You Can Serve Two Masters

You guys, you all got out of bed this morning because you wanted something. It's true. Maybe, like me, you wanted to go on a walk before it got unbearably hot outside and you have a creature that lives in your home that needs exercise. Maybe that was you this morning. Maybe you just wanted to have some time alone before the chaos monsters called your children emerged from their lairs. Maybe, maybe you are more like my wife and you just needed a nice cup of caffeine to start your day. I've learned in the Levitt household, Emily's alarm is always the one that goes off, but she does not wake up to her alarm. I wake up to her alarm. And so gently, I will kick her to turn off her alarm. And then I wake up, I'm the first one out of bed and she's still not out of bed. I get to the kitchen. And I perform my daily magic trick, which is making the coffee. And I press the coffee bean grinder in and it's like I'm pulling a rabbit out of a hat. Suddenly, poof, Emily appears around the corner. It's amazing. Magic every morning in the Levitt house. But the point, the point is this. Every one of us is in this room today because of one thing. Desire. We all wanted something or a series of somethings. And those desires led us to make the radical choice to get out of bed and into the world. Desire to one degree or another motivates everything we do. Which means desire is often a beautiful and good thing. Desire is what makes it possible for us to be passionate about our work. It's what makes us caring parents or neighbors or friends. It's what compels us to make good food or make good art or enjoy good company. if at any point desire becomes something that we are unable to control, if at any point desire takes the steering wheel of our lives, if our personal pleasure or satisfaction becomes the ruler of our lives, we get into trouble. Because as good as desire can be, it's also one of those things that's never, ever satisfied. As the great poet in the book of Ecclesiastes in our Bibles put it, the eye is not satisfied with seeing or the ear filled with hearing. Fast forward to 1740, David Hume, the great philosopher, put it this way. Desire alone of acquiring goods and possessions for ourselves and our nearest friends is insatiable, perpetual, universal. And maybe most importantly to those of us in this room who love rock music, in 1965, one of our great modern poets said, I can't get no satisfaction.

Mick Jagger, baby. What every one of those great minds and artists are getting at is a fundamental component of our human nature, that our desire is infinite. And because we are finite, because we are limited people with one body and one mind and one heart and one job and one life, we constantly feel a deep sense of longing. We have infinite desire. But we're trying to satisfy it with finite things. And that often means that the human condition is one of perpetual turmoil. And there's maybe no better cultural moment to prove that than our own right now. See, America, especially over the last few decades, has been built on a simple notion. Personal pleasure, the pursuit of your desires is the primary aim of life. We've all been saturated, grown up in that culture and trained to pursue our desires full bore. Get what you want, when you want, how you want it, and it will lead you to satisfaction. Much of it is derived from a guy named Sigmund Freud. He's a neurologist in the early 20th century. Freud had research that concluded that most humans make decisions not based upon rational thinking, but based upon desires that are often unconscious, below the surface, things we don't even realize are driving us until we really reflect on them. We all have automatic impulses longing for pleasure in our brains, and we tend not to act rationally, but irrationally based on desire. Which means we are more prone to manipulation from the outside and self-deception from the inside than we'd ever really like to admit. And that actually isn't a new concept, by the way. Freud brought that up here for us, and it's been used in America, but the writers of the New Testament talked about this a long time ago. They had something similar, they called it the flesh. There's something in us that is compelled to pursue us over everything else. But when people in the U.S. realized that they could make money off of that desire, they capitalized. Fun fact. Edward Bernays, he was Sigmund Freud's nephew. He's now called the father of modern advertising, because he came up with a way to monetize our flesh, our desires. He rallied political and economic powers. After the two world wars, when the economy was kind of down a bit, he rallied political and economic powers to say, hey, what if we just capitalized on people's psychology? What if we used propaganda? And that's the word he used. What if we used propaganda to convince people that they need more? If you want to make money, that's all you have to do. Just convince people that they constantly need more in their life. And he wasn't shy about this. He literally wrote a book called Propaganda. This is what he said American culture is like. He said, in almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our societal conduct or ethical thinking, we are dominated by a relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. This isn't a conspiracy. This is just what is true about the U.S. It is they who pull the wires, which control the public mind. And the world that Bernays described is the world we live in right now. Friends, at this moment, teams of psychologists you will never meet have access to your email, if you have a Gmail account, and your photos if you have an Instagram account, and all the things you share on Twitter or Facebook or Pinterest. Facebook is an old social media site for those that don't know. Your web searches, your phone conversations, they're listening. And they have algorithms that are hard at work determining what you want before you know you want it. And every day, they're feeding you thousands of advertisements telling you that you just need to pursue your desires, pursue your pleasure, and you will find satisfaction. Just a couple weeks ago, I was talking with a buddy, and I noticed he was wearing some really nice shorts. Recognize short games. It's really important. Good shorts in Phoenix, Arizona matter. I recognized his shorts. They're amazing. And I complimented him. Guys, literally an hour later in my web browser, there was an ad in the margin for the shorts that I complimented. Our culture is listening. They're trying to capitalize on our desires. There's another marketer. He's a great marketer in the 1950s who wrote about this. This is a real quote. I couldn't believe when I read this. This is Victor Lebo. He said, our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction in consumption. The greater the pressures on the individual to conform to safe and accepted social standards, the more they tend to express their aspiration and individuality in terms of what they wear, what they wear or eat, his home, his car, his food, his hobbies. We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever-increasing pace. We need to have people eat, drink, ride, live with ever more complicated and therefore constantly more expensive consumption. Welcome to church, friends. That's the world that we live in. And the truth is that most of us in this room, I think, are pretty smart people. Most of us think, yeah, I know that's happening. Like, I see the ads. I know what's going on. But I mean, I'm wise. I don't give in to that sort of thing. data would say the opposite. The average American home in the last 50 years has tripled in size. The average American family has not tripled in size, just for the record. We consume twice as many material goods now as we did 50 years ago. In America, we have 4% of the world's children and 40% of the world's toys. And according to a recent study, half of Americans report believing that they would be happier if they could spend more money. And those are just the people willing to admit it. And it's not just America out there, friends. It's in us. Take some time. Do an audit of your heart. Ask yourself, do you ever have a thought that you really just need a little better house or a little better salary, and then you'll have peace? Do you ever think that you really just need a little better city to live in, maybe a good group of friends, and then you'll have peace? Do you ever think that you just need that new relationship, that new life stage, and then you'll have peace? We all do this. Our spiritual lives even get corrupted by this sometimes. A few hundred years ago, there was a guy named John. We call him John of the Cross now, which is an epic name. But John of the Cross, he wrote this piece where he talked about spiritual gluttony. He said that sometimes we can bring this sort of thing into our spiritual lives. And we think that just one more spiritual book or one more prayer practice or one more church service or one more emotional spiritual high will bring us final peace. We're people who are constantly pursuing our own personal pleasure.

