I want you to think this morning as we start. I want you to think, I'm gonna ask you to think of a couple of people. And I want you to think about who the smartest person you know is. Okay, think about that, the smartest person.
I think my friend Alan Moschter, I went to seminary with him, and this guy was, he's made my head hurt. I could hang out with him for like 10 minutes and I had to stop because my mind was just about to blow up. But think, what are the qualities of that person? Like what makes them smart?
What are the attributes they have? Think about that. Think about what do you think makes him smarter than you? Okay, when you get into the situation with him, you're like, wow, I'm really showing my intelligency around this person.
Think about that. And also I want you to picture, and when you think about the wisest person, you know. And then we begin to realize that smart and wise might be very different things. I think of my uncle Burl, uncle Burl, in the Navy in December of 1941.
He had one semester left, he was gonna be a mechanical engineer, and he never went back to it. Uncle Burl could fix anything. And I'm talking like a redneck fixing. I'm talking like a real fixing.
He was just wise, I mean, just, but think about that wise person. What are the qualities that make them wise? Okay, think about what makes them wiser than you? Why are you attributing to that person to be in the wisest person that you know?
See, there's a difference here. There's also, now you see tons of people are seeking out the idea of a mentoring or coaching. People seek out those who are wiser than them because they want to learn from them. They want to know how their life can be better because of having this wise person in their life.
And you realize that they're not necessarily the smartest, but they're the ones who know the most about the situation can help the most. See, wisdom's a very different thing. We're talking about wisdom to the sun. We're finishing up a conversation that we have had over the last few weeks.
We're talking about the heart. We're talking about the mind. We're talking about wisdom today. These are these basic emotions of what does it mean to be human?
But there are also three huge emotions that we find in scripture. We're looking at these through the lens of what does it mean to be a disciple. The first week we talked about our heart and that we talked about what we manifest in the world always begins in our own heart. The things that we do, the things that we cause to happen, they always start in our heart and we see the good side of that and also the bad side of that.
Last week we talked about the mind that what we dream we do, the things that we fascinate on, the things that we fixate on will come to reality in our life. These are all closely interwoven. But today we're talking about wisdom and we're talking about wisdom, asking ourselves the question of would we rather be self-made or would we rather be Jesus-made? Because we're finding in scripture, wisdom there's another twist to that as well.
And so to kind of quickly dive in, we look at wisdom in scripture, the place that we see the most about wisdom in scripture in the book of Proverbs. It's mentioned 45 times in the book of Proverbs. There's chapters that are completely devoted to wisdom as a character. When I was in eighth grade, I was at a small Christian school because I got there at regular school.
And in our Bible class we had to learn the entire way to memorize all of Proverbs chapter two. And so I was homesick, sick. And I saw Godfather for the first time. Okay?
And the only way I can remember all of Proverbs chapter two is if I was pretending to be Don Corleone in the wedding scene. So I had it, the teacher came and said, you have it memorized chapter. We all had it memorized different chapter. I had Proverbs chapter two.
And I said, I can say it. But I'm not just saying it a certain way. She said, well, you want to say it, you can say it, well, she wanted to regret that statement. When I was sitting behind her desk and my son, you accept my words and store up my commandments within you, turning your ear to wisdom.
I'm not gonna do the whole thing. I still know the whole chapter like that though. But wisdom is all over Proverbs. And the verse that we really think about this and see this the most is in chapter nine, 10.
It says, let's pop this up. The fear of the Lord is the foundation of wisdom, knowledge of the holy one results in good judgment. So we see fear at first week, we'd be scared of God, no fear means awareness in scripture. This awareness of who God is, is the beginning of all wisdom.
We fast forward in scripture to a man named Solomon. We read about Solomon in first and second chronicles. He's David's son. And after David leaves us, big huge building project for him to take care of.
Okay, how many of you all would get mad if your dad's like, all right, peace out, you take care of this. I couldn't do. I'd be frustrated. Okay, so he's a build, this temple.
And the day that the temple was finished, this big, huge ceremony. And we read these stories and also we're like crazy, holy spirit stuff happened. And there's Solomon alone in his bedroom at nine. He's freaking out.
Cause he should be freaking out right now. And he has this holy spirit encounter face to face with God. And we're just just writing the script to read this. So that night God appeared to Solomon and said, what do you want?
