The Wisdom that is from Above Part 2

Thank you that you are still doing miracles. You're still answering prayers today. And so, Lord, we just commit this service to you.

Pray that you'd be at work among us. Pray that you build your kingdom in Jesus name. Amen.

You can be seated. God bless you. Good morning.

Thank you. Um, last week we were preaching and, or I was preaching. And, um, about halfway through the sermon, I thought, man, we are not going to get through this thing.

You ever, have you ever been in that sense where you're sitting in a sermon and then the guy says, I haven't even gotten through my opening notes. And you're like 45 minutes in the whole congregation's like, Oh no. Uh, Timothy said there was a song.

How does that song go? Have thine own way till 12 o'clock. I'm getting hungry. Tell the preacher to stop.

That came upon me about halfway through. I thought this is not going to work. And then you're faced with this dilemma.

Do you rush through it? And then everybody's just like, things are flying and, you know, words are coming out funny or what do you do? Well, anyway, a brother came to me afterwards and why don't you just take my spot next week and I'll push off another week and finish up. So that's what we're going to do. Um, we were talking about the wisdom that is from above and we are like making some practical applications, looking at, uh, what it means to have the wisdom that's from above out of James chapter three.

If you want to turn there, we read, I read you a song last week and a couple of songs, Caleb read, read a couple of songs and, and I asked the question, is this just idealism? Um, some of the wording in there, um, trust and obey, not, not a doubt nor a fear can arise, you know, these words that are just so powerful, but sometimes they don't seem like our own experience. And I've been thinking about the song out of, uh, eight Oh four, like a river glorious, um, the second verse says this hidden in the hollow of his blessed hand. So you're this picture.

You're in the hollow, like in a stump of a tree, you're hidden in that, but it's his hand you're hidden in. Never foe can follow, never trade or stand. Now listen to this, not a surge of worry, not a surge of worry.

Ever get that where I've had it. Where like flushes up, like I see Willamette urology call on my phone and I feel this flush of like, Oh no, here it goes again. You know, uh, because you know, it's connected with feelings.

It's weird. I'll call, I'll call the hold music of Oregon health department. I'll call that.

And just that gets my heart going. Like it's weird. It brings back memories.

It brings back thoughts of surgery and cancer and all of that. It's amazing. We're, we're frail individuals.

Not a surge of worry, not a shade of care, not a blast of hurry. And then it says this touch the spirit there. What does that mean? Okay.

And you're, you're in a special place. It says where you don't have a, uh, it said not a, a surge of worry, not a shade of care, not a blast you ever feel like that in the morning, we've got a lot to do, right? We've got a lot of things on the schedule, not a blast of hurry. And then it says, touch the spirit there, you know, for you to be able to touch something means it's gotta be pretty close, right? Think what that songwriter wants us to get is when you are in this place where you are not letting the cares of this world, the hurries of this world, the, um, what does it say? Uh, the surge of the worries of this world, you can actually be in his presence.

He's so close. You can touch him. He can show you your motives.

He can reveal things to you. He can use your words as powerful. Who wants that? I mean, that, that is what we were built for to feel fulfilled, right? All of us, I think, desire that we all desire to know and walk with God.

And so James, just a practical lesson tells us how we can have that. He tells it and he calls it the wisdom that's from above out of James chapter three. So we're studying these, uh, and we'll just run back through them.

And I want to encourage us. This is probably the most, you know, when we think about these things, though, you know, it's pure and peaceable. We think of monks, you know, out in the middle of nowhere, like, Oh, you know, they don't have any shades of worry or anything.

And yeah, sure. You know, you go out in the middle of nowhere and, and have nobody around you and just have all the time to pray. And maybe you can get that, but this is one of the greatest evangelical, evangelical, how do you say the word? Tools for evangelism that we can have, you know, when you are in a surrounded by a world that is worried, hurried, full of care, and you're walking around, not with those things, you're walking around in peace.

You're rocking around with long suffering. It's, it's night and day difference. I've seen it.

I've seen it down many times. I don't want to bring any spotlight to myself, but I've seen it many times. I've heard people say, you're not like the normal Christian.

When we were in Belize, they said that. And I was, I wasn't doing anything different except trying to live out what the Bible teaches about these things. So this is a huge, um, tool and so much of Christianity has done injustice to Jesus.

Just think about these things. Uh, Dennis and I were talking about through the day, you know, like people associate Christianity with people drinking poison or, um, what are some of these other just crazy, nutty things, you know, um, what was the one we were talking about, Dennis? I can't remember now. Oh yeah.

Revivals with clowns coming in and whacking people on the head and, and they fall into laughter and they, and they think of Christianity, they think this is what we are. I mean, so we have, we already have that to contend with. Then they also think of all the hypocrisy out there.

