a particular word of welcome to our visitors, welcome to all of you, but particularly to our visitors. And thank you to the New Song folks. It was a wonderful time last night. And in particular, I'm partial to Brian Wright because his family, many years ago when Julie had two surgeries up in Massachusetts, kept me. You could either say they put me up or they put up with me for weeks at a time. And I'm very grateful and it's good to see him. and the rest of you as well. Welcome to you. We're in James today, Chapter 3. We're continuing a study of James over the summer. If you have your Bible, you may turn to James, Chapter 3, or you can read the front of the bulletin, or you can listen to the word as it's read. Through his wise and 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. Shall we pray? Father, we thank you for this portion of your word. I pray that you will give me clarity of speech and presentation as we look at this portion of James. I pray that you would Open our hearts to receive your word. So, as James says in chapter one, we are not just hearers of the word, but we are doers of it as well. We pray in and through our Lord Jesus. Amen. Do you pray to be wise and understanding? Do you pray for the Lord to give you wisdom in everything that you do? I remember being so struck one time and impressed and grateful when I was out on a early on after I had started studying for the pastorate around 2002 or 2003, somewhere along in there. Steve Hohenberger, our senior pastor, and I went to visit a member of the congregation who was having significant health difficulties and some other problems as well. And I was struck by Steve's as I often am, analysis and wisdom in the counsel that he gave. And as we left, he turned to me and said, you know, Rob, in the 30 some years of ministry that the Lord has given me, I don't think a day has gone by that I haven't asked the Lord to give me wisdom. So here's a man who prays every day for wisdom. Is that your prayer and my prayer? Wisdom is the ability, according to the dictionary, to discern or judge what is true, right or lasting. It can be insight, common sense, good judgment. Proverbs 1 verse 7 says, The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline. Godly wisdom is not based on a superior intellect which may be prideful. Reformed people of the Lord, I want us to hear this. Wisdom is not based on how smart we are or how many degrees we have. I may be more overeducated than anybody in here, but it's not based on that. It is based rather on a humbleness before God and a recognition of our own inability to be biblically wise without the Lord's intervention. I'm not saying there isn't wisdom out in the world. that's not biblically informed there is. But if we're going to be wise as Christians, then we have to approach our Lord with a humbleness of heart and put aside any intellectual aspirations or preconceptions we might have. According to James, wisdom is not just an intellectual activity but a way of life. Those who are wise will be gentle, humble, and exemplary in their conduct. Look at verse 13. The question, who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show it by his good life, by deeds done in humility that comes from wisdom. Let it be shown by his good life. James sees wisdom as something that involves our entire being. It isn't just an intellectual activity. It is, in fact, what we do in our entire existence. Is your life, is my life, are our lives characterized by humbleness before God and a willingness to pursue wisdom as described in James chapter 3, as we've just heard, rather than wisdom as we define it? Meekness and humility in the first century, especially in the first century Greek world, were considered traits that were not desirable. And they often still are, aren't they? I can remember that some of you who are visiting may not know I had a career of about 20 years in the banking industry before I came into the pastors. And interestingly enough, at another church recently, somebody asked me if I was repenting of my time in banking by becoming a pastor so that I could put aside what I had done those years. And the answer was no. I was a Christian then, and I hoped my conduct was godly. I'm sure sometimes it wasn't. I had a 20-year banking career, and I can remember we would have meetings over certain things, and our superiors would say, well, don't, you know, we don't want to show any weakness here on such and such, even when it was a plain and open weakness. And I think some of you have had similar experiences, even in our culture. It's not considered good to show weakness. Jimmy Connors the flamboyant tennis player once said he hated losing more than he liked winning because he Hated the view he hated walking up to the net and shaking a hand of his opponent who had just beaten him More than he did winning the tournament and beating the other guy well that was a weakness obviously and Jimbo that is I think indicative But you see the Bible sees it differently Jesus pointed to the meat as inheriting the earth The Beatitudes, Matthew Chapter 5. Are our deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom? Are they indicative of a biblical understanding of the relationship between humility and wisdom? Because you see, James clearly makes that connection. Is our outward conduct, that is the conduct outwardly that others see, a demonstration of an inward understanding? that godly wisdom comes from a submissive heart, one that yields to God, one that looks to our Father, the Father of heavenly lights, James calls him, in chapter one, for that wisdom. You see, godly wisdom comes from a heart that has been humbled