Sermon Transcript

0:00:14.0

Well, good morning to you.  I am told that Fairfax County, Virginia has more advanced degrees per capita than any other county in the nation.  Did you know that?  If you want to have an intelligent, thoughtful conversation, this is the place to live, isn’t it?  A Ph.D. is as common in northern Virginia as suntan oil in sunny California.  Now, where would you like to be this morning?  Seriously, when we moved to a little year ago we had some friends tell us, “You’re gonna meet some fascinating people, intelligent people, smart people, people who have degree upon degree upon degree, and who work in just some really fascinating places and areas.  Sometimes they’re not even able to tell you where they work.”  And we’ve met some people like that.  With all due respect, we’ve met some really interesting folks here in northern Virginian and right here at Immanuel Bible Church, some really smart people.  People who, when they walk into the room, they really all are the experts in their particular area of study.  I mean, some of these folks are like walking Wikipedias.  You know what I’m talking about?  Some of you maybe even wrote all the content on that online encyclopedia.  I don’t know, but just really bright, intelligent people.  And it really makes for fascinating conversation here in our nation's capital.  But maybe you’ve noticed something that I've kind of picked up on from time to time.  And present company excepted of course, but sometimes intelligence, education, and just the everyday, common sense wisdom of life don't go together.  You ever notice that?  Some you are laughing like, “Yeah, I’m married to somebody like that.”  Okay?  But sometimes that's true.  When it comes to just, sort of, common sense, everyday wisdom, I was reminded of this by watching a television commercial, of all things recently, advertising, of all things, peanut butter.  Picture this. There were two toddlers, two toddlers who run up to their mother and say, “Mom, we’re hungry, we’re hungry, but there is only one piece of bread left in the kitchen.  What are we gonna do?”  And not to panic, mom, wise old mom, looks at her two toddlers and says, “Let's cut the piece of bread in half.”  And so she takes a knife and her favorite jar of peanut butter and spreads peanut butter all over this single remaining piece of bread in the kitchen.  And before she's done, one of her children says, “But, mom, what if his piece if bigger than my piece?”  Sounds familiar, mom?  What would a mom do in a situation like that?  Well, she looks at the child and says, “Well, why don’t you cut the bread in half?”  And so the child grabs the knife, slices the piece of peanut butter bread in half, and before he can reach for the piece that he wants, he hears moms say to his brother, “Now you get to choose which side.”  Oh, come on.  That’s really good.  I want to say three cheers to mom, wise old mom, who’s able to take the case of the selfish toddlers, and case closed.  She knows how to deal with that.

0:03:33.7

It reminded me a little bit of the wisdom of Solomon.  You remember Solomon in the Old Testament?  Solomon was made king after his father David passed on.  And Solomon prayed and asked God for wisdom.  He didn’t ask for wealth.  He didn't ask for honor.  He didn’t ask for long life.  He didn't ask to win over his enemies, which were many.  He asked for a wise and discerning heart in order to lead God’s people.  And God was so impressed with Solomon’s request that He granted the request, made Solomon the wisest man on the planet, and, in addition to that, gave him great honor and great wealth.  And the Bible tells us that when Solomon reigned as king, that people from all over the land traveled long distances to come and meet Solomon and have conversations with them.  One of them was a gal by the name of the Queen of Sheba.  And she came to meet in Solomon’s court, the scripture says, to test him with difficult questions.  You ever had somebody show up with some difficult questions?  Well, the Queen of Sheba shows up one day in Solomon’s court, testing him a difficult questions.  And by the end of their conversation she's impressed.  She's saying to Solomon, listen to this, “The half of the greatness of your wisdom was not even told to me. You surpassed the report that I’ve heard.  In other words, Solomon, I came because of your great wealth and the vast amount of wisdom, the reputation that you had.  And five or ten minutes with you just exceeded all of my expectations.”

