How To Become Wise
James 1:5-8
Preached by Pastor Tony Miano
Pico Canyon Community Church
November 19, 2000
Introduction: Over the last couple of weeks, we looked at how we can experience authentic and pure joy in the midst of our day-to-day trials. James finishes his thought in verses 2-4 of the first chapter of his letter by telling his readers if they persevere with an attitude of joy they will grow in their Christian character and spiritual maturity. Not only that—the growing, maturing believer will not lack anything that they need pertaining to spiritual growth.
In our passage for this morning, James 1:5-8, James is going to introduce two subjects that he will address in more detail later in the letter—wisdom and double-mindedness. We know from our study that James is not calling his readers to perfection, but spiritual maturity. We also know that becoming mature believers in Christ is a process. So there are, obviously, things that we will lack and hope to gain while we are on the spiritual journey toward maturity.
James was well aware of this and, because of his own experiences and knowledge of the truth, had a good idea in what area his readers might be lacking—wisdom. This morning we’re going to look at James 1:5-8 and look at James’ three-fold plan for becoming wise. First, we need to recognize our need for wisdom. Second, we need to request the necessary wisdom. And third, we need to receive the gift of wisdom. Along the way, we’ll also look at how double-mindedness can affect the level of wisdom we have in our lives. Let’s pray.
But if any of you lacks wisdom . . . (v. 1:5a)
Some have suggested that James is beginning an entirely new train of thought in verse five. However, the first word of verse five makes it pretty clear that James is continuing what he started in verse two. The word “but” serves as a connection between verse 2-4 and verses 5-8. Small connecting words like “but,” “and,” and “therefore,” just to name a few, are words that you should key on when studying the Bible. They will help you to determine how a particular verse fits into the framework that you are studying and help you to avoid taking single verses out of context.
James is about to provide his readers with some practical application for what he just taught them in verses 2-4. James’ readers probably read the command to consider every trial an opportunity for joy with difficulty. After all, they were (now here’s a word you’ve probably heard too often over the last week or so) a disenfranchised group of people. They were persecuted for their faith by the Gentile world and disowned by their own people—the Jews.
James says, “if any of you lacks wisdom.” James is not saying that he doubts that his readers have a need for more wisdom. He is saying that he recognizes the need as a forgone conclusion, as a fact of life.
Over the years, I’ve had opportunities to meet people who, shall we say, lacked wisdom. Most were citizens I came in contact with on a wide variety of calls. But some of them wore the same uniform as me.
I remember one summer afternoon, probably twelve or thirteen years ago. I was working one of the jails in Castaic. It was an open compound with a dozen or so dorms, each designed to accommodate at least 100 guests.
I was getting ready to start my shift and was walking down the main hallway of the administration building when I saw several deputies sitting on a wooden bench, outside the infirmary. The bench was usually reserved for sick or injured inmates. As I got closer, the deputies looked up at me with red, tear-stained faces. The deputies had their uniform shirts off and I could smell a very distinct, recognizable odor coming from their persons.
They looked up at me and one of them said, “Tony, you’re not going to believe what happened today.” Then they shared their story with me.
You see—we had a sergeant at the time, who has since retired, who was not necessarily well liked by the rank and file. He was a stickler for procedure and had a tendency to pick inopportune times to run us through some unorthodox training. On this particular day, the sergeant decided he wanted to practice entering a dorm during a mock riot. Before sending a platoon of deputies into the vacant dorm, the sergeant pulled a small metal canister from a green canvas bag. He also liked realistic props.
He gripped the canister in one hand and slipped the index finger of the other hand through the small ring attached to a pin at the top of the can. One of the deputies, who had the presence of mind to keep his eye on the sergeant, saw what the sergeant was about to do. With all the tact he could muster, the deputy asked the sergeant if he was sure he wanted to throw the canister into the dorm. The sergeant gave the deputy a look of indignation (he also didn’t like to be questioned—ever) and brought his arm back to make his throw.
