Godly Wisdom Versus Worldly Wisdom

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Rob Konold; James 3:13-18 Godly Wisdom Versus Worldly Wisdom

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You are listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Mattawan, Michigan. Yes, I am
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Rob Knold, and I've been asked, how do you pronounce your name? And I usually start with a rhyme, because I always say,
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Old Knold. So you can call me Old Knold, or just Rob, for short, I prefer that. It's good to see you all this morning.
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It is a privilege to preach God's Word, and it's actually something I don't take lightly. As I come to preach
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God's Word, I think I have a combination of emotions, personally. One is just sort of apprehension, right?
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Like it's just that natural fear of public speaking, like, am I going to make a mistake?
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Am I going to stumble over something, get lost, make a fool of myself, right? I think we all have that natural fear, and it's the fear of man, and I think
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I honestly have that every time I prepare to preach. The other part, though, is kind of it's excitement, and it's an enjoyment, and I'll tell you why
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I have that when I prepare to preach, and it's because every time that I've studied
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God's Word, dug in deep to preach, and by the way, when you have to explain something, you have to dig a little deeper, if you know what
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I'm saying, like it forces you to, and I need that. I dig into God's Word, and I find that a passage that I used to read right over, suddenly there's things in there
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I never saw, and there's things that apply to my life in a way I never even comprehended. So, again, it's a little bit of an apprehension, but it's a huge joy to preach
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God's Word, but it's mostly the preparation that's so enjoyable, and I want to share a little bit this morning about the book of James.
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That's where we're going to be this morning as we dig into God's Word. I'm excited about James. James is a letter.
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It's an epistle written. It says, to the 12 tribes scattered among the nations, so it's to the Jewish believers who during the period of Roman persecution were dispersed through the known world.
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So James was writing to those believers scattered among the nations, and yet it's also a wisdom book.
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It's a little bit of a pithy, concise, wise sayings hitting a variety of topics that we'll talk about.
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So, as we dig into the book, I want to do a little bit of a refresher and a reminder on the book of James and the author.
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So most scholars agree that James, the brother of Jesus, is the author of the book of James.
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And James, well, first of all, James was the younger brother of Jesus. I'm a younger brother.
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How many of us this morning have older siblings? Quick show of hands, like a good chunk, right? And so I grew up a younger brother with an older brother and sister who were very talented, very sharp, and I often felt like I was in their shadow.
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So I just think about James growing up as a younger brother of Jesus. What was that like? Perfect older brother, perfect big brother.
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I don't know what it was like. It must have been amazing, but it must have been very challenging at times.
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I don't know. But that was James. That's our author this morning. A young...a
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man who grew up as a younger brother of Jesus. And then it's interesting to note in Scripture, if you read in the book of Acts, in the history in the
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Gospels and the book of Acts, how initially Jesus' brothers did not believe in Him. They did not believe
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Jesus was the Messiah. It says His own family didn't believe. And yet, as time goes on,
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Jesus is crucified, is buried, and is resurrected. And then we see in the book of Acts, suddenly,
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James does believe. He is a believer, and he is actually a leader in the early church in Jerusalem.
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So he joins the apostles, and he helps to lead the church, and ultimately writes the book that we enjoy today, the book of James.
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So I'm excited to dig in. And we're going to be looking at a number of verses, verses 13 to 18, which
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I'll read in just a moment. But let me just review what topics James has covered so far.
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He's covered everything from...let me find my place in the book,
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I mean, in my notes here. He's covered trials and hardships. If you go back to verses 3 and 4 of chapter 1, he goes on to talk about wisdom.
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Already, he's talked about wisdom in this book. He's talked about a number of other topics, including wealth and poverty, and how to deal with financial issues, you know, within society, temptation, and how do we handle temptation.
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He defines true religion. He talks about favoritism within the church, bias or favoritism or partiality.
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And he talks about a number of other topics, including faith and the definition of faith.
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What is faith, and is there a faith without works? And James says, no, faith is always accompanied by works.
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And then he talks about, in early parts of chapter 3, controlling our tongue, which is such a hard thing to do.
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And that was the last sermon that I preached was on James, the first part of James chapter 3. So now we're going to move into James chapter 3, verses 13 to 18.
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So I'm going to read that to you, and I'd encourage you to take out your Bibles or your devices and turn with me and read these words as well.
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I'll be reading from the English Standard Version, ESV, this morning as I read James chapter 3, verses 13 to 18, as we prepare our hearts for worship.
