James - Part 6 (Wisdom)

Brothers and sisters, think not uh think of what you were when you were called.

Not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were influential, not many were of noble birth, but God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise.

God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.

God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things and the things that are not to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him.

It is because of him that you are in Jesus Christ, who has become for us wisdom from God, that is our righteousness, holiness and redemption.

Therefore, as it is written, let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.

Would you stand with me?

We'll read out of the book of James.

Uh I'll read James chapter three, finishing out this chapter.

We're gonna begin in verse 13.

Who is wise and understanding among you?

Let them show it by their good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom.

But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth.

Such quote unquote wisdom does not come down from heaven, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic.

For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice.

But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure, then peace-loving, considerate, then of all submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere.

Peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness.

You may be seated.

So you and I on an average of uh on any given day are making about 35,000 decisions.

Some of you decided to get out of bed today.

I think all of you did.

Um maybe you brushed your teeth.

Um, thank you.

Uh you decided to be here this morning, uh, or someone else decided for you.

I'm sorry.

Um decisions are conscious and others are subconscious.

Some of the decisions you make today will be simple, and others you've been holding on to for a long time, and you're you're just wrestling with it and considering it and reflecting on it.

Experts call the feeling of being overwhelmed by decisions choice overload.

Uh have you ever felt overloaded by the choices in front of you?

Um I think uh I think a McDonald's.

Uh like you're standing at a McDonald's menu and you're like, uh, does anybody get anxiety when you go in the drive-thru with a bunch of other people in the car?

And you have to be the one that interacts with the person at the window.

Um or have you ever eaten at a cheesecake factory, you're handed like this book uh menu and you don't know what you want to eat?

Um yeah.

Some of us are in the middle of decision making right now.

Um you're wrestling through some things.

Should I take a new job with bigger pay?

Should we move to another state?

Should I marry this person?

Should this friendship continue?

Should I be parenting in this way that I've been parenting?

Should I go to college or go on go to a trade?

Should I buy a house or rent an apartment?

How do I care best for my aging parent?

How do I practice generosity without enabling somebody?

How do I walk through pain and suffering?

And many of the decisions we make throughout our life require wisdom.

And the unique thing about wisdom is it has nothing to do with our intelligence.

We can impact our intelligence a little bit as we go through life, but pretty much what we've been given is what we'll have.

But wisdom is an altogether different thing.

There is some wisdom that could be gained by anyone as we go through life.

The book of Proverbs says that earlier.

There are people who I consider real wise, one of which is the late Dr.

Tim Keller, and maybe some of you listened to him.

Uh Sarah, you're a avid listener.

Uh he says wisdom is making the right choice even when there are no clear moral laws telling you explicitly what to do.

Some decisions require only knowledge, like the proper medicine to take, and some only compliance with rules like whether or not to commit adultery.

Um, but no Bible verse will tell you exactly whom to marry, which job to take, whether to move or to stay put.

Yet a wrong decision can be disastrous.

Keller sums it up by this way in this way.

Wisdom is knowing the right thing to do in the 80% of life situations in which there are no moral rules that provide clear answers.

80% of our life requires wisdom.

We can't go to some sort of book and say, okay, this is exactly what I should do with this exact situation.

It will require wisdom that is gained throughout our life as we grow, as we continue to get older.

This week I was uh finishing up this sermon, and I was walking, just walking the streets of downtown, and I came across an acquaintance, and he he's actually a friend of Victoria's, and so the way he addressed me was, hey Victoria's dad.

Um and it's parents, isn't it fun to be known as your kid's like uh parent?

Um and so he walks up, we're talking a little bit, and I he's like, Hey, what are you doing?

And I'm like, Oh, I'm just walking around enjoying the sun.

He's like, he uses an expletive and how great that is, and uh I won't use that in here.

Uh and so I'm like, yeah, it was a it's a great morning.

Um I'm prep actually prepping for a sermon.

Um, and this is what I'm gonna talk about talk about wisdom.

And he's like, oh man, I need wisdom.

He says, I can't, I cannot allow emotions to dictate the decisions that I make.

I really need wisdom to do that, especially in my job.

And so he is uh he has a big part in our local judicial system.

And I'm thinking, oh yeah, I mean, man, wisdom is so important in the role that he plays.

And so today I just want to talk to you a little bit about what does Scripture say about wisdom?

And James is gonna ask this question right at the beginning: Who is wise and understanding among you?

He's asking some churches that.

