Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Grace-based biblical teaching and sermons with Pastor Jason White. Messages that focus on Life in Christ and practical application as New Covenant believers.
So last week we talked about how James mentions 2 kinds of wisdom…
There is a kind of wisdom that we can walk by that is earthly, unspiritual, and demonic…and this kind of wisdom is characterized by envy and selfish ambition.
But the other kind of wisdom, James says comes down from heaven. It’s a wisdom that comes from God, and it is characterized by peace-loving, consideration for others, it’s full of mercy and good fruit…
And James says is that the difference in living between these 2 kinds of wisdom is pride and humility.
When we walk by pride, we are living by our own strength, by our own thoughts about what is right for our life…and ultimately all of those are being influenced by Satan who is using this world to promote a counterfeit wisdom or a godless wisdom in order to keep us from experiencing true wisdom and the Life of Christ in us and through us.
See, Satan wants you and I to live as if we are our own gods…the ruler of our own life…and of course he doesn’t have our best interests in mind though, He knows that God loves you & created you & has your best interests in mind when it comes to guiding you and directing you in the way He created you to live, but Satan doesn’t want you to step into that…b/c he is out to destroy you, God’s most prized creation.
And so Satan tries to convince us to walk in pride…that we are our own god and that we create our own truth and our own fulfillment and satisfaction… knowing all along that we’ll never find any of those things b/c they can only be found in God who is our Creator and meant to be our Source for life.
So as long as we continue to walk by pride then we will be stuck in this endless treadmill of chasing after satisfaction and fulfillment…
BUT…James says if we walk in humility by setting our minds on things above rather than earthly things, then Jesus will guide us by His wisdom and in ways that we find fulfillment and satisfaction in Him and in ways that make this world a better place because it will be characterized by peace-loving, consideration for others, full of mercy and good fruit.
So the difference in living by these 2 different kinds of wisdom is pride and humility. He even said specifically in 4:6,10…
6 …God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble…10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.
As you humble yourselves and quit walking in pride, then God will lift you up off of the path of worldly wisdom and put you on the path of Godly wisdom.
So you would expect James to now go into some more examples or just dive more into humility…
But he does just the opposite. In the verses we are going to look at today, James basically gives 3 examples of what it looks like to walk in pride…of walking in that earthly, unspiritual, demonic wisdom
And this is good though, b/c we need to be able to recognize when we are walking in our flesh and not by God’s Spirit living in us…because it can be so easy to become fixated by the ways of this world and think we are walking down the right path. So, let’s look at this 1st section I asked you to turn to…4:11
11 Brothers and sisters, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against a brother or sister or judges them speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it. 12 There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you—who are you to judge your neighbor?
So the first example of walking in pride and living by this earthly, fleshly wisdom is slandering other people, which in essence is judging them and trying to take the place of God, James says.
The word “slander” here means to “speak against,”…it’s false, critical speech that is damaging to a person’s character…it’s an attempt to push them down and put ourselves above them.
There was a time many years ago when I was in my early 20’s and well before vocational ministry that I was going to a church and had become really good friends with the Children’s Pastor at this church…he kind of became a mentor to me…
And one day it seemed just out of the blue that the church fired him… and I got mad…and I began to do just what James is talking about here…I was slandering the leadership of the church…I was talking about them behind their backs…I was doing my best to tear them down to anyone who would listen to me…
James says (v. 11) “when we do this, we are not keeping the law and are speaking against it.” He’s talking about the Royal Law that he has mentioned already in 2:8 which Jesus said was “Love your neighbor as yourself.” And…I was certainly not loving my neighbor when I was slandering them…I was judging them and putting myself above them and putting myself in the place of God.
Well, God finally got ahold of me at some point thank goodness, and He said, “Jason, why don’t you go talk to the leaders of the church and try to gain understanding instead of just slandering them?” And so I did, and we had a great conversation and I learned some things that I didn’t know…and I began to understand a little more of the reasoning behind the decisions that were being made…And God used that to humble me, and I apologized and asked for forgiveness for slandering them.
Is there someone that you need to go to today and ask forgiveness for slandering them?
