Jesus Christ, Our Wisdom

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0:00Thank you, Joel. It's a great blessing to be here. I was just telling Elizabeth that, you know, I'm on this commission, so we pray for you guys all the time. We pray for God to be working here, and so it's just, and I can't get away that much, but when I come here and lay my eyes on the fruit of those prayers and the work of God here, I'm so encouraged. You know, new members today, and beautiful day, you know. And Joel has told me that you guys have been working through the book of Proverbs in the Old Testament. So he had originally asked me to come back when we had that really terrible snow and ice storm. So that's another reason. I was driving up today, I was like, this could not be a more different day than that day where church got canceled. So what we're doing, so I'm going to talk out of the book of James, and I'll be interested, as I was praying about it on the drive down here, if it might help us to see the unity of God's word today. You guys have been spending weeks, about two months, looking at the book of Proverbs, and I wonder now as we dip into one of the letters in the New Testament, how it might help us to see God's message through the Old and New Testament, and how that really is aimed at lifting up Jesus Christ, our wisdom.

1:24And so I'll look for that today. So like I said, snowstorms that didn't come down here. So what I did at my house in the days following the snowstorm is watch kids sled. We have the lone hill in our neighborhood, okay? Relatively flat neighborhood, but we got this one hill that when it snows, All the kids come out, and all the moms and dads stand at the top of the hill, send their kids down the hill sledding, okay? And so it was amazing, because this was an extraordinary snowstorm with a lot of ice.

2:03Folks did not know what they were in for with sledding this year at our house, because the way it works is we have this hill. Our house is at the bottom of this hill, stop sign at the top of the hill. and so they were sending kids down but the the road is not just simply a hill it's a it's a hill and then it pulls to the left in front of our house and so what would happen is especially the dads there was just something about the dads this year they would like put their kid their little kid in the sled and then they would push down the hill and the kid be doing great he's flying down the hill we lots of fun lots of laughter and then it would pull over like right in front of our house. And kid after kid was hitting our mailbox, which is well set in the ground. I was not worried about the mailbox, but kids got creamed this year. Like kid after kid would go down the hill and then bounce off the mailbox and fly out and cry. And then the dads would be like, I think we just need to start a little bit further over to the right. It was amazing.

3:06Like multiple kids got creamed, so much so that the dads in the neighborhood started calling the mailbox the widow maker. They were undeterred. They did not stop sending their little kids down the hill. They kept sending them down, and then it would hit that mailbox again. They're like, oh, yes, we got to work on our physics here. It was amazing. But I thought about that on the drive down, too, because there is something in the human spirit. And I guess I thank God that it's there, that maybe in its finest form, we call it hope or something. But there's just something there where oftentimes we just overestimate our power, right? We just kind of get into this mode where like, I can do it, and you can't. You can't do it, at least not the way you think, okay? It's not just a matter of putting the kid a little bit further over on the right side of the road to the mailbox. There's just laws of the universe, and there's ice on the ground, and yeah, there's just the way those things start to work. Well, okay, in the book of James, okay, what you got, and this is your crash course in the book of James, James, very, very early New Testament letter.

4:18Jesus is probably not a dozen years since he was crucified and rose again. A dozen years. And you get James, who I believe is the half-brother of Jesus. It's one of the children born later on. He's one of the ones that you might read about in the gospels that didn't understand what Jesus was up to. Went with his mom to say, come home. You're causing trouble. You're not right, right? There was that, those sorts of things that were going on. But upon the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the lavishing of the Holy Spirit on the church, what you have is James says, I see now. I see who Jesus is. He is our risen Lord. He is resurrected. He is alive. And James finds himself in the city of Jerusalem, leading a church of mostly Jewish converts to Christianity. And he's leading this church, and he's trying to help them understand what it means to be a believer in Jesus, a follower of Jesus, a worshiper of Jesus. So that's what you get with James. And so when James has to develop a pastoral voice, okay, you have a pastor, you know he has a certain voice.

