Where Does Conflict Come From?

Introduction

Filling in tonight, and it’s like, well, it’s kind of short notice. Hey, dumping on you. And I’m like, man. We just got through going to the convention last weekend. I told him I got tons of material. Probably more than anybody wants to hear. We go every year to a homeschool convention. Many of you know we homeschool our kids, which the seminars that we try to go to when we’re there are hardly about homeschooling at all. They’re a lot more to do with raising your family, having good relationships with your kids and others around you, and it’s just good stuff that there’s a such a broad application in many things to a lot of things that you hear, and it’s really just be called a parenting seminar sometimes or relationship seminar.

But I went to one from a fellow that he has 14 kids. And he started out talking. It’s like, you know, my you know experience is I’ve got 14 kids and you know I’ve helped raise 14 kids. My wife, she raised 15, because she had to start with me first. He said I was fat off, and she’s still working on me, said sometimes I feel that way as well. That there’s things that we could always work on, things we can always improve on. But he’s like, you know, sometimes when you have a lot of people together, he said, whether it’s in your home or in a co-op or a club or a team or a church, you got the potential for conflict.

And he’s his title of his sermon or his little lesson was Raising Cain without killing Abel. And he said, Sometimes I thought it was it was pretty bloody at our home. And so I’m gonna share some thoughts that he presented to us, and I’ve kind of adapted some for hopefully something that we can make application in our setting with us. Because really, anytime you’ve got people together, you’ve got the potential for conflict or some problems. I appreciate the songs that Scott led for us and trying to set some of this up. But where does conflict come from, really? You know, that’s a question you’ve got to kind of get down and think about for a little bit. Over J and James, the book of James, chapter 4.

1. The Source of Conflicts Comes From Wrong Motives

I want to read verses 1 through 7 and see what that has to say about that about it. It says in verse 1 of James 4, it says, What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? Is not the source your pleasures that wage war in your members? You lust and you do not have, so you commit murder. And you’re envious and you cannot obtain, so you fight and you quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. And you ask and you don’t receive because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures. You adulteresses, you do not know. Do you not know that friendship of the world is hostility towards God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

Or do you think that the scriptures speak to no purpose? He jealously desires the Spirit which he has made to dwell in us, but he gives a greater grace. Therefore it says, God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Submit, therefore to God, resist the devil, and he will flee from you. So if you look at that over in verse three there, has something telling. It says, you ask and do not receive because you ask with wrong motives.

And my suggestion to you is most of the source of our conflict with our spouse, our kids, our fellow Christians, people at work, people in any relationship that we have is because there’s wrong motives involved. And those motives typically are selfish motives because we want what we want. And we typically are going to look out for our self-interests more so than others. Now that’s that’s the natural way of doing it. And that’s what the scripture is trying to show us in the scriptures that you need to do what’s unnatural and try to look out and observe the wishes and the well-being of others. And that’s hard to do. But he’s basically that this source of conflicts comes from wrong motives. And we’re going to look at some of those motives and some of those things that could probably be some driving factors behind some of these conflicts.

And us that already have kids out of the house, work on it with yourself. But, you know, really the home is kind of like a boot camp for life. It’s what kind of gets you ready to go out and do battle. And if you don’t learn these lessons at home, then you end up having the same problems and issues with people that you encounter that you work with and that you have to associate with. And it’s the same issues if you realize if you step back and look at yourself honestly, it’s the same stuff you fought with your siblings about. Because if you had a character defect or flaw that irritated them, guess what? It’s not going to be any different when you leave home.

And so, you know, the plea here is that try to learn some of this stuff as early as we can. You know, an irritation in your life is calling attention to a need. Now think about that for a minute. You know, there’s an example of, you know, you got a dog and you come in and there’s a pummel on the floor. That’s not something that any of us really want to see at all, but it’s calling your attention to a need. He needed to go outside. And this is the result of that need. You know, and that irritates us. You know, you’re sitting in there on the couch, you just got settled in the TV and the game, and you hear something go crash.

