Please turn your Bibles to the book of James. You'll be looking at verses 13 through chapter four, verse 12, tackling kind of a large section, hoping that I don't give you folks whiplash this morning. James is a book that is about the trials of life, but James, as we dig deeper and deeper into his epistle, He is exposing how those trials that are exterior to us start to become the real trial is how we react to those things in our hearts. And today we're gonna be looking at the concept of wisdom as it's taught in scripture. Wisdom is something that we need throughout our trials in the Christian life. And wisdom is something that James is going to tell us is necessary There's a certain type of wisdom that we should have and a certain type of wisdom that we should be guarding ourselves against. Biblical wisdom is not an easy concept to grasp. If you were to ask someone what is wisdom, it might be difficult to define that. But even more difficult might be obtaining wisdom as an attribute in our life. The Bible has a lot to say about wisdom. We heard Chilson read Passage this morning from the book of Proverbs, that whole book is considered what we would call or categorize as wisdom literature. There are several books in the Bible in the Old Testament referred to as wisdom literature. Book of Job, Song of Solomon, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and there are even Psalms that fit into the category of wisdom literature. The Hebrew word for wisdom, is the word that's used for skill. So wisdom can be considered a skill. And biblical wisdom is a skill that we have to apply to the Christian life. And I believe a major aspect of wisdom is the skill of applying God's law to our lives. The law by itself can be abstract, it can be objective, The law by itself is outside of us, telling us what to do, but it does not necessarily tell us how to do. Wisdom could be thought of as a way or a how to apply the law of God to our lives. The law by itself would be like me having a blueprint to build a deck for my home. Wisdom would be having Jeremy Luckadoo come over and showed me how to use the blueprint to build the deck for my home. That's a real life example. Thank you, Jeremy. Well, in our text today, James is going to show us the essential need to have wisdom. And if you look in your bulletins, you'll see in the outline, we're going to look at wisdom as it's described by James. James is gonna show us a picture of wisdom when it is denied, and then we're gonna talk about wisdom perfected, and I hope you can, I hope you've already guessed that wisdom perfected is not us, it is God. So, let's look at our Bibles in James chapter three, and let us hear the word of God, beginning in James chapter three, verse 13. Who is wise in 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. What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions, you adulterous people. Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the scripture says, he yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us. But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you. Do not speak evil against one another, brothers. The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother speaks evil against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law, but a judge. There is only one lawgiver and judge. He who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor? May the Lord bless the reading of his holy word. James begins his description of wisdom in verse 13, by asking a question. Who is wise and understanding among you? When this question is asked in our minds, we may look around for a person who has education, someone who has great intellect, or maybe someone is shrewd or honorable in the community. Well, all of those things are good, and there are many who possess these attributes who also possess wisdom. But James associates wisdom with moral conduct, more than he does with intellect. Wisdom is moral, it's a moral attribute. In verse 14, James says, by his good conduct, let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. James says that meekness is at the center of the moral skill of wisdom. If you don't know what meekness is, that word can be translated as humility or gentleness. Some people like to say that meekness is a silent strength. Notice also that this wisdom is something that's tangible. It is something that we can see. Wisdom is a characteristic that we need to have the skill to discern in ourselves and we need to be able to discern it in other people. But how do we know what wisdom looks like? Well, James is gonna help us with that. But of course, before James can tell us what wisdom looks like, he's gonna start by telling us what wisdom does not look like. So wisdom is gonna be defined to us by what it is not like and where it does not come from first. Beginning in verse 14, he says, 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. James says that there is a wisdom that seems right to some, but this wisdom is earthly, and its source is not from above, implying it's from where? It's from below. This wisdom is from below. He also says wisdom focuses on me. It's driven by jealousy and selfish ambition. This wisdom wants its way. It always wants what's best for it. It never considers others and it certainly is not humble or meek or gentle. We see this wisdom in action back in James chapter two. When James was talking about those who were showing partiality to the rich and they were oppressing the poor and telling them to sit in the back and nobody wants to see you. Why did they do this? Why did they show partiality to the