Ask In Faith

Ascension Presbyterian Church Longwood

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Please remain standing and turn in your Bibles to the book of James and chapter 1.

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So we've read through James 1 a couple of times, I'm just going to read verses 1 through 11 today.

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I want to remind you that this is God's holy and infallible word,

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James chapter 1. James, a bondservant of God and of the

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Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad, greetings.

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My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience.

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But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.

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If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him.

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But let him ask in faith with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind.

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For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord. He is a double -minded man, unstable in all his ways.

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Let the lowly brother glory in his exaltation, but the rich in his humiliation, because as a flower of the field he will pass away.

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For no sooner has the sun risen with a burning heat than it withers the grass.

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Its flower falls, and its beautiful appearance perishes. So the rich man also will fade away in his pursuits.

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May the Lord be pleased with our consideration of his most holy word.

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Please pray with me. O Lord, we ask that you would, in the power of your

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Spirit, supply illumination and unction. We desire to see

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Christ exalted and glorified. We seek the transformation of your people into full maturity.

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O Lord, these things seem impossible with us, but with you they are not only possible, but promised, and we thank you for this.

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And we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Please be seated. Last week we started the body of the letter of James, and we emphasized the purposes of God in trials, so that we might be able to count it all joy, that the genuineness of our faith that is more precious than gold, that it would be sent through the refiner's fire, and be tested, and be found whole.

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And the chief marker of that maturation process is endurance. Over time, we become increasingly more and more able to bear up under trials.

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And as the heat is turned up, the dross is burned up, and only the true treasure, communion with God and faith and obedience in Christ, will remain.

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You'll remember from last week that James has a clear goal in view in this section, and I would argue that it's a central theme of the whole book, and it's found again in verse four, the last part.

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It says, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.

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The goal of James is to incite his readers on to full

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Christian maturity. The goal of the Holy Spirit in inspiring this work for the church is that that would happen in the hearts and lives of every believer and every age.

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You and I need to grow up into our faith, to the full measure, that full stature of Christ's likeness.

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Today we're going to consider verses five through eight, and it's important to observe the connection of verse five with the preceding section.

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I mentioned last week that the book of James is like the wisdom literature of the

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Old Testament, and one error that we could be prone to make is to take each verse individually and remove it from the context of the section, and view it in isolation.

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Verse five is not the beginning of an entirely new idea, but a further expounding and explanation of how the

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Christian grows up to maturity. In particular, it gives guidance for us when we face trials.

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What is needed when we face trials is the question that's being answered by James in our sections.

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First, like last week, it is a right understanding of God's purposes in those trials.

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Secondly, we need a patient endurance to persevere through them.

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A patient endurance to persevere through them. What was lost because of time a little last week,

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I could have spent a little bit more time on this, there's something that is only acquired through the passage of time.

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New converts are a joy to be around. They're zealous. They're excited about Christ and his gospel, and we love that.

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But there's also a danger. They can be grieved by trials.

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They're disillusioned about the faith. Old saints who have walked with the Lord for 50 or 60 or 70 years, they're not blown and tossed by the wind that way.

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There's something about the persevering over time that is beneficial to the saints.

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You and I need to cultivate and develop a patient endurance that we might persevere.

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And third, under this idea of what's needed when facing trials, we need to get a sense of the trial's usefulness in our own growth in Christian maturity, and we focused on that a good bit last week.

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But there is another element, and it's going to be the central point of us today.

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The fourth one, in response to what is needed when facing trials, is wisdom.

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We have to apply our knowledge of Christ and salvation and his word and communion with him in prayer and meditation and our life in the church to the trials and issues of life that we might walk in faith and obedience.

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So those of you who need an outline today, I have three things for you. First, what do you need in order to be perfect and complete?

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What do you need in order to be perfect and complete? That's the first point, the question.

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And the answer is wisdom. What do you need in order to be perfect and complete?

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Secondly, the question, how do you get wisdom? It's found there right in the text.

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How do you get wisdom? Then third, there is a stern warning against double -mindedness.

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A stern warning against double -mindedness.

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Let's look at our text again. You are undergoing trials.

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You are experiencing hardship in the Lord, and the purpose of those trials we learned last week are to test the strength of our faith and to expose both our strengths and weaknesses, to produce humility in us, to break our sinful attachment to worldliness, to call us to the hope of our heavenly citizenship, to reveal what we really love, to highly esteem communion with God, and to enjoy the blessings that come from obedience.

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We experience these trials that we might be able to minister to those who are going through similar things.

