Praying for Spiritual Wisdom
Notes
Transcript
[ Introduction ]
Well as we all know life is an adventure. The path by which we travel through life is sometimes bumpy and sometimes smooth. There are times when a lot of it is out of our control, but many times it’s determined by the decisions we make. By the way we choose to live. Some people are fools and some are wise. Hopefully most of the time we fall in the latter half of that, I know many times, though, I can fall into the foolish group. Being foolish doesn’t mean making an honest mistake, foolishness is knowing what you should do, and doing the opposite. Usually personal pleasure is what drives us to make foolish decisions. And there’s always something the world presents in front of us to distract us from what we know is the right thing to do.
Before we dive into scripture, let’s pray.
[ Pray ]
If you are wise and understand God’s ways, prove it by living an honorable life, doing good works with the humility that comes from wisdom. But if you are bitterly jealous and there is selfish ambition in your heart, don’t cover up the truth with boasting and lying. For jealousy and selfishness are not God’s kind of wisdom. Such things are earthly, unspiritual, and demonic. For wherever there is jealousy and selfish ambition, there you will find disorder and evil of every kind.
But the wisdom from above is first of all pure. It is also peace loving, gentle at all times, and willing to yield to others. It is full of mercy and the fruit of good deeds. It shows no favoritism and is always sincere. And those who are peacemakers will plant seeds of peace and reap a harvest of righteousness.
Let’s start by looking closer at verses 13-15. From these three verses there is a couple things we can learn about wisdom.
1. We know that it is scriptural to say there are two kinds of wisdom. Wisdom from God, and wisdom that is not of God.
We see Godly wisdom by our good deeds, end of verse 13: “doing good works with the humility that comes from wisdom”
There are sinful actions, wisdom not of God: End of verse 15: “For jealousy and selfishness are not God’s kind of wisdom. Such things are earthly, unspiritual, and demonic.”
So often when we hear the word wisdom, we often say something is wise or it is not wise. We think of one type of wisdom. But it’s interesting reading these verses, it acknowledges that there are different types of wisdom. In a sense, everyone has wisdom, it just depends what kind they have. The definition of Wisdom from google is:
“the quality of having experience, knowledge, and good judgment; the quality of being wise.”
We all experience life everyday, we all have knowledge about different things in life, and based on those first two things, I know you’ll get mixed opinions on what “good judgement” is depending on who you ask.
Your actions are always based on two things. Wisdom from God or earthly, unspiritual, demonic wisdom.
Which is why we can so easily justify sinful behavior in our minds, because the less wise we become in God’s eyes the “wiser” we become in Satan’s eyes. And if we really want to justify bad behavior, Satan will be right there to encourage it. So you can accept conviction from the Holy Spirit and correct yourself with God and draw nearer to Him, or push that voice away and bring Satan closer. You’ll always be wise in someones eyes. We need to be careful for which voice we’re listening to.
2. Wisdom isn’t just “what” we do, but also “how” and “why” we do it.
Verse 13 again:
If you are wise and understand God’s ways, prove it by living an honorable life, doing good works with the humility that comes from wisdom.
So how do we know someone is living based on wisdom from God? An honorable life, which is accomplished by doing good works with humility. There is a what and a how in this verse. Do good works and have a humble attitude. It’s so important to bring the do and the how together. Now let’s take a look at the next verse to see where the “why” applies.
But if you are bitterly jealous and there is selfish ambition in your heart, don’t cover up the truth with boasting and lying. For jealousy and selfishness are not God’s kind of wisdom. Such things are earthly, unspiritual, and demonic.
The what and the how can often be seen, but there is also a why in what we do, and that’s from the heart. That’s what God sees. He knows if what we are doing is out of selfish ambition or if we have pure motives.
An example of this can be found in Philippians.
So Paul is writing to the people of Philippi as he’s imprisoned, some debate whether it was Rome or Ephesus that he was imprisoned in. But for we’re talking about it doesn’t really matter where he was at, just know he’s going through struggle in imprisonment. One of the things he brings up in his letter is about how there are people who actually gained confidence in the Word of God when he was imprisoned and began to spread it. But there was also some who did not like Paul, and they preached the Word only in hopes to stir up trouble for Paul. It doesn’t say much about what kind of trouble it could be causing Paul, but he makes it clear that they had wrong motives. So they were doing something that on the surface seems about as spiritually wise as one could be, spreading the Word, but they had selfish ambition.
Those others do not have pure motives as they preach about Christ. They preach with selfish ambition, not sincerely, intending to make my chains more painful to me.
And I don’t think these were false teachers, because in the next verse we read:
But that doesn’t matter. Whether their motives are false or genuine, the message about Christ is being preached either way, so I rejoice. And I will continue to rejoice.
Paul doesn’t really care if their heart is right about why they’re preaching the Word, he knows their sinful motives are in vain because Paul finds joy only in the fact that the Word is being preached. If it was false-teaching I think he’d be responding in a different way, which you see in some of his other letters to the different churches.
Alright back to the focus on wisdom: No matter what we’re doing, there is always a “how” and a “why”. And all three are important.
