08: How to Spot the Wise

Good morning.

This is uh James chapter three, verses thirteen through eighteen.

It says, 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 is earthly, unspiritual, demonic.

For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice.

But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere.

And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Thanks for joining us this morning.

My name is James Rathman.

I'm the pastor here at Redemption Church Denver.

It's great to see all of you.

That was such great singing.

It was like you didn't even have masks on.

It was so good.

We did have masks on for the audience at home, uh for the viewership.

Uh uh, but uh yeah, it just sounded wonderful.

So thanks for participating with us, for singing.

Uh and then uh on the other side, when we sing two more songs, let's just sing twice as loud uh through our masks.

We'll try it.

Um so a couple of announcements before we get started.

Uh, kids Church is open.

This is the third week that Kids Church is open.

So if you have a zero to three year old, uh they uh don't uh aren't required to sit with you in the service any longer, but they can join us at uh Redemption Kids.

Just register online and go ahead and register for Redemption Kids when you do that.

Um also August 5th, which is just a week from Wednesday, which is pretty crazy that August has already happened.

Uh like March 8th happened, and then there was some span of time that I don't know what happened, and now it's August.

Um August 5th, we're beginning our fall Bible study called Your Place in the Story of Redemption.

Uh, really want to encourage you to sign up for this if you haven't already.

Uh, we uh are providing at each gathering for the study uh childcare and food.

So literally, this is taking something out of your schedule.

This is one less thing to plan.

Uh that's what's happening when you join this study.

We're going to be moving through the story of redemptive history as described in scripture.

So it takes place in four parts: there's creation, there's fall, there's redemption, and then there's our future hope, the glory that we're looking forward to.

By understanding how the story of creation takes place, then we're able to understand how our life stories fit into that larger narrative.

That's where we discover things like purpose and we discover things like wisdom and how to engage with a world right now that seems very disorienting.

We're able to orient ourselves to the true story that's actually taking place in history.

Uh so if you feel disoriented, uh, this is the study for you.

Uh really recommend it.

So you can sign up uh on our app, just tap registrations and sign up for that study.

Uh looking forward to the group that's starting to gather around that.

So it should be a really great time.

All right.

Uh lastly, so uh there's been some uh economic turmoil lately.

Um are you aware?

Yeah, okay.

We're all on the same page.

So uh something that I that I want to just draw our attention back to is giving.

Uh what does giving mean in a season like this?

And is this like the last time that we should be talking about giving?

Um well it I I don't think it is.

And and it here's why.

This is this is one of those seasons where uh your giving to the church is is really important.

And we're giving, in a sense, really towards our future here, or our future here.

We're looking to really connect with this community, all those cars that you see driving by and those people that you see walking and running by this morning when you're zoning out during my sermon.

Uh we're looking to connect with them in this community.

Uh and your giving, just on a discipleship level, is an act of worship.

Now, it may feel like this is this is overstating it.

That's what I would say too if my salary depended on my giving, right?

Uh, but it really is an act of worship.

So I I during this season, I I want you to consider it maybe less.

You may be needing to give less during this season.

If you tithe, 10% goes down with your income.

And that's obviously okay.

Like that's not something we as a church financially, to be frank, we're we're doing good.

Uh, but I want you to consider your heart through this season.

I know that throughout this, I hadn't realized how much confidence and hope I had placed in uh the home that my wife and I bought continuing to increase in value.

And as this uh has gone on and as things become more and more difficult to discern, I've realized, oh, you know what?

That was never real security.

Real security only ever took place in God.

And so by our giving, we're reinforcing that reality in our hearts.

So if that's not uh a part of your practice of worship, I I want you, I want to encourage you towards that end.

Uh, it it is a joyful thing to be able to part with your money towards the greater story of redemption.

Um, that is that is the model that we see in scripture.

So I want to invite you into that.

Okay, uh that covers my note that said mention giving.

All right, let's pray, and then we're going to get into today's text about wisdom.

Holy Father, you are so gracious towards us.

That even with all that's going on, we're able to gather together.