And you come in there and your kid’s got a glass broke on the floor. How many of you would just say, oh, he probably needed a glass of water? And it was. No, we typically don’t do that. But that was, he had a need there. And this irritation is representation or is representing that need. And sometimes it’s not always happy. Sometimes when we get angry at somebody or something for some reason, you know, could it be that we need to learn a little more patience? So almost every irritation, we’ll step back and look at it, almost every irritation that we have or that presents itself to us is indicative of a need that needs to be met. It may be a need in ourselves, and quite often it’s a need that needs to be met in someone that we know.

2. Anger Against God Causes Strife

And so let’s step back and just try to look at some of these things for a little bit, and then we’ll be done. Let’s turn over to Genesis chapter 4. And we’re going to look at the sibling relationships because I think that’s fitting the story that we see in Genesis 4 there, because we call ourselves here in this building, brothers and sisters. This is our family. This is our house, our home, if you will, we’re going to carry that analogy. And so there are still things that quite possible we didn’t master when we were at home, for real, under our parents’ roof, that we’re still working on today. I know I am. And many of us who are honest are going to say the same thing.

So let’s look at some of the things that were problems with some people in the Old Testament and see if we can identify some things that we can work on. Genesis chapter 4, verses 1 through 8 says, Now the man had a relationship with his wife Eve, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain, and she said, I’ve gotten a man-child with the help of the Lord. And again she gave birth to his brother Abel, and Abel was a keeper of flocks, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. So it came about in the course of time that Cain brought an offering to the Lord of the fruit of the ground. And Abel on his part also brought of the first things of his flock and of their fat portions.

And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering. But for Cain and for his offering, he had no regard.

So Cain became very angry, and his countenance fell. Then the Lord said to Cain, Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door, and its desire is for you. But you must master it. And then we know what happened after that. You know, Cain found Abel in the field or had him go to the field and rose up against him and killed him. Who was Cain really mad at? Some of you are smiling, some of you are like, Well, I hadn’t thought about that before. You know. Was Cain not angry at God? He was mad at God. Because God held him accountable for not doing what he was supposed to do.

But then who did he take it out on? Closest thing he’d get his hands on. You know, now there’s probably some rivalry there. But he didn’t want to humble himself and do what God says. And that’s what we just read over in James 4. It says, but he gives greater grace, therefore it says, God’s opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Submit therefore to God, resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Well, Cain didn’t resist the devil. He gave way to the devil. Okay? And then God warned him in verse 7. He said, If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? But if you don’t, sin’s crouching at the door, you need to master it. You need to master it.

But he chose not to. So he’s going to write up on the board here is that you know anger against God oftentimes is something that causes strife and it causes rivalry and it causes problems. Something that we need to watch out for. Now if we continue this bloodline story here over in Genesis chapter 25, we’re going to move on and look at another story. Genesis 25, starting in verse 27.

3. Favoritism, Temporal Values and Being Opportunistic

This is talking about Jacob and Esau. Okay. A little further around, and it says, When the boys grew up, Esau became a skillful hunter, a man of the field, but Jacob was a peaceful man living in tents. Now Isaac loved Esau because he had a taste for game. But Rebecca loved Jacob. And when Jacob had cooked stew, Esau came in from the field and he was famished. And Esau said to Jacob, please let me have a swallow of that red stuff there, for I am famished. Therefore his name was called Edom. But Jacob said, first sell me your birthright. And Esau said, Behold, I’m about to die. So what use then is the birthright to me? And Jacob said, First swear to me. So he swore and sold his birthright to Jacob.

Then Jacob gave Esau bread and lentil stew, and he ate and drank and arose and went on his way. This next phrase, I’ve heard lots of lessons on this next phrase. It says, Thus he despised his birthright.

Verse 28. Now Isaac loved Esau, but Rebecca loved Jacob. You’ve got parental favoritism there. You’ve got somebody running favorites. And we’re going to look at the story a little bit further down how that plays out. And you’ve also got a problem here with the two brothers themselves. You know, you wonder where they get it. And the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. But Jacob was very opportunistic, was he not? Because as soon as he saw his brother in trouble, what’d he do? Gigged him, man. Twist twisted the knife and, you know, sell me your birthright. But Esau, on his part, he had temporal values. Temporalism in temporary. Not looking at the long haul, not looking at the end of a thing when he’s down here at the beginning.

