You would please open your Bibles to the book of James. We are in chapter three, starting in chapter three anyway. Chapter three, verse 13 and following. James 3, 13 through 4, 12. This is God's word. Who is wise in understanding among you? Let him show it by his good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. Such wisdom does not come down from heaven, but is earthly, unspiritual, of the devil. For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice. But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure, then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere, peacemakers who sow in peace raise a harvest of righteousness. What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don't get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive because you ask with wrong motives that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. You adulterous people. Don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Or do you think Scripture says without reason that the spirit He caused to live in us envies intensely, but He gives us more grace? That is why Scripture says God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Submit yourselves then to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn, and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will lift you up. Brothers, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against his brother or judges him speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you're not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it. There is only one lawgiver and judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you, who are you to judge your neighbor? May God add his blessing to this reading from his holy and inspired word. Two kinds of wisdom. There's earthly wisdom and the wisdom that comes from God. I've had the privilege of knowing a lot of different people from different backgrounds in my life. Some of them have been extremely educated people. And some of those extremely educated people were truly wise. And some of those extremely educated people were extremely foolish. I've known people who had very little formal education who were extremely wise. And I've known people with very little formal education who were extremely foolish. It's not about how much education that you get. Education is valuable. But you are not made wise just by getting degrees, just by getting more education. You can have knowledge, lots of knowledge, and lack wisdom. You can have vast stores of information. and not be a wise person. At my house, my wife and my son often enjoy watching Jeopardy. And the people who do well on Jeopardy have a lot of information. I mean, it's amazing some of the things that they know. And it's amazing some of the things they don't know. Now I've been pleased over the years that whoever works behind the scenes at Jeopardy often has a category that involves Bible knowledge. As our society has gone further and further into the septic system, I used to say down the toilet, but we're way past that. As our society has gone further and further into the septic system, it has been very evident that although the Bible questions are not getting harder, the contestants, for the most part, are getting more and more ignorant when it comes to Bible knowledge. And that's really sad, because Western civilization to a great extent, was built on Bible knowledge. Not that everybody back in the old days was living a godly life. But people at least used to know what the map said. You know? I mean, they might have gone off the trail, but at least they knew where the road was. No more. Now people, some of them, not only have never studied the map, They don't even know what a map is. Let me just tell you something. There are two alternatives, wisdom and foolishness. But there are two kinds of wisdom. There is a wisdom that comes from above, that comes from God, There is a wisdom that is earthly and even demonic, satanic. What are we talking about? Well, who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show it by his good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. If you are wise, you will be humble. This passage tells us that God gives grace to the humble, quoting from the Old Testament there, Proverbs 3.34. And then it says, verse 10, so humble yourselves before the Lord. and he will lift you up, that's in chapter four. Humble yourself. I have prayed before for certain individuals to please be humbled so that they don't have to be humiliated. Humility is the opposite of arrogance. That sinful, selfish pride that causes all kinds of strife in this life. And God in his mercy across the years has on a number of occasions sought to pull me back and give me some humility. You'd think that it would be easy. I mean, if we really had a proper understanding of ourselves and of the universe, humility would be a piece of cake. we would all understand that we have tremendous reason to be humble. I know a pastor who, it wasn't me, years ago was told by a couple of his church members that they were leaving his church and they wanted to talk to him. And he said, okay. So they met together and they said, we have decided that we're leaving this church. And he said, okay. And they said, do you want to know why? And he said, well, if you want to tell me. And they said, it's because of you. And he said, really? And they said, yes. You are not humble. To which he responded, it's hard to be humble around people like you. Now, that was witty, but it kind of reinforced their point. On the other hand, they weren't especially humble themselves. You had a couple of prideful people criticizing a person for being prideful. The pot calling the kettle black. Most of American political discourse. I mean, this is the human condition in our natural state. We fight and quarrel. and there's not humility on either side. A humble person, a humble person recognizes that whatever truth they have, whatever talent they have, whatever ability, whatever wisdom, it comes from Him. Wisdom has to do with seeing things the way God sees them, which is the way they really are. We have trouble just believing reality, just accepting what is true. Now, wisdom produces humility. It is much better to get the humility by embracing God's