Right? So anyway, James chapter three, let's read through this again. I want to pick it up. The wisdom that is from above in verse 17, the wisdom that is from above.

Now, remember we talked about last week, what is wisdom? And, and, and Trevor said, I think he thinks of her gray hair, right? Well, that is wisdom, but this is a different kind of wisdom. It's not just knowledge. It's not just me standing here preaching.

It's, it's actually actions. Look at that. It's first pure.

Okay. Then peaceable, then gentle, easy to be entreated, full of mercy, good fruits without partiality and without hypocrisy back to pure. We'll just quickly run through where we made it through.

Pure is translated. This Greek word is translated throughout the new Testament as one time, several times as pure, several times as chased, which we get the idea of a woman, you know, being chased. In other words, she's staying set apart for her husband.

She's not just going out with every man. She's staying separated. It's translated chase and it's translated clear.

Okay. So this is the idea of pure. And what I said last week was that it's got another group Greek and it's two Greek words actually, and it's not in King James, but the idea is there.

It's truly pure. So it's, it's the idea of it's genuine, it's sincere, it's real, you know, and so much fake out there. Uh, John says everyone that has this hope in him purifies himself, even as he is pure, that's our goal to purify ourselves and become more and more clear.

Like Jesus is clear, genuine, separated, clean. Okay. It's peaceable.

That's the next one. And we're doing a little test in our lives. Am I these things? Um, Jesus said, blessed are the peacemakers for they shall.

What? What's the promise? They shall be called the children of you want to be called the children of God. You want to be called the son of God. You want to stand up and hear the father say to you, you are my son on judgment day, you gotta be a peacemaker.

You gotta love peace. You gotta love to make peace. Do you find yourself enjoying a good argument more? Or when you find two people starting to get heated, do you feel the sense in you that what can I do to bring peace? I've, I've known somebody before they've noticed two people at odds and what they'll purposely do is bring up things that this person said in the positive to this person, and then they'll go over here and say what this person said in the positive, trying to bring peace between them.

Cause if you said the negative, it would create exactly the opposite. So are you looking for ways to breed peacemakers? Gentle. Last week I held up a piece of sandpaper and a piece of, um, magic eraser.

Both are abrasive, but one's very gently abrasive. The other is like, you don't want that on your skin. Gentle here is translated.

The Greek word is translated patient in your King James Bible. It's translated other places, gentle and other places. It's translated moderate.

Think about that. Think about a brother. He's just moderate of opinion.

He's not harsh. He's not strong. He's not coming down.

He's moderate, right? That's the idea of gentleness. Uh, the, we read the verse Romans 15 when we then are strong ought to. What's the word? The infirmities of the week bear the infirmities of the week.

Then it goes on and says, easy to be entreated. This is two words put together, a compound word, the word for easy or well, and the word for persuade. Or trust.

And so it's the idea. Are you in a person that is easy to persuade? Somebody comes to you with a fault. They pointed out, are you the type of person that says, okay, I want to work on that, or are you the one person that uses this word? And years ago, I say this because years ago, somebody pointed out in my life, they said, every time we come to you with something we see in your life, you use this word a lot, just, well, I was just meaning this, right? And what, what's the, what's the bigger, long, longer version of this word justify.

Right. That's what you're doing when you use the word just, and I always want to tell people in my heart, I really wasn't meaning it mean like, and I go on and on and on and on, but it comes across at the end of the day is that I'm trying to justify myself. I'm not, and it doesn't, I've been on the other side of that where I'm trying to point out a fault and it doesn't feel like the person's accepting it, right? They're not easy to be entreated.

They're justifying their actions. And I've been on the, on the other side where I'm trying to just show my heart, but realizing that now that's not easy to be entreated. It also could be easy to be persuaded.

So now think of the, uh, if I came to you trying to persuade you of something and you were just suspicious of me and I don't know, you know, that's not easy to be entreated. It's also that Greek word could be translated other places as trust. Are you skeptical? Are you just the skeptical nature of everything? And it's just not easy to bring anything up cause you're always skeptical.

Uh, that's the idea. So the idea of somebody that it's not easy, they're stubborn, it's their way and they justify it, right? Maybe, maybe each one of us have to look at this list and decide maybe one of these things I need to work on. I would think every one of us, something the Lord could highlight in our life this morning, there's something you got to work on right there.

Maybe multiple. Okay. So that's what we made it to last week.

Now I want to move on to full of mercy. Now, actually we kind of did get into mercy last week, but that's when I started realizing we were way out of time. Um, mercy is the benevolent mildness or tenderness of heart, which enables a person to overlook injuries.

