Well, I echo the words of Brother Barry this morning. It was good to hear from the men again at 10 a.m., and just like many of those men spoke of when they stood up to give their meditation, They thanked the man that went before them because it seemed to go hand in hand with what they wanted to speak about, and Pastor Mike spoke about that from the pulpit also, and so will I. In fact, Brother Jesse, who said a few words, and I don't know if he's left for his bus or he's still here, but I heard what Brother Jesse had to say and I thought, well, Brother Jesse just preached my sermon, I'm just gonna dismiss every, if you were here at 10 a.m., you heard my sermon when Brother Jesse got up, and you're excused. No, just kidding. The rest of you weren't able to be here, you gotta stick around and hear the sermon. So anyway, so I'm happy that that's occurring again, we're hearing from the men, and as the pastors, your elders have spoken many times about this, We're well pleased when we hear what the men have to say because they're speaking solid theological truths. They understand what's being taught. They are obviously doing studying on their own. It's not just repeating what they've heard a pastor preach. They're reading God's word and they're examining it. And I know from talking to many of you, sisters also, that you're reading commentaries, you're reading other things that help you understand the word, and I'm glad for that, and I encourage that. So, here we are, the beginning of the new year. You know, actually, in the old Christian tradition, the celebration of Christ's birth lasted until January 6th. So if you feel bad because your Christmas decorations are still up, please don't, you're still in the Christmas season as once upon a time we enjoyed it. And it's kind of, when you think about it, the immensity of the gift that we've been given by God actually coming in the flesh and dwelling with us, how can that be contained to one day? And I think the older church was right in this long celebration. But it's a fact we don't lose sight of, right? I mean, year round. So now let's turn our attention to the two kinds of wisdom James speaks about in James 3, 13 through 18. And I'm gonna read this to you. Please follow along out of your Bible. And as usual, I'm reading out of the ESV, the English Standard Version. This is what Pastor James has to say about wisdom. Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct, let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder in every vile practice. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. So as we read what Pastor James has to say about wisdom, We're probably thinking, and I think we should be thinking, what exactly is wisdom? How do we define it? More importantly, I would say, how do we know what wisdom is? Now, if you're like me, you associate it with knowing or with knowledge, and I think that's a very good way to start in defining it, but we know it's more than that, right? There's something about wisdom that's deeper than just knowing. And you could think of people you know, I can think of people I know, that are very highly educated and have a great knowledge in a certain field of expertise, yet they are lacking in that quality of wisdom. They're not someone that, once they're venturing outside of the very narrow scope of what they've been educated in, that is wise in other things. While on the other hand, we have people that we know are wise, that are considered wise by many people, that do not have advanced academic degrees. So it's not just intellectual knowledge. So we could say it's a category of knowledge, but it involves lived experience. It's both intellectual, and there's another element to it that's moral. It involves moral living and moral knowledge. So it encompasses experience, knowledge, and morality. Well, as you read through your Bibles, or you listen to sermons being preached, you realize fairly quickly that wisdom is an important topic in the Bible. It's mentioned in many places. In fact, there's an entire genre of literature in the Old Testament called wisdom literature. So the Lord God obviously wants us to know about wisdom since he's revealed so much about it in his word. And by revealing it to us, We should know that the Lord God wants us to obtain this wisdom. It's not just trivial knowledge, it's something that we are to pursue. And this is why he's talking about it so much. What's been rightly said, I would say, that all truth is God's truth. And if we consider that to be true, and we should, because our God is a God of truth, he's sovereign over all things, so all truth belongs to him, all truth originates from him, and from that basic idea, we can construct a basic, what's called a syllogism, which is a form of reasoning using assumed premises or propositions. And so the major premise in the syllogism is all truth comes from God. Scripture tells us that. And then the minor premise that we can work from the major one with is wisdom is truth. We know that. So the conclusion we come to with these two premises is wisdom comes from God. Our takeaway from that is this, since God is a source of wisdom, then it is by him and through him that we experience and obtain true wisdom. And how do