Because deep down, most of us have put our desires, our cravings, in the driver's seat. Most of us have made pleasure our ruler. And the problem with that is it's not working, friends. It's a con. In the culture where we've embraced that notion the most, restlessness is our default mode. In conversation after conversation I have with everyone in this room, restlessness is a default mode for us. Anxiety is our nation's neurosis. Fear. And worry over not having enough or holding on to what we have. That's the fuel for most of our decisions. We can't get no satisfaction.

We're continuing a teaching series here at Midtown called The Great Con. We're going through the book of James together. And each week we're looking at a different con, a different lie that our culture hands us. We tend to believe and buy into. And how James, in his letter, responds and says, guys, no, you're missing it. That's not wisdom. That's not truth. That's not what it means to be human. And as it turns out, being ruled by our desire for pleasure or comforts, that's not just an American problem. It's a human problem. James dealt with this very thing in his early church community. And he had strong words for them. He had strong words in the passage we're going to read. They're words that expose the problem, but they're also words that we'll talk about this morning, point us to the solution. How we can be ruled by the right things in our lives. So friends, if you have a Bible, open it with me to the book of James. This is near the backs of your Bibles, if you're flipping there. James chapter 4, starting in verse 1. That's where we're going to be. I will read through verse 10. If you don't have a Bible, that's OK. The words are going to be behind me on the screen, so you can follow along there. James chapter 4, starting in verse 1.

Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you? You want something and you don't have it, so you commit murder. You covet something and cannot obtain it, so you engage in disputes and conflicts. You do not have because you do not ask. And you ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly in order to spend what you get on your pleasures.

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. Or do you suppose that it's for nothing that the scripture says God yearns jealously for the spirit that he has made to dwell in us? But he gives all the more grace. Therefore, it says. God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Submit yourselves, therefore, to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners. Purify your hearts, you double-minded. Lament and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned into mourning, your joy into dejection. Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Friends, back in the day, people used to fight with each other. Just back in the day. It's super primitive. I know we're evolved, peaceful people now. Back in the day, people used to fight. And James talks about that here in verse 1. Some context leading up to this passage. Most scholars think the letter of James is a written version of a sermon or speech given by a guy named James who was the brother of Jesus. And all throughout this letter, James is writing to the early church in Jerusalem, helping them to recognize a crucial difference in their spiritual lives, a difference between profession of faith and possession of faith. That is, the difference between saying you believe something and actually having that thing work itself out in your life. His whole point throughout this whole letter is that Christianity is not just about adopting a set of beliefs or ideas that you ascribe to in your head. Instead, for James and the rest of the scriptures, Christianity is about taking the good news of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection and laying it on your soul in such a way that it changes everything. It changes everything about you. Which means James is threading an important needle here. On the one hand, he's not saying what many people in our culture like to say, which is that what you believe doesn't really matter as long as you're a good person. We love that notion in our culture. What you believe doesn't really matter. James knows that what we believe really does matter. What we believe about human nature, what we believe about God and other people, what we believe about money and wealth, those things matter. But they aren't the only thing that matters. See, James is saying it's not enough for us to just say a prayer or ascribe to certain beliefs if they don't actually change our heart, if they don't actually shape the way that we show up in the world. In fact, in James' eyes, if we have that kind of faith, if we have a faith that just says we believe certain things and doesn't actually back it up with behavior, that sort of faith is dead, useless, worthless. If your beliefs aren't changing your life, it's very possible you don't actually believe what you say you do. That's what James and Jesus in the scriptures tell us over and over again. And so a life of following Jesus, it's an integrated life. It's one where our head and our heart and our hands are all aligned by Christ's way, by Christ's work. And that means we will become fundamentally different people. It means that our pleasure and our desire will no longer be in the driver's seat for us. Our cravings, our longings, they no longer dictate how we show up in the world. Instead, we are to be shaped by the practices and priorities of the kingdom of God. So loving God and loving your neighbor, loving your enemies, practicing confession and forgiveness, like Luke just walked us through. Refusing to use others as a means to our end. Seeking the flourishing of others, even when it comes at our own expense. That's the new paradigm that James has been outlining throughout this whole book. And now he gets to chapter 4, and he really starts to cook. Yeah, that one's just for Daniel. I got to snort out of Daniel on that one. In many ways, this passage, it's a crescendo to what he's already been saying for the last chapter. He points out a specific example here in chapter 4, verse 1, to illustrate where the profession of faith, might not be matching the possession of faith in the church. It's the example of conflict. Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from, he asks. Because back in the day, people used to fight.

