Wisdom, Purity and Peace (Part B)

He says this wisdom does not descend from above, but is earthly, sensual, demonic. I love this verse because it's so true. This wisdom, this brand of behavior that comes from, it's imparted, it comes from somewhere, it doesn't come from God.

James describes this behavior by three adjectives, and they lead to a climax. Yes, it's earthly. All right. That's not good. It's sensual. It's carnal. That's not good.

It's demonic. Now you've got the attention of the listener. This is Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel, Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of James.

Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. Today, Pastor Rick continues teaching through James chapter 3 and his message called Wisdom, Purity, and Peace. And meekness of wisdom. Now we talked about that wisdom in the first chapter of James. We're not talking about God making all of his people a bunch of sages that are just wise people, you know, sitting down waiting for someone to ask for counsel. He is speaking about the knowledge and application of God's will in righteousness.

This is the wisdom that he is talking about here. To be skilled at serving God because of the Holy Spirit's touch upon your life. If you are a believer in Jesus Christ and you've not experienced the Holy Spirit, I don't mean, certainly not limiting that to some sign or some wonder, but a robust sense of his love and his presence unlike anything else in your life. If you've not ever had that experience as a believer, you must come up at the end of the service to the pastors and say, please pray that I receive the Holy Spirit. When you're born again, you come to life and it's life in Christ and it is with it our feelings. Sensation of his presence is nothing like it.

It is unmatched in the human experience. In verse 14, he continues to build upon this. Again, in verse 13, he says, who is wise and understanding among you, let him show by good conduct that his works are done in the meekness of wisdom.

Good conduct, he says. Verse 14, but if you have bitter envy and self-seeking in your hearts, do not boast and lie against the truth. Well, when he starts off verse 14 with, but if you, that singles out all of us.

Anyone who can hear what he is saying, that's who he is speaking to. And so now comes the outcome of behavior. When the wisdom of Christ is missing in the flock, we have problems and this is what he is talking about. And so he has already said, let him show by good conduct that his works are done in meekness of wisdom, that imparted knowledge of Christ. But if you have envy and self-seeking in your hearts, don't go boasting and become a liar against the things that are so, that are from God.

So when we are driven by rights of self, my right, my self-right, and not led by the Lord, here's where we're going to land. As a flock, as an individual, in a home, wherever you find a group of believers, if they are not working at rowing in the direction God has sent them, then bitter envy is waiting for them. Satan had that bitter envy when he wanted that throne that God sat on and sits on. So he says, bitter envy. This is a passion that is poisonous in the context that this is bitter envy. Bitter envy is extreme.

It will become extreme if not checked. In 1 Kings chapter 26, you'll know this story. This is when Solomon's wisdom was made clear to everyone in the kingdom. But it also brings to us two characters, a mother who loved her child and a bitter envious woman, who by mistake rolled over and caused the death of her child. We pick it up in 1 Kings 3.26, then the woman whose son was living spoke to the king and for she yearned with compassion for her son. With Solomon bluffing, of course, saying, well, we can't figure out who the child belongs to, so let's cut the child in half, give each piece.

It's kind of, well, that's grotesque. And so the mother, the true mother, yearned with compassion for her son. And she said, oh my Lord, give her the living child and by no means kill him.

But the other said, let him be neither mine nor yours, but divide him. That bitterness, satanically driven bitterness. That kind of person thinks like this. I always read that section and I wonder, what happens when they all went home?

Where did that lady go? I would have put my house for sale. I wouldn't want to live next to a neighbor like that. Well, be careful because bitter envy can lead.

Maybe not that far, but it doesn't have to go that far to bring destruction and satanic activity in a church goer's life. He says, but if you have bitter envy and self-seeking in your hearts, that means it's got in there and that's what's driving the ship. We all at some point sense envy or jealousy. We want something that another person has or we're overly protective of what we believe to be ours.