we experience God's wisdom? There's two ways that people generally look at God's wisdom. Some think that to obtain God's wisdom, that that is knowledge that is up there and equal with what God knows. That we would then know the secrets of God, that we would know why everything occurs in life. We'd be able to explain everything that comes along on this rocky road on our mortal journey. But experiencing God's wisdom is not knowing all that God knows. It's not understanding every small detail of our lives and the world. We do not and cannot know everything that God knows. Everything that God is doing in his sovereign ruling of all creation, how everything fits together. If I was to stand before you or anyone was to stand before you and tell you that not only was that possible, but that's what you needed to do, I think you'd quickly, if you thought about it realistically, you'd see it was an impossible task and you'd probably quickly give up in futility or it puts you off your rocker. It's an impossible thing. Think of it this way, we can compare experiencing God's wisdom to driving a car. When we drive a car, we do not need to know everything there is to know about automobile engineering, how the car is built, how all the systems work. We don't need to know how and why Highway engineers, traffic engineers construct roadways and why they put up certain signals and how the signals operate, so on and so forth. What we do need to know is if we're on the freeway driving along and we want to take an off ramp, let's say on the 210 and I'm thinking about if you're going eastbound and you take the baseline off ramp, how it spirals down. Through experience, you learn how to adjust your speed and your steering and braking, et cetera, et cetera. And you realize that these engineers have even put up an advisory sign for you, what speed they think is safe on that off-ramp. And that's what you need to know. Just like when you come up to a traffic light, you do not need to know how that system is wired. You don't even need to know the philosophy behind the three light system that is used basically worldwide. What you need to know is how to properly brake your car, how to judge the distance. These are things we are taught when we learn how to drive. And we pick up this experience as we continue driving. And we should do the same thing as we drive through life. use our learned experiences, learn what God has revealed to us in his good graces, and apply it to the environment around us, just like you do when you're driving in your car. So God has wisdom for us that enables us to live as he wants us to live. It's not identical to his wisdom, as I said. It is wisdom that is appropriate to us. Well, how does this wisdom come to us? How does God's wisdom for us come to us? Well, the Bible gives us four specific ways. Number one, through reverence. There's a There's a passage in the Bible that's repeated about five times in different ways. And you're probably familiar with this. You probably have heard it. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. So we can see that God is telling us, you start with me to gain wisdom. We must see God for who he is. These passages encourage a proper fear of him. Now a fear of the Lord, a righteous fear of the Lord, is not I'm scared of God. If you're a sinner and you're not in Christ, then that is something you will experience at some point when you stand before him. But our fear of God, being in Christ and being part of his sheep, his flock, is a love and a faithful obedience to him and to what he commands of us. That's how we fear the Lord. And then also, in this idea of reverence, we must acknowledge our place in God's creation in comparison to him. He is infinite, all-knowing, all-powerful, We are finite and we are limited in all our abilities. And as such, we do not control everything around us. The Bible, on the other hand, teaches us that God is sovereign over all things. So the second thing the Bible teaches us on how to obtain wisdom is through what we call conversion. That is, we become regenerated by the Holy Spirit. Christ becomes our Lord and Savior, and as Scripture says, then we are in Christ. 1 Corinthians 1.30 points this out. It says, and because of him, that is God, because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God. Christ is our wisdom from God. The third way we obtain this is through scripture. And you've heard the two other pastors this morning, each encouraging you about reading scripture daily. This is the way we know what God has revealed for us and wants us to understand. And this is pointed out, I think, very clearly, very explicitly by the psalmist in Psalm 119, which if you're familiar with the Psalms in your Bible, you know that's the longest Psalm in the book of Psalms. So I'm not gonna read the whole thing to you. I'm gonna read a few passages. I'm gonna read verses 97 through 104. And as I read this, And I encourage you to turn to your Bibles, to Psalm 119, starting in verse 97. As I read it, what would be helpful is if you can identify where the psalmist is talking about scripture, where he's talking about God's word, where he's talking about the Bible. It's all the same thing. So, let us begin. Verse 97 of Psalm 119. Oh, how I love your law. It's my meditation all the day. Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies, for it is ever with me. I have more understanding than all my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation. I understand more than the aged, for I keep your precepts. I hold back my feet from every evil way in order to keep your word. I do not turn aside from your rules, for you have taught me how sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth. Through your precepts I get understanding, therefore I hate every false way. Well, in each of those verses, there is a reference to God's word. God's law, his commandment, his testimony, his precepts, his word, his rules. Again, his words, and again, his precepts. The fourth way that we will obtain and get God's wisdom is prayer. Number four is prayer, and we've seen this in James. In the first chapter of James, James 1, 5, James says this, and it's a very simple instruction. If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. Now as we go through this, and you hear about the two types of wisdom, I want you to keep in mind that what Pastor James is talking about here in 1-5 is the wisdom that God wishes you, desires for you to have, not all of the wisdom that you may desire. So if you're going to school and you show up on Monday and you've had a great weekend and not done any homework or studying and you have an algebra test but you haven't studied, Praying to God for the wisdom to pass that algebra test is not what James is talking about here. So just so we understand that. So the defining characteristic, I would say, of the wise, the person who has wisdom, is not how much they know. It's not that. Rather, it is humility. That's what God's word reveals to us. Because humility, proper humility, demonstrates that we have the proper understanding of God and his greatness and his holiness and our finiteness and our sin in comparison to him. So what James has to say about wisdom, we're gonna look at these verses one at a time and think about what they mean, how it connects to this topic of the two sources of wisdom that James reveals. And starting in verse 13, This is where James says, he asks this question, and then he gives some guidance. The question is, who is wise and understanding among you? And then his guidance. By his good conduct, let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. Now as we saw in chapter one and two, if you were with us and you remember, chapter one and two of James show the necessity of good works in the life of a true Christian. So James is just going back on that. See how he's building his point, how he's building upon his theme. He's doing what good pastors always try and do. And oftentimes, when you go to church, you come here and you hear your pastors speaking, preaching, we are building upon something. And you may bring a friend to come to church with you and say, oh, you gotta hear my pastor, it'll be a blessing for you. And they come and they're like, I didn't get it. Well, that's because we've been building on something, maybe for weeks, maybe for months, and it's all, together. That's just like God's Word. We're preaching from God's Word. Now, you can take one verse out of God's Word and you can learn a lot from it, and you can preach on it, but you can also take it out of context. If you don't know how it fits in to the paragraph in which it is set, in the chapter in which that paragraph is in, and then the book that that chapter is in, and then overall the overarching theme of God's message in the Bible, all of this comes together. Again, how do we know or identify what wisdom is? So, as I was saying, the answer is connected to what James has previously written. And now, think about the first half of chapter three, if you were with us last week. You'll see the logic to James's reasoning, which we need to understand and follow. He spoke in the first part of this chapter about ambitious self-centered would-be teachers creating dissension in the church. So we need to see that the wise are not these men that he's talking about with what he calls their fire-starting tongues who claim to be superior in knowledge and wisdom. These people who imagine that anyone who disagrees with them must be inferior to them in their intellect, in their knowledge, in their wisdom. So James has identified this issue he sees in the church. This is why he's writing this letter to the churches. So what is a good preacher or a good leader, in fact, does this? You identify a problem and then you identify the resolution to that problem. You just don't chew people out for making a mistake and leave it at that. You point out a mistake and then you give a solution to that dilemma. And so James is writing about proper wisdom here. And what he's telling us in this excerpt we're in this morning, the moral test for wisdom is gentleness, meekness, and mildness. That brings me to the first point that I wanna make this morning. Point number one is, the way of the world is not the way of wisdom. The way of the world is not the way of wisdom. James tells us that there's two kinds of wisdom. Wisdom from above. We might call it godly wisdom, heavenly wisdom. And then, on the other hand, there's wisdom from below. We might call that worldly wisdom, earthly wisdom, even false wisdom. So James, in this passage, first addresses the wisdom from below and provides the outward signs of this wisdom from below, the worldly wisdom in verse 14. He writes, but if you, and the you here is plural, he's writing to the church that's out and has moved away from Jerusalem and is in various parts of the Roman Empire. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, so in your hearts, that's like secret, right? It's not apparent to everybody. You're harboring this. Do not boast and be false to the truth. James is talking about the hearts of those who are wise in their own eye, not being humble and meek, but are full of this, as it's translated, bitter jealousy, or literally, it could be translated harsh zeal, and selfish ambition. There's a lot, I would say, about selfish ambition in the New Testament letters from the apostles. James and Paul write about this, both of them write about it. And Paul writes about it in Philippians 1.17. He describes these men who have come up against him and are in rivalry with him. He says this, the former, which is the envious that are attacking him, the former proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition. There's that same Greek term that we saw in verse 14, selfish ambition. Not sincerely, but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment. And we know that Paul had many periods where he was imprisoned. He's locked up for his faith by the authorities, and these people, with their selfish ambition, are taking advantage of Paul's situation to undermine him. They're coming forward and they're teaching false doctrine. They're saying Paul doesn't know what he's talking about. Paul is not a true apostle. They're saying they are true apostles. Or they even call themselves super apostles. So they're attacking his teaching with a harsh zeal. So you can imagine what happened. And if you read this in the back of your mind, if you read Paul's letters, if you read 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, you can see this. What's happening is it brings splits to the church. So competing factions arose in the early church. There were evil little support groups continually warring with one another, and they were boasting about it. They thought this was a good thing that they were doing. And this contentiousness, that Paul and James were concerned about in the various churches, usually, I would say almost always, is traced back to one person. It springs from one person who spreads venom and suspicion in the assembly. R. Kent Hughes, a commentator on James, he writes in his commentary, he calls this, what we're speaking about, he calls it political ambition, which I thought was very interesting, because when we think about political ambition, we think of someone running for office, right? We think of our national scene or our local elections, and we know how contentious those are. Well, Dr. Hughes is saying we find that same thing in the church, and the mindset of some people that engage in this is no different than a politician running for office, some of whom we know will do virtually anything to obtain that office. So it's what we might call in our vernacular a cutthroat, dog-eat-dog competition. And we often find this in worldly organizations. I'm sure many of you in your place of employment at some time during your working life have experienced things like this. I've seen many of you nodding or giving a little smile, like, yeah, boy, I've been there, and it's difficult. I've been there in my former career more often than I would want to be. This is like the story that I heard of, there was these two men that were in this old, old kingdom, and they were both advisors to the ruler of the kingdom. And these men were both contentious. One man was extremely envious. The other man was extremely covetous. The ruler got sick and tired of them and called them in one day and said, okay, I've had enough of you two. You're driving me crazy here. I'm going to fix this, and the way I'm going to fix it is this. I'm going to grant you one request. Just one request. You, Sam, because you're so envious, you get to choose what it is. But here's the thing, before you get too excited, whatever I give you, Sam, I'm going to give to Joe twice. I'm going to double it. So the envious guy doesn't want the covetous guy to get the good stuff and vice versa. So the envious man, he ponders this request. And finally, he decides what it's going to be. And he smiles at his rival. And he turns to the ruler and he says, my lord, put out one of my eyes. This is what a contentious spirit can cause in people, that to get ahead, they will wreck someone else, completely wreck them. In fact, that's the goal. There are some out of envy, bitter envy will undermine someone even to the point of disrupting or undoing a Christian ministry and sowing a dissension in the church. This is what James is talking about. I must add at this point that I am very thankful that I've not seen that here. I've seen it in other churches. We're blessed for the unity that the Lord has granted us with here. And we should pray that this continues, that we work together in love and