Keeping Trouble under Lock and Key (James 3:13-18)

Welcome this morning, a beautiful day today. Hope you had your reservations in for the tri-tip later. Me too, looking forward to it. Mostly looking forward to being together with the believers this morning.

So let's open with a word of prayer. Father, it is always a joy to gather with your people, to be reminded of your work of grace that spans the ages, spans ethnicity, spans social status, spans any physical barrier, limitation, or division that humanity has erected through the years and continues to erect.

With the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ smashes it all down, for we are all on level footing before the cross of Christ. Your mercy and grace reach out to us, and you ignite within our hearts a love for Christ that causes us to pursue him relentlessly.

We thank you. You've placed your spirit within us. He's jealous for us that we might walk in holiness, that we might enjoy the fruit of our salvation even here as we long for the day when what we now have in principle becomes its fullness of reality there in your presence, in your great eternal kingdom.

The world is such a such a messed up place at the moment, Father, and we know that there can never be peace until the Prince of Peace himself returns. And so with the saints through the ages, we pray even now, Maranatha, come quickly, Lord Jesus.

Amen. All right, well, come on in. Thank you. Get your seats. You have to come early to get a good seat. Meaning a seat in the back. The back row Baptist, no kidding. All right, so he was born Eric Weiss.

Eric Weiss. He was born in Budapest, Hungary in the year 1874. He died in Detroit, Michigan on October the 31st, 1926. During his career, he became known as the world's most famous escape artist. Harry Houdini was his stage name, and he was a master at picking locks, holding his breath underwater, and contorting his body.

Those were his specialties. Among his more notable escapes were the milk can escape. In this stunt, Houdini would be handcuffed and sealed inside of an oversized milk can filled with water. As part of the escape, Houdini would challenge the crowd to hold their breath along with him while he was inside the can.

Another one was the Chinese water torture. There, Houdini's feet would be locked in stocks and he would be lowered head first into a glass fronted tank filled with water, and the stocks would then be locked to the top of the tank.

Or the suspended straight jacket escape. Here, Houdini would be strapped into a regulation straight jacket and then suspended by his ankles from a crane dangling above the crowd. In full view of the crowd, he would wiggle his way out of a straight jacket.

The master of escape. He was indeed that master of escape, but there is one who is even more difficult to keep under lock and key than Houdini, and that is your tongue. Your tongue. One writer says the tongue is contained in a cage of teeth and lips, but it still escapes.

But it still escapes. Open your Bibles up to the third chapter of James. We're back here in James chapter 3. We'll finish it this morning. In James chapter 3, verses 13 through 18, title the message this morning, Keeping Trouble Under Lock and Key.

Keeping Trouble Under Lock and Key. Last week, we heard a message entitled Two and a Half Ounces of Trouble. In that message, James pointed out the very sobering and penetrating picture of the problem of uncontrolled speech.

This week, we move with him to another topic, but a related topic. It is the topic of wisdom. James moves to the topic of wisdom, and it's related to this whole topic of the control of the tongue. The key to right talk is right thought.

The key to right talk is right thought, and the means to right thought is not intelligence, but wisdom. The key to right talk is right thought, and the means to a right thought is not intelligence, but wisdom.

We certainly see that on display around us, don't we? Wisdom is not a measure of IQ. Here we are in James chapter 3, verses 13 to 18, and we're going to see here in these verses three lessons regarding wisdom that are essential to keeping trouble under lock and key.

So, three lessons concerning wisdom that are essential to keeping trouble under lock and key. So, let's read the text. Who among you is wise and understanding? Let him show by his good behavior his deeds in the gentleness of wisdom.

But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, do not be arrogant and so lie against the truth. This wisdom is not that which comes down from above, but is earthly, natural, demonic.

But where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder and every evil thing. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy.

And the seed whose fruit is righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. So, the first lesson for us this morning is this. Wisdom is practical, not theoretical. Wisdom is practical, not theoretical.

Verse 13. Who among you is wise and understanding? Let him show by his good behavior his deeds in the gentleness of wisdom. Now, when you and I open our mouths, we assume something about what we are saying.

And the assumption that we make is our own wisdom. We assume our own wisdom every time we open our mouths and speak. In other words, we think that what we have to say is worth being heard. We assume our own wisdom.