0:05:16.7

Solomon became famous for a particular case that he solved.  I call it the case of the panicked prostitutes.  There were two ladies of the evening that got pregnant, the scripture tells us.  And they delivered their children both in the same house and on the same day.  Later that night, the children were asleep with their mothers in their beds.  But one of the mothers rolled over and lay on top of her child, and the child died.  She was grief-stricken.  So grief-stricken, the scripture says, that she pulled the old baby crib switcheroo.  She took her dead child, put it over here next to the other mother, grabbed the living child and brought it back to her bed.  And she thought she had everybody fooled.  But as the early morning sun began to peek up over the horizon, it brought to light what really happened.  And the mother of the living child…you know, they got into this debate, this child custody case.  And it became so heated that they brought the case to Solomon.  And Solomon listened to the two women.  He heard them pour out their hearts.  And then he must have quieted the crowd and quieted the court room and said, “Somebody get me a sword.”  And somebody handed Solomon the sword.  And he says, “I'm going to take this sword and chop the living child in half.  And you can have one half and you can have the other half.”  And you could have heard the hush in the room.  You’ve got to be kidding me!  What is Solomon doing?  Is he out of his mind?  But Solomon knew exactly what he was doing.  You see, he had the wisdom of God poured into him.  And he proposed the sword principle here because he was looking for the reaction of the two mothers.  And by their much different reactions, the mother of the living child was revealed.  And he handed the child to her.  The case of the panicked prostitutes was closed.

0:07:20.7

Now, wouldn’t you like to have that kind of wisdom?  The ability to skillfully apply truth to a variety of situations in life.  Whether you’re a mother with two toddlers who are fighting over a piece of bread, or you’re Solomon ruling over a case, or whether it’s wisdom that you’re trying to determine how to pull the lever in the voting booth in November.  Or the kind of wisdom that you need to lead a family as a father or as a mother today.  Or the kind of wisdom just to have a relationship was somebody in your neighborhood, or wisdom you need in the workplace, whatever it might be.  Wouldn’t you like to have the kind of wisdom that goes beyond degrees on the wall, that goes beyond education, that goes beyond intelligence, and that really gets down to the common sense, everyday wisdom of life, and even more than that, Biblical wisdom, God's wisdom that comes from above.

0:08:21.9

Now, that brings us back to the book of James, James 3:13-18.  Now, we’ve been saying all along that the book of James is New Testament wisdom literature.  James is less impressed with the degrees we have on our wall as he is with the deeds that show the wisdom that is in our hearts and in our minds.  One scholar, in fact, summarized James 3:13-18 by saying “wisdom is not measured by degrees but deeds.”  This is James’s point.  “It is not a matter of acquiring truth in lectures, but of applying truth to life.”  If I were to summarize the big idea in verses 13 to 18, it would be this- that wise actions speak louder than words.  Remember, this comes on the heels of James 3:1-12 where James is talking about the tongue.  He has a lot to say about what we say.  And that he devotes a good bit of his editorial space in his letter to that matter.  Right on the heels of all that discussion about the tongue, he gives us the highest concentration of discussion in his book about the subject of wisdom.  What is it?  Where do we get it?  How do we apply it?  And in the context here, most certainly, he’s talking about the wisdom of our words. And what he is suggesting to us is that our wise actions do speak louder than our words.