unity. But the truth of the matter is, we can hardly escape such vileness in the workplace, in the secular arena. And it's particularly repugnant in the church, and I've experienced it in other places, and I'm sure many of you have also. So God's saints, that's us, we should not be like the mafia with the five families in New York City plotting to knock off our rivals and remove our own bosses in an insatiable lust for power and wealth. That's not how the church is to operate. And if you read your scripture, and this is why it's so important that you daily be in God's word, you see this. God points it out that when you read about it, think about the place you work or places you have worked or other human organizations. And just, you'll realize, I think, that wow, this is really counter-cultural. This is nothing like the way culture operates. That God wants something different from us. He demands something different from us. And when we're in Christ, we can do that, we can be that way. Not on our own, doesn't work that well on our own. Might work for a little while, not for long. So here's the thing, we stress, I stress, and it's important that we know and understand God's sovereignty in all things. We must acknowledge that God's hand is at work in our churches, in the establishment and administration of his churches. So I say his churches because it doesn't mean every building that has a sign that declares itself to be a church is one of God's churches. We're guided by our confession of faith, the London Baptist Confession of Faith, which talks about this specifically in chapter 26, in paragraphs eight and nine of the confession, where this is what the Baptist divines wrote centuries ago. Bishops, elders, and deacons are appointed by Christ to be chosen and set apart by the church by the common suffrage, which means a vote, we just did it for the role of deacon, by the common suffrage of the church itself. So our Baptist forefathers back in London in the 17th century established these instructions from what? From the Bible, from the very clear teaching of scripture. They didn't make this stuff up just so they would have power over other human beings. Because we all realize that if God appoints, he can also remove. And we see this in the Old Testament, don't we, with King Saul. King Saul is appointed as king over Israel for a time and God removes him from that because of his unsuitedness to the role. And these scriptures that teach us about the ruling of the church have been established by God and in the New Testament from the very earliest times of the church, during the time of James, who wrote our letter, and the time of Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, who we know wrote such a large portion of the New Testament letters. And Paul, he warned the church in Ephesus, he wrote to them, to the Ephesians, that they were not to grieve the Holy Spirit. He tells them to get rid of all bitterness, in Ephesians four, verse 31. Because the envious and the self-centered are destructive to Christ's church. We must never forget that, it is Christ's church. It does not belong to you, it does not belong to me, it does not belong to any human being, it belongs to the Lord. And he has called us to this place to assemble together and he's blessed us with what he has given us. It's all because of him. So we're talking about worldly wisdom here. So what's the character of this? How do we identify it? How do we know what it is? Verse 15 of chapter three tells us what it is, what it looks like, how to recognize it. This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, this contentiousness, this envy, but it is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. James describes here false wisdom. And I think there's an order to what he is describing here. It's an order of increasing negative strength. And that's kind of hard to grasp. It's like, okay, so we know if it was good strength, how something gets stronger. But bad things can get stronger also. So they're growing in evilness and opposition to God. this idea of earthly, unspiritual, then demonic. So earthly, that tells us that the source of this wisdom is the world, the world around us. And yeah, so we get, in one sense, we get all of our wisdom that we need to live in our culture and so on and so forth from the world. But think about this, the world in the New Testament way, especially the way, I think it's very easy to see the Apostle John in his gospel. When he's talking about the world, he's talking about powers on earth, both temporal, both physical and spiritual, that are joined together against Christ. And earthly wisdom ignores the supremacy of God, that type of earthly wisdom. It demands love of itself and inhibits the love of God. This can even be seen in academic knowledge. This can be seen, especially if you're taking a class in philosophy, especially more modern philosophy. I had to take a lot of classes in classical philosophy, which is different than modern philosophy. And you can really see as you're going through philosophy from the ancient Greeks forward to our time, to the modern age, how philosophy very blatantly turns against God. The classical Greeks really are, they're kind of poking in the