Tomatoes in a Fruit Salad

Sovereign Grace Family Church

3 views

October 25, 2018

00:01: Alright guys, open up your Bibles to James with me.
00:12: I know I see some new faces and I'm glad to see new faces and I'm also glad to see you guys who are continually here with us.
00:23: And what we're doing in this time on Thursday morning each week is we're going verse by verse study of the book of James.
00:31: So far we have looked at verses 1-4 and today we're going to look at verses 5-8.
00:39: But since we are so close to the beginning, I'm just going to start in verse 1, remind us of the context of what we already learned, and read down to verse 8.
00:53: Verse 1 says, James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes in the dispersion, greetings.
01:04: Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds.
01:10: For you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.
01:15: And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
01:24: Verse 5, if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generally to all without reproach, and it will be given him.
01:39: But let him ask in faith with no doubting.
01:41: For the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind.
01:46: For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord.
01:51: He is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.
01:56: Let's pray.
01:57: Father, I thank you for this time to study together with these men.
02:00: I thank you for giving me this opportunity to be among them and to get to know them and to share Christ and to enjoy fellowship together.
02:10: I thank you, Lord, for this place that seeks to raise up disciples of Jesus Christ, and I thank you for my opportunity to be a part of that.
02:20: Lord, I pray for every man here that their ears will be open to the truth, that their eyes will be open to what your word says, and I pray that you will keep me from error for the sake of your name, for the sake of my conscience, and for the sake of these men who are valuable.
02:35: They're made in the image of God, and they're worth receiving the truth and not error.
02:41: So I pray, Father, that you would keep me from error, keep me only in the truth.
02:46: And Lord God, as we open the word together and we look at the subject of wisdom and of faith and of double-mindedness, God, that you would just write upon the table of our hearts the eternal truths that are found in this text.
03:03: In Jesus' name, amen.
03:09: Yes, sir? I'm in the English Standard Version, ESV.
03:16: A few years ago, we, as a church, we bought Bibles for the pews, and we had to decide which one we were going to choose.
03:26: Now, if I had it to do over again, I would have probably chosen the New American Standard Bible.
03:33: Yeah, I knew I'd get an amen out of that.
03:36: NASB is a great Bible.
03:38: ESV is also good.
03:43: But some folks are King James folks or New King James.
03:46: So really, any one we would have chosen, somebody would have come in and said, well, we should have chosen elsewhere.
03:52: But because we chose the ESV, that's what I choose to read out of.
03:56: And also, I bring my Greek with me so that I can always reference it if I need to.
04:00: I have a Greek text that I use as well that's helpful when I'm teaching.
04:08: So, today we're going to look at verse 5, but I want to remind you of what we talked about last week.
04:13: Last week, we discussed the fact that James here tells us that we ought to count our trials as joy.
04:21: He says, count it all joy, brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds.
04:28: And I got to thinking about some things that I didn't say last week that I sort of wanted to bring into this week.
04:36: Because one of the things that we have to learn when we're looking at the text of Scripture, when it comes to the mind of God and when it comes to the understanding of our life, there is no such thing as luck.
04:52: You ever heard somebody say, well, that guy's a lucky man or that person's unlucky or it has just no luck at all? We do not live in a world that's governed by some kind of mystical force called luck.
05:11: And when we start thinking of life like that, we get away from understanding that God is governing the world and we start to think that chance is governing the world.
05:20: Like all these people who are playing the billion dollar lottery, right? They're all hoping that the chance that they're going to be the winner and they're going to have all this money and all of these things.
05:33: Someone told me that the word luck was derived from something.
05:38: I've not heard that, so it sounds plausible.
05:42: Explain to me in a way that it sounded pretty convincing, but I didn't research it.
05:46: It was broken down pretty, how the devil likes to twist things, and the word Lucifer, and then luck, and it's a lie.
05:55: Well, I looked that up.
05:57: I had not heard that, but I know this.
05:59: The Bible says in Proverbs 16, the lot is cast into the lap, but it's every decision is from the Lord.
06:06: So we don't live in a world governed by luck.
06:08: We live in a world governed by the Lord.
06:11: And so when we fall into various trials, it's not just that we had an unlucky day.
06:17: It's not just that we had a day that was not in our favor.
06:20: May the odds be forever in your favor.
06:22: It's not that we just didn't have a bad day, but God is using that day or even that period in our life, whatever difficulty it may be, to sanctify us, to draw us to Himself, to cause us to lean on Him.
06:36: I'll give you an example.
06:37: When I was two years in the ministry as a full-time pastor, this is my twelfth year, but when I was two years in, I had a man try to have me fired because he was not happy with my particular theological persuasion.
06:56: I am a Reformed theologian, Reformed pastor, and he did not like that.
07:02: And because he did not like that, he went through the process of starting to gather a coalition of people within the church to try to find a way to oust me.
07:12: Sounds familiar.
07:13: Yeah, I mean, have I told this before? I don't know.
07:18: I haven't told it here, right? This sounds familiar.
07:22: Yeah, you've heard it before.
07:23: Okay, not from me, but from other guys.
07:25: Yeah, it's funny.
07:26: No, I mean like it's what they did to Jesus.
07:27: Oh, yeah, okay.
07:28: Yeah, well, what he did, he started having private meetings in his home.
07:33: They weren't too fond of Luther.
07:35: Well, that's true, yeah.
