Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript: “Affirm, Share, Serve—The ‘One Anothers’ in the Church Community: Its Need and Its Enemies”

**James 4:1-12**

**Pastor Dennis R. Tuuri | September 20, 2015**

Sermon text for today is James chapter 4, verses 1-12. James 4:1-12, and this is the tenth and final sermon in the series on affirming, sharing, serving—basic community building practices. And today’s topic is community: its need and its enemies. Please stand.

James 4:1-12: “Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war yet you do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive because you ask amiss that you may spend it on your pleasures. Adulterers and adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world 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. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Lament and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he will lift you up.

“Do not speak evil of one another, brethren. He who speaks evil of a brother and judges his brother speaks evil of the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law, but a judge. There is one lawgiver who is able to save and to destroy. Who are you to judge another?”

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for this text. Bless us, Lord God, by your Holy Spirit. Transform us and may the words of this text sink down deep into our hearts and spirits by the power of your Holy Spirit and transform us. We pray, Lord God, I pray specifically that this sermon may be an encouragement to the folks here who are gathered together to worship you to gather together in community groups as well and thus fulfill these basic community building practices that we’ve seen in your word. Bless us to that end today in Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.

You may be seated. So I had a birthday Friday—it was my sixty-fifth birthday. And I don’t know, maybe that’s never been a big birthday in the past, but because at sixty-five, I don’t know, someone said on my timeline I’m now eligible for Medicare. I was told by an insurance agent I had to get Medicare. So there’s a little difference between being able to and having to, but sixty-five is that magic age. It used to be retirement age. So it’s a birthday.

And here’s what I did on my birthday. I worked thirteen hours. And with the kind of work that I do, I didn’t even usually on Friday—I’m going over my sermon, I’m doing more preparation for it. I didn’t get to do that, which is the most restful part of my life as a pastor. I had several counseling situations involving emails, a couple of meetings, difficult situations. Pray for your pastors and for the other congregations here.

I also had a two-and-a-half hour meeting with Kent Kinyon to make plans for our study day for pastors in a week and a half to develop more understanding and form for the church in Oregon City. And you know, my schedule went from like nine till nine-thirty. And you know, it fits right in with today’s sermon because today’s sermon is about the problem that gets in the way of community building, and the basic problem is wanting to do what we want to do—my life for me.

And so throughout this day, I confess to you that I sinned. Sinned grievously at certain points of the day. You know, the day didn’t meet my expectations. It was not what I would have hoped for or planned for my sixty-fifth birthday. I saw virtually nothing of my family, for instance. So I kind of whined to myself, right? And on the other hand, the day was a tremendous blessing to me. It was a great encouragement. I mean, the meeting with Kent Walton alone was a tremendous encouragement. And then meeting and thinking I have the calling and ability to interact on some of these counseling situations and the other stuff I was doing—so it was kind of one of these bittersweet days.

And frequently, I think our days can be like that because that’s the struggle we face. We face the struggle of wanting things to work out the way we want them to work out selfishly—you know, my life for me—or we spend other parts of our day serving other people, whether we have to or don’t have to, or God’s called us to. And when we do that, it’s not ever what we want. Well, for this sinner, it’s never really what I want to do, but it’s the only thing that really gives me the satisfaction and pleasure and joy that I expected from doing things the way I wanted to do them.

Do you understand what I’m saying? So there’s my confession. There’s my introduction to the topic today. And really, that’s a lot of all I have to say today in terms of my life and yours. But let’s go over the text. Let’s talk about the need for community that’s described in this text. Let’s talk about the barriers, or enemies, or the enemy to community—what stops it from happening? And then let’s talk about how we break through those barriers, we destroy those enemies, and enter into community.

Now, I have in your outlines a kind of summation of the talks—the nine sermons that I’ve given in this series. And you know, it’s all right there. And so I think these are important things, and of course all they were is really Tim Keller’s kind of organization. I mean, I did things different than him, but his basic organization of the “one another” texts in the New Testament. And remember, one another—if nothing else you take away from this series, think about it as reciprocity in all the things that we’ve talked about, and you’ll get a big part of what’s being talked about in terms of how to build community: reciprocity.

Now, for the last time today on the handout table, if you’re interested—and I’m not saying you should be—but on the handout table in the foyer, the last time, are five or six copies left of the listing of all the “one another” texts, mostly in the New Testament. And so these nine sermons were an attempt just to sort of organize them, put them under particular headings, and then to talk about them as the basic community building practices.

And remember, last week you said that this has great relevance to the state of the world we’re in because we’re told in Philippians 2, the great text about seeking others’ interests rather than your own. You know, that’s preceded immediately by verses that talk about Paul strengthening them to stand fast against the enemy and to be powerful in Christ and defeat enemies. So, you know, it’s not as if we’re talking about a privatized reality here that doesn’t have great impact on the cosmos and upon the ability to withstand temptations that our particular world system is throwing at us, to be strengtheners to our local communities that we live in, et cetera. So all this is related.