Friends, the truth is that James' words speak just as convictingly to us today. We are quarrelsome people. There is no part of human life that is untouched by conflict. Where does it show up for you? Conflict with your parents? With a sibling or siblings? Your roommate? Your neighbor? Your political enemy? That person at the back of the plane who stands and walks down when the plane lands so they can get out first, maybe? Your coworker? Maybe your spouse? During premarital sessions with couples, Emily and I will always walk through healthy communication and conflict resolution strategies for people. And one thing we always mention is that the journey they're embarking on in marriage, is certainly a journey of saying, this is the person I commit to loving for the rest of my life. But it's also the journey of committing to be willing to fight with that person for the rest of your life. Is this person someone you're willing to sit in hard disagreements with? Is this person someone you're willing to have conflict with? Because conflict is part of our human condition. And notice James' focus here. It's not just general conflict. He says the conflict is among you. Remember he's writing to Christians. He's talking specifically to people who say they have conflict with you. They follow the Prince of Peace, who are committed to love and forgiveness and reconciliation. And he says, you, church, you're on the hook for this too. Which I'm sure comes as a complete shocker. The church sometimes gets it wrong. Sometimes we mess it up. Super weird, right? Inviting, rumor spreading, obsession with power, belittlement of others, doctrinal divisions. We're just as fractured and just as fracturing as anyone else. And the truth is that it's often because the church fails to live differently than the world. That the world chooses to reject the church. When we fail to embody Christ's humility and love and compassion and embrace our own pride or self-justifying or self-elevation, all the world sees in the church is a mirror to themselves with some nice gold religious plating around the edges. Oftentimes the church is the biggest obstacle to the world seeing Jesus. And that's what James is seeing in his own time. And it grieved him deeply. But notice he doesn't just call out the problem. He also encourages them to dig deeper. He asks, where do these conflicts come from? He's trying to get underneath the conflict to try to get to the source. Because conflict is a symptom. James wants to know the sickness. Because only when you know the sickness can you really find the cure. I think it's worth noting and emulating James's posture here. James's question is always a good question to ask in our own lives when conflict comes up. When you're angry. When you're fighting. When your chest tightens and your breath shortens. It's often good to ask, where is this coming from in Where is this rooted? See, the truth is that conflict is just the outward expression of some deeper spiritual and emotional pain. It's the bubbling up of some other buried thing, which means conflict is often an opportunity. If we listen well to our conflicts, if we use our conflicts as reminders to probe into deeper reflection. What we find is that we can actually start to work through them well, work through them with maturity. But that means we have to reorient ourselves in the way James encourages us to here. See, in conflict, what most of us end up doing is saying, this is their problem. They messed up. They're the reason. And I'm angry towards that person. The problem is always out there. And James says, no, no, no. Turn that finger here. How are you contributing? What's going on in you? What's the reason that this is bubbling up in you? He forces us to ask, well, what if we were willing to start here? What if we were willing to start with us? And in doing that, just asking that question, James quickly comes upon the sickness that leads to conflict. He says this, do they not come from conflicts? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you? That's a rhetorical question. He knows. His audience knows. That's where these conflicts that are arising in them are coming from. James is saying that our sickness is that each of us is a walking civil war. We are all a war of desires. Craving. There's a battle constantly happening within us over what single thing will be the driving force of our lives. And we shouldn't gloss over the image of war there. He's using a really strong metaphor for a reason. You guys, war only has one purpose, and it's to win. And the desire that we let win out in the war going on in our hearts is no small thing. It will come to control us. It will come to take us over. That's how war works. See, each time that you choose to pursue a desire, you are slowly becoming a certain type of person. Slowly becoming different than you were before. And you are either becoming someone who is more in harmony with God, with others, and with the world, and with yourself, someone who has real joy and peace and wisdom in everything you do, or you're becoming someone else, someone whose life is smaller, who sees others as a means to your end. Who Who sees others as a means to your end.

You're being a person who is moving in one direction or another, based on the desire that we are letting win out in us. And he doesn't mince words on the sort of person we become when we let our self-focused desire for pleasure win out. There are three things he points out here in just a couple of verses that are the consequence of us letting our self-focused pursuit of pleasure win out. The first thing is that we set ourselves against others. Friends, a desire for pleasure is a desire to win. for even a good thing becomes a bad thing when it's turned into an ultimate thing. And desire for even a good thing becomes a bad thing when it's turned into an ultimate thing. When my heart, which is made to be satisfied only in the divine, infinite joy of God, when it's ruled by a different sort of craving for something less than God, it will alter everything about me and the way I show up in the world. And most notably, it will alter the way that I see you.

When all of us live that way, life inevitably becomes a competitive arena, and humans suddenly become less than human. We're no longer beings to love, we are now objects or obstacles. Objects to use for our ends, or obstacles in the way of what we want. That's what we do with one another. It puts us at odds with one another. I was just reading about a great example of this involving beauty queens. Yeah, I was reading an article about beauty queens. The Bachelorette fans in the room will really dig this story. Back in the 1980s, two gals grew up together in rural Iowa. And they went to the same school, they were part of the same community events, and ultimately they started competing against one another in beauty competitions, beauty pageants. And during those years, they became kind of rivals. Each of them was vying for their own spot in the spotlight in this rural Iowa town. But then later on in high school, they actually kind of both won out. One of them became Miss Homecoming Queen, which was a big deal in this small town, and the other one became Miss Harvest Queen. It's Iowa, right? That's the Harvest Queen, right? Homecoming Queen, Harvest Queen. And they kind of settled the rivalry down a little bit. They're like, well, we're both kind of winners, and everyone recognizes us, and we have our own little part of the spotlight we can run in. But then, Miss Homecoming Queen took a liking for a young stud muffin named Jim. Jim. Yeah. Just one problem. Miss Harvest Queen had her eyes on Jim, too. And they went back and forth, trying to earn Jim's affection, when one day they gave Jim an ultimatum. You have to choose one of us. Always a great relational practice. Definitely recommend this move here. Not at all. Ugly. And eventually Jim said, okay, Miss Homecoming Queen, you're the one I choose. And the whole town got hyped for them. They got engaged. They were about to celebrate this wedding. Everyone except Miss Harvest Queen. She stewed with anger. She had made her desire, her pleasure, her ruler, and she couldn't handle not getting what she wanted. She especially couldn't handle that someone else who was her rival got what she wanted. So one night, late into the evening, under the wide-open Iowa skies, she visited Miss Homecoming Queen with a belt and strangled her to death.