And even in the midst of a pandemic, you've supplied means so that those that aren't able to join us physically in the room can still join us uh digitally online.

Lord, I pray that your word would continue to go out.

Father, that you would build into our church a resilience and a sense of real mission, not a sense of pause during this season, but a trust that your word continues to go forward, perhaps even more than ever.

Lord, open our hearts to that possibility.

And would you use this morning as we gather together under your word to shape us and refine us into a kingdom of priests?

Lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So this summer, my wife and I planted a garden, and uh we also planted flowers.

The flowers have done very well, and our garden has taken the path of non-existence.

Uh I don't think there's a single vegetable that we've gotten out of it except for one, two.

All right, my wife just showed it.

There were two vegetables, a real harvest for the winter.

There are two.

One of them I'm pretty sure a squirrel ate half of, uh, which was a green pepper.

So uh we we did not we did not do a good job growing this garden.

And uh, you know, when you grow a garden well, uh when it produces a yield, the scripture talks about that as you're literally tapping into the very wisdom of God when that happens.

I don't know what that says about us.

Uh here's one of my favorite texts of scripture to describe this principle.

This is Isaiah 28, 23 to 26.

You're just gonna see 26, so you can listen to the first part.

It says, give ear and hear my voice, give attention and hear my speech.

Does he who plows for sowing plow continually?

Does he continually open and harrow his ground?

When he has leveled its surface, does he not scatter dill, sow cumin, and put wheat in rows and barley in its proper place, and emmer as the border?

For he is rightly instructed, his God teaches him.

Look at how in the dirt the wisdom of God is.

Look at those descriptions are so practical.

It's uh look, when you plow your soil, do you plow continually?

No, I mean, I don't think.

I'm not the guy to ask.

But you you you plow and then you're done plowing, then you move on to planting.

And when you plant, you plant, you scatter the dill, but you plant the wheat in rows.

And then on the edge, you plant emmer to protect the rest of the garden.

There's this process in this practical way that makes a garden flourish.

And how do we know that?

Scripture says that it's the wisdom of God that teaches us that.

It is God who instructed that level of practicality for how a garden is supposed to grow.

The wisdom of God is right into the dirt.

And this explains to us what we're looking at when we're exploring the wisdom of God.

When we're shown the wisdom of God, we're shown how to engage with reality, to bring goodness out of it, to bring fruitfulness and goodness out of the world.

That's what the wisdom of God does.

It sees reality as it is and it draws out of it wisdom.

It draws out of it the goodness.

A Christian life is meant to look like this.

We're meant to be instructed by the wisdom of God so that we're able to draw goodness out of creation in the most practical levels.

In our relationships, we're meant to be able to engage the reality of those relationships and draw out goodness financially or uh systemically.

You know, we're meant to be able to engage the reality and by the wisdom of God, draw out goodness.

Now, what James is looking for, not me, James, this James, what James is looking for in this section is he's on a quest to find someone who is wise and understanding among us.

I think we would join him on that quest.

Here's what he says in James 3, 13.

Who is wise and understanding among you?

By his good conduct, let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom.

James expects that the wisdom of God will be bound up with good works, and the wisdom of God will be informed by a posture of meekness.

So it tangibly does something.

The wisdom of God is not like the wisdom of Siddhartha, who ultimately finds that we ought to sit by a river and then contemplatively we will have done enough.

Now, James expects that the wisdom of God will not result in our passivity and just the enjoyment of our own knowledge, but the wisdom of God will result in action, real good works, like a well-planted garden that bears fruit.

But that wisdom must be in the posture of meekness.

The wisdom of God takes place in the posture of meekness.

Now, why is that?

It's because we're engaging with a reality that is beyond us.

You know, Megan and I have an option right now.

Uh, next year we can look at our garden and we'll say, you know what?

Uh we didn't do it wrong.

Those vegetables were wrong.

And this year, we're gonna do that same thing, and those vegetables better get their act together.

No, that that's not the way wisdom works.

You know, that's not an approach of meekness towards a reality that is outside of us.

The vegetables aren't wrong.