The body of Christ, right? The church is—you know, what the gates of hell, they will not be able to get in the way of or impede the earthly advance of the manifestation of Christ’s kingdom. And that manifestation happens as we are the church and as we apply these practices among lots of other things we do in terms of vocation, families, et cetera. But these basic practices empower us. You see, that’s how we’re going to, you know, crash the gates of hell, as it were, and push back the effects of the fall by applying the gospel of Christ in community building practices.

Now, all these practices are in Christ. We talked about this last week, but I wanted to stress this again. It’s kind of a makeup sermon. Last week we talked about all those wonderful advantages we have that Paul uses as motivation to call us to fulfill his joy, to fill the Father’s joy, the Son’s joy, the Holy Spirit’s joy, to fill each other’s joy by being one together. There’s a unity that is talked about there. And then he tells us that the way you do it is by putting others’ interests in front of your own.

But if there’s any of these benefits, he says at the beginning of the list in Philippians—in Christ—all these things that we talk about, solace, comfort, love, fellowship, whatever—there are worldly imitations of them. Okay? The central thing is being in Christ. So in Colossians chapter 3, we read—he’s telling them what to put on in terms of the new man—bearing with one another. These are things we talked about: forgiving one another. If anyone has a complaint against another, even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do. But above all these things, put on love. That’s the summation of everything we’ve talked about. Paul says in the epistle to the Colossians, it’s love which is the bond of perfection. So love creates a bond. Love is a bond. Love creates a bond, and it’s a bond of perfection. It’s the great bond. It’s the ultimate bond that bonds together a community of people.

So it’s this love that, in being in Christ, is all about. And in Philippians 1:9, this is what I didn’t get to last week, but in Philippians 1:9, we read: “So he says in Philippians 2, ‘If there’s any solace in Christ,’ okay, or ‘solace of love’—rather, I’m sorry—’solace of love.’ And so again, there we sort of think about love as the bond of perfection. You know, love—we think about various ways of what that means, but before he says that in Philippians, he says this in chapter 1.

‘This I pray: that your love may abound all more and still more and more in knowledge and in all discernment.’ So biblical love, as defined in Philippians, which he’s going to then call on them to exercise in community building, is biblical love attached to, related to, is part of—it has as its constituent elements, at least two things here: knowledge and discernment. Okay.

R.C. Lensky, the great Lutheran commentator, says: “So if there’s any solace, let it be of love, let its source be Christian love that is intelligent and purposeful. Love, sentimentality, mere human humanitarian feeling will not do, and a facetious intrusion would be the worst of all.” So Lensky says this love is knowledge and discernment. He says that Christian love is intelligent and purposeful. Okay?

So when we talk about being in Christ and we say that the ultimate attribute we’re putting on toward each other is love, it is a purposeful love. Okay? It has intentionality to it. It has discernment. It is not just seeking to exercise selfishly an attribute toward you that is good for us. It has discernment in how it goes about reaching into your life. And it has knowledge. It has intelligence. It has a knowledge based upon the wisdom of God’s word. So that’s what Christian love is, and it’s very important for us to keep that in mind.

That particular verse—that love is purposeful and love has a knowingness to it—that distinguishes it then as Christian love. Its knowingness is according to the word of God, and its purposefulness, its discernment, is in building up the manifestation of Christ’s body in our communities and in our churches. Okay, a little introduction.

Now let’s talk about community, its need. And so I’m going to go again, like we did with Philippians—the verse just before the text we read. Let’s start there. You know, the two verses. Here’s James 3:17-18: “But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, without hypocrisy. Wisdom from above.” We’ll get back to that in a few minutes. “And then the next verse: ‘Now the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.’”

So the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who are peacemakers, who make peace. What does this mean? It can get messed up in our heads because, you know, what does righteousness mean? And so often in American churches, righteousness is this imputed righteousness that we have from Christ. It’s about our right relationship to God. And it is. But righteousness has broader connotations than that.

Righteousness can be said to essentially mean putting things right, and there are three dimensions to this. But let’s talk about three dimensions first. First of all, it puts you right with God, and that’s the way we normally think of righteousness, okay? So it puts us right with God, forgives us our sins, imputes to us the righteousness, the justice of Jesus Christ, his perfect obedience, and so it puts us right with God. It takes care of that chasm that sin created.

But secondly, righteousness puts us right with ourselves. In our fallen state, we are very confused in our personalities and our personas and our spirits, our minds, our souls. Righteousness means increasingly that God is putting you right with yourself. And then third, and this is the point here, righteousness means putting you right with other people. So righteousness is also justice. It has this horizontal dimension as well as this vertical dimension to God. It has a horizontal dimension.

And so what’s going on here is that as James launches into the text we read before, he says that there’s this peaceable fruit of righteousness—there’s this fruit of righteousness, this development of it. And it’s based upon the wisdom from above. And then it’s based upon the verses we just read, which reflect on the enemies to this community building practice.