You remember Jesus stood there or didn't stand there, but hung there on the cross and he said, forgive them. That was mercy. It's a tender heart, which gives a person the ability to overlook them injuring himself or to treat an offender better than he deserves.

Think of somebody that's offensive. Think of how you want to naturally treat them. Mercy says, I'm going to treat them better than they deserve.

Now, listen to this, the disposition or it's the, uh, it's your, I can't think of a word anyway, that tempers justice, tempers, think of tempers, uh, tempers. If you only had justice and it was just pure justice, it would be this really like coffee, like it's, I know some of you guys like black coffee, but I like a little cream in my coffee. It tempers the bitterness, right? And so putting mercy in with justice, it tempers it.

It brings a full taste, right? It brings, it brings it not so harsh. Uh, it tempers justice and induces an injured person to forgive trespasses and injuries and to forbear punishment or inflict less than law or justice will imply so, or warrant, sorry. So think about that.

You think about somebody, they did something wrong when you think, bring that justice down on him to the full extent of the law, right? Mercy says, no, give them, give them some leeway. Lee, you know, maybe cover off a couple of years. So what can we do? That's mercy.

What's your heart? Are you one? That's maybe a little strong on the justice in this sense. There is perhaps no word in our language, precisely synonymous with mercy. It implies benevolence, which maybe we could call kindness, tenderness.

It implies mildness. It implies pity and compassion and clemency, but only exercises towards offenders. So think about that.

We don't even have a word to say mercy. It has so many facets, right? But it's towards people that are mean to us. It's not towards our friends.

Um, mercy is a distinguishing attribute of the Supreme being or of God. I think we talked about this, about prayer meetings and a lot of, um, mercy isn't just sitting up here praying, but it's also doing right. It's not just praying for the poor people in India, but it's doing something about it.

So now I've noticed this in the conservative, in the liberal world, the conservatives tend to love justice, right? We've got borders, keep them there. We put big walls up, keep them over on their side. We'll stay on our side, right? It's not right to kill children, which is true.

Um, it's not right to have violence and it's about justice. It's about keeping the law, right? And the liberals, I was once a Republican. So I understand this thing.

The liberals are on the other side. They're kind of like, we should have mercy, you know, we should feed the homeless children here and we should go there, right? And so what we tend to do is because we don't want to be liberal, right? Is we, I remember feeling like this. I remember feeling like, Oh, I don't like that man be pamby stuff.

It's like, like soft and gushy, like, but that's mercy, right? That's mercy. And so what we tend to do is kind of shy away from that side because we want justice because, you know, that's associated with them, but notice this, that the fruit or not the fruit of spirit, the wisdom that is from above is not just mercy, but it's full of mercy. So we need to realize that in our own heart, as we look down into our heart and do an evaluation that Jesus was in some ways like the liberals, I hate to say, like, I remember seeing this bumper sticker.

It said, uh, how did it go? It said something about the guy with dark skin and, uh, from a, he was a foreigner and he cared about helping people in their health. And, Oh, we're talking about Jesus, you know? And it was, it was clearly a liberal sign, but it was like bringing a little bit of, Ooh, like a little stab in our heart that Jesus in some ways was like them, but in some ways he was like the other side. So we have to be very careful that we stay in the middle and not get sucked into the other, because mercy is part of God's heart.

It is, he's full of mercy. I mean, you can just clearly see a Republican would not hang on the cross and say, father, forgive them for they know not what they did. Right.

Isn't that true? You think he would? You do? I don't think so. Jesus, God himself said in the old Testament, listen to this. This really, really hit my heart years ago when I was trying to decide on this whole non-resistant thing.

He said, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked. I have no, it doesn't even bring him pleasure to watch wicked people die. You would think he would be like, finally you're dead.

But he says, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked. He says, but that the wicked would turn from his way and live. He wants him to live.

He wants him to repent. Even in the old Testament, he said this, it doesn't bring him pleasure. Jesus said this, blessed are the merciful.

And what's the rest of the thing though? The rest of the line, but they shall. So that tells me if I'm just reading like a little child, that if I want to have mercy from him, I have to be merciful. Who wants to stand on judgment day before God and him to say, okay, well, we're just going to go all justice with you.

Just, we're going to set mercy over there. I don't, I want mercy. Do you want mercy on judgment day? I want mercy.

And so the, the clear new Testament teaching from Jesus and his apostles were, if you want to have mercy shown to you, you have to show mercy to others. And that's interesting. That shows me that God's going to treat each person differently on how he judges depending on how we acted.

And James himself said this, listen to James chapter two, this, this, this verse here was one of the verses that convinced me, um, while I was coming through all the, trying to understand what Jesus meant, and if you were to take him seriously and would prefer to be non-resistant and all these things. Um, even James talks about the just does not resist you, but verse 13 of this chapter of chapter two, he says, for he shall have judgment speaking of God, for he shall have judgment without mercy. That's a scary place to be.