The deputy yelled, “Wait, sarg! That’s a can of ‘C.S.!” pointing to the big block letters on the side of the canister.
“I know!” The sergeant retorted. “It’s canned smoke!” He threw the can into the open door of the dorm. He ordered the platoon of deputies into the dorm that, by now, was completely filled with smoke. It took but a second for the deputies to realize that what the sergeant had thrown into the dorm was not canned smoke. It was tear gas.
Some of the best examples of people lacking wisdom were those that I dealt with when I worked the 9-1-1 lines at the station. Everything from raccoon fights, to people expecting me to predict the next earthquake, to UFO sightings, to people calling and, I kid you not, asking for the number to 9-1-1. Sadly, most of these people didn’t realize they lacked wisdom and would be incensed if anyone suggested otherwise.
Step #1: Recognize Your Need For Wisdom
The first step toward becoming wise is that you must first recognize your need for wisdom. Again, James says, “if any of you lack wisdom.” To James it was a forgone conclusion that his readers would be lacking, in various degrees depending on their level of life and spiritual maturity, the wisdom necessary to navigate life’s trials.
James uses a present passive form of the word “lack.” He looks at his readers’ lack of wisdom as a present condition. In a sense, James was telling his readers that he understood that at least some of them lack wisdom, at the time he was writing to them.
We should probably take some time and define exactly what kind of wisdom James is referring to. The word “wisdom” comes from the Greek word sophia. The wisdom James is referring to is that which manifests itself through insight into the true nature of things.
There are many people around the world today, as there has been throughout the centuries, that society considers wise. But are they really? Are they wise, or do they simply possess an incredible amount of knowledge on a given topic? Wisdom is not simply knowledge. It’s the practical use of knowledge. When we consider whether or not a person is wise, we need to evaluate what they do with their knowledge. Do they have a lot of insight into things? Or do they have insight into the true nature of things? It’s been said that you can be very sincere and still be sincerely wrong.
Society, and even parts of the Christian community, seems quick to label people, especially religious leaders of other faiths, as wise. But how can we call religious leaders wise when their teachings go against the true nature of things? How can we call leaders of other religions wise when their teaching denies the authority and infallibility of Scripture, when their teaching denies the deity of Christ, when their teaching adds things like works or requires an affiliation to a particular group or sect to the gospel message? Yet it happens all the time.
Certainly, there are wise people in the world, and probably even in our own lives, whose wisdom is born out of years of worldly experience. But James regards wisdom as not simply possessing intellectual prowess, but having a spiritual insight into matters of the heart, mind, and soul. It’s not the esoteric or mysterious wisdom akin to a soothsayer, but that of a person who’s authentic relationship with Christ is apparent in the way they handle trials and counsel others through trials.
In a nutshell—wisdom “is the moral discernment that enables the believer to meet life and its trials with decisions and actions consistent with God’s will” (Hiebert, p. 69). If that sounds like a high standard, it is. It’s God’s standard. That’s why it was obvious to James, and should be obvious to each of us, that there will be times in our lives when we lack wisdom, when we lack spiritual discernment. In order to become wise, we must recognize those times when we lack what it takes to be wise, to be discerning.
There have been times in my life when I lacked wisdom. Yet I was able to convince myself that my will was God’s will. Some of those times ended up being disastrous. Others worked out all right—certainly not because of my lack of wisdom, but because of God’s sovereign grace.
There are times in our lives when we try very hard to meet our own needs, or seek our own heart’s desires. We know that God wants His very best for us so we convince ourselves that what we want is what God wants for us. The quest for personal fulfillment cannot only cloud our judgment, but it can keep us from seeing the true nature of things. It can keep us from discerning whether or not the source of our desires and the basis for our decisions stem from our own appetites or the desire to truly be in the sovereign will of God. It can keep us from discerning whether or not God is opening the doors in front of us or we’re forcing the doors open ourselves.
