James part 12
James the Just • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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A Wiseman’s Conduct
A Wiseman’s Conduct
Have you ever heard someone repeatedly tell you they have a characteristic or trait that they clearly do not?
Maybe a boss at work that repeatedly states “I am normally a nice guy”
Or that friend that is always stressing out, but says “I am an easy going person”
How about when you seek the advise from someone you find out later has less than honorable motives?
Today we have professional councilors and doctors that have all kinds of “expert opinions” on how to properly raise kids.
Without getting too far down a rabbit hole, I’ll give one example.
Parents and teachers need to affirm children identity, even when it has no basis in reality.
If a boy thinks he is a girl, their are “experts” with words of wisdom for how we are to handle that.
Today they say we need to support and affirm this lie that a boy can be a girl, or a girl can be a boy.
This is an earthly type of wisdom....
We are going to talk a little bit more about that today...
13 Who is a wise man and endued with knowledge among you? let him shew out of a good conversation his works with meekness of wisdom.
14 But if ye have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not, and lie not against the truth.
15 This wisdom descendeth not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish.
16 For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work.
17 But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy.
18 And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace.
*Open Prayer*
At this beginning of this chapter we saw how James was addressing teachers and leaders, and then he went on to talk about how all of us need to control our tongue.
He basically was telling us how we should talk.
Now he is addressing how we should live.
We are going to see two types of wisdom mentioned in this passage.
An earthly type and a Holy type.
Lets break this down starting there in verse 13.
13 Who is a wise man and endued with knowledge among you? let him shew out of a good conversation his works with meekness of wisdom.
Who is a wise man from among you?
Teachers? Leaders?
Let him shew out of a good conversation his works.....
or in other words, let him show good conduct that follows good conversation.
Good conduct that is done out of meekness.
James is showing us genuine wisdom is not just head knowledge...
Real wisdom and understanding will be revealed by the way we live!
With meekness....
righteous wisdom, or genuine wisdom is not conducted in a way that glorifies oneself.
We will talk about that kind of wisdom here in a second.
Righteous wisdom is conducted with meekness.
Just like salvation is made apparent by “fruits”...
Righteous wisdom is made apparent by the way one lives...
Actions speak louder than words.
If your actions point to self glorification, then it is not a true type of wisdom, it is vain, earthly.
Just like James told us about genuine faith and dead faith,
Here we are told of genuine wisdom, and earthly or dead wisdom.
14 But if ye have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not, and lie not against the truth.
15 This wisdom descendeth not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish.
16 For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work.
Bitter envying and strife, these are opposite traits from what we would describe as “meekness”.
Earthly wisdom, like earthly faith, is dead....
We see this thought echoed throughout the Bible...
15 The way of a fool is right in his own eyes: But he that hearkeneth unto counsel is wise.
12 Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? There is more hope of a fool than of him.
22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,
21 Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, And prudent in their own sight!
8 Ye shall not do after all the things that we do here this day, every man whatsoever is right in his own eyes.
14 But if ye have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not, and lie not against the truth. 15 This wisdom descendeth not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish. 16 For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work.
We can go on all night.
The Bible makes it clear, earthly wisdom is devilish, evil, wicked.
James is warning of wisdom that frankly is not really wisdom at all.
Adam Clark defined these words like this:
Earthly- Having only this life in view
Sensual- Animal-having for its object the gratification of the passions and animal propensities. (animal style lusts)
devilish-inspired by demons
Earthly wisdom promotes envying and strife, their you will find confusion and evil work...
Lets get back to looking at the characteristics of heavenly wisdom.
17 But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy. 18 And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace.
When we talk about righteous wisdom, as in the kind from God, it is described using words such as
Pure
Peaceable
Gentle
Full of mercy and good fruits
Without partiality
Without hypocrisy
Godly wisdom produces fruit...
The characteristics of this type of wisdom is loving, Holy in nature...
It is pure in that there is an absence of sinful motives or attitude.
I think Paul sums up the lesson pretty well with this verse in Romans chapter 8.
5 For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit.
Wisdom does not come from what we think is right or wrong...
Often it does come through trial and error...
But genuine wisdom comes from God alone...
We need to be on the watch for “earthly wisdom”
*close out*