James Session 9
Tom Shrader teaches through James 3:13-18, contrasting two types of wisdom: earthly wisdom marked by bitter jealousy and selfish ambition versus heavenly wisdom that is first pure, then peaceable and gentle. He emphasizes that earthly wisdom is natural, demonic, and leads to disorder, while wisdom from above produces righteousness and peace in believers' lives.
“The minute you say God is number one and then something's number two or three or four, what you instinctively do is do the God thing and then go do the other thing.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: James (2009)
Recorded: 2009 at Cannon Beach Conference Center
Duration: 58 min
Themes: wisdom, jealousy, pride, peace, purity, gentleness, humility, righteousness, struggling with envy, dealing with selfish ambition, seeking godly wisdom, mature believer, bible study leader, facing difficult decisions, growing in character, mentor
Scripture: James 3:13-18, James 1:22, 2 Timothy 3:5, 1 Corinthians 15:16, Galatians 5
Theological Themes: biblical wisdom, worldly wisdom, sanctification, spiritual maturity, holy living, christian character, spiritual discernment, godly wisdom
Full Transcript
It is that I felt like when I got up this morning, maybe there's a fog and maybe it's just the time of being here. We've been here a while now. I felt like I hit a wall this morning. I felt like it was just a little bit tired and it probably had to get up early for the guys' thing this morning.
Guys that showed up at 7 o'clock this morning blows me away because I laid in bed and wrestled whether to go or not. I can't imagine you being there and you had some questions that are really interesting. The more that you're around, the more you engage, the more you start to hear the same questions. I should be smart enough to say hey, I better be proactive in dealing with these because there are those series of questions.
Gentlemen, if you were there this morning, you get a sense of what they were. I did the best I could to try to answer some of those and to give you some thoughts and just things to work through. That's really my goal - maybe have you look at the same old things in a new way. Periodically we'll look at something and you go, "Oh, that's new." But the reality is that there aren't a lot of new things out there.
The Challenge of Teaching
When somebody comes in and I'll say, "How was he as a teacher?" and they'll say, "Well, he taught the same old thing," you understand if somebody comes in and teaches something new, we call him a heretic and run them out. There aren't a lot of new things here, but maybe to put a new fresh twist on them.
Here's what I've discovered over the years: when I was a kid, the girls had a Chatty Kathy doll - remember those? You just pull the string and it just says that same circle of five or six or seven things. I really do feel often times when I teach like the teaching version of a Chatty Kathy doll that you just pulled.
Book Recommendations
Tim Keller - how many of you know that name? Let me see hands. Some of you do. If you don't, here you go. Susan said I was going to mention some books for people to get, and I mentioned three this morning to the guys.
If you had a guy, let me give you the names again from this morning just to re-emphasize these. They kind of run in the same genre for me. One was called *Revolution Within* by Dwight Edwards. The second was called *The Contrarian's Guide to Knowing God* by Larry Osborne - I love that book. Then the third of those was called *Real Church* by Larry Crabb.
The first two again - I'm an Amazon guy, so I just simply took those three and just ordered them and they all came. I told them this morning those all came to me in Amazon. I'm a prime customer - they call me that because I pay them to. I didn't do anything. They just call me a prime customer. Once they sent me a mug though. But those all came in one box. I opened them and I was like a kid at Christmas. Those three books - those are three great books to talk about.
Tim Keller Resources
If you don't know that name Tim Keller, two years ago World Magazine's book of the year was called *The Reason for God* by Tim Keller. That book is a tough book. I love the first half. I didn't like the second half. My friends like the second half, didn't like the first half. So to warm up to Keller, let me give you the book from Keller to read. It's called *Prodigal God*.
Again, it's one of my new kind of books - it's those little books, probably might be a hundred pages. *Prodigal God* - I guarantee you would have been the book of the year, but last year they gave it to him. They copped out this year, by the way. World's book of the year was the ESV Bible. We're going to make the Bible the book of the year. Come on, let's go.
But it's the ESV Study Bible, which is incredible except you have to carry it. I don't know if you've seen it, but it's like the size of this pulpit. It's hard to carry around, but it's wonderful footnotes. Great. It's a great study Bible.
But you ought to introduce yourself to Tim Keller and I'll give you another resource. Google Tim Keller, get onto his website - it might be Timothy Keller now, he's New York. Get under his website and keep clicking around in there until you find a document that's titled "The Centrality of the Gospel." You just keep hunting and that may take - I can't remember, I got to it really fast, but I think it's because somebody else put me on it. But "The Centrality of the Gospel" - that document is powerful. It's probably maybe 15 pages, two sides. It is really good. Anybody familiar with that document?
You need to get that *Prodigal God*. So there's four books for you. I can mention other books along the way, but I'm kind of in that mood right now. I just reread Chuck Swindoll's book on grace, which is an older book but it is a wonderful book to read again. I'll tell you something really good on that book if you can find it - because Swindoll did it on book tape, so my guess is you could probably somewhere order it on book tape. Again, if you're going to find a book tape, it's going to be Amazon probably. But if you can't find it on book tape, that's worth going on eBay because a lot of that stuff you can find on eBay. That book tape of Swindoll reading his book on grace is really good. It's a wonderful little resource.