0:09:59.4

Let’s look at verse 13 of chapter 3.  And James begins with another one of his rhetorical questions.  He loves these questions.  “Who among you is wise and understanding?  Let him show by his good behavior his deeds in the gentleness of wisdom.”  He says, is there anybody among us who is wise and is a person of understanding?  If you are, stand up and show me your degrees from the university.  Show me your Bachelor’s degree.  Show me your Master’s degree.  Show me your Ph.D.  Show me the three Ph.D.’s that you have.  No, he doesn’t say that, does he?  He says if there is anyone who is wise and understanding among us, “let him show by his good behavior his deeds in the gentleness of wisdom.”  Our deeds, according to James, are more a reflection of the wisdom that we might have than are the degrees that we might have earned along the way.  The best universities cannot give you wisdom.  I don't care if you got your discount knowledge from the junior college, as the country western song says, or you went to Harvard University.  Just because you got a degree, it doesn’t make you wise.  Universities are in the business of dispensing knowledge.  And we’re very good at that in our country today.  We know how to get knowledge and to get a lot of knowledge.  But some people are so educated they can’t even get a job, for instance.  So educated, but they don’t know how to take the vast knowledge and information that they have and put it to work for them in the highly competitive world in which we live.  You can almost be over-educated.  And, likewise, there are some believers in Jesus Christ who have vast and knowledge about the Word of God stored up in their minds.  They’ve been to Bible study after Bible study after Bible study and been in the church since they were just little kids.  But when it comes to the skillful application of truth to life, we just need to work on that little bit.  That’s what wisdom is.  Wisdom as the skillful application of truth to life.  It's taking that truth of God’s Word, that which we know to be true, and saying, “How do I take this and apply it in a skillful way to this situation or this situation or that situation?”  James says, is there anyone among you who is “wise and understanding?  Let him show…”  He’s a show-and-tell guy.  “…let him show by his good behavior his deeds in the gentleness of wisdom.”  

0:12:55.1

One other thought here.  James’s question here reminds me of one that the Apostle Paul posed to the Corinthians in I Corinthians 1 or 2.  Paul is writing to a very sophisticated audience that is, you know, deeply involved in Greek philosophy and Hellenistic thought from the 1^st Century.  And he says to the Corinthians, “Where is the wise man?  Where is the scribe?  Where is the debater of this age?”  I mean, he’s really challenging these folks who are well educated and well thought out philosophers of life.  He says, where is the wise person?  Has not God chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise?  And that’s one of the great aspects of the gospel and of the cross of Jesus Christ, that through the foolishness of the cross, the wisdom of men is made to be foolish.

0:13:50.1

Now, James goes on here.  And in verses 14-18 he compares and contrasts wisdom from above and wisdom from below.  A heavenly wisdom and a hellish wisdom; those two sources of wisdom.  But before we get there, let’s ask and answer the question in a broader biblical sense.  How do we get wisdom?  We know how to get knowledge.  We go to a university.  We go to a place of higher learning.  We get knowledge.  We get a degree.  We check that box.  We get the stamp.  All of that.  But how do we obtain and acquire wisdom?  Four or five ways the scripture would tell us.

0:14:28.5

Number one, at the top of the list, of course, is to fear God.  Proverbs 1:7 says that, “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of understanding.”  The starting point in wisdom, the starting point in knowledge is a deep and reverential respect for God and His Word.  Do you know most of the major universities like…oh, let’s just say Princeton, Harvard, Yale, name the Ivy League ones that were some of the ones that started at the founding of our country.  They started understanding this principle, the fear of God.  They’re based upon biblical principles.  They understood that knowledge in itself apart from God is just a bad route to go.  But since then, sadly, we have taken God out of the classroom and off the college campus.  And the fear of the Lord is not found in our education, our public educational system today.  But this is the biblical place to begin.

0:15:34.3

Secondly, I would suggest a passionate desire for wisdom is important here.  Read through the book of Proverbs sometime.  Proverbs is one of five Old Testament books that make up what’s called the wisdom literature of the Old Testament.  It’s Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Solomon, the book of Job.  These are the wisdom books.  And the book of Proverbs is wisdom in a horizontal sense, about our relationship with one another.  Psalms is vertical wisdom, our relationship with God.  Song of Solomon is God’s wisdom on love, marriage, sex and relationships.  Ecclesiastes is wisdom about the meaning of life.  Job is God’s wisdom about how to hang tough in tough times.  You read the book of Proverbs though, and it’s just chock full with encouragements to passionately desire and run after wisdom.  To get wisdom.  To love wisdom more than you love life itself.  To love wisdom more than you love gold and silver and wealth.  In fact, Solomon who collected and penned many of these Old Testament proverbs, the richest man who ever lived, also said that wisdom was of more value than wealth was.  Do you passionately desire it?  Do you hunger for it and thirst after it?