07:37: He started having private meetings in his home, and he started trying to get people to create this, sort of like I said, a coalition to try to oust me.
07:45: And at one point I had to go to one of the elders, the only man that I trusted at that point, because I knew something was happening, and I said, tell me what's going on.
07:54: And he took me into his office, and we talked, and we went over what was happening.
08:00: And this whole time I'm thinking, my goodness, why am I going through this? This is awful.
08:07: I mean, I don't know if you've ever had anybody try to get you fired.
08:09: But when you're a pastor, that's a fairly big deal.
08:12: I mean, because they're calling your character into question.
08:14: They're calling your theology into question.
08:17: They're calling your faithfulness to God into question.
08:20: And on top of all that, they're messing with your family and your livelihood, because this is what you do to provide for yourself and for your family.
08:29: You're a preacher of the Word of God, and this is how God is providing for your family.
08:33: And so you have all these things coming to your mind.
08:35: And I've got to tell you, it was a trial.
08:37: It really was.
08:38: Now, it's not the same level as some other men.
08:40: You mentioned Luther, and of course Christ.
08:41: But it still, for me, it was heartbreaking to know that there were people who were literally having meetings in their home because they hated me so much they wanted to see me outed.
08:55: By God's grace, and I don't want to spend too much time on the story, but by God's grace, I stayed and the other guy left.
09:05: He ended up getting angry, leaving, and we lost maybe one or two families.
09:10: But it didn't divide the church.
09:12: It didn't split the church.
09:13: Praise God.
09:14: And from that, the question of what is Reformed theology and what does that mean and how do we explain it, became a big deal.
09:22: And within two years of that event, God brought revival into our church.
09:27: And we went from being, prior to me coming, quite liberal and quite wishy-washy on theology to very solid and very firm in what we were and who we were.
09:37: We even changed our name.
09:38: We changed our constitution and our statement of faith to affirm these principles.
09:43: But it wouldn't have happened if that terrible time in my life in 2008, if all those private discussions, if that guy hadn't tried to lead that evil, good would not have come out of that.
09:58: Yeah, so God is causing it to work together.
10:01: And even though at the time I would have said this is awful, now I can look back at it and I can say God was using that very difficult time to bring sanctification to me because it caused me to have to pray, caused me to have to seek counsel from ministers who'd been through it before.
10:18: It caused me to have to literally stand before the church and stand my ground.
10:23: Because I stood before the whole church and I said, look, this is what the Bible says and this is what I'm going to preach.
10:28: As long as I stay, this is what I will preach.
10:31: And if you keep me, this is what is going to happen.
10:34: If you don't want that, then fire me.
10:37: I said almost exactly those words.
10:39: I haven't written down exactly what I said, but essentially I said you have a choice.
10:43: You keep me and we go the way of the Scriptures.
10:45: You don't want to go the way of the Scriptures, fire me.
10:48: But there will be no middle ground.
10:49: There will be no place where we find a balance.
10:52: We will go with the Scriptures or I will go somewhere else.
10:56: And thank God for that because that was what God used.
10:59: A very difficult time, a hurtful time to bring revival.
11:04: And so it reminds me that trials have a purpose.
11:07: They sanctify us.
11:08: They cause us to draw closer to Christ and to His purpose for us.
11:15: Now we get to verse 5 because that's what all of verses 2 and 3 and 4.
11:18: Now we get to verse 5 and James asks a question.
11:22: He says, if any of you lacks wisdom.
11:27: Well, right there, just stop.
11:30: This passage by itself could be taken out and just used by itself.
11:37: If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God.
11:40: Right? But it's not without a context.
11:45: The most dangerous thing that we do is that we try to take verses out of context and just look at the one verse.
11:57: What is the context of James 1.5? Well, James 1.2-4.
12:04: And what is the context of James 1.2-4? Experiencing trials.
12:10: Going through trials.
12:11: Finding joy in trials.
12:12: And guess what the most difficult thing in the world to do is? Finding joy in trials.
12:18: So if any of you lacks the wisdom for that, let him ask God.
12:24: That's the point of this text.
12:26: It's not just wisdom in general, but this particular admonition is if any of you lacks the wisdom to find joy in your trials, he needs to ask God.
12:38: Now can you apply it greater than that? Yes, you can apply it to any area where you lack wisdom.
12:43: But the immediate context is the issue of finding joy in trials.
12:48: If you lack that wisdom, then you need to ask God.
12:53: You need to go to God for that.
12:56: Now, you guys, I understand, read Proverbs every day? Every morning.
13:01: Every morning you read Proverbs? Very early, I understand? 6.30, that's early, early.
13:08: 29.15.
13:09: Ah, okay.
13:10: Proverbs 29.15.
13:11: Oh, I thought you were doing like military time.
13:15: I didn't know, okay.
13:17: But what were you saying, 29.15 says? Proverbs 29.15.
13:20: Well, I want to ask you this, and I know you probably know the answer, especially you guys who have been studying Proverbs for a while, but I'm asking it anyway because the three things we're going to look at today from this text is wisdom, faith, and double-mindedness.
13:35: That's the three points that I'm sort of breaking this text down.
13:38: Wisdom is verse 5, and then he talks about faith in verse 6, and then he talks about double-mindedness in verse 8.
13:44: So that's the three parts we're going to look at.
13:46: So let's look first at the word wisdom.
13:48: Well, that one doesn't work.
13:54: All right, so we talk about the word wisdom.