So we'll mention other things along the way, but Keller...
James Session 9: Two Types of Wisdom
James talks a lot about the idea of the gospel, but James is talking about the results of the gospel in our life. We've made this point to you, and I have to because some of you miss a session here understandably or we just forget or we get carried away in something. We have to remember that James is writing to a group of people who believe the gospel already. They're followers. That's why 13 times he calls them brothers.
He's calling them brothers because he is about to give them some really difficult things that need to be said. He challenges them. Remember we said the key verse of the book is what? This will kill me when you don't know this. What's the key verse of this book? 1:22, that's correct: "Prove yourself to be not just merely a hearer of the word but a doer as well." So that's the overarching theme to be a doer of the word.
James Gets Practical
Well, he's moving along and he's applying this, so he's in a really practical section. Last night we talked about the tongue. If you look at chapter 4 he begins with "What's the source of the quarrels and conflicts among you?" Here these two practical things against the backdrop of talking about trials and ending by talking about sickness - and we can argue out what that is, physical or spiritual - but against sickness, trials, talking about the idea of the tongue and talking about quarrels, he puts this almost parenthetical insert that he drops in there in verses 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, and 18.
Now when I try to convince people, "Hey, you can read the Bible and get something out of it on your own," I'll frequently go to this passage. Let me show you how we'll do this because some of you might say, "Oh, you know Bible study, it's so complicated, it's so difficult. Some of it I don't get, I quit. Some of it's too much, I don't know."
Working Through the Text Together
Look how you can work this one apart. I'm going to challenge you now. I just acknowledge I think we hit the wall of the week. This is the toughest time. You had yesterday morning off, yeah, the great last night, some s'mores. You're a little bit tired. I'm kind of aching right now for my own bed. I love Cannon Beach, opposite except for the beds. I struggle here on the bed. I'm stiff, I'm really stiff, so you hit that wall.
Now we got to power through this, and it's not my job to get you through this. It's the Spirit of God to get you through this, but you got to try. This is a perfect section to be trying to get back engaged because I'm going to say to you: let's read this and you start to make some observations. So it's really helpful.
Making Observations
Look at this: "Who among you is wise and understanding? Let him show by his good behavior his deeds in the gentleness of wisdom." So a question and a statement. Then the word "but" - you always look for words like this. When you see a "but" or a "since" or "therefore" or whatever, that immediately tells you that the author's connecting or contrasting thoughts here. See what I'm saying? You don't need Greek for this. You do need a little common sense.
"But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, don't be arrogant and so lie against the truth. This wisdom is that which comes down from above, but it is not wisdom that comes down from above, but it's earthly, natural, and demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exists, there is disorder and every evil thing."
Verse 17, here it is again: "But." So in this case, it's a contrast. "But the wisdom from above is first pure and peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy." And then there is verse 18, which is somewhat of a confusing verse and difficult to translate, but it's translated this way: "The seed whose fruit is righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace."
For the sake of our illustration here, let's forget verse 18 for now.
What Do You Notice?
Just look at this. Just you with a notepad in your room. If you were sitting down and I started to say to you, "Make some observations about this passage," just based on that reading right there, what are some things you notice in there? We can do it that way. I can do it as a rhetorical question, or if you've got something you want to fire out, just shout it out. You don't need to be called on.
See that right away? How cool is that? Just right away he shows you a contrast. The two "buts" in verse 14 and verse 17 - he's contrasting here. Right, got that. Now what's he contrasting? What's the overall topic? The overall topic is what? Wisdom. See, you don't need me. They're paying me all this money to be here and you don't need me. They're not paying me anything, so hang on.
Two Types of Wisdom
So he's talking about wisdom and he's going to give you a contrast. Now when he talks about wisdom, what does he say about it? If he's contrasting, then there must be at least two things that he's contrasting. What's he contrasting?
This is - you're making this way tougher than it needs to be. He's contrasting earthly wisdom and he's contrasting heavenly wisdom, or earthly wisdom and the wisdom from above. What else does he say? He's telling us that earthly wisdom has bad results. You're going to be able to spot it. It's identifiable. If you have earthly wisdom, it's identifiable, and he tells us what that is.
What else does he say in describing that earthly wisdom? It's demonic. What else? The word right before it: it's natural. So it's really simple, see? You grab that. That's what I'm saying. I want you to be encouraged. I want you to - when we say be a student of the word, the deeper you go in terms of study, and sometimes deeper means more complicated, that's fine, and I need resources.
I'm not a student. I'm not intellectually that curious. I honestly grab a few basic principles and then I just hang on those. But I want you to be a little bit encouraged by looking at this passage. I mean we spent three minutes there. I read it to you when you started and you really started to unpack it. Now from there we can go deeper, but I'm just gonna show you how to do that.
You see what happened? You read it and I have a study Bible. So there's headings and most often those headings will actually break sections that have a theme. I have a Ryrie study Bible. I haven't taught out of this Bible in a long time, but I thought I'll grab a different one when I came up here. I don't know why I just did. But in that study Bible that section, verse 13 to 18, is titled "True Wisdom."
