James: Hijacking God’s Mission

One of the greatest dangers plaguing the church today is also one of the oldest — selfish ambition. Since the church was first established, the people of God have experienced conflict, disagreement, and division, and often times these circumstances provide an opportunity for us to become bitter, envious, and boastful.

But James 3 shows us what it looks like to endure conflict well. Rather than give in to the bitterness and envy that comes naturally to us in conflict, James instructs us to practice godly wisdom. We reject selfish ambition and instead choose to be people of peace, mercy, and good fruit.

You can take interactive notes here. At the end of the message, you can email the notes to yourself.

  I’d love for you guys to open your Bibles to James chapter three. We’re continuing in our collection of talks, just looking at the book of James, and it has just been so helpful in edifying our church and I really think today if we have ears to hear, it’ll do the same yet again.

Now in the last 25 years, uh, here in America. 40 million people have stopped going to church. Of those 40 million, there’s a bunch of different reasons why. Right? Some are no longer Christian, or a lot of them, though, are just Christians that no longer see the value of church. I recently finished this book, it’s called The Great De Churching, and, uh, it addresses that phenomenon.

And it says, this quote, it says, More people have left the church in the last 25 years, Then all the new people who became Christians and now he’s going to talk about American history from the first Great Awakening the second Great Awakening and the Billy Graham crusades Combined so if you know your history, those are pretty major movements where revival came And now we’re actually talking about the opposite of revival.

Instead of millions of people come into church, come to Christ, finding new life, we found in the last 25 years, the exact opposite happening. And so that book put together like a research team and they interviewed a lot of people and did all those surveys trying to figure out why is there such a major exodus?

Why is there a lot of people who are not here? And it came up with a lot of things. Some reasons include, and it makes sense, suffering, right? Suffering changed their view of God. Why do I even want to run to God if just life is so hard? And we deal with that as a community. Another thing they said was money.

You know, like jobs and and taking overtime. It’s not so much that I just want to get rid of church; It’s just no longer had the space for it. AlongsideAlong with that my family almost fell into this trap of sports; I was super into basketball, and I know one day my dad woke up and was like, why are we doing this?

This is not as important as coming to church on a Sunday. And so I sadly couldn’t play basketball anymore. That’s why I’m not in the NBA. That’s because of church Not because of my mom’s height and now that I’m short, that’s not it at all. Uh, but also a big one that we deal with a lot in our community is just like, family’s hypocrisy of the Christian faith, specifically when it comes to the political arena.

Right, we’ve been raised to believe in one thing and yet the way we treat the other side or all those sorts of situations really has made a lot of people go, I don’t, I don’t really want to do church anymore. And, the issues are many, and I love that it addressed it in that book. Um, and we need to face them, we need to speak honestly about them.

But I think if you boil down the biggest issue, uh, for why there’s such a major exodus of the church, it’s James chapter 3. It’s avoiding everything James Three says to do and not to do. And it takes a lot of courage to apply this chapter. It takes a lot of support of church leadership for this kind of thing to get done.

And so what this really is addressing when you look at all of James chapter three, it’s what you and I would call church hurt. Has anybody been hurt by the church before? You’re like, I’m not going to raise my hand, and you’re going to hurt me again. Okay, I’m sorry. Right. But I imagine more hands would have raised, but shout out to us, you know, I don’t know.

I was about to call you boring or something, but then you wouldn’t listen to me the rest of the time. You guys are great. Um, but you have the sting of gossip, right? Eugene Peterson says there are more, there’s more gossip than casseroles at a church potluck, and that’s saying something. Uh, the disorientation that comes from people manipulating you, right?

You think you guys are friends, and then they stab you in the back, and it’s all within the context of the church, and it gets really, really, Hurtful. Well, James 3 addresses a lot of that. So I want us to really zero in on this. Uh, we’re gonna be really covering the back half of James 3 starting in verse 13 through 18 because we address James 3, 1 through 12 in our simplicity series.

If you guys were here in week 3 in August, we talked about relational simplicity. It’s a lot of what Victoria was actually talking about in her testimonial video today. Um, so I, I encourage you if you really wanna deep dive into that. Just go on to our podcast, and you can listen to what it’s called relational simplicity.

Uh, but I want to give a summary of verses 1 through 12 before we dive into verse 13. Sound good? Wonderful. Uh, brief summary. Alright, there are four traits of the tongue. These are the words that James establishes in James Chapter 3, verses 1 through 12. Number one is that our words, our tongues, are powerful.

