James Week 6

Sermon Transcript:

All right, appreciate y'all online as well or who come in later through the podcast. Oh, we're in the book of James. And we're right in the middle. And sorry, there's no there's no fire or water this week. So we're just gonna, we're gonna see a chart here later, so, but at the end of the day, we want to make sure the reason why we do illustrations or applications is because we want the Word of God to get in our hearts, is that right? So that when we walk out of here that we remember what God said to us, when we were in this room or listening online later in that we say, Okay, Lord, how am I going to put that into action in my life. That's why I as a pastor, and as communicator, strive hard to be true first for me. And then as I have these truths roll over my own heart, it's my pleasure, to shepherd and deliver to others. Well, one of the main themes of this book of James, as we've already talked about, his faith without works is dead. That's huge. It's that whole concept of that we think that we have faith. But if we don't show it by what we do, and who we are, and how we act and how we respond. what James says is that faith is useless. In fact, it doesn't really exist. The other main theme that I would say is in this book is this whole idea that true wisdom comes from God. True wisdom comes from God. If you remember, back in James, chapter one, verse five, he brings up this whole question, if any of us lacks wisdom, how do we get it? How do we gain wisdom says let him ask of God above and God will freely and generously give to all people. That's why we don't have to ask sometimes we get we don't know if we should pray about something shot pray about moving should have about him or her or doing this or doing that. Those are sort of wisdom calls. But the whole idea of should we pray for wisdom, that's a no brainer. Whatever you and I are faced with are confronted with in life, we for sure want wisdom from up above. So he begins chapter three, right here in the middle of last week, we talked about the whole tongue and just what the tongue does and how it can be a blessing or curse. This week, we're gonna get into just again, just selling biblical wisdom into our heart. First start teen says this, if you're wise and understand God's ways, prove it by living an honorable life. Doing good works with the humility that comes from wisdom. Now, we all want to be wise, right? There's no one in this room. I'm going to ask her handwriting exercise, but his own his room says, like, I'm good. I'd like to be foolish. I'd like to be stupid. I'd like to have a legacy of foolishness and stupidity. No, we would all say, Yes, I want to be wise, we understand that Solomon himself in the Old Testament, he asked neither for riches nor fame. What did he ask for from God himself, that he would be wise, it's kind of like asking the question of who wants an extra million dollars to do whatever you want with, it's a no brainer, I'll raise my hand Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, whatever the game is. That's what we're talking about. We know, this is what we desire, we desire to be wise. And so some of us wrongly think, Okay, I'm gonna muster that up, I'm gonna do it. I hear the challenge at church, or maybe at work or at school, or whatever. And I think wisdom is good. So if I'm going to pull myself up by my bootstraps, I'm going to grit my teeth. I'm going to clench my fists, and I'm going to move forward, I'm going to do those things that I know I'm supposed to do. Well, how does that go for us? I mean, you think about this past week. I know many of y'all were here in the service life last week, are you listening in online and you heard about the tongues of fire and so you may be walked out here and said, Lord, I need to control my mouth more. And you control how I speak. Lord, let me have gracious words and not words that put down and then what happened over the last seven days, many of us faltered, we fell, we can point back to the times in our heads and our hearts like I already did this. I said this to him. I said this to her. I did this to my children. I continue to say this at work. And so we need a different source. We need a different way to understand this. We you and I can't just muster it up. We also can't fool ourselves into thinking that we're okay. You're we're good. Okay, yeah, I got this. I'm, I'm a humble person. I'm good. I'm god, this was gotten all that. And what we have to realize is that we look at our own lives, and we ask other people to look at us really look at us. The truth is, the proofs gonna be in the pudding. First gonna be in the pudding. That's my first point. You remember that phrase? It says that whole idea of how do we know if the puddings any good or not? If you're a taste tester and a judge of pudding, how do you know if it's any good, they can look at it and say, Okay, well, the gel looks kind of consistent or inconsistent or whatever. But how do you know it's when you actually scoop your spoon in there and you taste it? You're not like, Okay, that's good pudding, or no, that's bad pudding or whatever. It's in the same way with our own lives. A lot of times we fool ourselves into thinking we're okay. When we don't have enough self awareness or we're not, you know, brave enough to ask someone else who's close to us. How am I really coming across? Who am I Are we don't sit with ourselves in the dark and in the stillness and ask ourselves what is it that you want to do in my life and in the life of those around me? We don't like that we don't like the spotlight on our own head and heart. Jesus, though this is how he confronted us and got us moving to where he wants us to be. I think about this with the Sermon on the Mount, if you remember when Jesus sat down to teach his followers, how they should go and the ways that they should walk in the famous sermon on the mount, it's in the book of Matthew, it starts out in chapter five. And where it starts out is what's often called the Beatitudes. Maybe you've heard these are these are somewhat familiar. Chapter Five of the book of Matthew, beginning of our three, God blesses those who are poor and realize their need for