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Thank you. "'Who is wise and understanding among you?
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By his good conduct let him show his works in meekness of wisdom.
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But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth.
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This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic.
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For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice.
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But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere.
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And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.'"
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That is our passage today, and I'm going to pray now as the worship band comes to lead us in worship.
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Heavenly Father, I thank you for these words that we have. The whole Bible, God, your holy word is inspired and is a gift to us, revealing who you are and revealing your plan for us,
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God, and we just are grateful for it. But I just thank you again for the word that we can dig into each
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Sunday. I thank you, God, because it's a gift, and I thank you for what we can learn from it.
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God, I pray for this morning. I pray for, first of all, that your words would be proclaimed accurately, for my own mouth to be clear and accurate and not make errors.
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But Lord, I also pray for our hearts. God, we recognize that as we hear your word,
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Lord, it's really your spirit that works in us to convict, to change, and so,
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God, we ask for your spirit to be alive and active in this service, Lord. And as the worship team comes to lead us in worship,
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I pray, Father, our hearts and our minds would just be directed and steered through the lyrics and through the words to you.
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Lord, you are the only true God. You are the only one worthy of worship. You are deserving of all praise and all glory and all honor, and I just want to lift you up this morning and ask that you would be praised in this service, and we pray all this in Jesus' name, amen.
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Boy, it's good to be reminded that we need to worship God, we need to rejoice no matter what we're going through in life, no matter what season of life we're in.
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Whatever hardships we're facing, we still praise God, right? That is a good reminder this morning. You know, as I mentioned earlier,
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I'm excited to dig into God's Word. I've been studying and I'm just excited to share some of the things
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I've been learning. And as we dig in to James chapter 3 and verse 13 to 18, again,
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I'd encourage you to have that open and be looking at that as we go through it. I'd like to start off here with a question.
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How many of us desire wisdom? I mean, all of us, right?
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No one's going to say no to that. We all want that. And I think there's all kinds of circumstances we might be in that require wisdom.
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It might be a difficult situation at work. It might be relational challenges that you're facing, maybe with a family member.
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There is just so many things in life where we need wisdom. It covers pretty much every area of life, right, the need for wisdom.
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I was considering the difference between, like, say, wisdom and morality, and there's an author and a preacher that I've listened to quite a bit.
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His name is Tim Keller. He recently passed away. But I remember a sermon that he preached where he defined wisdom and how it differs from morality.
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He's like, okay, the Bible teaches right and wrong, morality, right? That's black and white and it's very clear.
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But that's really only a small portion of life that applies. I mean, 80 % of the things that you face every day are gray areas.
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There's no clear right and wrong, like this job or that job. Do I respond this way or that way? Do I say this or that?
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Do I say something? Do I not say something? You know, there's just so many circumstances in life where we have challenging issues we face and no clear moral thing, right?
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It's always good to be doing right. But in cases where there is no clear right and wrong, we need wisdom.
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And that's why this topic of wisdom is so important this morning. It applies to so much of life.
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And I'm going to have to keep track of where I am in my notes as I go. There's a passage,
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Proverbs 3 .13, it says, "'Blessed is the one who finds wisdom and the one who gets understanding, for the gain from her is better than the gain from silver, and her profit better than gold.'"
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Wow, wisdom is valuable. And I think maybe as you've gone through life, you perhaps start, this has started to really sink in and you start to realize it really is worth more than money.
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But how do you get wisdom? How do we get it? Where do you go for answers, in other words?
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I have to be honest, a lot of times if I have a question, I Google it, right? So that's a great tool, right?
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But is that where you get wisdom? What about books? There are so many books written. And in fact, it seems today there is an expert on every topic and people, there's just no limit to the number of books, right, that you can go read.
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Is that where we go for wisdom? Maybe it's a friend, advice from a friend.
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That's not a bad option either. But we know wisdom, according to Scripture, comes from God.
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Proverbs 2 .6 says, "...for the Lord gives wisdom. From His mouth come knowledge and understanding."
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And in the beginning of James 1 .5, so if you just flip back a couple of pages, you'll see
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James himself address the topic of wisdom and how to get it. And he says, "...if any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask
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God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him." What an encouraging verse.
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So we know that we need to go to God for wisdom. How many of us this morning have asked
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God for wisdom? I know I have many times. And I think it's a good thing to ask
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God for wisdom. If you remember in the Bible, in the Old Testament, Solomon was given a choice, what do you want?
