Share This Episode
Lighting Your Way Lighthouse Baptist Logo

Are You Wise? God's Wisdom vs the Worlds

Lighting Your Way / Lighthouse Baptist
The Truth Network Radio
January 10, 2025 2:14 pm

Are You Wise? God's Wisdom vs the Worlds

Lighting Your Way / Lighthouse Baptist

On-Demand Podcasts NEW!

This broadcaster has 178 podcast archives available on-demand.

Broadcaster's Links

Keep up-to-date with this broadcaster on social media and their website.


January 10, 2025 2:14 pm

Wednesday, January 8, 2025  |  Message by Pastor Josh Bevan

Main Scripture: James 3:13-18

COVERED TOPICS / TAGS (Click to Search)
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
The Todd Starnes Show
Todd Starnes
Dana Loesch Show
Dana Loesch
Our American Stories
Lee Habeeb

Well, if you have your Bibles tonight, I want to look at James chapter number 3, James 3, and we're going to read verse 13 down to verse 18 when you find your place. Coming into the New Year, I was thinking about just living with wisdom, and one of the things that I would encourage you to do is apply the book of Proverbs to your life.

Proverbs is the book of wisdom, and one thing you can do is just read the proverb that correlates with the date on the calendar. So today being January 8th, read Proverbs chapter 8, a wonderful chapter about wisdom personified in some sense like Christ in Proverbs chapter 8, but just correlate that, but Proverbs gives us wisdom in life, how to live effectively and right before God, and so James 3 verse 13 through 18 is giving us the difference between earthly and heavenly wisdom and asking us, are we a wise man? Verse 13 says, who is a wise man and endued with knowledge among you? Let him show out of a good conduct or conversation his works with meekness and wisdom 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, and demonic or devilish, for where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work, but the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy, and the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace. Father, we are so thankful to be able to gather together tonight. We thank you for the children, the teens, and the adult ministries.

I praise you for a wonderful year in 2024, and we look forward to this next year. We pray your blessing to be upon the service tonight, and if anyone doesn't know Christ, that tonight would be their salvation. It's the wisest decision they could ever make, and I pray that as Christians, as we walk into this new year, that we would live in a way that would be wise and not as fools, and we ask it in Jesus' name, and God's people said, man, you may be seated tonight. Well, if you're familiar with the book of James, it is a very practical letter that is written by James, giving us instructions on putting our faith to work, living out effectively what we believe, and if you are familiar not only with James, but James chapter 3, you know James 3 is a chapter on the tongue, harnessing that most difficult part of us that wants to, that it's hard to cage it in, and so the Bible talks about it like that, and so we need to harness the tongue, and the Bible says if you can control your tongue, you can control anything, because it's the most difficult thing to harness, and very few people have learned to control that. We live in a society also that's quick to shoot off out the mouth, because social media and texting and outlets for communication have continued to grow, and so it's easy for people to speak, and it's easy for all of us to at times speak without fully thinking about the consequences of what we have said.

Sometimes we'll make the statement, I don't know what I was thinking when I said that, and then you ask your wife for forgiveness. So, but if there is one group of people that must learn to harness their mouth in life, it is the believer, and the reason I bring up verse 1 through 12's conversation about the tongue, it sets the tone for verse 13 through 18's teaching on who is truly a wise person, and then also who has false wisdom. So after James gets done discussing the battle with controlling our mouth, that leads him to discussing the essential differences between what the Bible would call true wisdom and false wisdom or worldly wisdom. And so the question tonight is, are you wise? Do you have wisdom?

Would people in your life consider you to be wise? And so in order to have wisdom, we need to know what wisdom is and how it operates. And so we're going to look at a comparison between true wisdom and false wisdom as laid out here tonight. Wisdom was very important to the Jewish people. Again, the book of Proverbs really written to center on that. Solomon writes in Proverbs 4-7, wisdom is the principle thing, therefore get wisdom with all thy getting, get understanding. So wisdom was very, very important, and some 900 years later, the first century Roman philosopher Cicero stated that wisdom is the best gift of the gods, he says, and is the mother of all good things. And so both the Jews and even the Romans in that first century considered to be the highest and most noble and valuable of all possessions is wisdom.

