Who Is Wise and Understanding?

But James isn't asking us who is knowledgeable among you. He isn't asking you who has the four point o GPA or who is the brightest person in the room. He asked who is wise and understanding among you? Hello, friends. Welcome to the Life Tabernacle Church podcast.

It's an honor to be with you today. This podcast serves as our church's weekly sermon archive. Tune in each week to hear what God is speaking in our community. Be sure to follow and share with a friend. We hope you enjoy today's message.

Thank you. Wow. The presence of the Lord has been so special this morning. So special. Amen?

Amen. That song, Worthy of It All, carried me through the darkest season of my life. Because we can look back, and we can look back at the dark times of our life, and we can say, Lord, you're even worthy of those times. Times that we probably wouldn't wanna walk through again, but He's worth it. And the gifts and the things that happen in us when we walk through those seasons, they just put us in more awe of His worthiness, and I love that song.

So thank you for singing it this morning. This morning, we're gonna be in James chapter three. We're gonna wrap up chapter three today. Last week, if you were here, Pastor Dallas gave us a pretty difficult teaching called the Terrible Tongue. Did you already enjoy that?

Convicted me, convicted me last week, for sure. I think that we can all in the room raise our hand and say that we have been hurt by someone's tongue, yes? Can everyone raise their hand and say that, yes? And then I think that you could probably raise your other hand and say that you've hurt someone with your tongue. And so if you have both hands up right now, you should if you still had your hands up, you could praise the Lord that he is still perfecting us and completing us, that he's gracious to us, amen?

He's so gracious. Pastor Dallas showed us that the tongue is ultimately not a mouth problem, it's a heart problem. And this week it kinda looks like at first glance that James is gonna change the subject on us, but he isn't. He's gonna take us deeper into the subject. So let's allow James to take us on a journey.

If you have your Bibles, open them to James chapter three. We're gonna start at verse 13. This is the word of the Lord. Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom.

But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but it is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder in every vile practice. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, and partial and sincere. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.

Lewis, would you pray for us? So James starts out saying, who is wise and understanding among you? He asked us that question. And last week we had a question that James asked us. He said, who can tame the tongue?

If no human being can tame the tongue, the question that we were kinda left with was what can? And the question that I have today for us is what does my speech reveal about the wisdom that's shaping my life? Is it heavenly wisdom or is it wisdom from here on the earth? What is shaping my heart Which then in turn affects my speech. Our words reveal what is in our hearts.

And now James asks us, what kind of wisdom is governing our heart? In essence, the fruit of our mouth reveals the source of our wisdom. I wanna play a little game. Now I thought I'd have a lot of football fans in here, so that's why I kinda picked football type questions. Like Chris, I don't see him, but I was really counting on him.

So hopefully some of you know the answers to these questions. I want some crowd participation, okay? Don't be afraid to know. It's not like, you know, you wanna be the cool kid in class, so you don't wanna raise your hand and answer the question. It's not like that, okay?

I want you to participate. It's cool to participate today. So, if you know who has won more Super Bowls than any other team. I wish I had like a ding ding ding. Okay, Lewis?

New England Patriots. Okay, New England Patriots, he says. But guess what? He's not actually right. Okay, y'all aren't right either.

Does anybody know the correct answer? It's both, it's both. It's a tie. New England Patriots and the Pittsburgh Steelers, okay? So they've both won the same amount and I've already forgot how many that is.

I think it was seven or eight, eight, okay, good. You guys know, you know this stuff, okay. I got the right questions. All right, here we go. Now this one is debatable, but I think there's an answer.

I think there's a correct answer, even if you don't like this person. Who is said to be the best quarterback of all times? Best quarterback of all times. Oh, I like this participation, shout it out. Tom Brady, okay?

That is true. He's won the most Super Bowls, okay? Who is the best NFL football team? America's team? Dallas Cowboys.

Okay, debatable again. But we know America's team, Cowboys. Okay, and this one, I know this isn't the right region, but I don't know what this college region is. I tried to look it up, but I wasn't that interested. But who is the best team in the SEC?

Just So raise your backs. Okay, I knew there was gonna be a lot of Alabama fans, okay. And Texas, no boo. But because I'm an Arkansas native, we're now gonna call the Hawks. I'm just kidding, we're not going to.

But woo pigs sweet, okay? All right, so football isn't everyone's thing, I get that. But football is a big deal to a lot of us. It kinda connects our families and we love to watch it, or at least my family does. But I'm gonna throw in some more questions.

Let's see what else we know. How many books of the Bible are there? 66, all right, that is correct. Jesus said, My house should be a house of Prayer. Prayer, right.