He's like, hey, who is wise among you?

So what I want you to do, I want you to take out this bulletin that you received.

There should be a pen in front of you on that on the back of that pew.

And there's a note section, and you don't have to write much, but what I do want you to write is an answer to that question.

Who do you know is wise and understanding?

What name comes to mind when you think that?

Who is someone that you would go to to seek advice, to get wisdom from?

Would you just write their name?

That would be a kind of a form of uh um just honoring them.

Because James is not asking this in just a rhetorical way.

He really is saying, who is wise and understanding among you in this church body?

Who has experience that can speak into difficult decisions?

Who has understanding that can weed through what really is important and what really doesn't matter?

And who maintains integrity when they have to make tough choices?

One Old Testament scholar wrote, Wisdom means becoming competent with regard to the realities of life, how things really happen, how things really are, and what to do about it.

I was reading a leadership book this week, and he says, one of the first things that a leader must do is to be able to name what is reality.

And sometimes we are confused by what is real and what's not real.

We'll see something and our hearts will deceive us and we think this is real, but we later learn, oh no, that wasn't real after all.

Have you ever made a decision in life?

And then 10 years later you look back and you're like, oh man, that was not wise.

But in the moment it was wise, like we thought, oh, that was, oh yeah, this is what I should do.

And 10, I mean, you think about most teenage boys and 20-somethings, all of the videos show, oh man, there's not a lot of wisdom right there.

Um, and so you get a little further down the road and you're like, oh yes, okay, now we're gaining some wisdom along the road, hopefully.

Age does not always equate wisdom.

Um however, uh, we were watching uh this weekend, we watched uh um The Odyssey.

Um and the story kind of begins to unfold about the main character Odysseus.

And as he's going through uh this story, Odysseus gets along, goes along and he's making a lot of decisions that implic that just impact so many people.

And he gets to a point and he turns around in life and he looks back a few years and he realizes, oh man, should I have made those decisions?

Was that wise?

Especially when it impacted so many.

Like I want to see it.

I want to see it lived out.

I want to I want you to show that you have wisdom and understanding.

He who is wise and understanding, who is wise and understanding among you, let them show it.

Oh, you're all with me.

Yeah.

This this has been what James has been saying the whole time in this book.

If you've been with us last uh several weeks, he keeps saying, if you have this, I want to see it.

If you have faith, then it needs to be shown by your deeds.

If you have something, then everyone around should be able to see it.

So he's saying, if you really do have wisdom and understanding, show it to us.

Let them show it by their good life.

By deeds done in humility that comes from wisdom.

So what is the good life?

How would you define the good life?

Loving your neighbor as yourself?

What else comes to mind?

What's a good life?

Love your enemies.

Uh Danny, did you say something?

Family?

Linda making good decisions, family making good decisions.

Anything else?

Contentment.

Who's wait?

Somebody said contentment.

Somebody says something back here.

Being a peacemaker.

Penny.

This good life.

That that word good in Greek could be translated beautiful, could be translated honorable or pleasant.

Could be translated like, oh, this is this is a beautiful thing.

So he's saying, hey, you would have a good and beautiful life.

And I don't think James is referencing financial success, like, oh, you'll have a lot of financial success.

Or he's not saying, oh, you'll have the American dream, it will be fulfilled in you.

James is going to go into something a little more deep.

He's going to say that living the good life is the way of humility and wisdom.

A good and beautiful life as a result of wisdom continues to happen at each season and each stage.

So whether you're beginning your senior year in high school like Rebecca, come on now.

Or you're or you're uh you're planning to retire uh like Gene, right?

Coming to the end of a career.

Whether you have uh a little one in diapers still like Isaac and Megan, or you're uh you're you're playing with your great-grandchildren like May, right?

Like you're with your great, like each of those seasons, James says there could be a component of the good life.

And it could be filled with humility and wisdom.

Whoa.

I think that's the first time I've done that.

Have you been watching me as I've gotten close?

Okay.

Uh there are three books of the Old Testament that ponder what the good life is and what's required to have it.

And these three books are often referred to as the wisdom literature.

Can you think of one of the, well, there you got some uh what is one of those that comes to mind often of a wisdom literature of the Old Testament?

Proverbs, we often will consider that.

James is considered the Proverbs of the New Testament.

And so these three, I love what the Bible project does, is they call these three, the way they describe these three as good old friends that you come across.

Like you come up to these good three friends, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job, and you sit down with them and you're asking them, hey, what do you think about the good life and what is wisdom?