0:16:56.1

Thirdly, you’ve got to know Christ.  And maybe this should be near the top of the list as well.  But in Luke 2, the early chapters of Luke, we find little glimpses into the early childhood of Jesus.  And we’d always like to learn a little bit more there.  But what the scripture tells us is that here was a child who grew in stature- that was physically- in stature and in wisdom and in favor with God and with men.  Paul, when he was writing to the Corinthians in chapter 1 and verse 30, he talks about being in Christ, that unique Pauline phrase that describe our relationship with Him.  That being in Christ means that Jesus Christ is the wisdom of God to us.  Oh, you might be able to gain the wisdom of the world and apply that in some way.  We’ll talk about that in a moment.  But you’ll never know the wisdom of God apart from knowing Jesus Christ Himself and having a personal relationship with Him.

0:17:58.6

Fourthly, love and read the Word of God, the Bible, this book right here, the holy Word of God.  I love what we found in the Old Testament book of Psalms, and particularly Psalm 119 as it relates to David’s passion and love for the Word of God.  I mean, David couldn’t get enough of this stuff.  Listen to this from Psalm 119 beginning in verse 97.  “O how I love Thy law,” David says.  “It is my medication all the day.  Thy commandments make me wiser than my enemies, for they are ever mine.  I have more insight than all my teachers, For Thy testimonies are my meditation.  I understand more than the aged,” he says, “Because I have observed Thy precepts.”  You see, you may have all the advanced degrees in the world, but that doesn’t mean you’re wise.  David says, “I have more wisdom than my teachers do.”  And just because you have age and experience on your side, that doesn’t mean you’re wise either.  David says here, “I understand more than the aged, because I have observed Thy (0:19:00.2) precepts.”  It began with a deep love for the Word of God, a passion for God’s Word.  He says, “O how I love the Word of God.  I think about it all day long.”  Some of you think about God’s Word for 30 minutes or maybe an hour a week on Sunday, and you never give a second thought to it through the rest of week.  And you wonder why you’re making some of the foolish decisions over and over and over and over again that you’re making, present company included.  David loved the Word of God.  And from it, he knew the mind of God and the mind of Christ (0:20:00.2) and found wisdom in the scriptures.

0:20:02.1

And then finally, how do you get wisdom?  You pray for it.  You pray for it in faith.  That bring us again back to the book of James, only this time chapter 1.  Do you remember these verses?  We looked at them several weeks ago.  Verse 5, “But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all men generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him.”  God loves to dispense His wisdom, but He’s looking for us to ask for it.  Again, do you need wisdom as you walk into the voting book in November?  Which lever do I pull, Lord?  Do you need wisdom in some family situation?  Do you need wisdom in some work situation?  Is your life, kind of, at a crossroads, maybe at a fork?  Do I go this way, Lord, or that way, Lord?  Maybe both ways are…there’s not a right or a wrong way, but you just need wisdom.  Ask God for it.  He’s generous with His wisdom, the scripture says.  And He won’t give it to you with reproach.  By that, I take that to mean that He’ll never say, “Well, that’s a stupid question.  You should figure this out on your own.”  No, He doesn’t do that.  But in faith, not flip-flopping from one day to the next day.  Do I believe God?  Do I not believe?  You know, James says don’t be like the person that wavers, but ask God.  Pray.  Seek His face.  Passionately desire Him and the wisdom that He can dispense.