Jesus said, My house should be a house of prayer. And then what's the rest of that verse in Isaiah? Do you know? Prayer for anybody? I hate that we, this part, He says it in Mark, house of prayer for all nations.

All nations. I forget that part too. And then this was just something I was curious in this week, so I looked it up. What country in the world currently, and we probably don't have this statistically accurate, but the best that we have according to the Joshua Project, has the most amount of unreached people for the gospel. India is what showed up the most from what I read.

The most people that don't know the gospel or haven't been reached. So see, we're knowledgeable about a lot of things. The things in our hearts that we're interested in, are knowledgeable about. But James isn't asking us who is knowledgeable among you. Isn't asking you who has the four point o GPA or who is the brightest person in the room.

He asked who is wise and understanding among you. He isn't asking us this so that we can look around the room and make a decision. Because here's the thing, you can know all 66 books of the Bible and you can still hurt someone with your words. You can understand big terms like incarnation and other theological terms and still find yourself jealous of what someone has. You can quote scripture and still be motivated by selfish ambition.

James isn't impressed by what we know if what we know never transforms the way we live. He cares about the actions, our lives. He earlier in the book told us in the letter, be doers of the word and not mere hearers. He wants us to show our wisdom, or the source of it, by our lives. So he asks this question in verse 13 and he doesn't ask it for you to answer, because maybe you would have an answer.

If I had to say, oh, who's wise and understanding among me? I'll just go ahead and puff him up a little bit. I'd probably say my husband. He is incredibly wise. And I get really jealous sometimes.

I'll be honest, I'm like, why do you know so much? He's very knowledgeable. He just can remember all of these things that we even learned in elementary school, and I forgot all that stuff. I'm like, how do you know this? I could throw his name out there into the pot.

I'm sure that we could throw Tino out there into the pot as someone who's wise. Our sister Dreama, we could throw them out there. But James isn't asking us to look around and ask the question. It's a rhetorical question. He is asking, inviting us to look into the mirror of God's word and ask, what do my words, what do my actions, my life as a whole reveal about me?

So when we look on into this verse, there's a common misunderstood word that I wanted to point out, and that is where he says, show his works in the meekness of wisdom. Now a lot of times when people see meekness, they think weakness. I'm not sure if that's because it rhymes, but that's not what it means. Meekness is strength under control. To walk in meekness is to walk with humility.

It's to walk with gentleness. You aren't self seeking and nor do you need to be. If you've ever met someone who you consider wise, I think they're usually good listeners. They may talk a lot, but they also listen very well. They don't ever have to say, I'm wise.

They don't have to prove themselves. This is what wisdom looks like. Wisdom doesn't announce itself. Wisdom demonstrates itself. It's gentle.

It's humble, it's meek wisdom. And then James gives us a little word, but. Because there is another wisdom at war, at war for our hearts, at war for us. He says in verse 14, but if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. We shouldn't call ourselves wise when the fruit of our life says otherwise.

He is asking for us to be honest about what is in our hearts. We can't just pretend them away. Can't pretend like that jealousy may not exist. If our heart is jealous, bitter, or selfish, in fact it is wisdom to confess this truth about ourselves. The proper response to our exposed jealousy or selfish ambition, It isn't justification because we like justification, don't we?

Like, well, I have the right to be jealous because life gave me a bad hand. My parents didn't set me up for success. I have the right to act this way or to be this way, but our right response isn't justification, it's confession. Later, James is gonna tell us one of my absolute favorite verses in the Bible. Confess your sins to one another, pray for one another, and be healed.

Confession is the path to healing. It's the path to freedom. And confession is absent in our churches today. I don't really wanna go up to Sister Dream of this week and say, hey, had a really bad week and this happened and that happened and confess my sins to her. But when I find somebody that is safe and that I can do that with, man, it's life changing.

It's life changing to practice confession. And I'm not gonna get on that because that's not where we're at in James. But if we are jealous, are bitter, are self seeking, it's gonna be revealed in our words and in our character, and confession is the step. So, you may not know this, but I was a kids pastor before at Christ Point. I was a kids pastor for seven years, and it was a very special time in my life.

I loved it so much, And I was up working on the kids' sanctuary one day and my kids basically lived there. It was our home, our second home. And I was tired. Was like, okay, gonna take a break. And so I sat down there in the sanctuary, and I pulled out my phone, and I did what I shouldn't do when I take breaks, but I jumped on Facebook.

You know, very encouraging. And Facebook is a good place for jealousy. I mean, maybe not for any of you, but I have to really limit it in my life because it's easy to start seeing all these things that other people have and start to want them. And now I have to really keep that in, reign that in. And so I paused for a few minutes that day from working and I sat down and I opened Facebook and I saw this girl, she was a kind of a friend, kind of an acquaintance.