And the way they describe Proverbs, Proverbs would be this young lady who is super smart about a lot of things.

Like she could tell you a lot about what is, you know, good financing, good parenting, good work relationships.

And she claims that if you live a certain way, then all of those good things will happen to you.

And if you choose a foolish way, then wicked things will happen to you.

But the friend next to her, Ecclesiastes, will kind of give her like give her like this quizzical look like, wait, and he'll start to question her, like, hey, I don't know about that.

Because I've seen good people and they've done righteous things and things don't go their way.

And I've seen wicked people win at everything.

And so he has this kind of like cynical spirit, and he's kind of questioning her a little bit.

And then Job, he's like this, he's like this old sage that looks at the other two, kind of smiles at them, and and he realized, oh, yeah, I've been there, I've been that smart young kid, and I I've I've walked through some cynicism a little bit.

But but listen, this is wisdom.

And he speaks about it out of suffering.

Like these are some things I've learned about God and about life and what the good life is.

If we're not careful, we'll read one of those separate from the other two, and we won't have a good full picture of what wisdom is.

All three are necessary when we consider wisdom.

Because sometimes we'll read Proverbs and we'll think that there are all these promises.

Like if I do this, then this will always, always happen.

And many of us could attest that is not the case.

And so Ecclesiastes speaks into that a little bit.

And then Job will speak into that a little bit.

And all three of them, it's interesting how all three of them come up with this one conclusion about wisdom.

They all say that there's a crucial place where wisdom begins.

Job says it this way, and he said to the human race, The fear of the Lord, that is wisdom.

And to shun evil is understanding.

Ecclesiastes 12 13 says it this way.

Now all this has been heard, here's the conclusion of this whole matter.

Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the duty of all mankind.

And then in Proverbs 1 7 that Jake read earlier, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.

But fools despise wisdom and instruction.

All three of them concluded that the fear of the Lord is where it all begins.

The fear of the Lord is a phrase that's used often in the Old Testament.

It means this person who worships Yahweh and is faithful to Yahweh.

Walking with Yahweh throughout our life is a path of humility and wisdom.

And you might be able to come up with some people who are in scripture that are wise.

Like Pharaoh noticed Joseph was really wise.

He actually acknowledges that the Spirit of God is on Joseph.

There's a man that was helping build the first tabernacle, Bezalil, and he was considered wise as the Spirit of God came upon him.

Esther has this wisdom that we read about.

Solomon has a wisdom.

The woman in Proverbs 31 has wisdom.

Stephen is known to have wisdom.

Like all of these people acknowledged that they have wisdom.

Joshua has the spirit of wisdom on him.

But what would we see if we saw it?

I mean, if you looked across the room and you saw somebody who is wise, what would you be seeing?

Penny had it on the, like, she's maybe you saw it in James, but maybe you already knew this, Penny.

James will say that wisdom, the evidence of wisdom is peace.

That they are a peaceful person.

That when they're around, it's like, oh like you just oh, this is good.

Martha Moore Keish in her commentary on James observes one who is wise and understanding will show this in her actions of mercy and peace.

This weekend I was sitting in a room uh with two two guys, um, both of them are older than me.

And there had been this uh tension point, a conflict between them for the last two years.

And they never spoke about it.

And I'm sitting there and watching as they began to work through this really uh difficult conversation.

Um and as I watched, I saw both of them continue to just kind of mutually submit to each other, even though they had to say really hard things, both of them were saying hard things, and I thought, oh no, how's this gonna go?

And and they were not, I mean, they weren't like angry, angry, but but they could have, at any point, one of them could have got angry, slammed everything down, and walked out the room.

That could have been the option.

And and one of them could have just started yelling at the other, or just like, I don't want to hear this anymore.

And if we could have walked, but what I kept seeing is as they said hard things to each other, they kept saying, but I really care about you, but I really care about you.

And they would both, like I could see this like mutual submission taking place between them.

Oh my goodness, this is like wisdom personified as they began to work and seek to understand one another and their points of each other.

Like they both it both had to experience humility to say, Oh, you're right about that.

I misunderstood.

And it was this beautiful picture of what James describes as what wisdom is.

And I thought, ah, this is what I want to continue to be as I grow.

So here's what let's review what James says about wisdom being peace loving and mutually submissive.

Verse 17.

But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure, then peace loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere.

And then James says, a wise person is a peacemaker.

In verse 18, it says, peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness.