I'm going to judge you without mercy. He says that half showed no mercy. So your mercy is contingent upon how much you show mercy, but then listen to this, the, this next thing, and mercy rejoices against judgment.

That's a little hard to get when you're reading here and you might not understand what it means. Mercy, you could say glorious or wins out or triumphs over judgment. Uh, another translation says it is better to be kind than it is to judge people.

In other words, when God sees that you're a merciful person and you walk that way, it will win out, it will triumph on judgment day. It will actually be brought in and used as part of the balances. Isn't that amazing? So it makes you think, huh, I should show mercy.

We should be merciful. And it's so interesting. I was thinking about this as, you know, fishing and children fishing and, um, you know, having your special spot and, you know, all the bickering that goes on between that and, you know, when you're in that spot and your brother comes along and you're thinking, this is my spot, you move on, you know, find another place.

And you think if my dad comes around, he's going to take my side because I was your verse. Right. And yet from a father's perspective, you sit there and you're, Oh, I just wish my children would get along.

You know, I just wish we'd come out for a fishing trip and they'd enjoy each other. Right. And you know, really does a heart.

The, just an amazing thing for a father is when he goes here, let me tie your fishing pole for you. Let me, why don't you fish here? Right. Until your father's, you won't understand this, but when you see that your heart just was like, I mean, you want to, you want to cry.

It's just amazing. That's the same thing happening in God's heart. When he see, you know, that Muslim and that gangster and whoever else fill in the blank that you just despise was weaned by God too.

He was created by God. Just like all my five children were all came through the same hands, the same love and cherishment. And, and I have goals for every one of them and I want mercy shown to each one of them.

And it just does my heart good. The same thing for God. When he sees that Muslim, he says, I created that person.

When he sees that gangster, he says, I created that person. When you see that liberal, even when you see somebody that's a homosexual or messed up in their gender identity, he created them and he wants us to show mercy towards them. Right.

But we can get so caught up in that little childish way and just be like, move on. You'll find another place, right? That's what we do. And that shows we're not the wisdom that's from above.

We're the wisdom from the world, from beneath. So mercy, we should move on or else we'll have to go a third week. Uh, let's go on.

It says full of mercy and good fruits. And notice the word ends there. So that means it's also full of good fruits, full of mercy and good fruits.

It's full of both good fruits. I'm always going to think of brother Mike and all the sermons he brought about the fruit of the spirit and all those things we studied out. It's our actions.

It's our works. It's our deeds. It's our conduct.

It's how we live. It's what the world sees in us, right? Are good fruit. And have you ever bought an apple before and it looks so delicious and crisp and you bite into it and it's like pithy.

And I hate that. And I'm always worried, like not too bad, but a little bit like, is this going to be a good one? Like I'm trying to make a good judgment. Is this going to be good? Right.

And that's what the idea is. Are you going to be a, is your life like that? When you bite into it, it's crisp and it's juicy. That's what makes a good apple, right? Not pithy and sometimes moldy in there.

That's horrible. Or oranges. You ever get the ones that you peel them off and like the ends are dry and it's like no flavor.

We're down in Belize, man, those things are all a flavor. Amazing. You can't even taste oranges up here like they are down there.

Um, that's what we're talking about to where the world tastes it. And it's like, that is so different. It's so amazing.

It's so delicious, right? It's full of good fruit. So I want you to look at your life this last week. Not what you want it to be, not what it is in this very second, as you sit there wholly in the pew, but what was it this last night? What was it yesterday? What was it the day before? Was it a tree bearing good fruit? Like brother Mike went through love and joy and peace and long suffering and the rest of it.

The problem is we live in a place that choke good fruit. Jesus talked about this. He said, the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, the pleasures of this life, all are things that choke out our good fruit.

If we're not watchful, they'll turn into pithy apples and dry oranges. Okay. Let's go into partiality.

The next one says without partiality. Anybody want to take a guess what partiality might mean? Okay, good. That's a good word.

What's another word? Favoritism. Okay. Close.

Although the next one is hypocrisy. So we could do that one and keep it separate, but that's very close. Partiality and hypocrisy run right line in line together.

Anybody else? It's another word for favoritism. How about bias? Here's the definition inclination to favor one party or one side of a question more than the other and undo bias of minds towards one party or side, which is apt to warp the judgment partiality springs from the, okay, let's talk about it. Springs from the will and affection.

So we're going to have two boxes here. These little boxes are in your heart. We'll put your head up here.

Okay. There he is. So you have two parts.

