Sermon: "Wise Words"

3rd in the "False Pictures" series.
Delivered March 18, 2007 by Rev. John Schmidt.
Other sermons in this series / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5

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I would like to read to you from the Book of James, Chapter 3, Verses 13 to 18.

"Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show it by his good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. Such "wisdom" does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, of the devil. For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice. But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. Peacemakers who sow in peace raise a harvest of righteousness."

This is the word of the Lord; thanks be to God.

Did you ever have regrets about something you have said? Of course you have. It's universal. I know I have. In fact, I seem to have those regrets all the time. Who knows how many times I have walked down the concourse of this church thinking to myself now why did I say that. Regrets. Now sometimes it's a regret because I think of a better or clearer way of saying something. I say something in a sermon or a lesson or in a little interaction with someone and then I later think, oh if I had only said it this way. But a lot more often than that I am walking away thinking boy that was stupid what I said So easily misunderstood, possibly even hurtful. Sometimes it's a big enough deal that I have to confess it to God and sometimes I have to confess it to God and to the person too and then move on.

People feel this way a lot. You feel this way a lot because sometimes you come to me and tell me your regrets about something that you have said. What we say can hurt, because words are incredibly powerful. Friendships end over words. Marriages end over words. Some people struggle for 30 or 40 years over words that were said to them when they were young. Words start wars. Words obscure the truth. Words give false pictures of who we are and of what life is all about and who God is. Words are powerful.

James the Apostle realized how powerful words were when he wrote this letter to the young churches. We have been on a series of false pictures about how our society gives us false pictures about who God is, what life is like, who we are as human beings. Last week we looked at how the church gives us false pictures. And then this week, we realize how much words can give us false pictures. Right here in the middle of this letter James is dealing with the issue of words. Even in these early churches people are hurting each other by their words. One minute they are teaching beautiful truths to one another or they are praying or blessing and the next minute they are cursing someone out for getting in their way. Words are powerful. And so, James had to deal with this issue of the church and its words. And so, in Chapter 3 he begins to poke into their lives a little bit.

Chapter 3 of the Book of James easily breaks into two parts. Verse 1 to 12 deal with the issue what we say can cause big problems. And so there is a number of images there that remind us of how powerful the tongue is, how powerful speech is, and then how hard it is to control. And so the lesson here in the first half of the chapter is controlling the things that we say. The second half of the chapter; the part I read today, deals with the fact that wisdom is not just what we say, but are motives and behavior as well. Wisdom is more than just words. The flow is from the heart, to the life, and then to the lips. And so, the lesson here is that the church and Christians need to seek this true wisdom.

So I would like to read the first verse in that section again, Verse 13.

"Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show it by his good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom."

James begins this section by if you are going to be wise then show it by a good life. If you have wisdom and understanding, your life has to reflect that. James never views our words as being isolated from the lives we live around it. This comes up in the first half of the chapter and it comes up again here. He never views our words as isolated. It's the overflow of what's inside of us and the reason why James thinks this way is because Jesus taught these things and James is so deeply influenced by Jesus.

Matthew 15:18 records these words.

"The things that come out of the mouth come from the heart and these make a person unclean."

Words are the overflow of the heart, from the heart, to the life, to the lips."

And so James believing this talks in Verse 14 and beyond about harboring envy, and selfish ambition in our lives. If we harbor envy and selfish ambition in your heart, most about it are denied the truth. Such wisdom does not come from heaven, but is earthy, unspiritual, of the devil, for where you have envy and selfish ambition there you will find disorder and every evil practice. There is a kind of wisdom that is out there in the world. It's a wisdom that involves getting things done, of knowing how the system works, of getting your way, of knowing how to grasp and use power. We talk about people like that as being savvy. They know how to work the system. They know the ropes. They are cunning. Maybe we think of them as being politically astute or vain. But what James is saying is that if there is any kind of skill that grows out of this selfish ambition and envy, then the results of that are disorder and every kind of evil practice. This is an earthy wisdom. It's a false picture.

And then in Verse 17 he gives us a list of wisdom from heaven. It's an interesting list. The wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure. Pure; cleansed of false motives, not selfish, scheming to get our way, no hidden agendas. It's pure.