James wants to put that assumption to the test this morning. He wants to test that assumption. And so, to those who will and are willing to step forward and be examined, he will assert this morning that true wisdom is not based on a person's knowledge of theology, but rather their skill in putting that knowledge into practical use in the everyday circumstances of life.

In other words, it's not how much you know, it's what you do with what you do know. That's what James is concerned about. He challenges his readers, and by extension, us, to show what you have. What have you got?

And it's a similar challenge to what he issued back in chapter 2 and in verse 18, you remember that, where he says, some say you have faith, I have worked, show me your faith without your works, I'll show you my faith by my works.

This is another show-and-tell challenge. This is another show-and-tell challenge. What do you have? Do you have wisdom or not? That's the question. James says here in verse 13 that true wisdom produces two results.

Look at verse 13 again, who among you is wise and understanding? Let him show by his good behavior his deeds in the gentleness of wisdom. True wisdom produces two results. First, it produces good works, he says.

You see it there, good behavior in his deeds, basically. So the idea is good works. So he's not speaking here about the occasional good work that people stumble into, but rather he's talking about the overall conduct of a person's life, their overall behavioral pattern.

What is the behavioral pattern of their life? Is it one characterized by good works? In other words, it is the day in, day out, week by week, year by year pattern of doing that which is good. We might say that it is not the perfection of our lives that James is here examining, but the direction of our lives.

He is examining direction. He's asking us to examine the direction of our lives. So don't look at our successes, just we're looking for a pattern. We're looking for a pattern here. Wisdom produces a life that is characterized, James says, by good deeds, by good deeds.

Now, how do we know what are the good deeds that wisdom will generate in a believer's life? Where do we go to understand these things? Do we go to the culture? Do we ask them, you know, how would you like us to love you?

Is that what love means? The answer is obviously no, we don't. We go to the scriptures. The scriptures are very explicit in explaining and elaborating what it is that a life of faith, a life of wisdom produces in terms of the deeds towards others.

So lots of time spent in the scriptures gives us those places of evaluation in terms of our lives. What are our deeds like? James is talking here again about the overall conduct of a life, the direction of our lives.

He's saying it's measured by the scars of having fallen down and gotten back up again. Fall down, get up, move ahead. Fall down, get up, move ahead. That's the kind of a life he's talking about. Learning from our mistakes, plotting on, plotting ahead.

Sounds boring, but hey, you know what? That is the Christian life. That is the Christian life. And this, by the way, is generally why the scriptures equate wisdom with age. Generally the scriptures equate wisdom with someone who has achieved a measure of age, often measured by gray hair.

And why is that? Because someone who has achieved a measure of age is someone who has at least lived a while and hopefully has learned some things along the way. But it's not always true. It's not always true.

Just because you have gray hair or no hair doesn't mean that you have arrived with wisdom. The world is full of people who start the race and don't finish well. Lots of starters, far less finishers. How many will finish?

How many of us will finish this race? It is a race. We need to keep our eye on the finish line. We need to persevere in the race. We won't just stumble over the finish line somehow. It's a race that has to be pursued.

You know, one of the dangers, I think, of virtually all young men is a discontentment with the older generation. I think, generally speaking, young men have a discontentment with the older generation.

They are quick to see the flaws in the lives of those that are older than them. They're very good at seeing the flaws among the older generation. And they generally think that they know what is necessary to fix all those problems.

There is a certain hubris of youth that thinks that they can see clearly. And when you put a little Bible knowledge into the mix, you have a very potent formula for disharmony within a church. A very potent formula for that disharmony.

In other words, young men filled with their heads full of Bible, without a whole lot of wisdom to go with it, are dangerous. They need to be set aside for a while and tested before they're elevated to positions of leadership because they tend to be self-destructive.

And James here is calling for a life that displays wisdom, that has skill in the display of the wisdom. Something beyond mere theoretical knowledge. So wisdom produces good works over a long period of time.

Second, wisdom produces humility. The second thing we see in verse 13 is wisdom produces humility. Who among you is wise and understanding? Let him show by his good behavior his deeds in the gentleness of wisdom.

This word translated here, gentleness, proutes, is the Greek word. And it's an interesting word because it has a really wide semantic range. So it certainly means gentleness. It means meekness or mildness.