13:58: What does wisdom mean? What does wisdom mean? Insight, okay.
14:06: Yes, sir? Ability to apply knowledge.
14:10: That's good.
14:10: That's really close to what I have written down.
14:12: Anybody else have anything? Yes, sir? Okay, knowing something about a particular matter.
14:18: Does anybody else have a thought? Yes, sir? Knowledge put to work.
14:22: I like that.
14:23: Yes, sir? In-depth knowledge.
14:26: One of the words I'm going to use is understanding, so I like that.
14:29: That's close.
14:30: Yes? Timing.
14:33: Yeah, not only knowing what to do, but when to do it.
14:35: That's good.
14:36: Okay.
14:37: Anybody else have an idea? Discernment.
14:41: Okay, that's a type of wisdom for sure.
14:43: In James 3, it talks about wisdom.
14:48: Yes, absolutely.
14:48: One of the wisdoms for godly wisdom, you know what I mean? It's a different kind.
14:52: And it says, you know, beginning of wisdom, fear of the Lord.
14:56: Yep, yep, and that's here on my sheet, too.
14:58: Here's what I, the way that I've described it, and I think it's very close to what all of you guys have said.
15:05: Knowledge is the accumulation of information.
15:08: Knowledge is the accumulation of information.
15:11: Wisdom is the application of information.
15:15: Knowledge is accumulation.
15:16: Wisdom is application.
15:19: All right? So let me put it to you in maybe a little simpler terms.
15:23: Knowledge is learned, but wisdom is earned.
15:28: Yeah, because we learn to apply wisdom, or we learn to apply our knowledge through experience.
15:35: Yes, sir? It'd be a lot easier to say, hey, the stove's hot.
15:39: Don't put your hand in it.
15:40: Yeah.
15:41: And that's knowledge, but we touch it, and then we're wise now.
15:47: Yeah.
15:50: Yeah, and that's why I talk about earning wisdom.
15:52: In the book of Job, chapter 12, and verse 12, it says this.
15:57: Wisdom is with the aged, and understanding, which I said was similar to what you were saying, understanding is in the length of days.
16:06: You know, the Bible always talks about the gray-haired person as having glory.
16:13: I'm getting a little bit of gray hair.
16:15: I see some of you guys have gray hair.
16:16: As our hair begins to gray, it's a sign of our aging.
16:22: And normally, with age, there comes wisdom, experience.
16:26: We've done life, and so we know a little bit more about life.
16:30: And so, in that sense, there's a wisdom that comes with getting older.
16:34: However, as he already said, the Bible says the beginning of wisdom is what? The fear of the Lord.
16:44: The fear of the Lord.
16:45: Is it possible for somebody to be really smart and really intelligent, but not very wise? Yes.
16:55: Yes.
16:57: Absolutely.
16:58: Stephen Hawking.
16:59: Stephen Hawking is a great example.
17:01: Well, let's just talk about Hawking for a minute.
17:08: Hawking is now dead, which means that he knows more than he ever did, knowledge-wise.
17:19: And it is an unfortunate knowledge, because if Luke 16 tells us anything, Luke 16 says that the wicked man closed his eyes here, and he opened his eyes in hell.
17:30: You know the difference? And that's an interesting juxtaposition, because in Luke 16, it talks about the rich man and the poor man.
17:39: The poor man who wanted to eat from the rich man's table, and the rich man wouldn't give him anything, and they both died.
17:44: And it says when the poor man, the man of faith, is who he represents, when he died, he was carried by the angels to Abraham's side.
17:52: So literally, at death, there was an angelic escort that took him from his deathbed to the side of Abraham.
18:03: But the rich man, the wicked man, is represented in the story.
18:07: He closes his eyes here and opens them in hell.
18:10: No angelic escort.
18:12: How many of you saw the movie Ghost? Now, I know I'm maybe dating myself a little.
18:17: Thirty years ago, the movie Ghost, when the person who was wicked would die, all the shadows would become demons and would come and take him down into hell.
18:28: That was the symbol, was all the shadows would become demons.
18:30: Here's the thing, that's wrong.
18:33: If you die as an unbeliever, shadows don't become demons and drag you into hell.
18:37: You close your eyes here, you open your eyes in hell.
18:40: There's no ride.
18:43: There's no boat that you get on that you have to have coins.
18:46: You know in the ancient world, they would put coins over the eyes of the dead because they believed that they had to have those coins to pay their way into the next life.
18:52: There is no payment that can be made.
18:54: Once you're dead, you die in this world, you open your eyes, and it's torment.
18:58: What about indulgences? Stop it.
19:03: Now, now, now.
19:04: The payment was already made on the cross.
19:07: Exactly, exactly.
19:08: Yeah, indulgences are...
19:10: You really want to get me talking about the Reformation.
19:12: Don't do that.
19:13: It's got to be in there, Johnny.
19:16: Take your family from the Father.
19:17: So we think about Stephen Hawking.
19:20: Unfortunately, we know he died not only not confessing Christ, but he died repudiating the knowledge of God that God had put in his heart from birth.
19:30: He knew God existed.
19:31: He died rejecting that knowledge.
19:32: So there's no reason to have any belief other than the fact that he closed his eyes here and opened his eyes in torment.
19:38: Unfortunately, because he was, by all intents and purposes, he was the world standard for knowledge.
19:46: Even though his whole body didn't work, his mind was a functional powerhouse of understanding, of science.
19:56: And yet he was without wisdom.