1980s, friends. Wild time in American history. But even if, friends, we aren't Miss Harvest Queen or Miss Homecoming Queen, this sort of putting desire, putting our pleasure as the primary ruler in our life, it does things to us. It sets us at a odds with one another. And the second thing we see that it does to us is that it escalates harm. James traces this pattern in verse 2. Things, oftentimes, when we make desire our ruler, they start small. We have a little craving for an experience or a person or a thing, but then that desire starts to dominate our thoughts a little bit more. It starts to pop up in our work or our school or at night when we go to bed or even in our dreams. And bit by bit, it starts to rule us. And then our imagination gets involved. We start to wonder, well, how we might feel if we get that thing. What it will really be like when we get it. How we really do deserve it after all. And then we start to look around our lives at the people who have what we want and we start to resent them in some way. They haven't deserved that. I deserve that. We get envious in our lives. And suddenly we find ourselves saying things or thinking things or doing things that we never would have dreamed of when we first had that craving. Things escalate when we let desire be our ruler. And at least to my knowledge, it's not resulted in physical murder for anyone in this room. But I do think that we kill each other in different ways. James seems to think so too. We have our own versions of silently killing others off. We use backhanded compliments. We ignore people. We speak badly about people behind their backs. We question their motives or whether they really deserve what they have. We constantly do away with one another. Think about it this way. What if every word that you said about someone else in the last year was put up on the screen this morning for everyone to see? What would that say about us? We don't have to be Miss Harvest Queen, friends. We don't have to be on an episode of The Bachelorette. The devil is often more subtle than that. Third thing that we see that James points out here about making desire our ruler is that we shut off connection to God. He uses the example of prayer. He says that when we make our own pleasure, our own priority, the focus of our lives, our prayers actually become destructive. It's important to note, James isn't saying that we can never bring our wants or our needs to God in prayer. Remember how Jesus taught us to pray. He did say, pray for our daily bread, our needs. But remember that our wants and needs are not the purpose or point of prayer. Remember what comes before praying for your daily bread. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Prayer, according to the scriptures, is the space in which we get reoriented. We get realigned with God. It's where we listen to his voice and character. It's where we recall the redemption, the healing, the life that he's bringing into the world. His love and grace and generosity. And then it's where we're shaped by those things. We bring our desires before God and allow those desires to get shaped by his kingdom. And when we don't do that, when our desires or our pleasures become the center of our prayer lives, we will ultimately find ourselves praying godless prayers. Or even more convictingly, we'll find that we've replaced God with us.

There's a great author named David Henderson who writes about this in his book, Culture Shift. He says, we have tended to turn the Christian faith into a relationship with a God who is the divine vending machine in the sky, there to meet our every need. Unhappy, unattractive, unsuccessful, unmarried, unfulfilled, come to Christ, and he'll give you all those things that you asked for. We forget that God is not primarily in the business of meeting our wants. And when we make him out to be, we squeeze him out of his rightful place at the center of our lives when we put ourselves in his place. God is in the business of being God. Redeeming and restoring, forgiving and healing and loving. And Christianity cannot be reduced to just meeting people's wants. When we make it so, we invariably distort the gospel.

You guys, our lives are not about us. They're not about us. Our lives are caught up in a larger story, and that story is one of endless beauty and grace and goodness. It's one in which joy and life and peace are found only in our connection to the divine center of all things, in God. That's why placing ourselves at the top of our priority list doesn't work because it goes against the nature of reality. It goes against the nature of what actually is in God. And that's why James is so strong with the image he uses. Adulterers in verse 4. 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. He's using a common scriptural metaphor to describe God's relationship to us. A loving, committed spouse. There's all sorts of metaphors that describe our relationship to God. This is one of the most common. And here's what he's getting at. When we choose to embrace the world, and by world he doesn't just mean like spending time serving your neighbor. That actually is the opposite, right? By world he means the underlying assumptions or stories or pursuits of the world. Things like consumerism or individualism or nationalism or whatever else. When we embrace those things, what we're really doing is undermining our relationship with God. We're deserting the love and the grace and the peace that God has made us for. And we're making ourselves present only to what the world says we need to be present to. And it puts us in the ugly position of cheating. Remember, James is speaking to Christians. These are people who claim they love God, claim to be followers of Jesus, but then their conflict, their desires, their cravings, show something different. The top priority in their lives is elsewhere. And they're trying to be married and have affairs. They're trying to experience commitment and do whatever they want. They're trying to live in love and in lust. And the picture is meant to be absurd to strike us. I mean, imagine if a husband sat down next to his wife this evening on the couch. He looked her in the eyes, he smiled like he did on their wedding day, and he said, wife, of all the women I kissed this week, you're my favorite.

Offensive. Ladies in the room, what's the response? He has a different shaped nose tomorrow, right? Absolutely, that's what happens. Right? James is saying to the church that we have all, in our own ways, acted like that husband. For those of us that call ourselves Christians, we do all sorts of things to indicate that God is the top priority. We go to church, we read our Bibles, we pray, we even serve. But while all that's happening, we often have some part of our lives that we keep tucked away. Some other lover that we try to hold on to. Most of us like the idea of being united with God so long as we can hold on to what we really want. We like the idea of marriage so long as we can still have our affairs. And James says that destroys us. I was reading about a really strange and ugly baptism practice that existed a few hundred years back. When members of the Knights Templar would be baptized, they would be baptized with their swords, but their swords would be held out of the water. So every part of their body would be immersed except their swords. And it was a way of people saying, you can have all of me, Jesus, just not my sword. And the things that I do with my sword. I'm all yours, but who I am and what I do on that battlefield, how I use my sword, that's mine to keep. Friends, what are you holding out of the water? What are the things that you're allowing, that we're allowing, to rule our lives instead of God? What affairs might need to end in your life?

James is clear. Living ruled by your desire for pleasure cannot bring you lasting peace and happiness. It can only bring division and conflict and escalation. It will turn us all into mis-harvest queens. But James, James doesn't just expose the sickness here. He also points us to the cure. He does that in verses 6-10. He says, God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. It's a quote from Proverbs 3-34. Submit yourselves to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands. Purify your hearts. Lament and mourn and weep. Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you. Two things, I think, worth bringing out that James is getting at here. First, the character of God. This is where the cure begins. Notice, this is a God who is unendingly gracious.