It means kindness and also carries with it the connotation of humility. So it's all of these kinds of characteristics wrapped up in this word, proutes. Now the idea behind the word is that a heart, attitude full of gentleness and mildness toward other people.

That's what it is talking about. It's one's orientation towards other people. A person characterized by proutes is one who can give and receive rebuke in a humility of heart. Engaged with others, with humility, able to give rebuke with gentleness and kindness, and also to receive it.

That's because these characteristics are always measured in the context of a relationship. It's super easy to think we are gentle or kind or mild or humble when we're not interacting with other people.

We can be the most gentle people when we're all by ourselves. Yeah? It's when we engage with others, when we rub shoulders with others, that's when we find out, are we really gentle? Are we really characterized by a meekness or a humility?

So, drawn out in relationships. Now, much like our own time, the ancient Greeks equated this quality, proutes, of humility and gentleness with weakness. They saw it as weak and they found it to be contemptible.

They had no interest in it. So this is a Christian virtue. This is not any kind of a secular virtue. This is a distinctly Christian virtue because it is produced by the work of the indwelling Spirit of God.

He alone makes people gentle, mild, meek, and humble. We're looking for an example of proutes. Where would I go to see what it looks like? What's it look like in practical terms? There's no better place to go than to the Gospels and the Lord Jesus Christ himself.

He says of himself in Matthew 11 29, take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and humble in heart. So, time spent in the Gospels, reading the Gospels with an eye for this kind of characteristics, you will find the perfect pattern in Christ himself to which we can then look.

So, time spent in the Gospels helps us understand what it is that James is evaluating and what it is that the Spirit of God produces and, may I say, expects of his children. He expects a family likeness, a growing family likeness.

Beloved, wisdom is not measured by academic achievement but by deeds done in proutes, in gentleness, in mildness. This, by the way, is why the Apostle Paul, when talking about the characteristics for an elder, those things that they need to be tested in, never mentions any kind of formal education.

No seminary degrees or what would be the first century equivalent of that is never mentioned. Instead, it's a character assessment. It's a character assessment because it's wisdom really that he's talking about.

It's wisdom. And wisdom is not learned by sitting and listening to lectures but by applying truth to our lives amid life's real circumstances. That's how we grow wisdom. That's how we gain. So, the first lesson to keep trouble under lock and key is that wisdom is very practical.

It is not theoretical. There's not a theoretical topic. Second, wisdom is from God, not man. Wisdom is from God, not man. Verses 14 through 16. Beginning in verse 14, but if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, do not be arrogant and so lie against the truth.

Notice the contrast. Find the immediate contrast designated here with the word but. The true wisdom is revealed in our deeds and just as that is true, so also a false wisdom is revealed in the same way by our deeds.

In this case, a jealous self-seeking ambition. We can know in contrast, true wisdom and false wisdom, wisdom so called by the deeds again, by what is manifested through this wisdom. He's concerned about those in the church whose motivating desire was to promote their own opinions, to work for their own self-interest.

Notice it. Bitter jealousy, selfish ambitions. This is in the context of the church. So, these are those within the church who what moves and motivates them is a desire to express their own ambitions within the church.

Now, years ago I learned this principle and it is this, that everybody embodies their ministry. Everybody embodies their ministry. In other words, whatever ministry you are involved in becomes to you a certain reflection of yourself and what that means is when there is any kind of criticism of that ministry, it's really easy to personalize it and see it as a personal criticism and an attack.

And all within that process, again, it's very easy to baptize our own ambitions, our own desires, and put the mark of God on them and thus push them within the church and the people of God. And James says that's not that's not heavenly wisdom.

That kind of approach is actually just the opposite. And it's not very hard to imagine the type of speech that comes out of the mouth of somebody who is overtly jealous and pursuing a selfish ambition.

I think it would be well said in verse 6 that they are going to speak like a vent pipe from hell. The words that come out of their mouths will be mostly like a vent pipe out of hell as they push their agendas within the church and among the people of God.

Rather than produce the outward results of good deeds and humility, instead they exude arrogance and thus lie against the very gospel they say they believe. The gospel should produce humility, wouldn't you agree?

The gospel should produce humility and it should because it enables us to recognize truth about God and ourselves. For example, God is sovereign and you are not. God is holy and you are not. You are sinful and guilty.

