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

 James 3:13 to 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."  

Wisdom does not mean knowledge.

1. It does not mean information.
2. It means the application of knowledge with divine power to the reshaping of life, transforming attitudes, transforming behavior into righteousness.

 Wisdom, then, is not what I know, wisdom is how I live. And so how I live, according to the wisdom of God, is a barometer on my spiritual condition. And I pointed out to you in the past that God puts no premium on a wisdom that is cerebral or a wisdom that is creedal. The only premium God has to put on wisdom is the wisdom that transforms the life.

 
Wisdom, then, in biblical terms equals lifestyle.
 
It equals lifestyle, behavior.

True wisdom is knowing God in a life-changing relationship, okay?

True wisdom is the outworking of a life-changing knowledge of God.



Remember that the wisdom of the Old Testament was basically initiated by the fear of the Lord. Do you remember that? The fear of the Lord is the what? Beginning of wisdom. Wisdom begins in fearing the Lord.

 To fear the Lord is to have a reverential trust in Him. When the Old Testament says fear God, fear the Lord, it is a call to salvation, it is a call to reverential trust, to commitment, in which a person turns from sin in faith to God and has a hatred of evil and a love of obedience. And we went through all of that in great detail a couple of weeks ago.

So wisdom began at the point when one was ushered into a relationship with God through reverential faith and trust, called in the Old Testament the fear of the Lord.

You remember that Cornelius, because he was a believing gentile, was called a God what?

Fearer, because that was the essence of saving faith. So once a person put their faith in God, then that introduced them into a life of wisdom. The fear of the Lord was the beginning of wisdom. The fear of the Lord was to turn from iniquity. The fear of the Lord was to hate evil and love righteousness. The fear of the Lord was to do God’s commandments.


And that all is a part of a saving work, so when a person put his faith in God, he was ushered into the sphere of wisdom.


And then became the - really, the student of divine wisdom who lived that wisdom out. True wisdom, we saw, comes from God. It is given to one who comes into relationship with Him. And all of us who know God in a personal, intimate way have received from Him that wisdom. Now let me say that again. All of us who know God through Christ in a personal way have received the wisdom of God. And that wisdom of God is manifest in the life of a true believer. Every true believer will manifest the wisdom of God.


We will manifest the wisdom of God, and we should manifest more of the wisdom of God.

A true Christian will love the Lord Jesus Christ and should more love the Lord Jesus Christ.

A true Christian will serve God and should more and more serve God, right?

A true Christian will obey and should more and more obey


. So when we say that having become believers, we have received the wisdom of God, that does not mean we have received and are applying all the wisdom that it’s possible to have. Okay?

It is truly a mark of a believer to manifest the wisdom of God, but none of us manifest the wisdom of God to the fullest possible capacity. And so when we say this is the mark of a believer, we can also say it is an encouraging and exhorting text to increase our commitment to that wisdom at the same time.


The New Testament also ties wisdom to the act of believing.

Matthew chapter 7:26, which is a very familiar text to anyone who has studied the gospels. You remember there are people who hear the Word of God and that’s all, and then there are people who do the Word of God, and they are the true believers. Not the ones who hear and not the ones that say but the ones that do.

And then He gives an illustration of that in verse 24.


"Whoever hears these sayings of mine and does them, I will liken him unto a" - what kind of man? - what kind? - "wise man who built his house upon a rock, the rain descended, the floods came, the winds blew, beat on the house, fell not. It was founded upon a rock. These sayings of mine are also heard by people who do not do them and they are likened unto" - what kind of a man? - "a foolish man who built his house on the sand, the rain descended, the floods came, the winds blew, beat on the house, it fell, and great was the fall of it."

Now, here you have the unregenerate man who is very religious. He’s got all the religious superstructure but no foundation, and he is a fool. On the other hand, you have a truly converted man who does the Word of God, and he is a man who is what? Wise. Wisdom, then, in the words of our Lord right here is equated with true salvation. It is equated with saving, working faith.


Matthew 24:42. "Watch, therefore, for you know not what hour your Lord does come, but know this, that if the householder had known in what watch the thief would come, he would have watched and would have not allowed his house to be broken into."


Our Lord is speaking. "Therefore, be also ready for in such an hour as you think not, the Son of Man is coming. Who then is a faithful and" - what? - "wise servant whom his lord has made ruler over his household to give them food in due season?"

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.