But when it starts getting out of control there's a big problem. This word for self-seeking in the Greek really is strife, contention, belligerence. So this bitter envy leads to strife, to belligerence, to confrontation.

Have you ever tried to be nice to someone who refuses to let you be nice to them? They're belligerent. They're looking for a fight.

They're looking for trouble and jealousy. It makes one bitter not better. Verse 11, look up at verse 11 of James 3 if you have your Bibles open. Otherwise, you'll have to depend on my reading of it. Does a spring send forth fresh water and bitter from the same opening?

No, it does not. It shouldn't be this way. At spring, if you pour fresh water into salt water, you have poisoned the water. If you put good fruit with bad fruit, you will rot the good fruit. We've got to be mindful of these things that are bitter and destroy and self-seeking.

Is it? And it's an accurate translation. That Greek word, again, it does mean contention and strife but it also carries the meaning of asserting oneself, seeking what you want at the cost of everybody else around you.

I want what I want. We may not say it that way, but you know when you get into that zone, you're going to force your will on the other person if you can. Make them sorry for standing in your way. Paul had this problem with the church at Corinth. What problem did he not have with the church at Corinth? And there are many churches of Corinth in existence where they go and they sing and they're in the Spirit because he said to that church, you lack no spiritual gift. God truly blessed them. They sing, they hold their hands up, nothing wrong with that.

In fact, I encourage it, as long as you're not sticking your hands in the face of the person next to you. Worship the Lord, your heart, soul, mind, and strength, all of it. But that's all they had, many of them.

That was it. They failed when it came to obedience. They were churchgoers for themselves.

They were self-seekers. So he writes and he says, you are still carnal. You're still like unbelievers.

That's what that means. Like you've never been born again. You think just because you stand and sing, you've been born again. So he says, you are still carnal for where there are envy, strife, divisions among you, are you not carnal and behaving like mere men? And James is talking about the same thing. James wrote earlier, this letter from James precedes the letters of Paul. More than once, the pastor will step into a pulpit and address a passage of scripture that deals with these behaviors, only to discover it sometimes, trampled by a churchgoer who is sitting in the sermon soon after the sermon.

What happens here? Well, the will to do good is with me, but to pull it off. When someone pushes my buttons, incidentally, that won't excuse you before Christ. To stand before him, well, I pushed my buttons. This was Moses' case when he struck the rock. Two million people here nagging me. God didn't say, oh yeah, that's pretty bad.

I mean, one person pushing your button is bad, but they have two million of them. No, God did not give him a pass. What a lesson. I get so much from the life of Moses because I see my own life on a much smaller scale, of course, because I side with Moses. Those people are irritating Moses.

You should have hit them with the stick, not the rock. But we have to submit because always in the presence of God, when we disagree, he is right. We are automatically wrong. When I mention churchgoers can hear a sermon points addressing the very behavior they're going to violate after the service and then this is the worst part, they won't repent. They're clearly wrong, but their pride has welled up and days later, months later, they won't repent. Usually they'll leave so they don't have to repent in their own thinking.

I hope this is none of us and if it's been you before, may it not be again. Do not boast, he says. Why do Christians even have to be told these things? Don't go around bragging, you who are self-seeking in your heart. This evidently was also going on in the churches.

Otherwise, the Holy Spirit would not address it through James. To boast is to exalt oneself. Now, of course, you're sitting around the table playing Monopoly, having fun with each other and you boast that you've got all the money. That's a game.

It's fun. But when it shows up in real life, it's a problem. To puff oneself up is to parade oneself before everybody else is being more important than they are. 1 Corinthians 13, love does not envy.

There's something to contemplate. Love does not parade itself, is not puffed up. Knowledge will puff up if it has not the wisdom from above.

It won't grow up, it will puff up. Do not boast and lie against the truth. Sort of a paradox there, to lie against the truth. That's what all lies do. But Jesus said, I am the truth.