You know, or another picture, you know, if you're if you're walking around and you have a map, and your map doesn't agree with with what the world bears out, it's not the world that's wrong.

It's your map that's wrong.

But so many of us, we move around, and instead of a posture of meekness towards creation, uh, we just are trying to plug the data in in a way that reinforces what we desire and want to think.

Humility allows us to truly engage with reality as it is, so that we're able to learn by the wisdom of God, you know what, the dill needs to be scattered, the wheat needs to be planted in rows.

How do you think that wisdom of God, how do you think God instructed that?

It was over time and over generations that by testing you may discern what is the will of God.

That's Romans 12.

So somebody plants the wheat and it doesn't grow.

They try it in rows, it flourishes.

That's learning the wisdom of God by a posture of meekness.

Now, when we adopt that posture of meekness, we are able to engage with and see the world, reality, as it is, because we're willing to be corrected by it.

Okay, now some of you, maybe I didn't see anybody in here, but maybe maybe at home or watching online, uh you you might start to smell where this is headed.

Okay, there's a preacher, and he's standing up and he's telling me that he can see reality as it is.

And now he's just gonna lay out for us what that reality is.

And you know, our hackles start to kind of go up, and it's like, you know, I don't want to play this game.

I've seen too many people taken advantage of by this very means.

You know, we might say, of course, a religious person is claiming to see reality.

It begins with meekness, but it always ends in pride.

When you finally do see reality and claim that you've seen it rightly, it always ends in a prideful posture.

And what about perspectives?

You know, you're you're looking at this bringing your perspective, your history.

And that's the only thing that you can ever look out of.

So can you really claim to have seen the truth of reality and that wisdom allows us to actually see things as they are?

More strongly, doesn't a religious perspective necessarily cloud our ability to see reality?

Because if we already know the story and we're trying to make the data fit into the story that we already know, then aren't we already skewing how we're going to look at and see the data?

All right, put a bit more strongly.

Once we claim to see reality, is there any way that we don't use that to oppress people who view things differently?

Isn't any claim to see reality ultimately a move towards oppression?

Even if it began in meekness.

The danger of claiming wisdom, the root of the danger of claiming wisdom, and then how to spot real wisdom.

Look at the danger, the root of the danger, and how to spot real wisdom.

This is James, this is the danger of claiming wisdom, James 3, verse 14.

James 3:14

But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth.

All right, so James now moves into this dangerous position of claiming to know the truth, but out of a wisdom that's actually false.

We're gonna look at what that is.

And this is a dangerous place to be when you're claiming to be wise.

It's a false wisdom.

So what we see this false wisdom does is it's colored by jealousy and selfish ambition.

Bitter jealousy and selfish ambition.

Now, when you're claiming to see reality from a posture of bitter jealousy and selfish ambition, you're always going to be manipulating the truth and not seeing reality as it is.

So let's look at these two terms, jealousy and selfish ambition.

First of all, jealousy.

The jealous person views the world where others are a measure of themselves.

And so their general posture towards the world is one of envy or criticism.

The jealous person looks up at somebody else and thinks, okay, well, the reason that they're there is because they lied or they cheated or they did something that uh I never would have done, and they view the world through a lens of uh through a lens of envy and a lens of criticism.

So when you're viewing your relationships from a jealous position, then everything is gauged in terms of you and how you stack up with the person that you're talking to.

Is this person some sort of a threat?

Any goodness in them becomes a threat to you?

And so all of a sudden, these positive things about the people that you're engaging with, you have to interpret as negative things, because all their goodness is a threat to the reality of who you are.

We shift the world into a self-preserving narrative.

All right, now selfish ambition is kind of like the perfect opposite of jealousy.

Selfish ambition, if jealousy looks up and tries to pull down, selfish ambition looks down and tries to keep down.

Uh, this word is actually a really rare Greek word.

Um, one of the only other uh occurrences of it is actually by Aristotle.

I didn't know this, a commentary looked it up.

Or I I read it in a commentary.

Wouldn't that be cool if I was reading it and I was like, that Greek word reminds me of the Aristotelian word.