Two Kinds of Wisdom
As you read it you got that the theme is wisdom. There's doing a contrast and He's saying there's two kinds of wisdom. You get them here. There's earthly wisdom and there's wisdom from above. There's natural wisdom and there's supernatural wisdom. There's demonic wisdom and there's godly wisdom.
Now I asked this question assuming the answer is obvious: Which one of these two do you want in your life? My assumption is you want that second wisdom. You want that wisdom from above that's supernatural and godly.
Well, what does that look like? He doesn't give us a bunch of specifics. He gives us really what the result of that thinking is. It's kind of like when Paul says the fruit of the Spirit is—He doesn't say Bible study, prayer, accountability. He doesn't say those things. He says the fruit of the Spirit is really attitudes: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control. That's the fruit of the Spirit.
The Contrast Between Spirit and Flesh
So you go I'm walking and then we could go to that. We may have—depending on how our time goes we may look at that contrast in Galatians 5 because He said I want you to be led by the Spirit not by the flesh. And He said the Spirit and the flesh are at war with one another. If you're walking in the fruit of the Spirit it is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control. But right before that He gives you the fruit of the flesh.
We skip that a lot. James is absolutely camping on this fruit of the flesh. See it?
The Warning Against False Wisdom
So let's go into it. Now He says look, if you have bitterness—verse 14—and selfish ambition in your heart, don't be arrogant and lie against the truth. So He said if you've got these two things, this jealousy and the selfish ambition, don't be lying about your faith. For that wisdom—what wisdom? Well that wisdom that produces those things, the jealousy and the selfish ambition—is not that that comes down from above. Don't be trying to kid yourself. It's earthly, natural and demonic. Because where you have—and then He connects those words again—where you have jealousy and selfish ambition exists, there's disorder and every evil thing.
Understanding Bitter Jealousy
So He said here's the first thing I want to talk about. I want to talk about bitter. That word bitter means prickly or sharp. It's a sharp jealousy. And jealousy manifests itself—and I made a list of at least two ways.
One, I'm jealous when I want what you have. You have something and I'm envious of it. So you look at me right now and go "that's the coolest shirt and shorts, I wish I had that"—you're jealous. Okay, that's one kind of jealousy.
The other type of jealousy is this and I think this is far more hideous: I don't necessarily want what you have. I just don't want you to have it.
Personal Example from Business
So I used to be in the commercial real estate business and we had daily, hourly, empirical data and evidence of the depravity of man. It is a cutthroat—I know how tough business is—but let me tell you that is cutthroat, evil, tough business. I did a lot even in that business. I did a lot of stuff on handshake and I never in my time was one time sued or taken to court, never had to file for errors and omissions insurance or anything. I mean I just, if there was a pushback I folded. I really played—I was an easy touch because I felt that was part of, in my case, part of my testimony.
We used to have a slogan in my office. I think I made it up but it plays to this jealousy thing: That the next best thing to making a deal was seeing someone else lose one. There's a real perverse joy we took in that. To hear them talk about a deal, maybe even have it go into escrow, maybe even have the non-refundable money pass through because usually at that point you think you got the deal, but then to have it go south—that my friends is bitter jealousy.
The Self-Centered Life
I want what you have or I don't necessarily want what you have, I just don't want you to have it. This idea of jealousy is living in our own world, our own personal ideas, our own desires, our own standards, our own measurements. And so people, goods, services, whatever they are, are in this planet to serve us.
So here you go. Look up here. For thirty years, here was my life. Here's me and I was convinced that everything else in the world was here for one reason and that was to make me happy. So relationships, people, goods and services, anything—anything was valuable to me as long as it would advance me, my agenda, my career. The minute it didn't, I was done with it. It was as disposable as forks and plates that we use now, coffee cups.
So if you look at that first thirty years of my life, it's filled with—and it should be, you would expect it—it's filled with bitterness, disorder and every evil thing. So I have all sorts of broken relationships.
Teaching Experience
One day I—I used to before I started the church I taught a Sunday school class at this other church and it was a big class. We had like 500 people in this Sunday school class and they put us in a room like this. And we developed—it really was a church within a church and there's just no way to stop it. I mean we really tried to regulate that not happening and tried to not have that.
attitude and try to emphasize to the Church people we're here to support you, but we developed our own thing. We had our own tables, our own table host. We did our own, but with their blessing, our own Christmas parties. Well, we had greeters. We had guys at the door.
Well, we had one of these guys at the door, one of these kind of guys that I don't like very much now. "How you doing?" "Any better, there'd have to be two of me." Oh man, I hate that. So I just say fine. That's all I want to hear. I don't want to hear about two of you. So this guy's one of those: "It's gonna be a great day."
So I come in one day and I said, "How you doing?" "It's gonna be a great day." I said, "Oh, that's cool." He said, "It's gonna be a special day." I said, "Well, that's cool, too." He said, "There's a girl who I met who just went in who says she hasn't seen you since she was in high school. She went to high school with you." I said, "Oh, it's not gonna be a great day. I don't think it's gonna be a very good day for me."
