You've probably heard the saying, With Age Comes Wisdom, but that's not always the case, is it?
Is knowledge or life experience the same thing as wisdom? We'll hear about the source and proof of true wisdom today on Truth for Life as Alistair Begg teaches a message titled, Who Is Wise? James 3.13. Who is wise and understanding among you?
Let him show it by his good life, by good deeds, done in the humility that comes from wisdom. But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. Such wisdom does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual of the devil. For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice. But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure, then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. Peacemakers who sow in peace raise a harvest of righteousness. Now, Father, with our Bibles open before us, please come and help us so that we might speak and listen in a way that is honoring to you and life-transforming for us. For Jesus' sake.
Amen. Those of you who've been studying along with us in James know that this third chapter has begun with James addressing the would-be teachers. And then from verse 3 through verse 12, he has a discourse that is all about the tongue. And it may well be that this discourse is in some sense as a digression—a meaningful digression.
He's on the tongue, and he just reinforces it. But that he hasn't, in verse 13, changed his focus in terms of those he is addressing at the beginning of the chapter. In other words, he still has in mind the would-be teachers—those who, by dint of their background or interest or involvement, are suggesting that they are the individuals who have the requisite gifts and calling to become teachers in the church.
And so to them, and to others, obviously, but to them perhaps in particular, he issues this particular challenge. Who is wise and understanding among you? We're getting a group of wise and understanding individuals together, and we would like all of you to assemble over here by the tree, if you would. And as people begin to scurry for their diplomas and for their briefcases and for their files full of information and for their heads full of knowledge, in order to come over and display themselves to be amongst the wise and the understanding, James says, Hey, hang on just a minute.
You'll be able to tell whether you should be over by the tree, not by your degrees, but by your lifestyle. Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show it by his good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. And the challenge that he is laying down is akin to what has already happened in chapter 2, as it relates to faith. Remember, here comes somebody who says, I am a man of faith, or I am a woman of faith. And James says, Okay, then, show me your faith. Show me your faith. And now in chapter 3, here I am, I am someone of wisdom and understanding. He says, Well then, let's just apply the same test. Why don't you show me how wise and understanding you are?
Why? Because true wisdom, like true faith, is vital, it is practical, and it is observable. Because the wisdom that James is addressing here is the endowment of heart and mind from God, giving us all that is necessary for right conduct as a result of right thinking.
That's what you have in Romans 12. Be transformed by the renewing of our minds. How will we know that our minds are renewed? How will we know the nature of our creed in our conduct?
How will we know the nature of our faith in our function? How will we know the nature of our wisdom in our practical living out of such a life? Now, this is very Old Testament in its orientation, and we've said already that James is a very proverbial New Testament book.
There are many echoes of proverbs in this book. And so it is not surprising that the Old Testament concept of wisdom is uppermost in the mind of James. Wisdom is to be seen in the living of life.
We are completely on the wrong track if we're thinking simply in terms of SAT scores or of intellect or of gray matter, of capacity, mental capacity. That's not what James is addressing here. It's not really what the Bible addresses at all when it comes to the subject of wisdom. Wisdom has feet. Wisdom has action.
Wisdom goes places. So, for example, in Psalm 1, the book of Psalms opens up with the description of a wise man. How do we know that he is wise? Because he does not walk in the counsel of the ungodly. He does not stand in the way of sinners. He does not sit in the seat of mockers. So people look at him and see him go, see him sit, watch where he stands, and then conclude, Here is a wise man.
His wisdom is deduced from his life as lived, not from his lips as proclaimed. There is a huge distinction between education and wisdom. Our culture is preoccupied with education.
Justifiably so. We don't want dumb children. Parents are concerned. Schools are concerned.
Politicians are concerned. But as I'll show you later on, many of those concerns are completely divorced from that which James is addressing here. Now, the wisdom that he's referencing is the wisdom that gives insight into the will of God, his purposes, and gives the ability to fulfill his purposes. And what I'd like to do is to isolate one wisdom from the other. You will notice, if you have an NIV, that it says here that there are two kinds of wisdom.
One is heavenly, one is earthly, one is proud, one is humble, one is from heaven, one is from hell, and so on. We're only going to deal with it in terms of heavenly wisdom or true wisdom to begin with. And we won't deal with all of it even this morning in this first instance. But to give you some idea of what we're trying to do, we will first of all look at the source of this true wisdom, and then in verse 17 at the nature of this wisdom, and then coming back to verse 13 again at the evidence of this wisdom.
But we won't get beyond source, so we didn't really worry very much about it at all. James has already introduced the subject and has answered his own question. And in the fifth verse of chapter 1, if you remember, he said, If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God who gives to all generously. In other words, James knew his Bible. He knew that this was exactly what Solomon had written in his Proverbs, and particularly in Proverbs chapter 2, where he says, For the LORD gives wisdom, and from his mouth come knowledge and understanding.
The Bible is unequivocal concerning this. If you want to be a wise person, you need to know God. If you want to be a wise person, you need a Bible. If you want to be those who display understanding, then it starts with your own humility before the majesty and might of the God who has made you.