Asking how we'll give it to you. Solomon replied, you showed great and faithful love to David, my father. And now you have made me king in his place. Oh Lord God, please continue to keep your promise David, my father for you have made me king over people as numerous as the rest of the earth.
Give me the wisdom and knowledge to lead them properly for who could possibly govern this great people of yours. So God said to Solomon, because your greatest desires to help your people and you did not ask for wealth or riches or fame or even the death of your enemies or 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, fame such as no other king has ever had before or will ever have in the future. So in his moment of I can't do this.
Can I have a guy who laid in bed at night and said I can't do this? I'm not being an example, I've done this in the last couple of months. And God comes up, what do you need? What do you need to take care of this?
I have the money, I need wisdom. Just give me wisdom. Now is the answer that showed the character of Solomon's heart and the character of Solomon's mind. And God's like, okay, we're gonna give you that, but you're gonna get all this other stuff, not as a reward, but because I can tell your heart and your mind are in the right place and you get the point of all of this.
The last little quick journey we're gonna take about wisdom and scripture actually is from Jesus in Luke when he's a little guy. And this is the only thing we know about Jesus' adolescence in scripture is this one verse we can infer so much from. He says in Luke, 2 52, Jesus grew in wisdom and stature and favor with God and with all of the people. He grew in wisdom.
His heart and his mind were in the place where he was being conformed to what God is doing. Wisdom is this, wisdom is discerning how to follow the order that God has built into this world. So we go to that question, do we wanna be self-made? Or do we wanna be Jesus-made?
So we're gonna jump in quick, like hit the ground running, tucking roll into James this morning. And about halfway through, we're gonna talk more about James later on in the message. This is what James says. James is fastening with the idea of wisdom.
This starts in verse 13. It says, if you were wise, understand God's ways, prove it by living an honorable life and doing good works with the humility that comes from wisdom. But if you're a bitterly jealous and there's selfish ambition in your heart, don't cover up the truth with boasting and with lying. For jealousy and selfishness are not God's kind of wisdom.
For such things, this is rough. For earthly, unspiritual and demonic. For wherever there's 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's peace loving, gentle at all times and willing to yield to others. It's full of mercy and 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.
So, sounds kind of weird. We're gonna talk about that weird a little bit. But we realize that pretty quickly James is just calling us out. That's what he's doing.
The way he builds this sentence. He's saying, so you think you're wise, all right? You think you're wise? Well, this is what wisdom looks like.
Check yourself. Beastie voice, I check your head. There's directions of wisdom. We're gonna talk about some of this gnarly language this morning.
But what James is really showing out, is there's two directions of wisdom. And the only way I can think of to show this was not with words but with drawing, but you're gonna have to deal with my horrible artistic skills. Is Leah in here, please forgive me. Okay?
All right, you all ready to see this? This is what I drew. This is the first direction of wisdom. All right?
So I had to draw, that's a brain. The whole, I wrote the words underneath because I realized that doesn't look a brain. I practiced all week long to try to draw a brain. I couldn't do it.
See, in our mind, what we think we're gonna have to do is we have to have the right heart. We're gonna add that together. We're gonna have the right mind. And then we're gonna add that together with our kind of wisdom and the wisdom that we develop.
And then we think that's gonna equal out to be our idea of the good life. We think that's what happiness is gonna look like. We're gonna pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. We're gonna do this ourselves.
And we can create all three of these emotions to lead to success. But that's the direction of earthly wisdom. So James is talking about second direction of wisdom as this. Looks a lot like the first, but it's different.
So we have the heart, we have the mind. It looks like a piece of toast with the nose. But we see that wisdom, there's a different direction that wisdom comes from. You see wisdom is put into that equation.
I'm also showing the fact that I took math 99 four times in college. I don't know if this equation is correct whatsoever at all. It makes sense in my mind. We see that wisdom comes from the direction of Jesus.
And that wisdom is multiplied with our heart and our mind. See, we cannot create wisdom on our own. There's two directions for wisdom. Do we wanna be self-made or do we wanna be Jesus-made?
That's what's going on here. The question about this is this jealousy, self-assamvision. Is it earthly? Is it demonic?
