Life constantly lays choices before us. Many are mundane and ordinary: If we say yes to fish at a restaurant, we also say no to chicken, beef and every other meat. To order one dessert is, in a way, to reject the other desserts. Some are bigger. When you get married, as your vows say, you forsake all others. To say yes to parenthood is to say no to a simpler life. These choices, what we eat, whether we marry, have kids, what job we take, all set direction in our lives.
As I was thinking about this this past week, I kept thinking, is wisdom something we are dying to know about? I bet if we took a poll here this morning and asked for your top 10 requests to God right now, I wonder if wisdom would be one of them.
Have you ever met someone who when you were with them, you loved to get advice from them? They were someone that you consider to be a wise person. All of us at one point or another seek out people who are wiser than we are.
This happens in the movies often. It happened in the clip that we just saw. Here is a guy that knows so much, yet he doesn’t know anything. In movies with a hero, they often have someone in the background who is helping them, who is smarter than they are. Batman had Alfred to help him sort things out. In Star Wars, the Jedi had Yoda. The X-Men had the Professor. Rocky had Mick in his corner. But the point is, here were people who had incredible skill, yet they sought out wisdom.
Since Katie and I have been married, we have sought out couples who are ahead of us in life. Before we had kids, we looked for couples with kids. Now we look for couples with kids in elementary school. When we were trying to figure out retirement and investing, we sought out couples who were close to retirement and had done that well.
I have always found it interesting that professional athletes still have personal coaches and trainers. They know there is a limit to what they know. They may have the natural ability, but they seek out people who are wiser in certain areas.
Wisdom is a funny thing though. I mean, how do you nail it down? How do you decide who is wise and who isn’t? According to Webster, Wisdom is the ability, developed through experience, insight and reflection, to discern truth and exercise good judgment. Discernment I think is the key word in that definition. To be able to discern things.
As we have been moving through the process of adding board members, which we will be voting on in two weeks. One of the things that I told our current board is that the first thing I want, are people with the gift of discernment. Because that is a key to leading a church, being able to discern where God is taking us. Essentially, wise people.
If you have your bibles, you can open them to the book of James, it is on p. 870 if you grabbed a bible in the lobby. We have spent the last few weeks walking through this letter that James wrote to Christians in the 1st Century. The author James, was the brother of Jesus, so on this topic of wisdom, he should have a lot to say. Last week we looked at the beginning of chapter 3, where James spends a lot of time talking about how we use out tongue. Then he moves into this discussion on wisdom.
This is what it says in verse 13: 13Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. 14But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. 15This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. 16For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice. 17But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. 18And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.
Throughout this letter, James contrasts a lot of things. He does it here again. In chapter 1 he contrasts the person who considers himself religious with one who has a religion that is pure and faultless. He moves on to whether we will treat the poor with respect or not. Will we assist needy people, or will we talk about assisting them? Will we tame our tongue, or will it be a destructive force in our lives? Here is contrasts to kinds of wisdom.
James starts this discussion by looking at false wisdom, what wisdom is not. If our thoughts and motives have jealousy and selfish ambition, or envy in them, that is not wisdom.
Let me ask you, any jealousy, selfish ambition or envy in your life right now? That verse hurts doesn’t it. Because we all have that.
Let’s break down each of these words, because it is easy to see those and convince ourselves, “I don’t have that problem.”
Envy and jealousy. One author (Daniel M. Doriani) says this, “Envy is the enemy of Christian living. It is the opposite of grace, for it wants to grasp rather than to give. Envy is the opposite of caring for the needy. Envy sees only its needs and desires. Envy thinks other people should care for themselves. Left to ourselves, we all live for ourselves and envy what others have.”
Envy and jealousy simply is when we want what others have. Maybe it is a house, a car, a spouse, we wish our kids were like someone else’s. We wish we had someone’s job.
So James is saying, there is not a connection between Godly wisdom and envy and jealousy.
What about selfish ambition? Selfish ambition is not being goal oriented, going after things in life. Selfish ambition is when we make decisions solely for our benefit. Ever do that? I do.
James calls the way of life marked by envy and ambition a kind of “wisdom” because envy and ambition do have a certain logic to them, even if they are ultimately unspiritual and demonic as he says in verse 15. The logic runs this way: I have to look out for my interests. If I don’t, no one else will. I must get what I deserve. I see people at school, people who were hired with me. Some have passed me, even though they have no more skills and work no harder than me. I deserve more…I deserve what they have, the logic goes. We think, “haven’t I earned that right?”
