Wisdom From Above

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0:00Yeah, thank you for having me this morning. This is a treat for us to be here, and yeah, so thank you. Even though I guess it was Joel's decision to have us here, so I guess I should just be thanking Joel. But yes, so my name is Jake. I'm the youth director at Spring Run. We've been there about five years, which is kind of crazy that that's already happened. But yes, so our church, Spring Run, has been in the book of James recently, and so I'm going to take us there, because that's what we've been studying, and so I'm going to bring us to a passage right in the middle of James.

0:33And if you have not studied James in a long time, or you've never gone there, just a quick kind of idea of what the book is about. James is a short, practical book. It's focused on how Christians should live. You know, the fact that we're Christians, how should we actually conduct ourselves in life? And it's very to the point, and it's so to the point sometimes that James will often say, hey, here's how you should live, and he doesn't even really explain why you should do that.

1:02He just says that and then moves on. And I think it's so much to the point that James is often a book that our culture is largely on board with, because there's so many just, hey, you should live this way. Let's move on. For example, he says in the first chapter, he says, Now, if I was preaching to a room full of atheists, I think I'd get an amen to that one. It's not that, they'd be like, yeah, that is what religion should be like. And he says other things, like he talks about controlling your speech.

1:38He talks about not being partial to rich people over poor people. He says, don't be selfish. He says, if you're Christians, you can't just say that you care about people. You actually have to act like you care about people. I'm nervous my notes are going to slide right off of here. So, okay, there we go. Now, to a lot of people, that just seems like a self-evident way of living. Like, we know that to live this way makes people happier, causes less suffering in the world.

2:04So, this is just self-evident. But in the middle of the book, where I'm going to take us this morning, James stops and he grounds his argument in exactly, he grounds his argument in something very specific. And by doing that, he's saying, even though Christian living, moral living, and non-Christian moral living might overlap in some significant ways and look very similar, they come from two completely different places. And as a result, they're fundamentally different.

2:34And only one of them is going to lead to a truly moral, loving life long-term. And so, we'll see him say that naturally, human moral living, what he's going to call wisdom, that's based on our own experience, our opinions, and our passions. But a truly moral life has to be received before it can be lived. And so, by looking at his argument, we'll see the kinds of wisdom, two kinds of wisdom, the sources of wisdom, and the way to find real wisdom.

3:02So, let me read our passage today, starting in James 3, verse 13. He says, This is not the wisdom that comes from above, but 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, impartial and sincere. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.

3:46What causes quarrels and fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

4:11Do you suppose it is to no purpose that the scripture says he yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us, but he gives more grace. Therefore, it says, God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Submit yourselves, therefore, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be wretched and mourn and weep.

4:37Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you. Let me pray. We've prayed a lot this morning already, which is wonderful. Let me pray again over this text. Father God, we thank you that you don't just leave us to our own devices to stumble through life blindly, but that you actually have revealed yourself through your word. God, we ask that we would not only read it, but believe it, whether we understand it rightly.

5:10And God, that by your spirit you would press us into the mold of Jesus so that we can live the way that you've designed us to live. So, Lord, we ask this in your name, and I pray for the teaching of this text that what is true would be heard and received, and what is false would be quickly forgotten. We pray this in your name, Lord. So, the first thing James says, he asks this question, who is wise among you? Now, in a letter about how you should live, that might sound kind of how Christians should live in a moral way.

5:43That might sound odd to us, but that probably sounds odd to us because when we think of wisdom, we're thinking in an intellectual category. So, when we think of wisdom, the wisest person in the room to us is the person that has read a lot of books, understands a lot of things, has synthesized some deep ideas, is able to communicate that. And when the Bible talks about wisdom, it does mean that. It certainly means what you think and what you know, but it means a lot more than that.

6:11When the Bible talks about wisdom, it's referring to an entire way of being, the way that you conduct yourself in life in general. So, for the Bible, the wisest person in the room is not just the person who knows the most, but the person who knows what the good life looks like and has applied it to their life. For the Bible, wisdom is embodied knowledge. It's not just head knowledge. And so, when he's talking about wisdom, that's what he's talking about.