and that is teachable. and that is willing to come before the Lord. My seminary professor, Mark Yutaka, a professor of Hebrew, some of you know and probably have read his commentaries, once said that we get defensive when we think we don't have anything to learn. We get defensive when we don't think we have anything to learn. Boy, I've sure found that to be true in my life, and I wonder if you have in yours. We get defensive when we don't want to be humble. So think about that the next time you start to get defensive on something. What might you learn from the situation? even if it's simply that you don't want to be in it again. Worldly wisdom comes from a self-centered heart. James contrasts godly wisdom with earthly or worldly wisdom. You'll notice in this short letter of James there are a number of contrasts. You have the what what pure religion is in the in Chapter 1 versus what false religion is in Chapter 2. You have faith and works in Chapter 3. You have the tongue and the image of the spring. And here we have the contrast between what true wisdom and earthly wisdom is. So what James is doing is saying this is the godly way versus this is the ungodly way to go about things. The second half of Proverbs 1-7 that I already quoted says, fools despise wisdom and discipline. Now we need to be careful when we're reading the Bible to make sure we understand what the terms mean. A fool in our language can mean many different things. He came into the room looking like a fool. 1972, my mother said, Robert, don't go to the beach before you graduate and get a sunburn and come back looking like a fool. She didn't want me to come back red and glowing like a lobster because I had been out in the sun all day and would look awful at graduation. He was a fool for eating chocolate cake. So we use fool in a number of different ways, but a fool in the biblical sense in the Old Testament is someone who is morally deficient. It's someone who resists knowledge and correction of any type. It's someone who follows the wisdom of the world. What does the verse say? Fools don't follow wisdom. It says fools despise wisdom. Proverbs 1 7 says fools despise wisdom and discipline. I can remember my late father-in-law, who was such a wonderful person in my life, Bud Trinisman, if you know him, talking about the role of discipline and how much he had learned from being in a military academy when he was a teenager. My first cousin visited with us recently and had just retired from the Marine Corps, and he said, you know, the discipline of the Marine Corps was what I needed in my life because I was such an undisciplined person. But the fool despises wisdom and discipline. And what James says here is that if you harbor bitter envy and if you have selfish ambition in your heart, then you have a self-centered heart. Let's not kid ourselves. Look what he says. Such wisdom does not come down from heaven, but it is earthly, unspiritual, of the devil. He says this kind of wisdom has nothing to do with God. This kind of wisdom is earthly. This kind of wisdom leads to death. It doesn't lead to life. It leads to death. It's of the devil. This type of self-produced wisdom and genuine wisdom are polar opposites. Only the Spirit of God, only the Spirit of God working in us can give us true, biblical, godly wisdom. Listen to what Paul says in Corinthians. Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength. The foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom. And the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength. That's what godly wisdom is. But the earthly wisdom does what? Verse 16, where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice. or every evil thing. Some of you may have that translation in your Bibles. How many churches in our day have come apart because of the selfish ambition of pastors or members in that congregation? How many folks have left churches? How many folks have left churches but cause of selfishness. How many of us have put our own agendas first and it's resulted in disorder? I've had a number of, I continue to have a number of humbling experiences in the last couple of years and it's probably because they're things I still need to learn. But one of them is I started visiting different churches And I would go in, and in my sanctified, wonderful way, I would say, you know, I don't really like the way they're doing this, or, you know, I'd do this differently, or, you know, we don't do this this way. And then I was visiting at the house of a member of one of them, and the man says, now, Rob, do you ever find that you go into a church and you're sort of critiquing the service and saying, you know, we ought to do this or we ought to do that? Do you find it hard to worship in such a setting? I was like, I said, yeah, you know, I do. And it was a really humbling moment for me, but it also was a liberating moment in the sense that I confessed my own selfishness, where my preferences really, in a way, had become my convictions. They didn't need to be. And I started sitting back and saying, you know, everybody doesn't have to do it my way. And it may even be better that they don't do it my way. And it really was a liberating moment. Because I'm in a number of different churches going around with the Hispanic ministry, and they have a number of different worship styles, and I don't like parts of some of them. And, you know, that's okay. I've learned by God's grace alone. It's not in me. I've learned to set those things aside and say, we're here to worship the living God. I don't like all the music we have at three o'clock in the afternoon sometimes. You know, it's not my language. Some of it's pretty lively. That's okay. It's all right. I'm not saying there are places we don't draw the line, but I am saying that, as my brother Larry Yeager said recently, sometimes we draw the line here and we put it in indelible ink. We've got one of those permanent markers that you can't erase. We need to be careful, my brothers and sisters. We need to be careful. about the things that are in our hearts that really are just self-motivated, where we're not humbling ourselves and looking for wisdom. In our world of instantaneous texting and emailing and chatting, Twittering, whatever else we do, how many thoughtless responses have we sent without consulting God for wisdom? How many faultless responses to an email have we sent without really thinking about it? It couldn't have been more than two or three months after I was ordained. I was visiting another church and a man said that he really would like to help me with the ministry. He spoke Spanish. I thought, oh, great. This will be a real foothold here. And I'm thinking, oh, you know, we're going to move forward. How great this will be. And so, I don't know, a few weeks later, I emailed him. I said, well, you know, I remember our meeting a few weeks ago. I'd love to get together for lunch with you, et cetera. The email came back from him and said, well, you know, I really can't do this because I'm just covered up with all sorts of things. And I'm sorry, but I can't help you. Now, the right thing to do, the right thing to do would have been to say, you know, God and His sovereignty. After all, I am a Presbyterian. I believe in the sovereignty of God. God and His sovereignty has another plan. But not me. I click, or I write a reply forward to somebody else. Some of you know where this is going. And I say, you know, man, people like this really make me mad because they commit. But instead of hitting forward, I hit reply. So it went back to him. So imagine my reaction. When the email came back, I said, boy, I'm really sorry that I said that. I didn't mean to lead you on. And I'm feeling about this big. Larry's looking in the office to see why I'm over like this. So I called him. And I said, well, pastors are sinners, too. And I'm among the chief. And we worked it out. He forgave me. And actually, he was very, very gracious. But how much better off would I have been? How much better off would I have been just to say, Maybe wisdom means being humble and saying, God's plan is the right plan here. It's not Rob's plan. So, for all of us who text, email, who are kind of quick on the draw, careful. We want to be wise. We don't want to be displaying earthly wisdom. Earthly wisdom is rooted in the ways of the world where it causes the spread of disorder in every evil practice. because of its ungodly nature. Which kind of wisdom do you choose? Hopefully not the one I just illustrated. Which kind of wisdom do you choose? The wisdom that comes from heaven? Listen to what James says about that wisdom. If you've got a Bible, feel free to turn to Galatians 5, 22 and 3 and look at the fruits of the spirit because these are very similar. The wisdom that comes from heaven is pure, peace-loving, it's considerate of others, it's submissive, it's full of mercy, it's impartial, or some of you may have the translation unwavering, that's okay, and sincere. That is, literally in Greek, it says it's not hypocritical. Pure, peace-loving, considerate of others, submissive, full of mercy, impartial, and sincere. Is that the type of wisdom that you choose or is it the one that's earthly, unspiritual and of the devil? Because you see, godly wisdom is imitative of the character of God. Godly wisdom is a reflection of the character of our great God. And it produces peace. Don't miss that last verse, 18, peacemakers who sow in peace raise a harvest of righteousness. Peace is used 93 times in the New Testament. Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called sons of God in Matthew 5, 9. Titus 3, 1 and 2, remind the people to be subject to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready to do whatever is good, to slander no one, to be peaceable and considerate, and to show true humility to all men. Hebrews 12, 14, make every effort to live in peace with all men. Godly wisdom and the peace it produces are found in the character of our great Savior in his selfless, submissive act of coming out of glory to walk among us so that we might have peace with God. That's what Romans 5, 1 says, doesn't it? After the chapter 4 about justification, Abraham believed and was credited unto him as righteousness. And then what does he say? Therefore, we have peace. That is the most fundamental peace there is, to be reconciled to God. We're enemies with God, but we're reconciled by the act of peace that Christ has made for us in his life and in his death on the cross and in his resurrection. James says those who promote peace Raise a harvest of righteousness. Are you a peacemaker? Are you a peacemaker in your home? Are you a peacemaker with your wife? Are you a peacemaker with your children? Are you a peacemaker with your neighbors? Are you a peacemaker with those you work with? Are you a peacemaker with those who are different from you? One of the interesting things in the Hispanic ministry is I end up interfacing with all sorts of people, many of them non-Christians, who are social workers, attorneys, and people like that. And one of the things I've noticed is what a zeal some of them have for reconciliation and for peace. That needs to be us because we have the fundamental peace with God with whom we've been reconciled. So don't leave it to the people who don't know him as Lord and