And if you don't start there, then everything else will be deducted in a way that is flawed. So he says, the wisdom back in James 1 verse 17 is the wisdom that comes down from heaven. It comes down from heaven. And this is simply another way of saying that it comes from God, the wisdom that comes from heaven. Remember that the Jews—and Orthodox Jews to this day—are concerned about the irreverent use of the name of God.
And so they will, in every instance that they can, use a substitute for God. So if you have it, for example, in the parable of the prodigal son, when he comes to his senses, he says, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight, and I'm no longer worthy to be called your son. What does he mean, he's sinned against heaven? It's simply a way of him avoiding the use of God's name. I've sinned against God.
God is in heaven. So when James says this wisdom comes down from heaven, he's simply saying what he's referenced in verse 5 of chapter 1. This wisdom is from God. And it is this wisdom which Solomon requested of God, remember? How God comes to him, and it's recorded for us in 1 Kings 3.
It's a wonderful story. And God says, What would you like, Solomon? And Solomon says, Well, I would like to be wise. I'd like to be able to discriminate between error and truth. I'd like to be able to discern between right and wrong.
I'd like to be a wise person. And 1 Kings 3.10 records the fact that the Lord was pleased that Solomon asked him for this. Good man, Solomon!
That was a good answer. Where did you come up with that answer, Solomon? Well, the answer to that question, Solomon tells us in Proverbs chapter 4. Listen to what he says, When I was a boy in my father's house, still tender and an only child of my mother, he taught me and said, Lay hold of my words with all your heart. Keep my commandments, and you will live. Get wisdom, get understanding.
Don't forget my words or swear from them. So from his very infancy, Solomon was nurtured in the awareness of what he later writes, that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, that the entry into the school of understanding is an entryway that comes in an encounter with God who has made us. And the God who has made us has revealed himself to us externally in creation and internally by means of our conscience. And so we have within us a sense of oughtness that speaks to the fact of his handiwork and his control.
And we have above us and beyond us the vastness of the world that he has made, which speaks to his power and to his majesty. Now, I'll leave you to read some of Solomon on your own. Chapter 4 is particularly powerful as he calls out to his children to make sure that they don't neglect wisdom. Whatever else you do, he says, make sure that you are wise, make sure that you discern between right and wrong, make sure you make straight paths for your feet.
Don't go from the right and don't go to the left. Is this just a sort of elaborate cry from an intelligent dad who is a pragmatist and knows the benefits of putting your best foot forward? No.
No. Because he goes from chapter 4 into chapter 5, and what's chapter 5 about? Adultery. He doesn't want his boy to go down there. He doesn't want his boy to stop off at that house.
What does he need? He needs to be wise. He doesn't need to be educated. If education was the answer to helping people to stop smoking, the information is so undeniable that it wouldn't be the person smoked in the entire world. Education is not capable to do it. If education could deal with teenage pregnancy, it would be over with.
It can't do it. It's wisdom that is lacking. You're getting a group of wise and understanding people who are going to stand over here by the tree who are the wise and the understanding ones. You see, what Solomon does is provide, if you like, the example par excellence of Christian parenting.
Because what he does in his day and generation is what every Christian parent must at least attempt to do in their generation. And interestingly, when you move from generation to generation—and after you've lived a little while, you can speak about generations, and you can read history books, and then you know a little more about generations—but it is an observable fact to me that the older people grow, the more they pontificate about the nature of the predicament of the culture in which they're living. So grandparents are, Oh, this is the worst I've ever seen in my entire life. I don't think my grandchildren are going to be able to cope. I think the whole world is over, you know? And there may be justifiable reasons for making those deductions, but you only need to read history to know you're just singing an old song.
You know, this was up the charts many, many times before. You can go to any century and find people bemoaning the same thing. What do you think Augustine's mother thought in the fourth century? What do you think she was saying with her boy, complete bedlam in his life, going all over the place? Listen to this.
Sound familiar? Our young people are growing up at a period when the foundations of the earth are out of course, and when subtle and restless efforts are made to poison their hearts and pervert their ways. Nothing, therefore, can be more important than to fortify them with sound principles, that when withdrawn from the parental wing into a world of temptation, they may be under a divine cover as the children of a special providence. This is the introduction to a book on Proverbs.
October 7th, 1846. So 160 years ago, the fellas writing the introduction to Proverbs, and he goes, This is terrible. Our young people are just in dreadful predicaments if they… I can't believe the kind of things that are going on.
The books that are out there, they haven't even reached the silent movies yet. Can you imagine if somebody was dropped down from 1846 just to watch MTV? Could they conceive of such a world? 1846, that decade is interesting, because it's in that decade that Jonathan Edwards, whose name you may know, and some of his colleagues, started to call for what he referred to as a Great Awakening—started to ask God to come and visit North America with a dramatic display of his power and of his wisdom. What most of us don't know is that what motivated this call from the heart of Edwards and his friends was the secular thinking being taught at Harvard and Yale. And they were so disappointed as graduates of Yale at how things had gone and what they had been taught that they asked God to come and speak wisdom again into our land. Now, if you think about this, it is quite fascinating, because Harvard was founded in the seventeenth century. Glasgow University in the fourteenth century. But anyway, we needed to produce the scholars to bring them over here so you could have a university. But anyway, sorry for that dreadful jingoistic burst.