They’re very powerful. You see an image of a horse being bridled. You see the image, he then shows a ship with a small rudder. A horse and a ship, especially back then, these are the most powerful things you can think of. And he’s saying, LIKE Like these horses and the ships, the tongue has power, and it has power of life and death.

Proverbs 18. 21 says, Life and death are in the power of the tongue. You know that whole phrase, sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. Simply not true. Words are very powerful, and I think it’s the number one thing that hurts most of us just in life, and also specifically in the life of the church, if not dealt with.

Number two is that it’s destructive. So because it’s so powerful, it makes the destruction even worse. Jesus, uh, James, excuse me, describes the tongue like a forest fire. And he also uses that phrase that it’s animated by hell, so it’s very destructive. And so what it can do is I have to be careful because I talk a lot here on Sundays.

And what it can do is it can cast shame over people’s life that can destroy somebody. It can divide a church by what we say and what we don’t say, especially behind people’s backs. And it can harbor bitterness, right, all through the power of the tongue. It could begin to destroy you and everybody around you.

Number three, it’s uncontrollable. He’s talking about how we have figured out how to tame animals. But he says nobody has figured out how to tame the tongue. Uh, one, uh, group of people I’ve been studying a lot recently are the desert monks or the desert fathers and mothers. And I just love so many of the stories.

One of the stories is this, this monk went up to his Abba, his, his father, his spiritual father, and said, hey, I’m having a problem, uh, with, with saying things I shouldn’t say. And so he said, okay, great. Take this rock and keep it in your mouth for three years. So for three years, this monk kept the rock in his mouth, prohibiting him.

From speaking, and then therefore prohibiting him from gossip. And so we have rocks as you’re on your way out. We’re gonna make, I’m just kidding. But another story of another desert monk is even more fascinating. He went to his father, his elder, and he says, how do I overcome gossip? Specifically, I’m having an issue.

Isn’t it weird? Like we all know gossip’s bad, but we want to hear if somebody’s gossiping. It’s this weird pool and desire. And so he admitted that to his spiritual father and the, and the father says, okay, take a bag. And fill it with feathers from all the birds in the region. So he went out, had to figure out how to get all these birds, get the feathers, and put it into this bag.

And so the young monk, did as you said, returns with this huge bag filled with feathers. The elder slowly instructs him and says, Okay, now I need you to place a feather on the doorstep of every house in the village. Not knowing where this is going, he… He did what he was told to do. He got a feather, put it on every single doorstep.

When he returned, the elder then instructed him, saying, Now, go back and collect all the feathers you scattered. Of course, just as it is impossible for that young monk to recover every single feather, so it is with our words. You cannot take them back. When you spread gossip around, there’s no raining it back in.

It is now gone with the wind, and it’s doing more damage than you and I could ever know. So the tongue, it’s powerful. It’s destructive. It’s uncontrollable. But now James transitions in verse 11, and really I think sets us up for verse 13 and following. He says that it’s revealing. He says, look, like a, like a fig tree can’t produce olives.

Essentially, an evil person cannot produce righteousness. So you can try to be good all you want, but your words will reveal who you really worship. So if you’re not following Yahweh, if you are not surrendered to Jesus, it is inevitable. You cannot control your tongue and it will bring a forest fire and it will cause heartache.

Why? Because your heart hasn’t been regenerated by the love of Christ. You cannot help but speak evil and destruction in this world. That’s why Jesus says you will know a tree by its fruit. And something I love about the Desert Fathers that I think a lot of us forget when we study them in history, they didn’t do these things just to do things, they did them to examine the heart.

So it would ask questions like, does my speech point to a pride issue? Or does my appetite point to some gluttony issue that Jesus needs to take care of? Or do I serve people because I love them or because I want them to love me? These heart questions. That’s what James is doing here in the rest of this chapter.

He’s saying, okay, the heart, when it’s not redeemed, it can’t be controlled. But when it is redeemed, your tongue can be controlled. And so where does your heart lie? We can talk about restraining our tongue all day, but the deeper issue is the heart. So cue our rabbi, who’s also James half brother, and Luke 6.

He says, for out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. And so what is your mouth saying is pointing to where your heart is at. And so a heart that is specifically poisoned by sin and Satan himself is that of selfish ambition. Write this down. Nothing hijacks God’s mission more than selfish ambition.