rich? Because they were hoping that it would benefit me. Immoral partiality wants to benefit me and wisdom from below is all about the self. It's always pointing back at me. Wisdom of the world is selfish. It's always looking out for number one, and it knows nothing about what Chilson was talking about, loving neighbor as self. Thankfully, James is gonna give us the positive side now. He's gonna tell us what wisdom from above actually looks like. Beginning in verse 17, he says, 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. One of our church membership vows asks you to affirm this question. Do you submit to the government and discipline of the church and promise to give attention to its purity and its peace? Purity and peace are both vital to the Christian faith. And you can see those ideas emerging here in James' definition of wisdom from above. There's both purity and there's peace. Wisdom is the skill of being able to balance purity and peace in your life. If we only cared about purity, if the scale was always tipping towards purity, We would always be judgmental ogres. We would have a Pharisee-type purity that only considers a harsh, rigid, condemning way of applying the law to others, but never to me. But if we care only for peace, we slide off the other way, and we will allow all types of vile and disorderly and evil conduct. James says wisdom is first pure. And he has taught a lot about purity all through this letter. But now as he marches towards the command against judging in verses 11 and 12, he seems to want to expose a false external type of purity. James understands that our purity needs to be gentle and peace loving. Otherwise, our zeal for holiness will decay into unholy strife-loving, judgmental, neighbor-hating, that, to quote Jesus, is always straining at a gnat and always swallowing a camel. And what Jesus meant when he said that was you're always nitpicking these little things, but you're never understanding or seeing the cancerous sin that's residing in your own heart. That's how the Pharisees judge. And in chapter four, James paints us a picture of what this looks like when peace and the meekness of wisdom is denied. Starting in chapter four, verse one, once again, James poses a question. He likes to ask questions to his audience. He says, what causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? I like what Sam Albury, one of my commentators, says. He talks about how we might be tempted to answer this question. He says that in our hearts when we hear this question, what causes fights and what causes quarrels? The first thing our hearts might be tempted to think is if they weren't so unreasonable, if they weren't so demanding, if they were more thoughtful or more considerate, it's always the other, it's always somebody else's fault. I'm not the problem. The answer to that question is always others. Others are always causing the fights and the quarrels among us. And that can be true sometimes, right? It's true sometimes that there are people who want nothing but to be obstinate and disagreeable. And the Bible even affirms this. In Titus, Paul says, as for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him, knowing that that person is warped and sinful. So, the Bible acknowledges that it's not always you, sometimes it is others. But before we jump straight to others, that shouldn't be our first instinct to jump straight to others, James wants us to first look inside our own hearts and search ourselves. He says, starting in verse one, Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. The potential for this type of demonic, self-centered state of mind is inside of all of us, inside of our passions, inside of our desires. To use a more familiar theological term, it's inside of our sinful nature, inside of our sinful flesh. We can't have our way, so we murder. We murder the person who's keeping us from getting our way. Problem solved, right? They're out of the way. Well, I'm hoping that there's nobody in here who's not gonna think, I would never murder somebody. I hope that you're thinking that. But remember that Jesus said that anger and hatred for brother is the fountainhead or the source. It's the beginning of murder. The origin of all murder is hatred and anger that's in the heart. And James says in chapter one that the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. Self-centered anger that just wants others out of the way does not dwell with wisdom that's from above. Instead of murdering others in our hearts, wisdom teaches us to examine ourselves and do our best to always make peace possible. And I say try to make peace possible because as Paul said in Titus, it's not always possible. But we should always be trying to make peace possible. Now the description in verses one through four is a picture of a heart polluted with all types of self-centered motivation. Conceit, murder, and prayers that are spent on passions. And James is showing here that this pollution doesn't just go out towards each other, we might see it towards each other, but sometimes it even goes upward towards God. as we're praying towards our God. This is why James says in your prayers, you don't have because you don't ask. And when you do ask, you ask in a selfish way. You ask in a way that feeds your sinful desires and your passions. Wisdom from above can actually turn our prayers into an act of self-worship. like the Pharisee who exalted himself. Remember in Luke, the Pharisee who, some translations say he was praying to himself, not to God. And the tax collector, who was righteous, was over in the corner, huddled