That immediately an understanding of that orders our relationship both to God and actually to others around us. Jesus died for us because we are helpless. He died for us because we are helpless. That levels the playing field.

You don't bring anything to your salvation except your sin. That's all you got to offer. Jesus does it all. God raised him from the dead that he might rule over us. Thus he is known as the Lord Jesus Messiah.

He is our Lord. We have to humble our hearts, believe and call upon him to save us. This is a very humbling thing. A proud man can never find redemption in Christ. Never. Only the humble. And finally the news flash.

The church belongs to Christ, not you. This is not your church. This is not the elders church. This is Christ's church. It is Christ's church. These gospel truths help to properly humble us. In fact, we could say that the gospel is like halon gas.

You familiar with that? In a fire suppression system they have what they call halon gas and it evacuates when it's dumped and released into the room. It evacuates all the oxygen out of the room and thus there is nothing that can burn, right?

One of the requirements of a fire is oxygen. So halon gas suppresses fires by suffocating them. And the gospel acts like halon gas to the fire of a proud tongue. It removes the oxygen that the tongue feeds on.

The antidote for the proud heart is to go back to the cross of Christ again and again and again and be reminded of who he is and who we are. When we say we believe the gospel and we act with arrogance, we are in effect lying against the truth that we say we believe.

Verse 15. This wisdom, this wisdom that produces a selfish ambition is is not that which comes down from above but is earthly, natural, demonic. Notice James says here that the source of the false wisdom in effect is the world, the flesh, and the devil.

Is that familiar to you? John's terminology. This is the source of it all. Those who are wise in the ways of the world will often seek to advise believers. They'll often seek to advise you. Play politics.

Figure out who are the decision makers. Buddy up to them. That's how you'll get things done. They'll even dispense this and call it church growth strategy. And yet it has no place, no place in the church of God and produces only disastrous results.

Next week we'll begin in chapter four and and you just notice beginning in verse one, what is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? James is going to speak with candor about fighting within the church of God.

Conflict within the church and what is the source of it? In context it follows right along from a natural demonic wisdom. Verse 16. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder and every evil thing.

James says that just as true wisdom produces true results, so also worldly wisdom produces two results. They're just the opposite. First, disorder. It produces disorder. This is a fascinating compound Greek word here but essentially it's it's against stasis.

It's akastasia is the Greek word against stasis. What is stasis? Stasis is equilibrium. Equilibrium. Earthly wisdom, demonic wisdom produces a condition that is against equilibrium. It's a condition within the church that's characterized by disorder, confusion, disturbance, and restlessness.

In James 1 .8 we can turn there he uses a form of this word to describe the conditions of a double-minded man. Verse 8. Chapter 1. A double-minded man, unstable in all his ways. There's the form of the word.

It's unstableness. In 3 .8 he uses a form of the word to describe the untamed tongue. No one can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil. He says same form of the word. So it's unstable. It's restless.

Produces disorder, confusion, disturbance. The idea is that a congregation in which worldly wisdom prevails is a congregation that is characterized by public confusion, disorder, restlessness, and chaotic turbulence.

Those are the environmental factors that produce church splits. Those are the kinds of environmental factors that produce church splits. Some of you no doubt have been through the pain of church splits.

You've been in those places where the place you go on a Sunday morning and it is not a peaceful place. It is chaotic. It is confused. It is restless. It is a congregation in flux because it's a congregation that is being driven by a demonic wisdom, not of heavenly wisdom.

It produces this kind of disorder. Secondly, it produces, notice he says every evil thing. Every evil thing. The idea is a good for nothingness. It produces a good for nothingness. In other words, the impossibility of anything good ever coming from that situation.

James is speaking of every kind of evil thing. He means the wrong kind of wisdom produces every kind of evil practice that somebody could imagine. How can a church do this? One might ask. The answer would be is that they are in grip, in the grip of a demonic wisdom, an earthly wisdom where selfish ambition and jealousy rule and there is no limit to what they can do.

No limit at all. Many years ago, my wife and I became members of a small Southern Baptist church, a small Southern Baptist church. And we weren't there very long before we began to understand the lay of the land.

This church had two prominent families as part of it. These two prominent families, we might call them the two bulls in the pen, hated each other's guts. They absolutely despised each other. And when you come, and we're a young couple, we're 26-ish, four or five, I don't know, we're young.