Backing up the “how” part some more, let’s read a few more verses.
Whenever reading through scripture about what we are to do, notice how often there is an adverb.
Dear brothers and sisters, if another believer is overcome by some sin, you who are godly should gently and humbly help that person back onto the right path. And be careful not to fall into the same temptation yourself.
Gently instruct those who oppose the truth. Perhaps God will change those people’s hearts, and they will learn the truth.
They must not slander anyone and must avoid quarreling. Instead, they should be gentle and show true humility to everyone.
Whether it’s a fellow Christian or a non-believer and we’re aware of the struggles they’re going through or the mistakes they’re making, many times we probably feel like I know what they need to do to correct themselves and I definitely have the best of intentions, we just want everyone to come closer to God. But if we go about it in the wrong way, not in a gentle and humble manner, it can cause some to drift even farther away from God. Now I’m not trying to see we need to live passive lives, we need to take action when God puts it in our heart, but doing it in the right manner is important as well. We cannot force something on people, we share God’s word and love, but as we read in 2 Timothy 2:25 “Perhaps God will change those people’s hearts, and they will learn the truth.” God is the one who saves and corrects a heart.
I was always like Paul’s examples, no matter how much he did to spread the Word, he never exalted himself:
This is a trustworthy saying, and everyone should accept it: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners”—and I am the worst of them all.
Being humble is very important. We don’t exalt ourselves and talk down to others to help them. Admitting our own faults when trying to advise someone is a great first step.
In summary of the points made about these first few verses:
1. There are different types of wisdom, There is Wisdom from God, and wisdom that is not of God, which is earthly, unspiritual, and demonic.
2. Wisdom isn’t just “what” we do, but also “how” and “why” we do it.
Let’s go back to our core verses and read the last 3, James 3:16-18
For wherever there is jealousy and selfish ambition, there you will find disorder and evil of every kind.
But the wisdom from above is first of all pure. It is also peace loving, gentle at all times, and willing to yield to others. It is full of mercy and the fruit of good deeds. It shows no favoritism and is always sincere. And those who are peacemakers will plant seeds of peace and reap a harvest of righteousness.
The first thing we read here is about how jealousy and selfish ambition (earthly, unspiritual, demonic wisdom) brings about disorder and evil of every kind. The actions that come from this kind of “wisdom” results in self-destruction. There is a snowball affect that takes place. Whenever you see someone make a big mistake, or perhaps it’s ourselves that have made the mistake and we feel like we’re at rock bottom. We always feel like “wow, how did they (or I) get to this point.” There’s usually a trail of other mistakes that led to the result. Pride, jealousy, selfish-ambition, lust, greed, all this “wisdom” that is not of God that snuck into our lives caused one misstep at a time. And the more we shift our ear towards the voice of Satan to perhaps make us feel better, more struggles begin to come.
So how do we avoid this? How do we gain and keep the wisdom that is pure, peace loving, gentle at all times, willing to yield to others, full of mercy, bringing about good deeds, shows no favoritism, always sincere, wisdom from God? So that we can be peacemakers who plant seeds of peace and reap a harvest of righteousness.
James puts it very clear and simple in James 1:5
If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and he will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking.
Don’t think “Oh I’ve been a Christian for so long” I should have the wisdom by now, I just sound dumb for asking. I mean God probably already gave me whatever wisdom I needed when I accepted him into my life. I don’t need to ask, if I mess up it’s just because I was born this way, God created me, he gave me these desires and passions. This is just the way I am. There are so many different desires and passions that the world will try persuade us to pursue, we can’t just fall over. We should be asking for Wisdom from God everyday. We need it to stand guard against the evils of this world. To do what needs to be done, in the right way, with the right intentions in our heart.
Whenever we think it’s silly to “just ask”, think about King Solomon.
That night God appeared to Solomon and said, “What do you want? Ask, and I will give it to you!”
Solomon replied to God, “You showed great and faithful love to David, my father, and now you have made me king in his place. O Lord God, please continue to keep your promise to David my father, for you have made me king over a people as numerous as the dust of the earth! Give me the wisdom and knowledge to lead them properly, for who could possibly govern this great people of yours?”
God said to Solomon, “Because your greatest desire is to help your people, and you did not ask for wealth, riches, fame, or even the death of your enemies or a long life, but rather you asked for wisdom and knowledge to properly govern my people—I will certainly give you the wisdom and knowledge you requested. But I will also give you wealth, riches, and fame such as no other king has had before you or will ever have in the future!”
You can also read about this in 1 Kings chapter 3. Then later in 1 Kings 4:30, it says about King Solomon:
In fact, his wisdom exceeded that of all the wise men of the East and the wise men of Egypt.
Solomon gained wisdom because he asked God. He desired wisdom from God above everything else. And because of that he also became very blessed in many ways. A popular book of the Bible to read about wisdom is Proverbs, which is knows as the “Proverbs of Solomon”.
Life can be tough to navigate through sometimes, we need to stay close to God and ask him to receive the pure kind of wisdom that only He can provide.