perspective than it is to have to be humiliated. I've told you years back, I presume, maybe one or two years ago, about my experience as a seventh grader who had finally gotten my first suit. We went to Bon Marche in Asheville and I bought a suit that was black with white pinstripes. And I thought I looked so handsome in that thing. The price was reduced because that's a winter look, and we were headed into late spring when I bought it. But that did not dissuade me. That simply moved it within reach. And so now I could afford to buy this with my money, and I did. And I got a shirt to go with it that was black, and a white tie made of 100% polyester, which was intended to look like silk. And so I had this black suit with white pinstripes, a black shirt, and a white tie, and I thought I looked like a million bucks. I wore it to church in the summer at Montreat, where our church didn't meet all summer. We would instead be invited to go down to the conference center and hear the various speakers that were brought in to preach in Anderson Auditorium. Some of them were good preachers. Some of them were even more foolish than this seventh grader. They had no clue about the Word of God. They did not preach from the Scriptures. They just Wasted everybody's time. It was one of those Sundays. My parents were away doing ministry. I was there on my own. And after listening to the first part of the sermon, I realized this guy is not, not preaching the scriptures. And so I got up and left the building. I went out the back so as not to come down where other people would see me. But as I walked out the back door, There was a boy seated on the steps right over here. I'm walking this way. He's right there. And I imagined in my mind how impressive I must look in this suit. And I thought to myself about how he probably, if I was 12, he was probably 9 or 10. And I thought how he must look at me and aspire to someday look like that. And so, wanting to be kind and perhaps condescending to this young man on the stairs, I gave him a smile and a nod and walked at full speed right into a stone column. Face first. I mean, I was moving rather quickly. I was walking briskly. And as I nodded at him, boom! I mean smack into that stone column. And I turned to look at him and give a reassuring look that I was okay, but I couldn't see him. It was just, everything was a blur of stars. And I don't know what kind of facial expression I had, but I reached out and sort of touched the wall and went on around the corner and down a little ways and then leaned up against the wall and laughed. laughing at myself for being such a prideful idiot. How stupid. Suddenly, I didn't feel so brilliant looking. That was the mercy of God. And let me tell you, that was when I was 12. It wasn't the last time that God in his mercy has pulled me up short and said, who do you think you are? Actually, some of my most cherished memories are of my Heavenly Father saying, who do you think you are? Because on the one hand, if I realize the truth about the situation, my pride evaporates. But on the other hand, if I realize the truth about the situation, my gratitude and worship are multiplied. Because I realize that the God who rules the universe, who is the creator of all things, chose to reach down and rescue me from the pit, and adopt me into his family, and give me eternal life. And so that doesn't, when I recognize the truth, it doesn't make me prideful. It makes me grateful. It makes me humble. Wisdom produces humility. But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, Do not boast about it or deny the truth. Such wisdom does not come down from heaven, but is earthly, unspiritual, of the devil. For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice." And so, he will go on in chapter four to tell us that our enemy, the devil, is the one we must stand against. But in order to do that, we must submit ourselves to God. Look at verse seven. Submit yourselves then to God, resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Our enemy is not that other person. Our enemy is not our competitor. Our enemy is not the person who's telling us that we need to do what God says. Our enemy is not even the person who is trying to get us to do wrong. Our enemy is the puppet master behind the person who's trying to get us to do wrong. Our enemy is Satan, for we war not against flesh and blood. but against principalities and powers and the rulers of the darkness of this present age and against spiritual wickedness in high places. Our warfare is spiritual. And when we treat people as if they're the enemy, we have fallen into the enemy's trap. We're doing exactly what he wants and therefore you get all kinds of strife and quarreling and people treating people like they're the enemy. So we need to humble ourselves. The wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure, then peace loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. Peacemakers who sow in peace raise a harvest of righteousness. I'm going to use an example of someone who most people right now in the world seem to think is not a good guy. And I certainly am among those who believe he's a very wicked man. Vladimir Putin. He's the person that everybody in the West feels free to criticize right now. Because he's doing some hideously evil things. He has proven himself to be a liar, and he's proven himself to be ruthlessly cruel. He does not care about the Ukrainian lives that he's destroying, and he doesn't care about the Russian lives that he's destroying in order to try and get to the Ukrainians. He doesn't care. He doesn't care. He's made that very clear. Bad man. Yes, he is a bad man. That's just an obvious fact. Doing bad things. Yes, definitely. What's interesting is that many of the things that Putin has said in the last few years are actually true. I said he's a liar, because he is. That's not just opinion. That's something he has demonstrated by saying, I'm not going to invade Ukraine. And our government is saying, it sure looks like he's going to invade Ukraine. We expect an invasion any time now. And then he invades Ukraine. Then he said he wasn't going to do, days before. So is the man a liar? Obviously. But that doesn't mean he's never said anything that's true. He