6:33He's talking about the moral life, the good life that God has designed for all people to live. So, he then draws the difference out between these two different kinds of wisdom. And he says, okay, there's a wisdom that comes from above. It's identified. You know what it is by its meekness, by its humility. And it produces good things. It produces peace, impartiality, sincerity. And then he says there's this other kind of wisdom. It's earthly, so it's not, it doesn't come from above.

7:01It's natural to us. It's earthly. And he goes on as far to say it's demonic. And it's identified. You know what it is because it comes from jealousy, comes from selfishness. And it produces every vile practice. Now, if you're like me, you read that, and it's kind of hard to pinpoint where you are on that spectrum because you're like, hmm. Because most of us think I'm not the best person in the world, but I'm definitely not the worst person. So, I prefer kind of that gray area where I could kind of slide in.

7:31That doesn't make me feel quite so bad. I don't know if I'm demonic or heavenly in this. But the way that James is talking about wisdom here is not foreign to the Bible. It's not new. This is how the Bible always talks about wisdom. And actually, the passage we read in Proverbs, I'm going to go back to that. I'll just read a little bit of it again about wisdom. In the beginning of Proverbs, it's outlining what is this wisdom thing that I'm talking about.

7:57And in verse 8 of chapter 1 of Proverbs, he says again, So, this is a good thing. Wisdom is not only a nice idea, but it's actually good for you. It actually builds you up. And then he turns around, next verse. My son, if sinners, not mom and dad, entice you, do not consent. If they say, come with us, lie in wait with us for blood, let us ambush the innocent without reason. Like Sheol, let us swallow them alive and whole like those who go down to the pit.

8:31We shall find all precious goods. We shall fill our houses with plunder. We'll have a common purse. All this stuff. All this terrible stuff. Again, you're getting this, okay, there's a good kind of wisdom that leads to good things. And there's a terrible kind of wisdom that leads to terrible things. It's not hard to realize, okay, it sounds like it would be good to be wise and bad to be not wise. Okay, I'm picking that up. I don't think the point, though, the reason I'm showing this dichotomy is not just, the point is not just that there are two different kinds of wisdom, and one is really good and one is really bad.

9:06And good people will always be drawn to good wisdom, and bad people will be drawn to bad wisdom. I think part of the point that James is making, that Proverbs is making, is everybody thinks they're wise. Everybody thinks they're living the moral life. Everybody acts in a way that makes sense to them. And so James isn't simply saying there's two different kinds of wisdom. He's also saying what you think is righteous living, what you think is a moral life, might not actually be a moral life at all.

9:31When I was a freshman at JMU, me and my wife Mariah went to JMU, and I was a freshman there, and I started joining InterVarsity, a campus ministry there. And I went to their large group meeting for the first time. And there was a couple hundred people there. I get called up for this game. They would have games for freshmen. So hopefully everyone could laugh together at freshmen. And I get called up for this game, and I find out the game is, we're going to play a song, and you're going to dance to it, and whoever dances best wins.

10:04And I come from, well, I'm a homeschooled kid, so that's strike one and two when it comes to dancing. But I also, my family is just not really musical or dancing oriented in any way. So I know this is probably going to go bad, but I'm like, I know it's better to commit. You know, don't just kind of stand there awkwardly. Like, go for it as hard as you can. And so I'm standing up there kind of behind the speakers, and they start this song, and I really only have a few seconds before kind of the reaction of everybody chimes in, and I can't really hear what the song is.

10:36And I swear that I hear what comes on sounds like some kind of orchestral symphony. It sounds like a ballroom dancing song or something like that. I'm like, that's weird, but go for it. And so I start gesturing, and I'm spinning. It looks like I'm at a ball dancing by myself with nobody. And I'm watching my friends in the front row who are so excited for me to come up and dance and embarrass myself, realize, like, it's too embarrassing, and they're not making eye contact with me.

11:04It's like, oh, no. Well, I come down after, and I find out the song that was actually on was Wrecking Ball by Miley Cyrus. So not at all what I thought it was, and I was up there looking like a complete buffoon in not even the way that you're supposed to look like a buffoon in that game. So I tell this story because I was up there dancing my heart out to what I thought was one particular kind of song, only to find out that the song was not even remotely close to that, and I was dancing completely out of sync with what was actually on.