20:00: Richard Dawkins, evolutionary biologist, famed atheist.
20:06: He's the one who has made his whole reputation out of making fun of Christians.
20:13: And he goes and he says that we ought to be ridiculed and mocked.
20:19: And he's written books, The Blind Watchmaker and all kinds of things which are intended to attack Christianity and any belief in God.
20:27: Richard Dawkins was asked how he believed mankind came onto this planet.
20:32: This is actually in the movie Expelled.
20:35: Have you all seen the movie Expelled? Good movie.
20:38: I might talk to Brother Mark.
20:39: Maybe we'll have a showing at our church.
20:40: Have you guys come watch it.
20:42: It's cool.
20:43: It's about how scientists have pushed out believers from their community in schools and other places of higher learning because they don't want the creative design movement or intelligent design movement to be part of the scholastic conversation.
21:01: They don't want anybody who has any idea that there was a creator God.
21:05: So they have pushed them out.
21:06: That's why it's called Expelled.
21:07: They've been expelled.
21:08: Well, at the end of that movie they interview Dawkins.
21:10: And they ask Dawkins, if you don't believe God created man, where do you believe man came from? Well, he evolved.
21:18: Evolved doesn't talk about origin.
21:21: Evolved means change.
21:22: So you've got to have something to start with before it can change.
21:24: So evolved doesn't talk about origin.
21:26: If anybody says, well, the origin of life is evolution, it can't be.
21:29: You've got to have something to change before you can have evolution.
21:32: So evolution has to follow some kind of creative act.
21:35: Something has to happen before evolution can happen.
21:38: So he said, well, it's possible that aliens seeded this planet and from the seeds of the aliens sprouted all of life here on earth, including man.
21:54: But I believe the aliens came about themselves by evolution and Darwinianism.
22:06: And it's like, bro.
22:08: I mean, because you not only said that you believe in aliens possibly.
22:13: You don't believe in God because, oh, that's far fetched.
22:15: But I believe in little green men and Martians and all this crap.
22:18: But you believe in that.
22:23: But you don't believe in God.
22:24: Yes.
22:25: And then even then, what created the aliens? And he said, oh, but Darwinism created that.
22:29: It's just taking a step back.
22:31: It's just kicking the can down the road.
22:33: It's only one step removed.
22:35: Circular reasoning, I think.
22:36: Absolutely.
22:37: And so at the end of the day, you've got somebody as smart as Dawkins.
22:41: And I would say he's smart in the sense of he's a scientist.
22:45: He's got multiple PhDs.
22:47: He's written several books.
22:48: He can chain sentences together in a cogent way.
22:52: And he makes himself sound very erudite.
22:54: And he's got a British accent, which automatically adds 10 IQ points.
22:59: Because them British people sound really bright, you know.
23:04: But I was going to say, you've got a great accent, too.
23:08: But that's a man who is full of knowledge.
23:18: He's full of intellect.
23:21: No wisdom.
23:22: His wisdom is absent.
23:27: Because he does not have any fear of the Lord.
23:32: I would say this.
23:34: It is impossible to have any wisdom from above if we don't fear God.
23:39: Because that is the beginning of wisdom.
23:41: There's an earthly wisdom, as you already described.
23:43: And I would say that goes along with the intellect.
23:46: It's as far as the intellect will go.
23:50: And sometimes we meet people and they're unbelievers.
23:52: And we say, man, that guy is insightful.
23:54: Or he's smart.
23:55: Or he's intelligent.
23:56: But he's not pointing us to God.
23:59: And thus he's not wise.
24:01: How many of you guys know who Jordan Peterson is? Now, I will say this.
24:06: I'm actually halfway through his book because I wanted to read what he had to say.
24:11: Jordan Peterson is not a confessing Christian, even though he would say he's a form of Christian.
24:16: I don't think he's a Christian at all.
24:17: He denies the deity of Christ.
24:18: He denies salvation by grace through faith.
24:20: He denies the Scriptures.
24:22: He denies everything that I say you've got to believe to be a Christian.
24:24: So I'm not going to say he's a Christian.
24:27: But I wanted to hear what he had to say because he's got a lot of influence, especially in young people today.
24:33: So I read in his book just to see what he has to say.
24:35: But I've got to tell you, it's very insightful on certain things.
24:38: A lot of knowledge.
24:40: A lot of intelligence.
24:42: But not very much wisdom.
24:43: Because every time he talks about the Bible, he gives analogies and allegories.
24:48: He doesn't believe in Adam and Eve.
24:49: He doesn't believe in Noah and the flood.
24:51: He doesn't believe in Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as real people who really established the nation of Israel.
24:56: He doesn't believe in God parting the Red Sea or doing any of the things that the Bible says.
25:00: He doesn't believe in any of those things.
25:02: So when I listen to him, I say, okay, he's got knowledge and he's got intelligence.
25:06: But he lacks wisdom.
25:10: Because he doesn't fear the Lord.
25:13: Yes? What did you say was fear of the Lord? Worldly wisdom, we talked about this in James 3.
25:21: There's a difference between worldly wisdom.
25:22: I said worldly wisdom is much like intelligence and insight.
25:31: There's a good quote.
25:33: In fact, I wrote this down.
25:34: I thought it was funny.
25:35: It was a journalist named Miles Kingston.
25:42: He said, knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit.
25:48: And wisdom is not putting a tomato in a fruit salad.
25:54: And I thought that was funny.