You see this in the garden, right? Why do Adam and Eve? Do what they do. They have selfish ambition. They want to be like God or more than God. You see this with the kings throughout the whole Old Testament and the prophets. It’s nonstop. Selfish ambition is what thwarts us, moves us away from God’s mission.

And here’s why it’s hard. It’s really hard to spot. Selfish ambition for a period of time can look like you’re the best person in the world. Specifically in the church, you can do so many amazing things, and it looks like you love the Lord, but eventually your tongue will find you out. If you’re not doing it for the glory of God and to love people.

Eventually, your service will grow sour and begin to divide. Now, I don’t do this normally, but how I want us to begin is to read Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of James 3, 13 through 18. I find it very helpful, good context, and then we’ll go line by line by a more literal translation of the CSB. You with me?

Okay? So, just listen, look at the screen. This is Eugene Peterson as he studied the Greek. Here’s how he summarized it for modern-day English. He says the following. Do you want to be counted wise to build a reputation for wisdom? Here’s what you do. Live well, live wisely, live humbly. It’s the way you live, not the way you talk, that counts.

Mean-spirited ambition isn’t wisdom. Boasting that you are wise isn’t wisdom. Twisting the truth to make yourself sound wise isn’t wisdom. In fact, it’s the furthest thing from wisdom. It’s animal cunning, devilish plotting. Whenever you’re trying to look better than others or get the better of others, things fall apart and everyone ends up at the other’s throats.

Real wisdom, God’s wisdom, begins with the holy life and is characterized by getting along with others. It is gentle and reasonable, overflowing with mercy and blessings, not hot one day and cold the next. not two faced. You can develop, and this is our prayer, you can develop a healthy robust community that lives right with God and enjoys its results only if you do the hard work of getting along with each other, treating each other with dignity and honor.

Let’s pray. Father God, we just ask that this would be true of our congregation. God, we repent of any selfish ambition. God, we come before you. We want this kind of community that gets along with each other, that pursues your mission together for the sake of the world. Holy Spirit, would you gift us that today?

Give us the next step, God, based off of the reading of this word. In Jesus name I pray. Everybody says. Amen. Amen. Let’s look at verse 13 in a more literal translation. Verse 13 says, Who among you is wise and understanding? By his good conduct, so he’s pointing to his deeds, he should show, don’t just tell, right, that his works, which Caleb did a wonderful job last week talking about the importance of works, are done in the gentleness that comes from wisdom.

So he is talking about wisdom. Who is wise? We have to understand today, there is a major difference between wisdom and knowledge. We’re in a culture today that has a lot of knowledge, not that much wisdom. Right? Let me give you a few examples of the differences. Knowledge is measured by degrees. Wisdom is measured by good deeds.

Right? You can have all the degrees in the world and still not be wise. This is a more important illustration. Knowledge is knowing that tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting tomatoes in your fruit salad. Nobody’s laughing or anybody? Do you know what a fruit salad is? Come on. I quit. Uh, no. Done in gentleness.

This one’s so hard. So we have to remember, everybody looks wise as long as everybody’s getting along. The whole context of James 3 is this forest fire of words, chaos, strife. Now, it displays who is wise and who is not. So in this chaos, when things are going against you, when people are speaking lies, manipulating you, now you can display your wisdom.

He says the true wisdom is done in gentleness, which literally means you don’t retaliate in the face of criticism. Everybody looks wise when things are going well, and everybody likes them. What do you do? When people criticize you, offend you, go against you. James is saying wisdom from above chooses to forgive, chooses to nurture, and constantly restore.

I’m not going to hold that thing you said against me. I’m going to keep pressing through. I know you didn’t mean that. And even if you did, I’ll forgive you. I don’t like me either. Let’s move on, right? Done in a spirit of gentleness. Verse 14. But if you have bitter envy and selfish ambition in your heart, Don’t boast and deny the truth.

These words are really heavy. They’re loaded with meaning. So, let me just parse these out for you. Bitter envy. Uh, bitter and envy is actually kind of like a, a compound phrase here. And so it adds to the envy. Um, this is where Eugene kind of described it as mean-spirited. If you ever meet a mean-spirited person, they’re filled with bitter envy in their life.

Envy, I heard one commentator describe it as desire plus resentment. Which is the total opposite of contentment. That’s my line at the end, because you know me and my rhyming. Right? So it’s desire plus resentment. So you want something, somebody else has it, and now you can’t stand that person because they have the thing that you want.

And you won’t be happy until you not only have what they have, but they no longer have the thing that you want to have. Bitterness. Right? I’ve heard people describe bitterness as holding a knife and gripping onto it, thinking somehow it’s going to hurt the other person. Bitter envy. Proverbs 1430, one of my favorite verses, he says, a tranquil heart gives life to the flesh, but envy makes the bones rot.

So he’s saying a wise person, gentle, nourishing, forgiving, doesn’t use the tongue to bring people down, but to build people up. The opposite of godly wisdom, earthly wisdom. Bitter envy. Always trying to plan and mean-spirited, and you better not be better than them at anything. But an even better phrase, bitter envy and, and this is the crescendo here, selfish ambition.

Dr. Eric Mason in Philadelphia, uh, great church plant there. He defines selfish ambition as, quote, a strong drive for personal success without moral inhibitions. A strong drive for personal success without moral inhibitions, meaning if you are filled with selfish ambition, you have no problem cutting corners and you have no problem cutting somebody off as long as it fulfills your own agenda.

A person with selfish ambition is happy to use the church as long as the church is useful. The moment the church isn’t useful for your own personal agenda, you’re walking out the door and going somewhere else. It’s heavy today. You guys still with me? Selfish ambition always produces hatred and division.

You’re never content. You’re always needing to tear somebody else down. And specifically, I mean, you look at all the different mentions of selfish ambition in the New Testament, which is quite frequent, you’ll see a common theme that they always resist spiritual authority and they bypass accountability.

So if you have someone in your life, or if you are somebody, let’s be real, we have to always start with, is this me? Do you bypass accountability? Are you above somebody rebuking you? That’s a scary sign that possibly you are in bitter envy and selfish ambition. Another way that I looked at it is, um, another way to look at it, is selfish, ambitious people, they don’t have a paradigm for suffering or struggling.

And so when they’re suffering in their life, they want to point that out. Somebody else’s fault and get out of the situation and find somebody who won’t make them suffer. Uh, uh, Gerald Sitzer, who actually where I got those desert monk stories from, says the following, and after describing those desert fathers and mothers, he says about the Christian faith, We therefore cannot escape struggle, nor should we try.

Rather, we should discipleship.

For the goal of life in this world is not ease, prosperity, and success, but intimacy with God, maturity of character, and influence in the world. Selfish ambition says, no, I need ease, prosperity, and success. A person who has been regenerated by the Holy Spirit says, No, I need intimacy with God, maturity of character, and influence in the world.

You see the difference there? Stark difference. So what is James doing? He’s helping us further determine. Because on the outside, both look wise. But then you start to ask the tough questions, they really begin to reveal themselves. Then it says, they don’t boast and deny the truth. Which means. They’re constantly bragging about themselves and twisting the truth in order to make themselves sound better.

So they boast and they deny in order to move things around so that they are praised and so they are seen as successful. And, and James is saying, no, this just brings about destruction, which leads to verse 15. He’s going to crank it up even more. He says, such wisdom does not come down from above, which of course above is implying from God, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic.

What is he doing here? He wants us to see how severe this type of person is. And it’s not just to agree to disagree. No, this is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. When you allow them to do what they can do, they will tear apart your flock. He’s saying it’s earthly. It’s not of God. Unspiritual. It’s the opposite of the Spirit’s work.

And literally, demonic. But again, notice, James is calling this wisdom. Because you and I believe this type of person for a season. It has the appearance of wisdom, but they lack all godliness. And so it’s a warning to the congregation. It’s certainly a warning, this text, to pastors, to take high the calling of rooting out any selfish ambition among us, first and foremost, but also within the congregation.

Uh, it’s gonna be on the screen. You can flip there if you’re like the Bible, you know, if you’re fast. Uh, go to Acts chapter 20. I used to do those tests. Anybody do those like, you know, like in elementary school, it’d be like the test who can get there the fastest and I was annoying and always won. Uh, verse, uh, verse 28.

I really was, and I rubbed it in people’s face. Total Pharisee, uh, but God saved me. Uh, Acts 20, verse 28 through 31. I like to hear, I like the sound of the Bibles moving. Acts 20, I gave you enough time. You know, you’re not, you lost the contest. If you’re still, I’m just kidding. Oh, Lord, uh, selfish ambition, maybe?