Step #2: Request The Necessary Wisdom
. . . let him ask of God . . . (v. 1:5b)
Once we have recognized the need for wisdom, the need for spiritual discernment, the next step is to request the necessary wisdom. James wrote, “let him ask of God.” The request for wisdom is made to God, through prayer.
James makes another imperative command in this phrase. James tells his readers that they were to keep on asking God for wisdom. The prayer for wisdom was to be a frequent part of their prayer life.
In the book How I Pray, Billy Graham wrote the following. “I heard about a young president of a company who instructed his secretary not to disturb him because he had an important appointment. The chairman of the board came in and said, ‘I want to see Mr. Jones.’ The secretary answered, ‘I’m terribly sorry, he cannot be disturbed, he has an important appointment.’”
“The chairman became very angry. He banged open the door and saw the president of his corporation on his knees in prayer. The chairman softly closed the door and asked the secretary, ‘Is this usual?’ And she said, ‘Yes, he does that every morning.’ To which the chairman of the board responded, ‘No wonder I come to him for advice’” (Larson, p. 208). The only way to ask God for wisdom is through prayer and, as far as James was concerned, continual and regular prayer.
Notice that James does not say we should ask for relief from our trials. Now, that’s not to say that we should never ask for deliverance from the trials of life. However, “Lord, get me out of this,” should not be first and foremost in our minds or in our prayers. We already know from our study in verse two that trials will come, that trials will continue to come. We’re not told that there is any way to stop the trials from coming.
What we’re told is that God allows trials to occur in the life of the Christian to produce an enduring quality, wholeness, in the believer’s faith. Asking for wisdom to handle trials should take precedence over asking for relief from trials, during our times of prayer.
James tells us that God is the source of wisdom. If we want authentic wisdom, if we want to know the true nature of things, if we want to be wise as we face the day-to-day trials of life, we must ask God to provide the wisdom we need.
Step #3: Receive The Gift Of Wisdom
. . . who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him. (v. 1:5c)
So, we need to recognize our need for wisdom and we need to request that wisdom from the only one who can give it—God. But James doesn’t stop there. James also tells us that we need to receive the gift of wisdom once we ask for it and once God decides, according to His sovereign will, to give it to us.
Look at the last part of verse five. It says that God “gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him.” James’ wording tells us that giving is not just something God does, but it is an attribute of who He is. Again, we see the present tense here. Just as God is eternal and will continue forever, so, too, is His giving continual. God’s giving is not something relegated to a certain point in time. He has always been giving and will always give.
The word “generously” is an important word in verse five. The word is translated from the Greek word haplos. This is the only place in the New Testament where the word is used as an adverb. In other New Testament passages where the word is used as a noun, it carries with it the idea of “generosity, liberality, or single-minded attention to the gift with no thought of self” (Ropes, p. 140). James describes God’s giving as a very gracious generosity.
James elaborates on God’s generosity when he writes, “and without reproach.” God’s giving is gracious in that He does so without finding fault. He does so without attaching conditions. He does so without applying guilt.
We have all probably experienced this kind of negative giving. We may have experienced it to such an extent that we might assume that God’s attitude or mode of giving is the same. Have you ever asked something of someone and had the person say these words as they’re giving you what you asked for. “You know, had you just listened to my advice in the first place, you wouldn’t be in this position right now.” Or how about this—“Look. I will give you this but you have to promise me . . . (you can fill in the rest).” Or how about this—“I can’t believe you’re putting me in this position. You know I can’t I refuse to give you this. You’re putting me in a very difficult position.”
If you’ve ever received a response like the ones I just mentioned, then you probably are leery, at times, to ask things of others. Not only does our pride get in the way of asking for help, but add to that one of the typical negative responses and it can be very difficult to ask for help.
What James is telling us is that we need not worry about these kinds of negative, selfish, human responses when we go before the Lord in prayer and ask something of Him or from Him. The tense of the wording here tells us that not only will God not react this way to our requests, He will never react in such a manner.