But the Jews understood true wisdom was not simply being intellectual, but application and behavioral. Therefore, the biggest fool was the person who knew the truth but did not live out the truth. Having information did not make you wise. That's why Jesus even applies this at the end of the Sermon on the Mount. If you notice, he says in Matthew 7 verse 24, whoever hears these sayings of mine and does them is a wise man. And then he says in verse 26, but if you hear these sayings of mine and you don't do them, then you're a fool. Both people have the information, but the person who applies it is the wise person, the one who has the information and does not is a fool.

And so it's not having information, it's not knowing the truth that makes you wise, it's what you do with that. We are a people who believes that salvation is by grace through faith. You believe that, right? But we believe that true faith really works, and you can't divorce it. That's why we reject the easy believers, and it says you can pray a simple prayer, live like a sinful, evil, opposing God life your entire life and go to heaven.

That's not true. The Bible teaches that true faith truly works, and true wisdom is the application of truth. And he declares a fool is the one with the right information but wrong application. And so the Jews understood that, and really wisdom is being skilled in living right. Wisdom is the skill of living right. The word righteous just means the easiest way to understand it is to be right with God. You're skilled at living right with God.

You know how to line your life up with Him. And so James 3, verse 13, there's a couple words I want to point out as we kind of enter into this information here. The first one is the word wise. It comes from the Greek word sophos, who is a wise man and a dude with knowledge among you.

This is what could be referred to as a rhetorical interrogative question. He is asking them this question, who is wise? And the common Greek word for wise here is used for speculative knowledge and philosophy, but the Hebrews infused into this word sophos a much more full and rich meaning of the skillful application of knowledge to the matter of practical living. So it's more than knowledge. It's more than having the right information. It's the right use of knowledge. So the idea behind this word speaks of the ability of applying it in your life.

The Jews' wisdom involved to perform right conduct necessary to the knowledge you possessed. And so the book of Proverbs is literally just practically living in a wise way. Here's pithy statements.

It's full of just pithy statements, how to live those things out. Now in the Old Testament, the words wisdom and wise appear some 300 times. A hundred of those times are in the book of Proverbs alone. And so wisdom again is the ability to apply biblical truth to all of life's situations. Now it's one thing to say I do in marriage and know what marriage is. It is an entirely different thing to live a successful marriage filled with Christ's centeredness, to know how to love selflessly, to love sacrificially, to care for your spouse in good and bad times, through valleys, through the mountaintops, to know how to be kind, to know how to forgive, to stay committed to one another for a half century. That takes wisdom. A wise person is one who can work through that.

It's again, you may know what a marriage is. It's another thing to be able to sustain it. It is one thing to know what it means to be a Christian. It's another thing to live the truths of God out in your daily life. Knowledge is having the truth. Wisdom is living the truth. When Jesus came, he put perfect knowledge on display and he was the wisest man who ever lived because everything he did was exactly lined up with the will of God. When speaking of Jesus Christ, Paul said in Colossians 2, 3, in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Jesus is knowledge personified.

And it says, who is a wise man among you? And then it says, and endued with knowledge. Who is a wise man who is endued with knowledge or has understanding? In the Bible, wisdom and understanding are often brought together. Epistemon is the word here for knowledge. This is a Greek word that is basically synonymous with wisdom. It is one having the knowledge of an expert. So wisdom is more so the stress on application of that truth where knowledge, epistemon, is more the focus of the expert, the intellectual side of that. But in the Bible, these two words are really often used synonymous. Deuteronomy 1, 13 says, take you the wise man and the understanding and known among your tribes and I will make them rulers over you.

So the Bible would attach those two. It is somebody who has good information, they understand things well, but then they also carry out that with wisdom. Now, after James presents the question of who is a wise and understanding person, he says, notice what he says next, let him show out of a good conversation his works.

Let him show. This is the verb, doxito, and so you would reveal that through a good, I would prefer the translation should really be conduct. It is not just your language, but it is your life. It is your life actions. It is how your life is carried out.

For some reason, King James will oftentimes use the word conversation. It is not simply conversation. Most of the time it is the idea of your conduct, your way of life. It could probably be best translated as let him show out of the way of his life, the way that he walks, the way that he lives, the way he carries out everything. So it transcends just your communication. It is what you do with your actions.
Whisper: medium.en / 2025-01-10 17:32:55 / 2025-01-10 17:44:14 / 11

Get The Truth Mobile App and Listen to your Favorite Station Anytime