The Problem with Natural Wisdom
Why? Well, if you knew me in high school, you knew what, in fact, was in essence the real me. And that was selfish and self-centered and self-absorbed. Why? Because I was living with a wisdom—so let's go for sake of discussion and just put kind of worldview in there. We could do that, a philosophy of life that was based on the natural and it was demonic and it was totally earthly.
There's that idea of that bitterness, jealousy, selfish ambition. So there's nothing wrong in and of itself with jealousy if we were jealous like God was, like we looked at last night. But we aren't. It's bitter jealousy. There's nothing wrong, by the way, with ambition. I personally believe that Paul the Apostle was a driven man. I think he was a very ambitious man. He talked about focus: "This one thing I do."
Now He did a lot of other things. He said, "I've been determined to preach Christ and Christ crucified to you." Well, this is really good right here. This is really key. Here's what He says: it's not that He didn't talk about other things, but He said those other things were all based on the relationship with Christ.
Relationships and Proper Priorities
That's why if you're single, we say to you what you look for in a guy—look for in a girl is a girl that loves Jesus more than you. Girls, look for a guy that loves Jesus more than you. Why? Because that's what you want.
So I used to teach this and somebody talks about reprioritizing your life. So they would say—and you probably even answer this—"What are your priorities in your life?" And then it's chatty Kathy moment: "Well, God is number one and then my family is number two and then my kids." I always made a distinction between my wife and my kids because I used to tell my kids, "I love your mom more than I love you. I just do. You kind of dropped into this thing and then you're gonna leave. We're kind of stuck in this thing. So if I don't love her more than you, then this isn't gonna work."
"So I'm glad you're here. Good friends, help you out as long as I can, feed you for a while, try to develop you, coach you through life, but I love your mom more than you." And you ought to do that. That's the problem. Sometimes you all fall in love with your kids way more than each other. That's not good, because once those kids are gone, they're the 10W-40 that's making it work, and once they're gone now it's bone-on-bone.
Reframing Our Priorities
So I'd always go like this: "Well, God's number one, my wife is number two, kids are number three, my church is number four, then somewhere's business." And one day I'm teaching somewhere and this guy said, "Hey, come here a second. You got your priorities all out of whack." I said, "Really?" He said, "Yep." And I'm gonna tell you up front, he's right.
He said, "The minute you say"—and he's right—"the minute you say God is number one and then something's number two or three or four, what you instinctively do is do the God thing and then go do the other thing and then go do the other thing and then go do the other thing. What you need to never do is isolate the God thing but say, 'Here's what's number one, here's what's number two, here's what'—if you want to do it that way, but overarching, permeating, sautéing—I made that word up—marinating—I'm on a roll—whatever those things are. So if it's Susan, this is the priority under the umbrella of God is the priority over that." You see that? That's really big.
Parenting Under God's Authority
So now when it comes to kids, my kids—like I'm not hung up on this whole kid thing. And some people are really, you know, "They're my kids," and they're not your kids. They're God's kids. And your job here is to, first of all, not screw it up and then to expose them to the things of God.
So we had a really cool thing yesterday. I've never done this at Cannon Beach, but yesterday afternoon we did a baby dedication. There's a family here and then some friends here and we did a baby dedication. Well, at a baby dedication—I don't know if you do those in your church. We don't do many of them anymore, but we do them out in the areas. We'd say do it with your neighbors. In a baby dedication, we're really not dedicating the baby. We're really dedicating the parents.
So we'll say, "If there was a little switch here"—the kid's name was Jake—"if there's a little switch that we could throw on Jake that he'd believe in Jesus, we'd do it. We can't do that." Well, we want to really dedicate the parents in this.
The Challenge of Natural Parenting
Why is parenting so difficult? Well, essentially because the kids are pretty much an inconvenience and we're selfish. That's all right. It's okay to say that. They are. They get in the way. It is really difficult. They seem to act up at the most inopportune times. And then it becomes a pride issue because I know you are gonna evaluate me by how my kids behave. So now I'm parenting out of pride and selfishness. Now, how's that gonna work? Not very well. Thank you.
So that's my natural flinch. See, that's the natural man. That's who I really am. That's who the world is. So the world wants what it wants when it wants it. It's driven. I go to the grocery store. I don't—
I don't go to the grocery store very often. I'm just not a grocery store person. When Susan got sick—and I think it was like two or three summers ago—she was in bed sick and we were on vacation. We needed provisions, so I had to go to the grocery store.
You're going to laugh. I had never been to the grocery store to actually shop. I had bought an item here and there, but I had never been shopping. So I had this list, and it wasn't very extensive since we were on vacation.
When I got into the store, I found all these sections. When I got to cereal, I was blown away. There was a whole wall of cereal. I like shredded wheat—I like the little mini shredded wheat. I don't want frosted shredded wheat or the ones you have to rip apart. So I had to find those.
Then Susan wanted pancake mix, and I couldn't find it. All these people kept asking, "Can I help you?" No, no, I'm going to find this pancake mix myself. So I looked all over. Finally I was just desperate, so I said to this young lady working there, "Can you tell me where the pancake mix is?" She said it was in aisle four. I said, "Well, let me tell you something—if it's in aisle four, I'll take you to dinner, because I've been in aisle four." You could tell she thought I was hitting on her or something. So we go to aisle four and she goes, "It ain't here."
