Katy’s Hill-n-Dale Children’s Ministry Weblog

Part 2 about true and false wisdom: do you remember that last week we learned about false wisdom? This week we’re going to look at what true wisdom is, wisdom that comes from God. Well really, we’re going to look at what true wisdom does. For real wisdom isn’t just a set of smart things to believe (that’s “knowledge”), but it motivates certain kinds of behaviors. What kind of behaviors you ask? Well, good question, I’m glad you asked! We’ve got a nice list in our verses tonight, which kind of remind us of some of the fruit of the Spirit that Paul writes about. And just like the fruit of the Spirit come from…well, the Spirit, that is, God, so too do all of these behaviors come from above, that is, from God. Here they are; are you ready? First pure, then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. Whew! Take a minute to ask yourself if you are filled with godly wisdom, or earthly wisdom. Now, let’s put your answer to the test. Let’s come up with a recent experience and ask some questions about it. Remember back to your car ride over to the church just recently. Close your eyes and picture who was in the car with you. Don’t say anything; just remember. What did you talk about? What did you and others do? Try to remember as much about that car ride as you can. Okay, now let’s ask our questions. Try to answer each one of these silently: Were your actions on the car ride pure? Think about your motives, why you do what you do. Were you trying to be noticed? Were you trying to pick on a sibling? Were your actions pure? Next one: Were your actions in the car peace-loving? Do you truly enjoy peace and work to make peace, or do you enjoy conflict? Next, were your actions considerate? Were you listening to anyone else and their stories, or just your own? Fourth, were your actions submissive? Were you being submissive to those in authority? To your parents? To God? Fifth, were your actions full of mercy? It doesn’t matter how right you are about something; if you are trying to prove the wrongness of someone else, then you aren’t full of mercy towards that person. Next, were your actions full of good fruit? Will good come out of your actions on the car ride, or more tension and stress? Next, were your actions impartial? Were you showing favoritism to one person over another? And finally, were your actions sincere? Were they genuine? Did you really mean what you were saying and doing, or deep down were you angry, grumbly and bitter? If you do something good only in order to be noticed by others, don’t you think God sees and knows that? So, how did you do on the test? This was just a way for us to take a short span of time and think about what kind of wisdom is in our life. We can ask these questions about every single thing that we say or do. If something doesn’t match up with these characteristics of true wisdom, then it is not a godly action. James then writes about the harvest of righteousness that peacemakers sow. Do we want to be peacemakers? What then, should our harvest look like? It is fruit, the result of conduct which is pleasing to God, just like those characteristics that we just went through. What does your fruit look like?

¹³Who is wise and understanding among you?  Let him show it by his good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom.  ¹⁴But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth.  ¹⁵Such “wisdom” does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, of the devil.  ¹⁶For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice.

James 3:13-16

winter hiking hat-- true vs. false wisdom

We humans have had serious problems from almost the beginning of our beginning.  Most of those problems (aka “sins”) have been caused by selfish ambition and envy.  Remember Adam and Eve?  They were the perfect couple; literally.  When God created them, he said it was “very good.”  He created them (and us) in His image.  The problem came because God gave them a choice.  He said that they could eat of every fruit in the Garden of Eden… except for the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.  That’s like saying, you can eat any or all of these 99,999 jelly beans.  But oh, this green one here, I don’t want you to eat it.  Well, you know what happened:  They couldn’t resist the temptation to eat of that one tree, and their selfish ambition cost them their home, their life as they knew it, and brought sin into the world.

Now remember their children, Cain and Abel?  Cain killed Abel in a jealous rage.  Jealousy over what?  Over God’s love, of all things!  Cain was filled with bitter envy because he knew God was more pleased with Abel’s sacrifice, because Abel gave his best and it was true sacrifice.  So Cain killed Abel.  Rather than improve his own behavior, he got rid of his competition.

God created each one of us too, with the freedom to make our own choices.  And this is a good thing.  We have a choice in what we do.  We can choose to do what God wants of us, or we can choose to go against (disobey) God’s intentions.  We can choose to let jealousy rule us, or we can choose to let God rule over our jealousy.  We can choose to let our selfishness be in control of our lives and our decisions and the way we treat others, or we can choose to let God be in control of our ambitions.  We can choose to be governed by God’s boundaries, or we can give in to temptation, like Adam and Eve, and discover disorder, discontentment, and discord.

James, in our verses, talks about two kinds of wisdom.  Both kinds of wisdom come from making choices—choices that stay within God’s intentions for us, or choices that step away from what God wants.  We’re going to look at heavenly wisdom next week, but this week let’s look at what this false wisdom looks like.  What are some descriptions of false wisdom?   (Bitter envy, selfish ambition, earthly, unspiritual, of the devil, disorder[ly], every evil practice).

Now think of the opposite descriptions of false wisdom.  [good practice, of the Spirit, humility, sweet goodwill, heavenly, of God.

Earthly vs. heavenly           

Unspiritual vs. of the Spirit

Of the devil vs. of God

Bitter envy vs. sweet goodwill

Selfish ambition vs. humility

Disorder vs. peace

Evil practice vs. good practice

 These descriptions of false wisdom match up with Cain’s attitude when he killed Abel.  You can see that, while we might suppose that some of these images aren’t “bad” on their own, when we let ourselves be filled with them instead of with true wisdom, then serious problems arise—problems like Cain murdering his brother Abel.  Instead, James tells us that we need to have humility that comes from true wisdom.  We’re going to learn what that true wisdom looks like this next week.