0:21:32.5

Well, let’s go back to chapter 3.  And let’s look again at verse 13.  James says, “Who among you is wise and understanding?”  Who has that discerning heart?  “Let him show by his good behavior his deeds…”  And then I love this phrase, “…in the gentleness of wisdom.”  True wisdom, James says, is characterized by a gentle spirit.  The word here, really, is meek.  Maybe some of your translations say that.  Don’t confuse meekness with weakness.  Meekness, the word here translated “gentle”, is the picture from the animal kingdom of a horse.  It’s power under control.  And true wisdom is characterized by a gracious gentleness that communicates power in a situation, but it is power under control.  You see, wisdom never comes upon a situation and just, sort of, pushes its way in.  That’s not wisdom.  It’s not like a snorting bull that runs through the narrow, cobbled streets of Pamplona, Spain.  You ever seen the running of the bulls?  The wisdom of some people to get in front of a charging bull, to get out in front of them and run through the streets.  I mean, that’s real common-sense, wisdom, isn’t it?  That’s real smarts there.  Happens ever July during the San Fermin festival.  And you’ve seen those bulls running through the streets and goring people and trampling people and the blood spilling and all of that.  Wisdom doesn’t show up that way.  It’s not like a snorting bull.  Knowledge shows up that way sometimes.  In fact, Paul says knowledge puffs up, doesn’t it?  Knowledge can become arrogant and charge into a situation like a snorting bull, trampling over people and goring people in the process.  Casualties on one side or the other.  Be careful with the knowledge that you have.  James says, “Let him show by his good behavior his deeds in the gentleness of wisdom. “  Your knowledge, your experience, may give you tremendous power in a situation.  But your wisdom will teach you how to temper that and be gentle and gracious with it.

0:24:02.3

Now, James goes on to describe two sources of wisdom, wisdom from above and wisdom from below.  A hellish sourcing wisdom and a heavenly sourced wisdom.  Let’s talk first about the wisdom from below.  In verse 14 he says, “But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, do not be arrogant and so lie against the truth.  This wisdom is not that which comes down from above, but is earthly, natural, and demonic.”  He goes on to say, “Where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder and every evil thing.”  Real quickly here, he characterizes worldly wisdom two ways.  He says it’s characterized by bitter jealousy and by selfish ambition.  These are twin cousins you never want to meet, let alone have to be true of yourself.  He says these exist in the heart.  Bitter jealousy and selfish ambition are sort of like stealth bombers.  They love to fly below the radar so nobody can see them.  I can’t peer into your heart, and you can’t peer into my heart and really see whether bitter jealousy and selfish ambition resides.  But, like a stealth bomber, they love to fly under the radar, come into a situation, and explode the situation to where there is organizational chaos, emotional chaos, and relational chaos.

0:25:43.7

Let’s talk about each one of them.  Bitter jealousy.  Green is the favorite color of the person who is bitterly jealous because he’s eaten up by envy.  Bitter jealousy is what threw Joseph into the pit.  Remember the story in the Old Testament?  Joseph had a dream, a dream that God placed in His heart.  But young Joseph didn’t know how to share that dream, and he told his dream to his brothers.  And his brothers became bitterly jealous.  Joseph’s dream became their nightmare.  That’s the way it is with bitterly jealous people.  And they took Joseph, and they tossed him into the pit, sold him into slavery.  They said, “Ah, you got it coming to you, buddy.”  Bitter jealousy driving that.  Bitterly jealous people resent other people’s success.  Have you ever worked with somebody who is bitterly jealous?  Maybe you’re on a work project assigned to a work group.  Now, somebody who is bitterly jealous…again, this hides.  It resides in the heart like a stealth bomber.  Nobody would ever come out and say, “I am bitterly jealous.” But quietly they’re saying to themselves, “I would rather the project fail than for it to succeed without me getting the credit for it.”  That’s the way bitterly jealous people work.  And like that stealth bomber, they work their way into a situation and explode the situation, because they really hate you for your success.