him. For the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs. God blesses those who mourn for they will be comforted. God blesses those who are humble talked about humility, for they will inherit the earth, the whole earth, God blesses those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be satisfied. God blesses those who are merciful, for they will be shown mercy. God blesses those who are pure at heart, for they will see God, God blesses those who work for peace, for they will be called the children of God, God blesses those who are persecuted for doing right, for the kingdom of heaven, is theirs. And you and I hear a list like that. And we think about a list like that. We're like, I can't do that. Like, that's not me. He goes on, he talks about praying for those who persecute you, we already have this idea of, if we are blessed for being persecuted, if we do what's right for the kingdom of heaven is ours. And we say, Pastor, I can't go there, I can't get there. I get that. Because what we're meant to see in a book like James and what Jesus wanted us to understand when he came in, he taught, he wanted us to understand that you and I are meant to come to the end of ourselves, and realize that we can't, but he can. And that God working in us to give us a new heart, and to show us a new path and to give us wisdom is what it's all about. When you and I come to the end of ourselves, we're a good candidate for grace. It's a great opportunity for God to build something new last week when I set that house on fire, and we saw the flames come up, and we saw that great house tumble, because of just the sparks, whether it was a sparks of anger, or insecurity or hate, or whatever it was, that we understand that the House will come down. But the truth of the matter is, is that God can build something new. And so we're going to see that continually in the Bible, and in this book called James. But there's an alternative here. And so we're gonna continue to go on in verse 14, it says this, but if you and I are bitterly jealous, and there are selfish ambition in our hearts, don't cover up the truth with boasting and lying for jealousy and selfishness are not God's kind of wisdom, it's the opposite. Such things are earthly, unspiritual and demonic. For wherever there's jealousy and selfish ambition, there you will find disorder, and evil of every kind. Again, these verses it brings up like we did last week, where you saw things that were satanic. And now we talking about demonic because we understand the contrast between being worldly and being godly. Again, what the Bible wants us to understand is that anyone can live a life where might makes right where we triumph over others, anybody can be nice to those who are nice to them to get ahead or to get something in life. But Christ is calling us to so much more, we can't get what we want. If we just want what the world wants, you understand that you and I have to come to grips with that. Just that basic understanding that you and I, we want wisdom, we want a life with God, you wouldn't be in this room, you wouldn't be listening in if you didn't care about what God thinks about your life, at some level. And the only way that that's going to occur is if we say, God, you've got to help me, you've got to shape me, I've got to turn from these things, I cannot continue to do the same thing that everyone else around me does what everyone around me once. Because what we're being taught and told over and over again, is more and more you and I need more individuality, we need more self expression, we need more selfishness, we need more thinking about ourselves, we need a bigger car, a bigger house, a bigger, whatever, bigger trailer. And we understand that that doesn't get us where we say we want to go, which is the path of God and wisdom. I'll show this in an illustration. It really just takes these verses and breaks them up. Because what ends up happening, we understand and we ended up seeing a lot of times the disorder and the chaos and evil of every kind. That's sort of the outworking of what ends up happening talked about that last week that oftentimes we'll be in a work environment, or our home environment, or we think about our own hearts, and we just see the mess we've made. But how did we get there? Well, first of all, if we start out with just being bitter, jealous, we have selfish ambition and you know that you know that when that's part of your heart or when you rub up against someone who this is their mode of operation. Because what do you begin to see? You begin to see things that are unspiritual earthly, right, just this whole idea that you If you think about that we want to accomplish thing that God wants us to accomplish. We can't do this by earthly means we're gonna need something else. We see this idea of lying. This is one of those things that culturally, it's acceptable. And so we all just go along with it. Think about this with the paper this week, where you have a government official, it's like, yeah, yeah, I was just sharing my gas card with whoever and you're charging up. Oh, my bad. Yeah, sure, I'll pay it back. What was going on there, dishonesty lie, but it's just part of everybody, everybody does it, we all cover up what we don't do right at work, we all sort of, you know, do this at a job site, and just let's just cover it up. Let's just say we did this and really do this, we all sort of steal back time at work or whatever. And we understand that when we go that way, what ends up happening, and that keeps pushing out. We talk about demonic that, you know, we think about something that we prayed about with the shooting in our state, and we have our own history with stuff that's going on locally. But we just understand that even though there are things to be done, that we have control and power over, which is for sure legislation and talking about gun laws and voting certain ways, and, you know, creating a ruckus with certain people that are over us. And we're definitely a government of the people, by the people and for the people for that reason, so that we can have laws that make sense for our land. But at the end of the day, church, let's be the people that understand