James 3:13-18
Tom Shrader explores James 3:13-18, examining two contrasting types of wisdom. He describes earthly wisdom as characterized by bitter jealousy and selfish ambition, leading to disorder and evil. In contrast, wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering and without hypocrisy. Shrader emphasizes that true wisdom must be lived out through good behavior and deeds.
“We're not going to get sin less, but we're going to get more and more broken over our sin.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Blue Jean Theology (2011)
Recorded: 2011
Duration: 39 min
Themes: wisdom, jealousy, ambition, peace, gentleness, mercy, purity, behavior, struggling with jealousy, dealing with selfish ambition, seeking godly wisdom, new believer, mentor, parent, navigating conflict, young adult
Scripture: James 3:13-18, James 1, James 4:1, Romans 12, 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel
Theological Themes: practical wisdom, godly wisdom, earthly wisdom, spiritual discernment, sanctification, becoming holy, spiritual maturity, christian ethics
Full Transcript
James chapter 3. Let me remind you what's really important. James is writing, remember back in chapter 1, to the 12 tribes who are scattered. These are Jewish believers and he's trying to encourage them. At the same time, he's trying to deal with some issues they're wrestling with.
So he starts by saying, "Consider it all joy when you encounter various trials, knowing the testing of your faith produces endurance." We start with that. Then he moves in and he says, "All right brothers, I'm going to tell you the truth. You need to make sure you are a doer of the word, not just a hearer."
The irony is the better the church you go to, the more likely you are to be a hearer rather than a doer. If you have somebody who's teaching the word and teaching the word and teaching the word, and you start to take this in and you begin to get a greater and greater thirst for it, the tendency is to think there's more to learn. And there is. But there's a corresponding responsibility to do.
If you're in a church that tends to be theological on the liberal or more liberal side, there tends to be the emphasis on doing interaction rather than the theology part of it. The reality is it's a combination of two - it's both. I'm to hear and to do. What I hear and believe affects how I live. That's James' whole premise - that if you're a follower of Christ, this is how you should live.
There can be some confusion. He's not saying do these things so you will become accepted by God. He says because you're accepted by God, do these things.
The Context: From Tongue to Relationships
Last time we were together, the first 12 verses of chapter 3, James talks about the tongue. He talks about its potential for life or death. He talks about how it can be constructive or how it can destroy, and we dealt with that.
Next time he talks about relationship. In fact, look at chapter 4 verse 1: "What is the source of the quarrels and conflicts among you? Is not the source your pleasure that wages war in your members?" So he goes right for their strife. What's the source of it? Let's deal with it.
Kind of parenthetically shoved here in the middle is verse 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18 where he deals with the topic of wisdom - not knowledge, but wisdom. He's not talking about the accumulation of facts or information.
Wisdom vs. Information
I get on and start working on the internet a bit, and it doesn't take long for me to find some really interesting information that I think is really helpful. We have information all around us. What we don't have necessarily is wisdom, which is the application of the information. Or maybe even said just another way, it's kind of common sense - good old-fashioned Midwestern common sense. We don't have a lot of that.
When we get to wisdom, James says there's really two kinds of wisdom. So let's read this. If I were to say to you, like if somebody comes to me and said, "I just want to learn to start studying Bible," and I really wanted to encourage them, this is the kind of passage I'd go to and say, "Just get a notebook and start making observations." Because it's really easy to get this and tear this apart. So this will be fun. Let's look at it.
"Who among you is wise and understanding? Let him show by his good behavior his deeds in the gentleness of wisdom." So that's not too hard to figure out. If you're wise and understanding, there's going to be a corresponding action.
Two Kinds of Wisdom
"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 not that which comes down from above, but is earthly, natural, and demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exists, there is disorder and every kind of evil. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy. And the seed whose fruit is sown in righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace."
So we just start to attack this. We can make some observations real quickly. James is saying there's two kinds of wisdom. One kind he describes real clearly with three words in verse 15. There is one wisdom that's earthly, natural, and demonic. There's another one that's not earthly - it's from above. That's not natural - it's supernatural. And that's not demonic - it's godly.
Now if I were to just arbitrarily just throw out the question, which one of these do you want? My assumption would be, though not everybody I guess would say it, that I'd go, "I want that one that's from above, that's supernatural and godly." Well, what would that look like? How would I know if I had it?
The Marks of Earthly Wisdom
Well, let's again go after what James has here. He says, "Listen, if you have behavior," verse 14, "if you have this behavior that's bitter jealousy and selfish ambition, that's the wisdom that's earthly and natural and demonic, and it will result in disorder and every evil thing."
See that? We didn't do hardly any work there. All we did was just move some things around, and we got a long way in understanding real quickly what James is saying. James is saying if I have this earthly wisdom, there is this bitter jealousy.
So when we talk about jealousy, we'd talk about it in this way most often: I want what you have. Jealousy, envy - well, yes, but there's another side to it. I may not even want what you have, but I just don't want you to have it. Okay, that's the darkest side of this.
So I go back to my old days at Coal Banker. I don't know if this was my observation - I think it was. I don't know how many of you are familiar with the commercial real estate industry, but it's a place where moment by moment you have empirical data for the depravity of man. You don't have to look very far to see sin around you.
Well, I don't know that I coined the phrase, but it certainly was something I observed. When we were in that business as brokers together, my observation was this: the next best thing to making a deal was seeing someone else lose one. Okay, now preferably this is the way you want to see Him lose it - after the money goes hard and...
When they're forfeitable, they therefore would have spent the to-be-determined commission check, so now they're in debt on top of it. It's a very good feeling when you see somebody in that situation. That would be what I would call bitter jealousy—that's what James is saying.
So I'm living for myself. The idea of this bitterness is sharp, prickly, poignant, pungent. It is this harsh, sharp, cutting, destructive idea with no concern for anyone else. Your idea of the world is here's you, and then everything else circles around this. The result of that bitter jealousy is you end up being selfishly ambitious.
See how they come together? There's this bitter jealousy, and the selfish ambition is now in your heart. So your concern is about nothing but you. You become contentious, selfish—there's strife. Don't be arrogant, He said, and lie. So if you say you're a follower of Christ but you have these things, then you're lying because that's not earthly—there's something in us in this process.
The Natural Inclination Toward Selfishness
I go to the grocery store. I don't go to the grocery store very often, but when I go, I have one specific ultimate destination: the lane that says "express" on it. Now the last time I'm there, I'm at the express lane and they're training someone. That just seems like the oddest place to train somebody, but it's just me.
So I'm in line at the express lane, watching people fly through these other lanes with carts of stuff while I'm standing there doing what you can only do—which is to say, "Well, I don't want a candy bar, I don't want this." I'm looking and saying, "Honestly, who cares if John and Kate Plus Eight mated with aliens? Is there anybody possibly who can care about this?" Then because I have time, I'm by myself asking really the big question: who buys this? When the guy behind me picks up a copy. Now all I could think is his vote counts as much as mine. That always gets to me, but there's this morbid curiosity that we have—there's that dark side.
I read a book a few years ago. It was a biography of Nike and Phil Knight and how that came into being. John McEnroe's in the middle of this, and McEnroe has a wonderful quote. He said, "People love success, but they hate successful people." So they love that, they want to build it up, they want to see it, but yet there's something in us that wants to see that torn down. There's this selfishness, there's this bitterness.
Understanding True Self-Denial
We have to be careful when we talk about self and the environment we're in, because we may start talking about self-esteem and self-worth and self-value and all these other things, and we don't want to go down that road too far. The Scripture, I think, is clear. It's not that we should feel good about ourselves, it's not that we should feel bad about ourselves. The reality is we shouldn't be feeling about ourselves.
"Deny yourself, take up your cross and follow Me." So what He's saying there is not deny the feelings, but deny the human side. Deny the earthly, natural, demonic. That's what He's saying. Put those aside. Get those out of the way. Kill those. They keep coming back up. Kill them again and kill them again and kill them again.
I read a study a while ago. Among the fourteen top industrialized nations in the world, the high school students in the United States rank thirteenth in mathematics, but number one in self-esteem among the fourteen nations. So we don't know what two plus two is, but we feel good about that. That's how we got there. That's how I try to put those things together.
The Spiritual Battle We Face
So I say, look, this is just natural, it's demonic, it's fleshly. In that, I want you to get that there's a spiritual warfare going on. This is a spiritual battle, and we don't want to undermine that at all. There are forces that are engaged around you—demonic forces, Satan, His demons, the world system, my flesh, your flesh, our flesh—and we are prone to this. We're vulnerable.
The result, as I said, is that there's—verse sixteen—jealousy, selfish ambition, and there's disorder in every evil thing. You look around and things in your life are in disarray. So if you in your life see this thing of disarray, you see constant tension and friction—I'm not talking about hardship and difficulty, I'm saying there's friction and relational friction—you have to first look inside.
Creating an Environment of Peace
We had somebody that came into our house the other day for the very first time. They came in the door, and they were there about thirty seconds, and they said, "This is unbelievable when you come in here. You just decompress when you walk in. There is no tension." It is designed—when you walk in, there is a big L-shaped sectional that just says, "Just come in here and turn on the TV and put on golf and fall asleep." I mean, it just says that to you, the whole house.
So this person makes that observation, and Susan said, "That's been my desire from the very beginning in our family—to create a home, to understand that there's all that out there, but we don't want that environment in here. We don't want that here. We want here to be a place of fun, a place where you want to come, a place where you can hang out." She would say, "I don't want Tommy to come home and fight wars here at home. I want Him to know there's stuff out there, but when He comes here, He's not fighting more battles."
Perfect. Well, you can't do that. That's not natural, earthly, and demonic. That's supernatural.
The Wisdom From Above
Well, what is that wisdom? Now He describes it in verse seventeen. Look at verse seventeen. I'll read it to you: "But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering and without hypocrisy."
When you look at that, is there something in there—so if we're going to break it apart—that kind of jumps out at you as you look at it? Just take a second and look at it. Again, for me, I'm looking for hooks, words, ideas.
immediately I see the word "but," which tells me there's either a conclusion or some sort of contrast taking place. But the other words that jump off the page at me would be "first" and "then." So he's contrasting here—whatever was earthly, natural, and demonic, he's going to give you the "but," the other side of that. And when I look at it, he's saying it's first this, and then there's a whole sequence that comes to that.
But leading the way is the word "pure." Now we almost overuse that word, and at the same time underuse it, so let me explain that. We almost overuse it in the sense that we use the word "pure" to describe, for example, pure gold. I got a pure sound on my sound system. Pure chocolate.
The Meaning of Purity
I have a driver. My driver is the size of a toaster, and it has at the center what they call the sweet spot, which now after a hundred rounds is still on its maiden virgin voyage—it's never been touched. So I have this driver, but every once in a while I will hit—I played golf last week for the first time in two months, 17th hole, par 4, 208 uphill, my second shot. And I hit a three wood about two feet from the pin. I hit it, and I said to the guy, "That's as pure as I can hit it." Wherever that goes, it doesn't matter—wherever that goes, I cannot feel better, I cannot hit it any better than that.
And it just went up there, and I lost track of it a little bit, and it just came down. He said, "I think that's right by the pin." And it was just a pure shot. So the purity He's talking about here is almost synonymous with the idea of holy.
Four Areas of Purity
I'm going to give you four areas of purity here, but I think it's important for us to have them. The first one is purity of thought. "Don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." Purity of thought. And we can illustrate it in a bunch of different ways.
If you have a material problem, you're materialistic by nature, then going and looking at model homes is probably not a good idea for you. But for me, the easiest is to just talk about guys, and most guys, and the struggle of purity of thought.
So when Jimmy Carter was president, which pretty soon we're going to be calling the good old days, when Jimmy Carter was president, he had a thing that he used called the misery index, which was a combination of inflation and unemployment. And he was able to crank that baby up to about 32. To illustrate thought purity, I have this thing called the lust index. And there's a connection.
So I have two elements to it. Let me give you the weather for today. Let me give you the next six days. Here's the temperature: 107, 110, now we're to Saturday, 114, 113, 111, 109. So that would factor—let's average that, let's say 111.
So I'm trying to get the lust index. I take the temperature and I combine that with fashion. So you take the excessive heat and female fashion, which in the center of heat becomes shorter, tighter, and lower cut. And you get the lust index. Well, the lust index is high this time of year.
So for the male of the species, the last place you want to go is a place like Fashion Square, where the girls are walking through, coming from 111 to the air conditioning with not many clothes on, and thoughts come into your mind. And you have to do that—you have to get a hold of this. Don't let your mind go there.
And it could be in the area of lust, it could be in the area of feeling sorry for yourself, it could be in an area of relationship, it can be anything. You have to get control of your mind. You have to get purity of your thought.
Purity of Habit
Purity of your thought, here's the second thing: purity of habit. So I have to control the people and the places and the things around me. Can't control some of them, some of them just come in, you can't—I mean there's nothing you can do about it. You're just in certain places with certain people at certain times, they just happen. But to the best of my ability, I have to get control of my habits.
So I'm going to suspect that there may be one or two of you who are here who have some degree in counseling, there may be one or two of you. But probably most of you don't. But I'm going to show you that I think you could probably counsel a lot of what I would do.
A guy comes to me, he's in Tucson, so he's from Tucson, so don't try to figure out who the guy is, you don't know Him. And he said, this is after a study, and he said, "I want to tell you something." And I could tell because I've been through this drill a million times. I could tell just by the way he's talking. And he's nervous, and so if people are here, he's over here, you can just tell, body language, and he's going, "I just really want to tell you, I'm not really sure how to tell you," and I said, "Look, just say it. That's the only way to do it."
He said, "Well, my wife doesn't know this, no one knows this." I said, "That's fine, just say it." And he said, "Well, I've had a series of one-night homosexual encounters." I said, "Okay, that's fine, we can deal with that, that's all right."
So I said, "Well, let's just get a cup of coffee and talk about it." So we're talking, and I said, "I don't need to know what you do with each other, but tell me, kind of tell me how these things happen." Well, he described three or four of these encounters. Every one of them started at the same bar.
Now, you don't have a degree in counseling, but you would say to Him, I think, "Okay, right, don't go to the bar." And he said, "Now, I just want you to see and understand the depth of sin, not just His, but yours. He said, 'You don't think I know that? I say that to myself all the time when I'm driving to it. When I'm driving over there saying, don't go to this, I can see that guy and say, don't talk to that guy. I can see it. I want to come back,'"
because it's really easy to beat this guy up, because it's so clear. Every person I know has something that makes them sad and mad and feel stupid when they do it. Maybe it's the way you treat a spouse. Maybe it's going to an internet site. Maybe it's the way you interact with somebody else. Maybe it's a thought process. I got don't do it. I got just say no. I got that. But it's not always that easy.
It is that simple, but it's not that easy. Now, by way of encouragement, what makes it doable is you now have the spirit of God in you who allows you to live supernaturally. But it's purity of thought, purity of habit, it's purity of motive.
Pure Motives in Action
Back in the old days, I'll tell you how old these days were. There were things called developers. There was a developer who used to come to one of the studies and he said, I found the perfect Sunday school class. I said, really, what makes it perfect? The city manager and the head of planning and zoning go to the Sunday school class. So I sensed that his motive for the class, perhaps, was not the right reason.
We can do the right thing for the wrong reason. The Pharisees are perfect examples of this. So Jesus says, they're praying, they're giving, they're fasting. Don't do it like that. He's not saying don't pray, give fast. He said, go ahead and do that, just don't do it like they do it.
Did he mean the ceremony part of it? Part of that, but it wasn't the ceremony even as much as what was driving that. What's the motive? Why do you do what you do? So it's purity of thought, habit, motive, and it's the purity of God's Word. It's coming back to the one source that we have, that we can encounter, that we can rely on.
The Jefferson Bible and God's Pure Word
Every once in a while I'll bring this in, so some of you have seen it. But it's a little book that you can go and you can buy it at Barnes & Noble or Borders. It's called the Jefferson Bible. What Thomas Jefferson did, and you can see it's a very small book. Thomas Jefferson took the Gospels, and then this would have been way better if he'd had a Mac. It would have been a lot easier for him. Because he then cut and paste and put together the Jefferson Bible. It's about 15% of the New Testament.
So what he did, literally, is rip out the stuff that he liked and the stuff that had nothing that was supernatural associated with it. I'll go ahead and stipulate for you, Jefferson's way smarter than I am in a whole bunch of areas. But I got him beat in this one. When he puts this together, it begins, and this is his whole intention. If you study it and you read his foreword, he's saying what I'm trying to do is to take from the New Testament the stuff that Jesus really said.
Now that introduces a whole interesting question, which would be what? How do you know what he said? We don't even need to go there. It begins with this. It came to pass in those days that there was a decree from Caesar Augustus that the world should be taxed, and all who went to be taxed, everyone to every city. Joseph goes up with Mary and Jesus.
Now the first thing you notice in the Jefferson Bible is there is no encounter of angels and announcement and virgin birth. So we lose the virgin birth, which is essential to the Christian faith. The last sentence of the Jefferson Bible is this: There they laid Jesus and rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulcher and departed. No hope, no resurrection.
Now you want the teaching of Jesus. I'm all over Jesus. Good teacher. But if you just take the teaching of Jesus, and then you take that and you edit that, you edit out all the supernatural. Well, you edit out the resurrection. The very thing that Paul says, if that's not true and Jesus didn't rise from the dead, then we won't rise from the dead, and then we have no hope, and then our faith is useless. Our faith is in vain. Our faith has no value if Jesus didn't rise from the dead.
Scripture as Our Reliable Source
So the purity of God's Word, to understand that this indeed is an ancient document, and I will acknowledge, I wish it came together a little cleaner than it came together, and I understand the sloppiness over a period of time about it, and yet I am convinced by the book itself and then by study that it's the most reliable of any books that we have and really all of history, and that it is in fact the inspired Word of God. At that point, what makes this really helpful is now I have the answers to the questions that I'm asking.
So I watch a discussion. I'm watching a discussion. I don't understand the law at all, but I'm watching a discussion on the Constitution with Justice Scalia and Justice Breyer. So these two guys are talking about the Constitution. As they're talking back and forth, it's a striking conversation similar to the discussion we have about the Bible.
So Breyer is saying the Constitution is a living document. Scalia is saying no, the Constitution is what they gave us and we have to interpret it as it's written. You come to Scripture, it's the same discussion. I was struck by it.
You have a whole group of people that say this is a living document, and this is not at all, please, this is not to beat him up, but there was just a long article in USA Today on the President and his faith. So he was saying he accepts Jesus as this part, but he's also very open to other ideas and other faiths and sees the Bible as very helpful, but literally, and I want to say literally, I'm paraphrasing, but I may have nailed it right here, literally talking about the Bible as a living document.
God's Fixed Answers to Life's Questions
Well, it's certainly full of life, but it's not something for you to change. Every answer to every question that God wanted you to have answers for is in there. Now, you may not like the answer.
So we go, how do we get this planet? Here's His answer. In the very beginning, there was God. And He said, let there be light. That's how we got it. Now, you may not like that answer, but that's how you got it. Are there a lot of ways to get to heaven?
Well, the Scripture says, no, there aren't. Is man basically good or basically bad? I mean, we're still arguing this. If there's anything for which we have insurmountable empirical data, it would seem to me it's this, but we still argue this. Well, we go to the Scripture and it says, no, man is evil. So by purity, by holiness, comes from purity of thought and habit and motive and from the purity of God's Word. And now it begins to live in me.
It has its result. It's pure, and then it's peaceable. I have the peace with God, so now I have the peace of God. And that peace of God, I can now see it work itself out in the lives of the people around me. Here's the illustration before of the house that Susan has created, the home.
Paul says it this way in Romans 12: "As far as it depends upon you, live at peace with one another." Be peaceable. I think He implies in that you're not going to be able to live at peace. Some people you can never get there. But my responsibility is to live at peace, is to be peaceable.
Testing Our Peaceable Nature
You're never going to know if you have that peaceable spirit until you're in some tension situations. You don't know if you have them or not. It's like love. You don't know if you really love somebody until they act in a way that's unlovable.
We were talking about serving the other day, and there's a wonderful lady and her husband who come to our church, and they're owners of a restaurant, so service is important. I'm talking about serving, and it's just a great conversation. She said, "Here's what I've observed. It's easy to serve until you're treated like a servant." That's really insightful. It's easy to love until you're treated in an unlovable way. It's easy to be at peace until you have turmoil and difficulty around you.
Gentleness and Reasonableness
And then gentle—it's strength under control. For me, that's always easy. I always look to Jesus on the cross as an illustration of that. He went there voluntarily. He climbed on that cross. He could have stopped it at any moment, but He was there to lay down His life so that you and I could have eternal life. So there's a wonderful picture to me of gentleness.
And then reasonable—it means teachable, compliant, not stubborn, without rancor or dispute. I last week finished writing my funeral, so I've been working on this. This has been a living document. Now done. All the orders done, all the speakers done, all the music selected, instructions for the band when to be on the stage and platform and off, all done. Printed, sealed in an envelope, copy given to Karen and one to Tyler.
That sounds very morbid perhaps, but it's just I want to make sure I know what I want and I know what I don't want. And I know that if I let everybody else figure it out, they'll do what they want. So I've been spending my whole life giving them what they want and they're not going to get it now.
A New Season of Ministry
It makes me think about the remainder of my life which is however long. And I've come to this realization, is that the balance of, and this may sound odd to you, but my biggest endeavor is not up front, though I'm sure I'll stay up front for stuff, but it's finding a half a dozen young people to pour my life into them.
To find, I'm going to hand select them. They're going to be between 25 and 30-ish, probably three or four guys, one gal, and go, "You get everything I got. I want you to ride me hard. I want you to suck out of me everything you want. I want you to abuse me and I'm not looking for anything from you back." So when you feel that or sense that, I'm pretty concerned about getting the right four or five people.
Number one, number one concern of mine, are you coachable? Because if you aren't coachable, I don't got to waste any time on you. We're going to go through, I'm not saying you got to do what I say, but I'm saying if there is this non-compliant, stubborn, disputing, argumentative—very different than inquisitive—then we aren't going anywhere with this. Well, that's that wisdom from above. It's reasonable. To have a younger person, person 25 to 30, who's reasonable is unusual.
Mercy Through Hardship
It's also full of mercy and full of good fruits. The only way you're going to have mercy is to have hardship in your life. Now, there's a few people that just ooze compassion, but I don't happen to be one of them and I don't know many. They just ooze it. What makes you compassionate is to have some experience that connects you with pain.
So I give you a really silly one. I don't know how old I was. I'm probably 33 or 34 and I'd never had food poisoning and people say I had food poisoning. I go, "How can that be? I've eaten off the floor at some of the dirtiest bars in the country and I never got sick. I don't understand this." Until one day in Sun River, Oregon, I'm throwing up on a flowerbed from something I ate the night before. And now when somebody said food poisoning, I'm going, "Let me tell you about food poisoning, pal."
You have a bunch of chronic pain. You can't possibly begin to connect with chronic pain because you're going to go, "Well, I ache every day. Just suck it up." Well, there's a whole new level of that that people have. You can't even connect in that until you have it. It's this idea of mercy and with it, it's the idea of good fruits, good works. Your life is changing. It's transforming.
Unwavering and Without Hypocrisy
So this wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy, good fruits. It is also unwavering, meaning it's solid in its faith. It's not double-minded. It's going to have those moments. That's unfortunate. I mean, we're going to have those moments where it kind of, but my faith is unshakable, not in myself, but in Him and in His Word and that God is faithful and do what He says He's going to do, even when I'm not always there. So it's unwavering in that and it's without hypocrisy. That's the thing that everybody
hates. Everybody hates a hypocrite of every ilk. So if you're on the conservative side, you're looking for a Cadillac welfare guy. If you're on the liberal side, you're looking for a family values guy who's flying to Argentina. You're always looking for that because that's the hypocrite and that's the easiest thing to expose.
Well, it's very difficult and you have to do it to distinguish between a sinner saved by grace and a hypocrite. And I think the distinction, as close as I can come, is there is real remorse in the midst of the sin and hypocrisy of somebody who's really converted.
David: A Man After God's Own Heart
So I'm teaching through first and second Samuel right now. There is no reason to admire David. This guy, when they say He's a man after God's own heart, I'm convinced that's because he never has it. This guy, and we don't have time to go through it, but this guy has these incredible moments and says, "God, you're the one, I get it." And the next verse is denying it.
What is it about David? I think it's this: as he continues to sin, there's continuing repentance. That's it. We're not going to get sin less, but we're going to get more and more broken over our sin. And there will be a corresponding life change that takes place. It doesn't mean that I'll never go and do that again, but it does mean that my heart is broken over it.
Now that may sound like gobbledygook double talk to you, but it isn't.
The Picture of Hypocrisy: Judas
So who's the picture of hypocrisy? Well, to me, it's Judas. Because Judas is the one they make the treasurer. They don't have much dough when they put him in charge of it. That shows they trusted him. At the last supper, when Jesus said, "One of you guys are going to betray me," they all, eleven, didn't look to Judas. They all said, "It's not me, it's not me, it's not me, it's not me." So after three years with this guy, they could not call this guy out. That's how hideous they can be.
So I want you to understand something. When you're sitting at East Valley Bible Church or at Scottsdale Bible Church or wherever you are at one of these churches, I want you to understand there's hypocrites all around you. That's what makes this so difficult. And you may be one. That's what makes this so difficult.
This wisdom from above has with it this lack of hypocrisy, brokenness, real ache over my sin, not perfection.
The Fruit of Righteousness
And verse 18, let me just paraphrase what it says because it's a little cumbersome. The fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.
So James says there's two kinds of wisdom. One's earthly, natural, and demonic. The other is from above, supernatural, and godly. One produces disorder and evil. One produces that sequence we looked at: purity, peace, gentleness, reasonable, full of mercy.
Evaluating Ourselves
So as we've done in all of James, you evaluate you, not me, not your spouse, not your boyfriend or girlfriend or your friend, whatever. You evaluate yourself. Are you somebody who has the wisdom from above or the wisdom that's earthly, natural, demonic?
Even having that and saying that ought to be present in your life and therefore in our lives collectively, James is realistic and says, "But you've got conflicts among you. What's the cause of the conflict?" So how do we resolve this conflict? Conflict resolution we'll look at next week.
Let's pray. Father, thank you for these amazing, wonderful truths and