So the point here is that the preface to what we read in James chapter 4 are the verses that tell us that there is this growing fruit of righteousness, of right connectedness, putting things right in relationships, in communities. In other words, not in isolation. You know, we’re Americans. We tend to think it’s all about us, and that’s a huge problem. And so it’s all about my personal salvation with Jesus—no, that is way too small a thing for what the gospel is. The gospel is God is putting the world to rights, and that includes putting relationships to rights. Okay?

And in order for that to happen, he says in the text we just read, you have to have peacemakers. Again, peace is not always properly understood, but in context here and throughout the Bible, peace is the right ordering of relationships under God, or with God in the middle. So we’re supposed to be people that are making peace as the establishment, as the seed that grows fruits of righteousness.

This happens in community. Okay? This happens in relationships. It can’t happen here. You know, there’s a sense in which we’re a community, but there’s a great sense in which we’re an aggregation of people coming together. If you look back on all the nine sermons I preached up to now, we can begin some of them. We can do some of them liturgically, right? We can sing songs to encourage one another as the best and most obvious example. But most of that stuff we’re not doing today. You’re not doing it in this worship service, for sure.

Now, we have a little extended time downstairs with the dinner, and so people stay for that, and maybe a little bit more of that happens. But you can’t do these basic community building practices if all you do is go to church with people, and that’s it. It won’t work. And in fact, you and I have both known people who have gone to church for years and years and years who say, “Boy, pastor really knows what he’s doing. He can tie the scriptures together. That’s great. Really like the sermon. They get jazzed about it. And then they leave church and they’re really not connected to other Christians or communities, and their lives are the same. Nothing really improves. The same besetting sins, the same problems that really affected them. Yeah, they felt good for a day or whatever that was, but they don’t change. Is that because the word of God is ineffective? No. Is that because the sacraments don’t work? No. That’s not why.

These things set us up. This community around the table today sets us up for community in the week. Do you understand what I’m saying? We need community. And so James, chapter 4, is all about the dangers to community, but it’s prefaced by this great need for community. We see it exegetically in that verse we just read. We see it pragmatically in looking at the list of things we’re supposed to do to build up community, the “one anothers.” You’re not doing it here. I mean, you do a little here, but most of it, no—you can’t do it here. Sorry. You need community.

Now, there are different ways to affect that. I’m today making a plea. I’m urging you to consider becoming part of a community group, or to recommit yourself to a community group, or to at least investigate a community group here at RCC, because this is so important. And what we’ve had in our culture is sort of a breakdown of natural communities, and we have to be intentional about creating community again. So the community groups here at RCC is an attempt to make intentional what I’m talking about here—the need for community being met, at least in part, and you know, pretty importantly, I think it can be by you becoming attached to a community group here at RCC.

So the seed, the crop, is peacemaking, building community. By the way, another plug for the book *The Peacemaker*. I mean, if everybody just reads that book, does it—my counseling load goes down significantly. I don’t mind the counseling load because that’s what I do—I have people read *The Peacemaker* and I do other things. But such an important book. I’ll get back to that maybe in just a minute.

Romans 12:9, for instance, says this: “Let love be without hypocrisy. Okay, what does that mean? It means don’t be fake with each other. Let love, your relationship to people with knowledge and discernment, not be hypocritical. Don’t smile at people on Sunday and think, you know, you can pray for another and really not be any of that with them.

Now, it’s very easy for Christian love to be hypocritical when all you do is see people here. In fact, it’s almost—it’s very difficult to avoid being fake here. Am I right? I mean, it’s what we tend to do. We tend to put on the best face. I don’t normally start a sermon by telling you how badly I sinned on Friday in my attitude. And the worst thing is I’m sinning by being unthankful for the very things that God is using to give me meaning and purpose in life. So I don’t start that way, but you know, we have a tendency here to want to look good to everybody else. I understand it. I get it, and it’s good to act in that way and to make yourself into that. But all I’m saying here again is that if you become part of a community group, it’s a little tougher having love with hypocrisy. It’s a little tougher to be fake with the people you’re working with. All right?

So that’s community—its need. Now, community—its enemies or barriers. And I wasn’t planning on this being part of the outline until early this week. Improper use of social media. Some of you know exactly where I’m going. So pray for me as I go there.

James 4:1 says this: “Where do wars and fights come from among you?” I know where they come from. The internet. That was easy. “What are you talking about? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members?” We’ll come back to that. Very interesting. And then verse 11: “Do not speak evil of one another, brethren. He who speaks evil of a brother and judges his brother speaks evil of the law.”

So it kind of begins and ends, you know—these two verses begin and end by talking about war, and then talking about slander in relationship. So we’ve got community, and there are these things that we can do that just pour acid on the mechanism, or the organism—or it puts, you know, it puts water on the flame of community. It destroys community or greatly hampers or hinders community.

And so foolish use—that’s the word I’m going to use—foolish use of social media can be a tremendous detriment and damage to community. And I don’t think I need to go into all the ways that is true. If you just think about it a little bit, what are the effects? Not very many people are going to believe everything put on the internet. But you know what? They’re going to start to get doubts. They’re going to have suspicions. They’re going to believe some of it. And then they’re going to want to encourage people. That’s who we are. We’re encouragers in Christ. And so we want to encourage somebody. But that encouragement could be, and likely will have, an effect of, you know, buttressing that person up. And there’s slander on the internet of various individuals, churches, and whole denominations. It’ll buttress that up.