that when someone goes in to kill people who are vulnerable, who are helpless, demonic stuff is at work in that individuals life long before the shooting occurred. We're the people who understand that what everybody else sees is the chaos and the disorder and the evil of every kind. But it works out from demonic we understand that boasting How many times have you and I been around somebody at work, or at school who's arrogant, they can just see it, you just smell it's almost like dripping off, maybe you yourself, you're that way. And you were that's a part of your story. Where were you found yourself thinking you are something that you were not are thinking more highly of yourself than you aren't what ends up happening. Second point I wants to see is that disorder, and evil of every kind, are the ditches we often find ourselves in, we often see these sort of outward things and and we as the people of God, we are not be fooled, that we know. And we see massive destruction in our own lives, in the life of an organization, in the life of even a city, something went wrong at the core. There was jealousy, and there was selfish ambition, it led to all those other things that we pointed out. And then we just have the carnage. I think about this, when you go back to the book of Genesis, one of the reasons why it talks so much about judgment and whether it was the judgment that happened with the flood, or you send them see fire from heaven coming down on people, what is going on there is you just see that evil of every kind, sort of it just it just seeps out into everything, and to all kinds of people. And that when we find ourselves in these ditches, this disorder, an evil and every kind of evil are the ditches we find ourselves in this is a good time for us to look up is a good time for us to look I'm a mess. I'm in a mess, God, what are you gonna do save me from this give me wisdom and how to interact with these toxic people at work, and maybe at school? And how much does the function and how much was to be a partner with them? Or how much was we on the same team with them? disorder and every kind of evil or the distance we find ourselves in? We as believers, we can trace that back and say, We know some root things that caused this massive chaos. But we don't want to just talk about the negative. In the Bible, you'll often see warnings or you'll see, hey, this is the bad news. This is the bad stuff. But keep reading always in your Bible and in the Scriptures. And you'll see that God always has a solution. He goes on in these verses in Book of James, he says this, but the wisdom from above, which is what we said we all want, is first of all pure, it's also peace loving, gentle at times at all times, and willing to yield to others. It is full of mercy and the fruit of 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. Again, I've got another illustration to sort of break apart these verses to see how this all plays out oftentimes in our life, that if at our core. Now again, it's not perfect. We're not perfectly people have mercy. But just going back to the Beatitudes, where we see that if we're merciful, that we're the ones who will receive mercy. So in our heart and our core, you can see this from these verses, and from Jesus's words, that mercy we have good deeds that were the people that get about our things. We ask God what you wanna do with our hands when you want to do with our feet, and we do those things for the Lord. What ends up happening we end up getting people who are sincere sincerity. How short of supply we are in that with these days. Think about this that a lot of times as we came out of COVID personal interaction We find ourselves as we are in the marketplace, literally, as we go around town, that people are sometimes like zombies. We're all just sort of, you know, punching the clock and we're kind of back at it. But in our hearts, they're far from this. They're distracted by whatever our phones, our problems are just our depression, all these kinds of things, real mental health issues. I'm not minimizing any of that. But what's it up to us to be the people who are sincere? How are you? The Lord may want to use you this week as the Lord pray about it. Ask for wisdom up above that when someone shares something at work with you about how they're feeling and how they're thinking that you're asking the Lord, how can I be sincere in this moment? How can I love them? How can I pray for them? How can I enter in to their problem with them, just like Jesus sits with us? Gentle, it's very much like that. Just the gentleness, the gentleness that is supposed to just come from believers, because God has been gentle and merciful with us. It's not weakness, right? It's not that mid doesn't mean that we never take up sword or, or whatever. But it's just that whole idea that we are the people because God has been gentle with us, we're able to be gentle and kind with others pure. Again, we look at that. And we then I'm not very pure. I know what I've done. And where I've been, God makes our hearts period gives us a new heart. So no matter what ditch we found ourselves in yesterday, last week, last year, he comes in, he sets our feet upon a rock. And I know there's so much a testimony in this room that we use over and over again about I was there but now God has brought me here. And he didn't give us a pure heart. pure motives to where we show no favoritism, favoritism. Boy, one of those things, that hurts at work, doesn't it when you know that so and so's getting ahead because he or she, you know, connects with the boss or the supervisor over drinks after work or connects with them on the golf course or they have similarities and those kinds of things. But believers when it's up to us, we're in positions of authority. We're just show no favoritism. It causes such havoc doesn't that think about this in terms of your home life? How many of y'all who are siblings understand just the the records that it causes when mom and dad showed favorites? Were they had a favorite? He say, some of you are thinking No, no, in my household. There were several siblings. None of us were favorites, mom and dad. That's because you're the favorite. Okay.

And so you don't feel but but those who weren't, they felt that right, that we understood that man, there were favorites here and it calls all kinds of conflict and trouble going back all the way to Genesis, isn't it that Joseph himself ran into all kinds of trouble, because why? Because Daddy played favorites. Christians are also peaceable people, were the people that bring the peace. Again, we're the ones that we have levelheadedness were the ones who in the meeting can bring down the temperature of the room. In our homes, we bring down the temperature of what temper tantrums, craziness, the chaos is going on. Maybe in our neighborhood or whatever. We're, we're bringing it down with how we interact and live. Why because we're willing to yield. This is hard. Okay. I mean, literally willingness to yield, you understand this from from like a driving perspective, I don't know where you're at, you can tell a lot about someone's personality, but how they drive. So come on in merge, don't get ahead of me. No, but you understand that willingness to yield is that we don't we give up our right to always be right. You're saying what I mean? So as we again, have you all in the room, you'd like to be right, you want to be right, you want to have the last word, you want to fight to the very end. And so what God is saying is that because we're his we give up the right to be right all the time, and that we're willing to yield even when we know we're in the right room to say, You know what, I'm gonna give that to them. Why? Because I serve a higher power, I serve a God that has got my back, even if no one else does. And what this leads to this is so cool church, what this leads to is filings and these big arrows here is peace and righteousness. I'm not making this up. It was right there in the Scripture. And we know this experientially, don't we think about this verse in verse 18. And those who are peacemakers, which are those of us who are believers, will plant seeds of peace and reap a harvest of righteousness. We know this, we talked about this over and over again and book of James, as we sort of many of us want to shift our family tree and family heritage, to be a Christian one, and to really seek God in His Kingdom and have all these things be added on to us because we sought his kingdom first. And what it says here is that in order for that to happen, we have to be peacemakers who plant seeds of peace. And ultimately what will come is this harvest of righteousness just leaves my last and final point, let's plant seeds of peace. Wherever we go, let's plant seeds of peace wherever we go. I've told you before, it's no accident that when we designed this cover for the for our series on James, that we put our city behind us, and I understand that while we're in El Paso, so as you're here for three months, 11 months, or just a couple of years or whatever, but God has you and I here for a purpose. And I would say that one of the main purposes, you'll hear me say all the time, seek the good of the city, but also say is to seek the peace of the city, or the Old Testament where you say, shalom, you've never heard that before. It's just a word for peace and how they would greet each other in the Jewish understanding. But it's just this whole idea that let's plant seeds of peace wherever we go, however long we're here, we have to believe that God is sovereign, that it's no accident that you and I are in our homes, whether we're single, and we're just really responsible for ourselves and our own household at this moment, even though we affect other things in our neighborhood, or where we live and at our workplace or school, or whether we find ourselves in a position where we have a household that we're responsible for, or how we butt up against different people in the city, and that we say, how is it that my being here, my presence, being here in El Paso, the borderland for how long I'm here, how can it be a place where I can just plant seeds of peace, that I'm a peacemaker that my feet where they walk my mouth, when it talks, my hands when they put to work, that it brings about the good of the city, or what we would call seeking the shalom, the peace of the city, because folks, if we really believe God is sovereign, then what that means is that He's sovereign over our lives. And it's no accident that you and I are here right now, in this moment, right here in May of 2023. I think about this in terms of yesterday, watching the Sovereign King be king, I mean, you understand this, that this only happens, you know, once every 50 years or so it's been 70 some odd years since we last had a coronation of a king in a country that we're so closely sort of aligned with or that we recognize on a world stage how important they are. And again, that's just symbolic, right? He is the symbolic sovereign, over the Church of England and over the country of England. But we serve a king who is ultimately sovereign, and it's no accident that you and I are here, and how he's working in your home, and in my home, and in my life and in your life. And so what are we going to do? Let's plant seeds of peace. Let's sync the shalom, of the city. Let's pray. Father, we thank You for Your Word. We thank you how you care for us. I pray for people in this room, who are struggling with all kinds of things, financial issues, relational issues. Just I don't know how to get out of bed issues, mental anguish, physical issues. I just pray Lord for wisdom in all the different given situations across this room and those who are listening later online. Father, help us to be men and women who walk in your steps, who walk in your path, not by our own strength, but because of your grace, and your love that you so freely bestow upon us and your wisdom. Oh, Lord, how we need it in these days, in in all days of our life. Is this in Christ's name? Amen.