Maybe the Lord is wanting to use this today in your life to get your attention about how you have been slandering others in your own life: someone in your family…a neighbor…a boss or a co-worker…a church leader or a church member…someone on your football or volleyball team…a coach or teacher…OR maybe He’s trying to get your attn. about the way you slander people on social media (politics)?
James says you cannot love your neighbor and speak slander against them…Speaking slander is the way of worldly wisdom under the influence of Satan…shows us that we are walking in our flesh…
But as we walk in humility and turn our attention to His wisdom and His ways, He will lead us to speak in ways that are peace-loving and in ways that we are being considerate of them as he mentioned in 3:17 when talking about what walking in godly wisdom looks like… 4:13-17…
13 Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” 14 Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. 15 Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” 16 As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil. 17 If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.
What James is talking about here is how walking in pride leads us to arrogantly plan everything out in our lives to determine our future.
I’ve had people come up to me before and talk about how they’ve got their whole lives planned out you know…
I’m going to get married by the time I’m 25, and I’m going to have 3 kids, and I’m going to run my own business from home while I raise my kids…we are going to live in a house with a white picket fence and 2 dogs and a cat. My kids are all going to grow up and be polite and successful and on and on and on…
I’ve had others tell me that they were going to get this degree by the time they were this age and get a job in this field and make this much money by the time they were 35, and that then they would settle down and find spouse and have a family and that they would live in this kind of house and drive this kind of car and have all of the latest and greatest toys and on and on and on…
These are examples of boasting in arrogant and pretentious planning!
It’s pride…it’s saying that “I know what is best for me. I am the lord of my life. I decide and determine where I go and what I do and how I do it.”
This is earthly wisdom, inspired by Satan to keep you from God’s great plan for your life and how He wants you to fit into & be a part of what He is doing in this world through you.
And so James says, 15 Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.”
Now, to be clear, James is not talking about never making plans. Scripture tells us all over the place that planning and saving and thinking ahead is a wise way to live…especially in Proverbs. Here’s the way Douglas Moo in his commentary on James describes what James is saying here…
James is not rebuking these merchants for their plans or even for their desire to make a profit. He rebukes them rather for this-worldly self-confidence that they exhibit in pursuing these goals. And we should guard here against another kind of misinterpretation: the idea that James is forbidding Christians from all forms of planning or of concern for the future. Taking out life insurance and saving for retirement, for instance, are not condemned by James; these may very well be a form of wise stewardship. What James rebukes here, as v. 16 makes clear, is any kind of planning for the future that stems from human arrogance in our ability to determine the course of future events.
In other words, we don’t make our plans based on our own wisdom…by what we think is going to make us happy and provide fulfillment & satisfaction for our lives… we don’t do it to provide for our own security and in ways that we are not depending upon Jesus…
Instead, we make ourselves available to Jesus and allow Him to be the Lord that He is instead of us trying to be our own lord. We cling to Him and depend on Him to be the Source of our lives.
And so James says, “When we know the good we ought to do and we don’t do it, then we sin.” (When we know that God has a plan for our life and the way He wants to Guide us into that plan and those good works He planned in advance for us to do and don’t do them, we sin)… We walk in pride and in our ways…we are following our own wisdom and plan for our lives instead of submitting to His
And so…James in these first 2 sections we looked at, shows us that pride… that walking in earthly wisdom will result in us speaking slander against others to build ourselves up & that it will also lead us to make our own plans & be our own guide for life in our pursuit to find fulfillment and satisfaction…
And finally, in these last few verses we are going to look at today, he will show us that walking in pride and the way of fleshly, earthly wisdom will result in trusting in riches & the mistreatment of others…
Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you. 2 Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. 3 Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. 4 Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. 5 You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter. 6 You have condemned and murdered the innocent one, who was not opposing you.
When we live in pride…when we live by our own wisdom, we can easily become convinced that money will provide for our satisfaction, fulfillment, and security.
And James kind of pulls back the curtain here and shows us 4 things that are going on when we trust in our money and living by this earthly wisdom that this kind of thinking is guided by…
#1 – Your money will do nothing for you in the scope of eternity (v.2-3)
He reminds us in v. 2-3 that it doesn’t do any good to hoard money…that we can’t take our money with us when we die…that it will stay here on earth and all the security you and I built our hopes and dreams on will not be available to us in eternity. Your money won’t buy you entrance into heaven. It’s pointless to trust in money and hoard it for your own security and gain.
Again, James is not talking about not saving…godly wisdom says to save and be prepared for things that happen in your life. The difference is hoarding for personal fulfillment and security in money over God.
#2 – When we trust in money, it can cause us to mistreat others (v. 4)
In v. 4 James talks about how these rich landowners held on to their wealth instead of paying their workers. There were a lot of day workers who worked for landowners during this time and if they didn’t get paid then they and their families didn’t eat that day.
But when you are trusting in money, you don’t care…you need to hold onto it as long as you can regardless of what that does to other people…and the same can be true of us… #3…
#3 – Trusting in money leads us to self-indulge instead of helping others (v. 5)
In verse 5, James says, “You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence.”
Pride and earthly wisdom will tell us that happiness and satisfaction are found in stuff…and so we use it to indulge ourselves and find temporary satisfaction… and it is temporary…that’s why we constantly have to keep indulging ourselves with more stuff, b/c the stuff we’ve already indulged in always succumbs to the law of diminishing returns (we experience less and less life out of our stuff over time)
And so walking in pride and by earthly wisdom will lead us to self-indulge, BUT walking by the Spirit and the wisdom from above will lead us to use the money God provides for us to be a blessing to others…to serve the poor and the needy and to be used in His Kingdom work in the church and all over the world.
Finally, in verse 6, we see that…
#4 – Trusting in money can lead to injustice in the lives of others (v. 6)
James says that these rich people condemned and murdered innocent people (v6). Now, James here, probably didn’t mean that they actually physically murdered people but most likely through depriving them of what was rightfully theirs, it led to their demise.
In one of the apocryphal books, it even says, “to take away a neighbor’s living is to murder him; to deprive an employee of his wages is to shed blood.”
The rich were cheating the poor out of their land and also robbing them of their wages or ability to make a living for themselves or their family.
And the same kind of thing can be true in our lives today…the more we walk in earthly wisdom and trust in money, the more it causes us to need more and more of it, even if it means at the expense of others.
And so James is showing us in this section about money that this is not the way of godly wisdom… if we are walking in humility and are trusting in Christ and His wisdom to lead our lives, He will provide for us…He will bring satisfaction (not money)…and He will lead us to use His money to bless others and to be a part of His Kingdom work in this world.
And so overall as we think about these 3 sections we looked at today, James has given us some things to look for that will give us indicators of how we are walking in pride and in the earthly wisdom he discussed in ch. 3…
We’ll know that we are walking by worldly, unspiritual wisdom that is influenced by Satan if…
#1 - we see that we are using our speech to slander other people…
#2 - if we see that we are trusting in our own plans for our life…if we are trusting in our own self-confidence and arrogant ability to determine our future…
#3 - and if we see that we are trusting in money to be our security or overindulging ourselves with stuff money can buy…
If we see these things, then we will know we are walking in earthly wisdom and in pride…in a self-sufficient manner…
But if through humility, we trust in the wisdom that we have in Christ, then we’ll see not slander coming out of our mouths but speech that builds up, speech that encourages others, and speech that shows we are loving our neighbor as ourselves.
We’ll see that we are praying for God’s plans for the future of our lives and for His guidance in all areas of our lives…at work, at home, in school, in our social circles, in our recreation…in everything…when we are walking by His wisdom, we are walking in dependence on Jesus and where He leads us in the future!
And finally, we’ll see the opposite of what we saw in these first 6 verses of ch. 5…that we are not overindulging ourselves with our money but that we are finding ways to use it to bless others and be a part of His Kingdom work in this world… this is how we’ll know when we are trusting in Jesus, who we are in Him, and the way He is leading us in our lives.
So…maybe today there is someone you need to apologize to for slandering them…maybe Jesus is wanting to get your attention about the way you are slandering others you don’t even know through social media…
OR, maybe today there is an area of your life you need to turn over to Jesus for your future instead of trusting in your own plans that you’ve been making and using to determine the direction of your life…
Or maybe today, you need to allow Jesus to use the money He’s blessed you with to be a blessing to others and to invest it in His Kingdom work in this world.
Let’s pray…