11:35And I think what James in part is saying is that's how most of us live life. We live life thinking we're dancing to one kind of song. We know the moves. We know what we should be doing. He says, actually, you don't even understand what kind of song he's playing. You are completely out of sync with the way that you are meant to be acting right now. And so these are the two kinds of wisdom, and what is most natural is for us to live in the demonic earthly wisdom.

12:02So those are the two kinds of wisdom, but James goes on, he contrasts these two kinds of wisdom by talking about where they come from. So the human wisdom, the earthly wisdom, it's imperfect and it leads to destructive ends because it's that, it's human. So notice twice he says the wisdom, this wisdom is described as coming from jealousy and selfish ambition. And he repeats that twice, so it's not just some random negative adjectives that he's using to describe this kind of wisdom.

12:29And he really says it a third time because he says, what causes quarrels and issues in your church? Isn't it this same thing, the selfishness and jealousy, that people want what they don't have? And in selfishness, they think they deserve it and they reach out to grab it. That's what causes all these problems in a community. And so really he's saying three times, jealousy and selfish ambition. Now why does he choose to describe it that way? I think because that is, because that's at the heart of what Adam and Eve's sin in the garden is.

13:02So if you think about Genesis 3 and when Adam and Eve sin, the serpent shows up and he doesn't just say, oh, he's not like the guy in Proverbs 1 who's like, oh, come sin with us, it's going to be great, we're going to go kill people and it'll be a blast. That's not what, that's not what the serpent does. He starts with jealousy. And in Genesis 3, 5, he says, God knows that when you eat of it, the fruit, your eyes will be opened and you'll be like God, knowing good and evil.

13:27He's saying there's something God has that he doesn't want you to have. He's holding out on you. He's keeping from you. And then what happens? Selfish ambition. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, isn't that interesting? She took of the fruit and ate and she also gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate. There's a very wise pastor named Sinclair Ferguson who said, he's described sin as the belief that God is being stingy, that God's being withholding, that God has something good that he doesn't want you to have.

14:06That's exactly what Adam and Eve believe. That's exactly how they act. They believe that God's keeping something good for them and so what do they do in their jealousy? They reach out in selfishness and say, I should have this and they take it for themselves. And so by doing this, by connecting the kind of earthly wisdom James is talking about to the garden, to what Adam and Eve do, he's saying this is the fundamentally human way of living. This is natural.

14:34This is the software that comes preloaded on the computer. What most of us think is good moral living is really just watching out for ourselves. It's really just our sin nature. And we may think that it's all the right way to live, that this is good living, but really we're just acting out of self-interest and jealousy. And if you need any kind of confirmation that this is how the world works, you should watch Survivor. I don't know if there's any Survivor fans in the room.

15:03My wife and I have gotten into watching Survivor in the last few years. If you don't know what Survivor is, it's a show that's been on for a while. Put a bunch of strangers on an island in Fiji and they make them compete in challenges and then every night you have to vote someone out of the group and the last man standing gets a million dollars. And there's tons of drama and lying and backstabbing and it's great. But one of the things that you notice of everybody who comes to these islands to compete in this game, they all have some kind of moral code and they all use that moral code to justify whatever they're doing.

15:38And so you'll hear people say things like, it's just a game. Like, I got to do what I got to do. It's just a game. I'm trying to win. Or, you know, oh, that person betrayed my trust, so that means that I can do whatever I need to to them. Or, there's a million dollars on the line. Like, this would change my family's life. And they use that to justify however they're acting and whoever they're lying to. Everybody thinks that they're acting in line with some higher moral value.

16:01And the reality is, they're just acting in self-interest and self-preservation. And that's our natural form of moral living. That's what comes most naturally to us as humans. So everybody thinks they're living in the heavenly moral way, but the reality is, the most likely thing is, you're not. You're living out of selfish ambition. Now, what about the source of the other kind of wisdom, the godly wisdom? We're told that it comes from above, meaning from God's realm.

16:28And before anything else, it's pure. It's holy. It's set apart by God. In other words, the wisdom that comes from above is not from the natural realm. It is supernatural. It is a supernatural kind of wisdom. And therefore, it can't be created. It can't be discovered by us. It has to be received. So the question is, how do you receive that kind of wisdom? And this is where things get good. Because James is so practical, he's not just going to say, you need supernatural wisdom, probably from God, good luck.

