Grudge Match

Monday July 19, 2010: James 4:1–3 (NKJV)

Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members?

You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures.

Background: The root Greek word translated as fight or quarrel is ‘match’!

What irony creates fights or quarrels? Fights or quarrels start with a desire for personal pleasure.

Tuesday July 20, 2010: Titus 3:9 (NKJV)

But avoid foolish disputes, genealogies, contentions, and strivings about the law; for they are unprofitable and useless.

Why are we admonished to avoid arguing (about law)? There’s no conclusion, profit or use. Both sides end up saying, “I’m right, you’re wrong!”

Wednesday July 21, 2010: Titus 3:10 –Titus 3:11 (NKJV)

Reject a divisive man after the first and second admonition, knowing that such a person is warped and sinning, being self-condemned.

What does ‘divisive’ mean? The Greek root word is ‘heretic’, a person who creates division. A divisive person gets others to choose sides. “Whose side are you on: mine or his?”

Thursday July 22, 2010: 2 Timothy 2:23 (NKJV)

But avoid foolish and ignorant disputes, knowing that they generate strife.

Why avoid foolish and ignorant disputes when our input is wise and erudite? Joining a dispute is like pouring lighter fluid on an ember: it ignites that which was just smoldering. Extinguish the cinder.

Friday July 23, 2010: 2 Timothy 2:24–26 (NKJV)

And a servant of the Lord must not quarrel but be gentle to all, able to teach, patient, in humility correcting those who are in opposition, if God perhaps will grant them repentance, so that they may know the truth, and that they may come to their senses and escape the snare of the devil, having been taken captive by him to do his will.

So you say you serve the Lord! How strong are the words ‘must not’ that precede quarrel? In Greek, they begin the sentence. They are literally translated ‘It is a necessity that the servant of the Lord not quarrel’. Where do you stand on this? Do you get into many ‘grudge matches’?