25:56: And from the world's perspective, that is how they understand the difference between knowledge and wisdom, right? It's knowledge is applied.
26:03: But it's more than that.
26:04: Wisdom is beginning everything with God.
26:13: The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord.
26:16: Or backwards, it's the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
26:21: And James is saying that.
26:24: James is saying, okay, you're going through trials.
26:27: You're going through tribulations.
26:29: I'm telling you to count that joy.
26:31: That's difficult to do.
26:32: So what do you do when you're having difficulty counting your trials as joy? You go to God and say, God, I need the wisdom.
26:40: I need the understanding.
26:42: I need the insight from You.
26:44: Because the whole world around me isn't going to give it to me.
26:47: I've got to have something from You that's going to get me through this.
26:50: I've got to have something from You that's going to help me get through this trial.
26:54: Do you know what the world says when we go through trials? Huh? The world usually says something like, it's probably, they'll either say it's your fault, you're going through that because you did X, Y, or Z.
27:13: Exactly.
27:17: Exactly.
27:18: Was it he or his parents who sinned that he was born blind? So it's always the world is either going to blame you, or they're going to blame something that happened to you.
27:28: Right? If you hadn't had that father who was really abusive, you wouldn't be this way.
27:32: Or if you didn't have that mother who didn't hug you enough, you wouldn't be this way.
27:36: So it's either you or it's going to be something that happened to you.
27:39: There's always going to be a blame that's cast on something.
27:41: And the world's going to try to find an answer.
27:44: And it's never going to be from the world, you need to appreciate your trials because they force you to be like Christ.
27:52: The world's never going to tell you that.
27:54: The world's going to tell you, do whatever you can to get out of your trials.
27:56: If it means drinking, drink.
27:57: If it means taking drugs, take drugs.
27:59: If it means going and having illicit sex, go have illicit sex.
28:01: Do whatever you've got to do to get through this, because that's what the world's going to give you as an answer to your trials.
28:06: Do whatever you can to avoid trials.
28:08: Yes.
28:12: Yeah.
28:14: Yeah.
28:15: Our trials...
28:16: The world's not going to tell us that.
28:18: The world's not going to tell you to count your trials as joy.
28:23: In fact, quite the opposite.
28:27: So wisdom begins, and this, with understanding, or rather the point of the text here, is we're to count it all joy.
28:36: How do we do that? We ask God for wisdom.
28:38: We ask God to open up our eyes and see what it is He wants us to learn from this.
28:45: And I like the point that He says, ask.
28:47: Look at it with me.
28:48: Here.
28:49: It says, if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, and it will be given to him.
28:58: Let him ask God.
29:01: That's right.
29:02: Who said that? Yeah.
29:04: Yes, sir.
29:04: I got a question.
29:05: Okay.
29:06: I ain't trying to get ahead of you, but...
29:07: No, you're fine.
29:08: Sir, he said, he should ask God who gives generously to all without finding fault.
29:13: Yeah.
29:13: What does that mean, without finding fault? Well, let me...
29:16: It says here, I just want to read from another translation, okay? Because you're in verse...
29:23: Five.
29:23: Verse five.
29:26: Let him ask in faith without doubting for one who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind.
29:30: I'm...
29:31: Without reproach.
29:32: Without reproach.
29:33: Oh, without reproach.
29:34: Okay.
29:35: ESV, okay.
29:35: Who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.
29:39: God does not find fault or cause reproaches on us when we ask him for things.
29:45: That's the point.
29:45: When we ask God for anything, He doesn't get angry about it.
29:50: You know what I'm saying? Do you have any children? Yeah.
29:53: Okay.
29:54: Do they ask you for things? No.
29:56: Okay.
29:57: All right.
29:57: Well, I don't want to get...
29:58: I don't want to get in your business because, I mean, we're all in a different situation.
30:02: As a father, I have five children.
30:06: And the reason why we have five children is because we do not want six.
30:10: That's Bill Cosby.
30:12: I guess I shouldn't quote him anymore.
30:19: You could quote Bill Cosby with no problem.
30:22: Not anymore.
30:26: No.
30:27: Five kids.
30:28: Your kids come and ask you for things, and sometimes it gets worrisome.
30:33: Especially if they're asking for things that are either what you can't do or what they don't need.
30:40: It can get worrisome.
30:41: And sometimes it can cause you to be upset.
30:43: And you get frustrated because you're an earthly father and you don't have the mind of God.
30:49: God says, come and ask.
30:50: Come and ask.
30:52: And I'm not going to reproach that.
30:55: I'm not going to be angry with that.
30:56: I'm not going to be upset when you ask.
30:57: Especially when you're asking for what's right.
31:00: What does the Bible say about what we ask? It says, ask and you receive, or ask and you receive not because you ask for the wrong thing.
31:06: You ask amiss, right? You ask for the wrong thing, right? So either we're going to ask God for what's good and He's going to give it to us, or we're going to ask God for what's not good and He's not going to give it to us, right? And so we don't always get what we ask for because we don't always ask for the right thing.
31:17: But we know when we ask for wisdom, we're asking for the right thing.
31:22: But here's the problem.
31:23: We have a problem in our modern world with asking for anything.
31:26: We demand things.
31:29: Especially when it comes from God.
31:31: We tend to go to God in a very cavalier way, and we go to God with a demanding spirit.
31:39: Yeah.
31:40: You know, I heard a preacher one time, and if I could have reached through the television, I would have, well, I may have laid a holy hand upon him because it was so angry to me what he said.