I gotta repent. Okay, verse 28. Be on guard, this is Paul, he’s about to leave the church in Ephesus. Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has appointed you as overseers. To shepherd the church of God, which he purchased with his own blood. This is sacred, right? You guys are a sacred people, and the shepherds have to really be careful.

And he says, I know that after my departure, savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. Men will rise up even from your own number. And this is why church hurt hurts so bad. It’s people you love. It’s people within your own corner. They will rise up and now begin to distort the truth to lure the disciples into following them.

That’s what selfish, ambitious people do. Our call is to point people to Jesus. If I’m calling you to point to me and follow me, that is not the way of Christ. It’s the way of selfish ambition. Therefore, be on the alert. Remembering that night and day for three years, I never stop warning each one of you.

With tears, Paul is taking this so seriously. Go to 3rd John. This is gonna test you. Get there quick. 3rd John. You don’t actually say chapter 1, cause there’s only one chapter. So 3rd John 9 and 10. Uh, John is warning the church. He says, I wrote something to the church, but Diotrephus, who loves to have first place among them, does not receive our authority.

This is why if I come, I will remind him of the work he is doing. slandering us with malicious words. And he is not satisfied with that. He not only refuses to welcome fellow believers, but he even stops those who want to do so and expels them from the church. This is what people with selfish ambition do, and when left unchecked, they destroy a church.

These people are convincing and conniving, and I’m so grateful for the Holy Spirit giving us James 3 to where we can determine if somebody is producing in us division because of their own selfish ambitions. Chuck DeGroat, he wrote a really helpful book called When Narcissism Comes to Church. Narcissism is another way to talk about selfish ambition.

I imagine many of you have met somebody who’s narcissistic before. He mentions two different types of narcissism, which I think are really helpful to see. The two different types of selfish ambition we see in this text, but also we can see in the real world. Number one is grandiose narcissism. So sometimes people are this way, they just literally brag.

They want up everything you say, you talk about you’re so excited. I got this reward. Okay, cool. I got two of those, you know, like that kind of guy, you know, um, just constantly bragging, boasting, begging for applause, focused on winning, pointing out the losers above rebuke. You don’t tell this person what they did wrong.

No, they are so much better than you. You’re just lucky to be in their presence. This is grandiose, selfish ambition. And I think in today’s world, we can spot that a little bit more. Right? There’s been a lot of podcasts, there’s been a lot of people very fearful of this type of person, and I praise God for that.

The second kind of narcissism that I think a lot of us leave unchecked and don’t think about is vulnerable narcissism. He describes this as a person who clamors for affirmation in the cloak of victimhood. And so now any if, if they ever go against you, now all of a sudden, instead of saying, I was wrong, you say, no, that hurt me.

You’re a terrible person for telling me the truth. And they become this victim, and you get caught up in their narrative, and now you’re just wanting to throw away the truth. And, and so this person feels better. It can, it’s very manipulative, it’s passive aggressive. Uh, Chuck DeGroat coins, this phrase faux nobility, f a u x, like fake, right faux nobility where people use vulnerable moments.

To trick you into just believing everything that they’re about to say. And I think this is really, really hard. We have to see people will appear wise. Oh, they’re so vulnerable. They’re just so real. And yet, if that heart is not regenerated, it’s not godly ambition. It’s full of selfish ambition. And it will destroy all the people around them, including themselves.

And so to make sure, to know what kind of demonic wisdom this is, 316 is so helpful. It says, for where there is envy and selfish ambition, so what happens when those two things are there? There is disorder in every evil practice. Or what Eugene Peterson said, whenever you’re trying to look better than others or get the better of others, things fall apart and everyone ends up at the other’s throats.

Christ created us for shalom, for overall peace, flourishing, order. And when somebody is full of selfish ambition, you can have all the other people in the room that have the right mentality. And they can find ways to poison the well. And now we hate each other, we’re speaking ill against each other, we’re not trusting each other.

And this kind of church hurt happens. All the time. And as pastors, our chief job, first of all, is not to be the person with selfish ambition. So this is why we are accountable to you. But also, as shepherds, we are called to see, determine who that person is, lovingly rebuke them in all gentleness and wisdom, as it says, but say, well, you’re not doing that anymore.