up, wouldn't even look up towards God, and was humbling himself before God. It is the tax collector's humility that James is going to encourage us to have in the next verses. So look at verses six through 10. God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Submit yourselves, therefore, to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be wretched and mourn and weep, Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you. James is saying that humble prayer, confession, and repentance is the way to clean out the selfish pollution that's going out towards others and going up towards God. Humility is always the key to the treasure chest of wisdom. humility in the presence of God, and humility towards your brothers and sisters in Christ. And a major part of your humility is recognizing simply that you are not the judge. You are not the judge, and that brings us to our final point. Wisdom perfected. Starting in verse 11, James says, do not speak evil against one another, brothers, The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother speaks evil against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law, but a judge. There is only one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor? There's only one judge. It's not you, it's not me. When my friend Mark Swartz preached this passage, he said something like this. I'm paraphrasing him because it's been so long since I heard the sermon. If you don't know who Mark Swartz is, you can ask me after the sermon. He said, God does not scoot over to make room for you on the judgment seat. There is no room next to the omnipotent all-powerful, all-wise God of the universe, for you to sit down next to him and help him do the judging. Now I have to say this, because the times that we live in, James is not saying that all types of judging is wrong. So we can take this too far. James has already given us all types of examples in this letter of the appropriate things that we should judge. In chapter 2, He wants us to judge those who are showing immoral partiality towards the rich and who are oppressing the poor. Also in chapter two, he wants you to be able to judge whether someone is showing true and living faith. Do they have works that are flowing out of their faith? Or is their faith dead? And here in chapter three, he wants us to be able to understand the difference between wisdom that is from above, that is pure and peaceable, and wisdom from below, that is selfish and demonic. So James is not saying don't ever judge anything. However, here, James is talking about the kind of judging that always leads to condemning. The condemning kind of judging. The kind of judging that does not have grace, and that does not have salvation as its motivation. In essence, he's condemning the kind of judging that is only the prerogative of God. God who possesses all wisdom, God who possesses all knowledge, and God who possesses all holiness. The only one who James says in this passage, who has the power to save and to destroy. That's the only one who has the prerogative to condemn, not us. Let me give you an example of the unwise type of judging from the Pharisees. The Pharisees are always good examples of what not to do. So if you will, turn over to Luke chapter six. Luke chapter six, we're gonna look at verses one through five. Now as you're turning there, let me encourage you If you've not been able to come to Sunday school, Pastor Mike has been teaching through the Ten Commandments. And if you weren't here last Sunday, he taught on the Sabbath. And he taught this passage, not from Luke, but from Matthew, Matthew chapter 12. And he really unpacked this passage really well and talked about the law and applying the Sabbath in different ways. So I would encourage you if you weren't here to go back and listen to April the 24th, Sunday school class on the Sabbath day. He just did a great job with that passage. So, a little advertisement for Sunday school. Now, Luke chapter six, verses one through five. On a Sabbath, while he was going through the grain fields, his disciples plucked and ate some heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands. But some of the Pharisees said, why are you doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath? And Jesus answered them, have you not read what David did when he was hungry? He and those who were with him, how he entered the house of God and took and ate the bread of presents, which is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and also gave it to those with him. And he said to them, the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath. Now the Pharisees knew the fourth commandment. Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. They knew the fourth commandment. They knew it in an abstract, objective way, but they didn't know it according to wisdom. Think about this, they were actually standing before the one whose very essence and being was the moral law. and telling him that he is teaching others to break the moral law. Now that is a misunderstanding of the law. And Jesus' answer to them was a simple example of wise application of the law to a certain situation in David's life. Jesus says that David ate bread in a certain situation, bread that was unlawful for anyone but the priest to eat. Leviticus 24 9 says that this bread is for Aaron's sons, meaning the priest, and David was not one of Aaron's sons. But what Jesus is teaching and what David understood is that the law is not meant to be black and white in every situation, and that you do need to actually consider heart motives in the law. David