We arrive and we are immediately greeted with with open arms and a show of hospitality by each of the families who bent our ear all night long, primarily about the other family. I said it didn't take us too long.

We weren't super mature, but it didn't take us too long to figure out what was going on. They had a death grip on this congregation. In fact, the congregation called a young pastor from seminary and he came and they put on a good front, brought him in.

And then after the fact, he realized what was going on and he wouldn't give in to them. And so they just stopped paying him. They wanted him to resign. He wouldn't resign. He said, well, we just won't pay you then.

And so he slugged it out for about 90 days without getting paid until finally he couldn't pay his bills anymore and they left. And he left the ministry, actually. He left the ministry, a young seminarian so discouraged by the kind of anger and bitterness and infighting that arises in a church that is controlled with an earthly or demonic wisdom.

Carol and I actually encountered this. We were married in that church years before that. And we arrived, this is a very small church, so we arrived on a Friday night to do the rehearsal and we looked at the soundboard and there were just wires hanging out of it because one of the families had contributed all the sound equipment to the church, but then they got mad because they weren't put onto a certain committee.

And so apparently they showed up sometime during the week and tore it all back out again. So we don't have any recordings or videos of our wedding, but we've been married 45 years next week and it's still like the knot still worked.

So it's all good. It's all good. But that's the level of fighting that we've experienced personally and that's nothing. That's nothing compared perhaps what some of you have experienced or what you've read of.

What you've read of. Listen, since the God is a God of peace, since God is a God of peace, factions in the church cannot legitimately claim God's support for their cause. If God is a God of peace, and he is, then factions in the church can lay no claim to his support for their cause.

It is a blight, it is a shame, and it has got to torment the heart of Christ to see his church torn like that. Wisdom is practical, not theoretical. Wisdom is from God and not man. Third and finally, wisdom produces peace, not strife.

Wisdom produces peace, not strife. Verse 17, but the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering and without hypocrisy. Contrast, again notice the the adversative there begins with but, there's a contrast here to the worldly wisdom and the outcome of the wisdom from above.

Just like true faith, true wisdom is identified by the quality of the life that it produces. Okay, back to that theme again. This verse reminds us of course of Galatians chapter 5 and verses 22 and 23, right?

The fruit of the spirit, in other words the fruit that is when produced demonstrates the spirit of God resides within this believer, that they are under his influence and power, his presence is manifested in them.

Notice the first and preeminent attribute that describes the heavenly wisdom is purity. You see it? First pure, haknos. It denotes an innocence, a moral blamelessness and it is the source and the key of all the other virtues that follow and flow out of it.

It flows out of the inner purity of a heavenly wisdom and there are six, there it is, six. If God had given us six fingers, you'd only have to put up one hand, but there are six qualities that characterize this life of godliness here.

The first is peaceable. You see it? Peaceable. The idea is desiring and fostering peace, a peace lover by restraining discord, by promoting right relationships among the people of the congregation. In other words, that someone who is a demon is demonstrating heavenly wisdom, it will be someone who is a peacemaker among the people of God.

One who perhaps when they hear something spoken that is critical of a church or its leadership and so forth, they'll be the halon gas, they'll be the one who extinguishes the fire, who reminds the person.

That kind of a critical spirit has no place among the people of God. If you have something, you need to go and speak to them. Don't speak to others, speak to them. Be a peacemaker. Be gentle. The idea is yielding to the wishes of others, a gentleness.

It carries the idea of yielding to the wishes of others. It's interesting, by the way, that Paul picks up this same word in 1 Timothy 3, where he's talking about the qualifications of elders. In verse 3, he said that they are not addicted to wine or pugnacious, that means not a striker, not one quick to go to their fists, but gentle.

You see that? Gentle. In other words, yielding to the wishes of others. Why? Because in an elders meeting, it can get pretty intense at times. People hold their convictions deeply and strongly, and so being willing to have that kind of a yieldedness to another man, to let him let him express himself, don't ridicule his ideas.

Listen. Be a peacemaker. Be a gentle man. You can't be a leader among the people of God and not be. Third, reasonable. You got to be reasonable. The idea is easily persuaded, open to reason, willing to listen, and defer to others.