That didn't happen, though.

But listen to this selfish ambition, Aristotle uses this word to describe the narrow partisan zeal of greedy politicians.

Does that sound relevant?

So, what does selfish ambition mean?

It means I'm the one who's in control of the narrative, and if you threaten my narrative at all, I will push you down, and I will silence you.

So I have the power, and if you threaten it at all, then I will push you down.

So both of those use their own position to judge what the truth is.

So the the lens then through which they're looking at the truth is not a lens of, okay, there's something outside of me that's real, and I need to discover what's really there.

No, that that's not the way they're viewing it.

Instead, it's what does that truth mean about my position?

How is it a threat?

And then how am I going to use my understanding of the truth to either try and pull down or to keep down?

So that's a wisdom that's guided by jealousy or selfish ambition.

Now, uh, you may be thinking, okay, great, but this isn't really news.

I mean, isn't that just kind of the way we assume people work?

In fact, if we're any sort of an enlightened person at all, then we'll know, look, that's the reality of the way that things work.

In fact, anytime someone claims to know the truth, all they're doing is trying to manipulate the evidence to either keep someone down or to pull someone down.

And so we know that all claims to the truth are ultimately just about power and manipulation.

Any sort of shrewd or wise person might know that.

And, you know, ultimately this means that, like Nietzsche was right, the will to power is the only thing that's driving us.

And the only accurate interpretive framework that we have to understand the world is the lens of power.

There is no truth.

There is either somebody without the power trying to get the power, or somebody with the power trying to preserve their power.

And in order to view the world accurately, we need to abandon the lens of truth and exclusively look through the lens of power.

That might be where we're headed in this.

Okay, now here's the problem with abandoning the lens of truth and exclusively looking through the lens of power.

First of all, it's extremely alienating.

Because what that causes us to do is it means that we can never listen to what someone tells us.

We always have to be listening just behind what they say.

Because nobody could ever be sharing what they legitimately feel or what they've legitimately experienced or what the data has actually shown.

All they're doing is using those words and those phrases to try and gain power or to try and keep power in a relationship.

All of our language becomes posturing, no knowing of one another.

So we can move through the world and become extremely successful at moving through the world and remain completely unknown by anyone and never know anyone.

It's incredibly alienating from one another.

And it's also alienating, of course, from the truth itself.

There is no reality to be dealt with outside of us.

Leslie Newbegin.

With regards to this sort of posture that our culture has developed towards, excuse me, away from truth and towards just viewing things in terms of power.

He says this we have learned to acknowledge the cultural conditioning of all claims to know the truth.

But if that leads us to abandon as hopeless the search for truth, then our culture is dying.

All living creatures must come to terms with a reality beyond themselves, which they have to explore and about which they can make mistakes.

To abandon hope of speaking truthfully about reality is to abandon the adventure of life.

It's a little distracting.

To abandon, I think I'm I might wait.

Wow.

It's only driving closer.

To to abandon the hope of speaking truthfully about reality is to abandon the adventure of life.

I want you to hear that.

Okay, we have to be able to know there's a there's something out there.

It's beyond us.

And by wisdom, we can try, even in our finite fallen condition, we can try and speak real, truthful things about this that aren't just manipulative, but are a legitimate quest for the truth together.

Okay, so how do we get out of this?

Where do we go from here?

How do we abandon this cynicism that says there's only power, there's no truth, and return to the adventure of life where we can collaboratively seek to discover something that's outside of ourselves.

In order to go forward, we have to see that things are actually much worse than Nietzsche would have expected.

It's actually much worse than things just being colored by power rather than being colored by truth.

Let's look at the root of the danger of claiming wisdom.

This is James 3, 15.

This, that is the jealousy and selfish ambition-motivated claim to wisdom.

This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic.

This is the opposite of God's wisdom: earthly, unspiritual, demonic.

Now that little triumvirate right there should remind you of something else in scripture.

This is a way of describing the reality of the sin-corrupted, evil world, the reason why uh any worldview, any person knows the world is not as it should be.

Now, the biblical description of why the world is not as it should be is threefold.