Maybe someone has insulted you when you make a request. God will never do that. Maybe you’ve been reprimanded and accused of being greedy by someone when you come to him or her more than once with a request. God will never do that. Maybe you’ve been in a position where you feel like you have no other choice but to make a request of someone you know is going to humiliate you, and the person, keeping true to form, does just that. God will never do that to you. That is not the God we serve. It would be completely inconsistent with His character, with His generous and gracious nature, to treat you that way.
James ends the verse with an emphatic encouraging statement—“and it will be given to him.” This is a promise. The promise is that when we ask for wisdom, we can be assured that God will, in fact, give us the wisdom we need. Jesus made similar promises in the gospels.
Turn to Matthew 7 and let’s look at verses 7-11.
What a powerful analogy in verse eleven. Even though we are sinful creatures, we still have the capacity to give good things to our children. If that’s true, how can we doubt for a second that God is capable of even greater giving?
Turn to Luke 11. This is a parallel passage to the one we just looked at. But there is a slight variation to the analogy that’s important for us to consider. Let’s read verses 9-13.
There are people in the world, maybe even people in your life, who look at those times when you ask something of them as opportunities to be vindictive or mean-spirited. They will look at your request as a sign of weakness and use it as an opportunity to belittle you or boost themselves. They are the people who will give you a snake instead of a fish, or a scorpion instead of an egg.
Having contact with even one such person can make us hesitant to ask anything of anyone, even God. But Jesus stresses his point by making the rhetorical assertion that if we wouldn’t expect such behavior from a father toward his children, we should certainly not expect such treatment from our heavenly Father.
If we recognize our need for wisdom, request the wisdom we need, and receive the wisdom God promises to freely give to whoever asks, then we should have it all figured out. We should be as wise as we need to be, regardless of the trial we may be facing. Right?
Well, not quite. You see, there is at least one obligation, a human obligation; we need to meet in order to complete the wisdom process. There is something that God expects from us.
But he must ask in faith without any doubting, (v. 1:6a)
James calls his readers to an obligation that he states both positively and negatively—they were to ask in faith and they were not to doubt that an answer would be received. Now, up to this point, James has been speaking about prayer in the context of asking for wisdom. But starting in verse six, we can look at the “asking” as referring to prayer for anything.
James gives yet another command—“he must ask in faith.” James uses the singular form of the verb “ask.” This means that each person “individually must meet the condition to get his prayer answered. [James makes it clear that] no exceptions are made” (Hiebert, p. 72).
What we need to decide is what kind of faith is James talking about. Is it a faith that simply believes, with confidence, that we will receive that for which we ask? Or is it a faith based on our full dependence on God? Is it a faith fueled by our belief that God exists? Or is it a faith based on our genuine belief in who God is and who we are in Him? We’ll answer that question after we look at more of the text.
The flipside to the positive attitude of asking in faith is the negative attitude of doubt. The Greek word translated here as “doubting” is actually a combination of two words—dia, which means, “between,” and the verb krino, which means, “to separate.” The word literally means, “divided,” or “at variance with one’s self” (Ropes, p. 141).
The doubting person is one who is divided in his or her own mind. A doubter is one who is like an oscillating fan. He moves back and forth between positions and decisions, never settling in one place. Even though the doubter makes a request of God, he never has any real sense of assurance that he has either asked for the right thing or even wants the thing he asked for.
The person who doubts is fighting an internal, moral struggle. There is a fight in their inner person over who they should follow—God or the world. The bottom line is that the person who doubts is unwilling to completely depend on God for the things they ask for in prayer.
. . . for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind. (v. 1:6b)
James describes the doubter this way. Look at the second half of verse six. What do we know about the surf of the sea? We know, just as James recognized when he chose his words, the surf of the sea is not made up of a single wave. The surf is a constant, almost rhythmical succession of waves. There are times when the surf is mild. There are other times when the surf rages because of a storm. Like day and night, the surf is always there.
But James’ word picture of doubt is even more vivid than that of a predictable tide. He says that the person who doubts is “driven and tossed by the wind.”