All are running. All are cheating. All are chasing after a life for ourselves. It in no way alters God's love for us. He is simply waiting with open arms for us to come home. There's no shame. There's no impatient foot tapping. There's no waiting for work that's good enough to compensate. When we draw near to God, he draws near to us. He's wooing us and waiting for us to come back so we can celebrate together. That's who God is. And here's the truth, you guys. Believing that's who God is is often the biggest hurdle to returning to him. Because nothing else in our world works that way. We often discredit ourselves. We often think we've messed up too many times. We often think our cheating has been too much. Or maybe we doubt that God really, ever does think that about us. The truth is that we're less gracious than God. We're more stringent, more legalistic, more shaming than God to ourselves and others. You guys, if you're ever in doubt that this is true of who God is, that he's waiting to welcome us back with open arms and invite us into a life of joy and peace, listen to the words of Jesus, who was God in the flesh in John 6. Anyone who comes to me, I will never cast out. Anyone who comes to me, I will never cast out. There's a great poet named John Bunyan who had some commentary on this that embraces the rebuttals that we often embrace to that comment. We say things like, but I am a great sinner. Jesus says, I will never cast out. But I am an old sinner. I will never cast out. But I'm a hard-hearted sinner. I will never cast out. But I'm a backsliding sinner. I will never cast out. But I have served Satan all my days. I will never cast out. But I have sinned against life. I will never cast out. But I have sinned against mercy. I have never cast out. But I have no good thing to bring with me. I will never cast out. Friends, if we want true healing from our unhealthy affairs, it starts by knowing the character of our true committed spouse. And once we do that, the task is simple on our part. Humble ourselves. Humility. We approach God with humility. And we need to remember that humility, friends, is not condemnation. To be merciless with anyone, even ourselves, never a virtue. Humility means having a right view of ourselves. Just being truthful. Humility means telling the truth on ourselves. Humbling ourselves before God means telling the truth. Because with this God, the sin is not the condemnation. It's the posture of the heart. The sin is actually the opportunity to return. The sin is the opportunity to come home. And when we hear it that way, when we hear our brokenness that way, it doesn't lead us to shame, to over-emphasis, it just leads us to truth-telling. We tell the truth and let it guide us back to God. And when we do that well, it should, James says, result in a genuinely hurt heart. He borrows language from the prophets here. Lamenting, mourning, and weeping to describe our posture. We don't exaggerate. We don't over-shame ourselves when we return to God, but we also don't minimize. We don't push it aside. We need to learn to recognize the grievousness of what we've done. We need to learn the practice of genuine remorse, because when we do, the love of God can be become real in us. A few months back, I noticed that Emily was acting a little quieter around me, and a little kind of more standoffish around me than normal. And knowing who I am, I'm like, yeah, this is on me. Whatever's going on here is on me. So I asked her, hey, what's going on? I just noticed. And she quickly had a list of things that I had done that week that hadn't been the best. Ways I was inconsiderate or neglectful or selfish, and how each of those things had hurt her. Now, I'm not a huge crier. I'm not somebody who weeps a ton, but man, my heart sunk. We're a whole seven years into marriage. I thought we had this thing nailed down, right? I thought, man, I'm so good at being a husband. No. No, no, no, no. I screwed up. My heart sunk deeply. That's how our hearts ought to feel. And that's not out of shame, friends. I knew my wife wasn't deserting me. I knew my wife wasn't leaving. She was simply being honest. She was telling me the truth. And I know she's telling me that because she knows, she longs for me to become a better husband, to become a better Christ follower, to become a better human. It was a way for me to just know and truly feel what I had done. That's our approach with God, friends. We need to listen well to God's word. Learn to hear the ways in which we've missed the mark on what it means to live well with Him. And learn to have genuine remorse over it. And never out of shame. Only ever because we know that God reveals those things to bring us more deeply into who we're made to be. One practice that I think has been helpful for me, and I want to close by giving you this practice. That's one that's been embraced by monks for a long time. The monks had a lot of good things figured out. The examine is what it's been called. And the examine is basically a way of posturing your heart in reflection over your week or your day. So pick a time, 30 minutes, an hour, once a week, even once a day if you can. And spend some time being navigated by certain questions in prayer. So stop yourself before God. Take some deep breaths. Consider who God is. And then ask these questions. God, where was I near to you and your love in this day or week? And reflect on those. And then celebrate those. Thank God for the ways that His Spirit worked in you. And then the second question. God, where was I far from you and your love? And allow your heart to sink. Allow the Spirit to expose those things in you so that you can move and turn. That's the idea. That's all repentance is for Christians. It means coming back, turning around, reshaping our lives. And when you do that, friends, when you practice that sort of examine, it's remarkable. You'll find that God draws near to you. He doesn't push away from you. He draws near to you. He doesn't shame you. He doesn't define you by your sin. He forgives you. He welcomes you. He embraces you. And not only that, He exalts you. Did you notice that James in verse 10 ends this passage, which is pretty convicting, on one final term. Humble yourself and God will exalt you. Raise you up. Lift you up. You are a beloved child of God. He will never cast you out. So come back, friends. Put down the sword that you're holding out of the water. It's not going to satisfy you. Leave behind your other lover. It's not going to satisfy you. Come to His table. Let Him reshape you again today. Let's pray, friends.Not very kind words from Dr. Walsh in terms of how he thinks we've developed in wisdom. Maybe we wouldn't go that far to agree with his words, but I don't think we have to look far to say that we are not surrounded by tons and tons of wise people on a regular basis. So what is real wisdom? And how are we supposed to get it? That's the question that we're going to answer today. We are in the middle of a teaching series here in Midtown called The Great Khan, where we are working our way through the book of James and combating cons or lies that we are often told in our culture with what scripture has to say. I really enjoy the book of James because it speaks very plainly about the difference between a profession of faith and a possession of faith. That if you have this possession of faith, it will touch all of these areas of your life in tangible ways. It's more than just speaking. You don't just get to say that you're wise, but you embody wisdom with how you live. And this is so much about what the book of James is about. We have heard about topics through this series like our speech, our favoritism, our individuality, and our anger, and how our faith actually touches. Every aspect of these areas. And today we're going to do the same thing with wisdom. To combat the con that if you follow the world's lead on wisdom, you will be happy and fulfilled. This idea that through study and contemplation and abstract thinking, you can grasp wisdom for yourself. All of the wonders of the world will be available to you and you will know exactly what you ought to do if you just work hard enough at it. I think that this is bad wisdom. Spoiler alert. And I think that the Bible's teaching on wisdom is far more robust. And I think that the words that it has to say are very thought-provoking. So that is what we're going to look into today. And it is so much more than just an individual pursuit, but a communal pursuit as we learn about what is wisdom and how do we get it. So we are going to be reading today from James 3, verses 13 through 18. So if you have a Bible, turn with me. The book of James is going to be towards the very back of your Bible. Close to the end of the New Testament. If you don't have a Bible, no problem. The words are going to be behind me on the screen. So let's read James 3.