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And God tells him and he says, I want wisdom. And God commends him for it. It is a good thing to desire wisdom.
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And I think if you're asking God for wisdom, it's also expressing a need.
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It's expressing a dependence on God. When we are struggling and when we need help,
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God wants us to humbly ask Him for wisdom. It expresses a dependence on God, and it's something
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God desires for us to do. So as we move into the topic here,
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I just want to start from a place of honesty on my own part.
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I don't feel wise. I don't. I have often asked
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God for wisdom, as I mentioned, but I really don't feel qualified here to stand before you and preach on wisdom of all things.
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You know, I got to this section of the book of James, I'm preaching through it, and it's not one where I feel like I have achieved a certain higher level of wisdom in my life.
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In fact, it's kind of the opposite. As I get older, I keep experiencing new things and realizing, kind of being humbled, realizing, wow,
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I thought I had all the answers and I clearly don't. That's been my experience in life. It's been a series of humbling experiences where I realize how little
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I know and how much I need God in my life. So I'm coming to you from a place of not knowing it all, not having all the answers, but what
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I do have I share with you, and that is God's Word. And I just want to emphasize this. This book does have wisdom.
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It is the source of wisdom, and it is where we should turn. And I'm excited to share from that book this morning with you all.
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Let's define wisdom this morning. Just before we jump back into James, what is wisdom?
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It certainly has something to do with knowledge, but it's more than just knowledge.
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One of the commentaries that I read in preparing the sermon defined wisdom this way. It said, wisdom is skill in the art of living, skill in the art of living.
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And I thought that was a pretty good definition. Another source defined wisdom as the ability to think and act informed by knowledge, thinking and acting informed by knowledge.
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So it's not just knowledge. We know this. It's not just knowledge, you know, being smart or an academic in an ivory tower, but it's knowing what to do when the rubber meets the road.
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It's knowledge in action, the ability to put it into action. Solomon, the wisest man, it says according to Scripture, he asked for wisdom,
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God gave it to him. He was a very wise man, and he wrote much of Proverbs, and we read
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Proverbs and there's many wise sayings there. But Solomon had a thousand wives and concubines.
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Was that wise? I struggle, like what? So apparently having wisdom at one point in your life doesn't guarantee that you're always going to make wise decisions, does it?
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It doesn't mean that you're always going to choose the right path either. So that's a pretty sobering reality to consider.
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So with that in mind, let's turn to the book of James, and we'll jump into it. As we look at this passage,
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I have an outline for you today, and we'll be bouncing back and forth between godly wisdom and worldly wisdom throughout this passage, and we're going to cover three distinct aspects of both worldly wisdom and godly wisdom today, and you'll see them on the screen there.
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First off, verses 13 and 14 in your outline is…that's covering the marks or the indicators of godly or worldly wisdom.
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Verse 15 is going to talk about the source of both godly and worldly wisdom.
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And then lastly, we're going to look in verses 16 to 18, the results of both godly and worldly wisdom.
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So that's our outline as we dig into it today. And so we'll start off with verse 13.
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James starts with a question. And in James 13, he says, and let me read it again, who is wise and understanding among you?
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So he's asking a question to an audience, and we need to know who is the who that James is referring to there.
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And if we back up in the passage to James 3, verse 1, we see who the who is.
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He says in James 3, verse 1, not many of you should become teachers.
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So he's writing this letter to Jewish believers scattered among the nations, and he's saying, which of you…who of you aspiring to be leaders?
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So he's addressing this to those aspiring to be leaders within the church. And that is the who that he's addressing here.
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And then I just want to point out that as we look at that, it's really…the audience here is broad.
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He's writing it to all believers scattered among the nations. So I think it has brought a publicity to all of us, but he's especially targeting those who aspire to be leaders within the church.
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And so, in James chapter verse 13, James goes on to say that they should demonstrate wisdom and understanding.
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How should they demonstrate it? By good conduct in the meekness of wisdom.
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By good conduct in the meekness of wisdom. So those are your marks or your indicators of godly wisdom.
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Good conduct, let's talk about that for just a minute. Good conduct, it's simply…it's doing the right thing.
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Remember, we said wisdom was knowledge in action. So here already James is saying it's literally putting your feet where your mouth is.
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It's stepping out and doing the right thing. And what about meekness?