dark trying to figure out what's behind what they see in this world. They know there's something beyond this world. They're not sure what because the gospel has not been preached to them. In fact, it hasn't even come about because this is like 400 years before Christ was born. But then when you get to the more modern philosophers, it's just, It's horrible. You read some of them and you can see why people would be very depressed, even in fact to the point of not wanting to continue to live in this world. So that type of wisdom is not really wisdom. It's this knowledge, but it works against what God has created you for. So it's also unspiritual. This is kind of what I've been touching on just now. That means it's centered on a materialistic or a naturalistic worldview, that there's nothing beyond what you can see, hear, smell, touch, that sort of thing. You've heard so many people say, if I can't see it, I don't believe it. You know, if God wants me, you know, whatever, then he better do this. And it's usually something connected to the physical senses. That's a materialistic or naturalistic worldview. So it's natural as opposed to spiritual in the sense of what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2.14. Paul defines this. He says the natural person, now that's not the person that shops at Sprouts or Trader Joe's or just eats organic. There's a deeper meaning to that. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him and he's not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. That's why when we speak to our friends, even family members, loved ones that have rejected thus far Christ, and we talk to them about biblical truths that we know, that we read, that we understand, and they're just, they don't get it. Because beloved, these things have been, God has allowed you to spiritually discern these things. Perhaps you think of a point in your life before, You came to Christ where you tried reading the Bible or people spoke to you about the Bible and it just didn't make any sense. It was like, yeah, I just don't hear it. It's like a bunch of words. There's a lot of words on the page and they don't make any sense to me. And now you read the Bible and God is speaking to you. You hear his words. It's a message, a personal message to you because God has lifted that veil from your eyes because you are his beloved and he wants you to know his thoughts and his ideas for you. The last one we come to is this interesting term of demonic. Now the materialistic, the naturalistic person will take that and just say, well, that's just really, really bad. If something's demonic, it's really, really bad, which is true. This is the most negative of the wisdom from below. What James is telling us that this wisdom comes from, originates with the devil. And it's these things that he speaks about. like bitter envy, selfish ambition, and proud boasting. These are evil things. They're bad fruits that we can have in our lives, and we must realize that these bad fruits are planted and watered by Satan. They're not from God. In other words, what he's saying is this earthly wisdom comes from the world, the flesh, and the devil. You've undoubtedly heard that phrase before, and it was a favorite phrase amongst the Puritan writers, and I think it identifies this very, very well, what James is writing about, and the behavior of those James described is demonically instigated. These evil spiritual beings, he's calling them demons, are behind it. And the New Testament reveals this, that demonic forces are the powers behind the curtain, if you will, for all these thoughts and actions opposed to God. Paul writes about it in 2 Thessalonians and 1 Timothy. John writes about it in Revelation. And James here is writing about it. So this brings us to our second point this morning, point number two. Worldly wisdom only leads one way. Worldly wisdom only leads one way. And that way is down, down, down. Well, how do we avoid this trap that's set by demons? We're in Christ, that doesn't mean we're exempt from evil spiritual forces wanting us to stumble. We shouldn't think that. We can stumble. So one example. I know this has happened to you. It's happened to me. I wouldn't even count how many times it's happened to me. Think about an argument you've had with someone or a confrontation about something. You go away from that, and after the fact, you think, ah, I should have said this. You come up with all these zingers, right, after the fact. It's like, ah, next time that happens, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that. Well, we need to stop doing that. That's a trap. We should not, absolutely should not, train ourselves in verbal assaults against another person. Whether that person is a believer or not is not relevant to the fact that this is a trap set by demonic forces. Imagine if the person is not a believer. Maybe you don't really know them. and you have this confrontation, but you trained well in verbal assaults, and you just cut them down, and you're so happy when you walk away, you're very proud, I won that argument. And then later, this person appears before you again in a situation where you could share the gospel with them, and their experience with you is pretty bad. You've