Finally I found pancake mix. You know where I found it? I found it with the syrup. So I grabbed the pancake mix and I'm so excited. This was supposed to be a 15-minute trip, but I was gone three hours. I was really into it. I found Gold Bond foot powder and thought my dad always used that. I found all this other stuff—it's unbelievable.
So I come home and Susan could barely get up. She said, "What took so long?" I said, "Oh man, I couldn't find the pancake mix. Did you ever see the cereal aisle? Unbelievable!" She gets up the next day and decides she's going to cook. She comes in and says, "Hey slick, look at the pancake mix." I was so excited to find pancake mix that I never looked—I bought chocolate chip pancake mix. She said, "I don't want to eat this."
The Express Lane Experience
I don't go to the store much. I went to the store about six months ago, and there's one place that's my ultimate destination in the store: the line that says "Express." Even if I need 15 things, I'm only getting 12. You better figure out what you're not getting.
It drives me nuts because the guy ahead of me—I'm looking going one, two, three, four, five, six, seven—and I'm saying that's got to be 13. I haven't figured out how you count all these things yet.
So I'm in the Express line. What would you never do in the Express line? You'd never train a checker in the Express line. If you're going to train them, why would you put them down there? So I'm in the Express line, and every other line has guys coming with four carts and they're getting out of there before me.
I'm standing there, and I look to my right at this wall of magazines. You know: "What did Michael Jackson mate with an alien?" and "John and Kate plus eight split." I'm standing there thinking, "Who buys this stuff?" Just then a guy says to me, "Excuse me," and reaches over to grab the alien one. I look back and I got my answer to who buys these things.
Our Obsession with Tearing Others Down
My point is that even that is selfishness. John McEnroe said this: "We love success but not successful people. We want to tear people down a notch."
I love Michael Jackson's music. There's probably a lot of sad things in Michael's life, but one of the most sad is that he did Thriller so fast. How are you going to make a better CD than Thriller? It ain't going to happen for you. So whatever you do after that is measured against Thriller. He could do great stuff, which he did, but he's never going to match that. He's a tragic figure.
But what's the obsession with Michael? Why did CNN—if they had any credibility left, they lost it there—go 24/7 for 10 days on Michael? We're curious about that stuff, and there's a morbid side of us that wants not just to know who they are but to tear them down. Why? Because there's a jealousy in the midst of all this.
The Self-Esteem Problem
High school students in the United States of America ranked 13th among the top 14 industrial nations in the world in mathematics. But we rank number one among the 14 top industrial nations of the world—our students do—in self-esteem. So we don't know what 2 plus 2 is, but we feel good about it. That's how I interpret that data.
We're obsessed with self. What is that? That is earthly, natural, demonic. That's being absolutely natural. We are sinful, but make no mistake about it—we're spiritual.
Paul writes to Timothy in 2 Timothy 3 that in the last days, difficult times will come. People will be lovers of self, and then He lists lovers of money and goes all the way through. Then He says this in 2 Timothy 3:5: "They will hold to a form of godliness, although they will deny its power."
What's the power? The power is in Christ. So He says just because they're religious or spiritual—I mean, my assumption is if you walk up and down Hemlock and start talking to people... I did a retirees conference here in March, and I always thought that these people went to relax on Hemlock. That made me laugh the whole time I was here.
If you're walking up and down Hemlock and you start talking to people, you'll find they're very spiritual, very New Agey. "I'm very spiritual. I'm a spiritual person." I don't know what that means. What does that mean? "Well, I believe in this spirituality." Well, you don't define a word with the word. What does that mean? "Well, I believe there's this other force or power or whatever you want to call it." Okay, I'm all right with that. Here's the problem: Is there a force, a power, a person? See, what we're talking about here is truth.
The Spiritual Equivalent of Mathematical Truth
Let's go back to two plus two. If we were to do the mathematical equivalence of how we look at theology, you'd sit down with a first grader and go, "Two plus two is..." and you put five. They would check it and say, "No, that's wrong." Well, the first grader would say, "Wait, wait, wait, what do you mean wrong? It's five for me. It feels like five. I think it's five."
"Well, but it's four." "But it doesn't matter. It's four for you. It's five for me. It may be eight tomorrow. It may be three. Does it really matter? It's only important that I fill in the blank, that I have an answer." Well, no, it's wrong. "Well, who made you King? Who are you to say two plus two is four?" And that's funny—we get it there.
What I'm saying is there's a spiritual equivalent of that. So we can talk about, "Well, that's God for you, and you feel it's that way, but that's not my God. My God would never..." and then you fill in whatever it is. "God wouldn't do..." Well, that's thinking natural, selfish, demonic.
The Pattern of Worldly Thinking
That's the idea that Paul has in mind when he says in the last days people will be lovers of self, lovers of money—run down that list. If you run down that list, you see all sorts of things, and you begin to see a behavior pattern that develops in there as well. They're lovers of self. They're lovers of money. They're boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. Though they hold to a form of godliness—see how that dovetails? That's all through Scripture.