has said some things that are not only true, they're important truths. He has talked about the moral decline in the West. And of course, he describes that as also being the case in Ukraine. He has spoken clearly. and accurately about a bunch of bad stuff happening in our society and ways in which Ukraine is following our path to hell. And he has said this is wrong. He was in church when they celebrated Easter over there. Looked like he was having a little trouble health-wise, but he was in church on their Easter. But he was bombing Ukraine on their Easter. While the Ukrainians were trying to go to church, he was making it hard for them to do so. What do we make of this? One of the net effects of a bad man who's doing bad things saying some things that are true is to discredit those truths. And one of the problems with proclaiming the truth without humility is that it doesn't draw people to the truth. It makes it easier for them to discount the truth. Now, the truth is still true no matter who says it. One of the reasons I love mathematics, say, Pastor Wood, I thought you said you don't like mathematics. I don't personally enjoy having to take timed tests in math, all right? But I learned to love math in college, actually, after years of dreading it in public school. I learned to love math because in mathematics, the answer is either right or it's wrong. We actually have some very foolish people in our schools in America today who are trying to say that that's a racist concept. They don't even know what racism is. Let me tell you something. 2 plus 2 is actually 4. 2 plus 2 is actually 4. It really is. That's not a matter of opinion. It's not up to you to decide. We're not going to take a vote if everybody disagrees, they're wrong, and two plus two is still four. Understand? That's why I love math. That's why I love math. Now, the reason I found math challenging is because I didn't necessarily always get the right answer. Whereas in English, and in history, and philosophy, and psychology, and sociology, and even, of course, economics, where it's all a matter of opinion, some people think, even though that's not true either. In those areas, I could make a, what I thought was a pretty persuasive case, and I generally made very high grades in those areas, because there was room to disagree. I could make this argument for this position, or I could make this argument for this position. And if I made my argument strong enough, I got an A. I made a lot of A's. But in math, doggone it, you don't get the right answer, you get an X mark. And you can't solve for X in that situation. I guess you could say I frequently solve for X in algebra. In other words, my solution resulted in an X. Here's the thing. In life, it's not enough to know the truth or even to know the truth and speak the truth. We have to speak the truth in love. We have to live the truth in humility. We have to demonstrate a lifestyle that makes it very hard for people to argue with what we do. I don't know what God's gonna do with your lives. I believe that some of you are very genuine in your love for the Lord. I can't always tell who's who. I've heard people proclaim the truth and go and live in an opposite way. And I've seen other people where it was like, I'm not sure if they're even listening. and they got out of here and they lived it. They put it into practice, because they were trusting the Lord. I don't attempt to predict the future. But I do know this. It's not just about knowing the facts. It's not even just about memorizing scripture. Both of those things are extremely valuable, but if you don't have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, where he is Lord, and you want to do what he says, it is not gonna go well for you. It's not. I pray that God will bring you to the point where you cry out to him for mercy. where you ask him to save you, well, you can still be saved. But I'll tell you this, life goes by a lot faster than you can imagine. And when it's over, you don't get another shot at it. We've had very few deaths among our students after they leave the ranch. Well, we've had a couple. I told you about one. I'm going to tell you again. It was a little girl who came here as an absolute disaster. Nobody enjoyed being around her. And that was not the fault of her house parents or mentors. It was her fault, because she acted terribly. I mean, she was a pest. Even the students didn't like her. But she got saved. She really got saved. I mean, God worked in her heart, and she came to faith, and everybody saw it. The students were amazed, even unsaved students were amazed by the change in her. And one of them that I know prayed and asked God to save him. But he did that after the Thanksgiving break. Because she went home for Thanksgiving break and on her way back, Apparently, her grandfather, who was driving the vehicle, had a heart attack. And they ran off the road. And they were both dead when the ambulance came. Here's a little girl. She's just gotten saved. Now she's gone. Well, we were heartbroken. I was asked to come and preach her funeral up in Indiana, and I did. And I was grateful to be able to share that without a doubt, that little girl is in heaven. She is at home with her Lord. But seeing how suddenly life can end caused some other folks to get serious about whether or not they were ready. I want to ask you in humility, are you ready to meet God? What if it were today? What if the bombs were falling here, not just in Ukraine? Are you still thinking that this is something you can deal with later? You've learned a bunch of facts. You've memorized a lot of scripture. But have you surrendered your life to Jesus? Do you love him? Do you know Him? I can't answer for you, but I plead with you, while you have the opportunity, give your life to Jesus. Ask Him not just to forgive you, but to take control, to be your boss, to be your master. because everything else is a waste. Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for loving us and loving us enough to take the punishment that we deserve. Thank you. Thank you, Lord. Have mercy upon us, we pray. and grant us faith to believe with obedient faith, trusting in You, the God who loves us. We'll give you all the praise in Jesus' name, amen.