just closed that door. by responding in such a way. It really doesn't matter what people say to us because where is our worth? Our worth is in Christ. It is not in proving ourselves better or smarter or more quick-witted than other people. When we do this, what we're doing, using James' analogy from the beginning of chapter three, we're piling up dry kindling and tinder on our tongues for the demons to set fire to. We ought not to do that. In verse 16, the next verse, James tells us that the fruit of worldly wisdom is rotten. It's rotten fruit. He writes this, for where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice. Where there is only envy and selfish ambition of worldly wisdom, one will find disorder and every evil practice. On the other hand, God's word teaches us the fruits of the spirit, Galatians 5, 22 through 24, enumerates, lays out what the fruits of the spirit is, and this is different from the rotten fruit. of worldly wisdom. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such things there is no law. That's the wisdom from above. And those who belong to Christ Jesus, Paul says, have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. These passions and desires are, in essence, the wisdom from below. Our Lord Jesus also, on the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5.5, what did he tell us about being meek and being humble? That we're blessed and that we will inherit the earth. There's no blessings that are given in that sermon the Lord preached about those who are aggressively self-centered and get ahead at all costs. There's no inheritance for the worldly. As we're told in scripture, they have their reward. The reward is here and now, whatever they may happen to obtain. Wisdom from above in contrast to wisdom from below is both possible, and this is important that you hear, it's necessary for Christ followers. Why? Because Christ abides in us and we abide in him. Now this is very important, a very important concept I want us to understand. In Matthew's gospel, Chapter 11, verse 29, this is what the Lord says to us. He urges us to do this. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. So, you know what a yoke is, right? If you've seen, you know, oxen or cattle pulling a plow and they're yoked. There's this device that goes over their necks and their shoulders and they push against it and the plow moves forward. So it's an implement of labor. It's something used to work and it joins two together for a task, a task in laboring. So we're joined together. not only to each other, but we're joined to the Lord Jesus Christ by this yoke. Because it is his yoke, he says it is my yoke. Because it is his yoke, we are to learn from him. So what the practice was in the days when oxen were yoked to a plow, or other agricultural implement, is that there would be a mature ox, an older ox that knew how to do this stuff. And the younger ox would be yoked with the old ox. And the young ox would learn from the old ox what the pace should be. They had to keep pace together. And he learned from the older ox how to take direction from their master who is controlling the plow. So when we're yoked together, you younger believers, you're yoked to older believers who help you to learn how to take directions from our master. And then our Lord is also yoked with us. And in the labor of our salvation, that labor is his. We're not working towards our salvation, although there's this idea of this implement of working. But we're abiding in him just as he abides in us, as the yoked oxen, as we keep pace with the pace that he has set for us. If we understand this, and we remind ourselves of this, I think we can leave behind our turmoils, anxieties, and fears, which perhaps drive you to prove yourself right, or better, or more suited than others. And instead, enter into labor with the prince of peace. because there's no competition in the harvest field of the Lord. There our work is at the Lord's pace. We're not going to outdo one another. We each have a set task that the Lord has for us. And it's also where the Lord says you'll find rest for your souls yoke to him is because you'll find yourself exactly where you need to be, where you're intended to be. And it may be something much less than what you had envisioned for yourself. It also may be something much bigger than you envisioned for yourself. The Lord will lead you there. Point number three is envy and wisdom cannot dwell together in the same heart. Envy and wisdom cannot dwell together in the same heart. There's seven characteristics of godly wisdom in verse 17. James tells us the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial, and sincere. Notice that first off, the very first characteristics he talks about is pure. Everything else flows from that. Pure, we need to associate that with God because God is holy. God alone is pure and righteous in all three of the persons who are in the Trinity. It's peaceable because it's not contentious. Gentle. Interesting, the Greek, here for gentle really is not easily translated. There's not one good word that fits it. But here's the idea. It's the quality of a person who, when that person is wronged and has the right to stand his ground and not yield, instead