Who is wise and knowledgeable among you? Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom. But if you have bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not be arrogant and lie about the truth. This is not wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, devilish. For where there is envy and selfish ambition, there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind. 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. And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. So James gives us a very helpful definition here of what wisdom is. But first, I thought it would be good if we started looking at our very baseline definition of wisdom from the very elegant and classy lady that is Miriam Webster. So let's look at our dictionary definition of wisdom here. It says this. It's broken into three parts. Wisdom is the ability to discern inner qualities and relationships. Wisdom is good sense and generally accepted belief. And wisdom is accumulated philosophical or psychological and scientific learning. I find that we tend to think of wisdom mostly as that third line there. We think of wisdom as knowledge. Oh, someone who's wise knows a lot of things. They can just recall information like this. They are buried in the books. And they really, they've got a big brain. They know stuff. I was surprised to see particularly the first part of the definition. Wisdom is the ability to discern inner qualities and relationships. I don't know about you, but I don't really think of wisdom like that. What does relationships and inner qualities have to do with wisdom? And I like that it's broken up into three different parts, that wisdom is not just knowledge, but it is knowledge, insight, and judgment come together. So how does this actually play out tangibly? Why is wisdom tied to understanding and discerning relationships? It was a little bit confusing for me at first, but then as I studied, I'm like, wow, this makes perfect sense. Miriam Webster is smarter than me.

James asked the question, who is wise and understanding among you? And he follows it up by saying that they should show it with their good life. Painting this picture that you show wisdom by how you live. It's not just what you know, but how knowledge is actually applied and lived out in the world. How does something relate to life and everything around it? The Olympics are a perfect example of this. I'm just going to keep hitting you with the sports analogies. If you watch most sports, there's a surprising phenomenon that happens where a lot of older athletes actually tend to win, which goes against common reason. You would think that younger athletes would have a leg up. They're probably in better shape. They're definitely more athletic. They haven't lost that step or two yet. They don't have to take as good a care of their bodies to recover. So knowledge would tell you that a younger athlete is definitely going to have an advantage over an older athlete. And yet you see all of these older athletes winning. And when you ask younger athletes about it, why does this person always tend to win? And it's almost intangible. They just know how to. They understand these relationships and inner workings of the game that they're playing. They know how to use their body. They know how to take advantage of officiating. They know all of the biomechanical movements that they've been practicing for years and years and years. And they understand how it all relates to the game itself and how they can leverage that to their advantage to then win. If you've been paying attention to all of the memes that have been circling around, there is this man from Turkey who has been making the rounds. His name is Yusuf Dikec. He is on the right here. The reason that this man has become an internet sensation is because he showed up to the Olympics to shoot and he has no eyewear. He has no protective eyewear. He has no ear protection. He has no fancy equipment or gear. He just showed up, put his hand in his pocket, shot some shots, and he won the silver medal. You can trust that with who is on the right who's got the fancy glasses, all the drip, you know, the nice fancy gun. All of this stuff. All of the things. The ear protection. This man has become probably the most interviewed person at the Olympics. One of them. And they're like, what's your deal, man? How do you do it? He's like, I just like to shoot. I just show up. I just show up and I shoot. I know how to play the game. And I don't need all of this fancy equipment. That's wisdom. A great example that I've seen in my own karate career is when my teacher's teacher comes to town. It's a really big deal. His name is Toshio Osaka and he is an 82-year-old man from Japan. Who probably is five foot five, 140 pounds soaking wet. He is not a large man at all. And you look at him on the street and you would think, I could definitely take that guy's money. I could definitely grab his cane and run off with all of his items in the blink of an eye. You contrast him with Damien here who is the top student at my dojo. He is probably 43, six foot two, 210 pounds. An absolute monster and a terrifying human being. You do not want to get in a fight with Damien. But when Osaka sensei comes to visit, he always brings Damien up to do his demonstrations. And he moves that guy around like a rag doll. It is unbelievable. And you might think that I'm joking. Next time I'm in town, I will invite you when he comes for a seminar. And you will be as amazed as I was the first time that I saw it. That he just moved this grown man like he was nothing. That's wisdom. He understands the physics of how to use his body. He understands all of the biomechanical movements of karate. He has refined them over 70 years of practice in his life to be able to then apply them to the real world in a situation that looks totally unfavorable to him. Like where he would clearly be the underdog. These are ways that we see wisdom play out in relationships. Or what about musicians? There is only so much that you can do with music theory. There are no new notes that have been recently discovered that have altered the course of music history. And if you think you found a new note, come talk to me because I don't believe you. But if you do, let's go in on it. Let's make a fortune. The same notes that people were writing and composing songs with hundreds of years ago are the same notes that are being used today. Knowledge is knowing that there are 88 keys on a piano and that each key corresponds with a specific note. But not everybody who knows the notes and knows all of the theory is a good musician. What makes a good musician is knowing how to take all of that knowledge and compose it into something beautiful using the relationships of chords and harmonies and melodies and dynamics and production. Wisdom of how to use this theory is what makes beautiful music. Famous theologian Jonathan Edwards has a quote about this topic where he says, there's a difference between having a rational judgment that honey is sweet and having a sense of its sweetness. This is the difference of seeing honey and knowing that it's sweet. You see the little beeves doing their hive thing like, yeah, I bet that that tastes really good. The difference of that and actually tasting the honey and feeling it on your tongue and confirming, yes, this is definitely sweet. This is how you move from knowledge to wisdom. You must experience it to move beyond simply knowing. To focus on us for a moment, a beautiful and wise life is one where you relate things to each other. It's where we understand concepts like care for your body equals care for your soul. That when you are eating well, when you are exercising, when you are getting enough sleep, when you are doing things to take care of yourself and things that fill up your cup, physically, things are a little more settled internally. And when we're not doing things I don't know about you but I start freaking out a little bit and I start panicking because I know that things are not right.