It is truly wisdom of the world to boast, “I will take care of myself; I will get what I want.” If there is no God, such thinking does have some wisdom to it. But James says in verse 16: Where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice.
This shows up in churches a lot. Often, someone will have an idea, and it is usually a good idea, something that is near and dear to their heart. They present the idea, when nothing happens, they get very upset. Why, often, not always, but often it is because of selfish ambition. Or, we are in a group of people and we say something to make someone look stupid, so that we look better. Ever do that?
Last year I spoke at a conference for pastors on the topic of developing leaders. I was asked what criteria I use to choose leaders. This is how I answered. If I have two choices, I will choose the one who picks up the trash, puts away chairs. I will choose the one who doesn’t ask to be up front all the time. That person doesn’t have selfish ambition at their heart. Because James is right, envy and selfish ambition don’t bring any good thing to any situation.
My first job in a church, I worked as a worship leader for a student ministry. I wanted so badly to be in front of people, so everyone could see how talented I was. Instead of getting the best place in ministry, my boss had me lead worship for jr. high on Sunday nights. The first time I led, 8 kids came. After awhile, I stopped caring who saw me, my attitude changed, and I was given more responsibility.
Often times in our lives, when we think I deserve what that person has, or I should be getting that award or recognition, God keeps that from us. We aren’t ready for it.
This happened in my life recently. For the past several years I have worked really hard to network with people to be able to write a book and be published in a book. I have written some articles, but I wanted more. It always seemed to elude me. Because I wanted to do it so that everyone would think, “Check Josh out, I wish I was like him.” As God worked on that attitude, and changed that in me, not all the way yet, but we’re working on it. Things started to fall into my lap, opportunities to write seemed to pop out of nowhere. But often, we have to let God break that in us.
Remember two weeks ago we talked about faith and deeds. James says in chapter 2 that faith without deeds is dead. This comes up again in chapter 3. On the other side of this discussion on wisdom, James says that anyone who is wise and understanding shows it by his good life, by deeds that reflect wisdom. Good deeds is the basis on which we can demonstrate and show wisdom.
He says this in verse 17: 17But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere.
Let’s break these down. Pure, without stain. This is the opposite of envy and selfish ambition. Pure wisdom is wisdom that is not out for itself. Instead of a vehicle to move our kingdom forward, it becomes a vehicle that God can work through. This past week, when I was out biking I was thinking about this idea of pure wisdom and I thought about all the things I have missed out on that God wanted to do in me or through me, simply because I would have ruined it. I would have done it with the hope of showing how great I was, how talented I was. I would have stained those opportunities.
Peaceable and gentle. Often, we think of these as traits of women. Sometimes to be peaceable and gentle, we have to be bold and tough. For example, we should be gentle when we boldly set wrongs right.
This is what one biographer had to say about Jackie Robinson. Jackie Robinson, the first African American to play major league baseball, attained this blend of strength, self-control, and a meek refusal to assert rights. Robinson had other options as a professional athlete. He was better at football, but professional football was already integrated. He chose to help integrate the main professional sport of his generation, major league baseball.
Robinson was a fiery man and a man of deep convictions. Ordinarily, he was fearless about expressing those convictions, but for his first two years with the Dodgers, he chose to remain almost totally silent, whatever abuse was heaped upon him. He intended to prove that his race had the mental and athletic toughness to compete at the highest levels. He had to be strong to be gentle.
Robinson played 2nd base for the Dodgers. Pee Wee Reese, a popular all-star shortstop played next to him on the field. One day, players from another team fired the cruelest racists epithets at Robinson inning after inning. Reese, a southern man, face a choice. He could pretend he heard nothing. He could shout back at the other team. As the jeers grew, Reese stirred. It is customary for baseball players to toss a ball around between innings. As the Dodgers did this, Reese walked over to Robinson, draped his arm around his shoulder, and smiled at the opposing team. The tormentors fell silent. Patience and love proved Robinson and Reese to be gentle but strong.
This past week on our discussion blog, someone asked this: How do we say what we think and yet not go around offending people. It can be dangerous to tell people we’re angry at them or hurt by them or just simply to say we think they are wrong about something. I don’t want to be a door mat to someone. Does Jesus call us to be door mats in the name of unity and forgiveness? Are husbands supposed to be "punching bags" at times?
This verse is the answer to that. At times, we have to boldly say, I think you are wrong. You hurt me back there when you said that. Or, we need to pull aside a friend and say, “I think you are living in sin right now. I think you need to change in this area.” None of us like doing that, but when we don’t do it, we aren’t helping those around us.