I'd use the D word there. Okay, let's ask you this question. Do you wanna create chaos in life? Or do you wanna create comfort?
Think about that. Do you wanna create chaos? Or do you wanna create comfort? James says, if there's jealousy, or if there's bitterness, there's selfish ambition, there you will find disorder and evil of every kind.
It's evil, it's demonic. Because it's creating an alternate pathway that's the opposite of what God desires in this world. And if we wanna get down to brass tacks, that's what the demonic is. It's a spiritual force and activity that's creating an alternate pathway to a way that God has designed this world.
And that sometimes that looks like what we'd imagine demonic activity looks like. Sometimes it's realizing us, we're so blindly unobvious to the fact that we're doing the opposite of what God wants. Sometimes in our hearts, it looks so much like what God wants us to do. That it's created that much of a charade.
Just think about this, self-assamvision. Think about what does it mean when we're unsettled with our situation in life? We're unhealthily focused on what we see is wrong without accepting any responsibility for it. Okay?
What does it mean for us to be intentionally cruel or dehumanizing to get what we want? Okay, I thought long and hard this week about the best way to represent that. No, the best person I can think of for us to understand just the evil behind this, but how that evil does not look wrong is obeying from days and confused. Okay?
I hate Ben Affleck to this day because this guy, remember him? So we all laugh, you know exactly. He's that jerk who failed to sing a year. So he's the freshman for one more year.
They catch an important pain on top of his head. It's a grand moment of retribution in my fifth favorite movie of all time. Think about that. Unsettled, unsituated.
I'm going to intentionally be cruel or dehumanizing. That's being self-made. Our attempts at creating wisdom sometimes and many times are just thwarted by our own actions. It's an alternate pathway.
And then what ends up happening is we end up creating the exact opposite of how God designed this world. We don't want to be self-made. We want to be Jesus-made. And what James tells us this morning is that we cannot do wisdom by ourselves.
We simply can't. It's impossible. So the next thing he starts talking about is this. I'm going to read verse 17 and 18.
Just think about this. He says, but the wisdom from above is first of all pure. It's also peace-loving. It's gentle at all times.
It's willing to yield to others. It's full of mercy and 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.
Think about this. When do you seek out wise people in your life? We seek out wise people in our life when we need help with something, when we need advice, when we might feel hopeless or frustrated or insecure. That's when we seek out wise people.
We have those folks that we call, or we have those folks that we need to call, or we realize that we don't have the relationships to have those people in our lives. But we seek out wisdom when we need comfort. Because that's the question. You're creating chaos.
Are you creating comfort? That's what James is talking about. He's using this term, peace so much. And this isn't like a woodstock kind of thing.
This isn't like a sticker. Is it small, the piece on the back of your truck? This is this is peaceable community. It's not a relationship between two people.
But this is a state of mind that if chaos is enmity with this world, it's just frustration and destruction. That peace is harmony. But this peace that James is talking about is also an eternal sort of peace. It's that peace that we see spoke about in Revelation when John says that he's gonna wipe away every tear from our eyes.
I mean, we're crying morning pain, tears for the things of this earth have passed away. That peace has this future guarantee of tranquility in our lives. That peace is the ability to flourish. I think about that.
An environment has to happen for someone to flourish. What kind of environment has to happen for you to flourish? That's deeply individualized. And God has the ability to do that.
He's picking up for that. That peace is the end of this disturbed relationship we have with God because of sin. It's him coming in and saying, we're gonna fix this, we're gonna take care of this. And it only happens with God's mercy.
We cannot create this peace on our own. Now we can be participants with this kind of peace. That's what James is telling us. It's here's the thing about wise people.
It's how they're able to create comfort and not chaos. Wise people have generally gotten over themselves. They have full awareness of who they are. But wise people have also experienced peace in a way that just completely reorients them in life.
Their end goal is a very different end goal than others might have. Wise people have understand that they've reoriented sin away from this perspective of just a simple do's and don'ts. There's some sort of moral code. But wise people have instead, they've grown into the idea, they've gotten a bigger vision of what sin is because they see sin as something that deeply affects this entire world, that sin is something that deeply affects them.
And they don't want any part of it because they know that it only leads to death and destruction. Self made people are all right with chaos. Jesus made people seek to create comfort in their life and the life of others. So James, James is a different person.