0:27:11.0

Now, selfish ambition is a twin cousin.  And selfish ambition…there’s kind of a love/hate relationship we have with selfish ambition, because we really do like ambitious people.  They’re go-getters.  They have drive.  They have hustle.  They’re determined.  They’re motivated people.  Ambitious people are the people who get things done in our society and in our culture.  And we need them.  They’re high D, driven kinds of folks.  But the selfishly ambitious are all about themselves.  They’re driven to, kind of, fulfill their own ego.  Now, they do this very stealthy, very quietly.  Sometimes not so.  Selfish ambition and good ambition are easily confused.  I mean, the apostle Paul said to make it your ambition to be pleasing to God.  That’s a good thing.  He also said make it your ambition to lead a quiet life.  That’s a good thing.  Paul himself said, “I am ambitious to see the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ preached to places that have never heard His name.”  Paul was ambitious about that.  But he was careful not to be selfishly ambitious, all about his own ego, all about “me”.  No, he was all about Christ and making Him the famous One.  

0:28:35.9

James here says that a certain kind of wisdom is characterized by these twin cousins, bitter jealousy and selfish ambition.  And he says don’t be so arrogant and lie against the truth.  You’ll never align yourself with the truth of God’s Word as along as bitter jealousy or selfish ambition have got the best of you.  And when somebody points in out in your life- maybe one of those accountability friends that can speak the truth to you, and they say, “Hey, you might have a little bitter jealousy here or a little selfish ambition driving you here,”- don’t be so arrogant as to push the truth aside and to acknowledge it in our own lives.  He says there are three sources of this.  And James, you know, pulls no punches here.  He says it’s earthly, it’s natural as opposed to spiritual, and it’s demonic.  This is hellish wisdom, straight from the pit of hell.  To use another New Testament trilogy, it’s the world, the flesh, and the devil that drives this kind of wisdom.  And James says the result is disorder and every evil thing.  If you’re in a situation and there’s nothing but organizational, emotional, or relational chaos happening, you can be sure that these twin cousins, bitter jealousy and selfish ambition, are showing up somewhere.  Be careful of that.

0:30:08.4

Now, James shifts gear here, and he talks about a wisdom that is from above, a heavenly wisdom.  Verse 17, he says, “But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy.  And the seed whose fruit is righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.”  He lists seven characteristics here of God’s wisdom, reminiscent a little bit of the Fruit of the Spirit.  You find some of that in there from Galatians 5.  Also reminiscent a little bit of the Beatitudes.  You see some of those characteristics.  James was influenced, of course, by the Sermon on the Mount.  But let’s…we can’t spend a lot of time on each one of these, but let me give a passing glance to them.  He says this heavenly wisdom is first pure.  Purity is not one among seven characteristics here.  It is the most important characteristic and influences all of the others.  I think of Psalms 19:8 that says, “The commandments of the Lord,” this book, the Bible, the Word of God, “the commandments of the Lord are pure, enlightening the eyes.”  It’s the pure, unadulterated, unpolluted truth of God’s Word that will bring wisdom to a situation that will enlighten our eyes.  Historically, we went through what was called the Enlightenment Period.  And during the Enlightenment Period people kind of pushed God aside.  You’ll never truly be enlightened with wisdom unless it flows through the purity of God’s Word, also through a pure life, and, in the context of James here, pure tongue.  A polluted heart, a polluted mind, a polluted tongue, can never speak the purity of wisdom into a situation.

