Earthly Wisdom

 

James 3:13-18 Who Is A Wise Man Among You?

"Who is a wise man and endued with knowledge among you? Let him show out of a good life his works with humility of wisdom. But if you have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not and lie not against the truth. This wisdom descends not from above but is earthly, sensual, demoniacal; for where envying and strife are, there is confusion and every evil work. But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy. And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by them that make peace."

 

 

 

 

We will first see what EARTHLY WISDOM IS AND DOES?

It is reflective of sensual feeling, and it goes no further than the fallenness of mankind. That is earthbound, sensual, demonic wisdom, and that’s the way most people live.

But Satan calls it wisdom. Hey, when Eve was in the garden in Genesis 3:6, she looked on the fruit because she heard that the tree was able to make one wise. That was a lie. Satan always promises wisdom and he always promises that you will know and be in the know and understand, be erudite and be educated.

 

 

But the wisdom of the world proceeds from evil spirits.

It proceeds from fallen angels. It proceeds from demons. It proceeds from Satan and his agents who are disguised as ministers of light when in fact they are ministers of darkness. The thing that makes human wickedness so devastating is that man is smart and man is wicked and the combination is deadly. Demonic, natural, earthbound wisdom - mark it - never touches God. It never touches God.

 

It leads man into smugness,

it leads man into self-content,

it leads man into immorality,

it leads him into arrogance,

it leads him into self-sufficiency,

it leads him into total abandonment to his natural impulses.

 
And the only thing, beloved, believe me, that restrains the world at all from an absolutely animalistic existence is that God in His grace has salted the earth with divine wisdom that acts as a restrainer. And He has put here the living restrainer, the Holy Spirit.
 
But when the Spirit of God’s restraining work ceases and when the salt, the people of God, are taken out in the Rapture, all hell literally breaks loose for seven years because evil is no longer restrained, and the earth is no longer salted, and there is immorality and evil to the fullest extent that man would purvey it if indeed he were not somehow restrained. It becomes a malignant infection that spreads its killing influence everywhere.
 

And you look at our world, and don’t you worry sometimes?

 

I know I do, and I say, "How can it just keep getting worse and worse?" Sometimes I get frustrated. How can we stop this? How can we put an end to this? Why does it have to go this way? And I remind myself it can’t go any other way because we have a whole civilization of people who are locked up with human wisdom. They don’t have any answers - they don’t have any answers.

 

That’s why the educational system, in terms of its ability to evaluate man and solve his problems, is an absolute farce because all it is is demonic wisdom touching base with the feelings of man who are locked hopelessly in their own corruption.

 

It offers no answers. That’s human wisdom, and that’s the wisdom that characterizes the world.

 

So James says:

Look, if you’re going around saying you have the wisdom of God but you’re motivated by pride and the reflection of your wisdom is that which is characteristic of the world having been defined as demonic as to its source, fleshly as to its drives, and earthbound as to its extent, then whatever your claim, we don’t buy it. If you’re driven by the wisdom of the world, whatever your claim might be, it doesn’t fly.

The results of false wisdom in James 3:16.

 

What are the results? What comes out of this?

 

Verse 16 says: "For where envying and personal ambition are" - and he repeats the two motives from verse 14, same two terms. For where these things are as motives, bitter jealousy and personal ambition, where these two kinds of evil motives produce earthly, sensual, demonic wisdom, the result is that there is confusion and every - what? - evil work.

 

Confusion. The word is a most fascinating word, akatastasia, it means disorder coming out of instability, chaos, confusion, disorder.

 

The same word is used in James 1:8 the impact of doublemindedness.

 

James3:8 the impact of an uncontrolled tongue, the same kind of chaos, confusion, disorder.

 

Listen, earthly wisdom

 

will never produce harmony,
  it will never produce love because earthly wisdom is, first of all, proud, self-seeking, self-serving, self-indulgent,
 
it destroys intimacy,
it destroys love,
it destroys unity,
it destroys fellowship,
it brings discord,
it brings chaos.
•  

Are you seeing it happen all around our world?

 

Anger, bitterness, lawsuits, divorces, people unable to get along with people, that’s the result, that’s the legacy of earthly wisdom.
Confusion, chaos, destruction, devastation, division,
no ability to love,
no intimacy,
no true sharing,
no real fellowship,
no harmony,
no peace,

and our world is going to get worse and worse and worse as men keep moving toward the inexorable day when Jesus Christ invades this world.

 

So the results of false wisdom -

 

 First of all, confusion, chaos, disruption of all order.

 

Secondly, every evil work. You can’t get more general than that, folks. You say, "What does that mean?" It means just that.

At best, the word phauloi means worthless; at worst, it means vile. Every worthless and vile thing. It contemplates evil.

 It contemplates evil, not from the aspect of its active or passive malignity but rather from its good-for-nothingness, the utter impossibility of any true gain ever coming from it.

 

 So out of human wisdom comes

disorder,

chaos,

confusion, and

absolutely no good at all
 

 

The word "thing" you see there, every evil thing, or every evil work?

 

The word there is pragma, pragmatic. It produces absolutely nothing pragmatically of any value at all. At its best, it produces worthless things. At its worst, it produces vile things. Certainly can’t be of God.