Savior. We need to be peacemakers in what we do. Some of us, I'm afraid, like to stir the pot. Some of us just like to be right. Some of us want to win arguments, some of us want to show how good our theology is, some of us want to show how well we all have it put together. But that's not being wise. That's not being submissive. That's not being humble. That's being selfish. We're a well-educated group for the most part. But I'll tell you, with the group at three in the afternoon, They don't have that much education, but there are a lot of them. And I'm not saying we're not. I'm not saying we're not. But they're living lives of faith. They are living lives of humbleness. They are living lives that are dependent on God because they don't have the things that we have in place to depend on. I'm not saying they're better than we are. I'm just saying I think we may have something to learn. I've learned a lot. from their walk of faith. I've learned a lot from their humility. I've learned a lot from how wise some of them are with, in many cases, not even a high school education. I'm not against education. You all graciously put me through seminary, and I'm very grateful for that. But we need to use that great learning to be even more humble, to be even more submissive, to grasp hold of the scriptures and say, wow, we've got an understanding. We've got an understanding of this. It's just phenomenal. And who are we that God has revealed that to us? Who are we that God has given us that understanding? Who are we that he's shown us how to be wise? So what do we do? How do we deal with that? We think before we click on that button on the mouse. We think before we say something. We look at how we can be peacemakers and not stir things up. We think before we speak. We have a daily humbling before God. where we say, I cannot get through this day with any wisdom if you are not my pilot. If you are not guiding me every day, every minute, every second of this particular day, I will not be wise. There are two very different wisdoms presented in James chapter three, two very different wisdoms. Our wisdom must be rooted in a genuine humility before God. A daily realization of our unworthiness and our dependence on the saving work of Christ and a rigorous examination of ourselves in the light of the scriptures to see what elements of worldly wisdom remain in us. Our wisdom must be rooted. That is, it must be based in being genuinely humble before God, putting aside all pretensions, genuinely humble before God, realizing our unworthiness, that we aren't any better than anybody else, realizing our dependence on the saving work of Christ, the only hope we have, salvation through Christ, and a rigorous that is a studious, a very deep examination of ourselves in the light of these scriptures to see where we still are being worldly-wise rather than godly-wise. Our lives must be characterized Just want you to think while I'm reading this list, think, think is my life characterized by this? Our lives must be characterized by purity, love for peace, consideration of others, submission, mercy, steadfastness or impartiality and sincerity, producing good fruit in keeping with repentance. There is no other way to acquire true wisdom outside of the knowledge of God, a trust in him through our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, and the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit in us. I go back to Steve's prayer, praying every single day, every single day in the pastorate, Lord, give me wisdom. Lord, give me wisdom. We need to pray that for each other. You need to pray that for us as pastors. You need to pray it for me, pastoring a congregation that's different cultures, different language, different problems, different everything, where sometimes I feel very short on wisdom and empty on answers. Pray that for me. Pray for the other pastors as well. Pray for the elders. Pray for each other. How can we be wise? How can we be wise? How can the Holy Spirit work in us so that on an ongoing basis, We are wise in what we do to reap that harvest of righteousness. James teaches us that our choice of wisdom will have a bearing on our daily conduct and our interactions with those around us. The wisdom that we choose will have an impact on how we deal with others around us and will either be wise from a biblical perspective or will be wise from a worldly perspective. May God grant us grace to humble ourselves before the Savior. Thank him for his great mercy and ask him through his spirit to give us true and godly wisdom. Will you join me in prayer? Father, I thank you for this portion of your word. I confess for myself and perhaps maybe there are even others in this room today who would confess that we often are worldly wise and quite honestly don't look much different from the rest of the world around us. But you can change all that. And we are delighted in the fact that you continue to work in centers and you continue by your Holy Spirit to cause transformation in us. Make us a congregation that's wise in what we do. When we look at the two different wisdoms, that we turn away from the wisdom that has envy and selfish ambition, and we turn toward the wisdom that produces a harvest of righteousness. Cause us to be wise as elders, as deacons. Cause us to be wise as a congregation. that turns not to ourselves and not even to how well educated or smart we might be, but turns instead with a humble heart toward the Lord Jesus who humbled himself out of the glory of heaven to live among us, to die a horrible death, an unjust death on our behalf so that we might live through him. And we ask these things in his name. Amen.