0:32:10.6

He also says that this wisdom from above is characterized by peace.  It never creates a situation where there is division and rivalry.  Bitter jealousy and selfish ambition do that.  They do it well.  But this kind of wisdom, when it comes to the table, is peaceable.  And it’s peace-loving.  It flows through the heart of somebody who wants to bring peace, not division, to a situation.  It’s also gentle.  Here’s that word again.  It doesn’t snort like a bull and create casualties as it comes in.  There’s a gracious gentleness.  A power under control, as this heavenly wisdom is brought to the table.  Fourthly, it’s reasonable.  In the margin of your Bible it might say “willing to yield.”  I like that.  You know, knowledge, again, puffs up.  Knowledge is arrogant.  Knowledge says, “I’m right; nobody else is.”  But wisdom says, “Hey, maybe I understand the situation well, or maybe there’s a side that I haven’t heard yet.”  It’s reasonable.  It leaves itself open to yield to the other party.  I think of how the Lord dealt with the nation of Israel in the Old Testament through the prophet Isaiah.  He says, “Come, let us reason together.”  Even the Lord God of heaven and earth had a reasonable side to Him.  It’s full of mercy and good fruits.  James has already talked some about mercy, hasn’t he?  Being merciful to others.  The Sermon on the Mount.  If you give mercy to others, you will receive mercy.  But if you’re unmerciful to others, don’t expect God to be merciful to you, Jesus said.  Full of good fruits.  Number six, unwavering.  There is a sense…not in an arrogant way, but when you get God’s wisdom for a situation, there is a confirmation that comes in your spirit.  And you’re not doing the flip-flop thing- you know, on this side one day, on this side the other day- but James 1:5.  Not like the wave of the sea that waves back and forth.  But when God gives you wisdom you have a confident faith.  And then, finally, without hypocrisy.  What you see is what you get.  The person that is characterized by God’s wisdom is true to appearances.  Not putting on a mask.  Not putting on a show.  But what you see is what you get.

0:34:43.4

And James says there in verse 18 that the fruit of all this is a righteousness, a right relationship with God and the right answer for the situation, a righteousness that is sown in peace by those who make peace.  When believers walk according to God’s wisdom, the result is peace and righteousness and harmony.  And isn’t that what we want?  Doesn’t mean we can’t agree to disagree about something.  But as we dialogue about it, the result is peace and harmony and the fruitful works of righteousness.

0:35:29.3

One thing to keep in mind, especially as it relates to Solomon, our friend that we started with early in this message, Solomon had all this wisdom.  But if you study Solomon’s life, he kind of missed the skillful application of it, didn’t he?  And that’s where I want to leave our discussion today.  You know how to get wisdom.  You maybe know now what the difference is between heavenly wisdom and wisdom from below.  But as God gives you wisdom, maybe you’re praying about a situation this week, and God has dispensed some wisdom to you.  What are you gonna do with it?  Are you gonna skillfully apply it in the situation by faith that God has given to you?  Or, like Solomon, are you going to ignore the wisdom of God, and your life tracks in a foolish direction?  Let’s pray together.

0:36:29.3

Father, thank You for Your Word.  Thank You for wisdom from above.  Thank You for Your son Jesus Christ who embodies that.  For the wisdom that even showed up at the moment of creation and with wisdom spoke the worlds into existence.  Father, we are asking for Your wisdom today.  Wisdom on where we need to go as a country as we face a presidential election in these next several month.  We pray for our nation’s leaders.  We pray for those that are running for office.  We pray for every one of us that has a decision to make in the voting booth.  Give us Your wisdom, Father.  We pray for wisdom as fathers and as mothers as we raise children.  Give us great wisdom, Father, to not only decide between two toddlers who may struggle with a piece of bread, but even more difficult situations like that, Father, that we need your heavenly wisdom.  We ask you for that.  We need wisdom for church leaders, Father, as we guide Immanuel Bible church into the future.  Would You place Your steady hand upon us as a church and upon the leaders of our church?  That we would lead, not with selfish ambition and bitter jealousy, that that would not even come close to characterizing our leadership; but that heavenly wisdom…that You would dispense it into our hearts and into our minds and, yes, even into our feet, so that we can skillfully apply and put into practice the ministry of Immanuel Bible Church.  Father, if there is anybody here today who doesn’t know Christ who is wisdom to us, but doesn’t know Him as Savior, I pray that today would be a day of salvation and a starting point in their life and in their ministry.  And we pray this in the strong and powerful name of Jesus, our Savior and our Lord, amen.

0:38:54.7