Okay? So not empty-headed, where anybody can pour any crazy idea into your head and you think that's now the way to go. That's not the point of it. The point of it is, is that you're open to listen to another man or a woman who opens the scriptures with you.

And together, these three characteristics, they stand in very stark contrast to jealousy and the selfishly ambitious nature of the worldly wisdom, don't they? They just are incompatible with one another.

You can't be this and that. If you're this, you're not that. And if you're this, you're not that. You can't have a little of each. They are mutually exclusive, full of mercy and good fruits. Number four, full of mercy and good fruits.

This is more than a feeling of pity, more than just feeling the pity. Remember when he says, what kind of faith is it that says when they see someone in need, says, you know, be warm, be filled, and basically be gone, right?

There's no pity in that, or at least there's no mercy. Maybe I should say it that way. There's no mercy in that kind of an attitude. So James is saying here that true wisdom produces acts of mercy that lead to practical help.

Acts of mercy that lead to practically helping others. This is what a peaceable person is like. This is what a person manifesting heavenly wisdom is like. Fifth, unwavering. Interesting word here. It's the only place in the New Testament that occurs, and thus its translation is a bit uncertain.

We can't look anywhere else and get any ideas about it. So the New Testament, or the NASB rather, translates it as unwavering. I checked the LSB. They translate it as without doubting. But the other major translations, they opt for the idea of impartial or without favoritism, and I think that's probably a better in context, probably a better translation of it.

So one who is demonstrating heavenly wisdom will be someone who is impartial, doesn't show favoritism to others, and it fits in the characteristics here. And then sixth, without hypocrisy. Without hypocrisy.

In other words, sincere, free from having to try to impress other people. This is what a person whose life is characterized by heavenly wisdom looks like. And then verse 18, and the seed whose fruit is righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.

What? That's a proverb. James coins his own proverb. He's speaking here about the results of a godly wisdom, and he's doing so in a form like a proverb. I think we could say it like this, wisdom is the seed, kind of breaking it down, wisdom is the seed, righteousness is the fruit, and being a peace lover is the motivation necessary to sow it.

I think that's what he's trying to communicate here. One commentator takes his stab at it, and he says those who walk in godly wisdom are peacemakers, who sow in peace and as a result raise a harvest of righteousness.

Okay, I like that. Or how about this one, blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. Who said that? He did. Yes, he did. Last week, James talked about the danger of unrestrained speech.

Next week, chapter four, he's going to address the significant conflicts that can develop within the community of believers. Sandwiched between these two topics, the uncontrolled tongue and outright hostility within a congregation, lies this section on godly wisdom.

It's the meat of the sandwich, if you like, and there's a reason it's there. It's not by accident. It's not by accident. It's because godly wisdom is, all of us, our greatest need. It is our greatest need.

The book of Proverbs says that wisdom is available to those who will come and get it. Chapter four, verse seven. It is available, come and get it. The question I want to leave us with this morning is, do you want it?

Do you want it? If you do, come and get it. Let's pray. Our father, these topics last week, this week, and next are heart topics. They're hard because they expose the sin and weakness of our own hearts.

We confess, our father, that more often than we want to admit, we give in to the use of the tongue to to tear down, not to build up, that we do not take advantage of heavenly wisdom and instead tend to rely or gravitate towards unearthly wisdom, and to hear it explained in such stark terms that it is demonic and leads to divisions within the body of Christ and dissensions that can erupt because of it.

All manner of evil, James says, comes from this. Father, we need to hear it. We clearly need to hear it for your inspired James to write it, as he wrote to that first century community of believers who were undoubtedly facing these very issues.

How I thank you that that this church body is not marked by dissent and division, that there is a peaceableness here that is refreshing to our souls. We come, we look forward to being here. We're grateful for the gospel's work among us.

We're grateful for its faithful preaching and teaching. We're thankful for our elders, their love for Christ, and their desire to be involved and help people who are struggling to to understand how Christ works for them.

And yet, and yet, Lord, a division and dissension is never far away, for a church is filled with sinners saved by grace. Any one of us, in a moment's time, given the right provocation, would open our mouth and throw a hand grenade into the works.

May your spirit impress upon us the soberness of this. May you help us to guard our hearts, cultivate an attitude of gratitude rather than criticism, to seek to make Christ known, and that the glory that is rightfully his would shine over this place.

Amen and amen.