We’ve got a growing movement now of this sort of stuff on the internet about the CRC. And you know, it’s not as if—I don’t think that there are problems that myself as an individual, I was not by the way directly involved in any of this, but it’s not as if I can’t have criticism or want to hear it, or the church or the denomination. But there’s a way to go about interacting with people if you’re really trying to heal the kirk. That ninety percent of what’s going on the internet isn’t healing a dang thing—it’s ripping it up.

You know, cultures take a long time to build. This building took a long time to build. How quickly could you take it down? Real quick. If you don’t care about, you know, the value of the stuff and using it again, it can take years to build a good structure, a big building. It can take—you’ve seen the pictures on television. They put the explosives in the right place, the high-rise, boom—it’s done in a moment. Well, that’s the way social media can be in terms of community.

So I’m not saying don’t use it. I’m saying come on, pray about it. Have wisdom. Don’t use it foolishly. Understand that it’s one of the more significant ways today that community is attacked and harmed. All right. So that’s enough about that.

And getting to the other elements—which are in the text. It’s why I brought it up today. Wrong desires. This is interesting. In verses 1 and 3, right? So 4:1-3: “Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war yet you do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive because you ask amiss that you may spend it on your pleasures.”

All right. So who would know reading this text what I’m going to tell you? But you’ll know now. And that is that the “desires” word in verse one and the “pleasures” word in verse three are the same word. And the words in the middle—what is the King James translation? “lust” and “covet”—that’s in the middle of these two. Okay? So the significance is that those two occurrences of the words that at the beginning and end of this three-verse little mini-chiasm—those Greek terms that are used twice here are only used five times in the whole Bible. Okay? What is that term? It’s the root term from which we get our word hedonism.

Now, hedonism—you know, hedonism is a philosophy of life that says, “I’m going to go for everything I want to get. I’m going to live hedonistically. I don’t give a rip about anybody else. I’m going to indulge myself in every way possible, completely regardless of anybody else’s interests. Pleasure is what it’s all about, and I’m going for it.” Now, doesn’t sound that different from American culture today, but it used to be quite different. All joking aside. But that’s what hedonism is.

These other words—lust and covet—those words actually can be used either way, positively or negatively. You’re supposed to covet the better gifts, for instance. Those words, you know, they’re emotional terms or desires terms, but they can go one way or the other. It’s not bad to have, you know, a desire for things. But the two things here that represent the practice that strikes at community as its great enemy are practices of hedonism, which is to say practices of putting yourself first.

My life—it’s my life, and I’m going to do what I want, and it’s all about me. “My life for me” is what hedonism, or this particular term that’s translated here, is all about. It’s really quite obvious. It’s that simple. And as a result, that scary, if you start thinking about it.

Now, I got a couple of other references here. In Luke chapter 8:14, parable of the sowers: this self-centeredness, this wanting what you want when you want it—that is what the thorns are that choke out the seed that’s growing in the parable of the four soils. So, you know, it’s huge. It can destroy, you know, the incipient movement of people in terms of God’s word being planted in their hearts. It’s thorns. It’s the fall. It’s what the fall was all about. It will bring you fall-like consequences in your life.

And indeed in Titus 3:3: “For we ourselves were also once foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving various lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy.” And so these, you know, serving ourselves in pleasures—we were hedonistic. It was all about us: “my life for me.” What’s the end result of that? He says: “hateful and hating one another.”

When it’s all about you, when it’s “my life for me,” it’s as simple as that. When you want to do what you want to do, regardless of what God wants you to do, others want you to do, if you’re the deal, if you’re the master of your ship, right, the master of your soul, you’re the commander—you know, if you’re that thing, the end result of that is a choking out of any concern for true spirituality. And it’s becoming hateful toward other people and it’s being hated by other people. That’s the root. That’s the fruit rather of that noxious weed—the great enemy of community: to put yourself first.

It’s that simple. Now, that happens hundreds of times every day. Hundreds of times every day you have a choice to make, and you may not make it consciously. Usually you don’t. Am I going to listen to my wife? Am I going to address my husband? Am I going to do something for him? Is my screaming child going to get my attention? Throughout the day, there are all kinds of little things that happen, and you’ve got a Y in the road for you. Is it your life for you, or is your life for others? It’s really that simple, folks. Hundreds of times a day.

Now, the difference between those two is heaven and hell. I mean, almost literally we could say hell is about self-pleasure. It’s self-isolation. It’s complete eternal loneliness from one perspective. And it is hateful and it’s hating and it’s all that. When there is community, if there is any community in hell, it’s about hating and being hated. That’s hell. And what brings us to hell is just putting ourselves first.