Uh, one is earthly.

Now, this corresponds to the world.

Earthly, that is the there's uh the systems and stories that we live in that neglect to acknowledge God.

So whenever we develop a system of understanding that denies God his rightful position, here's what typically unfolds.

We idolize one aspect of creation and we say, if we receive this, if we make this ultimate, then we will finally achieve heaven.

And that causes us to demonize another aspect of creation.

Say we just need to get rid of that bad thing.

Now, the reason that's an earthly view is because it denies God his rightful position, which causes us to misunderstand the world that we're in.

Because the biblical description of creation is that God made the world good, but not ultimate.

God is ultimate.

So we're making an error on both sides.

I'll give you an example that hopefully no one likes this example.

For, because I'm gonna do both.

For the conservative, we would idolize freedom, and we would demonize whatever threatened that freedom.

For the liberal, we would idolize equality, and we would demonize whatever threatened that equality.

But listen, freedom is good, and equality is good.

Neither of those things are ultimate.

When we make either of those our ultimate good, it is causing us to demonize other aspects of our creation, other aspects of our goodness.

And so we're calling something bad that is actually good.

That is earthly wisdom.

Second, unspiritual.

So this is fleshly.

So what we see here is the world, the flesh, and the devil.

Fleshly or unspiritual wisdom.

What James is calling attention to here is that it's not just that the systems and stories that we live in take God out of his rightful place and therefore cause us to misunderstand the world.

But it is also that we ourselves in our own hearts take God out of his rightful place and therefore cause us to even misunderstand ourselves.

We think that the best, most hopeful thing we could be is not a creature in the arms and guidance of a loving God, but rather to be God ourselves so that we can determine what is right and wrong.

And from ourselves, we will be able to decide what will bring us joy and what will bring us fulfillment.

And so it is not just that the stories we live in are bent, but it is also that we ourselves are bent.

And then the one that is probably quite frankly, I think, most difficult to grasp for our culture, which just shows how effective he has been, is the devil.

This is demonic.

James is showing that even in the spiritual realm, there is a deception that takes place.

And we are prone to believe this deception.

And the deception is that God is not for our good.

What God ultimately desires to do is withhold his good from us.

And if we are going to experience good, it is by abandoning God and developing a knowledge that can be exclusively based on ourselves.

When you see these three things at play, we see the world system that we live in and think in motivated by a demonic lie that we embrace because of our twisted hearts, we realize that we are pretty bound up in this thing.

The root of this false wisdom, of the jealousy and the selfish ambition, is not just from Nietzsche, or it's not just from critical theory, or it's not just from some, you know, new academic way of understanding the world through the lens of power.

No, this runs deep into our hearts.

It causes us to be alienated from truth, from one another, and from God.

So what's the fruit of that?

James 316, the less popular of the 316s.

I make that joke whenever we hit a 316 verse.

Um says, For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice.

What's the fruit of this system of false wisdom that we live in?

It's disorder and every vile practice.

You know what it is?

It's my garden didn't grow, so I'm gonna take from your garden.

My garden didn't grow.

The reason that yours did, it was because you must have taken from me.

Or, you know what, I've got the right to any garden that I can see.

Or, you know what, I own all the gardens, and so you don't get any of it because I own, I own these by my own power and a cord.

Do you see what that causes?

It's disorder and every vile practice that flows from that.

That is the fruit of this false wisdom.

For the Christian, uh, we see this rule uh uh in our lives in terms of our tendency towards sin in our broken relationships and sexual immorality and greed and theft, it all comes from this root of the danger.

So the root of the danger shows us that we live in a corrupted world, that we ourselves are corrupted, and that there is a spiritual agent, the devil, who is looking to ensure that this corruption remains by a continued alienation from God.

Okay, so as you can see, uh this is not a problem that we can just think our way out of.

I think it's common when we're talking about wisdom to think like, okay, so what's been put in front of us?

Well, there's the wisdom of God and there's the wisdom of the world.

So what should we do?