She was newly saved. She hadn't been saved two months and she had started this ministry on Facebook, and it was blowing up. I mean, she already had hundreds of followers, and I was just, well, let's just be honest, I was jealous. I sat down, I was already sitting down, but I started sulking and kinda crying. I'm like, Lord, why?

Why is she already doing this? And why are so many people already following this? Because I wanted a ministry like that. And if I'm honest, I wanted influence like that. Kids ministry didn't feel enough.

My view has changed a lot now, but at the time it didn't. And I started to cry and I started to confess it to the Lord right then and there because I recognized this jealousy coming over me and I just started to pray quietly and I put my phone away and all of a sudden a friend that had been helping me there that day, she wasn't in the room when I had sat down originally, she walked into the room and she immediately, it's like the Holy Spirit dropped it in her and she knew why I was crying. She said, you saw so and so's new ministry, didn't you? And I was like, yeah, I did. And she was like, you need to keep your eyes on what Jesus is doing in your life and let him work out what's happening in this season in your life and live it to the fullest.

You don't need to be worried about that. You need to bless that, pray for that. You know, let the Lord work that out, but you cannot let jealousy keep you from doing what God has called you to do right now. She just called me out right there in a loving and gracious way, and thank God she did. See, this is what scares me about selfish ambition and jealousy, because mine in that moment was wearing ministry clothes and completing ministry actions.

We can be in a pulpit and be jealous. We can be in a pew and be jealous of our brothers and sisters that we're supposed to love and encourage. So James called this wisdom earthly, unspiritual, demonic. Wow, that's harsh language. I don't know that I've ever labeled my jealousy as demonic.

This wisdom, he first says, is earthly. Its origin isn't from heaven. He says it's unspiritual. It belongs to our flesh and our natural instincts rather than God's spirit. Some translations use the word sensual, which kind of means animalistic.

And so when we're looking, you know, animals, they just care about themselves, right? They wanna do whatever they can to protect and preserve themselves. And he says it's demonic. Ultimately, it reflects the kingdom of darkness which is opposed to God. And at the root of my problem that day was how can I advance myself?

How can I have influence? Why am I not being advanced? James doesn't say that jealousy and selfish ambition may produce disorder. He says it will produce disorder. Just as James earlier told us that the source of the spring determines its water and the nature of a tree determines its fruit, the wisdom governing our hearts will eventually reveal itself in our lives.

If jealousy and selfish ambition are at the source, if that's what's in my heart, then disorder is going to show up as the fruit. So I have some questions for us to ponder. For me that day it was, why am I jealous of this ministry? Maybe we're not jealous, but why are we criticizing someone? Could it be jealousy?

Why did I need to tell someone that negative thing about my friend? Could there be selfish ambition underneath my statement? Why am I secretly hoping that someone else fails so that I can get an opportunity? Satan loves these things. He loves comparison, suspicion, competition, criticism.

He loves them. So at the source of my heart, I must ask, is my desire self advancement? If so, my heart is consumed with earthly wisdom. Now James, though, he doesn't leave us there. He drops another but.

In James three seventeen through 18, he says, but the wisdom from above, man, I'm thankful for it, is first purer, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. So in verses 14 through 16, we had jealousy, selfish ambition, boasting, disorder, evil. But in 17, we have pure, peaceable, gentle, reasonable, merciful, fruitful, impartial, sincere. Can you feel the difference? Which one governs your heart?

I definitely want it to be seventeen and eighteen that govern my heart. I want that to be the source of my heart. Pure, it's from God. First, pure. Pure because it is from God.

There is no other source of heavenly wisdom. It's not something that we can conjure up. It is from Him, peaceable. It doesn't cause discord. Open to reason.

A wise person, a person with wisdom from above can be reasoned with. Now, can you be reasoned with? Sometimes I struggle with this one, so I'm just gonna point that one out. Can I be corrected? I hate when my husband tells me how to drive.

I hate it. And it doesn't always bring out peaceableness in me. Is that even a word? No. Here's another one.

Can someone disagree with me and me not get defensive? Do I have to win every argument? First ten years of my marriage, absolutely yes. Am I full of mercy and good fruits? James says this wisdom is impartial.

Remember in chapter two where James talked about this sin of partiality? And he says it's sincere, it's real, and it demonstrates integrity. This wisdom from above reminds me of the fruit of the spirit listed in Galatians. It's heavenly wisdom. When this is what is in your heart, then these things, gentleness, peace, those will be the fruit.