17:00He's going to actually say, here's what you need. Here's what you need to do. And so he starts, he says, God gives more grace. That's how wisdom comes. It comes through grace. But then he doesn't even just stop there. He says, how do you receive grace? And he's very specific. He says, submission. Submission is how you receive grace. Now, I have to imagine, most of us cringe a little bit when we hear the word submission now. Mostly because, we know of all the ways in human relationships that submission can go wrong.

17:26Even when it's necessary. In parent relationships, in the government, with bosses, submission can go very wrong with humans. But submitting to God is the natural status, the natural state of all things. Just by being created, that is everything's natural state. That sin, what sin actually does is to destroy our relationship with God by convincing us that we don't need to be submitted. And actually being restored to relationship with God is realizing that my natural state is submitted to my Lord, my creator.

18:01And so to submit to God is actually to be in right relationship with God. That's what he's saying. You need to be in right relationship with God. And what does that look like? It looks like submission. And then he breaks that down. He says there's two parts of submission. There's resistance and attraction. So the first thing he says is resist the devil. Now in the Bible, the devil is often referred to as like a personal figure, like in the garden with the serpent.

18:28And sometimes it's just referred to as a thing. A force of some kind. But so it's fair to read this is when he says resist the devil, certainly means personal temptation from the devil in whatever form that might take. But also all of evil, all of sinful living, all things that destroy. And he's saying stop acting in evil ways. Now, when it comes to changing behavior, I think we live in a time that can make us feel uniquely defeated about the prospect of changing sinful living and sinful habits.

19:04And a couple things that come to my mind. Because we live in a scientific era, we have a better understanding and appreciation for the ways in which people can predispose towards all kinds of behaviors or actions, right? So alcoholism, we know there's some sort of genetic component to that. That there's people who struggle with anxiety just from kind of family lineage and history that you might have a learning disability. There's all kinds of ways that we're afflicted by things that we didn't individually choose and that our parents didn't necessarily individually choose for us.

19:38And so how can I, I think how can I resist doing something that I'm predisposed towards? I think that's something that's on our mind. Another thing that we might think of is counseling and therapy has never been more popular. And I think it's a gift. When counseling is done well, it is such a gift to people. But one of the things that it, if you've ever been in counseling, you realize one of the things that you have to dig into is the ways that I have grown up, the ways that I have learned to engage with other people is in large part the way I was raised by my parents.

20:12And when you get into that, when you start looking into that, you start to wonder how can I resist two decades of what I learned from the way I grew up? How could I fight that? I think that's another way we might be defeated. And then another one that comes to mind is we love personality tests. I'm sure there's some Enneagram or Myers-Briggs fans in the room, right? And those can be great as well. I think those can be a gift. But it also reminds us to think of the ways that we are that are innate.

20:43You know, the things about me that are just the way that I am. And so you can be tempted to be like, well, if I'm a technically minded person who's not very, you know, gracious or loving in how I speak to people, that's just kind of how I am. I'm sorry. You know, you should probably go talk to somebody else if you want comfort.

21:02So these are some ways that we might be defeated by the idea of what, how, what would it look like to change and resist, change my behavior and resist sin. But scripture says that sin, it's like a slave master. And for all of your life, you've had no choice but to do what that slave master said. But when you come to Christ, you are no longer under a slave master and you actually have the power in Christ to say no to sin. It doesn't mean you always will say no, but it means that you can say no.

21:33It means that you don't have to live the way that you've had to live for so long in that the freedom that's found in Christ is more powerful than the slavery that you lived in for however long that was. And so if we're going to listen to the Bible, we need to recognize no, this is, we can say no to sin. We can resist as hard as that might be, as many kinds of help as you might need, you can resist sin. And by the way, James seems to be saying that it gets easier over time, not harder.

22:01He says resist the devil and the devil will flee. And so over time, the burden should get lighter, not heavier. So that's the first part is resistance. If you're going to submit to God, be in the right relationship, you need to resist sin. But the other part is attraction. He says draw near to God and God will draw near to you. Now, is he saying something like, you know, God helps those who help themselves? No, he's not saying that. He's probably saying this in the way that the Old Testament prophets were constantly telling people return to God.

22:29They wouldn't just say, Israel, you're caught in sin. Stop doing what you're doing. Tear down all these things. Just stop. He would say, stop those things and come back to God. Be drawn to Him. Come near to Him. Love Him. Praise Him. Worship Him.

22:45Repent is come back to the Lord. There's a C.S. Lewis quote on the front of the bulletin this morning about this idea of being in rebellion against God, but about a paragraph past that, he says this about repentance. He says, remember this repentance, remember this repentance, this willing submission to humiliation and a kind of death is not something that God demands of you before He will take you back and which He could let you off of if He chose.

23:16It is simply a description of what going back to Him is like. If you ask God to take you back without it, without repentance, you're really asking Him to let you go back without going back. It cannot happen. Very well, then we must go through with it, but the same badness that makes us need it, that makes us need repentance, makes us unable to do it. Can we do it if God helps us? But what do we mean when we talk about God helping us? We mean God putting into us a bit of Himself, so to speak.

23:46He lends us a little of His reasoning powers and that's how we think. He puts a little of His love into us and that is how we love one another. When you teach a child writing, you hold its hand while it forms the letters. That is, it forms the letters because you're forming them. We love and reason because God loves and reasons and holds our hand while we do it. He's saying this idea of coming back to God, it might seem impossible to us sometimes to return to God, to be back in God's presence.

24:13But what Lewis is saying, it should bring us a lot of comfort because what he's saying is the reason you can come back to God at all is because He's holding your hand while you do it. He is leading you back to Him and so we can be sure that because He is holding my hand, leading me back to His presence, He's not going to refuse me when I'm there. So before you can claim true wisdom and a truly moral life, you need to restore your relationship with God which means submission, which means resistance and attraction, come to Him with all of your brokenness knowing that He is the one who forgives and renews.

24:52So the good life has to be received before it can be lived. It's not something that we cook up for ourselves, it's something that we receive. Charles Spurgeon, a preacher from the 1800s, I think, shared this story in one of his sermons. He says, I remember hearing of a somewhat stingy man who once wanted to hire a horse and chase to go out for a drive. He went to the man who rented such things and asked the price. He said that the sum was too high and he went around to every other person in the little town who had such things to rent but found that their prices were higher still.

25:26So at last he went back to the first man and said to him, I'll take your horse and chase at the price you mentioned. No, the man said, you won't for you've been around to everybody else to get them at a lower price. I'll not let you have mine now. Spurgeon says, I kind of get where he's coming from. He feels like this guy is just running him around. And Spurgeon says this, Now some of you have been to everybody else for salvation except the Lord Jesus Christ.

25:50You've been to Rome and you've been to Oxford and you've been to self and I hardly know where you have not been. Yet in spite of that, you may come to Christ even now. He will not refuse you even now.

26:06So maybe you know that return, maybe you know intellectually, I know that returning to God is what I need. I need to be in his presence. I need to resist sin and be drawn into his life. But the thought of doing that again and again and again, especially with habitual regular sin, you're like, how could I possibly come back to him again and again? He's going to refuse me this time, right? But you can be assured it is part of God's unchangeable nature.

26:31It's actually part of who he is that when people turn to him in real repentance, he accepts them. And he will not refuse you. I think we often think that God died to save moderately broken people. And as a result, when we see, when you're faced in the mirror with this is who I really am, you think I can't really go back to God. I'm not a moderately broken person. I'm a seriously broken person. But Christ died to save sinners. The broken and the sinful you, that is the person that God loves.

27:06That is the person that God offers grace to. And so will you return to him again to receive the wisdom of God that comes through Christ, not through what you do, not through what you have to offer him. He will not refuse you. He's the one leading you to himself. Let me pray for us. Father God, we thank you that you do give more grace and that Lord, the longer that we follow you, the more we realize there is more grace. There's more grace than we thought there was before.

27:35So Father, I pray that we would believe that. And God, I pray for those in the room who feel maybe trapped under the weight of sin, that you would encourage them to come to you, to worship you, to love you, to serve you.

27:57God, it may feel for people who are part of a new thing, a new church plant that's exciting, that they feel like they've got to keep things together to keep the ship going. And yet, God, the kind of people that you call to yourselves are the ones who are broken and open about their sin so that you might shine through them. And so God, I pray for a renewed sense of your grace and love. And we pray this in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.