That's what James is saying. Look at it: if you've got bitter jealousy in verse 14 and selfish ambition, in verse 16, if you have jealousy and selfish ambition and exist, he said that's because you're thinking earthly, natural, demonic. However, when you have that, there's going to be disorder and every evil thing. That's the world you live in. That's the world that you and I occupy.
The Need for Followers, Not Just Leaders
If you googled the word "leader" or "leadership"—and I haven't done it in a while—but you get something like 3.5 million references, something like that. If you google "follower," you get something like 275,000, and almost all of them are Christians. So here's what we need: leaders. Well, here's what we really need: we need some followers. But we're not going to follow. And I'm not talking government—I'm talking about church. We war over the silliest, stupid things.
How come? Well, that gets into that section tonight in chapter 4 when He said, "What's the source of the conflicts among you?" Let's finish this. Okay, verse 17. Now you go ahead and read it. I'm going to take a drink of tea, and then I'm going to ask you to make an observation about that. So go ahead and read verse 17.
Examining the Wisdom From Above
Is there something in there—there's no wrong answer here, by the way—is there something you see in verse 17 that kind of jumps off the page at you? Okay, anybody? Here we go, talk to me.
"There's an order to it." Yeah, that's exactly—that would be... there's no wrong answer. So there's other things, but again, see how that is? When you see this, there's two words—because you're just reading it through, you just want to get this, what's He saying? Well, there's two words that jump right off the page. Very good. By the way, there's the word "first" and "then." So He's saying there's a progression here.
If I have this wisdom that's from above, I'm going to see it in my life in first this idea of purity. Now that's a word we use frequently, but we don't really use it as the Scripture uses it. So we may talk about pure gold, or we're working—we just reworked a sound system and the acoustics in our chapel in our where we do our one of our worship services. And they were saying when I walked in the other day, they said the sound in there right now is so pure. Or we may talk about pure chocolate.
The Sweet Spot Illustration
Or we may... I have a—I don't know if there's golfers here, but I play golf. I have a driver, and the head of the driver is roughly the size of a toaster. Right on the driver is a place that they refer to as... what is it? The sweet spot. Mine still is on its maiden voyage. My driver sweet spot is a virgin sweet spot. It's never been violated in any way, shape, or form, though it's the size of a toaster.
The other day I'm playing—I'm off the tee and I'm playing the number one handicap hole. I have a shot that's 208 yards. I know because I'm standing on a sprinkler; it's 208 yards to a green that's uphill. It's hard. It's the hardest hole on the course. I'm playing with a good friend of mine, and I've been hitting the ball really well all day. I haven't played at all, but I'm significantly stronger than I was—this is my theory—that I'm significantly stronger than I was four or five months ago, and I'm hitting the ball a lot further.
So I stand up and the ball is sitting just right. The ball is sitting just right, and the shot is really difficult, but it just feels right. It just looks right. It just fits my eye. And I got up and I set up over the ball, and I'm just sitting up. I said to him, I said, "I just feel like I'm going to hit a great shot. I just really feel good." And I set up—the ball set right, I felt right, I could feel right. I tend to bend way too much; it should be more like this, but I tend to bend a little bit. And I'm over this, and my mind is going, "Okay, man, just swing slow, nice and slow." Boom.
Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. I'm trying to get that rhythm on my mind. That ball left the club and I said to him, "That's as good as I can hit a golf shot. That is absolutely—" and then I use pure. I said, "I hit that so pure."
He said, "Oh my golly," and it had this perfect trajectory. I said, "Well, I can't see it against a white sky. I can't see it." "Well, that's the word you use—pure." Well, when he's talking about pure, he's talking about moral pure.
Somebody asked me this question the other day. It's a pretty good question. He said, "When is the last time you blushed? When's the last time you were embarrassed?" Society's lost that. Years ago you'd be in a meeting, in a business meeting, and there'd be some gals in there. All of a sudden one of the guys would start talking and use some language. He'd always say something like, "Pardon my French," and I thought, "Wow, I'm bilingual and I didn't even know it. I didn't know that was French. That didn't sound French to me."
Now the girls talk like sailors. I'll walk through the mall and hear these 14-year-old girls dropping the f-bomb everywhere. I will tell you it's not very ladylike. It's not very good on a guy. It really doesn't work on a man. The last bit of restraint in society that kept us civil were the women. I'm not blaming you for it, gals. I'm just saying you've let it go.
Four Areas of Purity
Now I'm going to give you four areas of purity. Number one: purity of thought. Don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the purity—be transformed by the purity or the thinking of your thought. We talked about the other night, so I won't go down that area again. But in that area, guys, for lust, they say that the average high school student by the time they've graduated high school has seen approximately 350,000 television ads, and those are all designed to capture your thought.