understood that in this situation, the ceremonial law of worship should not be observed over and above the law of life found in the sixth commandment. The sixth commandment, which is thou shalt not kill, which also means thou shalt not kill thyself. To make this simpler, Jesus is saying that God is not so rigid that he cared nothing for David's life and the life of David's men when they were facing starvation. David was fleeing Saul. He had no provisions. He was trying to get what he could before he went and lived in exile in the wilderness. God cared about that. And God knew that David and his men were not thumbing their noses up to the worship of God by eating the ceremonial worship bread. This was a time of crisis. Jesus is explaining to the Pharisees that the law is more than an objective, cold, black and white, easy to understand and apply in every situation law. And it takes wisdom from above to know how to discern all of the nuances of applying the law in different situations. But the Pharisees weren't trying to discern how to apply the law. They were driven by selfish ambition and a desire to murder and remove Jesus who was interfering with their sinful desires. They were straining at the gnat of crushing grain and the disciples refreshing themselves with nourishment on the Sabbath day while they were swallowing the camel of their desire to murder not anybody, not just anybody, but the Son of God. That camel was living and well in their own hearts and they were ignoring that and they were straining at this little gnat, a way that they thought that they could condemn the disciples. Their motive was not a love of the law, It was not a love of the truth, a love of justice, a love of grace. They did not care about the sanctification of the disciples. They just wanted to condemn. That's all they wanted. And this is what James is telling us not to do in James 4, 11 through 12. We are all given a level of judgment, and I hope we all have a level of wisdom, but only God knows all. Only God knows every heart, and only God knows how the law should apply to everyone in every situation. Let me give you a present day application. Church attendance. Ryan did a good job this morning teaching us in the book of Hebrews, chapter 13. In Hebrews chapter 10, we are told that we should not forsake the assembling of ourselves together. But should that be a rigid law for us to wield like a judgmental bat every time somebody is not here in the worship service? There are many reasons that someone might not be able to come to church. There's sickness. There's disability. There's vacation. It's okay to go on vacation. There's family emergencies. There are those who may not ever come to church because they've been hurt badly by the church. And there are even people and children who have been abused by clergy. And we should not treat all of these situations exactly the same. So how do we lovingly apply the command to go to church? We do it with wisdom. meekness, gentleness. We should desire the purity of the command while considering the situation and the heart of the individual who is not following the command. We judge wisely when we do it for God's glory and we do it for love of brothers, not when we want to feed our selfishness and our pride. So the question for us is this, will we follow the easy downhill path to selfish ambition, anger, and condemning others? Or will we follow the difficult self-killing path to wisdom, humility, and peace? Self-denial goes against every grain of our fiber of our being. That's why selfish ambition is easy. Going against ourself is painful, and wisdom sounds like something that we would like to obtain, but the cost of it feels high. So if we have wandered onto the path of selfish ambition, how do we once again find the path to wisdom? Well, the path away from self, I hope you understand, is not found in the strength of self. It is found in the strength of the only one who possesses perfect wisdom. James says that God gives grace to the humble. Humility is recognizing that we are not the source of our own strength, but that we are utterly dependent upon the past and ongoing work of our great high priest, Jesus Christ. The first wise act you can perform is to humble yourself at the cross of Christ. He gave everything for you so that you could be his treasured possession. Without his death and resurrection on your behalf, you would only be worthy of the eternal wrath of an all-holy God. Pride and selfish ambition will only accomplish your ultimate humiliation before God. But James says that if you humble yourself before the Lord, he will exalt you. You don't exalt you, he exalts you. Pride and selfish ambition will guarantee your humiliation. But humility before God guarantees your exaltation. And Paul says in 1 Corinthians that Christ is to us wisdom. Therefore, if you are united to Christ, you are united to all wisdom. So don't think that James wants you to work up the effort to be wise. He understands that true wisdom is alien to us, just like our righteousness. It's outside of us. It has to be given to us by God. We can't work it up. There's not some deep corner that we can find it within ourselves. It's an alien attribute. You must seek the skill of wisdom in Christ because Christ is the source of it and there is no other. And God promises that if we ask for it in humility and with pure motives, he will give us wisdom. Amen. If you would please open your hymnal to number 334, breathe on the breath of God. This is a prayer that pretty well matches what we've been doing. Let's rise together and pray together in music.