31:54: He said, God takes note when I lay a command upon His will.
32:01: A demand, I'm sorry, demand.
32:03: He said, God sits up and takes note when I lay a demand upon His will.
32:10: Any one of these health and wealth goobers on television? I actually, I taught a series of lessons a few years ago on worship, and I brought in videos of bad teaching just to show while I was teaching the lesson, and I brought in these videos, and he was one of them.
32:28: And the people heard what he said, and they said, I can't believe anyone would say that, that God has to sit up and take note when He puts a demand on His will.
32:36: What kind of foolishness is that? We don't go to God with demands.
32:44: Yeah, come arrogantly.
32:46: Yes.
32:47: Boldness is not arrogance.
32:48: That's right.
32:49: Yes, sir.
32:49: When you said stop demanding that, we were under the mighty hand of the Lord.
32:58: Absolutely.
32:59: Absolutely.
33:00: And I think about the story of the woman who came to the king and kept coming all the time, begging for what? Justice.
33:12: What she wanted was good and righteous and needful.
33:17: And she comes to Him every day asking for justice.
33:20: And the Bible says it wearied the king because he wasn't a good king, right? But he still did it because he was wearied by her requests.
33:28: And what does Jesus say? God's not like that king.
33:31: God is better.
33:34: God listens when we ask.
33:36: He listens when we go to Him when we're asking something that He wants us to have.
33:40: And what God wants us to have is wisdom.
33:43: The problem is we don't want wisdom.
33:46: We want answers.
33:49: You say, well, what's the difference? I want the answer that satisfies me.
33:58: I want an answer that satisfies what I want.
34:01: If I ask God why I'm going through this trial and give me the wisdom to go through this trial, that's different than saying, God, take me out of the trial.
34:11: But that's normally what we say.
34:14: Normally what we say to God is, God, don't let me go through this.
34:17: God, I don't want this.
34:19: God, change this.
34:20: Rather than saying, God, show me what You're doing in this.
34:26: See the difference? Yes.
34:37: Yeah, and that's what people don't do.
34:40: People want to get out.
34:41: You guys remember the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, right? They're thrown into the furnace and the Lord is there with them.
34:50: The fourth person, right? I looked in and I saw three.
34:52: I saw four standing there.
34:54: One was like the Son of God.
34:59: We go through trials.
35:01: We don't want to get anywhere near the furnace.
35:05: One, we don't think God's going to be there with us.
35:07: That's the problem.
35:09: But we don't even want to take the chance.
35:14: When they got in the furnace, they weren't alone.
35:16: They came out.
35:17: They didn't even smell like smoke.
35:20: Why? Because the Lord was with them.
35:23: You're in a trial.
35:24: Every one of you is going through something.
35:25: I'm going through something right now.
35:29: Probably not the same thing you are.
35:31: Probably much different than what you are.
35:33: But every one of us is going through something.
35:35: And we have to decide every day.
35:36: Are we going to be able to count this joy today? How do we do that? We ask God for the wisdom to count it as joy.
35:48: That's this first part.
35:54: Yes, absolutely.
35:55: Then he says in verse 6, but let him ask.
36:01: This is the second time he used the word ask.
36:03: He says, ask for wisdom, but let him ask in faith.
36:10: With no doubt.
36:13: I've got to tell you something, guys.
36:14: I have difficulty with that.
36:17: I'm not going to lie to you.
36:18: I'm not going to stand here and try to be like a pious gas bag and say I never deal with doubt.
36:23: Because if I said that, one, I'd be lying.
36:25: And two, I would be hurting you because if you do deal with doubt and you think I don't, you might think I'm better than you.
36:33: And I can tell you this.
36:34: I come here every week and I am no better than any of the rest of you.
36:38: I sin and fight battles with sin.
36:42: I struggle and fight battles with the flesh.
36:45: Yes, sir.
36:45: I'm sorry.
36:49: Yeah, and that's what I'm going to get to.
36:51: Absolutely.
36:51: Because that's what he says.
36:53: Without doubting.
36:54: Did you have a question or were you just saying amen? Absolutely.
37:04: Yeah, the smallest.
37:05: If you had even a small amount of faith, you could do amazing things, right? So when James is saying here have faith and not doubt, that can cause us to think oh my gosh, I could never live up to this.
37:17: Because I can never live up to this command that he's giving me.
37:21: Now brother, did you have something before I go further? Keep our minds right.
37:32: It does and it decreases our doubt.
37:40: It's funny you say that because that's what my wife does to me sometimes.
37:43: My wife is really good at reminding me of the times God has been faithful.
37:48: Because she'll say, she'll say Keith, you're going through this right now, but don't you remember when God did this for you? Don't you remember when God did that? Don't you remember that time that that person was trying to come against you and God intervened? Why do you not think He's going to do it now? Why do you not think God has a plan for what you're going through now? When He had a plan for what you went through when you were 6, when He had a plan for what you went through when you were 18, when He had a plan for what you went through when you were 25, and you've been through these trials and things, why do you not believe He has a plan for you now? So yes, absolutely.
38:18: But I do want to point out in this particular text when He says ask in faith with no doubting, I do believe the word doubt here has a very specific meaning.
38:31: Because if we just simply say we never doubt, one, I think we would be lying, but also I don't think it's necessarily the focus of this text.
38:43: And the thing is there's a difference between having a sincere struggle and having a questioning hard heart.