So you're sitting and you're watching it—how many times, let me ask it a different way—how many times have you watched an ad and at the end go, "What were they selling?" My dad used to do that. My mom and dad all the time would go, "I don't get that ad." I'd say, "Yeah, you're just old." Susan and I look at each other and go, "I don't understand that ad right there at all. I don't understand. What are they selling?" Jeans. I didn't see jeans anywhere. All I saw were girls walking around, or girls playing beach volleyball and sitting in a chair with very little clothes on, and it's an ad for Corona or Bud or something. The implication is you drink this—this is what's attached to that drink—and you'll play beach volleyball with girls that look like this.
Well, that stuff gets in your mind. It gets in your hard drive. Here's a little phrase I've developed. Again, I don't know if you're into tattoos or not, but if you're going to get a tattoo, here's a great tattoo for you: D-L-Y-M-G-T. That's a great little tattoo for you. Don't let your mind go there. Don't let your mind go there. You got to be proactive.
The Principle of Replacement
Now we're in a Bible camp, so you would say fill it up with scripture. Fill it with something. Whenever something's taken away—this is really an important principle—it has to be replaced with something else. So you can't say to somebody, "Well, don't do that." You've got to say, "Don't do that, but do this."
Susan and I will be with the grandkids, and so Braden will be playing with something. Here's how I'll do it. Braden's playing with something. I go, "Don't play with that. No. No, put that down. No." Well, it accomplishes almost nothing and just elevates the tension in the room. Susan will go over and say, "Hey, sweetie," and she'll take away what he's playing with and replace it with something she wants him to play with instead.
Again, if you're somebody who wants to read this stuff, Google the name Thomas Chalmers—I think it's C-H-A-L-M-E-R-S—and what you'll get is essentially him talking about the efficacious replacement of the heart. What he's saying is you need to take something away. Whatever is in your heart—talking about a lot about heart. Your identity is tied to this. You need to take that away and you need to replace it with that. Don't let your mind go there. So you need to do that.
Personal Example: Breaking Out of a Funk
Probably about—I would say about maybe it's six weeks ago, maybe eight weeks ago, maybe a little longer—I was just in a funk. Just in a funk. I did three things to get out of it.
Number one, I quit watching a lot of television, especially Fox. Because it's all screwed up and I know it. I don't need to hear that from Shepard and then O'Reilly and then Hannity and then Greta and then a rerun of them all. I don't need to hear Newt Gingrich is on every day telling me how screwed up everything is and there's these five things we need to do, or Karl Rove. They're all right. I don't have any problem with what they're saying. I just don't need it, and I'm just going worse and worse and worse every time. I'm just feeling worse.
So I got rid of most of that. Because of the nature of it, I'll kind of watch a little bit of O'Reilly, but I don't leave it void. I fill it with two Seinfeld's. Two Seinfeld's are equal to one O'Reilly. So I watch at least two Seinfeld's every day. Got rid of the rest of my television.
I changed the music I was listening to. I noticed that on my iPhone, I went to Pandora—I don't know if you've been to Pandora, but it's great—and I like Natalie Cole. So I'll go Natalie Cole and then I'll reject some of it. Well, pretty soon I had a playlist that was kind of these melancholy Natalie Cole, Nora Jones, Dido—you probably know that name, she has a really cool song called "White Flag" that I like. There's just a bunch of these really cool songs, but they're all this melancholy.
I said, "Alright, I got rid of that." I went back to the Doobie Brothers—good, solid music. Mozart and the Doobie Brothers, you can't beat that combination. Back to a lot of the Beatles stuff I like that. Then I started reading again. I had not been reading a lot.
Like those three I'm going through books at the speed of light now. The Kindle, by the way—they just dropped the price on the Kindle and it's still really expensive, but it really does, if you're somebody who likes to read, it will change the way you read, the speed with which you read. You will read more. It's an amazing product from an amazing company. You go to Amazon and they'll get that Kindle there before you get home and they'll be happy to load it with books along the way. They do an incredible marketing job. Well, the Kindle has really helped me read.
But here's what was happening—all those things make me melancholy. So I had to say to myself over and over again, "Don't let your mind go there. Don't let your mind go there." And it doesn't have to be a sexual thing—everybody always goes sexual thing—but it's a material thing or it's that, you know, when you're going there, don't let your mind go there. So it's purity of thought here.
Purity of Habit
Secondly, it's purity of habit. We're going to go a little longer this morning. Here's what I've done. Here's my rhythm—I'd rather go a little longer in the morning, a little shorter at night. I mean, you're fresher in the morning. It's cooler in here in the morning, a little hotter at night. You're tired, you got stuff to do. So I've made an arbitrary decision to go a little longer in the morning. Plus they all left, so we can do whatever we want to do at this point. So I've just given you a heads up on that. So it's purity of habit.
So I'm teaching in Tucson. This guy comes up to me. He said, "I want to tell you something I haven't told anybody else in the world." I said, "All right." He said, "I haven't told my wife, I haven't told my friends, I haven't told anybody." I said, "Fine." He said, "I want to tell you this." I said, "Okay." And you could just tell, and I said, "Listen man, here's what I've learned—it's like taking off a band-aid, just rip it off. Just say it."
