Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen
The text for our meditation is written in the of the Book of James: Chapter 3:13 to 4:10:
13 Who is wise and understanding among you? Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom. 14 But if you have bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not be boastful and false to the truth. 15 Such wisdom does not come down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, devilish. 16 For where there is envy and selfish ambition, there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind. 17 But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. 18 And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace
4 Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you? 2 You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder. And you covetsomething and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts. You do not have, because you do not ask. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures. 4 Adulterers! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. 5 Or do you suppose that it is for nothing that the scripture says, “God yearns jealously for the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”? 6 But he gives all the more grace; therefore it says,
“God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”
7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Lament and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy into dejection. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.
When I was 18, life was not a problem, you see I knew everything! My dad didn’t seem to think so though. He kept telling me that you are never too old to learn. Through the journey of my life, humiliation, experience and the words of truly loving wise mentors and teachers have instilled in me a real appreciation of the guidance my dad was trying to implant in me. It seems we all need to figuratively “touch the hot stove” a few times before we appreciate the wisdom that our elders attempt to pass along to us.
A quotation I heard years ago remind me that it takes some rough lessons in life before we start to understand the world around us well enough to function effectively: “Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you wanted.” (*Prof Randy Pausch – ‘The Last Lecture’). I repeat that one frequently to myself and sometimes to those who are struggling. It’s a good reminder that our plans and goals in life will often fail, yet even so, we may take away valuable practical lessons from having striven for them.
More importantly, though, this quotation also can remind us that what we want and what we need are often two very different things, and only our loving heavenly Father truly has the wisdom to discern between them. (Matthew 6:) “For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life, as to what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, as to what you will put on ….. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well”
Realising this, we not only develop greater wisdom and understanding, but a greater humility toward God as well.
In fact, true wisdom, understanding, and humility don’t come from mankind’s enlightened human words, but from grasping the truth the Lord has supplied us from His own wisdom, from the message of His inerrant Word.
Looking at that Word today, we are immediately confronted by a question asked by St. James at the start of our epistle lesson: “Who is wise and understanding among you?” It’s a challenging question, a godly question. It’s the sort of question the Lord frequently asks of us throughout Scripture; sometimes quite plainly, and other times simply by confronting us with our limitations and our ignorance. It’s a question that provokes a variety of responses.
To those who are dedicated to chasing after the things of this world, their minds and energy focused on the next thing that they want to obtain or achieve or buy, that question is often set aside. They think they know what they want and how to get it. Where they currently lack the resources to obtain those goals, they seek to address those shortcomings with great gusto, seeking the wisdom, understanding, and skills necessary to get where they want to be. If they answer that question, “Who is wise and understanding among you?”, their response might be, “I’m still working on it. If I think carefully and speak smoothly, I can capitalise on opportunity” In essence, they’re saying: “my wisdom lies in my ability to ‘work the system’ and exploit the vulnerability of others.”
In such a case, wisdom and understanding have selfish purposes: To place the individual in a better position to satisfy his or her ambitions. To obtain a bigger and better slice of life’s finite pie at the expense of others. Of course, such people strongly deny that this is their purpose. They claim we live in a dog-eat-dog world and if we don’t look out for ourselves, who will? We’re only trying to get ahead.
Yet!! The Holy Spirit warns us about this as he inspires James to write, “if you harbour bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth.” The seeking of knowledge for the purpose of getting ourselves ahead isn’t something to be proud of. Nor is pretending that this isn’t our motive, our real objective. In doing so we consciously sin in thought, word and deed.
Has there ever been a more fitting and accurate description of our contemporary world, than James 3:16?: “where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice.”
Indeed, this passage extends to us as individuals! How often, intentional, or otherwise, we use our wisdom to serve ourselves, our understanding to seek the satisfaction of our own needs.
You see, this is the very root of human decline: It is our own wisdom we’re depending upon. It’s our own understanding that we’re attempting to apply. Even when we achieve our wants and desires, and pride ourselves as wise; we are foolishly building earthly treasures, but are heavenly bankrupt. As written (Matt 6: 19 - 21) “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, …... But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, ….. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also”.
God’s message through the prophet Isaiah is that He will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and frustrate the intelligence of the intelligent. Human knowledge that puffs us up, and human wisdom that drives us forward with arrogance and ambition, is—as James writes— “earthly, unspiritual, of the devil.” What a fearsome caution; such behaviour threatens our faith, and ultimately our immortal souls.