How many of you saw the movie The Perfect Storm. It was a good movie—rotten ending. For those of you who may have missed it, it was the story of incredible storm of 1991 that struck the northeast coast. The story chronicled the fateful events that led to the sinking of the fishing boat, Andrea Gail, and the loss of its six-man crew, captained by Billy Tyne.
The “Perfect Storm,” was actually called the “Halloween Storm of 1991.” It was call the perfect storm because of the extraordinary way it formed. Three massive weather systems came together in the northwest Atlantic Ocean. A massive cold front had moved south out of Canada. An extratropical cyclone had formed about 300 miles east of Nova Scotia. And the subtropical hurricane, Grace, was moving north from the south. These three systems met in the perfect place, at the perfect time, to make the perfect storm.
No one knows for sure exactly what the seas were like in the area of the Andrea Gail moments before she was lost. They were the only ship in the area. But a fairly accurate picture can be painted based on various eyewitness accounts from people who braved the storm and meteorological reports.
The Andrea Gail probably faced repeated waves reaching 75 feet. The winds would have been anywhere from 80-120 miles per hour. The ship was probably hit by two monstrous, rogue waves, one at eight o’clock and another at midnight. These two waves probably reached 100 feet or more.
The way the storm had formed, the Andrea Gail would have been tossed in every direction. There was no way to predict which direction the waves would come from and the seas were boiling and swirling around them. Can you even begin to imagine the level of fear and uncertainty the six men of the Andrea Gail must have experienced before the ship sank?
This is the way James views the mind of the doubter—“driven and tossed by the wind.” The doubter is like the Andrea Gail, tossed unmercifully on the swelling seas. The doubter has no control and no sense of direction. They lack the anchor of decisive belief. They lack the anchor of genuine faith. They lack the anchor of sincere hope that comes from knowing that God will answer our prayers. Hebrews 6:19a says this. This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast . . .
Douglas Moo describes the doubter this way. “So the doubter, not possessing an ‘anchor for the soul,’ does not pray to God with a consistency and sincerity of purpose. [Instead, they are like] prey to the shifting winds of motive and desire, [wanting] wisdom from God one day and the wisdom of the world the next” (Moo, p. 61).
For that man ought not to expect that he will receive anything from the Lord, being a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways. (v. 1:7, 8)
In verses seven and eight, James further “explains the consequences of instability” (Thomas, p, S3). The person who doubts, the person who does not ask of God through faith, ought not expect to receive anything from the Lord.
Is James being harsh here? Is he being judgmental? I don’t think he is. Think about it. Doesn’t it seem arrogant for a person to expect to receive something from the Lord when, in their heart of hearts, they don’t expect God to answer their prayers? Doesn’t it seem arrogant for a person to expect to receive something from the Lord when, in their heart of hearts, they’re not sure what they really want from Him? Is it the desires of the flesh they seek, or the will of God?
James looks at the doubter much the same way Elijah once looked at the nation Israel. Turn back to I Kings 18. This is a great scene in the Old Testament when God shows Himself to be far above any of the false gods, in this case, Baal, that man creates out of his disobedience to the One True God.
I Kings 18:21 says, “Elijah came near to all the people and said, ‘How long will you hesitate between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow Him; but if Baal, follow him.’ But the people did not answer him a word.” Elijah passionately calls for the people to make a choice between God and the world. There were doubters among the nation of Israel.
There were those who found it easier to follow the black magic of the sorcerers of the day then to follow the God who created them, the God who delivered them out of the land of Egypt, the God who gave them the land and kept every promise He made to them.
Remember, James was a doubter. James, who walked and talked, ate and slept in the same room with the Lord Jesus, doubted that His older brother was capable of answering prayer. James possessed the credibility and authority to call his readers to stop doubting, to make up their minds, to choose between God and the world because he had once come to the same point in his life.
James emphasizes his point by referring to the person who doubts as being double-minded. The Greek word translated as “double-minded” is actually a combination of two words. Those two words are translated as “twice” and “soul.” The word for “double-minded” literally means, “a soul divided in two.”