Often though, instead of talking with someone to help them in an area, we talk to someone else about it. Or we say it to them in a horrible way that hurts them. That is not what James is talking about.
I got a call this past week from a youth pastor who is leaving the church he works at. He was sharing with his lead pastor and his board that he was leaving because he disagreed with some of the decisions that were being made and the way the church was headed. No one even asked what those things were or for clarification. He called me, really frustrated and mad about it. I said to him, “I’m not surprised. In churches we like to stick our heads in the sand for the sake of ‘unity.’” Don’t say anything to so-and-so, we need to keep the peace.
One author (David P. Nystrom) said this, “In practice we often confuse the biblical idea of peace with its impoverished modern counterpart, the absence of obvious tension. We do this in part because we find it expedient in the short run to avoid disagreement and the tension it brings.”
Often, we pursue the absence of tension over peace within our whole life. We think, it is easier if I don’t say anything. But in the end, we don’t have any peace then do we? It is easier to bottle up the heart that someone has done to me to keep the peace. So we don’t say anything.
When I was a student pastor in Maryland, we had a policy that if you were a leader, you couldn’t date a student. My worship leader, who was 20, started dating a student who was 18. they felt it didn’t apply to them. Because he was my only worship leader. I could have overlooked it, which is what another youth pastor told me to do. Instead, I told him he needed to step down. We went almost 3 months without any singing in our student ministry, because we didn’t have anyone else. But, it brought a peace to our whole ministry, because of confronting that. Are we tracking? Does that make sense?
This whole discussion on wisdom, I think is to get us to a discussion about peace in our lives and in the community we are a part of.
Earlier I asked the question if wisdom was something we are all seeking right now in our lives. Let me ask you something, are you in a situation right now that you can’t figure out the answer? Maybe you are in a relationship that you can’t seem to figure out. Maybe right now you are trying to figure out what to do with the rest of your life. James says, ask God for wisdom.
Maybe you are dealing with a child that you can’t seem to get through to. Maybe it is a family member that seems to live on a different planet. Maybe a boss you can’t deal with anymore. James says, ask for wisdom.
Maybe you are dealing with a decision, both options seem like good options, but you don’t know which one to choose. Ask for wisdom.
If we lack wisdom, the only person we can blame is ourselves. Since God wants to give us wisdom. One translation says James 1:5 says that God wants to lavish wisdom on us, like a good gift.
Verse 18 says: And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. I think this whole discussion is about peace in our lives and the church we are a part of. Because wisdom from God leads to peace. Let me ask you something, what would you give for some peace in your life? We would love to separate these, but James puts them together. He says, Godly wisdom, which God gives to whoever asks for it, leads to peace.
The word that James uses for peace is the word Salom. Which means to be whole, to be healthy, to be complete. That is what I want, and that is what God is wanting to give us, but we fail to ask. We try to make it on our own, moving through life trying to hold onto our decisions and things out of our control. Instead, we need to take that job, spouse, parent, child, sickness, our future and put them at the foot of God and say, “Here you go, I need your wisdom. I want to be whole.”
This past week, I was hit with this. It always seems to happen, whatever we are talking about on Sunday, something happens in my life to bring it to light. My mom has been having some irregular heartbeats and a lot of chest pain. She is in her early 50’s and she had to go into the hospital Friday morning, it was unplanned. After I got the call from my dad that they were at the hospital, I was hit with the reality that my parents are getting older and won’t be around forever. And I thought of this word salom, to be whole, healthy and complete. And I sat there, praying and said, “God, give me salom. I want to know your salom.” That is the wisdom of God that James says he wants to give us. God wants us to have his salom. That is what today is all about. Giving up on trying to acquire our own salom, and instead, asking God for his and taking his.
While we move into our time of communion, I want you to invite you to give those things to God. Maybe you can pull out the paper with lines on it and make a list of things you need salom on. While the band is playing, say, “God I need salom with this, and this, and this. Give me your salom.”
You can use these next few minutes as you need to. Please feel free to come and take communion whenever you are ready.
Let’s pray.
God we are broken people, living broken lives. Many of them filled with pain and hurt from wrong decisions made by us and to us. We are also people who are in serious need of your wisdom in so many different areas of our lives. Because you freely give your wisdom to anyone who asks, give us the courage to ask for your wisdom. We want to live whole, healthy and complete lives. Amen.
