This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

I want to welcome you to our study of the book of James and daily drive-time
devotions. We're looking at chapter 3 this week, this is the last day, day 5 of
our look at this chapter. We're going to be looking at verses 17 and 18 today,
which talk about God's kind of wisdom.

We talked about false wisdom, a seeming wisdom that's based on our human pride,
a wisdom that's, you remember we talked about it's earthly, it's unspiritual,
it's actually of the devil. When you look at wisdom, you have to consider the
source. And when selfishness is what's happening in my heart, that however wise
I think I am, however strategic I might think I am, when selfishness is what's
in my heart, the source is Satan, it's evil, he wants us to be selfish.

God's wisdom isn't like that, it is a different kind of wisdom. Listen to these
wonderful verses that picture for us what wisdom is all about, James chapter 5
verses 17 and 18. 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.

As we read through these words, you can begin to see that wisdom has more to do
with character expressed in our relationships than it has to do with education
or intelligence. Wisdom creates humility. Knowledge by itself creates pride, but
wisdom creates a kind of humility that affects the way we relate to other
people.

Every word that James talks about here when he talks about wisdom affects our
relationships with God and with others. What I'd like to do in our study today
is go through this as a kind of a personal checklist and ask ourselves, where am
I being wise right now? Where am I not being wise?

Where do I need to grow? In fact, I'm going to ask myself those questions as I
go through this and I'm asking you to ask yourself those questions at the same
time. I've always loved Pastor Rick Warren's expression of what these verses are
talking about when it comes to wisdom.

He says when he looks at these words, he's hearing him say this, "If I'm wise, I
won't compromise my integrity. If I'm wise, I will not antagonize your anger. If
I'm wise, I won't minimize your feelings.

If I'm wise, I won't criticize your decisions. If I'm wise, I won't emphasize
your mistakes. And if I'm wise, I won't disguise my own weaknesses.

" Now, you may not have written that down. That's okay. I'm going to go over
that again because those are expressions of the words we just looked at.

What is real wisdom like? Well, first of all, it is pure. And that means if I'm
wise, I will not compromise my integrity.

This word pure means uncorrupted, authentic. It's what we call integrity. Wisdom
begins with character.

Integrity means that my character and values are integrated into my life.
There's not this huge gap between what I say is important and what I'm living is
important. There's not a huge gap between what I say is my faith and what I'm
living out in my daily life.

That's where wisdom begins. So check your heart. Check your life.

Is there this huge gap in your life between what you say are your priorities and
what are genuinely your priorities with how you're living? I just talked to a
friend today who said he had to come to a point in his life where he realized he
was saying his family was his first priority, but he was never with them because
of the wonderful success he was having in his business. It was wonderful
success.

He could say God had given it, but there was a huge gap between what he said was
important and what he was living as important. Wisdom is, first of all, pure.
There's an integrity in it.

What's wisdom like? What's the picture of wisdom? Wisdom is also peace loving.

And that means if I'm wise, I won't antagonize your anger. True wisdom produces
right relationships. It loves peace in our relationship with other people.

And if you're okay with some relationship that's not at peace, in fact, if
you're sort of maybe one of those people who is causing the relationship to
become more and more irritated to somehow meet some need in your life, that's
not wise. That might meet in selfish need, but it's not wise. Wisdom is peace
loving.

So check yourself on that one. Do I love peace in my relationships with other
people? Because true wisdom produces right relationships.

Are you always antagonizing the anger of people around you? Are you a
peacemaker? The third word that James uses here is considerate.

That means if I'm wise, I won't minimize your feelings. This is a strong word
here that's translated considerate. It's a word that has to do with someone who
knows how to balance justice and mercy, who knows how to balance rules and
relationships.

This word considerate, it's a strong word. It's not talking about just sending
someone flowers. Oh, wasn't that considerate?

It's talking about how to treat someone like God treats us. When God looks at
me, when he looks at you, he considers it all. He is considerate of all that's
happened in my life, all the hurts, all the pains, all the joys, all the
opportunities.

He considers it all. He sees it as a whole and he doesn't get into these
situations where he's reacting to me, responding to me based on one wrong thing
I said today, based on one bad day that I had. If I'm wise, I won't minimize
your feelings.