Partiality springs from the will and affection rather than the love of truth and justice. Okay. So we're going to put, we'll just put truth over here and we're going to put feelings over here.

Now, what this definition says is partiality springs from here, not here. Christians don't run off of things springing from here. At least if you're operating out of the wisdom, that's what I'm about.

If you are operating from the wisdom that's here on this earth, sorry, if I'm doing it wrong, I don't remember what I was pointing out, but you'll be operating from here, so let's do a little test. Whose fault is it? This is a little game. Whose fault is it? A policeman shot a black man.

Whose fault is it? Now, if your heart went right to an answer, it probably sprang from right here. Right. And it could have been either one.

I could probably get half of you raising your hand. It was the black man's fault and the other half was the policeman's fault. But that's bias.

That's favoritism. And that's partiality. It came from feelings.

Okay. Next one. Israel and Gaza are at war.

A hundred missiles were shot. Whose fault is it? Did you say both? That's, that's probably getting better. That's probably getting much closer to the truth.

Um, okay. Joe was excommunicated from his church. Now, if you're an anti-standards kind of guy, you might say, well, it's the church's fault.

If you really like church structure and all that, you'd say it's for sure Joe's fault, right? But it all sprang from right here, right? You didn't hear the truth. See, a wise man listens for the truth and listens to both sides of the story. You don't really ever even have the whole story until you hear both sides.

Um, and he, he knows how to distinguish in his heart when it's truth versus feelings. That's what we need. We need the wisdom that's from above that says you are operating in feelings right now.

Jesus said not to judge according to appearance, but to judge righteous judgment, righteous judgment is judging by truth. Okay. So let me show you this little picture here.

Anybody seen this picture before? And can you tell me her name? Miss Liberty. Lady justice. I'll hold it up high.

Lady justice. Now just take a good look at it. Study it a little bit.

Now there's symbolism in this picture. First of all, who can point out the justice? What part of the picture is point is justice. Hmm.

A sword. Okay. She's got a sword.

What part of the picture is pointing out impartial impartiality. She's blindfolded. What's that Matthew? Balance is okay.

That's that. Yeah, that's true. Right? So see, it's basically saying this.

We're not going to go by feelings. I'm not going to know if you're my sister, my brother, my friend. I don't know who you are.

I'm not going to judge you by any kind of bias. I'm going to hear the truth. There's the balances.

And if required, judgment will come. That's how a Christian actually should be, right? It should be impartial. That's what that picture is.

Um, is display. It's not partial. And that's what brings corruption in government, in police, in judges, when they take that blindfold off and those balances start going the wrong way.

That's impartiality and it's corruption. We need to be not that people should look at us as Christians and say, these people are impartial. They don't play favorites.

They don't play bias. They're impartial. They will call out if it's wrong, whoever it is, and they will call out if it's right, whoever it is.

Okay. When we don't do that, James says we're judges of evil thoughts. Thought about that.

When you're partial, you're a judge of evil thoughts. When somebody walks to that back door and you say, Oh, well, I wrote some examples down, where is that page? Okay. Some guy walks in with skinny jeans, pointed shoes, pink socks, or the guy with blue jeans, plaid shirt, short combed hair, which one do you kind of feel like I'm going to go talk to that guy? Right.

But see impartiality says, Lord, who do you want me to talk to? Which one of those do you want? I'm going to look for an opportunity. And if it's the skinny, I'm not saying I want my kids wearing skinny jeans and pointed shoes, right? But it's still, it's impartial. It's, it's, it's not making decisions based off of feel.

Okay. Or one more, uh, tie dye, bell bottoms, rainbow, curly hair versus black slacks, white shirt, and clean cut. I mean, I, I struggle with these things like just anyone else.

Uh, I would feel the same way. I would want to go hang out with the guy with the slacks, but that's being partial. Okay.

So how can, uh, let's see, did we finish this? It says good fruits without partiality and without hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is the idea. It's, it's the Greek word is just meaning an actor, hypocritics or hypocrites, however you say it.

But in their day, they say, oh, you're a good hypocrite. You're a good actor. Did you want to come hypocrite for us? Because we really want to be entertained.

Can you come hypocrite? Um, Jesus said to be aware of that. He said, beware of the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. He said, why? Because on the outside, they look really good, but inside they're like rotting dead men.

They're like a beautiful coffin sitting up here with all that pine oak and all, you know, stained polyurethane and, and you open it up and outcomes is stench of a dead person. That's what hypocrisy is. And it's very dangerous.

Um, it assumes an appearance of piety and virtue when it's destitute of true religion is a definition. The Pharisees did it. If you remember when Jesus said, tell me where the baptism of John came from heaven or of men.