We are called in Matthew 6 to first seek Christ and His kingdom, and all other things needful will be given to us. That’s quite a challenge for us, because even though the Holy Spirit brings us to faith in Christ at the Baptismal Font, our sinful human nature actively resists Christ in our daily lives. We have no human ability to resist our sin, love God, and be saved. Even though He has reached out to us and through the Holy Spirit has purified us of our sins and drawn us to faith in Christ through Word and Sacrament, we remain in the dual state of ‘sinner and saint’. In the words of St Paul (Rom 7) “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it”.
We continue to constantly struggle with the envies and ambitions to which we are led by our human wisdom and understanding. These things will not let us go, for Satan refuses to accept the new reality of our lives in Christ, whose peace not only surpasses all our human understanding, but the understanding of even the angels, fallen or otherwise.
The opening verses of James, chapter four, is scathing as he lists point after point of all our failings: Fights and quarrels. Desires that battle within us. Our selfishness, and all the horrible things we do in our feeble and impossible desires to satisfy it. Our frequent neglect of asking God to address our needs, and our unfaithful intentions and improper motives when we finally do get around to asking.
Then James lays it on the line: You can be a friend of the world, or a friend of God. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t accept things the world accepts when those things differ from what God deems acceptable. You can’t try to force a compromise between human wisdom and understanding and God’s given wisdom, foolish as it might appear sometimes. To do so is to become God’s enemy, for you have chosen to be a friend to the world.
Friends in Christ, If that is all there is to it, if we are indeed lost and completely void of any chance of eternal salvation, we may as well pack our things and go home and shut the door of the church for good…… Well, to quote the much-heard line of those annoying Tele Advertisers say “But wait!! There’s more!!”
As a practicing Christian my first and foremost belief lies in the words of the Apostles Creed. When we confess the Apostles Creed we are stating
1. Our true belief that God the Father created us and all things; he gives us all things and daily provides us with all we need to support our body and life.
2. Our true belief that Jesus, at one with the Father, was born of the Virgin Mary and is our Lord who redeemed us, a lost and condemned people, and won us from all sins, from death and the power of the devil by His innocent suffering and death on the cross, that we may live with Him in His Kingdom into eternity.
3. Our true belief that we cannot by our own strength or reason believe in Jesus Christ our Lord and that only through the power of the Holy Spirit gifted to us at our Baptism, we have been called by the Gospel, enlightened and sanctified along with the whole Christian Church on earth. In this Christian Church he daily and richly forgives all our sins and the sins of all believers.
With this in mind, I again put the question of St James, “Who is wise and understanding among you?” and I also put to you the quote from 1 John 1: 8 “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us”.
The primary purpose of the Book of James is to help us to recognise our dilemma as sinful humans and to lead us to the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ. If you were out on the ocean in a boat and you had the radio in your hand and you were calling the Coast Guard with a ‘mayday’ call. The Coast Guard operator would ask you the nature of your problem and you in a now panicky voice shout “I’m up to my waist in water and sinking fast”; then you would clearly know the nature of your problem and the Coast Guard would know how to respond.
This is the purpose of God’s law. Without the “law” of God, the first and foremost being the Ten Commandments; without such writings such as the Book of James, we are not able to clearly identify the extent of our human sin, and therefore do not call on God to forgive us, to save us, to guide us. So many times people tell me that they are ashamed to come before God and confess their sins. As written in (Hebrews 4:15) “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathise with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are–yet he did not sin.”
There is no dilemma here for the Christian; we know that through the actions of our first parents on earth, we are born sinful and unclean and are daily tempted in every way; and when we fail, we turn to our loving Saviour in the same manner as the great King David did when he committed a grave sin in the sight of God as written in Psalm 51: All his pride diminished and he fell before His God freely confessing his sins and admitting his weaknesses and his inability to be acceptable in God’s sight without His loving guidance.
“Who is wise and understanding among you?” Those of us like King David who recognise our sins and our inability to make ourselves acceptable in God’s sight through our own worldly efforts. Those of us who lay our burdens at the foot of the Cross of Christ.
The Book of James paints an accurate picture of our sinful human nature, not to destroy us, but to lead us to the Baptismal font of new life where we receive the Holy Spirit; to genuine repentance; to heartfelt prayer; to the inerrant Word of God and to the Body and Blood of Christ our Saviour. In all these we will find true wisdom, true guidance, true joy and true salvation! We will continue to fail, but take heart in the words of St Paul as written in (Romans 5: 20 – 21) “The law was brought in so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more,21 so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen
The love and peace of our Great Triune God that is beyond all our human understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord, now and forever. Amen.
Thanks, Merv, great Gospel message and reminder to remain humble. 🙏
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