On the other hand, heaven is all about being in Christ, who came, you know, not to be served, but to serve. That’s heaven. So every day, hundreds of times a day, you’ve got a choice to make. Am I going to have my life for yours, or am I going to have my life for me? That’s the decision. And when you decide “my life for me,” you’re picking a little bit of hell for yourself. And if you do that over a period of time, you create, you know, almost you certainly bring the effects of hell into your life. Your life becomes very unhappy. Your life becomes very isolated. Your life becomes very bitter. Right? All because you make these little decisions.

You know, am I going to be in Christ? Am I going to choose your life to serve you with my life? Or am I going to have my life for me? Now, in America, we’re taught, you know, “my life for me.” We’re taught that since we’re little in America. That’s been one of the big deals. You can do whatever you want to do. You can be whatever you want to be. You go for yourself. You make your own deal. You know, it’s all about you. And it’s become even worse in our day and age. It’s very self-centered, that kind of upbringing. And so, you know, it’s a tough thing to resist, but it is to be resisted because it’s a great enemy of community.

“I am my own” is what George MacDonald said. “I am my own.” That’s the principle of hell. That’s the principle of hell. “I am my own.” And on the other hand, the principle of heaven is “my life for yours.” I’m here to serve others, to put their interests first. That’s what I went through all day Friday. Little decisions. Some I made right, some I made wrong. And the ones I ended up making right were because God intruded into my sin.

I had scheduled appointments that I had. Well, I didn’t have to, but I had Kent come by, talk about church in Oregon City. Two and a half hours we spent talking. Went by like that. Was so fun, so engaging, so encouraging, right? And that’s what happens when I’m not thinking about myself and how my birthday turned out. When I’m thinking about the church in Oregon City, when I’m thinking about my brother Kent, when I’m thinking about other people, when I’m serving other people—if God wants you serving people thirteen hours a day, praise him, right? He’s given me blessing.

I hope this is coming through. Probably I’m laboring a very simple point: “my life for yours.” So this is the great enemy that James tells us produces all those problems. And if you start to analyze—I’ve done a lot of counseling for thirty years. And if you analyze people’s jams, this is always right there at the core of the thing. Now, it’s more complicated than that frequently, but it’s always right there. You think about it yourself. What are your problems in life? It seems like they come down to this particular issue more often than not. All right.

I want to make a mention of the bride’s unfaithfulness in verses 4 and 5 before we move on to the cause of the causes, what Keller calls it. James 4:4-5: “Adulterers and adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you think that the scripture says in vain the spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously?”

Bad translation when it says “adulterers and adulteresses” in the first part of verse 4. “Adulterous people” is another translation. They’re all wrong. The word is “adulteresses.” You adulteresses. That’s what it says. It doesn’t say “adulterers and adulteresses,” and it’s feminine. Why is it feminine? Because he’s talking about the church, and the church is the bride of Christ. And so if you understand that right at the beginning of verse 4, then you get verse 5: that the Holy Spirit yearns and is jealous for what? For his bride to be faithful, to love the bride. The Father loving the bride. The Son loving the bride, and the bride being faithful to the Son. The Spirit of God is the matchmaker.

And when we, you know, it’s when it’s “my life for me,” when I do what I want to do and only serve when I have to, you know, that’s what the Holy Spirit is angry about because it moves you away. You’re not being faithful. You’re being an adulterous member of the body. Okay? And that’s very important because it establishes for us a love relationship between God and us that’s very significant as we think about how to bust through some of these barriers.

And it also, by the way, is an important verse to point out that, you know, when you do that, when you seek your own pleasure, it seems like a small thing. You know, “where’s my birthday cake?” seems like a small thing. But you know, you’re really imitating the fallen world. And when you do that, make yourself a friend of the world—what does the text just tell us? You’re an enemy of God. It’s not a little problem you got in your life. For that moment, you’re an enemy of God. And if your life is dominated more and more by that kind of self-interest, you can come to church every week, you can go to group every week. But if this is still the principle that’s operating in your life—that you’re primarily doing what you want to do—that’s of this world. You’re an enemy of God. It’s not that you’re not a friend. You’re an enemy.

All right? But God loves you. He loves the bride, and he’s going to work hard. He is jealous for that relationship. He yearns for that relationship. And that’ll be important in a couple of minutes.

Okay. Next: the cause of the causes, the cause behind the cause. Pride, verses 6-10. This is easy, simple stuff, you know it. But here’s what it says: “He gives more grace. Therefore, he says, ‘God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.’” Why is it that you want to decide to want X today rather than Y that God has given you to do? Why do you want your wife to serve you rather than you to serve her? Why do you want to insist on what you want? What’s the root of that?

That’s the manifestation. The root, as we go deeper into the text, is pride. It’s a self-centeredness. It’s a prideful attitude—not just about what you desire to do, but at the core of your being is pride. It’s the great sin. So he resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. There are the two paths. Pride is “my life for me.” Humble is “my life for you,” right? So this seeking the interests of others and serving them—that’s humility.

“Therefore, submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.” You’ll have strength. You can resist even the devil. You won’t be afraid of anybody or anything because you can resist even the devil, and he will flee from you. God says, as long as you’re humble. Those are great blessings to us, right?

“Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Lament and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he will lift you up.”