38:53: And I think that's the difference here.
38:55: Because honestly, I want to remind you guys I think somebody already mentioned it.
38:58: Do you remember when the man brought his son to Jesus who was sick and Jesus said if you believe He can be healed? And what did the man say? I believe.
39:06: Help my unbelief.
39:11: Well actually, this was not a centurion, but there's a similar situation.
39:15: This man, he brought the boy and he said, help my unbelief.
39:18: I do believe, and yet, help my unbelief.
39:24: And you say, well what? Is he is he crazy? That particular text is in Mark I've got it here, give me just a second.
39:37: Mark 9 24 and look and see if it is a centurion.
39:39: I don't think it was, but see if it was.
39:40: Mark 9 24 Yeah, he says, I command one to go and he goes.
39:48: I command another to come and he comes.
39:49: And so, if you'll command this sickness to go then it will go because you're a man of authority.
39:53: And Jesus said, I have not seen such great faith in all of Israel.
39:56: Because he understood the power of Christ.
39:59: Yes, sir.
40:12: Possibly, and I, and I do, I do think that that is a valid point that the difference between doubting whether he will versus doubting whether he can.
40:26: If we doubt whether he can then we're questioning his position as God.
40:29: If we doubt whether he will, that's questioning our understanding of what he wants to do in this.
40:34: Right, I have a friend, again, who lost a child and he talks about the fact that he didn't know God's will throughout it all but he prayed God's will be done because he didn't know what was going to happen.
40:45: He trusted God throughout it all.
40:47: And I don't think that was doubt.
40:49: One guy told me one time because I prayed for his daughter and I prayed that she would be made well.
40:55: And the guy came up to me afterwards and he chastised me.
40:59: And he said, don't ever pray for that girl to be well because God already told me she is already healed.
41:08: So she doesn't need you to pray for her to be well.
41:11: Well, unfortunately, she did not get healed.
41:14: Unfortunately, she died.
41:16: And I haven't seen that guy since then but I want to go up to him and I say, prophet of God, you who say God told you this, are you willing to submit yourself to the prophet's burden? Do you know what the prophet's burden is? If you say that which is not true, you'll be put to death.
41:35: If a man claimed to speak for God and what he said did not come true, he was put to death.
41:39: That was from the book of Deuteronomy.
41:41: Prophet of God, are you willing to take the prophet's burden? Probably not.
41:47: Yes, sir.
41:49: When we're talking about here's the amazing thing about like where Jesus was already taken.
41:57: Take the cup.
41:58: Nevertheless.
41:58: Not my will but yours be done.
42:01: Absolutely.
42:01: Nevertheless, not my will but yours be done.
42:03: And so when we come and we ask in faith and he says not doubting, that doesn't mean that we won't struggle with our faith sometimes.
42:13: Because any man who would say he never struggles with anything regarding his faith I think is not being genuinely honest about his faith.
42:21: That doesn't mean that every man struggles the same.
42:24: But the difference between the man who struggles as this man who said I believe, help my unbelief, that's a struggle, is the person who would say to God do such and though but I know you can't or I believe you won't.
42:38: And that's the double minded man.
42:39: He asks with no expectation.
42:42: He asks with no real belief that God is going to do anything or that God even can.
42:51: Yeah, I've asked you before you didn't do anything so I don't expect you to do anything now.
42:56: Again, questioning God.
43:00: Double mindedness.
43:02: Not trusting.
43:04: And I want to point to somebody and you might think I'm being a little unfair, but on the day Jesus was brought to the cross, Peter, Peter was warming himself by the fire.
43:18: And the woman said you were with the Nazarene and he said no I was not.
43:23: And then it happened two other times and before the rooster crowed he had denied him three times.
43:29: That is doubt.
43:37: Well, yes, John's situation I think is, well, I don't want to take too far of a right turn because the whole conversation of what John meant when he said ask him is he the one or is there another to come.
43:53: I do think there was a question in John's mind about what was happening because he's still in prison.
43:58: He hadn't been liberated from his prison and he knows that what's coming next is his death and he's asking is Jesus, are you the one or should we expect another.
44:06: He wants confirmation.
44:08: And so Jesus comes back and he says you tell John what you have seen and what you have heard.
44:13: Blind eyes are open and the lame walk and you go and tell him that.
44:17: And know this, that blessed is the one who is not ashamed of me.
44:21: And John is reconfirmed in his faith.
44:24: And in that moment of weakness in the prison he's reconfirmed.
44:27: I think any of us in that struggle where we know we're facing our mortal demise, we know we're facing the sword and death and we have a struggle, Jesus gives him confidence and says tell him all that you've seen and tell him blessed is he who is not ashamed of me.
44:44: I think that's just what John needed to hear to get him through those last few days.
44:48: But go ahead sir.
44:48: Would it be the doubting Thomas or the doubting Jesus? Yeah, it could be any of that.
44:54: You say doubting Thomas, you could say Peter when he denied Jesus three times.
44:58: These are people who were not confirmed.
45:00: They were wavering and that's the last one is double mindedness, right? Double mindedness.
45:05: Always going back and forth.
45:07: It's not a struggle with faith.
45:08: It's I have faith and then I don't have faith.
45:10: And I'm believing and I'm not believing and I'm always going back and forth.
45:14: And if we are thinking that we're going to be blessed of God with that type of faith, the answer is no.
45:20: It's a difference between a bobber and an anchor.