Wisdom in your life is knowing that resting well enables you to work well. That if you're constantly getting five hours of sleep and you are running around like a chicken with your head cut off, you are not going to be particularly productive and you are not going to be sharp in your mind to be able to accomplish the things that you need to accomplish well. Wisdom is that cultivating healthy relationships with others helps you care for yourself. That as we invest in community and we get our cup poured into by people that we care about, we are able to take care of ourselves better. There is a balance and harmony in how things work here on earth. And the same thing is true of our relationship with God. To move from knowledge to wisdom, we have to see how all of these things that we read about in scripture actually relate to our lives. Some of you maybe have grown up in the church and you have heard stories from the Bible your entire life. But I'm sure that you can remember moments when they became real to you and that they weren't just a story anymore. I didn't grow up as a Christian, but I had always heard the simple phrase that God loves me. Hey, God loves you. Didn't really mean anything to me for many years because I didn't know anything else about him and I wasn't trying to be a Christian, so the words were just empty. But there was a day that it became very real to me where I could actually see it, and I could feel it, and I could sense it. That's wisdom.

So what are the markers of this wise life? James gives us a very comprehensive list, but I felt that some additional definition might be helpful. This was taken from theologian William Barclay's commentary on James to better capture the depth of what these words mean. First, James says that true wisdom is pure, meaning that it is cleansed of all ulterior motives and of self, that it has become pure enough to see God. True wisdom is peaceable, meaning it has right relationships between people and people, and between people and God, that it brings everything into closer relationship. True wisdom is gentle or considerate, depending on what translation you have, that it knows how to make allowances and when not to stand upon its rights, how to temper justice with mercy, and how to extend to others a kindly consideration. True wisdom is willing to yield, meaning that it is never rigid, but willing to listen and skilled in knowing when to yield. True wisdom is full of mercy and good fruits. That means that it is mercy for any person, even if they have brought trouble upon themselves. It is pity that moves us to practical help for people. True wisdom is undivided or impartial. It is based on certainties that come from God through Jesus. It knows its own mind, chooses its course, and abides by it. And lastly, true wisdom is without hypocrisy. It never pretends to be something that it is not, and never acts a part to gain its own ends. I love this list because it is so important because much like the Merriam-Webster definition, there were some things in here that were challenging for me that I don't typically think about. How often do you think about someone who is gentle as being full of wisdom, or someone who is impartial?

These are not words that typically come to mind for me when I think about wisdom, which is why James' list here is so helpful. We see the picture that wisdom is through these things, and it is contrasted with envy and selfish ambition. Which leads to disorder. When I think about disorder, I think about my room. When my room is not clean, I am not doing well. I need a clean room to be able to go to bed. There is nothing like that feeling when you have been cleaning all day, you have got your fresh sheets out of the dryer, that wood floor of yours smells like lemon pledge. It is fantastic. And you wrap yourself up at the end of the night in a little burrito, and you are like, I am going to sleep easy tonight. We see this picture of order being contrasted with disorder. When everything is messy and chaotic around us, it is hard to rest. It is hard to actually feel nourished. I am sure we all feel that chomping at the bit when things are not clean. I just need to clean this. I need to take care of this right now because if things are not ordered, I am going to feel unwell. I love having that picture of that with wisdom. It is saying that envy and selfish ambition is actually going to lead you to that. When you think about your messy room and how much it drives you crazy, that is the disorder in your life that goes on when we are operating out of those areas. the person who is pure and peaceable and gentle and willing to yield and full of mercy and impartial and without hypocrisy is wise. And that will not lead them to disorder in their life. It will keep them fully in touch with reality.

I want to take a moment here to acknowledge quickly that some of you may hear this and think to yourself, okay, this all sounds great, but it also sounds like an invitation to let people walk all over me and take advantage of me if I am just full of mercy and willing to yield and I am just a very nice, peaceable person. What this is, is a challenge to look more like Jesus as he personally embodied all of these traits of wisdom. And in embodying Jesus, that also means that we stand up when things are unjust. That also means that we speak up when we see that things are wrong. We are not just doormats for people to walk over if we are pursuing this life of peace. And ironically, it is wisdom that we need to know when to make our voice heard and when it is time to stand up and when it is time to yield.

So now that we have defined wisdom more clearly, it is like, alright Daniel, you used some great Olympic analogies, lots of different relationships going on here, that is all great. How am I supposed to get it? Because I am picking up what you are putting down, but that all sounds too good to be true. I have got good news and bad news. You want the bad news first? Everyone always wants the bad news first. The bad news is this, is that you cannot will yourself to become wiser or work really hard to get it. So disappointing. So anti-Western. What do you mean I cannot just work harder and get wiser? That sucks. But the good news is that it is actually quite simple. All you have to do is ask for it. If we go back to the beginning of the book of James, we are reminded how we get wisdom. So this is James chapter 1 verses 2 through 5 right at the beginning of the book. It says this, My brothers and sisters, whenever you face various trials, consider it all joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance complete its work so that you may be complete and whole, lacking in nothing. If any of you is lacking in wisdom, ask God, who gives generously and ungrudgingly, and it will be given to you.

I am trying really hard not to oversimplify this here, but these are James' words, not mine. He says, you want wisdom? Ask God. God loves to give things to his children. It is hard to imagine that wisdom in wisdom. Let's use sweet little Nora Gustafson here. She goes up to Gabby and Jordan, her lovely parents, and says, could you guys teach me more about how to become wise? They say, no. Get back to us next year. We are really busy right now. We don't want to teach you about wisdom. Maybe some other time. It is hard to imagine that playing out. I am assuming. Gabby says, maybe six months.