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And we go through trials to develop a strength that endures for greater usefulness as God's instruments in his kingdom.

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And finally on that list from last week to be witnesses to the world, the reality of our transformation and union with Christ.

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But it begs the question, what do you do when you're faced with a new trial?

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What do you do when you're faced with a new difficulty in life? And I think what we normally think about verse 5 is just a general principle.

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At some point years ago, reading James 5, I no doubt have prayed,

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Oh Lord, please grant me wisdom. All of you have probably done that as an application.

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That's a good application. But I think like our sins that need to be repented of specifically, we need to ask

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God specifically to give us wisdom for the trials in which we are facing.

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And so this isn't a blanket prayer once or twice offered in life. I prayed the prayer of asking

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God for wisdom in James 1 .5, therefore I'm done with it. We need to daily, weekly, regularly return to the

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Lord and ask for him to grant wisdom to us.

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It says in verse 5, if any of you lacks wisdom, and I think that's a polite way to say all of you need it, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach.

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So one of the questions we have to ask first of all is, what is wisdom?

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What is wisdom? What do you need to be perfect and complete?

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And the answer of the text is wisdom. Sophia or Sophia, probably a better pronunciation.

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Many of you know people who have been named Sophia. They are named after the Greek word for wisdom.

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Wisdom is both the knowledge and practice of the requisites required for godly and upright living in Christ likeness.

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It is the application of orthodox knowledge, but it must be put into practice.

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We are, and we have all of these executives in the information world in our church, we have an abundance of information.

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Don't we? I rejoice that I was telling brothers on the back porch,

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I can remember a verse in my mind, I don't remember where it is, I can type it into Google, and there it is.

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Chapter and verse. It's a wonderful tool. I can look up commentaries that I don't have on my bookshelf by typing in searches.

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It's a glorious thing. We have, in this time, in our age, more access to more knowledge than ever before.

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We'd have to say that. But there's a dearth of wisdom. There's a lack of wisdom.

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There's a lack of application. There's a lack of taking that knowledge and squeezing the life out of it that you might know all the ways that you should walk in his righteousness.

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This is the marriage of orthodoxy and orthopraxy, and I've said this a number of times, we don't have orthodoxy without orthopraxy.

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You can't really have right knowledge if you don't have the accompanying right practice.

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Wisdom is moral. Did you know that? Wisdom is moral.

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Because we hear the truth about who God is, and he tells us who we are, and we need to respond appropriately to the truth.

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God is holy, and he calls us to be holy. You and I, there's a moral obligation as the people of God to respond and to act because God has spoken.

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There is a contrast that should be brought up. We bring these issues up a lot because of the spirit of our age, but how different is worldly wisdom compared to biblical wisdom?

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What about in the area of sexuality? Abominations are normalized, promiscuous behavior is encouraged, and this is antithetical to God's design, which is covenantal and monogamous.

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What about children? Children are disposable on the one hand, and wards of the state on the other.

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Scripture says that children are a blessing from God. What about marriage?

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Marriage is something you do for your convenience, for expediency's sake, and it becomes very transactional when the person who you've married doesn't do what you do like anymore, you get rid of them, and you move on to someone else.

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Marriage in Scripture is both covenantal and permanent, with minor exceptions.

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What about the use of debt? Now, there may be some legitimacy for collateralized debt, and that may be okay, but I researched business ideas, and now

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I'm inundated with gurus telling me how I can be rich using other people's money.

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The biblical view is that the borrower is servant to the lender, and debt should be avoided.

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Worldly wisdom says we evolve from slime, and biblical teaching says the

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Creator God created us in His image. What about education?

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Relativism versus an objective standard, and that's just the beginning of a list of hundreds of things.

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All around us, insanity is passed as worldly wisdom because people are wicked, and you and I are in danger of being infected by their poison.

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And in fact, we have been. We have taken on worldly wisdom.

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We have imbibed in worldly knowledge, and we have not seen the great disconnect between that worldview and a

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Christian one. So if you and I are going to grow up into the faith, we desperately need wisdom.

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I'm going to ask you to turn with me to the book of 1 Kings. It's going to be very familiar to you.

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The standard bearer of wisdom. The author of most of the books, the

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Proverbs, I believe. Solomon. This is going to tell us how

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Solomon got wisdom. I'm going to remind you that wisdom is moral, and Solomon's failures in the area of wisdom were colossal moral failures.

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We're not going to get into that. So you see, there's also an element of our responsibility to walk in obedience.

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I think the sins that Solomon committed, which were in contradiction to the knowledge he had and this great blessing of the

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Lord in wisdom, were magnified because he knew so much better.

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And it's true for us. You and I should not be tolerating sin because we know better.

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We right now have acquired enough knowledge of Scripture and everything in our lives to walk in righteousness.

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We should be diligent students of the Word. We shouldn't be content to be where we are today. But we have to understand, right now, we are walking in ways that are contrary to our new nature in Christ and to what we know to be right and wrong.

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1 Kings 3. Now Solomon made a treaty with Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and married

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Pharaoh's daughter. Then he brought her to the city of David until he had finished building his own house and the house of the

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Lord and the wall all around Jerusalem. Meanwhile, the people sacrificed at the high places because there was no house built for the name of the

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Lord until those days. And Solomon loved the Lord, walking in the statutes of his father

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David, except that he sacrificed and burned incense at the high places. Now the king went to Gibeon to sacrifice there, for that was the great high place.

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Solomon offered a thousand burnt offerings on the altar. At Gibeon, the

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Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream by night, and God said, Ask, what shall

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I give you? Now, asking becomes a very important part of our message today, coming up in the verses subsequent.

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But listen to the wisdom of Solomon's prayer in this dream.

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And Solomon said, You have shown great mercy to your servant David my father, because he walked before you in truth and righteousness and in uprightness of heart with you.

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You have continued this great kindness for him, and you have given him a son to sit on his throne, as it is this day.

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Now, O Lord my God, you have made your servant king instead of my father

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David, but I am a little child. What great humility in Solomon.

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I do not know how to go out or come in. And your servant is in the midst of your people whom you have chosen, a great people, too numerous to be numbered or counted.

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Therefore give to your servant an understanding heart to judge your people, that I may discern between good and evil, for who is able to judge this great people of yours?

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Verse 10, it says, The speech pleased the Lord, that Solomon had asked this thing.

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Then God said to him, Because you have asked this thing, and have not asked long life for yourself, nor have asked riches for yourself, nor have you asked for the life of your enemies, but you have asked for yourself understanding to discern justice, behold,

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I have done according to your words. See, I have given you a wise and understanding heart, so there has not been anyone like you before you, nor shall be any like you arise after you.

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And I have also given you what you have not asked, both riches and honor, so there shall not be anyone like you among the kings all your days.

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But notice this component. So if you walk in my ways to keep my statutes and my commandments, as your father

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David walked, then I will lengthen your days. You and I are the recipients of all of the sweet and precious promises of God in Christ.

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And yet we are required to walk in faith and obedience.

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We have responsibility in these matters. The glories of grace have been showered upon us.

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We're reminded of that again this morning in Sunday school. But that doesn't mean now that we go willy -nilly walking through the world.

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We now, because we possess these things, we must walk in righteousness.

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So how are we going to grow up into Christian maturity? How are we going to walk in righteousness? We have to have wisdom.

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As we're turning back to our text, I'd like you to stop at Proverbs chapter 1.

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If you need a Lord's Day reading for the afternoon, there's an immediate case of Solomon being able to apply his wisdom at the end of that text.

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So start reading in verse 16 of 1 Kings 3 later today to see how

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God gave him wisdom and how it looked in operation in Solomon's life.

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Let's look at Proverbs chapter 1. The Proverbs of Solomon, the son of David, king of Israel.

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And listen to the stated goal of the book of Proverbs. A wise man will hear and increase learning and a man of understanding will attain wise counsel to understand a proverb and an enigma, the words of the wise and their riddles.

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The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction.

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Now this is the part of the program where we say,

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I'm so glad that I'm not like them. I'm so glad that I'm not a fool, who I've done bad things like they do because I'm a spiritual

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Christian man. The danger for us, the folly for us, is that we will not know that we have need of wisdom.

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That we will think that we are okay because we have union with Christ.

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Well, we do have union with Christ and that is a glorious thing, but we are commanded, it seems, to pursue wisdom.

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Now, the last place I'd like us to go on this little journey is in Matthew.

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And one of the items I was going to bring up in the first two weeks, but I'm saving it till now, there's a very fine argument that the book of James is a commentary on the

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Sermon on the Mount. There's a very good argument, and we're going to see that today because the internal evidence of subjects that are raised in our section are found elsewhere in the book.

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And the language is almost verbatim from the words, the mouth of Jesus in the

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Sermon on the Mount. I'd like us first to, and I'm going to ask you to put a little mark here, we're going to come back in a few moments, but we're just going to do this very briefly.

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I'm going to ask you to turn to Matthew 7 and verse 24. This comes at the end of the

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Sermon on the Mount, so imagine all the glorious truth that has been expounded on by our

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Lord. But he says something very powerful, and it seems one of the main thrusts of the

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Sermon on the Mount is that the disciples would have wisdom and they would acquire it, accumulate it, possess it, and give it to us.

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That they would minister in wisdom. Listen to what verse 24 of Matthew 7 says.

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Therefore, whoever hears these sayings of mine and does them, be doers of the word.

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Very James -like there, isn't it? So, here's the thing. We love to talk about theology.

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We love to debate interpretations of texts in scriptures, and what we need to really love is doing them.

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Talk is cheap. Old guys sit in barber shops and wherever they sit on front porches and they never do anything, but they solve all the world's problems, but they never act.

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We're called to be the people of action. Whoever hears these sayings of mine and does them,

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I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock.

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Sounds like trials. And the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock.

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Verse 26. It's a great warning for us. But everyone who hears these sayings of mine and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.

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And the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, and it fell, and great was its fall.

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Knowledge, without its implementation, falls short.

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And so it was when Jesus had ended these sayings that the people were astonished with his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes.

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Now, I want you to remember that. I want you to go back to the book of James now. The first need is of wisdom in our text today.

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If anyone of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God. Turn over to chapter 3.

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It's going to sound somewhat familiar. James 3, 13.

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So it looks like James is not so different than Paul and other New Testament writers.

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He gives us a big clue about what the book is in the very beginning. Verse 13.

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Let me start a little bit earlier. This, of course, is the discourse about the tongue and its dangers.

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It says in verse 10, Out of the same mouth proceed blessing and cursing.

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And I will point out to you, this is that double -mindedness also that we're going to see at the end.

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The problem for us is when we are cursing with our mouth and blessing the Lord with our mouth, we've got a problem because we're double -minded.

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We're too sold. Does a spring send forth fresh water and bitter from the same opening?

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It's not possible. If there's any bitter, the fresh water will be contaminated.

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Does that make sense? As soon as I drop arsenic into the well, the well is corrupted.

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Can a fig tree, my brethren, bear olives? Or a grapevine bear figs?

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Thus no spring yields both salt water and fresh. Who is wise and understanding among you?

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Let him show by good conduct that his works are done in the meekness of wisdom.

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But if you have bitter envy and self -seeking in your hearts, do not boast and lie against the truth.

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So imagine the world's unidentified greatest theologian living.

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What if he has the ability to really understand

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Scripture? He has to understand his doctrine of God is impeccable, his theology proper.

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He's well -versed in all of the disciplines of theology, which is the queen of sciences.

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But what if he desires to boast and say, I'm the world's greatest theologian.

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This wisdom does not descend from above, but is earthly, sensual, demonic.

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For where envy and self -seeking exist, confusion and every evil thing are there.

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But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy.

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Now the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.

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James 3 seems to expound upon what we're learning about in James 1.

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Now let's go back here. There is a danger for us in our seeking after wisdom.

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You say, what could possibly be the danger? Contemplating this, there's a negative side to this because for many of us, our prayers have been entirely self -interested.

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And wisdom is not going to show any quarter to selfish ambition and self -interest.

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You and I have approached God and we have said, we would like it to be this way.

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Would you come alongside and give me what I want? But wisdom is going to dictate that you lay down your self -interest and you desire what

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God wants. And so your comfortable life that you've been cultivating, something might have to be purged.

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Something that you've been cherishing might have to be mortified. You and I need to earnestly seek that wisdom, which is from above.

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You already remember from the catechism that wisdom is part of God's character.

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He's infinite, eternal, and unchanging. In His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.

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Wisdom, like we learned this morning, the world belongs to the Lord. Wisdom also belongs to the

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Lord. And in our seeking after wisdom, God is not going to give us a serpent when we pray for a fish.

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We want serpents when we approach the throne of grace and He's a loving Father and He's not going to give us a serpent.

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So He's going to say no to your selfish prayers. If any of you lacks wisdom, second point, how do you get it?

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You ask for it.

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Look at it, it says again, if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God. And one of the things that it's a burden of the pastor and the preacher is he must be able to show how this text of Scripture applies and is an expression of Christ and His gospel.

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And I would say, we cannot ask of God if we not be in Christ. We can boldly approach the throne of grace, but we can only do it, as we learned this morning, because of Christ and His righteousness.

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So, this is not a casual manner. Oh, I must confess, the church is casual in her approach to God universally.

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One of the reasons that we have a structured liturgy is that it causes us maybe to be a little more circumspect, a little bit more serious about these cherished and precious and holy things.

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We don't approach God in a casual way. We approach in reverence and in awe and in recognition that Christ is only the one who's made it possible.

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There's no possibility that we could approach Him or have an audience with Him apart from Christ.

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How do you get wisdom? You ask in faith.

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But the prayer etiquette requires a humble submission. Reverence.

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And the one that I think is the sticking point today in my praying for the message is that we would be not self -willed in our prayers.

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I think this is our challenge as a people today. We want

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God to give us what we want, because we know best. I asked you to keep

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Matthew 7 open. This bolsters the theory that James is in many ways a commentary on the

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Sermon on the Mount. Please turn back to Matthew 7 again. I used this language a few moments ago.

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Matthew 7, verse 7.

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Ask, and it will be given to you. Solomon was given the privilege of asking of the

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Lord what he desired. And Jesus tells His disciples, ask, and it will be given to you.

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Seek, and you will find. Knock, and it will be opened to you.

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For everyone who asks, receives.

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And he who seeks, finds. And to him who knocks, it will be opened.

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Or what man is there among you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone?

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I'm convinced that our prayers, that we're not asking for bread, we're asking for stones.

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And our Heavenly Father is not going to give us a stone, because He loves us. Or if He asks for a fish, will

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He give Him a serpent? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your

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Father, who is in Heaven, give good things to those who ask Him? But I think that good things is very important.

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We ask, and we don't get, because we ask amiss.

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We don't know what the good things are, so one of the prayers for wisdom has to be for us to understand and to know what the true treasures are, that we might ask

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God for those things. Let's turn quickly, because of time, to James 4.

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Again, we're making a case that James is revealing to us more than just a little bit here.

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There's more to be considered under these headings in the rest of the book. This sounds a lot like Matthew 7.

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Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members?

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You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain.

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You fight and war, yet you do not have because you do not ask.

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Make sure your prayers are not asking for stones and serpents.

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You ask and do not receive because you ask amiss that you may spend it on your pleasures.

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There it is. God isn't answering my prayers favorably.

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I asked Him to change my circumstances and He didn't do it. We're asking amiss.

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Verse 4. Adulterers and adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?

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Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you think that the

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Scripture says in vain, the Spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously, but He gives more grace?

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Therefore He says, God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.

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Therefore submit to God, resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you.

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Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double -minded. Lament and mourn and weep.

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Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves in the sight of the

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Lord, and He will lift you up. Turn back to 1, please,

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James 1. One of the things that we need desperately, a requisite for perfect completeness in Christian maturity, is wisdom.

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And this wisdom, a limitless supply of which is available to the people of God in Christ, they can boldly approach the throne of grace, and they can ask of God in accordance with His will, and they can have great assurance, you can, that God is going to answer your prayer favorably.

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But it's interesting, if we're to take this little section and try to apply it here, then it would mean that our prayer would not be,

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Lord, take away this trial, but Lord, instruct me. Lord, cause me to walk in obedience.

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Help me to divest myself of my self -willed tendency that I might exclusively know your will.

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So we're not praying like that as we ought. We're not getting what we asked for because our

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Father is not going to give us a stone or a serpent. But here, the storehouse of heaven, the character and attributes of God, all that we need for life and godliness, we have the indwelling of the

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Spirit, we have the completed canon of Scripture, we have wisdom personified in the

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Logos, the Lord Jesus Christ, we have access to it all, all we have to do is ask.

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How many of you today are going to ask

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God for wisdom for the very present trials that you're in?

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That would be a good application of this. Don't throw out the blanket, oh Lord, grant me wisdom.

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Oh Lord, grant me wisdom in A and in B and in Q and in X and in Z, all of those individually.

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And listen to the generous character of God. He gives to all liberally, freely, without reproach, and it will be given to him.

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Then we have a warning, a warning against double -mindedness.

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And this is that part where we say, well, I'm so thankful I'm not double -minded. I'm here to say that you are.

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You're double -minded. And you're, by God's grace, making progress, but you are and have this continuing tendency in the old man to be double -minded.

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It says in verse 6, but let him ask in faith.

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Now, I think we read this, our first impression is I have to believe that God is able to answer my prayers.

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And some of our friends in other Christian movements, they teach that we should have faith in faith.

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That it's the believing that gets God to get the gold coins out of his hand and to shower upon us.

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So when we believe strong enough, sounds like worldly wisdom to me. If you believe it strong enough, you can have it.

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It's not what it's teaching. The believing, the asking in faith, the no doubting, is back to that idea of a humble submission to the will of God.

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When we pray with doubts, we pray with double -mindedness. We come not just with not my will, but your will be done.

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We say, oh Lord, give me what I want. That's how we become double -minded.

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That's how we pray with doubting. Our first parents in the garden doubted the goodness of God.

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You and I doubt the goodness of God. How can this affliction be good?

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This can't be good that I have this problem. This trouble I'm dealing with, oh God, this can't be good.

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This can't be in your will. Oh, it can be because trials are the way that we grow up, which is the goal of our lives.

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The universe is not off, and there's not a glitch. God in his providential care has placed you in the midst of your trial, and you have to look upon him as a loving father and say, oh

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God, not my will, but your will be done. Show me the way of faith and obedience.

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To doubt, in this biblical understanding, is to be at variance with oneself.

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In James, to be wholly free from that internal variance is the goal.

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For he who doubts is like a way of the sea driven and tossed by the wind. I think the translation here would be helpful if we saw the idea of what we may see this coming week on the west coast, a storm surge.

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The language of the grammar, I believe, is more suited to that. It's just not the waves lapping on the sea.

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It's the storm that picks up the buildings and runs it five miles into town in a tsunami.

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The doubting man is like a wave storm surge driven and tossed by the wind.

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He's not steadfast.

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He's not immovable. He's movable. For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the

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Lord. He's wavering. He's uncertain. He's doubting.

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He has a divided interest. And what is the divided interest?

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He has an interest in God on the one hand, and he has an interest in himself and the world and the flesh on the other.

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He's two -spirited. He has two souls, literally.

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And the emphasis seems to be here on competing allegiances.

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Divided allegiances. I am a

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Pittsburgh Steelers fan, and I hate three teams.

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They're all the teams that are in my division. Our division.

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The Steelers division. I do not like the Cleveland Browns. I do not like the

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Ravens. And I really don't like the Bengals. And it's funny, our sports allegiances are more crystal clear than our

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Christian allegiance to Christ. I'm never rooting for the

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Ravens. I'm never rooting for the Browns. I'm never rooting for the Bengals. But I will imbibe in this world.

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James is calling the people of God to have a singleness of mind and purpose and devotion and allegiance.

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You and I need to have a single allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ in every area of life, without exception.

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So today, we're learning that in order to have and achieve full

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Christian maturity, we need wisdom. And because of Christ, we have an open door, an interest into the throne room of heaven, that we could approach

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Him and we could ask Him for wisdom. But that place is still holy.

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And if we go in there asking Him for things that feed our flesh, we're going to be sorely disappointed.

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It's inconsistent with His character. He's holy. It's inconsistent with our new nature in Him.

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We are now holy in Christ. May the

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Lord grant you, His people, wisdom. May you be single -minded and there not be two competing allegiance between the

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Lord and yourself and the world, but there be only one allegiance. It would be to God, to the

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Father, to the Son, to the Holy Spirit. One quick word of application here and we'll conclude.

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I implore you to earnestly seek the wisdom from above.

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Check your practices against the standard of God's Word.

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Repent of your lack of wisdom. It says to ask for more.

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You have not used the wisdom that you've been granted. Make full use of what you have and ask for more. You already today possess enough knowledge to walk in obedience.

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Ask our God to supply you with wisdom that you might discern the times, not only the macro times, but the micro times of your life, that you might walk in His ways and be pleasing to Him in all things.

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Please pray with me now. O Lord, we are a dull and obstinate, stiff -necked people.

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I thank you for the clarity of your servant James, the unambiguous terms in which he writes.

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And O Lord, I pray that you would grant us wisdom, that we would be able to navigate the trials of our lives.

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O Lord, also give us the wisdom to see that some of the trials that we have are because of our own sinfulness, as we just read in 1

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Peter. It's not good to be beaten for our own faults, but it's a glorious thing to be flogged as followers of Christ.

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O Lord, may our trials only be for obedience' sake, not corrective because of our own sinfulness.

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O Lord, I pray that in the asking, your people would draw near to you and approach you, and it would be a source of worship and encouragement.

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They know that you're a loving Father who is ready to bless His children.

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I pray that they will pray bold prayers of obedience, that they would ask in faith.

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And O Lord, I pray that we would be those people who build their house on the rock, that we would be steadfast and immovable in our allegiance to Christ.