And they reason among themselves. If we say this, if we say heaven, then they'll say, well, why didn't you? But if we say of men, the people will still see that's hypocrisy. That's stemming from feelings and their own good.

It's not stemming from truth. It's, it's, it's being partial. And that's why partiality and hypocrisy come hand in hand.

Remember when John the Baptist, Jesus said to the Pharisees, he said, you know, you say that about John the Baptist, you say of him, when he comes eating bread and drinking, you say, he has a devil, then I come and I come eating and drinking and you say a wine beaver and a glutton, see that's hypocrisy. It's, it's, it's just flipping around and doing whatever you want to, to, to safeguard yourself. It's not about the love of the truth.

Okay. So these are the things that we need to work on. These are the things that should be in our lives.

These are the things that we should see in each other's lives. We should be seeing these things growing greater every day. Now look what that says.

The verse before it says earthly wisdom. It descends not from above verse 15, this bitter envying verse 14 and strife in your hearts. Now we might read that and think better.

Envying that's not me, strife in my heart. That's not me. I must be good.

Right. Do you know bitter just means harsh and envying is the Greek word zealous. So all it means is a zealous just means strong desire.

In fact, it's, it's translated zealous other places. So it just means harsh, strong desire. So if that, if that's you ever, if you ever have a harsh way to get your own way, then you have bitter envy and strife.

It is a desire to put oneself's purse forward, a partisan, a fractitious spirit, which does not disdain partisanship. In other words, you don't hate impartiality. You kind of like it.

You have a fraction of spirit that's strife in your hearts. So how can we get rid of that? I have a little illustration in there. Below in this cup right here, this is a picture of your heart and all of the stuff you can pre-program for, you know, when you come out of the womb, you don't have to work on being an evil person.

It just comes naturally. It's the wisdom that's from below. It's sensual.

It says, you know, sensual just means earthly. It's like the animals, the animals, they don't mind fighting. They don't mind one upping each other.

They don't even mind killing each other if they can be in charge, right? That's how the, it's the wisdom from below. It's the wisdom from this earth. It's sensual.

That's what your heart is like without Christ. And some of us think, well, what do I, Lord, I just want more wisdom from above. If any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God.

And they think, I just need more wisdom. God, just do it. Just snap your finger and do it.

And they go back on the next morning. They pray again. Lord, just give me more wisdom.

I need wisdom. I need to be like this. And then they go on living their life.

And it's like, they're expecting God to just do this, but it doesn't seem to help. Right. It, the more water it didn't help at all.

I put water. I put the wisdom from above. It didn't help anything.

It's still dirt, but in the very first verse here in verse 13, that we started last week. It says, who is a wise man and dude with knowledge among you let him show out of a good conversations, his works with meekness of wisdom. What I want to propose is that meekness is the idea of looking down into your heart and seeing the disgusting things like partisanship, like partiality and hypocrisy and that pit the apple, or I'm not gentle or I'm not pure.

I'm not a merciful person. And instead of just saying, Lord, can you just give some wisdom from above? We employ meekness and I want to say meekness. I think is this idea.

We just, we empty ourselves. In fact, the name of the definition of meekness is this. It says in the old Testament, it's the, those who are meek were wholly relying on God rather than their own strength.

This is their own strength to defend against injury justice. Thus meekness toward evil people means knowing God is permitting the injuries they inflict that he is using them to purify his elect meekness is the opposite of self assertiveness and self interest. It stems from trusting God's goodness and control over the situation.

The strong definition of meekness is afflicted. It is miserable. It is lowly.

Jesus said, come and learn to me. I am meek and lowly. The idea of meekness isn't God just send some wisdom down from above so I can be a little bit better.

It's becoming miserable. It's becoming so disgusted and emptied of yourself that, and this happens, this takes a process by the way, but it's emptying yourself. It's coming to a place where you despise your own wisdom, right? Cause he can't really fill anything.

I need to rinse this out a little bit to make my illustration, but he can't really fill anything until it's empty, right? And then when it's empty, he can, he can pour in the wisdom that's from above and he can pour in that purity and gentleness. And, you know, it becomes clearer and clearer in our lives as we walk, but it requires emptying. It requires coming to a place where we are higher.

And it even means a depressed mind. I was shocked to see that in the strong, the depressed mind, but it's like, you're so afflicted about, about yourself and how it gets in the way. And to the point where you just start to empty it, you start releasing it.

So if there was one thing I would get, hope you to get from that is that illustration that you might've been praying for years and years that the God would do this in your life, but God has to have an empty vessel. He has to have a vessel that's willing to be filled with these things. And if we're still so full of self and looking out here with self-confidence, he can't, he can't do that.

He can't make you impartial. In fact, D.L. Moody said this, the great evangelist of the 19th century said, the hardest thing for God to do is to make a mankind. Think about that.