It's peace-loving. Peace-loving here means more than just loving the absence of conflict. The meaning behind the word has to do with things being in right relationship; humanity in right relationship to God and people in right relationship to one another. Peace-loving means desiring and pursuing that right relationship; that wholeness.

The next word is considerate. It means a lot more than just kind. It means that when a decision happens the person understands all the rules, all the laws, but takes those laws and takes into account all the circumstances that surround it and is very thoughtful about how they apply what they know and understand. Another way of looking at this word considerate, as thinking of it as being gently deliberate. The wisdom from above is also submissive. It's not stubborn. It's teachable.

Then it says it's full of mercy and good fruit. Someone who is full of mercy is not the sort of person who says, "You brought it on yourself. You made your bed now sleep in it." A person who is full of mercy can understand how someone is responsible for their errors and yet can still have compassion on them in it.

And the good fruit talks about the fact that it's practical and results oriented, that wise people, the wisdom from above is something that actually has tangible fruit and seeks that fruit. It's not just words. It's impartial. Just like we looked at last week, it means we don't show favoritism, but it also means that we don't waiver; that we are not double minded about things; one minute going one way and one minute going another.

And then finally it says that it's sincere. It doesn't pretend to be what its not; it's not hypocritical.

James gives us this list of wisdom from heaven and then he ends this section with Verse 18 and it's a verse that I often just skip over because it's not real easy to understand. "Peacemakers who sow in peace raise a harvest of righteousness." We've got to remember here that he is not just talking about people who are looking to stop conflict. What James is saying to end this entire section is that people who value these right relationships and who are pursuing the right relationship and wholeness of people with God and people with one another, these people do the foundational work, the sowing that results in the fruit of righteousness in their lives and the lives of the people around them. This is a hard thing for independent individualists Americans to hear, because what it is saying is that this righteousness that we so desire is a community experience; that wise people are going to be people who know how to build that community and those relationships. Peacemakers who sow in peace and then raise a harvest of righteousness. So this relational dynamic; this way we treat one another, this understanding of our right relationship with God is absolutely essential to righteousness in our world and in our lives. Wisdom is more than just words. It comes from the heart, through the life to the lips.

Now what do virtues look like this in practice? We've got to face the fact that we don't get that many opportunities to actually share our faith in the course of a week. We get some, but the majority of our time with people is spent in relationship; spent in situations where we have to make decisions together; spent in situations where we disagree and have tensions. That's where most of what they see in our lives happens and its only more occasionally that we get to draw them in to the scripture and in to the truth directly about Jesus Christ. So let's think for a moment about all that vast majority of time where we are just in relationship and we are disagreeing with one another. What does this kind of heavenly wisdom look like? How to be wise when we disagree?

The first is to listen; to hear their side and represent it fairly. A person who is pure and submissive and full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere is someone who can hear the other side and doesn't have to caricature them, but can actually explain back to the person they are disagreeing with their own position to the point where they can recognize themselves and say, "Yes, that's exactly what I am saying." And so, wisdom and wise words doesn't start with words at all. It starts with listening. When we see that someone else has a good point, give them credit, another mark of wisdom. It might not be the best way to manipulate a situation, but it is wisdom, because again you are pursuing truth, you're teachable and you are not stubborn. The third thing is that the goal in these interactions is peace and harmony and unity and purity; getting at the truth, not just getting our way. We can have passion without abusing people.

One of the things that I love about our staff team is we have a lot of people on that staff team that have passion and when we get in to a room and talk about anything important let me tell you there is some emotion coming out and you don't lightly set aside anything in student ministry or anything in children ministry or anything in the worship, because these are important things in our life together and we believe in what we are doing, but there is a respect and a care in the way that they treat one another, the way we treat one another at the table. It's wonderful. All that love and energy and passion about things, and yet the capacity to handle it in a way that we don't abuse one another.

Another point. Don't make people take our side to have a relationship with us. We've got to have that capacity to have a relationship with someone with whom we disagree, maybe on something we feel important about, we feel is important and we feel strongly about.

The final one is to be a good winner, as well as a good loser. What do you do with that power that comes from a decision coming your way? How do you handle it? How do you handle the relationship with the person following that? That is a mark of wisdom; that when we win we still know how to care for the people that have been involved in that conversation with us. These are more than words. It's more than just the words we choose to say. Wisdom comes from the heart, to the life, to the lips.