But do we ask God for wisdom? Do we expect God to give it to us? See, wisdom is not just wisdom. Wisdom has to come from God because it resides with him, not down here on earth. By wisdom, the Lord laid the foundations of the world. By understanding, he set the heavens in their place. God, in the ultimate act of wisdom, brings order out of chaos and creation. All of the beautiful interconnected relationships between creation and us and us with each other and us with God. All art and stories and things that we think are beautiful in the world come from him. There is wisdom and order behind the universe that we live in. But we must be humble enough to ask for it and to receive it. Understanding that we cannot grasp this wisdom in our own power doesn't come from us. This is why enduring trials is so vital as James speaks about. And when we endure them as Christians, we speak about them as joyful things. Sounds very counterintuitive and crazy. But it's a good thing. The reason is because through hardship and some of the worst things that you could ever imagine happening in your life, God uses them to make us more whole. This was true for me certainly at the beginning of my faith journey that it is really difficult to be told that you're broken and to actually believe it. What do you mean I'm broken? I've got a lot of cool things going for me. My life is fine. I have some bad days where maybe I'm not feeling too great and maybe I do some stupid stuff occasionally. But overall, I'm scoring like 85 out of 100. I'm doing alright. It's hard to be told that you're broken and to believe it. You need to experience it. And you need to be brought low. You need to understand that you have limitations and that you have weaknesses. You need to feel that apart from God that you're not really capable of much. This is what moves us to a place of wisdom about who we are and the reality that we exist in. As we experience hardship, we should be pushed towards a place of humility not of pride. Pride is dumb, friends. Humility is wise. And I have spent a lot of my life being really prideful about a lot of things and I needed to be humbled and I needed to be brought low and reminded that I'm not right and that I don't really have all the answers and that I'm really not capable of that much. And those are tough pills to swallow but they are really great pills to swallow because you learn to give up some of these things.

Humility is wise because it is perfectly in touch with reality counteracting this I made myself what I am mentality that is so prominent in our culture as you see displayed in that Nike commercial. I believe that this is where so much of the brokenness in the world comes from. It comes from being out of touch with reality.

It's great to accomplish things. It's great to strive for things. It's not that achieving something is bad we have to understand that we don't really choose our circumstances. We didn't get to choose what family we were born into. We didn't get to choose what century we were born. We didn't get to choose where we were born in the world. We didn't get to choose what ethnicity we are and so many other things. We love to boast and prop ourselves up in our own language. In Vietnam in the 15th century you probably wouldn't be bragging about your master's degree. Your six figure salary. You'd just be doing what you had to do to get by. Again, this isn't to discredit hard work or to say that accomplishing something is bad. We have to understand that we didn't choose to be here right now. We didn't choose to be what we are. So we shouldn't boast about those things that we accomplish.

To bring it back to the Greeks they were not so foolish to think that the universe and all of its inner workings came from nothing. But they didn't understand how to get the wisdom of the universe. They thought that they could grasp it through individual study and contemplation and abstract thinking. But wisdom is not abstract. And wisdom actually can be known. But we have to relate to it. And this is where the beautiful story of the gospel comes in. This is why the word became flesh through the person of Jesus to dwell among us. The wisdom behind the universe is a person. And it's a person that you have to love and have a relationship with.

Thank goodness that Jesus is not some abstract idea that I have to contemplate or conjure up in my mind. But he is a real person who actually lived and walked the earth and died and rose again.

I don't want to keep hammering the point home too hard here. But God himself is even a relationship. The doctrine of the Trinity, which is an essential tenet of the Christian faith that Christians have affirmed for centuries, is that we worship one God who exists in three different persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Now I do not have time to break all of the doctrine of the Trinity down because we will be here for two more hours. And I know that you don't want that. And you have things to do. But we affirm this mystery of the Trinity that God himself is a relationship and that throughout all of eternity he has been a relationship. Meaning that relationship is the key to nature and grace. The relationship is intrinsic to the universe.

Finally, we look to the cross. Jesus on the cross related God's law and God's love. God's truth and his love. Something that could not be brought together in any other way. In the ultimate act of wisdom, Jesus brings these two things together. And as he does that he enables, humanity to be brought together with God. Jesus died not so that I might not suffer anymore but that in my suffering I would become like him. Wisdom has come down, friends. And he extends an invitation to us to follow him so that we too may become wise.

I would have never guessed that the good life was that story. That it could be found through pursuing relationship with God and seeking out the wisdom that he has to offer. Life as a pure and peaceable individual sounded not only impossibly out of reach for me but quite boring if I'm honest. There's no way that that could be the key to the good life. I was convinced that my life would look far better looking out for myself and living for the podium moment like those Olympians that we saw in the commercial. I needed to experience the brokenness that came with that way of living to know that there was a better way and that I could search for that better way and God met me in my searching and he was waiting for me. Inviting me to come on home.

So wherever you find yourselves at on this journey this morning my last bit of encouragement as we wrap up would be to be the bee. Look at this look at this lovely little bee. She's so cute she's so cute she's nice and fuzzy very vibrant in color at the nice flower that she's on you see a picture like that and you kind of want to go pet it but then you realize oh no if I touch it she's going to sting me and that's going to inevitably end her life and that's going to be really sad so I'm not going to pet it but I can admire I can admire how beautiful that picture is.

Puritan preacher Thomas Brooks says that it is not the bee's touching of the flower that gathers honey but her abiding for a time upon the flower that draws out the sweet. This is the picture of what it looks like for us. Will we be the bee? Will we abide on this flower that is God and his wisdom? Will we rest in his promises?

Will we seek wisdom out and not to be in a rush but to take our time? You can't rush wisdom friends. Would you accept Jesus' invitation to come and abide just like the bee abides upon the flower? Would you ask him to shape you into a person of peace and harmony in a world that so desperately needs it? I needed it. That lovely 16 year old holding the big trophy thinking that life had it made and I was horribly wrong and I needed I needed to understand all of these things that are true about the world. God is inviting you into the world to those things. So wherever you are at on your journey today I pray that you would be the bee.

Let's pray friends.