We must not lose sight of that. This is serious business. This is not just a little filler in here. He's trying to get to the next point.

This is the point. To lie against the truth is to be left blind to the truth and therefore to open oneself up for the consequences. Jesus was dealing with a bunch of religious folks, not righteous religious folks, and he said of them that they were of the devil. John 8, 44. He said the devil does not stand in truth because there's no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it. So when James says don't boast against the truth, don't go around puffing yourself up and siding with Satan against Jesus Christ who is the truth, that leads to judgment, yeah, and heresy and a bunch of other things. Verse 15, he says this wisdom does not descend from above but is earthly, sensual, demonic. I love this verse because it's so true. This wisdom, this brand of behavior that comes from, it's imparted, it comes from somewhere and it doesn't come from God.

James describes this behavior by three adjectives and they lead to a climax. Yes, it's earthly. All right. That's not good. It's sensual. It's carnal.

That's not good. It's demonic. Now you've got the attention of the listener.

There's a third person now involved. God who sees it, the individual who's embracing it, and Satan who's inflaming it. And so this wisdom, this brand of performed knowledge comes from the devil. Paul writing to the Romans talking about his countrymen who were zealous for religion but according to their own standards, not God. He says, for they being ignorant of God's righteousness and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God. Well, how do you learn what God wants?

How do you learn what's right with God? Well, the scripture. And anything contrary to the scripture is not from God. There are two kinds of wisdom, generally speaking, in the context of what we have before us. There is wisdom from God and there is wisdom from anywhere else.

And that is bad. The anywhere else one. First Corinthians one.

Again, this is our support member to the points being made. The second witness. Let everything be established in the strength of two or three witnesses. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For since in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God. It pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. So a line is drawn between the believer and everyone else.

And it has to do with the source of their information, their wisdom, their behavior, their application of knowledge. Second Corinthians chapter one. For our boasting is this, the testimony of our conscience that we conducted ourselves in the world in simplicity and godly sincerity. How much, how much theology is packed into those two thoughts? Simplicity and, I lost my verse.

I got it. Sincerity. Godly sincerity. How much theology is just in that?

Okay, well that's a pit stop. That's not the point, the main point. He says not with fleshly wisdom but by the grace of God and more abundantly toward you. So what I am trying to point out is that the scripture points out there's wisdom from men, there's wisdoms from the world, somewhere else. First Corinthians again chapter one verse six. However we speak wisdom among those who are mature. Yet not the wisdom of this age nor of the rulers of this age who are coming to nothing.

All the big shots on the planet that think they're pulling all the levers and turning the dials and running and ruining everything. They really in the end don't count. What counts is that relationship before the Creator whom they want to say does not exist.

What, would anybody here go to atheism for mercy and hope? I mean Lenin and Stalin, Mao, those folks, Marx. What did they give to humanity? They tried to take from humanity and have largely succeeded. Take away this knowledge of God and holy and righteousness and they sought to redefine what is acceptable behavior and what is not.

We're living right now and much of the society is doing just that. They want to change the identity of a male and a female, of sexual behavior. There's no limit to their madness. It is demonically driven. Don't you think for one moment that somebody just came up with this idea on their own. Human beings don't think this way unless somebody's been tinkering with them and the somebody is Satan and all of his minion.

Take it seriously because they have, we talked about this Wednesday night, over 80 million people died in the Second World War and most of them not troops, civilians. Very serious. None of God's word is fooling around. He says this is earthly. That is wisdom apart from a relationship with God.

We would say natural. It's denounced throughout scripture. Listen to what Jeremiah has to say about those who think they have wisdom apart from scripture. He says, the wise men are ashamed. They are dismayed and taken. Behold, they have rejected the word of Yahweh, so what wisdom do they have?

And then he adds in the Hebrew, diddly. That's the wisdom they've got. First Corinthians again 3.9, for the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written he catches the wise in their craftiness.