4. Deceit Fuels the Strife

And so he despised his birthright because that was something that was going to be his legacy. And he’s just like, you know what? For a bowl of soup, it won’t do me any good anyway if I die right here, which he probably wouldn’t have. So you’ve got another issue here that comes up with these two things. You’ve got favoritism, adds to conflict. Esau having temporal values. Jacob being opportunistic and taking advantage of others when he had the chance. Still more. Let’s go to Genesis chapter 27. We’ve got another story there. We won’t take the time to read the whole thing. But we kind of know what happens there. Genesis 27, starting in verse 1. On through 35, really, I’m going to pick out a couple of verses, but we’ve got the story where Isaac is about to die.

He’s getting old and feeble, and he said, I need to bless my son. So before I bless my son, I want to go ahead and he told Esau, I want you to go out and I want you to shoot a deer or wild game, bring it back and make it so I can eat it, and then I’m gonna bless you and put all his blessings on you. And as soon as he walks out the door in the field to go hunting, Rebecca comes in and tells Jacob, her son, you know what? You go get the goat and you kill this goat real quick, and you make up a nice stew for your dad, and he’s blind now. Okay, Isaac’s really old, he can’t see very well.

Hearing’s not so great either, but he’s basically blind. And she said, You wrap those goat skins on your arms and around your neck and stuff, and then you take this then, you tell him that you’re Esau, and you get that blessing. And he did that. And I gave him a really good blessing. Said that all of his brothers were going to be servants to him, and all the nations were going to bow to his house. And so no sooner had, in verse 30, had it came about as soon as Isaac had finished blessing Jacob, and Jacob had hardly gone out from the presence of Isaac his father, that Esau’s brother came in from his hunting. He also made a savory food and brought it to his father and said, Father, arise and eat of your son’s game, that you may bless me.

And Isaac’s father said to him, Who are you? And he said, I’m your son, your firstborn Esau. Then Isaac trembled violently. I mean, can y’all see this picture? An old frail guy doesn’t have many years left at all, days left, and just starts shaking. Like that. And then who was he then that hunted game and brought it to me? So that I ate of all of it before you came, and I blessed him. Yes, and he shall be blessed. When Esau heard the words of his father, he cried out with an exceedingly great and bitter cry and said to his father, Bless me, even me also, O my father. And he said, Your brother came deceitfully and has taken away your blessing. Just a little bit more look at the beginnings way back when they were much younger, what that unchecked has done to their relationship.

And you see there in verse 41, so Esau bore a grudge against Jacob because of the blessing which his father had blessed him. And Esau said to himself, The days of mourning for my father are near, then I will kill my brother Jacob. Goes back to the passage we just read in James, where it says, you know, you want, you don’t do not have, so you commit murder. My brother-in-law said there’s a he works for the county up in Walker County, and there’s a commissioner that one of the county commissioners, he says, you know, if this guy will lie to me, he’ll steal from me. And if he’ll steal from me, he’ll kill you. And so, you know, you’re like, well, that’s a pretty big jump.

You know, but if you allow that to progress to its end result, you basically get to where you have no regard for others’ things, and if you have no regard for others’ things, then you’re not gonna have any regard for them either. And it’s something that we need to, I think, always be vigilant to check ourselves against, letting some of these things creep into our feelings, you know, feelings of bitterness or being slighted about something, or not quite telling the whole truth. You know, most of us have a problem just outright telling a lie. I hope. But sometimes just you don’t tell all the truth. Because it may put things in a bad light that doesn’t reflect on you well. So anyway, this in chapter 27.

5. Jealousy From Rachel Caused Strife

This deceit fuels the strife. Esau’s got a grudge against his brother to the point that he wants to kill him because of this. And then we continue on, chapters 29 through 30. We’ve got the story of Jacob. His mom’s like, you know what? Esau wants to kill you. You need to get out of town for a while. Why don’t you go stay with your uncle? Some of us are smiling already. You know what happens to Uncle Laban, right? He wants to marry Rachel. And Laban says, sure, I’ll give you Rachel. But he doesn’t. He gives him Leah, the older sister instead, and tricks Jacob. And Jacob wakes up after the honeymoon, after the wedding night, and you know, they don’t have street lights and everything else.