Couldn't resist it. But anyway, 1636, Harvard is founded. 1642, the Student Handbook is published, in which every student at Harvard is called to be, quotes, plainly instructed and earnestly pressed to consider well that the main end of his life and studies is to know God and Jesus Christ, which is eternal life, and therefore to lay hold of Christ as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and learning. That's 1642, Harvard Student Handbook. So if you sent your son off to Harvard in the seventeenth century, and he came home with a handbook, and you were washing his laundry, and you had a little look into the handbook, you would discover that your boy was in a good spot or your girl was in a good spot.
There they're going to be compelled to consider the fact that the only found of genuine knowledge and understanding is there in a foundation which can be laid by no one other than Jesus Christ himself. Yale was founded in 1701. And the reason for the founding of Yale was because congregational believers—that is, believers in the Congregational Church—were disappointed by the growing apostasy at Harvard. And Edwards and his colleagues emerged from Yale and said, We'd better try another place.
And they founded Princeton University as a reaction to Harvard and to Yale. What is the point of declension at every point? It is the departure from wisdom and the embracing of earthly perspectives.
Simplistic analysis? Undoubtedly. Faithfully true?
Yes. In other words, such cries are far removed from the contemporary president of Harvard, who said just recently, Things divine have been central neither to my professional nor to my private life. Issues of divinity, he says, do not influence me in my professional capacity, nor do they play any part of significance in my private life. I admire his honesty. At least it's true. But it is a long way removed, isn't it? Let's just pause and acknowledge something that is patently obvious. Ideas have consequences. And people know that ideas have consequences, and that's why advertising is as profoundly impactful as it is. Because it is essentially the packaging of ideas, of concepts, of notions—some of them very subtle, some of them almost deceitful—is amazing, the way in which somebody sells their product to us by making us feel good about a funny little golden retriever that is running through the grass.
But it's got nothing at all to do with the exorbitant fees that the bank is going to charge you for leaving your money in their establishment. But somehow or another, the retriever did it. You know, he just—we got caught up by the retriever. They sold us an idea. They packaged it. David Myers wrote a book called The American Paradox. Spiritual hunger in an age of plenty was the subtitle.
It was published, actually, by Yale University Press. And this paradox, he described as follows. We're better fed, better paid, better housed, better educated, and healthier than ever before, and with more human rights, faster communication, and more convenient transportation than we have ever known. Alongside all this large yes, however, are the signs of life in pain and travail. Since 1960, the divorce rate has doubled, teen suicide has tripled, violent crime quadrupled, the number in prison has quintupled, illegitimate children six times, sextupled, and the number of those cohabiting has increased sevenfold.
Now, these are facts. Ideas have consequences. The idea that there is a God, to whom men and women are accountable, has an impact when believed on the lives and lifestyles of those who believe.
The idea that we are simply a random collection of molecules held in suspension with no particular significance at all also has implications—not least of all in how we spend our time, our money, and with whom we spend our time and money. And it may be with whomsoever we choose and on whatsoever we desire, depending on the source of wisdom. True godly wisdom is vital, it's practical, and it's observable. It begins with the fear of God.
You're listening to Truth for Life with Alistair Begg. In today's message we learned the source of true wisdom. We need to know God and know the Bible, and that's why our mission at Truth for Life is to teach the Bible with clarity and relevance every single day, and to make additional teaching available for free through our website at truthforlife.org. You can search for messages there by topic, by series, or by a scripture passage. You can even access the complete ESV Bible online at truthforlife.org slash Bible.
You know, the Bible assures us that when we ask God to reveal himself to us, he will. So our prayer is that he will use the teaching you hear on this program to open closed minds so that unbelievers will become committed followers of Jesus. We also pray that believers will grow in their faith and wisdom, and that churches will be strengthened as a result. Along with Alistair's messages, each month we choose with great care books that we can offer, books that we offer with our mission in mind. You may have heard me mention our current title, it's Little Pilgrim's Big Journey Part 2. This is a wonderful storybook. It follows the journey of a young girl and her brothers as they navigate the Christian life. It's a sequel to the very popular Little Pilgrim's Big Journey Part 1, and both of these are adapted from John Bunyan's classic work.
So don't miss out. Request Little Pilgrim's Big Journey Part 2 when you give a donation at truthforlife.org slash donate, or when you call us at 888-588-7884. I'm Bob Lapine. Thanks for listening. Scripture teaches us that there is no intellectual road to God, so how do we become wise? Join us tomorrow for the answer as we hear the conclusion of today's message. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.
Whisper: medium.en / 2023-02-25 21:09:20 / 2023-02-25 21:17:51 / 9