45:26: You know what a bobber is, right? The thing that you put on a fishing pole.
45:29: I think it's called a bobber.
45:31: A little red and white thing that you put on the fishing line and you put it in the water.
45:36: A float, a cork, yeah? You put that in the water and it ain't connected to a fishing line, what happens? No, it floats but it goes wherever the water goes.
45:48: Right? If that bobber, that little red and white ball, if it falls in the water and it's not connected to a line, it's going to go over here.
45:56: It's going to go over there.
45:56: It's going to go wherever the water takes it.
45:59: And that's how you can tell.
46:00: I've had people come and sit in my office and have counseling with me and they come week after week after week for counseling and one week they're on fire for Jesus.
46:08: The next week they don't even know if it's the Word of God and they're back and forth.
46:12: And you think they're there? They're such a wide variation because this week I saw on the Discovery Channel that maybe they unearthed some extra books of the Bible and I don't know if I believe anymore.
46:22: Oh, but this week I trust in Jesus and I've given Him my whole life and next week I heard that they found an extra chromosome in a man and now we think we came from aliens and blah, blah, blah.
46:33: It's always back and forth and it's like a bobber.
46:35: It's going to go wherever the wind causes it to go.
46:39: And that's what the text says.
46:40: He's like a wave of the sea that's driven and tossed by the wind.
46:45: In Ephesians 2 according to the course of the world it's a weather vane and it's basically whichever way the wind blows.
46:56: Absolutely.
46:57: You have no anchor, no identity, no root.
47:00: And you see those people because they're...
47:02: Whatever's trinity? Yeah, whatever's trinity.
47:05: And they go wherever the group is.
47:08: If they're with the Christians they can act like Christians and when they're with the non-Christians they can act like non-Christians.
47:13: When they're with the drunkards they can get drunk.
47:15: When they're with the sex fiends they can have sex, they can do whatever.
47:18: They're chameleons.
47:20: They are conformed to this world.
47:22: Yes, sir.
47:23: This person is saying in John 3 verse 8 that the wind blows where it pleases and you hear it sound but you do not know where it comes to and where it's going and so it is with everyone born of the Spirit.
47:40: Okay, that's a whole different context.
47:45: I'll give you a very quick...
47:47: Just because we're out of time, but I want to give...
47:48: Very quick.
47:50: Okay? That is talking about...
47:52: And I know this sounds funny, but that is talking about the sovereignty of God and salvation because Jesus is talking about people being born again.
47:59: And Nicodemus asked him, well, how can a person be born again? Does he go back up into his mother's womb and get born again like a crass rebirth? And Jesus said, no.
48:08: Unless a man is born of water and of the Spirit he shall not see the kingdom of God for the wind bloweth where it wills.
48:14: We know not from where it comes nor where it goes.
48:18: And so is it with the work of the Spirit.
48:20: Meaning, when the Spirit of God blows on the heart of a person, changes their heart, we can't cause that to happen.
48:29: Neither can we know when it will happen.
48:31: It's just like a wind that comes.
48:33: And that's why when I preach, I preach to everybody hoping that the Spirit of God will fall on them.
48:39: And I don't know when it's going to happen.
48:41: People always say, why don't you do a big invitation at the end of your service? Because I don't think God's limited to that time to blow His wind.
48:48: I think God can blow His wind when the person's driving home.
48:51: I think that God can blow the wind when the guy goes out of the church and he's sitting in his car and he's weeping over his sin.
48:57: And that's when God's wind blew on his heart.
48:59: That's the sovereignty of God.
49:01: God will blow that wind into the man's heart when He so chooses and He will give new birth which will result in faith.
49:08: So that's the answer to John 3 there in the wind blowing.
49:12: But getting back to this last thing, the last thing, the double-mindedness.
49:17: I said it's the difference between two things.
49:18: I think it's the difference between a bobber or a cork and an anchor.
49:24: You take one anchor and you can stop an entire battleship in its place as long as it's hooked to something solid.
49:36: So what is faith? It's attaching ourselves to that which is solid, which is Jesus Christ.
49:44: There's a song which talks about our anchor holds within the veil.
49:50: What that's talking about is in the Old Testament they had the temple and there was the veil that was up between the holy place and the most holy place, the Holy of Holies.
49:58: And only one time a year would the priest get to go into that place and offer the sacrifice of atonement inside the veil.
50:06: And that veil and that atonement, that's a picture of what Jesus did because when Jesus died on the cross, that veil was written half from top to bottom showing God had done it and the Holy of Holies was opened to the world and God opened up Himself and said, now Christ is the ark.
50:26: Now Christ is the atonement.
50:28: Christ is the answer.
50:29: And so how do we have wisdom? How do we have faith? As we attach the anchor of our life to the only thing that will hold firm forever and that is the Lord Jesus Christ.
50:40: Hebrews 6.19 Yeah, absolutely.
50:47: He is our anchor.
50:48: He is the one that we hold to and if we want to not be driven like the waves of the sea, we have to ask God to give us the wisdom to put our faith fully and completely without doubt in the work of Jesus Christ.
51:04: Let's pray.
51:05: Father, I thank You for Your Word.
51:07: I thank You for Your truth.
51:08: I pray that today that You will help us to all, myself included, Lord.
51:12: Myself above all.
51:14: Help us to truly have the anchor of our soul fastened firmly to the rock who is Jesus Christ.
51:23: And it's in His name we pray.
51:25: Amen.