jesus, we seek reconciliation with others. We try to make peace with our brothers and sisters. In Christ, to make this point, James uses this metaphor of a crop in seeds, in fruits, in harvest, the harvest of our righteousness, He says, The fruits the consequences of being reconciled with God becomes a seed called peacemaking. Christ for us, Christ in our lives, generates a seeding that makes us work for unity, harmony, building bridges, dialogs and relationships. Again, the importance of this we live in individualistic societies today. It's ingrained within us, me, me, me, I am. I decide the problem with this is that it doesn't work because we have been created by God to be social, to live in community, to depend on others. Nobody is isolated. No one is an island. How many of us maybe haven't said, especially as teenagers, I won't be like my father, I won't be like my mother, like this family, like these people, and for a while we live this illusion. The older we get, the more we realize the profound influence they have on us, how community impacts someone, and it's the same in our faith, after God's word and after the sacrament and alongside them, nothing has more powerful power, according to Luther, than the fellowship we experience here. Here someone could raise their hand right now and say, But Pastor, I've been going to church since I was I was a child, and I haven't felt this power of fellowship. I don't think I have why. I could say that it may just be our superficial perception that deep down, and sometimes we don't realize it, but we have, we have experienced the power. We have been tremendously influenced and blessed, and we also have influence and bless others. Uh, or I could say too that maybe, if we haven't experienced this, maybe we write, but the problem lies with us, because when the Bible talks about fellowship in the body of Christ, in the church, and the Bible talks a lot about it. The Bible doesn't talk about coming to church, sitting down, getting up and maybe having a coffee and living and that's it. Oh. The Bible talks about confessing our sins to one another, encouraging one another, investing your time and your life, in your care, in your love, on one another, counseling one another, eating with one another, sharing our blessings with one another, honoring one another. And the list goes on and on. There's no There's no single book in the New Testament without his expression one another. Maybe you've seen every page, and we cannot do that just by coming to church. It's more than that. It takes commitment, it takes generosity, it takes courage, it takes risk. And I know your pastor and your pastors have always invite you to this kind of community. And I know that this congregation facilitate as more as she can these things, and this is what the sacrament of holy supper is all about too. As we allow ourselves to practice this type of fellowship, it's impossible not to be blessed by the power and the beauty and the grace of fellowship, Christian Fellowship. So what hinders Christian Fellowship? According to James in chapter four, he talks about two main causes. The first one we see in the very beginning, what causes quarrels and what causes fights among you. It is not this that your passions are. Are at war within you you desire and do not have. So you fight and Quarrel. James is talking about us when we want something only for ourselves. We are obsessed with our pleasure, my comfort, my convenience, my preferences, my control is more important than anybody else. My needs are more important than the needs of the people around me. I am here to get the music that I want, the coffee that I want, the type of Men's Ministry that I want, the type of preaching and pastoring that I want. I am here to get what I want, and you are here to serve me your life for mine. And we fall into this all the time, because it's in our sinful nature, my brothers and sisters, and because it's in our sinful nature, trying to fight this, putting the needs of other people in front of ours feels like a sacrifice, like a small death, death death of my time, death of my privileges to let someone else. Preference be prioritized, when we forgive someone in church, when we volunteer our time, when we are part of our team trying to organize something when we don't insist on getting on our own way. These are like small deaths, like sacrifices, the number one barrier to Christian Fellowship, according to James, everybody is fighting like the disciples in the Gospel to be number one, to be the greatest, and the second cause is what James talks about here in verse six. God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Pride is our pride