Now, back when I was back in college I had an idea about wise people. Now every generation probably has their own image. Back when I was a student a wise person first of all had to be dressed as a hippie. You could not be wise if you had a crew cut. It was not possible. I am still struggling with that, no. The wise person had the longest hair and had the jeans with the frayed bottoms on it; the worst pair of jeans on. It was a person that read a lot of philosophy. Someone who had one of those memories that could not only remember the quotes from the book, but remember the author and if they were really great they could give you the page number. They were obscure people. If you did not hear something incomprehensible in your conversation you knew you hadn't really touched wisdom. But these people were also disdainful of the establishment. When I was a student our mantra was "trust no one over 30." Well I am 20-something years over that line here; disdainful of the establishment and also disdainful over anyone who disagreed. In other words, these wise people were also people who were full of clever but cutting ways of dealing with other people to win their arguments. And yet, we considered it wise. This picture we get in James is so different than that. It's a picture of someone who is pure and peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. It's a whole lifestyle. It's something that goes from heart, to life and then to lips.

The elders in our church are chosen for characteristics like this. We are not just looking for smart people. We are not just looking for people who have walked with the Lord a long time or people who can see the big picture; those are all good things, but when we select people who are going to be in that room, just a few people dealing with the most delicate, controversial or far-reaching decisions of the life of our congregation, we have to have people in that room who are pure, who love relationship, and are passionate about keeping those relationships in right order, who are considerate and deliberate about their decisions, teachable, not stubborn, full of mercy, concerned that it have practical results, impartial, not showing favoritism and sincere. It will not work otherwise. And God be praised; we have had a lot of men and women that can stand up to that sort of list, heart to life, to lips.

But it's important for all of us; our vision as a church is "moving people towards Christ; where we live, where we work and where we play" and we only get a few chances to actually focus in on the actual message of Jesus and the vast majority of time people are watching us in relationships with other people or in relationships with them. We are just living out our normal lives in front of them, laying foundations, building towards those moments when we do get a chance to declare the truth of Jesus to them. And so, if we have deep-sounding Biblical quotes one minute and then they see us yelling at someone abusively the next, people are going to see through that; they want to see a life that has this sort of character before they hear these words from our lips. The world is looking for more than my college idea of what a wise person is. They are looking for people who know how to live right. They are looking for people even though they would never know the verse, they are looking for people like Verse 18, peacemakers, people who love, the health in relationship together and that truth, that compassion in relationship together, who sow in that peace and then raise a harvest of righteousness. They are longing for that. And we can't do it.

Let's look at that list again; pure, peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial, sincere, the whole of our lifestyle and not just our words. Who are we kidding? Do we really have that in us? Let's look one more time at Verse 17. Verse 17 begins by saying, "But the wisdom that comes from heaven is like this." James never forgets that God is the giver of every good and perfect gift. The source for wisdom is not us. Christianity always comes back to the place where we recognize that it is God in us, God at work in us, the Holy Spirit working in and through us. We always come back there; that the kind of life change that God is looking for is not something that we generate for God. Sure, it will take work, alertness, effort, but it takes a lot of prayer too.

Because the first relationship that has to be right is a relationship to God, where we understand that God is Lord and we are not, and that his way gets done on earth and not ours and that we are a part of what God is doing in the world and we join Jesus and follow him and that is consecration. That's our verse for the year; "consecrate yourselves for tomorrow the Lord will do amazing things among you." Consecration is making sure that that relationship between us and God is right and that's where it begins. We are not alone. We are not doing this for God. We are doing it with him. So even the picture that I have been giving you this whole sermon, from heart to life to lips is a false picture. It's incomplete. The real picture of what James is getting at, the real picture of what Christianity says the wise life is like, what the holy life is like, is from God to heart to life to lips. God is the source. Wisdom is more than our words. It's the fruit of God himself that work inside of us.

Let's pray. God we admit again our incompleteness, our deliberate disobedience, our failure and yet we thank you now for the fact that the wisdom that you are looking for in life and the wisdom that people so long to see in our lives and hear from our lips, that that wisdom comes from you and so teach us now to rely on you in new ways, as we consecrate ourselves to you for Jesus' sake. Amen.

© 2007, Rev. John Schmidt
Central Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD 21204 410/823-6145
www.centralpc.org