She came in with a veil, and he woke up in the morning and like, oh, this is the wrong girl. And then Laban goes to him and says, Verse 26, it is not the practice in our place to marry off the younger before the firstborn. So you complete the week with this one, and we’ll give you the other one also for service which you shall serve with me for another seven years. So he’s already worked seven years before he got to marry. And now he got the after a week that he gets Rachel, and then he’s got to work another seven years to finish the paying for her, basically. So then what we know what happened, you know. He loved one of them more than the other, didn’t he?

He loved Rachel. He didn’t love Leah. Because Rachel’s really who he was working for. How do y’all think that went over? It didn’t go too well. So who ended up bearing and conceiving more children? Leah did, because God realized that she was unloved, gave her children. And it says she conceived again and conceived again. You know, verse 31, the Lord saw that Leah was unloved. And he opened her womb, but Rachel was barren. And it says, verse 1 of chapter 30 says, Now when Rachel saw that she bore Jacob no children, she became jealous of her sister. And she said to Jacob, give me children or else I die. Then Jacob’s anger burned against Rachel, and he said, Am I in the place of God who has withheld from you the fruit of the womb?

So then she tries to give her handmaid, you know, but you got jealousy here from Rachel on her part. And it caused strife. It caused conflict. And she was also angry at God. And Jacob, I mean, Jacob kind of threw it back at her. He’s like, hey, man, you know, God’s the one that’s done this to you. Don’t get on to me. And she’s angry at God. And I think that’s something that we see this has come up two or three or four or five times, you know, throughout the scriptures that people were angry at God. And why, well, why me? We were reading about it in the other adult class this morning in Psalm 73, where he kind of goes through a mental paradigm shift.

He’s jealous and upset with all of the inconsistencies with all the people in the world that are that are well off and are comforted and fat and they don’t have to work too hard. And he says, you know, I’m getting beat up every time I wake up in the morning and I’m bitter about that. And he said, when I went to the sanctuary of God, the house of God, I realized what their end is going to be. And he says, I’m reshifting my focus to where I’m not going to worry about what everybody else is doing, but I’m going to do what I know is right because we’re living for our end, not today. And sometimes we lose sight of that. Things that we see around us, we get upset about, we get we get down and discouraged.

And then sometimes we start letting bitterness creep in. And that’s that’s something that’s really hard to get rid of when you get bitter about something. Because it takes a while to get there. So you just can’t just scrub it out of the way immediately. But it’s something I think we need to really just bear in mind to guard our hearts and self against.

Sounds a whole lot like Galatians 5, doesn’t it? We’ve been studying in the vacation Bible school, but we’ve been studying the other side of that. This sounds like Galatians 5. Before the fruits of the Spirit, you’ve got all of these things that are the works of the flesh. And all of these are something that we should not be engaged in and party to on a regular basis. We’re not without sin. We’re going to mess up. We’re going to do things that aren’t the we’re not always going to make the best decision. But we need to be aware of where we stand before God and men and do our best to not have any fault in front of God or men. We see lots of these examples of these issues throughout the Old Testament and the New Testament.

You’ve got Joseph and his brothers. You know, once Rachel finally had a son, it was Joseph, and he was more favored again, you know, and the movie replays itself again. His brothers were jealous of him, sold him into slavery, and he ended up saving them all. Saul and David, you see that with jealousy and bitterness and anger coming out. And of course, when there’s wine and stuff like that thrown in too, you just kind of throwing fuel in the fire doing that. Even the disciples, Jesus’ disciples, what were they arguing about? They’re going along the road and they’re like, who’s going to be the greatest? I think I’m just going to be. And then you got some one. One of their moms comes to Jesus and says, I want you to have them one and two, Lord.

6. There's a Deeper Issue at Stake

You know. And wrong motives. Wrong outlook on what their state was, what their position was. And we’re supposed to serve each other. And as brothers and sisters, we sometimes lose sight of that fact. Whenever there’s someone that’s complaining or has a problem, we need to step back and look a little deeper. And you know, on the home front, you know, I mean, I’ve I’ve heard just bedlam coming from the other room. And you know, Teresa and I rush in there, and there’s one kid that’s just beating on the other kids, you know, or they’re screaming happening, and something’s, you know, going wrong, and so you snatch the one that’s doing the hitting and yank them out of the way, you know, and then you come to find out it was really the other one that was causing the problem.