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The meekness of wisdom, what is meekness? It's translated…it can be translated as gentleness or humility as well as meekness.
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It's not…basically, it's not seeking your own glory. It's not puffing out your chest.
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It's not taking credit. But it's interesting, it's also not putting yourself down.
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I think we can misunderstand humility and it's not saying, oh, woe is me, I'm horrible, poor little me.
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It's not denigrating yourself either. I think it's finding the right balance. It's not puffing your chest out and taking credit for everything and boasting, but it's also not putting yourself down.
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It's rightly recognizing who you are in Christ. And who are we in Christ?
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I mean, first of all, God created us. He made us amazing. Like the body, human body, we've spent thousands of years trying to understand and fathom the cells of…understand the human body and how it works, and we still don't understand it.
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Like God made us incredible with incredible abilities and attributes.
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He made us in His image. That's incredibly valuable. And yet, we're so small, we're so finite, our brains, our knowledge is so limited.
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All we can really take in is five senses, and the most we can learn and achieve in life is so small compared to an infinite
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God. And then on top of that, we've sinned. We've all fallen short of the glory of God and rejected
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God and rebelled against Him. So like we need to understand that when we understand ourselves, we understand our limitations and our sinfulness, but then we need to balance that with a
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God who loves us so much that He died for us, that He saw value in us even when we were sinning.
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And He sought us out and paid the ultimate price for us. So we have to understand ourselves sort of in tension between those two things, created in God's image, loved and sought after by God, but also very limited and struggling with sin, and we're in the middle there.
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That is a proper understanding of our humble state as human beings. But the main point
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I want to emphasize in verse 13 here is that wisdom requires action.
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Wisdom demands action. Wisdom cannot exist without action. You have to put the knowledge into action.
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It's knowing the right things to do, the good things, and demonstrating those good things with a heart attitude of humility, and that's very hard to do.
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Verse 14, now we see the contrast as we jump into worldly wisdom, and I often think it's best and easiest to define something by saying what it's not.
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And so, again, that's what we have from James, a good teacher here. He's contrasting godly wisdom and worldly wisdom.
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And the contrast here, he says, if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, then don't boast and be false to the truth.
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So here we see what is not compatible with godly wisdom, it's bitter jealousy and selfish ambition, just the exact opposite of humility, the exact opposite of meekness.
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So, let's talk about jealousy for just a moment. Jealousy is basically wanting what is not yours.
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It's wanting what belongs to someone else. And do we live in a materialistic culture?
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Absolutely. The number of commercials and things that bombard us every day, you have to have this, you have to have that, and it's easy to fall into a materialistic mindset and ultimately to jealousy of wanting what isn't yours and what belongs to someone else.
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But it's not just things, it's so much more, it's abilities, it's, man,
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I wish I looked like that, I wish I had that person's talents, or I wish
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I had their achievements or success in life, or what...so many things that we can be jealous of in life.
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And clearly here we're told that bitter jealousy is not godly wisdom, it is worldly wisdom.
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Secondly, the selfish ambition. Selfish ambition, what is that? It's basically self -promoting.
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It's lifting yourself up. It's basically doing what our culture tells us to do, right, every day.
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I remember learning how to interview for jobs when I was younger, and you're taught, you're taught to do all these good things about yourself and lift, you know,
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I mean, it's just embedded in our culture, self -promotion. I think careerism or, you know, trying to climb the corporate ladder is often all about I want to lift myself up at the expense of others, and that is just pervasive in our culture.
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It's hard to get away from it. I think I'm just going to dwell on this for just a moment and go down this tangent.
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Selfish ambition versus the concept of contentment. So selfish ambition on the one hand versus contentment.
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I remember Paul saying in Philippians chapter 4, just lifting up the virtue of contentment.
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I can be content in all circumstances. What an amazing statement from the Apostle Paul about contentment.
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But the selfish ambition, that contrast with that is basically saying I need more,
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I'm never content. And it's funny because I think our culture has taken contentment as a virtue and flipped it on its head and now says contentment is bad, never settle, never be content, and always strive for more and always want more.
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And I think that's an interesting flip of morals. I've heard commercials that say the message never settle.
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I think Gatorade and Nike, if I'm not mistaken, have those taglines. And there's so many other voices in our culture that proclaim that we need to make a priority of ourselves.
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And I just, to satisfy my curiosity, I did a quick Google search on putting yourself first and I got so many results that were just promoting that, just over and over and over, source after source after source.