You need Christ and Christ alone to redeem your heart. Let’s share the gospel to you. This is not how we act at this church. Because if you allow that to happen, it ruins our witness to the world. And it hurts each other. Hardest part of the job. Pray for your boy. All right. But disorder and every evil practice hurt people, hurt people.

But what does godly wisdom look like? So this is a pretty bad picture. Man, all sorts of chaos, destruction, all about them. Bitterness, envy, miserable people. Making other people miserable. What does godly wisdom look like? Well, he shows us how to tell the difference. Verse seventeen. But the wisdom from above, so it’s heavenly, not earthly or unspiritual demonic, as he just mentioned, from above is first pure.

Uh, commentator says pure is like the opposite of jealousy. Just genuinely root for others. When he says a compliment, he really means it. Right? Just pure. I don’t have a hidden agenda. Then he says peace loving. Peace loving is you get along with others. You’re hard to offend. When you get offended, you need to make sure you make it right.

But some of us just get offended too easily. You know what? They didn’t mean that. They had a bad day. They have a two-year-old at home. They haven’t slept for ten weeks. It’s fine, right? Don’t be so offended. And then gentle. Gentle is that nurturing, think that motherly, patient spirit. Compliant. Compliant means you’re teachable, persuadable.

When you come into a room, you have a disagreement. To be compliant is to say, Look, if I am wrong, if I was off, I’ll be the first to repent. I’ll be the first to say, You know what? You’re right here. I can be persuaded. I’m not coming into a meeting knowing all the answers, knowing how this meeting is going to go.

I’m very open. I’m going to be quick to listen. Where do we hear that? Slow to speak and slow to anger. This is compliant. Full of mercy and good fruits. Mercy, of course, is not being historical, right? Not holding their offenses over their head, but quickly forgiving. Good fruits are the fruit of the Spirit.

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Unwavering, which means you’re not hot one day and cold the next, right? A wavering person is hard to deal with. Is he in a good mood? I’m going to have that meeting now. If he’s not in a bad mood, I better get out. Friends, that’s…

That might be pointing to a poisoned well, and this person needs the gospel of Jesus Christ that grace can save them and redeem them, and their life doesn’t have to be for their own glory, but they can now make their life about the glory of God and just serving others and then without pretense. Without pretense is not two-faced, not hypocritical, where you hear one thing, you don’t have to worry; they’re now going to say something else when you leave the room.

Verse 18: And the fruit of righteousness Is sown in peace by those who cultivate peace. In other words, when we do the hard work of making peace, we experience a harvest, a, a reward, an outpouring of righteousness. Eugene, again, for the win. He says, you can develop a healthy, robust community that lives right with God and enjoy its results only if you do the hard work of getting along with each other, treating each other with dignity and honor.

And as I’ve been studying this and praying through this, I, I just want to say I’m really proud of our church. I think we’ve done a lot of this hard work of getting along with each other. Um, anytime you introduce change into a community, things can get a little wonky. Uh, we haven’t even been in this space for a year.

We keep changing and morphing and doing new things, and it pushes us, pushes our limits, and yet it’s been amazing. I’ve seen our people get together and work out their differences. Uh, it’s a sign of health. Uh, it’s not a healthy church when we all agree to everything. And ask no questions. That’s actually a sign of, of, of, you know, monarchy, right?

Of just one person calls all the shots. But a healthy community says, Now wait, here’s my perception, what’s yours? And we work it out. And sometimes, me and Caleb have to pull the pastor card when we have to, right? But other times, like, no, let’s figure this thing out together. And it’s a lot of hard work.

But we’re united because of the blood of Christ. We’re united. We’re on the same mission. We want to be formed by Jesus together. And we’ve just seen this worked out in so many ways. We’re so grateful for the way our community’s been practicing Sabbath and figuring out what does it look like to rest and how can we rest together in scripture, right?

Just like rooting each other on, to keep pressing into reading the text and simplicity, I think, has been the hardest, right? It’s really pointing a lot against our idols, and it’s so tempting. Here’s what I love about this. These practices are pressure cookers. If you have selfish ambition, Sabbath scripture, And simplicity will slap you right in the face, right?

Like, you can’t really stay here long if you’re here just for you. These practices make us, and I love how Victoria mentioned interim testimony, make us look at the heart and go, am I glorifying God who is so good? Am I loving and just serving my neighbor? Am I no longer focused on myself but on, on, on, on what other people need?