I will be considerate of what you're going through because I realize that
everyone's hurting. I realize that you have pains in your life. God can see my
heart, but I can't see your heart.

And you have pains in your life that I can't understand, but I know they're
there. And I will consider that in the way that I relate to you. That is a wise
way to relate to others.

What's wisdom like? It's pure. It's peace-loving.

It's considerate. Wisdom is submissive and the idea behind that word is I won't
criticize your decisions, your suggestions. This is a word that's used here in
the Greek only once in the New Testament and it has the idea of being open to
reason and willing to yield to others.

So instead of criticizing your suggestions and having to prove that my way is
always better, there's the issue. I'm open to learning from other people. I'm
open to listening to what you have to say.

You see, pride causes me to say, "I can't listen to your suggestion because I
have to prove that somehow I'm important in this situation. " But humility and
wisdom, it frees me to listen to other people and to hear their suggestions. I
won't criticize your decisions and suggestions.

In fact, instead I will learn from them. What's genuine wisdom, wisdom that
comes down from heaven like? If I'm wise, I won't emphasize your mistake.

It is full of mercy and good fruit, full of mercy. It's easy to emphasize other
people's mistakes. If not to others in your own mind, sometimes we try to cause
ourselves to feel better about ourselves by building up other people's mistakes
in our minds, other people's sins in our minds.

Well, at least I'm not as bad as him. At least I'm not as bad as her, but that's
not what wisdom does. Wisdom instead erases the record of that in our mind as
much as we can.

And instead of emphasizing the mistakes, emphasizes the growth, emphasizes the
good things that God is doing. That's what wisdom is like. That's why I began
today saying that genuine wisdom is relational wisdom.

It's the wisdom that's full of mercy and good fruit. What's wisdom like? Two
final words.

It's impartial and sincere. And that means if I'm wise, I won't disguise my own
weaknesses. It's sincere.

It's impartial. That means undivided, not wavering and vacillating. It's decided
and directed.

And it's sincere. It's without hypocrisy. When you start telling people what
your weaknesses are, the truth is they're not going to be shocked.

They already know your weaknesses. It's just that you and I are afraid to tell
other people our weaknesses. Everybody knows everybody else's weaknesses.

They're as obvious as the nose on our face. You're the only one who won't admit
it. But when I will, when I stop trying to disguise my own weaknesses, then I'm
showing God's wisdom in my life, and I'm developing a kind of relationship with
Him and with others that's based on wisdom.

Why do we walk around pretending that other people don't know our weaknesses? We
know other people's weaknesses. It's obvious to us, so they know our weaknesses.

So stop pretending. Don't disguise your weaknesses. Ask God for a heart of
sincerity that's just able to say, "Yeah, here I am.

I got some strengths and I got some weaknesses, and here they all are. God help
me to grow in my weaknesses, and God help me to build on my strengths. " We've
been talking about wisdom.

The question is, how do I get wisdom? Well, we talked about that in chapter 1.
How do I get wisdom?

I ask. Wisdom is a gift. And when I get this wisdom, when I ask for this wisdom,
God, I trust you for it.

Here's what happens in verse 18, "Peacemakers who sow in peace raise a harvest
of righteousness. " Notice, he returns here to this idea of making peace. This
is relational wisdom.

And the question here is, what harvest do you want? You see, if you push to get
something in your life with selfish ambition, you might get the project done.
You might get it done faster than anybody else, but that crop of getting that
project done more quickly than anybody else, that's not what we're about
accomplishing in this world.

Oh, we should accomplish tasks. And I'm all for getting them done as quickly as
we can, but that's not the crop that's going to last. It is righteousness that's
going to last.

And it has a lot to say to pastors, it has a lot to say to parents, it has a lot
to say to professionals. If I'm a believer in Jesus Christ, then righteousness
is the harvest that I'm going after. And so I need to treat everyone in every
situation with the kind of wisdom that we're talking about today.

So first, you be a peacemaker. That's your character. You sow in peace with
God's wisdom.

That's your actions. Let's pray together and just pray this simple prayer. God
give me wisdom.

I humbly ask, give me wisdom in my relationships. Help me to be pure and peace
loving and considerate and submissive and full of mercy and good fruit,
impartial and sincere. God I ask, you told me if I asked you would give, so I
pray that you would give me your wisdom in my relationships.

And I ask it in Jesus' name, amen.