Some of you might notice me don't know this. James was a half brother of Jesus. Church tradition tells us that James was actually the oldest son of Mary and Joseph. He was the next kid born.
He was the one who, I need to be like your big brother, Jesus. I never had my sisters. There was a kid my dad knew I used to be like Sherman folks. I still don't like Sherman folks.
He was a great guy. You got your brother, Jesus. We meet James in scripture in the gospels when people come outside and say, hey listen, your parents and your brothers and sisters are outside and they need to come take you home. They're calling out, hey, Jesus.
You're not this person. Slow your roll. Come on, you gotta go to the house and run the carpenter shop. James was there with Mary seeing his brother die on the cross, but not as a follower of James.
James was not a disciple. Something happened to James that led him into being the leader of the church in Jerusalem and Acts. The church fathers, those people who lived this first two or three hundred years after the death in resurrection of Jesus, that they called James old camel knees. Because he spent so much time in prayer on his knees that he developed heavy arthritis.
And his knees were heavily calloused. He seems a very wise person. And I think so much of James wisdom and his focus on wisdom here is him thinking like, man, I really messed this up. I worked in my own world.
I tried to be self-made for years. And I'm this the point and this guy was my own brother. Something happened to James where he made the decision. He wanted to be Jesus made and not self-made.
He had to make that decision. I want to be more like my brother. You all know what it's like to say. You want to be more like one of your siblings to take into that.
This makes me feel better about wisdom. I read it so hard for James to do. Am I causing chaos? Am I causing comfort?
What's spilling over in our lives? What do you cause to spill over? Just what happens? We don't seek to go do this.
We're so frustrated about something. We act out and we are interacting out what spills over. And the lives of those around us is going to be chaos or comfort. Verse 17 and 18, they talk about two actions.
They talk about planting. They talk about harvesting. This is what it means to be a peacemaker. Are you living up and are you investing down?
No, we all need people to pull us up. We all need those people in our lives that we need and to seek wisdom from. We need to have those people that we can call, that we can sit down with, that we can pray with. OK?
We're living up. We're seeking out those folks that are further along the journey on us. And it might just be about one specific thing. But we're also investing down.
We're realizing that I have gone through a level of experience where I had the responsibility to take care of those folks who may not be as far along this journey as I am. But when we invest up and when we plant and we live up and we invest down, we're realizing that wisdom happens inside of a community, inside a relationship. No, not only do we have not had the ability to create our own wisdom, that we cannot create wisdom in a vacuum that happens by how we intentionally look for others to help us get to that next place. But how we are also sitting there with our arm down, realizing that we have the responsibility to grab somebody and to pull them up.
And that has much bigger implications. Think about this. No, a few weeks ago, we spoke at Jeremiah in chapter 297, pray for the peace and the prosperity of the place where I have planted you. What does it mean to pull folks up and to be pulled up in community in this place?
That's part of what we pray for and where we live. It's all of us coming together and living those types of relationships. John 1 14 is kind of foundry. He's just that verse we put on everything.
The word became flesh and made us home among us. That's putting peacemakers, that's seeking out wisdom in community. That's living up, that's investing down. That's what Jesus did for us.
He invested down into us. This forces us to think about the way that our behavior, our spillover affects the world around us. It makes us think about it. Are we causing chaos?
Are we causing comfort? Because ultimately, hopefully, we all want to be Jesus made and not self-made. Wisdom is our heart and our mind by our willingness, saying, Jesus, we need you to shape this for us. I'm going to do the hard work, but I need you to come in and do what you do.
This is us come in and say, I want more of what he has, and I want what he has more than what I can come up with on my own, that what I can do on my own is not good enough. I need you to come to this. This is what it means to be Jesus made and not self-made. Let's pray.
Father, we open ourselves up to you. The scripture said, we're to love what our God, our heart, and our mind, and our soul, and our strength. That's the greatest commandment. We want to do that.
And we realize that us doing that means us working hard and being part of this. But also us just opening ourselves up to you, saying, Jesus, we're here and we trust you. So as we continue in worship, we just put ourselves in that posture in front of you, God. We're saying, we want to be Jesus made.
We trust you to shape and form us into the person you have made us to be. As we pray, amen.