5:33He has a way he talks to the church, a way he speaks when he's lifting up Jesus and he's shepherding the church. So James develops a pastoral voice. And it's amazing. If you were to go home today and you were to read the book of James, you would be like, oh my goodness, this sounds kind of familiar. Because James's pastoral voice is a lot like the book of Proverbs. Rapid fire, straight shooting. Sometimes you're like, I'm not sure I'd want this guy to be my pastor. He cuts to the chase. He pulls no punches, right? So James is intense, and he is very, very clear and targeted.

6:12And it reads a little bit like the book of Proverbs. Oh, it makes sense. He was trained on that, right? James sang all those psalms. He heard all those Proverbs growing up, right? So he kind mixes that style with so many quotes from Jesus. You know, James quotes Jesus more than any other New Testament book. I didn't know that until I looked at it. Right? There's more Jesus references in there. Because it's an early book, what are you going to do, right? If you're trying to train followers of Jesus Christ, you're going to say, I remember, I saw him, I walked with him, I had trouble believing him, and now I believe him. So I'm going to bring that wisdom to you. Okay? And so you have in James, you have a lot of things like he, James is not interested in solving our problem.

6:53Right? Sometimes we can be tempted to think our lives are just a list of problems to be solved. I know that for me, okay? This is just me. You might not be like this, but tomorrow morning I'm going to go into my church office. I'm going to sit down with my steno notebook. I still have an old school stenographer's notebook. And I'm going to flip the page and I'm going to make a list. Right? Because it helps me kind of get a grip on what is it that I hope God will do during the week and what do I need to do?

7:20but what it can tempt me to do is to think a good week, it's a lot of check marks. Oh, Elizabeth loves that one. A lot of check marks on the list. Bad week, few check marks, right? James is saying you got to get out of the check mark life, right? The list, the problem-solving life. Instead of problems being solved, he says, how about a life of dependence on the living God, right? Okay, that's what he's trying to encourage. Not problem solved, but someone with a living relationship with the living God. That's what he's trying to encourage. That would be wisdom. Or maybe he's saying maybe sometimes you think that religion, that good religion, that a good Christian does all the good things and stops doing the bad things. And James is going to say you got to get out of that mindset too. Because a person who is full of the Holy Spirit, a person who is a follower of Jesus Christ, right? The way that James would put it, a person who's a just person, who's been justified and their relationships are just, okay? They are not interested in doing certain things. They're interested in being a certain kind of person, okay? So all those things are in the backdrop when James launches into his letter, which we're going to read in just a second. Those things, is that James' mindset, how he is going to promote Jesus Christ, our wisdom.

8:47And I want to pray, and then I'm going to read these verses from James 1. Lord, it's just a pleasure to be here, and I see with my own eyes the fruit of answer prayer and your kingdom advancing and your faithfulness today. It's just great to sing those songs with all of our heart and to know that kids are hearing about Jesus and his victory and to pray for fruitfulness in today's egg hunt and just wonder what you'll do in this community as your kingdom advances here.

9:15All these things are great. And for now, we open up your word and we pray that you would show us who you are and who we are as we meet with you through the pages of your word, your preached word. Show us Jesus, our wisdom. We pray in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. All right, let me see what I was going to say now. Let me read the Word of God, okay? This is God's Word. We should hear it, take it in as such. This morning, this is James 1, verses 1 through 11. James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the 12 tribes in the dispersion.

10:06Greetings. By the way, why does James do that? Call them the 12 tribes in the dispersion. That's kind of weird. What he's doing, again, he is a Jew who's been completed in Jesus Christ. He is a Jew who now sees who Jesus is. And a big part of that Jewish history is the exile. And right now, he is on the heels of, remember your book of Acts chapter 11, Stephen preached the word and he was stoned. He was martyred. And then the new Jewish Christians scattered, right? So he's writing to those scattered Christians. And he says, count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness, and let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect, a complete, lacking in nothing.