forgoes his right. Now, There are mature Christians that are here that embody that. Those are the Christians that we should look to as the mature ox that we're yoked to. I would say for many of us, that is probably one of the more difficult characteristics to obtain. Because our culture teaches us that we are to demand our rights and stand up for our rights. And there's times when we should. I'm not saying that we should not. But there are other times where in the spirit of peace, we should forego our rights. What God wants, God's direction, God's teaching will lead us in that. Characteristics are, I would say, pretty self-explanatory, and I won't go over each of them point by point because of our time constraints. But let me wrap up here. The last point I want to leave you with is this. True wisdom leads to us becoming peacemakers, not peacebreakers. True wisdom leads us to become peacemakers, not peacebreakers. We see this in the last verse of chapter three. And this fruit of godly wisdom that James is talking about here is tangible, should be tangible in our churches, and I think it is in many places. Verse 18, he says, and a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. Now, if you, focus on that and you kind of break it down, you expect something different. You expect that peacemakers sow peace and then reap a harvest of righteousness. But James is really saying the opposite here. He's saying righteousness sown in peace yields a harvest of righteousness. In other words, what is sown is also reaped. You think about it from a practical aspect. Yes, you could go into a volatile situation and just be the peaceable person, just stand there in total peace, and perhaps that may awaken others to we should be peaceful. But when we think about it, we realize that that may not, that doesn't sound like it'd be very effective. But if you sow righteousness, If you were to go into a situation where you felt that you could bring peace, you would sow righteousness there. And from the righteousness, more righteousness springs as well as peace. Because brothers and sisters, we cannot be righteous and then be unpeaceable. These two things go together. And righteousness only grows in a climate of peace. And we find no peace that is true and lasting from the wisdom of this world. That's what James is pointing out to us. Instead, we find turmoil and destruction. And this is what we have to be careful of. Last illustration. That worldly wisdom masquerades often, and we don't recognize it for what it is. or we do and we think it will help us in this situation. So if you think the old days of sailing ships, especially in the Caribbean, there were pirate ships that would attack other vessels. And these pirate ships would fly a flag of a friendly nation. This was called a false flag, and that's what this term false flag comes from. So you have an English merchant ship sailing from the Caribbean, and they see another ship approaching, and the lookouts are looking in their spy glasses, and the captain wants to know, what is that vessel? Captain, she flies the English flag. She's a friend. The ship sails up, it's allowed to get close, and then the pirates on that ship strike the English flag and they haul up the skull and crossbones, which means no quarter to be given, no prisoners to be taken, and then they take that vessel. That's what worldly wisdom will do to us. It'll masquerade as something good until it's close enough to wreck turmoil and destruction in our lives, in our workplaces, and Lord forbid, even in our churches. So we must, with clear and steadfast purpose, take hold of the wisdom from above. And how do we do that? It's already been touched upon, but I'll repeat it because James gives us this in the very first chapter in verse five. If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. So let us pray fervently for God's wisdom, brothers and sisters, and pray with the full assurance that God always gives us that which he requires of us, and he requires this heavenly wisdom from us, so he will, without a doubt, give it to us. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we give thanks for The word of our brother who's gone before us, Pastor James, we give thanks for the inspiration that you gave him to write this letter that has benefited so many of our brothers and sisters through the ages. Father, we pray for this wisdom from above, your wisdom that you intend for your people. Father, we give thanks for the peaceableness of our people. our little church here that you've given us sovereign grace. Father, we pray that we may move forward in the future in this new year in peace and in unity under your word. Father, I ask for blessings on the brothers and sisters who are here listening on live stream. our friends that have joined us here today or via internet. Father, I pray that they all will experience the joy and comfort and love and peace of you in the year ahead in 2025. Father, we give thanks for the blessings you've given us individually and together as a church in 2024. We know all things come from you. good things as well as the things we struggle with, Father, and we ask for wisdom in understanding this. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.