See, it began and ended with “humble.” Again, a little structure, a little chiasm here. And the emphasis is humility. The emphasis, like before, was self-interest, right? Hedonism. Now the emphasis is to combat pride with humility. So the great cause behind the causes, the thing that drives us to seek our own interests rather than the interests of God and others, is pride. And what we’re to do to oppose that is humility.

Now, in Philippians 2, I’ve got in your handouts a chiastic structure. It took me a decade or two to turn my wife into a chiastic exegete. It took me a long time to convince her we should look at these literary structures this way. And once she started, she couldn’t stop. So anyway, this is hers. It’s not mine. But it’s kind of another element.

We talked about these verses last week, but if you look at these verses from Philippians 2—right? You’ve got the mind up there, and then you’ve got the mind down there at the beginning and end of that little structure: “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but let each of you not only look to his own interests, [but] the interests of others.” That’s the movement. We move from conceit to serving the interests of others. What’s the center that gets us there? “In humility, count others more important than yourself.” The core of that little section of scripture—another nice little chiastic structure—is again humility. It’s all over the place in the Bible. You know this: humility.

I mentioned earlier the heptamerous chiastic creational structure of James 3:17. What is he talking about now? “Heptamerous”—that’s seven. Hepta—right? Not octa (eight), not hexa (six)—hepta. Sevenfold. Chiastic. You know what that is. Creational structure. Many times when we see sevenfold structures in the scriptures—a list of seven—it mirrors the creation day. Which, you know, kind of makes sense because the word of God is bringing about new creation life and reality in us, and the Spirit of God moved in this sevenfold pattern of creation. And so we would expect to see these movements of the Spirit of God this way as well.

So this one, I think, does that. I read the list earlier, and what I want to point out is the center of the list—the center of the heptamerous chiastic creational structure in James 3. The wisdom from above. The center is being “willing to yield.” That’s at the center. What does that mean? That’s humility. Says, “Well, I think this, but boy I sure like to hear from you.” Willing to yield. You’re going to make a decision. People say, “Well, I don’t know if that’s such a good decision.” Forget it. I don’t care if you think it’s good or not. I’m proud. I’m not humble. And I don’t care what you’ve got to say.

But this attribute—easily entreated, willing to yield—is at the heart of the wisdom from above. And it’s in slot four. To some people, this just sounds so kooky. It’s reality. Slot four in the creation—what was the fourth day? Sun and moon and stars. Sun and moon—rulers. And that’s what it says in the creation account: to rule. That’s what we see on flags. Suns and moons. The center of the creation week is about establishing rulers for God, lightbearers. That’s who we are as Christians. And the fourth slot is about rulers representing Christ.

And the fourth slot in the wisdom from above is about willing to yield. What does it mean? It means that to be a ruler in a home, a business, a church, the state, and whatever relationship you might find it, the central characteristic you’re supposed to have—the most important, according to this list from James—is humility. And particularly humility applied to hearing intreaties from other people.

Now, if they don’t intreat you and they don’t tell you what’s going on, well, I don’t know what you can do. But you can try to make it clear to people that you’re easily entreated, you’re willing to yield on a topic, okay? You’re willing to say—even if the internet damage is hellacious, even if it comes from obviously people who are involved in various levels of sin, even if that’s true—a ruler will show himself willing to yield, easily entreated, and still try to find the best out of that to help him to being a better ruler.

Humility. Pride is the great killer of community. That’s the acid. That’s the antimatter to community. And the way we combat that is with biblical humility. Okay.

Now, I’m going to read some stuff here. I think I got time. Hopefully I have time. Hopefully this doesn’t go too long. But this is from a sermon by Tim Keller. He talks about a book by Jonathan Edwards on revival. That’s the name of the book: *On Revival*. Not one of his well-known works. And what it was: a series of observations by Edwards. He saw a revival happen in this little village, a little town, and then he saw it go to heck, right? It all disintegrated. And as he knew what was going on in the town and knew what was happening—saw the beginning of community building and then the destruction of community—he made several observations, and they all have to do with spiritual pride.

He said that spiritual pride is really the destroyer of that community that revival was building. And so it fits with what we’re talking about today: pride is the great enemy, and its manifestation. Well, “great, I’m not too proud of guy, Dennis.” Well, I don’t know. Maybe you are, maybe you aren’t. Let’s talk about some observations from Edwards.

Six things. I think they’re on your handout.

**One: More aware of others’ faults than one’s own.** Is that you? Are you more aware of the problems of people around you than your own problems?

**Two: Contempt and disdain for others’ faults.** When you see other people’s faults in the church, do you have contempt and disdain for them? If you do, that’s a mark of spiritual pride. What, of course, you’re supposed to be having is compassion, empathy, and desire to help. You don’t want to hurt; you want to heal, right?

**Three: Quickly separate from those he criticizes or who criticize him.** So you’re in a community, you’re in a church, whatever it is. You get a dust up going with somebody. Are you quick to just bag it, to leave the relationship? Or are you quick to leave the relationship when you are criticized? Either when you criticize somebody else or when they criticize you, is it your tendency then to withdraw from the relationship?