Seldom, a lot of times, a lot of times the person or the sibling that’s complaining, it’s seldom the instigator. Sometimes they’re they’re probably getting what maybe came needs to come to them, but just not the right method. Kids have a way of meeting out justice on one another sometimes. sometimes when we’ve got a problem with a brother, and we’ve got conflict, there’s a deeper issue at stake. There’s a deeper issue involved. And we look at it right here on the surface, and it you wonder why we can’t solve it. It’s because it’s not on the surface. It’s it’s it’s one of these other deeper issues that this action is springing up from that. You know, so when you have when we have these conflicts at home with our siblings, and we don’t learn the lessons, we’re gonna have those same things repeat at work and repeat with our family as we go through life, repeat at church.

We’ve seen people that I’ve had guys leave me that were working for me, and they go to another shop, or I’ve called the shop that they were at before they got to meet and just talk to the owner about, hey, what do you he did that in you too? Oh, yeah, he’d do that every day, man, just drove me nuts. I’m like, when you go somewhere because you got problems, guess what? You take those problems with you because you’re probably part of the problem. If you’re not most of the problem, you’re definitely part of it. And so you see these problems. People are going to go to one congregation over here or another, the problems are the same. Because there’s deeper issues than the issue.

And there’s when you see that, when you see a conflict in yourself, we need to step back and look for the character defect or the character deficiency that’s causing that problem. Now I’m not telling you I’ve got that figured out how to do it. Because I don’t.

Oh yeah, I know where the flaw is. It’s with him. You know, that’s the first thing we want to say is point out where they’re there are flaws. But you know what? God, when he instructs us, doesn’t really talk to us a whole lot about all the things that we need to recognize in others. He talks to us about the things that we need to work on in ourselves. Because at the end of the day, you’re the only person that can do anything about you. In Galatians 4, excuse me, Galatians 5, verses 22, 23, it says, but the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Now I love this next phrase. Against such things, there is no law. If we’re trying to work on those things and focus on things that are peace and patience, kindness, goodness, there’s no way we can go wrong.

Conclusion

There’s no law against those type of things. So I guess my plea tonight with all of us is to diligently work towards good character in ourselves. We’ve got kids, work on developing those character traits in our children. And work on, when we’re here with one another, encouraging one another to love and good works. Because that’s what it’s all about. We’re a family, and we need to remember that there’s this many people around, we’re going to have problems from time to time. That’s inevitable. But how you handle it and the way that you perceive it and the way that you deal with it, we can always improve on those things. Finally, I want to end over in 2 Peter verses chapter 1. And we know this passage well.

Verse 5. Now, for this very reason also, apply all diligence in your faith. Supply moral excellence. And in your moral excellence, knowledge, and in your knowledge, self-control, and in your self-control, perseverance. And in your perseverance, godliness, and in your godliness, brotherly kindness, and in your brotherly kindness, love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these qualities is blind or short-sighted, having forgotten his purification from his former sins. Verse 8 says that if you’re working on these things, that it’s not just a I’ve got it. It’s a level of increasing those items that you’ve got. And you don’t ever plateau out. There’s no way we could ever achieve full quantity on any of these things.

And so it doesn’t matter how old you are, how much you know, how good you are at it, we can always improve. But I like that it’s you’re not going to be unfruitful. And that’s what we’re just talking about the fruits of the Spirit. These are going to be something that’s going to help us to bear fruit and bear the good fruit that we’ve been talking about. So I guess let’s be useful and fruitful in God’s kingdom. It’s what God wants of us, and we’ve got a whole family here of brothers and sisters that we need to help improve and get to heaven so we can all make it together. That’s all I’ve got for this evening. If you have not been baptized and you need to obey the gospel and wash away your sins through baptism, we can do that for you.

If you believe that Jesus is Christ, the Son of God, that’s all that was required in the New Testament to do that. If you’ve fallen away, if you’re having problems, if you struggle with some of these things, if you need the prayers or encouragement of the church in any way, we beg of you to come forward as we stand and sing this song.