And it’s exposing us, but I think it’s good and just know, this isn’t a call to be perfect, it’s just a call to be humble. And as these practices push us and make us uncomfortable, lean into that. That’s where God does His greatest work. Sabbath exposes us, our selfish, ambitious spirit, and exposes how we love to do things because we love what other people think about us.

And we say for one day a week, don’t do anything, and don’t shine the spotlight on you, shine it on God. That’s hard. Scripture exposes us that we just love so many lies. We want to manipulate others to make ourselves feel better. Simplicity exposes how much we manipulate our situations, how many times we buy things to make ourselves feel better.

A selfish, ambitious spirit will just run away, but somebody with a godly heart leans in and lets him do his work. Nothing hijacks God’s mission more than selfish ambition. So I want to end by just showing the two choices you and I have. We have a choice to make. I love how James, he’s so simple. You can either have selfish ambition or godly ambition.

And here’s two key ways to figure that out. Number one, godly ambition remains submitted to biblical authority. One of the clearest markers of selfish ambition in your life is you have one authority and it’s you.

James is helpful for us because he says, Without using the scriptures as a mirror, willing to repent, willing to be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger, he says we will be stuck in self-deception. A selfish, ambitious person never entertains the idea that maybe they’re the problem. That’s what self-deception does.

It can create a whole lie, a whole narrative. To where you’re convinced you’re right. But if a congregation, if the word of God, if pastors are saying, No, this is wrong. Then there needs to be a wake-up call to repent and turn away from that sort of thing. Uh, what are, what are, what is biblical authority?

It’s God and God alone, of course. His ways are higher than my ways. His thoughts are higher than my thoughts. Which means we submit. to the Bible’s authority. Second Timothy three talks about how it’s helpful for all things, including rebuking us. And so we don’t pick and choose what to follow, but also the scripture says to submit to church leadership.

So that includes pastors and even in different situation, deacons. Right? And this is the most awkward thing to mention, right? It feels like narcissism. Hey, follow your pastor. But, it is the anointing of the office. And so, I try not to say this all the time. But, I mean, hey, if you don’t see me as an authority in your life, I would encourage you to go somewhere else.

Because you need authority in your life. You need biblical authority. And it’s the best thing for your soul. Um, and we submit to each other. Ephesians 5 talks about mutual submission. So it’s not just the pastor, but we also know the priesthood of believers. You have the Holy Spirit, you have the Holy Spirit.

And so a, a great council of people, group, right? We’re listening to each other. We’re moving together. And we’re being humbled as we interact and love one another. So it’s amidst biblical authority. Some of us, we think, no way, I can’t ever do that. Maybe that shows you need some repenting to do. And we’ll give you that opportunity.

Number 2, godly ambition remains connected to biblical community. One of the key ways you can tell if someone’s caught up in selfish ambition is they run when things get tough.

There is nothing more humbling than a together group, right? There’s nothing more humbling than church, than doing community. Keeps you accountable. It makes you stop worrying about yourself. You got to care and pray for others. It’s hard. Philippians 2 3 it says do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit but in humility consider others more important than yourselves everyone should look not to his own interest but rather to the interest of others and if that sounds appalling to you Our invitation is not just to get better, our invitation is to turn to Christ, because Christ will redeem your heart and your mind and your perspective, and you will see counting others more significant than yourself is the answer to life and life in abundance.

But if that doesn’t compute, that means we need to start with the cross of Jesus Christ and to remind you who Jesus is and how he has already forgiven you and redeemed you. Last thing, I want to end with this quote. Because community will rub you the wrong way. And that’s by God’s design. It says, Joseph Hellerman.

He says, spiritual formation, a word that you’ll hear a lot at this church. Spiritual formation occurs primarily in the context of community. Persons who remain connected with their brothers and sisters in the local church almost invariably grow in self-understanding. And they mature. And their ability to relate in healthy ways to God. This is especially the case for those courageous Christians who stick it out through the messy process of interpersonal conflict.

Hear me, long term relationships are the crucible of genuine progress in the Christian life. People who stay, grow. I love that. Let me just tell you, I see, I know the people in this room, and some of you, you stuck it out. And there has been a harvest of righteousness in your life. And I’m sad, because I know that some people are not in the room, because to be honest, they didn’t stick it out.

And our joy, our desire as a church is to grow you into the image, and so I want to encourage you to do these two things that our culture says is impossible. One is to submit to biblical authority. And two, to connect, stay connected, to biblical community.