Let's just abandon the wisdom of the world that thinks just in terms of power, and we'll go towards the wisdom of God that thinks in terms of truth and love and justice, and then we will uh uh finally that we will have fixed this, we'll have solved the problem.

But do you see what that neglects?

It neglects that you are a part of the problem.

The systems that we live in, you know who makes those?

We do.

The brokenness that's demonstrated in those is flowing out of our own hearts.

It's not in contradiction with our hearts, it's demonstrating the truth of our hearts back to us.

We're believing the lie that God wants to withhold by his constraints, not bless.

So we're all wrong people.

So what do we do?

Where do we see real wisdom?

What we need is wisdom that's from above.

See, a wisdom that comes from outside of ourselves to break into this broken system and demonstrate a way forward and actually rescue us out of it.

Here's the way James describes it in James 3.17.

But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere.

Jesus is the very wisdom of God.

I want you to see this in the character of Jesus.

When wisdom comes to us, when the wisdom from above comes to us, it doesn't come as like some idea that just gets planted in your head or uploaded into you like the matrix or something.

When God sought to demonstrate his wisdom from above, he came as a person.

He incarnated and demonstrated his wisdom to us personally.

So let's we can put some meat on this.

Uh, wisdom from above is first pure.

Look at how Jesus remains completely pure.

In the garden, when Adam is tempted by the devil, he caves and he eats the fruit.

In the garden, when Jesus is tempted by the devil to not go through with the pain and suffering of the cross, Jesus passes the temptation.

Jesus maintains God in his proper position.

Jesus remains completely pure.

Wisdom then is peaceable.

Jesus teaches in the Sermon on the Mount in the Beatitudes, he teaches, Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.

The peacemaker is himself, and it's it's how he draws us into the experience of the Trinity, that we might be called sons of God as peacemakers by his wisdom.

It is gentle because a bruised reed, he will not break, a smoldering wick, he will not quench.

If you feel threatened by someone who's more powerful than you, or if you feel nervous that your power is slipping away, if you feel broken by the systems of the world and in yourself and the way that you discover you have been living and reinforcing those things, Jesus is the perfect one to go to because he is gentle.

He will not break you or quench you.

Open to reason.

Here's one instance of it from Isaiah.

It says, Come now, let us reason together.

Though your sins are like scarlet, I will make them white as snow.

That's how Jesus reasons with you.

So come, let us reason with him and be open to that reason.

He's full of mercy and good fruits.

Jesus himself made himself the sacrifice for his enemies, who is us.

And the fruit of that is that we might be taken in by the very wisdom of God, by Jesus Himself.

We are his fruit.

He receives all who call on him.

And he calls you towards him.

And it is a sincere call that anyone, when they turn to Jesus, when they trust in Christ as the true sacrifice, as the true wisdom of God, as the ultimate reality that is outside of ourselves by which everything else may be judged and discerned, Jesus receives us all.

There is no one he turns away.

No color, nor creed, nor past decisions, nor position in life.

There is no one to whom Christ will not receive.

So how can a claim to the truth be something more than just a claim of power and oppression over someone?

It can when that ultimate truth is the God who became a man to die for his enemies.

And how do we as a church hold this ultimate truth, this ultimate wisdom in a way that is uh gentle and open to reason and not shutting people down, but but engaging in real conversation and not buying into the dichotomies that are being presented to us in culture right now, but instead able to engage with all people at the level of their genuine and real humanity?

That's possible because we are forgiven sinners, which means that when we view the truth, we view it from a posture of knowing there really is something outside of ourselves, but also knowing, you know what?

I'm part of the problem too.

So I need to be open to reason because we become part of each other's hope to discover the reality of the world.

You know, some of you can probably plant a good garden.

And when you come in and you share with my wife and I, hey, it's because they were in direct sunlight for the whole time, uh, then we'll say, oh, that makes sense.

That makes sense.

We'll be wrong there in order to be fruitful together.

Now what is the produ what is the product of this?

In James 3.18, and a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.

Do you feel how relevant this is?

How much that that this perspective on that that Christ That's the devil part I was talking about.