He said, "All right. I've had a series of one-night homosexual experiences with different guys." I said, "Okay." And they all think like I'm going to melt like the witch in the Wizard of Oz or something like that. Whatever. Okay. I don't care. That's fine. That's good. We can work with that. He said, "I'm so embarrassed." I said, "Don't be." He said, "I'm so ashamed." I said, "Don't be." "I feel so sinful." Yeah, be that.
So I said, "Let's go get a cup of coffee." So we're talking and I said, "I don't want to hear about what you do with this guy or guys, but tell me how this happens." So he gave me an episode. I said, "Well, give me another. Give me another episode. Give me another three." All three episodes had some variations in them, but they all started at the same bar.
Now I don't have a PhD in counseling, but I said to him, "Well, here'd be my immediate reaction—don't go to the bar." He said, "Do you think I'm totally stupid? Obviously I know not to go there. I'm driving to the bar saying I don't want to go there. I'm sitting down making eye contact with a guy saying I don't want to do this. I'm taking the drink he buys me." That's the power of sin, but I'm saying, "Man, here you go—we can eliminate those others if you don't go there." So as you're thinking about going there, you got to substitute it with something. Go to the gym, hit balls, read a scripture, read a book, listen to music, take a guitar lesson, climb a mountain, do something.
Purity of Motive
Purity of thought, purity of habit. Here you go—purity of motive. So now we're into the heart issue. The perfect illustration of this are the Pharisees.
Jesus moves through all of His life and He seems to get along with everybody until one of these Pharisees show up. The minute they show up, He launches every time—other than like Nicodemus and a few isolated cases. But the minute He's with these guys, He just can't handle it. And you should ask yourself, why is that? How can He be with the hookers and the drug addicts and our equivalent of it and the tax collectors and all that stuff, and He somehow gets along with them, the kids He gets along with them, but He can't handle these Pharisees? What's the problem? They're so self-deluded.
So even in the Sermon on the Mount He says, "Look, when you pray, when you give, when you fast, don't do it like they do." Now here's what He doesn't say—He doesn't say don't pray, don't fast, don't give. He said don't do it like they do. Well, when you go back and you look at that, when He says don't do it like they do, He's pointing out how self-absorbed it is and how much it's a pattern of their heart.
How do they give? They give in a very public way. How do they pray? In a very public way. They knew the times of prayer during the day and they would strategically find themselves—let's pick at the corner right down there by Bill's Tavern. They'd strategically find themselves right there per time and then they burst out in prayer right in the middle of it, so the people are supposed to look at them. "Aren't they really something?" How did they fast? Well, when they fasted they didn't take care of themselves. They let themselves go so that everybody would say, "He must be in the middle of a fast."
There's nothing wrong—in fact, it's good to pray and give and fast. The problem was they had entirely the wrong motive. So what are your motives? It's good to study God's Word, but why are you studying it? It's good to teach a Sunday school class, but why are you teaching it? It's good to sing in the choir, but why are you doing it? What's your motive?
Purity of God's Word
So it's purity of thought, purity of habit, purity of motive, and here's the last thing that gives us all that—that's the purity of God's Word. I made reference to the Jefferson Bible. It's to understand that this from beginning to end is the pure Word of God. It tells us not only who God is but who Christ is, why He's here, why He came, why
He lived, why He died, what in fact He is all about. It's within this Word of God that we discover that Christ rose from the dead. Paul writes in 1st Corinthians 15:16, "If the dead are not raised, then even Christ hasn't been raised. And if Christ hasn't been raised, then your faith is useless."
The Wisdom From Above
So the wisdom from above is first pure, and then all this stuff begins to flow out of that. It is first pure and then peaceable. The other produces quarrels and difficulties. Then there's a gentleness about it, and then it's reasonable. Then it's full of mercy and good fruit, and it's unwavering and it's without hypocrisy. You begin to see all of those things.
So if I'm thinking and my wisdom is earthly, natural, and demonic, the result is in verse 16: disorder and every evil thing. If I'm thinking wisdom from above that's supernatural and godly, rather than disorder and every evil thing, I see purity, peaceableness, gentleness, reasonable good works, mercy, all that, no hypocrisy.
Verse 18 may be best literally read this way: "And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace."
The Importance of Our Thought Process
So James is saying—he's been talking about the tongue, he's going to talk about life's conflicts tonight—but he says here in the middle of this, our thought process is really important. This wisdom is really important. This how we connect the dots is really important.
You've got two choices here: earthly or the wisdom from above, natural just the way you're wired or supernatural, demonic or godly. Which do you want? You want the second. How do you know you have it? That list right there.
Looking Ahead to Tonight
So I want to look—but just tease you a bit for tonight—He asked the question: What's the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? What's the strife in your life? What's going on there? We'll pick up right there and take a little look at that tonight.
Father, help us see these truths. Help us see these in our own life. We pray for our time together this afternoon. We pray that we have a great time at lunch. We pray for the carnival that's a cool family time, especially for the kids. Allow them to enjoy it. Safety, fun. Give us a bit of time of rest.
When we come back tonight, God, I pray that Your Spirit will invade our hearts. We saw that clip from Bible school, and the whole message was "it changed my life, it changed my life, it changed my life." God, that's what happens when Your Spirit applies Your Word to our heart. God, change our lives. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen.