Dennis Tuuri

May the Lord God bless the reading and exposition of his word to that end that in the midst of the mighty winds that blow against the church in our country and around the world, we would be those who stand. Please stand for the reading of God’s word. We’re returning to James. We’ll be looking at verses 13 to 18. The sermon is on wisdom from below. I think last November I actually preached on the wisdom from above that the false wisdom is contrasted with here.

I will touch on it today. But for a further exposition of that section, I would remind—I would ask you or let you know you could go back to that sermon in November and actually there are earlier ones as well. Mike Meyer preached on the same text. I think Richard Mayheart did years ago and I also did. So James 3:13-18 and on your handout today if you want to, you could follow along in that handout and that will acclimate you to the way in which I’ll be dealing with the text.

James 3 beginning at verse 13. “Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct, let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, do not boast and be false to the truth. This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder in every vile practice.

But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere, and a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.”

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for this text in front of us. Thank you for the great focus and desire of the people that James wrote to for righteousness, to see your righteousness exalted where they live, in their country, and in their families and their churches. We have the same desire. Lord God, we hunger and thirst after a world that is rightly ordered in relationship to you in our own lives and in the life of our nation as well. We pray you would use this text, Lord God, to help us to understand what produces that righteousness and what does not. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. Please be seated.

So let me commend you where we started with Joshua 22. Joshua begins by commending people. Let me commend you for making a good choice today. I know that SUS Prep is going on in Portland, sustainable preparedness. So some people, it’s today and today only. So in light of all the things going on in our country, you had two choices this morning whether you knew about SUS prep or not. It’s a prepper event, right? You could either go there to prepare for what we’re going through as a nation or you could go to church and worship God. You made the best choice. And so I want to commend you for that.

And that’s really sort of what’s going on in this text from James. You know, they’re in times of persecution. They’ve been scattered abroad, difficult times. There seems to be fighting going on in the church and other things that are difficult for them to go through. They’re certainly not living in an explicitly Christian setting where they’ve been dispersed to and the Jews continue to persecute them and come after them. And in relationship to that, they’re all trying to figure out what do we do? How do we get to, you know, praying and working toward the end that God’s kingdom might come on earth as it is in heaven. And the same thing is true of us.

We come to this text in the middle of interesting days. Tomorrow, you know, is Blue Monday. It’s what I’m calling it. The federal judge in Eugene will in all likelihood overturn the constitutional definition of marriage. It’s not a ban on same-sex marriage. It’s a constitutional definition of marriage as one man and one woman. He’ll overturn that probably saying it’s unconstitutional. That judge is homosexual. So he’s kind of got a vested interest in the case. And over one million people voted ten years ago to change our state’s constitution with that definition. And all we were doing, of course, was sustaining the definition that has been the definition in this state since its origin.

Right? And in western civilization for two thousand years, that’s all we were doing. And now one man will overturn the votes of over a million people. Not that votes are always right, but understand the significance of what’s happening here and on an issue based upon a newfound right in the Constitution, the United States Constitution, to gay marriage, a right that simply was not even dreamed of for the first two hundred years of this country’s origin. These are weird times. These are weird times. And they’re times to try men’s souls.

I mean, if you think about what’s going on and think about what he’s going to do and add one more fact, that case, you know, was one involving the Constitution of the state of Oregon. We have an attorney general. She’s taken an oath to uphold that constitution and defend it and she decided not to defend the Constitution because she determined, you know, placing herself in the context of the United States Supreme Court or something, she determined the law was unconstitutional. So when the court heard the case, when this single judge in Eugene heard it, there was nobody arguing in favor of this state’s definition since its inception in this country’s definition for two thousand years. Nobody argued that side of the case. How’s he going to rule? Well, it’s pretty obvious.

Do just what other states have been doing for the last year or two since a very poorly written decision by United States Supreme Court Justice.

Well, the point is these are times that make it more difficult to hold your temper down. These are times in which we want to get angry and do something about this stuff. But what do we do? Well, that’s kind of what this text is about—sort of what we do in those kind of difficult times. And it includes telling us what not to do. And then it tells us what to do. And then it says that if you do the wrong things, disorder happens. And if you do the right things, you manifest the right kind of wisdom. Then that righteousness will be the long-term effect of that.

You know, it isn’t just Blue Monday. Of course, I don’t know if any of you heard, but probably some of you did. A week ago, this last Friday, the decision was made by the people that Oregon Family Council had put together to run the Religious Freedom Initiative, which we decided not to do it. And that’s because the government of Oregon gave us a ballot title that said “allows discrimination” rather than “protect speech, religious or protect the actions of people with religiously held positions.” Now, it’s a—it’s a—I could go into detail on that, but it was clearly a political decision. We appealed that to the Oregon Supreme Court. The Oregon Supreme Court said, “Too bad. That’s the way it’s going to be.”

So we saw that we couldn’t get partners who we would need in a big statewide campaign. They were getting a little queasy because of the closeness to the Arizona law, which was completely different than this one. But anyway, there were political reasons, number of factors, and we decided not to do it. That’s a sad day, folks. That means people like, you know, Peter Mayahar and others, photographers, bakers, musicians, you know, will not be allowed, you know, to not perform in a same-sex wedding ceremony. They’ll have to do it or face civil prosecution by the state of Oregon. That’s sad. We can’t even defend our people anymore.

So, you know, these are difficult times. Oregon, you know, on a national level, Oregon’s become a joke because of our healthcare fiasco and you know, over the weekend, we’re going to become a joke again for I don’t know how long, but for a while because the candidate who will likely win the Republican primary on Tuesday, we come to this text in the context of politics. This is a text about politics. The one who will almost surely win the primary race is now been brought into a civil case where she’s said to have performed unnecessary surgeries. That’ll be going on this year. And now it turns out there’s a 9/11 tape where she entered illegally her boyfriend’s house and he called the police and they came out. We’re going to be, you know, a laughingstock again.

It’s tough. And we have the whole situation going on in Nigeria where it seems like what’s starting to happen is that the outrage about the girls being kidnapped is being turned more to the Christian government there than to the Muslim Islamic extremists who took them. So, I could go on. You know though, maybe you don’t know. Hopefully, you don’t read the papers as much as I or listen to the news as much as I. It can be depressing.

But in the context of that, this text is quite important. It tells us how we respond to these things. Right? So, this is what it’s about. It’s about how to respond in a way that does indeed bring about long-term righteousness of God.

Now, we don’t really know the context precisely of this, but let me read a couple of commentaries descriptions of what they thought was likely going on here. This commentator says that James alludes to what seems to be congregational strife as in a close-knit community leading to unruly behavior, disorderly worship, and a challenge to recognized authority as Corinth. Same problem, and I’ll read a text from Corinthians later on from Corinthians. Same kind of thing is likely going on here.

And again, another quote: “The problem seems to be that some self-style chief people thinking they were endowed with superior wisdom and understanding had divided the church because of their teaching, which betrayed a misuse of the tongue.” Now, the verse from Corinthians I was going to mention that kind of supports this view or at least shows a parallel to it is 2 Corinthians 12:20.

Paul wrote that “I fear that perhaps when I come I may find you not as I wish and that you may find me not as you wish, that perhaps there may be quarreling, jealousy mentioned in our text, anger, hostility, same Greek word is in our text today, slander, gossip, conceit and disorder, same word as in our text today.” So it seems like this is what was happening at least in some of the churches in the early church in the context of the writing of the New Testament.

Now in James 4, this section we just read leads up to the next section of James, James 4. And to support this idea that this seems to be what James is addressing, let me read James 4:1-3. “What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this that your passions are at war within you? Not within you personally, within your body. In other words, right? Passions are at war within your members. You desire and do not have, so you murder. You got selfish ambition, so you murder. Maybe not literally, but with your tongue, right? You destroy character. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel, willing to divide the church. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask, and do not receive because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions, those passions that our text today spoke of as well.”

So that I think is sort of what’s going on as evidenced by what we’ve read already and then specifically what this leads to in a description to the church or churches that he’s writing to here of what actually is occurring in the context of their body.

Now thankfully we come to this text at a time not like that. So it’s a nice dispassionate time to think of these things. We’ve gone through such times once or twice—times in which this text that we just read in chapter 4 really were quite germane, selfish ambition. However we come to this text in a little different setting and essentially what this text tells us is to avoid all of that you have to properly understand what wisdom is, what godly wisdom is. Right now, what is wisdom?

Well, and of course you know our day and age, wisdom is seen as primarily a philosophical or intellectual characteristic. This is not the wisdom of the scriptures. Wisdom in the scriptures works. It’s tied directly in our text today. The wisdom you judge and evaluate this wisdom by the conduct, not even the words, but now we’re moved to conduct that’s being described connected to the words, right? But conduct.

Tim Keller in his sermon on this text says this. He says, “The definition of wisdom is the ability to see and build relationships of all sorts. Wisdom is the ability to take things that are unrelated, to see them and fit them together into a relationship with each other. Wisdom is the ability to take disparate things and put them into a whole.”

Okay. So, wisdom is a very practical kind of thing that tries to put things together that aren’t seemingly able to be put together. But in the order of God, wisdom sees the heavenly pattern, works toward that pattern, and actively seeks to produce it in the midst of its setting. And you know, Keller is saying that wisdom really is across the board in all kinds of areas. Wisdom to build a building, for instance. But you know, I think that here the big thing to remember is that wisdom is talked about in terms of relationships. So wisdom is going about the proper way to build and maintain relationships as opposed to breaking and factionalizing a church the way the false wisdom does.

So the text I think generally calls us to understand that at the beginning. That’s what this first verse in verse 13 is all about. “Who is wise and understanding among you?” So you know he’s just talked about teachers and so everybody shouldn’t be teachers. So now if we want to think in the immediate context of the churches that he’s writing to “Who is wise and understanding? Who should be the leaders? How do you judge their wisdom and understanding?”

“By his good conduct, practice, not intellectual attainment. Let him show his works in the meekness, the meekness of wisdom.”

So this is what wisdom is. This practical thing.

Now, interestingly, as the text begins, it says “Who is wise and understanding?” If you know your Bibles really well, this would remind you of Deuteronomy. And in Deuteronomy, for instance, in verse 13, we read this. “Choose for your tribes wise, understanding and experienced men, and I will appoint them as your heads.”

So, this is civil governance that’s being talked about in Deuteronomy 1. This isn’t ecclesiastical stuff. This is the government. He’s going to appoint heads over them. And the qualification for being a leader in the state or in the tribe is to be wise and understanding. So James is bringing that language into this. You know this is written to twelve tribes—James right—and Deuteronomy heads of tribes. So he’s telling them you know in your churches [seek] wise and understanding guys but the implications for this text goes broader than that because he’s using a term that referred to civil leaders as well.

And he’s actually using a term which again from Deuteronomy is used of all the people of God. Deuteronomy 4, one of the favorite texts of theonomists. Deuteronomy 4:5-9 says, “I have taught you statutes and rules as the Lord my God commanded me that you should do them in the land that you are entering to take possession of. Keep them and do them for that will be your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples.”

So in the context of people watching, you know, a nation devoted to God. He says that his statutes—building your relationships and wisdom upon the word of God—”this will be your wisdom and understanding as people watch you.” He says, “Who when they hear all these statutes will say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.’”

He goes on to say, so this is a favorite text of theonomists because we know that the word of God applied to civil statutes right is in its when it’s performed correctly and articulated actually becomes a drawing point for other people to want to immigrate to you or to imitate you. This is what it was in America. You go back to the founding of this nation, texts like this were commonly talked about and the country built itself upon the statutes of God’s word. The whole sixty-six books of course, but paying particular attention to laws of governance. And what happened? America was a shining light on a hill, a beacon that drew all kinds of immigrants, drew imitation by other nations. We were the head, not in a boastful sense, but because we were wise and understanding people by building a civil culture and by building churches, yet upon the basis of God’s word.

Now, we don’t do that. And now we’re the tail and not the head. Now, we’re despised everywhere. And particularly the Christian aspects of who we are despised. But the point here is when he talks about wise and understanding, he’s talking about leaders. Leaders in the church, leaders in the state certainly and we could by application, leaders in business, leaders in a household, right? So the text in discussing wisdom directly brings you as a as a parent, right?

Into how to figure out the wise relationships in your home using not techniques that come from the world, but techniques that come from above from God’s throne room in heaven. So, it has application to all these things, has application to rulers in each of these spheres, but it has application to every one of us, whether you’re a ruler or not, because we’re all supposed to be, according to Deuteronomy, wise and understanding. Our lives are supposed to be marked by this sort of discussion of things we’re not supposed to do and things we are supposed to do and this doing of them is what wisdom is. It’s not an intellectual attainment, although there’s certainly involved in it.

Now, in Deuteronomy 32, he says later, he says what does he say? He’s telling them what will happen if they don’t obey him. He says “when you say our hand is triumphant, it was not the Lord who did all of this. They were a nation void of counsel and there was no understanding in them. If they were wise, they would understand this. They would discern their latter end.”

So what he’s saying is the essence of wisdom first of all is being right-related to understand who God is, not being puffed up. And this country of course has become prideful. We’ve done all of this. We’ve used worldly wisdom, our science, our technology, things we’ve learned down here without having to look at a heavenly pattern. And so we built up you know that kind of sense and God says you have no wisdom or understanding and you’ll become the tail as a result of that and that’s what’s happened.

So first of all you know critiquing our situation in this country and what we’re going through—why have these things happened and to counteract that what can we do to turn the ship of state back around—all right let’s look at one. Let’s first of all do a real quick glance over the text. Okay so take your handouts if you got them. If you don’t have them, I don’t know why you don’t have them. They’re provided for a reason. Hopefully, you’ll have them.

And you know what I’m saying here is there’s this first introductory statement. That’s what we just have been talking about. We’ll return to it in just a minute. So, he begins by saying, well, who are the wise and understanding? Who should be your leaders? Okay. And then what he does is he gives a sevenfold description of wisdom from below.

Now, he doesn’t say “wisdom from below,” but he says “this is not the wisdom from above.” So by implication it’s the wisdom from below. And then he talks about the fruit of it. And now I’ve arranged this so that you can see how I think there’s seven of these things. Right?

So he says first of all the characteristic of ungodly wisdom is bitter jealousy. Bitter jealousy. This word “bitter” is only used twice in the New Testament. Here and in the text we just looked at where fresh and bitter water come out of the same tongue. So these people who have bitter jealousy end up with bitter words, not edifying words. Okay? So bitter jealousy, that’s the first thing. And selfish ambition. So what they’re really about is themselves. May not appear that way, but that’s what they’re doing.

“In your hearts, don’t boast and be false to the truth.”

So that’s the first two characteristics. And then he talks about the origins of that kind of practice.

“This is not the wisdom that comes down from above.”

Coming down from above. What’s that? That’s heavenly perspective. But it’s also should remind us of what? Christ. Christ who coming down from above to be the wisdom of all ages. And it should also remind us of the spirit. The spirit falls from heaven upon the church on the day of Pentecost. And that spirit is a spirit of wisdom. So the wisdom from above is not some abstract thing you can grab a hold of. It’s relationship to Jesus through the Holy Spirit.

Anyway, so this wisdom from below doesn’t come from above. What is its origins?

“It’s earthly, unspiritual, demonic.”

Okay, so it’s three things in a row and these things increasingly are negative. Earthly, unspiritual, demonic. We’ll come back to that in a minute. Those are the sources. Then it gets right back to the first two.

“For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be discord—disorder in every vile practice.”

So the way I see this is he’s giving us seven things: bitter jealousy, selfish ambition, earthly, sensual, demonic, jealousy, and selfish ambition. So the first two and the last two match, and the three in the center are sort of a progression of badness ending in demonic, which is of course always a bad thing—demonic wisdom.

So, you know, that’s a description of the wisdom that is not from above and it’s sevenfold. And then it says, what happens if this is what’s going on in your life? If you’ve got, you know, envy, jealousy against somebody else, right? And in this case, particularly the other rulers in the church. So, if you’ve got bitter jealousy and envy against others, and if you have selfish ambition, you’re trying to exalt yourself. I’m a lot better, you know, understand that this is coming from ungodly sources.

And when you engage in those seven characteristics of the wisdom from below, the end result then is said to be “disorder and every vile practice.” Disorder is a strong term. It means like anarchy. So things start to break down. The churches start to split. The unity of the church is attacked and all kinds of bad nasty stuff starts happening in the church.

Contrasted to this wisdom from below is the wisdom from above. So that’s what we’re not to do to fix the situation. What are we to do positively? And this is verse 17. “The wisdom from above is” so we could say the spirit, Jesus, we’re supposed to walk like Jesus and follow him. What are we supposed to be like?

“Pure, peaceable.”

So purity, you know, wholehearted devotion again, right? Intentional in our wholehearted commitment, not double-minded. Not double-tongued. James has talked about these things. But pure in devotion and purity.

“Peaceable.”

So working in a way that brings God’s peace and order. Not the peace of lack of conflict, but the right relationship of parts or members of a church to accomplish things.

“Peaceable, building together things. Gentle.”

The word has an implication of being gentle and helpful to other people. So again it’s a practical kind of thing. It doesn’t mean it’s not talking about the manner of your speech or how you appear. This is talking about whether you’re gentle in the sense of helping other people. Okay. So you’re not selfish. You’re putting others above your own interests.

“Open to reason.”

Open to reason. Another way to that this is translated is “easily entreated.” And this is the middle of these characteristics of wise and understanding rulers and the very heart of it is you should be able to be entreated. Okay? Civil rulers should be able to be entreated. They don’t have such a power over everybody that everybody’s afraid to talk to them. Okay? Church leaders should be easily entreated. You may not agree with who’s entreating you, but you’re willing to look at it and you’re willing to have your mind changed.

Easily entreated. Parents, you know, as your children get older, you should demonstrate to them the characteristics of being easily entreated. Right now, you don’t want to put up with complaining and disorder. But on the other hand, you do want to show them that leadership in business or the church or the state and leadership in the family has as its heart a humility that creates someone who is easily entreated. It’s not all authority, particularly as the child gets older.

Easily entreated,

“full of mercy and good fruits.”

So again here remember James has told us you know that religion is to visit the widows and the fatherless in their distress. Good works. Wisdom is not intellectual. Yeah, it’s tied to what people teach. The false teachers are also those who don’t do any good for anybody. They don’t engage in good works. So the opposite of that is to help people out, right? To enter into that true religion of helping others—and others not just your friends, right? And your family.

These others are people with needs that the Lord puts us in contact with.

So, the wisdom from above is “full of mercy.” You’re sympathetic to people in their struggles and trials and “good fruit.”

“Impartial.”

You’re not breaking up into factions, right? You’re not partial toward this group or that. That’s what the guys with selfish ambition and bitter jealousy want you to do is to get partial about things. You’re impartial and you’re sincere in what you’re doing.

Now, I believe this sevenfold designation, and if you’ve heard me talk about this, you know this is what I think—it’s a sevenfold, heptastichic chiastic structure. Heptas—seven, chiastic. It moves. There’s matches, right? You’re gentle helping others and you become full of mercy and good fruit, right? You’re peaceable and that’s linked to not being partial. You bring people together. You don’t split them apart with partiality. You are pure and sincere. They clearly match up. And then the heart, the ruler is the one who is easily entreated.

Now that matches and I won’t take the time but that matches the seven days of creation. Lot of interesting studies these days on chiasms. You read almost any commentator modern commentators many of them look at these chiastic structures. Very few of them link these frequent sevenfold chiastic structures to the days of creation. David Dorsey has a book this thick. He outlines all the books of the Old Testament, he uses a lot of heptads, chiastic structures. He sees a lot of sevens, but he never thinks about them in relationship to the seven days of creation.

And of course, we would because the seven days of creation are the way God’s spirit moves typically, right? And in the seven days of creation, the center is what? Sun, moon, and stars. The rulers, right? And the middle of the ruler are people that are easily entreated. Right? Third day, plants start to grow up. Right? Fifth day, other teeming things and fish begin to abound. So you got the initial plants growing up—gentleness, helping other people—and then you become full of mercy and good works, right?

Second day firmament connecting heaven and earth, Jesus. So peace between two parties, right? Sixth day men are to be these peacemakers and intensify send business relationships up. First day the purity of the light of God’s word ushering creation into being and then the seventh day you know the sincerity of God’s visit with his people.

So I think it’s that and so this wisdom from above is the new world. You know, it’s interesting when he says that the threefold origin of the bad wisdom is earthly, sensual, and then demonic—first two would throw you if you’re just reading through it. Well, okay, what does that mean “earthly”? Well, we can link it up to worldliness, right? Which we would typically do in our heads.

But you know, in 1 Corinthians, when he’s talking about the transition, the transformation of our bodies, he uses both these two terms to speak of our initial bodies. There’s an earthly body and a heavenly body. Okay? There’s a natural body and then there’s this spiritual body. That’s the way he uses it. So, you know, “earthly” just means here of this place down here. “Sensual”—that term can also mean just kind of connected with who we are as created beings of God who draw breath and that’s not necessarily if you stay there it’s not good but it isn’t really necessarily all that bad.

You know, “sensual” begins a little bit of a development of more bad because we’re so engaged in what brings our bodies breath—pleasure whatever it is—we become animal-like. But the point I’m trying to make is those first two, you know, that’s the old world and you know, so it’s connected with the old creation, but when new creation happens, those things become very counterproductive.

Jesus is doing new stuff. There’s a new way to look at things. So what’s happening in these two wisdoms is the old fallen wisdom and the new resurrected ascended wisdom. And he’s calling us. He’s calling them and he’s calling you and I to live in the new world to make the right choice. On the Lord’s day, come commune with him in his spirit. Get wisdom from above—the preaching in the word and the reading of the word and the singing of the word. And don’t engage in the wisdom from below.

That may be proper in its place sometimes—susprep, preparedness for what’s coming down the pike—but if you choose that over the worship of God, you’re doing that wisdom from below. And what the significant thing is—the third in that sequence of the wisdom from below, right—so the middle of these three things, it’s earthly, sensual, and what’s the third one? Demonic. So now it nails it and says look, if you walk in that way, really ultimately in the face of rejecting the wisdom from above, that’s demonic stuff. It’s demonic.

Now James has talked about and he will more the devil, the tongue of the venomous tongues that we have in the context of creation is how he brings it up earlier in the epistle. He’s going to talk about resisting the devil later in this book. There are these you know kind of other references to diabolical, Satan, devil-inspired stuff of being at the heart of problems. And here that’s what he’s showing is that ultimately when we engage in selfish ambition and we engage in bitter rivalry or jealousy of other people, that’s going to split the church up.

And that’s exactly what Satan did in the garden, right? He took the unity of Adam and Eve and crashed it, splintered it. He took the unity of Adam and Eve and God and splintered it right? You know, by the way, another way to look at these threefold terms—earthly, sensual, demonic. You know, the Christian church has for a long time summarized the opponents that we have in the world or the temptations that we have as emanating from the world, the flesh, and the devil.

And that’s what these three terms sort of speak to. Earthly—worldly, the flesh—sensual—related to our breath and our animal natures—and then the devil, right? Demonic. So, so we’re really talking about old world, new world. And so the sevenfold designation, getting back to looking at the handout, is I think this direct reference back to creation because what’s going on is Jesus has brought in a new creation and this is the way to live in it.

This is the way to live in it. And what happens if you live in it that way?

“And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.”

Kind of an odd sentence. You don’t normally sow fruit or a harvest. You sow the plant and it becomes a harvest. But the point is a harvest of righteousness. What do we want? We want a harvest, a big harvest of right relationships, justice, relationships in the world, between the world and God. We want righteousness, right? We hunger and thirst for righteousness.

And we’re tempted to hunger and thirst and then try to meet that hunger and thirsting by those old world tactics of fighting, plotting, planning, you know, raising our voices real loud, jumping into the streets, maybe even, you know, being part of a movement to pick up guns, right? Because things seem to be so bad. And James—they were tempted in the same way. Remember the zealots, they wanted to kill people. It’s possible that some of the Christians were killing some of the persecuting Jews or Romans. We don’t know. But maybe so. Maybe when he talks about killing in the next section that I read in James 4, maybe it means literally they’re murdering people. We don’t know. But that’s the temptation.

And so what we’re told is look, you want a harvest of righteousness? Great. Good. Want that desire and now work to attain it. And to work to obtain it, you develop your relationship with the Holy Spirit who moves in this sevenfold wisdom. And you find yourself following Jesus by being correctly related to the spirit who brings you that wisdom from above. And the promise attached is you do that, a church does that, you won’t have a bunch of schisms and factions and people talking about other people and slander and gossip going on. You won’t have that. You’ll have a harvest of righteousness in the church.

The church will be effective for creating a harvest of righteousness in the culture because God will bless that. Evangelism will happen. More and more people will be converted and they’ll be converted in a way that’s self-conscious about knowing the word of God, the law of God that is our wisdom and understanding. So the harvest of righteousness will happen. He promises us that.

So he puts this choice, right? This choice in front of us of two different kinds of wisdom, two different approaches. And he wants us to know how to identify things. You know, he wants us to know that when you see, you know, divisions and dissensions and disunity and fighting and quarreling and slander, it emanates from the wrong kind of wisdom. It emanates from the double reference to envy and selfish ambition.

Mike Meyer when he preached on this text had a nice part of his outline. You can it’s actually on the website if you just search on James 3, Mike’s outline’s up there as well as his talk and he’s got a nice little section describing envy. And of course, we know what envy is. You don’t like the other person. You covet what they have. And so, you want to kill them. You want to mute them. You want to get them out. And this is what the Pharisees did with Jesus. It says they were moved by envy. This is what the Jews do with the church in Pisidian Antioch. They’re moved with envy as they see all the people coming to Christ through the preaching of Paul and moved with envy they then strike.

Okay. Selfish ambition is an interesting word too it’s good during our political season right now. The only place this is used in Greek outside of the writing of the New Testament at this time was Aristotle, and selfish ambition—that Greek word translated that—was what he would use to describe political candidates who would do anything to get elected. They would engage in all kinds of intrigues and arrangements and strange things because they so wanted to become that candidate, that leader. Selfish ambition.

So that’s what the two things that we’re to, you know, just try to wipe out of the heart of our souls, you know, they’re going to come up. We’re to repent of them and then we’re to make sure they don’t happen in the context of our body and then we’re also try to see that extended out that kind of peace that comes from the wisdom from above into the broader culture as well.

Now where does all this stuff? I mean what can we do about this? Well you know one thing we can do is understand meekness. The contrast in these wisdoms says “One is meek and one is not.”

He says, “Let them prove by their conduct that they possess and participate in this meekness, the meekness of wisdom.”

Let me read something from it’s actually in R.J. Rushdoony’s commentary, but he’s actually quoting from a Greek commentator. He says this.

He says, “The meekness of wisdom means that they are aware of their strength—strength in God. They know that in the Lord their victory is certain. They do not face the hostilities, opposition, and frustrations of this world alone or in isolation and weakness. It is an aspect of wisdom to know that God is always with us. Psalm 84, we’re those who walk through the valley of Baca, a desert, and we make it bloom because we are meek.

Meek is a word that has been devalued over the generations. We’ve lost the word. It becomes now weakness, mousiness, something. But as you’ve heard from me before and recently, it means broken to harness. And it actually, as this Greek commentator says, has the implication of strength. You can be meek and broken to harness because you are confident—not in yourself, but you’re confident that the strength of God is flowing rather through a life that is that is living in the context of the wisdom from above and the harvest of righteousness is your destiny.

It is your destiny.

Now when we have that kind of confidence knowing that God is working through us, we are humble and do things his way. But you can’t do that really ultimately if you’re fearful. Fearfulness, you know, is what drives much of that wisdom from below. We want to get in charge because we’re not content with God in charge or the people that he’s selected in charge. We don’t like what’s going on in the political process. We got to do something. Got to do it right now because we don’t believe that the Lord God is in charge of the history of the world. He is with us.

And as we seek proper relationship with the Father in heaven and to pray that his kingdom might come on earth as in heaven, that’s going to happen. It’s happening right now and it’s happening in spite of all the efforts of other people to destroy it.

You know, it’s interesting. Just think about it. So, the people in opposition to God, what are they always in the midst of according to this text? They’re in the midst of disorder. They can’t get it together, right? This group is fighting that group and that group is fighting that group. What is the church of Jesus Christ characterized by? Peace. Rightly ordered relationships which is stronger at peace and godly unity.

I think I mentioned this before but you know and Joseph is treated so sinfully by his brothers sold into slavery and then he has this prison. He goes through all these experiences and what does he tell them? “You intended it for evil but God meant it for good.”

These people that do this horrible thing to the church and to themselves by feeding themselves poison of being dissatisfied and wanting that political or ecclesiastical office and being jealous and envious of other people that have characteristics and things that they don’t have—that’s a cancer that they’re eating. That’s poison they’re eating into their soul and they pour it forth into the body.

But what is God doing? Even if they’re intending it for evil, God is superintending everything that’s going on for good. How do you beat a god like that? Why would we not trust a god like that?

Tomorrow the decision comes down, you know, we become another state given to rebellion to God in terms of sexual relationships. You know, don’t take to the streets. Don’t start swearing up and down. Don’t get all like that. Rededicate yourselves to be people with the wisdom from above. You know, these things that are mentioned here, these terms are in the list from Galatians. You know, there’s the acts of the flesh and that’s what the being demonstrated in that wisdom from below—acts of the flesh.

And Galatians contrast that with the fruit of the spirit, the spirit from above who brings us the fruits that are then mentioned in this text as well that we look. With redouble your efforts tomorrow. Redouble and concentrate on your children. Children, concentrate on not being grumblers and complainers and disputers against your parents’ authority. God has placed them there for your well-being.

If we redouble our efforts to have the wisdom from above, which comes from the Holy Spirit that came upon the church then and comes upon us now to fill us for the times in which we live—if we have the confidence that kind of meekness—a confidence that we are victors through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ in history. God says the end result of that is a harvest of righteousness. Praise his holy name.

Let’s pray.

Lord God, we thank you for the truth of these things. We thank you for the simplicity of this text and the interesting way the lists are contrasted. One doubling back on itself with jealous and selfish ambition getting nowhere and the other moving forward into sincerity and the blessings that you’ve given to us with the harvest of righteousness.

Lord God, may we be people who try to root out of our hearts sinful jealousy, sinful ambition, sinful, Lord God, uses of worldly wisdom. And help us, Father, instead having put those things off, help us to put on a confidence knowing that your hand—you’re the strength of things, not us. Bless us then, Lord God, as your vehicles to work in the context of the wisdom from above and completely expect the harvest of righteousness.

In Jesus name we pray. Amen.