11:00If any of you lacked wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given to him but let him ask in faith with no doubting for the one who doubts is like the wave of a sea that's driven and tossed about by the wind for that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the lord he is a double-minded man unstable in all his ways let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation and the rich in his humiliation because like a flower of the grass he will pass away for the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the grass its flower falls and its beauty perishes so also will the rich man fade away in the midst of his pursuits okay so there's like there's really two things that james is tackling here as he begins this letter to God's people.

12:00He wants to talk about how I want you to be assured. And again, remember they have that diaspora that's scattering in the background and they're new in their places, okay? They're outsiders in their places. Plus they're Jews that are now adhering to Jesus Christ. They're very unusual people. And so he says, you know, in verses 1 through 4, I want you to know that every bit of life, there's not one bit of life that does not serve God's purposes, okay? Every bit of your lives serves God's purposes. And then he's going to talk about in verses 5 through 11 where the power for facing trouble comes from for the believer in Jesus Christ. Where does the power for facing trouble in our lives come from? And this is really focused on wisdom, both of them, okay? So as he's teaching wisdom to the church, as he's teaching wisdom to the church and to us today, he says a number of things about how all of life serves God's purposes. One is he wants folks to know, he wants us to know, he wants the people of God to know that troubles are normal. They're not the exception. Okay? That is a bit of wisdom for us today. And again, you're talking to the list maker. I'm always trying to get ahead of the trouble. I'm always trying to manage the trouble.

13:19But trouble is normal in this life. It's a part of being a human being. It is a part of being a follower of Jesus Christ. Troubles are normal, not the exceptions. He says in verse 2, when you meet trials, not if you meet trials, but when you meet trials. And he says there's going to be trials of various kinds. And that's a description of the scope, okay, over the scope of life. in the next 10 days, I'm going to move my mother-in-law and father-in-law to Richmond, Virginia. We're really glad they're coming. They're not doing well. They're very elderly, and we love them and want them to come to town. So my wife Kim and I have been working real hard on their apartment, trying to get their apartment ready for them to come up. Now, my father-in-law, because he is in such poor health, he has two pieces of furniture super important to him. His bed where he spends a lot of hours and then a couch, a couch that where he's going to spend a lot of hours too. All right. He is not on his feet very much. So those two pieces of furniture super important to us. And we went to shop couches and I learned things. I never, I never shopped for couches before, but there's one that like can sit him up, get him like upright. We're like, that's the one, that's the one he needs. So he's not calling me to get him upright. We might have a shot of getting him moving up off the couch from time to time and so we go and we find the perfect couch we spend a lot of money on it because we love our father-in-law and we get the couch and

14:48it's moving day and I go over to the apartment to meet the movers and stuff like that and the guys come up to the elevator the only way to get couches up into the apartment and the couch does not fit in the elevator all right so okay this has been the culmination of you know it's like it's like a week of shopping, you know, some time off of work, a bunch of worry and a bunch of communication with people on the phone about couches, internet research. So all this stuff.

15:15Well, what do you think happens to me in that moment? You guys have your own couch moment, probably already this morning. There's one coming today, right? The couch is not going to fit in the elevator, right? That's just going to happen to you. It's normal. But what happens to us, we go to a very dark place every single time that happens. We're absolutely blown away that the couch does not fit in the elevator, and we all long for the day in glory when every couch will fit in the elevator all the time, right? It's not, that's, I mean, to have the couch fit would have been far better. It would have been far better, but it's just what happens to me spiritually in that moment, okay? I am blown away by my powerlessness. Think about relationships.

16:03Aren't we blown away if we're, like, enter into a love relationship with somebody, a friendship, a marriage, dating somebody, some sort of new neighbor, I don't know, new person at church even. You know, right, you get into a love relationship, and then that moment where all of a sudden, you know, you realize, I love the idea of love. I'm very excited about the idea of love, but when loving is hard, I'm like, something is wrong, right? We're so blown away that loving is hard when the very nature of love is death, right?

16:44Why did we not see that coming? But it's just, it's in the human makeup. This is why James is trying to teach us, train us, that troubles are normal, not the exception, but also, more importantly, that troubles are not meaningless either. It's not like just junk is happening to us and shouldn't have been surprised. That's cynicism. But he's trying to tell us here that a part of wisdom is not just accepting our troubles as normal, but to accept them as meaningful.

17:12That's next level. And what's that going to take to count it all joy? It's going to take that you would be given grace by God to see God working even in the midst of the trouble. Think about some trouble that you're in right now, all right? Think about it. Think about some trouble you're in right now. And there is a lot of pressure spiritually, okay? When the couch does not fit on the elevator, when loving gets hard and that's trouble, there is a lot of spiritual temptation and pressure to think I'm doing something wrong or somehow, somehow I'm disqualified from God's working.

17:55And people are trying to steal from me. Maybe even God's trying to steal from me. The most cynical of all the assumptions that we start to make. You know, years ago now, my wife and I, my wife was a newly minted counselor in the community. And I was a pastor interested in good counseling being available to people in churches. And so as part of a council, we tried to start a new counseling center in the west end of Richmond, Virginia. And one of the things we talked about, what are going to be some of the hallmarks of this counseling center, And one of the things that we want to say, we need to train the Christians of Richmond, Virginia to know, to know that God works in suffering.

18:35We would love to alleviate suffering. Yes, in Jesus' name. But one of the ways that God works is in the suffering. All right? We have to, that's part of, that's transmuting wisdom to people to understand that. And I need someone to remind me of that. when my list will not be completed or I'm feeling that frustration or the failure of love. I need someone to say, look for God, look for Jesus. He is working right now. That's the kind of wisdom that James, he brings to the church too. And then also the other thing to mention here is he's talking about how trials benefit us. This is the hardest one, I think, right? I could understand that there's some spiritual meaning, but here, that it could be actually beneficial in God's hand. I want you to notice that suffering alone doesn't benefit us, but the way he talks about it is repenting, seeing God, and following God in the midst of our trouble. That's where the benefit comes from. Our troubles are meaningful, and to see Jesus working in our trouble and to say, Jesus, I trust you. Help me. I want to follow you. I need you to work. That kind of repenting, That's also wise, right?

19:54So you see how that works too? Troubles are normal. Troubles are not meaningless. They're going to benefit us. And the way they benefit us in the way that James is teaching here is they're going to make you perfect. Mature, okay? Perfect not as like you're fully baked, but that you're grown up into the fullness of who you were designed to be called to be, made to be, okay? That's what he sees happens under trial. And I wonder, there are some things in life I don't think we can learn without the trial.

20:25That's the way I am, okay? I've learned a little bit about Jesus in the suffering in my life. There's a picture here of like a seed. The seed grows up into a plant, right? You plant that apple seed, you know it's going to become an apple tree and bear the apple fruit. That's what he means by perfect. The trials would make you perfect. It's part of, in God's economy, in this fallen world, he'll actually not just see you through it, but he'll use that for his glorious purposes.

21:01All right. So, if you're paying attention at this point, you're going to say, I'd like to get there, but I need some more help. I need to know how I'm going to get there to say, okay, I got trouble, and it's normal, it's not meaningless, and it's going to benefit me. All right, so that's what he does in verses 5 through 11, okay? And this is sort of the wisdom punch for James for us for today. He says, if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God.

21:27Well, for what? For what do you need the wisdom for? Well, you need the wisdom because facing trouble is so hard. Because suffering will get you. It will discourage you. It will hurt you, right? And so he's saying, if you find yourself in trouble and in suffering, if you find yourself struggling to see the benefit, struggling to know the meaning, to accept it as a part of life, if you're struggling in that way, that's why he says at that moment, that's the wisdom moment.

22:03He says, turn, turn and ask God. I want you to turn and face God. There's a little quote from John Calvin at the front of the bulletin where he says that all of our feelings, every bit of feelings, every bit of what's going on in this heart is averse to the thought that we can be happy in the midst of evils. We don't like that. Less evil, please. But John Calvin says, hence we, he business asks for wisdom. Again, that's the wisdom point, right? We don't need wisdom if we feel like we're handling it. We need wisdom when we say, I don't know which way to go.

22:52I have a group at church that I just love. It was me and another friend. We started it two years ago. We said, let's start a unique group at church that, here's the concept for it. We want to invite guys, a lot of guys that I'm talking to as a pastor, that are in trouble. They are stuck. They've messed up. They've been hurt. They've lost their footing. Okay? Let's ask guys to come to a group, and we're going to tell them up front, you're getting invitation because you're in trouble.

23:36And I'll tell you, every guy said yes, by the way, you know, because I have a theory that each one of us, if we're wise, we know we're in trouble, right? We know that about ourselves. They've lived enough life to know that they need something to break, something to happen for them. It's so great. We spend our days, when we get together on a Saturday morning, we spend our time saying, I want to listen to you about your trouble, the burden that you're bearing, the trouble that you're suffering in your life, the situation that you're in where you need God to do something that only God can do, all right? And we're going to listen to you, and we're going to ask questions to figure out, can we discern how is God working? We know that he is. Trouble's normal. God is working in the midst of that trouble. We're going to ask questions to discern, and then I'll tell you what? We're going to join you in asking God, make this man wise. Give him help. Change him.

24:38Bless him. Give him faith. Work out your purposes in his life. It's been the best group, guys. It really has been, because I'm in trouble, right? We're all in trouble. Thank you, Nikki. I mean, we're all in trouble, and this is part of what James is trying to say. The problem is not that we need to get out of trouble. The problem is we have to learn to act like we believe that God is as real as the people in this room are. God is as real as the trouble is.

25:11We need God's grace to be turned to ask God in the midst of trouble. If anyone lacks wisdom, let him ask God. So James is pointing out in the rest of this passage that when you endure trouble, you're going to, this is also something you should not be surprised by, you're going to struggle with two particular besetting sins. You know, there's all this business at the end about waves and, you know, burned up grass and things like that, but his point with all that is that when you ask, you're going to be tempted by two things that he calls double-mindedness, okay?

25:58Double-mindedness. I think Tim Keller, I think, called it this one. It's splitness. I like that. Splitness. I think he borrowed that from Russian literature or something like that. Does he feel like, you know, you're kind of playing both sides of the field? And instability. Okay? Losing your footing. Being tossed about by the waves. So there are two temptations. You're going to feel your instability, that you don't stand very well. you're unstable in your feet, and also that you're double-minded, or like another way you could put those two things to sum them up, that we struggle with autonomy, okay, I got this, that when the trouble comes up, instead of asking God, we're going to struggle with autonomy, I got this, I'm in control, and then the other thing that you would struggle with is ambivalence, I want God, but I also want another thing too, okay, that's the sense of what he's saying there. Autonomy and ambivalence, okay? Ambivalence also might be like, if I ask God, I might keep another God on the side just in case, you know, in case he doesn't show up, or, you know, or bargaining with God, okay? Trying to negotiate with God, too. Again, think about how this works for you, and this is, you know, getting into the last thing I want to say, too. Think about any any basic trouble you've got in your life. Like for me, something that happened in this past week for me was I had received some criticism from someone. Okay, it's run-of-the-mill trouble. We all get criticism all the time, right? It's no big deal, but sometimes on this week's soul, it's a big

27:42deal. So I got some criticism from someone, and it's amazing to me when I get criticized, sometimes I can listen and take it in. But sometimes what happens is justification of every design wells up in me, and I try to justify myself. Or I think about managing the person. I think, I got this, okay? Autonomy. Both those are autonomy. I will justify myself, or I can work with you, okay? I think I know how to change your mind, right? Or work with you. And I just treat it only as a conflict. Well, if you notice, I don't ask God in that kind of situation, right? That temptation to autonomy is very strong. Or I can struggle with ambivalence, too. I can actually start talking to God, but I can start talking to him like this. God, what am I doing wrong?

28:31Am I in the right place? Am I doing the right thing? That's not a prayer at all. That's not asking God for anything, right? That's just sort of pondering for God. Why am I not more powerful?

28:46So James is saying, when you recognize your powerlessness, you'll go to God and say, help me. Use me, change me, work here. Open my eyes, lead me in repentance, bless me. That's a very different prayer than I got this. God, I got this. That's not a prayer.

29:10James is saying we're going to struggle with autonomy and ambivalence, right? And rich or poor are going to be alike in this. Rich won't save you from these temptations, and poor won't save you either, okay? But by God's grace, we come to our senses when we're in trouble. He does this work over and over again. We realize, oh, I'm adrift. And I realize I haven't been asking God. I've been negotiating with him or taking his job away from him, unbelief.

29:38And then in repentance, I turn to him, and I realize there's really one course of action, which is make me wise, help me. Help me. James says here, and this might be the most important thing, why this is the course when we have trouble. Why the church? Why the people of God? Why we should ask God for wisdom when we're experiencing troubles? Why is this? And he says here it's because of the God who gives generously. He calls on the very person and character of God as the the core reason why when we're experiencing trouble why we should ask god you know one way you could translate this and i was working on this i think this is the best way to kind of amplify when uh james is talking in verse five about the god who gives generously it's really like hey i want you to know the giving god the giving god his nature is giving not taking not managing, giving, okay? I want you to know that the giving God, he does not have competing agendas, right? You might, you might be ambivalent, but he doesn't. He's always a giver. He's always God. He's always giving wisdom. He's always wise. He always sees you in your trouble. He doesn't have competing agendas. He gives to all who asks. He gives to all who asks, and there's never a reproach. You know that reproach is a shame word, right? There's never like, oh, shame, shouldn't have asked, should have outgrown this by now. No. Maturity is to be a big asker, a big relier, a shameless son of God who goes to God expecting he'll answer. He loves to give.

31:36When we ask for wisdom, this is an amazing thing about what's really true about God. We ask for wisdom, and he gives us his own son. There's another place in the scripture that calls Jesus wisdom from God. And why is that? Because, well, James is talking about asking in trouble. When we're in our deepest trouble, our sin, we were dead. Okay? We needed resurrection. we needed atonement for sin we need to be set right from God we needed righteousness before God we needed as we just sang about the wrath of God to be satisfied that's what we needed that's the trouble that we needed to ask God for wisdom in the face of and God did not hold back he gave generously he gave himself to take our place the place of the troubled the place of those who lack wisdom he took our place even to the point of death on a cross so that there would never be a question we'd always now would argue from that if he gave us his own son he can help me with couches you know or lack of love or a little trouble right or a big trouble. Because it was a big gift. It was a big gift that has fully taken away every barrier between us and the living God. So that we would have the confidence now to say, God, I need you.

33:05And to know that he answers not simply with help, but with himself. Hebrews 2 says, it was fitting that he for whom and by whom all things exist in bringing many sons to glory should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. The glorious God in taking on human flesh, suffering human flesh, he uses that to bring many sons to glory. That's us. For he who sanctifies, and those who are sanctified all have one origin. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers.

33:54What a picture of the giving God. who would enter into our suffering, Jesus is the extreme, the final demonstration that God gives generously. And that's wisdom, that in our trouble, you'll feel your need for wisdom and you can go and ask God. And the reason you can is because of the gift that he has given you in Jesus Christ.