Warning of Worldly Wisdom

Go ahead and open your Bibles to James 3:14

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Title: Warning of Worldly Wisdom

Tonights message we will pick up from where we were in James last week.

Last week James showed us what true wisdom is

But if you missed last week or don’t remember what we covered let me briefly review what we learned:

and as we review, I have a chart that summarizes what we covered last week

and go ahead and write this chart down if you are taking notes as it will help guide us through the rest of tonights message

First, true wisdom is displayed in meekness

James 3:13 ESV

13 Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom.

Wisdom is to be displayed in a way that is soft, gentle, or humble… that is what he means by meekness

Second, we saw the source of true wisdom is God… or as James puts it

James 3:17 ESV

17 But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere.

This is not a general wisdom

that is gained from books

Or many experiences

But it is a wisdom and knowledge of God and the gospel that comes from him

From his word

And from a real encounter with God through though his Spirit

And the fruit/effect of true wisdom - righteousness - thus the reason for displaying our wisdom from above

James 3:18 ESV

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

God is glorified by when the wisdom that we have recieved from him is put on display in meekness and peace

Others are saved by this - righteousness multiples

We mirror the humility of Christ and display the effect of God’s wisdom when it is displayed in meekness

But in the middle of the text that we read last week, James warns us of a different kind of wisdom...

one that is completely opposite compared to wisdom that is from God.

It is a false kind of wisdom

And that’s what we are going to focus on:

Specifically we will see how false wisdom is displayed

The source of false wisdom

and the effect of false wisdom

False wisdom is displayed by selfishness

James 3:14 ESV

14 But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth.

In v 13 James tells us that true wisdom is to be put on display, for when it is displayed, righteousness multiples…

But it is to be displayed in meekness

But then we see a kind of wisdom that people love to put on display, but it’s not displayed for God, but instead it James tells us that it is displayed with selfish motives

First it is displayed out of what he calls bitter jealousy…

The word for jealous is the same word in Greek that is used for ‘zeal’

The word jealousy/zeal describes an intense passion or desire…

Used to describe Jesus when he cleansed out the temple -

John 2:17 ESV

17 His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.”

Jesus was rightly jealous for the name of God when he cleansed the temple…

But when jealousy is used for ourself… it is a sign of false wisdom…

It’s the same jealousy that the religious leaders demonstrated when they persecuted the apostles in the book of Acts, because glory was going to God and not to them…

The other word that is used here to describe this selfishness is selfish ambition

Paul talks about this at greater length in Phil

Philippians 1:17 ESV

17 The former proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment.

but Paul goes on to say

Philippians 2:3 ESV

3 Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.

Paul here is striking the similarity note to James… that we are to display wisdom not with selfish ambition, but in humility and meekness

For when wisdom is displayed with selfish motivations, it then the motive is not to further the name of Jesus, but instead wishes to make a name for themself…

James goes on to say such boasting is false to the truth

That is to say, when jealousy and selfish ambition are the motives for showing wisdom, the truth of the gospel is falsely represented

So James says to not even boast and be false to the truth

So if motives in displaying wisdom are for self gain instead of being demonstrated in meekness, then don’t display such wisdom, for it does not rightly display the truth of the gospel… for it is not the true wisdom that comes from God

This leads us to the next point. The reason one must keep from such boasting

The source of false wisdom is Satan

While true wisdom that is displayed in meekness is from above (that is to say it is from God) the kind of wisdom that is displayed for selfish motives is from Satan

James 3:15 ESV

15 This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic.

Earthly - opposed to wisdom from above

Unspiritual - not from the Spirit of God

Demonic - it is not from heaven, not from the Spirit, but from the prince of this world

This is important to recognize the source of such wisdom, for there is no such thing as neutral wisdom

or neutral motives for that matter…

For if you seek to make much of yourself, then that desire comes from the enemy.

These desires are demonic, and while to many this might sound too extreme (or even strange to modern readers) listen to where James continues to go in chapter 4

James 4:3–5 ESV

3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. 4 You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. 5 Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”?

It is crucial that we recognize that earthy wisdom is not a neutral, rather it is in direct opposition to God…

Leads us to the last point

The effect of false wisdom is sin

James 3:16 ESV

16 For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice.

Where there is jealousy and selfish ambition - the sign of demonic wisdom

there is disorder and every vile practice

in other words… worldly wisdom (or to put it more plainly demonic wisdom) is the at the root of all sin…

James tells us that this kind of wisdom causes disorder!

Worldly wisdom opposes the good order that God created

Worldly wisdom calls sin good and righteousness bad…

And this is why such wisdom is false to the truth, is because it turns the wisdom of God upside down

This order and chaos is what is demonstrated in Gen 1-3

God put all creation into order and called it good....

but then Adam and Eve disobeyed God for their own purposes…

all because the fruit looked good to them

And everything that was good and ordered turned turned to disorder and chaos.

Thus… James says every vile practice comes from this kind of selfish wisdom

Every sin… is produced where there is worldly wisdom

And it is because of sin… because of the enemy, that Jesus died for us…

and in his death he is recreating order out of the chaos that sin has caused

He did so not out of selfish ambition, but instead he humbled himself

He came meek and lowly died so that we would have life.

And when we rightly know the gospel, it produces in us a wisdom that can only be displayed in meekness…

for in the gospel, we have nothing to boast in except the work of Jesus

And so to this end let us ask for wisdom

for James tells us

James 1:5 ESV

5 If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.