You're not going to outsmart God. Yet, those out of the Spirit, they love their brand of wisdom. They applaud their Aristotle and the Plato and the others, the Romans and the Greeks, the Romans who followed the Greeks.

And what did they give us that we could, that we just couldn't have or do without? He says it does not come from above, does not descend from above. God-given wisdom never parts company with truth.

Never. It always goes with truth. Jesus said, I am the truth. You want to depart from the truth, you depart from Christ, you depart from God. Self-exaltation lies against the truth. When I puff myself up, tell myself I'm more important than what I am, God will have nothing to do with that. And so James is saying to the believers, don't behave this way. Many well-meaning Christian has attempted to lay good things on top of a bad foundation, to try to put truthful things on that which is false, which is a lie. Jesus talked about this. You can't build your house on sand and expect it to survive the storms.

How great will its fall be? And there are many that appoint themselves to anointed positions and they have not been appointed by God because they want to be in the limelight. They want the attention or whatever it else that there have been many throughout the ages and may we be careful of these things. Then he says, sensual. That is, and I should pause there. Where it says does not descend from heaven, I could spend a whole morning talking about things that the world does, that Christians accept, that does not come from Christ, but is touted to be so special, but gives us nothing.

But I don't feel led to do it and I don't want to get in trouble with the Lord because one teeny mistake in the pulpit like that sticks with you for months. Well, not you maybe, but it does me. I can't believe I said that.

And well, let's get moving. Sensual. Now we would take that word and think that it has to do with the feelings.

It does. It's not limited to that. It is natural. We're told by those who translate that it's a difficult Greek word to put into English or to take it outside of the Greek.

But it's not impossible. It is natural. Appealing to the lower self, the lower elements of mankind.

Just again, the sensations. Not making, not contributing to right decisions. Jude will bring this up. He will talk about those who are void of the word being sensual. They're into this life.

They're into this. This is what fasting is all about. Fasting in the Christian life is to say, I've got to put a check on my flesh because if I, I'll be better off by keeping my carnal urges in check. And so I'll deny myself, discipline myself. And I don't think we, as a society that is so well taken care of when it comes to things, I don't think we excel in this area.

I read about it in the Gospels where the Pharisees boasted, you know, I fast once a week and I'm pretty impressed. It's difficult. Maybe you like, I don't know, kiwi raisin ice cream.

Who would like that? Maybe you like it too much and you need to just discipline yourself and abstain to keep the flesh down. Well, this sensual means essentially without the Holy Spirit. Paul asked the Galatians, he said, this persuasion does not come from him who calls you. We don't have to get into the details of what Paul is talking about in the Galatians, though I want to.

What we have to understand is that there is a persuasion. There are things that try to persuade us to do that, you know, things that God does not want us to do. And ultimately it is demonic and so he says it is earthly.

It is from the planet earth, not from heaven. It is sensual and appeals to the urges, the carnal urges, and Satan is pulling the strings. It is demonic. Satan is the creator of every false religious system ever known to man, beginning with Cain, which was the first false religion, that I can earn my way into heaven, that it is my effort that gets me approval with God. Do you know the first time the word wise shows up in scripture? It is in connection with Satan seducing mankind into sin. Genesis 3 verse 6. So when the woman saw that the, that is not where I want to start.

I will get to there in a minute. There it is, Genesis 3.1. Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field, which the Lord God had made. Thanks for joining us today as we took a deeper look into the book of James here on Cross Reference Radio. Cross Reference Radio is the daily radio ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia. We're blessed to bring you God's word with each broadcast. If you'd like more information or want to listen to additional teachings from Pastor Rick, please visit our website, crossreferenceradio.com. If you've been blessed by this program, we'd love to hear from you. When you visit the website, simply click on the contact us link at the top of the page and leave us a message. That website again is crossreferenceradio.com. Please join us again next time as we continue our study through the book of James right here on Cross Reference Radio.