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Yeah, you need to take care of yourself, put yourself first, take care of your own needs. And then
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I finally got to a word, narcissism, and it was defined as putting yourself first.
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I'll read the definition here. It said, basically, put yourself first, an inflated idea of self -importance, self -love, chiefly concerned with yourself.
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Wow, do we live in a narcissistic culture? Oh, my goodness. That message is everywhere around us.
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It's just hard, I think, to stand against the current of our culture. I know often
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I recognize, hey, that's not what I think, that's not what I agree with, but I hear it over and over and over, and you just feel yourself getting pulled along with the tide of our culture.
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And we have to stand against it. We have to. And there's only one way, guys. It's clinging to God's Word, the truth of God's Word.
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It does not change, and we need to continue to go back to it and soak ourselves in God's Word to stand against the current of our culture.
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So in contrast to that worldly wisdom is...so
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I'm sorry, I'm losing myself in my notes here. Let me move on to verse 15.
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So here I go, verse 15, and this is now moving to the second point in our outline. The source of wisdom, and we're going to talk about the source of both types of wisdom here, both godly wisdom and worldly wisdom.
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First it says, worldly wisdom is not from above, so it's not from God.
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That is very clear in verse 15, if you follow along with me there. So in this verse we're seeing godly wisdom comes from God.
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It comes from above. And we already know that from Proverbs and from other verses we've read.
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Godly wisdom comes from God. It comes from above. But we learn in contrast that worldly wisdom comes from where?
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It comes from...and it says three things here. First of all, it's earthly.
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Second of all, it's unspiritual. And thirdly, it's demonic.
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So the godly wisdom is from above, it's from God. The worldly wisdom is earthly, unspiritual, and demonic.
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And what is earthly? Earthly basically means worldly. That's where we get the word worldly from. And it means of the world's priorities and principles.
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It's according to the world's way of doing things. The second word in there, unspiritual, basically means there's no spiritual value.
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There's no spiritual benefit from this worldly wisdom. And then thirdly, it says it's demonic, which is a clear tie to Satan and his demonic influences in this world.
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We know that Satan is the prince of this world. He has incredible influence in this world, and it should not surprise us that he is influencing this worldly wisdom.
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But as I read this passage the first time, I read that word demonic, and it kind of jarred me a little bit.
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It was a little bit shocking. Like when I think of the demonic, I don't know about you, but I mean, I have an image in my mind, maybe it's from movies, but, you know,
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Satanism, witchcraft, dark magic, the occult, like all these things, right, are demonic.
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And yet, what is he saying in this passage? He's saying, basically, jealousy and selfish ambition are demonic.
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Whoa, is that accurate? So when you're jealous about the success of your coworker, wish
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I had his success, is that demonic? When you wish you had that nice house, that's demonic?
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Or that zero -turn mower that your neighbor just bought? That's kind of sobering.
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I know it was shocking to me to think about that, but then I started to ponder a little bit deeper.
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You know, Satan wants us to sin. Sin is simply not obeying
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God. Sin is falling short of what God requires. Sin is...and
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I would say all sin, by definition, is demonic. It's what Satan wants you to do.
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He is steering you in that direction, and it's no surprise that a lot of the worldly influences that we encounter are pulling us in that direction.
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They are influenced by Satan and by his demons. And I think I often walk around this physical world that we live in, and I'm just completely oblivious of the spiritual realities.
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There are spiritual realities that we have to be mindful of as Christians. We fight a spiritual war that we're in.
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And, you know, I want to just pause here and say, okay, who here knows God is spirit?
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God is spirit. And if you believe in God, you believe in the spirit world.
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It's real. Angels are real. Demons are real. This is not made -up stuff. We have to believe that.
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But if we don't believe that, then our whole faith is empty. It's meaningless.
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The spiritual reality around us is real. And if that's real, then things like sin, like jealousy and selfish ambition that hide in our hearts, that lurk in there, that tug us in a worldly direction are demonic, and they're real.
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And we need to recognize that. So it's a good wake -up call, and I think we all need to hear that periodically.
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So just to remind myself here as I'm coming back to my notes, so in contrast to godly wisdom, which comes from above, from God, the source of worldly wisdom is not just of this earth, which is the world system, but it's also nothing to God.
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It's demonic. And that brings us to the third point in our outline today, which is what does godly wisdom and worldly wisdom produce?
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What are the results? What does this bring out in our lives? And the two things that worldly wisdom produces were mentioned actually back in verse 14, so I'm going to sneak back to verse 14 and pick a couple of results here.
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It says in verse 14, if you have jealousy and selfish ambition, then do not boast or deny the truth.
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Do not boast or deny the truth. So the warning here is that worldly wisdom will lead someone who is self -promoting to naturally boast and brag about their wisdom, and in so doing, they deny the truth.
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So what is truth? What are we talking about here? The truth of the Bible, the truth of the gospel, this is truth,
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God's Word, and we know that God's Word is not just to be listened to, but it's to be obeyed, it's to be understood and obeyed.
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And so as they demonstrate worldly wisdom by boasting and bragging in their selfish ambition, promoting their own ideas, their own agenda, their own careers, by their actions they're literally denying the truth of God's Word, they're literally going contrary to everything that the
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Bible teaches, and so that's how they're denying the truth. In verse 16, now
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I'll move down a couple of verses, we have some more results of worldly wisdom. It says where you have jealousy and selfish ambition, you have disorder and every vile practice, disorder and every vile practice.
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We see here James doesn't take the time to list out a whole slew of sinful things, he just basically has a catch -all, every vile practice.
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The sobering thing to think about here is James, remember, he's talking to Jewish believers scattered among the nations, some of which who aspire to leadership within the church, and he's warning them that if they have jealousy and selfish ambition in their hearts as leaders in the church, it is going to lead to all kinds of sin inside the church.
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It's going to lead to sin inside the church, and that is a sobering reminder to us here today, I think.
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If our hearts are full of jealousy and selfish ambition, it will lead to all types of sin.
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It's also interesting to look at context as you're studying the Bible, and right immediately after chapter 3, it goes into chapter 4,
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Don is always keen to remind us, I think he said this last week, that, you know, these chapter breaks were inserted much later, and so, you know, these chapter breaks aren't necessarily breaks in thought for the original author.
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And you'll see verses…chapter 4 verse 1, we're not going to go too deep into this, we'll save it for another sermon, but he says, what causes quarrels and what causes fights among you?
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That's literally chapter 4 verse 1, immediately following this passage. So there is a clear connection here, that worldly wisdom, the thing that James is teaching against is to avoid or to stop fights and quarrels, which start from the wrong motives in our hearts.
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Again, he's addressing the heart motive in all of this. So we know that fights and quarrels are also a result of worldly wisdom.
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So, now we'll switch over and in contrast to that, we'll look at verse 17 and we'll see godly wisdom and the results of that.
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This list reads a lot like the fruit of the Spirit. If you've read Galatians chapter 5, and maybe you've memorized those verses and you can run through those in your head or flip to that passage, but Paul also expresses the fruit of the
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Spirit in a similar fashion, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self -control, and this list looks a lot like it.
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So what does James say? First of all, he says pure, godly wisdom is pure.
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What is purity? It's sinlessness. It looks like the absence of sin in your life.
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Then second of all, he says peaceable. What is peaceable? In contrast to the fighting and the quarreling that we just talked about that starts in chapter 4 verse 1, he says that godly wisdom is going to result in a peaceable, an attitude that is peaceable within the church, peace -loving.
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And it reminds me of what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount too, blessed are the peacemakers.
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Blessed are the peacemakers. The third thing in the list here is gentle. Jesus also was gentle and lowly in heart, if you remember that passage from the
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Gospels. And we should be too. The fourth item, open to reason.
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I really like this and it's a reminder that we should not be quick to judge, but that we should be patient, willing to slow down and listen, consider both sides and hear people, hear the evidence.
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The fifth item, full of mercy, full of mercy and full of good fruit.
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And that reminds me of God's mercy toward us. We've received incredible mercy from a heavenly
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Father who does not punish us for the sin like we deserve, right? And we should be merciful to others in the same way.
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And then good fruit, again, it gets back to actions. Godly wisdom results in actions.
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It results in actually doing things, resulting in good fruit, good actions in your life. The next one is impartiality, impartiality.
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And that reminds me of chapter 2. If you flip back to chapter 2, you'll get a whole passage from James on how in the church he was scolding the believers for showing favoritism to rich people and treating poor people not well.
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So we need to avoid partiality in discriminating between, say, how we treat some people with favoritism.
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So we need to avoid that and we need to treat everyone with dignity and respect. And then lastly, sincerity, sincerity in this list.
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What is being sincere? It's being real, it's being genuine, it's being authentic. How do you have a close relationship with someone if you're not being real, if you're not being genuine?
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I mean, we have to let our guards down if we're going to truly get to know each other, if we're going to truly grow close to each other in relationship.
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One of the values of recast, the A in recast stands for authenticity, which
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I would equate to this word being sincere. It's being authentic. We have to be authentic with each other or we're never going to build close relationships.
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And sometimes that requires a little bit of vulnerability. So I would encourage you to be sincere and vulnerable and let down your guard as you build close relationships with each other.
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So those are the characteristics that we see in verse 17. And then we go to our last verse, verse 18, and we conclude with this section.
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It says, a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace, which ties back to that peaceable characteristic we just saw.
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James here is explaining that the fruit or the outcome of living as a peacemaker is a harvest of righteousness.
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And I'm reminded of the term sowing is a farming analogy. It takes time.
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You sow in peace and you don't get immediate results. You don't. You don't know how long it's going to take often.
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We have to sow diligently, planting, watering, and waiting. And the harvest may be a long way off.
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Our place in this whole equation is to sow peace in our daily life.
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How do we do that? By loving people around us, by supporting them, by resolving fights and quarrels, not ignoring conflict.
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Sometimes you have to lean into conflict, but it's resolving those conflicts in a peaceable manner.
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And this verse tells us that in the long run, it will yield a harvest of righteousness.
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So we see James tying all of this passage together in this concept of peace.
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He lands on peace here, and I don't think that's just a random thing.
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I think this is the point he's driving toward. And peace is so much more than just not having a fight or a quarrel.
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It is that concept of shalom, of living rightly, living as God ordained it, in good relationships, in harmony with each other.
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That is what God desires for us, to live completely, to live wholly in harmony with each other and with God.
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And that really kind of summarizes or pulls this whole passage together. James is directing church leaders, so this is kind of a summary of the whole thing.
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He's directing church leaders to demonstrate godly wisdom through humility and through good works, which is the exact opposite of jealousy and selfish ambition, to bear good fruit in the life of the church, culminating in a true shalom peace or good relationships within the church.
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And that's a summary of the passage. So as we wrap things up, I do want to come to some application from this passage.
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And there's a lot of things we could take away from it. I trust that God has been speaking to you, and I know the
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Holy Spirit is really the guide, speaking to each of us in our conscience, bringing conviction where we need conviction and encouragement where we need encouragement.
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So I trust that He's doing that today in your life. But as I summarize here,
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I'm going to hit on three things that I took away from this passage as I reflected on it.
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First of all, this is ultimately an admonition to peaceful living. It's a challenge for us to have godly wisdom to avoid fights and quarrels.
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True godly wisdom should cause us to live meekly and humbly, doing good works and fulfilling
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God's calling. And that will lead to peace and avoiding fights and quarrels.
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So that's my exhortation this morning. My first one here is demonstrate godly wisdom by good works done in humility.
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And I'm just going to camp out on that last word, humility, just one more time as we reflect on the application, because I think that's at the heart of this message.
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It's really an attitude of the heart. You'll notice that, you know, wisdom is, okay, I have to know the right thing to do, and I have to execute it, and I have to do it.
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But really this passage has been reflecting most of the time on what? On the heart attitude.
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It's what's at your heart. That's what this passage is hitting on. Are you motivated by a humble heart or are you motivated by selfishness, basically, jealousy and selfish ambition?
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That's at the heart of this passage. So, I want to challenge you to, with humility, demonstrate godly wisdom with good works.
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You know, none of us should be walking around envying someone else's gifts or someone else's ability. Wish I was like that person.
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You know, we should be grateful for how God made us, and we should be actively using those gifts to build up the body of Christ.
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So, the second point I want to make as we land this sermon is wisdom is something we should desire, and it's something we should pursue, and we should ask
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God for wisdom, just like Solomon did in Scripture. But we have to remember that wisdom doesn't guarantee a good outcome.
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I personally am guilty of asking God for wisdom, and then I enter into a situation,
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I don't know if you've ever done this in your life, Lord, help me, I need wisdom, I need wisdom. Then we go in and we make a decision, and we go forward, and it just goes horribly wrong.
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Terrible outcome, right? And we look at that and we're like, wow, I must have been…I must not have had wisdom.
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Rats. I just didn't ask God hard enough, or He didn't give it to me, or what happened there. I just want to challenge my own thinking in that this morning, and all of us, by saying this harsh reality, which is you could ask
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God for wisdom, have excellent wisdom, do exactly the right thing, and it could still result in a really bad outcome, personally for you.
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It's no guarantee. Being wise is no guarantee of a good, easy outcome for you.
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It just isn't. And I have the wrong thinking often in that matter. So I want to challenge us this morning to not think incorrectly that, well, if I'm just wise, everything's going to work out fine, peachy keen.
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No, sometimes you're going to act wisely, and it's going to be a hard road. But persevere, persevere on that, and still pursue wisdom.
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Godly wisdom is not a trick to getting everything to work out smooth in your life.
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It's not. That is not what we're talking about. Godly wisdom is doing the right thing and obediently following God, putting your knowledge into action, but not always an easy road.
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Thirdly, I want to say that the application here is really around how to get it.
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How do we get wisdom? And I mentioned this earlier that we have to ask God for wisdom and that knowledge of God is the beginning of wisdom.
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So we need to pursue knowing God. That's what we need to do to pursue wisdom. And knowing more about God comes from His Word.
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You just can't get it any other way. You've got to dig into God's Word. And I will just highlight the fact that we have incredible access to God's Word today.
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What a blessing. Technology, you can listen to the Bible anytime on your devices.
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You can read it anytime. Dig into God's Word. His Word is the source of truth and it's the source of wisdom, and knowing
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God is what we need to do. So that's my third application and challenge this morning to you.
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And as we move to communion this morning and we prepare to take communion, I would just like to pause and reflect on the wisdom and knowledge of God for just a moment.
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We already talked about how all wisdom comes from God, and before the world began, God knew that humanity would fail, that you and I would sin, that we would rebel and go against God.
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Yet God in His wisdom still created us. He still created the world. Why did
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God do that? He knew this was going to be a train wreck. He knew we were going to go the wrong way.
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Isn't that crazy? God who is all -wise and all -knowing still chose to create the world, to create you and me, knowing that we would sin and knowing that He would have to go to the cross to pay for that sin.
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Isn't that crazy? Why would God choose that? But He did because He's wiser than we are.
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He knows more, and He has chosen in this mess of sinfulness and conflict and war and famine and all the things we struggle with here to demonstrate
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His love toward us through Jesus Christ by dying for us and paying for our sins.
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I'm just sometimes amazed at how God worked things out through human history, but that is the amazing
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God that we love and serve. He died for us, and that's why we come to communion, to remember
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His death on the cross, His burial and His resurrection. So this morning, if you are a believer, if you've put your faith and trust in God, in that God who in His wisdom made you, loved you, and died for you, then
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I just encourage you to take communion here in a few minutes. As we always do each week, we're going to get up during the next song and we're going to take communion.
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It's the cracker and the juice. There's tables set up all around the room. And during the song, if you're new here,
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I just encourage you, if you're a believer, just join us in taking communion. This is our opportunity each week to remember the incredible sacrifice that God made for us, sacrificing
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His physical body on the cross and spilling His blood so we could be redeemed, so we could be saved, we could be put back into relationship and fellowship with God.
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And if you're not a believer and you're still wondering, I just encourage you to take this song in and ponder and consider what
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Christ has done for you this morning. So I'm going to pray now as we come to communion.
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Heavenly Father, I do thank you for your wisdom. I thank you that you are a good God. I don't know why you're so good.
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I don't know why you're so loving. But you are. You are everything, God. You are holy and righteous and perfect,
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Lord, in all of your ways. And Lord, I thank you for creating us this morning. I thank you for making us, and I thank you for redeeming us and saving us from our sin.
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Lord, I know my own heart, as I've preached on this topic of godly wisdom and worldly wisdom, I've convicted myself, my own motives often seem to slip into jealousy and ambition and wanting to lift myself up.
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God, I'm a sinner, and I struggle daily with all sorts of things.
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And we are all sinners, God. We're all made of the same flesh, fallen and broken and in need of redemption.
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And I thank you, God, that you did redeem us through Jesus Christ. Thank you that we can celebrate that, that we can rejoice in that fact, that you poured out your love for us through Jesus Christ.
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Thank you for what you did, and I pray, Father, as we take the communion this morning, that you would just, in a new way, in a fresh way, remind us of your incredible love and forgiveness for us, undeserved.
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Thank you, God. We pray this in the powerful name of Jesus, our