The hardest thing, you know, God could speak the world and in existence, he is almighty, all powerful, omniscient, omnipresent, but to make you meek, that's you know why it's hard because he gave each one of you here a free will. Each one of you has a choice to harden your heart or to empty yourself. And he wants to make you meek.

He wants by the end of your life that you, people can say that person had these fruits in their life. He wants you to walk in the light as he is in the light, which means it's moving, which means he's constantly showing you things more and more. You stop in the darkness and the light keeps moving.

What happens if I'm on a trail up to our campsite in the middle of the night, we're walking and that somebody's got the flashlight. I just decided to stop. It's going to get darker and darker.

It requires you constantly walking, walking as he's showing you these things, but he can do it. So empty yourself with meekness, it says of wisdom. First Corinthians three 18.

We'll close with this. Let no man deceive himself. First Corinthians three 18.

If any man among you seem to be wise in this world, let him become a fool that he may be wise. So let's, let's, let's go to the Lord and ask him to show us where we aren't these things. And let's, um, let's ask him for the grace and the strength to become meek, to empty ourselves and seek for the most important wisdom of all time.

And that's the wisdom that's from above. It's far more important than the wisdom of farming or the wisdom of how to do medical or the wisdom of accounting or computers or the wisdom of building sheds or trying to think of some other things that might be wisdoms. But those are all small little things.

But to walk in the know with God, you have to become a fool. You have to empty yourself and you have to say, I don't know, Lord, show me out. And he wants to do it.

He promises if any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God who giveth to all men liberally. He wants to give it liberally, but he can't until you're gone, right? Until you're out of the way, but let him ask with faith, nothing wavering. He wants to give you that.

You need to believe he wants to give it to you, but you have to empty yourself. Thanks for your good looking. Thank you, brother, Jeremy.

The wisdom from above, pure, peaceable, gentle, easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits without partiality and without hypocrisy. I wonder how many of you would say, I have that kind of wisdom. Can you raise your hand? Okay.

How many want that wisdom? Raise your hand. You want that wisdom? Okay, good. How many, how many were blessed today to be here? Good.

How many want to go put it in practice? All right. And how many of you have a testimony to share? A few of you. Okay.

All right. We'll open up for those of you who have a testimony to share. Go ahead.

What did God speak to you about? Yes. So I was able to talk with him a little bit and that was a blessing for me to open up and be a blessing and encourage everybody else. So this message is really good.

I also want to be clear this week, a little bit different on the subject, but I listened to the sermon on non-existence, because I feel like in my personal life, I have been becoming more and more abstracted and really starting to come into doubt. I mean, I know non-existent people are non-existent, I agree with that. But I had that tendency for that.

I had the sense of almost being embarrassed when I talked with one of my co-workers about it. A lot of nominal Christians really think about the arms or just the respectful thing to help the country. And though I believe in non-existence, I was finding it hard to really, you know.

So after listening to this message, it just really impressed upon my heart again, just how much non-existence is non-existent. It's not just the Anabaptists that did it, you know, the early Anabaptists. Knocked him off of it.

He means his life very much. I mean, he can't even look back to it, considering he already filed it. He didn't argue that.

It's such a blessing, yeah. Yeah, I don't want to ever get to a place where I'm saying that God is a peaceful God. He's never, never going that far.

Amen, yeah. Do you have a link or a name of a sermon or something you want to recommend or not? Abner Kaufman on non-existence, okay. Yeah, I know when it comes to some of those teachings of Jesus, it is sometimes a stretch when you have people who are so fervent for the Lord, but seem to kind of ignore what Jesus said about certain things.

But Jesus said, you know, if you are ashamed of me and my words, I'll be ashamed of you. But if you're not, then if you acknowledge me and my words, then I'll acknowledge you. And that's not to judge those who appear that they're not, but it's to bless them.

If we can bless them by pointing out these things or by holding up the words of Jesus, holding up Jesus and his words. And maybe in our life, they can do the same for us of something that we're missing. Hey, you know, we'd like to hold up another area of Jesus' teachings that you are perhaps missing.

We need to be open to that too. That's a good thing. All right, good.

Thank you, Benjamin. Who else? There's a 50-50 ratio, but we argue that it doesn't mean there's nothing in self-love. It's an emptiness of self to be able to love God with everything.

It's an emptiness of self to be able to forgive, to show mercy, and not be offended, and to live for others. And it's like, this is the practical application of the command that we have to empty ourselves. It's good stuff.

That's good. Thank you. Who else? Oh, wow, okay.

Okay, thank you. Who else? How's he doing physically? Is he in the update? I think when I first heard it was saying he was dying. Is it cancer or what? I'm not even sure.