Like sowing in peace, if you're have any experience in farming, sowing is not an easy thing.

Like the whole experience from sowing to harvesting is not easy.

There was one time where a friend of mine broke his leg and he could not take all the bales of hay and throw them on the uh on the back of the tractor and then put them in the barn.

And so I'm like, hey, I'll do that.

Oh my goodness, that kicked my I'm like, this is exhausting.

It was an all-day experience.

Sowing and harvesting is not easy.

Peacemaking is not easy.

Peacekeeping is easy in a sense.

Many of us experience peacekeeping in our homes where we ignore everything that's happening.

That's peacekeeping.

Let's not say anything or we're gonna you know rock the boat here.

Let's just let that keep happening.

You know, many of us have grown up in that.

Peacemaking is to see the thing, see the reality of the thing, and do the hard work towards peace.

Like to seek out righteousness through peace.

To need to sit down and say, Hey, there is this thing that's happening here, and we need to work this out.

Which is unusual in our day and age, isn't it?

We just want to keep yelling at each other rather than get to a point of reconciliation.

And wisdom is saying, oh, this is what wisdom will look like when we see it.

It will be peaceful.

It will lead towards peacemaking.

It won't always lead towards reconciliation.

We can't control outcomes.

But it at least there's a pursuit of it.

I don't know about you, but I'm a little intimidated by wisdom.

Sometimes I'm like, do I even have it?

I keep feeling like I'm failing at decisions.

And you just keep like, oh, like I wish I hoped to be wise one day.

At what point do we realize, oh, we're at wisdom?

And I would hope that would be the case for me.

There are a couple practices as I sat in that room with those two guys this weekend that I think were really important to foster wisdom in that room.

And number one was a willingness to say, I don't know.

Too often we have to feel like we have to know everything, and some of us think we do.

But the willingness to say, I don't know.

To not be a lone ranger or a maverick, to constantly invite the community into my life.

And to follow what James says, be quick to listen and slow to speak, to practice this listening skill.

So to watch these two guys just kind of work out this, fleshing out this issue, and they listened to each other.

They paid attention to each other.

So how are we doing with that?

Like, how do we how are we doing with saying, oh, you know what?

I don't know the answer to that.

Oh, I don't know everything.

Oh, I am limited.

And I need you to bring other people into our lives and the practice of listening.

Oh, let me hear.

What do you all think about this?

I need some advice on this decision because it's too big for me to make alone.

I need to bring other people into this.

And those kind of foster a ground towards wisdom.

Then we have James who reminds us in James chapter 1 that we should ask God regularly for it.

James 1 · chapter mention

He says, if any of you lack wisdom, you should ask God, who gives it generously to all without finding fault.

And what will happen?

It will be given to you.

It will be given to you.

Anybody need wisdom this morning?

Yes.

Anybody have big decisions that you're working through?

And God in his graciousness says, hey, if you ask, I will give it to you generously.

Like I'll pour this out on you.

I'll be generous with it.

You know, the uh the first humans uh in the garden, their regular routine, it says, is that they walked with God uh in the coolness of the day.

And but then they decided to do this life hack and think that they could be like God in a very much uh in a much easier way, and that was to like take fruit and see, hey, let's just let's just speed these things up because we want to be like God right away, right now.

And so they ate this fruit.

Um in discipleship, um the it is described as walking with God.

It's not a fast process, it's a it's a process that just takes place day after day after day.

And towards that, you'll begin to build this wisdom, not not earthly wisdom, but a heavenly wisdom that just keeps on getting like poured out on us.

And so we just like, oh God, I want to walk with you today to gain your wisdom as I see this world, to know how you see this world.

Jesus in Luke chapter 2 is described as growing in wisdom and in favor with God and man.

Luke 2 · chapter mention

It was a description like as he began to get older, he grew in wisdom, all the way to the point where Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1 that Christ Jesus actually becomes the wisdom of God.

Like he becomes wisdom.

And for those who follow Jesus, we have full wisdom, like we have full access to wisdom, the wisdom of God through Christ.

And that we would walk with him daily so that we could grow in it.

Would you pray with me?

I think it'd be good for you, if you are working through a decision, that's pretty big in your life right now.

For you to just kind of hold that before the father and say, I need wisdom as I make this.

Would you help me?

If you are not working through a big decision right now, would you pray for those in the room that are, that have heavy things on their minds as they are considering a choice?

Is there working through a relationship?

Would you pray for wisdom for them?