Edwards says this was one of the characteristics that he saw in the men of this town that evidenced spiritual pride. They quickly leave others. What do we do? You know why I have the counseling meetings I have? Because I’m hanging in there. Now, this isn’t my pride talking. This is the grace of God talking because, remember, I wanted to do anything but what I did on Friday in my flesh. But you know the reason why we do this stuff, why we bang our heads against a wall—and I’m not saying we shouldn’t be smarter or more wise about how we deal with people. We don’t give up, right? Until we absolutely have to declare somebody excommunicate, we don’t give up. We try real hard. See, that’s because, as a result probably of the visibility we’re in, we know that’s the right thing to do. And it’s a mark of spiritual humility not to give up on other people, not to quickly break off relationships.

**Four: Dogmatic and sure about every point of belief.** We’ve excommunicated people largely because of this very thing. There’s no talking to them, you know, on this issue or that. They completely think they’re the only one with knowledge on this—them and a few other people around the world on the internet. That great social media stuff again. They just get completely oblivious. They don’t hear counsel anymore. And if you know people that, usually, when you talk to them, they’ve always got to be right. That’s an evidence of spiritual pride.

It may be about the Bible. And in fact, in the case of one excommunicate from this church, it is about the Bible. It’s about a view he has that the Bible says X. And if the Bible says X, that means you guys are Y, right? So slandering. And he won’t budge from it. I’m sorry if this is too personal for some of you, but it’s an example of what spiritual pride looks like. You’ve got to be right about everything. You’ve got to argue everything. Nobody else, you know—you’re wiser in your own eyes than seven with good counsel. That’s the fool. And that’s spiritual pride. You always want to be right about everything, or in particular, the things that you’re having conflicted talks about.

**Five: Always confronts or never confronts.** Edwards said, “I saw it both ways.” There were some people that the evidence of their spiritual pride was they always wanted to confront everybody around them. Well, you’re doing this. You’re doing this. You’re doing this. You’re doing this. Always wanting to confront. Or he said, there would be people who would never confront because, you know, they’re too good for that. They don’t want to mix it up with people. They’re quick. They’re really already kind of separated. They never confront. Either way, Edwards says what he saw at work was spiritual pride. Either confronting or never confronting. They’re both egocentric, right?

I got a note on here, but remember that self-pity is not humility. You know, if you’re always feeling sorry for yourself and, you know, like I was for a period of time on Friday, that’s not humility. It’s completely the opposite of humility. It’s self-centered. It really is a form of pride. It’s really all about you again. It’s still “my life for me.” I can’t get rid of it. But it’s still self-centeredness. It’s the same dang thing, right?

You know, humility—the purpose, humility is not thinking less of yourself. That’s not humility. Humility is thinking of yourself less, right? So it’s not thinking less of yourself. Moses—the most humble guy in the Bible, at least in the Old Testament, that the Bible says, tremendous humility. He knew the power he had in God. Was he weak? No. Was he powerful? Yes. He’d resist the devil and the devil would flee from him because he’s humble, right? Not because he thinks less of himself, but because he thought of himself less.

He did the work that God called him to do. He put others’ lives before his own. It wasn’t “my life for me.” Moses evidenced “my life for you.” It was his life for others. Okay? So humility isn’t thinking less of yourself. Humility is thinking of yourself less. And so, you know, self-centeredness is evidenced by self-pity, depression—so, I mean, not always. I’m not saying all those things are, you know, I probably shouldn’t have thrown some in there. But anyway, you get the point, right? If you’re self-pitying all the time, it’s really because you’re focused on yourself.

Now, that doesn’t make you a horrible person. That’s the way we all are. That’s the way I was on Friday. But it means we need to encourage each other to action, to service, to not turning inward with this stuff.

Anyway, okay.

**Six:** Spiritual pride manifests in being unhappy and self-pitying. Spiritual pride doesn’t seem like it, right? How’s that pride? Well, because you’re thinking of yourself all the time. I guess it’s all about me. It’s “my life for me” instead of “my life for you,” right?

So these are some marks that Edwards saw. And Keller has paraphrases of each of these in a particular sermon he preached. And if you’re interested, let me know, and I think I actually have it all printed up as a Word document. So if you’re interested in that, let me know and I can show you—send you Keller’s paraphrase. It might help you a little bit.

But the point is, you know, the reason for listing these is to let the Holy Spirit jog you and me. I preach to you and I preach to myself about our own seeking of our own interests, our own pride that resides in us. How we’re creating little moments of hell in our lives and how we may not see it. We may not see it because of self-deception. And these characteristics, as you meditate upon them, think about them—take the outline home, think about it. Is this me? Am I getting kind of like this? Think about it. Repent. Turn back to humility, which, as I said, is not meekness. Humility is not meekness.