that makes us more aware of other people's fault than our own. Is our pride that leads us, when we speak of the sin of others, to have an air of satisfaction and disdain you kneel. Reality means that when we speak of someone else's fault, we do that with compassion and mercy. Is our pride that leads us to distance ourselves from the people we criticize or who criticize us. Humility makes us to remain close, even when the relationship is difficult, because we don't want to give up on them. Pride is the first enemy of true fellowship, says James, pride can make us too convinced that we know everything about everything is pride that makes us want to be right every time and win every argument, and all of us have those tendencies. How can we repeat of this daily and let the Holy Spirit in us so we can bear the fruit of peacemaking and be someone who comes to church and is a member of a church eager to fight for peace and unity and fellowship. How can we face these barriers? That's my last point, there are two things in our text that help us to fight these barriers. First of all, right, after James talks about pride and humility, he says, submit to God, but resist the devil, and he will flee from you, the devil. You heard me right. The devil does not only attack us individually, but he attacks Christian Fellowship. He is involved in fights, in quarrels and misunderstandings in our communication with one another and grudge he is on he the devil is on provoking our snobbish attitude. He is on provoking our hypersensitivity to being offended by anything he is the middle of provoking us to come to church, demanding, where are my rights? Resist sister, resist brothers, because this comes from hell. Have no doubt when you are struggling to get involved in the church, to relate with one another. The devil is behind it. He knows how powerful community can be. He knows that is much harder to keep you off the path if you are connected, surrounded and protected by the body. Resist the devil. Resist the devil because he's not greater than the Holy Spirit who lives in you. Resist the devil and watch this Holy Spirit produce in you, the fruits that James talks about, humility, gentleness, patience, courage, commitment, a desire to participate and contribute in the church, resist the devil and witness the Holy Spirit. Produce the fruit of repentance daily, that, as James says, makes us to weep for our sins, that we cause against communion, for the toxin that we spread when we fail to spread the perfume of Christ. The other thing that James is going to tell us, in order to face these barriers, the most important thing that prevent Christian communion, is to remember that the source of our strength is God's love for us. Where does James says? Says this pastor pay attention to this verse is the hardest place in the text of all the serious words that James uses to encourage us to live our lives in peace with one another. He gives a severe rebuke to the church. He calls the church, you adulterous people. You see that James is touching in one of the greatest. Themes of the Bible, how God loves us, not just the way a shepherd loves his sheep, how God loves us, not just the way a father or a mother loves their child, how God loves us, the way a husband loves his wife. God is our husband, spiritually speaking, and when we sin, when we are harmful in the church, when we don't create fellowship, that is spiritual adultery, we are the unfaithful wife towards our husband. That's why God is jealous of us, by the way, it says in the in the verse, and he's jealous of a husband who longs to have the love of his beloved. The Holy Spirit has called us, through our baptism, to be part of God's family, and when we don't value this family. When we don't show peace in this family, we are saying to the Holy Spirit, to Jesus, to the Father, to the Trinity, I don't want this relationship. I don't want to be in the family. I don't want this marriage. I am alone, not married to God alone. We are not married to God. I am not God's bride. Together, we are God's bride. The church is God's bride. Together, we are also the adulterers. We have all sinned against the family. We all have failures in communion, fellowship. We all deserve to be abandoned, divorced. But what has our groom done? Has he divorced us? What did the love of God, our husband do for us. James says it came from heaven. James says the wisdom comes down from heaven. Jesus is the Wisdom, you see, our bridegroom came from heaven, embodying sacrifice, the death that is necessary to create community. He lost control, he lost his independence, he lost his preference and privileges and his power. He lost his life so that we could have ours back, so that we could have been forgiven by our spiritual adultery. Here we are. It's my life. Where are my rights? And then Jesus looks at us and says, Oh, that's it. No, he says, it's my life for you, and that's how you should live your life, as well as I gave my life for you. That's the size of the our guru's love. Now you go and you come to Sunday worship service, or you come to every meeting and every thing that you have with your brothers and sisters. You show up with this attitude, my life for yours. Before Jesus, Christ died on the cross on mounted Thursday, Jesus prayed to God, knowing how difficult it would be. He prayed, and he still prays today, for us to live in fellowship, to live as one in the prayer. He said, John, chapter 17, I have done, Father, the work that I needed to do. Now, Father, may the disciples be one as I and you are, so that the world may know that you send me in that you love them as you love me, the beauty of that may they know, Father, that because of what I have done, you not only love me, you love them. We are treated by God, adulterers as we are as faithful,
because Jesus died in our place. That's the extent of God's love for you. That's what you get when you trust him. Let this soften your heart. Let this renew your commitment to first Lutheran Church. Church. Let this renew your seeds of peacemaking among one another. Let it take fruit the blessing of being together.
Amen,
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