That that Christ, as the center of our understanding and as the center of our wisdom, creates a posture in us where we're able to claim to know the truth, which as Christians, that's what we're doing.

We claim to know what the truth is, what the reality of the story we're in is, and what the hope we're heading towards is.

You know, that's it.

These are powerful, big truth claims that we're making.

And yet, because they are made in Christ and of who Christ is and what he has done for us, these truth claims don't lead to oppression, they lead to freedom.

They don't lead to canceling, they lead to being reopened.

They don't lead to discrimination or a fear of being called discriminatory, they lead towards open repentance because we're moving as forgiven sinners in Christ.

Oh, this is a different way of living.

The wisdom from above is so different from the wisdom of the world.

It takes us back into the adventure of life.

All right.

Are there any questions?

One What are practical ways that the church can be an example of God's wisdom and order in the midst of a corrupted world?

So part of what the church is, is a proclamation and a demonstration of this order of wisdom.

So one of the most practical ways is we can demonstrate together in our community what it looks like when people unite together around being forgiven sinners.

Well, what is the what would that type of community look like?

It looks like, you know what, I have an expectation that I'm going to let you down and that you're going to let me down.

And we're gonna have space for one another in that.

It looks like a desire to be seeking the truth together.

Which means that when we're discussing politics, for example, we have a space and a generosity.

With one another, which allows us to explore towards the truth rather than to try and just crush and stamp out.

Now, notice how that's different than just a relativism that says, Well, you think what I think, and I'll think nope.

That's not relativism, but I would like to try that.

You think what I think, and then I'll think what I think.

You think what you think, and I'll think what I think.

Because you see, that's just giving up and saying, you know what?

Instead of experiencing the pain of trying not to be alienated from one another, let's just accept that we're alienated from one another, we'll never reach any sort of mutual understanding, and we'll just walk away.

What if instead we of the relativism and instead of the trying to stamp each other out with the truth, we said, what if we were reasonable together?

And we knew that there was a real truth out there, and we know that the ultimate reality of this truth is that God is gracious towards us, he's patient with us, he forgives us, he's kind, he desires the best for us and seeks for us to really experience his wisdom.

And so we can then explore together, that's the adventure of life that Newbegin is talking about.

We explore together what the truth of God is as manifest in our lives, and we receive input from one another in that process.

That type of community that I'm describing, you know what else is like that?

Nothing else.

There's nothing else like that.

Your family, family, like that's the closest thing we've got to the church.

I promise your family is not like that.

Uh you you you can't talk about politics with your family.

It's too scary.

Uh, there's too much involved, and you're gonna get hurt too bad.

What if you could with the people in your church?

What if you were open to reason and correction?

And you expected in yourself, I'm gonna discover ways where I'm wrong.

And I've got a safety here to be wrong because I know that my position is grounded in Christ.

It's not a relativism, we're really seeking the truth, but it's from humility and meekness from the gospel.

Oh, I would love to be a part of that community.

Uh so let's try it.

I mean, what else are we doing?

It's the pandemic, all our plans are canceled.

So let's try and be that community.

Uh to do that, you need to get to know each other, get some time with each other, take each other out to dinner, uh, frustrate each other a bit, uh, join a redemption group, sign up for the Bible study.

That would all be practical.

Matthew 26, verses 26 to 28 says, Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread and after blessing it, broke it, and gave it to the disciples and said, Take, eat, this is my body.

Matthew 26:26–28

And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.

You have a little thing, communion cup.

Um, we'll bless those together.

Holy Father, we praise you for the gift of your son towards us, the wisdom that you sent down from above to reconcile uh corrupted and evil people and people who want to remove you from the story.

Lord, thank you for putting yourself back into our story.

Lord, I pray for the people that are listening to this now, if there's someone in our church uh today or part of our gathering today, who you are not a part of their story, Lord, I pray that in the same way you would put yourself back into their story.

Draw them into the adventure of life that's scary because we have to really see the truth, but it's good news because the truth is the God who gave his son that we might be reconciled to him.

Lord, we pray that as we take communion, that would become the seat of wisdom in our hearts.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.