Your words and your actions will demonstrate these characteristics. So we started with tongues. In James three, your tongue causing a destructive what? Does anybody remember? What could your tongue be like?

A destructive fire, okay? Fire. But now we have such a beautiful part, a harvest. It's so beautiful. He says in verse 18, and a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.

In chapters, in chapter one verse 20, James told us that what does not produce the righteousness of God. What does not produce the righteousness of God is the anger of man. A harvest of righteousness comes when our actions and our words are peaceful. But what is the source of this peace? It is heavenly wisdom from the Holy Spirit.

And where do we get this wisdom? We ask. How do we ask? He told us in chapter one, in faith. The answer to taming our tongue isn't to try to control it.

It isn't to try harder. Has anybody tried that, to try harder? I've tried trying harder a lot, and it is never successful. It isn't to try harder to not be jealous. It isn't to try harder to be gentle.

Me, at 09:30, when I really want my three year old to go to bed. I do try harder to be gentle, but that isn't the answer. No, it isn't. Human effort cannot be the solution. We need to ask what only God can give, and that is wisdom from above.

If we need this, if we need this, which I really do, we must ask. What can tame what I cannot tame? What can transform the source so that different fruit begins to grow from me? I need something that doesn't originate in me, will never originate in me. I need wisdom from above.

So I want us to do something today. I want us to do a couple things. First, I wanna start with us, just as individuals. I want us to pull out the mirror of God's word that we've just read. In fact, if you have your Bible, just looking at three, chapter three, verses 14, and looking at that list that James gives us, there in fourteen fifteen.

And I wanna ask, I want you to ask, I want you to ask the Holy Spirit, what type of fruit is your life producing? What happens when your boss promotes someone else? What happens when no one takes the time to call you this week, to check-in on you when someone in your family is sick and you feel forgotten? What comes out of you when you feel forgotten? What happens when someone disagrees with you?

Here's an even harder one. What happens when someone calls you to tell you the new tea, the new gossip? Do they trust that your ear is a listening ear? Or have you figured out with wisdom from above how to not listen and how to change the conversation? What happens when you don't get what you want?

When we look at that list, the Holy Spirit can reveal to us, just like He did with me that day in that sanctuary, what was in my heart. And so right now, Holy Spirit, as we close our eyes, I ask you Lord, to do what only you can do. If there's any fruit, which isn't really even fruit, it's rotten fruit, that isn't holy before you, discord that we've created with our tongue, bitterness in our hearts, jealousy, I ask, Lord, that you would just reveal it to us right now. And then I ask, Lord, even further that maybe we need to confess it to be free from it. You can open your eyes.

Last week, when pastor Dallas was preaching and he was talking about the power of our words and how we have used them, I had to take a moment to confess a sin. I had to go to my husband and say, hey, I'm sorry because this week there have been some words that I've spoke to you that they didn't show that what's in my heart is wisdom from above. And so I'm sorry. I want my words to strengthen you, to bring life to you, to show that I love you. And was on the stage, so that made it even harder.

I had to walk up there. And I'm okay with saying that publicly because confession brings healing and it brings freedom. It doesn't bring judgment. And this is the thing, when the Holy Spirit exposes us to what is inside of us, Exposure is an invitation to accept His gracious gift to each of us. It's not the end of the story.

It's not the end of the story. Our tongues that once gossiped can sow beasts. Our words that have once wounded people can bring life when our hearts are filled with wisdom from above. And so, just repeat this after me. Holy Spirit, fill me with wisdom from above.

My life bear the fruit of purity, peace, gentleness, mercy, and sincerity. Thank you, Jesus. Now I wanna do something a little different today. And so I asked my kids to kinda clear the front row in case someone needed to sit down. But I know that the enemy loves to cause jealousy in churches, and that he loves for wisdom from the earth to try to corrupt our thinking.

And He loves for us to think, oh, why did they do that? And tell ourselves stories and cause division within places. And I'm not saying that that is here. I don't know that, never heard that, never been told that. But I want us to pray that as a church, that we would be unified, that our hearts, that the source of them, would be seeking wisdom from above, and that we would just ask the Holy Spirit to give us that today, to help us, to grow us into the future, what He wants to do.

We cannot do it on our own. We can't do it without His wisdom and without His help, and He told us to ask. So I thought it would be really powerful today if we just came together and we just tarried with the Lord. This isn't something I can do, but I see some saints in the room that I know know how to tarry. And so I just want us all to come forward.

I would like everyone to be a part if you feel comfortable, especially my people who I would consider wise, who I would consider someone who sought the Lord and you have wisdom from above. And if you need to sit down to tarry with the Lord as a unified body,