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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.
Two Different Wisdoms
| Sermon ID | 727102125341 |
| Duration | 31:24 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | James 3:13-18 |
| Language | English |
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