The word for “double-minded” is so rare that it is only used here and in James 4:8, in the New Testament. In fact, it is so rarely seen in other writings around the time of James’ life and ministry that some scholars believe that James may have coined the phrase himself.
Finally, James refers to the doubter as “unstable.” A person’s double-mindedness shows itself in what appears to be the instability in virtually every aspect of the person’s life. The same word is used in the Greek translation of the Old Testament in Isaiah 54:11. “O afflicted one, storm-tossed, and not comforted . . .”
Since James had just used the picture of stormy seas to illustrate his point in verse six, he probably had the same thing in mind when he used the word “unstable” here in verse eight. The stormiest of weather patterns are the ones that are comprised of unstable masses of air. Meteorologists can only hope to predict what these weather patterns will do. Their instability causes them to change frequently, even minute by minute.
The doubter is unstable in all his or her ways. This means that the doubter’s inability to decide between God and the world affects every aspect of his life, every part of his conduct.
And this brings us back to the question we asked a while ago. Is the faith that James is calling for the faith that simply believes, with confidence, that we will receive what we ask for? Or is it a faith based on our full dependence on God? I believe, and I think James makes it very clear in this passage, the faith that James is calling for, the kind of faith that is separate and opposite of doubting, is a faith that is fully dependent on God.
God hears every prayer. God hears the prayers of believers and unbelievers alike. But does God answer the prayers of unbelievers in the same sense that He answers the prayers of believers? Should an unbeliever who does not recognize their need for the Savior, who insists on living life according to their terms, who sees God as an existing being, but one that does not make a single bit of difference in their life, really expect to have their prayers answered by God? It’s a tough question—I know. But I think it’s one we can and should answer.
Let me answer it this way. I Timothy 2:5 says, For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. A “mediator” “refers to one who intervenes between two individuals to restore peace, or ratify a covenant” (MacArthur, p. 71).
When we pray, we are coming to God. We are entering into His presence. The Bible makes it very clear that there is only one way to gain such undeserved access to the heavenly Father—that’s through Jesus Christ. Acts 4:12 tells us, “And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.”
Without Christ, there can be no peace between man and God, and there is no salvation given to man apart from Jesus Christ. We should not expect to receive anything from God if we insist on being double-minded in our relationship with Him. We should not expect to have our prayers answered according to what we ask since we can’t expect to know what God’s will is in the situation, since we don’t know Him.
Are you looking for stability in everything you do—whether it is at work or at home? Are you tired of riding the rough seas of indecision, always wondering whether or not God hears the cry of your heart? Then you must ask in faith, a genuine faith—a faith born out of a relationship with Jesus Christ. If you doubt your need for a Savior, how can you hope to pray to God through Him without doubting? You can’t. You won’t.
If you’re here this morning having yet to ask Christ into your heart, and you have wondered if God will hear your prayers; let me encourage you with this. Turn to Mark 9. We’re going to read a story about an occasion when Jesus answered the prayer of an unbeliever. Let’s read verses 14-24.
The prayer of the unbeliever that God will answer is the one prayed by the father of the demon-possessed boy. “Help my unbelief!” Psalm 51:17 says, “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.” God will not reject the person who repents of their sins and gives their heart completely to Him. If you come before Christ the way the father in the story did, you will not be disappointed. You will not be turned away. Ask. Ask with faith, without doubting, and He will answer.
Well, I hoped you’ve been encouraged. Do you lack wisdom from time to time when you face one of life’s trials? If your answer is “yes,” then you’ve taken the first step toward receiving that wisdom. You’ve recognized your need for it. Once you’ve done that, make your request for wisdom to God, without a hint of doubting, because your faith in Him is strong. Finally, receive the wisdom you are asking for because you are single-minded in your prayer—not double-minded like the person who is tossed about by unbelief and indecision.
Do these things and God promises to give you the wisdom you need. Do these things and do them all for His glory. Let’s pray.