The humble man resists the devil and he flees. The humble man, like Moses, is willing, if called by God, to go to the great Pharaoh—who ruled much of the earth—challenge him to get rid of his means of production, completely change the direction of his government by letting people be liberated back to where they’re supposed to go. Think of the incredible shake-up to Pharaoh’s government, culture, if he would have seeded to Moses’ request. It was a ridiculous request to make. It took great courage to make that request. And that’s what it was: a request at first. So the point here again is that this humble man, Moses, is not weak. He has strength.

And if we’re going to bust through—in terms of combating these enemies, the enemies of being self-focused, seeking your own desires, and the greater enemy of the pride that undergirds it—and if we’re going to break through that, we need to remember several things here.

And what we just read about was: if you’re humble, God will exalt you. That’s what some call the upside-down principle. The Christian life is reverse of the way the world wants us to think. If you seek to save your life, what happens? You know what happens? You lose it. I sought to save my time. You know, that’s not the way to go. You’ll end up losing your life. But if you seek to lose your life for God’s sake—not just to lose your life, to lose your life for God’s sake in service to others—and you find your life. Your identity comes flashing into view. You become a humble person. You become a strong person. You become an effective person for the kingdom, right?

That’s what you do. But you’ve got to remember that the way to do that is not direct. It’s kind of indirect. It’s really putting yourself in the relationship of Jesus, right? Who came to serve and not to be served, right? Servant leadership is what we hear this all the time today, and it’s so important. That’s what this is: the upside-down principle.

So that’s one thing. And then the other thing is the inestimable love of God. That’s why I mentioned the verse, and I said we’d come back to it about the Spirit yearning and being jealous for you. And when you engage in a life of self-focusedness and pride, you’re an adulteress. God wants you back. He wants you to be faithful. And because—and when you’re faithful in Christ, when you’re in Christ, the image that’s set up, in other words, is that God has tremendous love for you.

And in fact, the judgments that he brings into your life as well as the encouragements—the occasional comments I heard on Sunday, you know, about Friday rather, that I was acting improperly—as well as the encouraging, most of it was God sending encouraging things into my life that day in service to others. That’s God’s love at work, right? Okay, that’s God’s love.

Christian, understand: you’re in Christ. The way Jesus is loved by the Father, that’s the way you’re loved. Okay? And because you’re loved that much, then you can go about doing what he tells you is the way that love will be fulfilled in you, manifested, grown, flow out to others. Which is to not have “your life for you,” but to see your life as called to serve others because you’re in Christ—you’re a little Christian, a little anointed one. That’s the way Jesus, you know, went through his process for us, and that’s the way we must do as well.

So the great love of God for us drives us to practice this upside-down principle, and that gives us tremendous courage in the context of our lives.

Now, as I began here, I talked about the need for community, and I told you—and I’ve taught some scripture here. I think I’ve exhorted you in some directions and myself. And I want to tell you now that the big application point I want you to make—apart from the obvious ones: humility, look for others—the big deal today is to seriously consider the form at the back of the outlines today about community groups at RCC.

We list them by region. We list them by, you know, the couple that are leading them. And then we ask for you to participate in one of these. Some of you are already doing it. You don’t have to fill out the form. But if you’re interested in another group or those of you that have not—my primary audience for this part of the sermon are those of you who have not really participated in community groups.

Now, we’re still praying for you. We still urge the leaders to pray for you. You’re still assigned to a group whether you know it or not. They’re thinking about you. Hopefully they talk to you occasionally. Much better, right? If you can be part of a community, because apart from community, I just don’t think you’re going to grow very much. Now, it doesn’t have to be community groups. Can be a set of friends. Whatever. Your spouse is a big part of that maturation process. But, you know, to grow more, I think we need community.

And I think the thing that prevents us from entering into community can be pride. We don’t want to be embarrassed. We don’t want to hang out with people we don’t know. We don’t want to show ourselves who we really are because we’re sort of prideful, right? Or just self-interest. I don’t have time. Too many football games to watch. Too many other activities in my life. Either way, see, I’m telling you as your pastor, if you’re a congregant here, I’m telling you—and I think the other pastors would say this with me, you know—please strongly consider attaching to a community group.

Try to, you know, back out the pride. Take on a humble attitude. Pastors say we need it. We should probably do it. Take on a humble attitude. Don’t go in there to fight. Don’t go in there with spiritual pride. Like Edwards said, you can start to create great community and fights break out if you’re not living this principle of “my life for yours.” So that’s my prayer today—that many of you would consider this, would fill out the forms, turn them in. Leave them on my desk. Leave them on the—where do we want you to put them? That’s a great question.

Yeah, you can put them well—except some people don’t know where Angie’s desk is. Well, you know who Doug is. You know who I am. You know who Chris—isn’t he in here? Ukraine. He’s still in Ukraine. Okay. Well, you could put him in the offering or you can put them in Angie’s desk, or if you’re confused, just give them to me or a greeter. Okay?

But please consider doing that.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your great inestimable love for us in Christ our Savior. We thank you for him accomplishing our redemption, our being freed from bondage to serve ourselves and to create hatred for others and to be hated by others. Thank you, Father, for healing us. And we pray your blessing upon us as we try to apply these community building practices we found in your word in the weeks and months ahead. In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.