I didn't have enough time in there to ask any questions about those kinds. Do you know? He's still in there though. Don't know that either.

Okay. Okay, well, good. That's good to hear.

Thank you. Yeah. Live by truth and show mercy.

And sometimes, maybe even our conclusions are right. You know, they deserve whatever, punishment or whatever. But what about us? Do we deserve that punishment? So that's where the truth comes in.

And if we deserve punishment, but we received mercy, how much more should we show mercy to others who also deserve punishment? Good. Thanks. Who else? Yeah.

Yeah. Yep. Amen.

That's tough. When you hear a really good presentation of one side, it's pretty easy to jump on that side. But I think you're absolutely right.

There's probably two sides. And it could still be that, hey, they're guilty. But after hearing their reason why they're guilty, now at least you understand where they're coming from.

But still, okay, maybe they're still guilty. But sometimes they're not even guilty. I mean, it just looked like they're guilty from the accuser's perspective.

And it's pretty amazing. Yeah. Hear both sides.

I think there's a verse in Proverbs to that too. You mentioned Proverbs earlier. One presents his case, and it seems right until the other one comes and presents his case.

So yeah, it's a good rule of thumb to go by. Yep. Yep.

Amen. Just say it the way it is. I've had that thought already myself.

That was probably my flush. Do you have a number? What's that? Do you have a phone number? I don't. They, yeah, I don't know.

Those people are kind of hard to get a hold of. So no, I didn't try. I probably wouldn't take theirs either if I didn't know who was calling.

So I guess it's a two-way street. I was just thinking that's not the way to go about it, but there is. I don't know if it makes sense.

Yeah. But that's John's case. That's not John's case.

It is. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Okay. Thank you. We'll also send a check.

Good. And he said, we were told to not let the dog out of the campground. My employee went in there, left the door open, the dog ran out.

So we were chasing all over town looking for the dog. And then he said, we got to the painter. He said, we got paint on the carpet.

He said, hi, I'm Al. He said, stop. Everything.

He said, OK. And then he said, can you do a mask? He said, there's no paint. He said, there's polos.

He said, right. He said, what are you going to do? He said, I can't jump the bridge. He said, the first thing you do is try to confuse them.

In other words, we'll make a bridge. And the way he came across, he said, it's got to come from where you left the dog out. He said, as a matter of fact, it didn't happen once.

It happened twice. So that was like, in the heat of the moment, it's not very fun. But by the time this all happened, pretty much all of it was all over.

I mean, now we can laugh. Fifth is, we're going to have some Christian basics here with you. But just try to confuse them.

Try to see where they're coming from. Just never justify yourself. Just simple things like that.

You did wrong. And try to hear them out. And just make a list of all your wrongs.

And keep asking. And see if, by the time it's all said and done, you'll be OK. The dog got home safely.

Oh, good. Cleaned up on that. And it's good to sit there and listen.

Because right away, it's easy for us when they turn on us to sit there and justify ourselves all the way through. Yep. Yep, that's right.

Justifying yourself. How do you use the word just? I just did this or just that. Speaking of dogs, got a call from Samuel Krupp yesterday.

He said two brown dogs showed up at their house, and he don't know whose they are. So if anybody knows who is missing two brown dogs, call Samuel, I guess. OK.

Well, anybody else have something to share before we close? Why don't we stand? We'll pray. We'll pray again for that little girl, Charlie Mae, and the Mahler family. And all of us as we try to put this into practice.

So let's bow for prayer. Father, we come to you in the name of Jesus. Thank you so much for your goodness to us today, for hearing about this wonderful wisdom from above that's pure and peaceable and easy to be entreated and full of mercy and good fruits without partiality and hypocrisy.

We want that, Lord. We don't claim to have it, but we really do want it. We want to put it into practice.

We want to become more and more empty of ourselves, more and more full of the love of God and the love for others. So, Father, we're asking you for help to do that. And we pray for this little girl, Charlie Mae.

Pray that you would touch her right now where she's at. Pray that your holy angels would be around her. And that, Lord, if it be your will, you would separate her from this evil situation.

Lord, in the meantime, protect her from it. Protect her from the danger that's there. And I just pray that you would raise her up to be a godly young woman with godly influences around her.

And I pray for the Mahler family and the part that they have to play in this. I pray, God, that you would just open up doors and close doors and show yourself strong and work miracles and have mercy on this girl and those around her. We just pray for that miracle.

Pray that you'd be with us in our fellowship time. Be with us through this afternoon. Be with us through this week as there's travel plans.

And I pray for safety, and I pray for, again, your kingdom to come and your will to be done on earth like it is in heaven. Thank you. We bless you.

In Jesus' name, amen. Thank you. You're dismissed.