Sermon Text: James 1:5-8
Below is a sermon manuscript from January 19, 2024. Watch the sermon here.
Introduction
Raise your hand if you have all the wisdom that you will ever need. If you recognize that you still need wisdom, then guess what? This message is for you. Throughout Scripture, we see conditions upon receiving something from God. Over and over again, we hear that it is recognizing that we need something from God. Think about it. Jesus says that he didn’t come for the healthy but for the sick. 1 John says that if anyone has sinned, they should go to God, who is faithful and just to forgive sins. But he also tells us that if someone says they are without sin, then they deceive themselves. Similarly, when we say that we don’t need more wisdom, we deceive ourselves. But that leads us to ask: where do we get wisdom, and how? Those are the questions that this passage in James answers.
Do: Go to God for Wisdom
Go knowing that God is the source of wisdom
The idea that wisdom is from God is not unique to this book of Scripture. As we will see throughout our time in the book of James, he pulls from a lot of wisdom literature. This is true of Biblical wisdom passages and extra-Biblical Jewish wisdom texts. Remember, he is writing to Jewish Christians, and so there are a lot of allusions to various texts that he knew and likely his audience knew. We don’t need to know these to get the main idea of what he’s communicating, but they can be insightful.
Think about Proverbs 2:6-8 which says,
For the Lord gives wisdom;
from his mouth come knowledge and understanding;
7 he stores up sound wisdom for the upright;
he is a shield to those who walk in integrity,
8 guarding the paths of justice
and watching over the way of his saints.[1]
God is the giver of wisdom. From him comes knowledge and understanding. Now, it is important to distinguish wisdom from knowledge. Wisdom is not the same thing. I want to be careful because the way Scripture uses these terms can have more overlap than how we typically use them today. But still, we can make a distinction between knowing something – having information about it – and having wisdom in how to apply that information given the various circumstances we find ourselves in.
Kent Hughes, in his commentary, says this,
Wisdom, therefore, in distinction to knowledge, is understanding for living. And Biblical wisdom is understanding for living which surpasses earthly wisdom. It is temporally and eternally practical. A. T. Robertson, the towering genius of Greek grammar, calls wisdom “the practical use of knowledge.”[2]
Ralph Martin says it this way,
“For the Jewish mind wisdom meant practical righteousness in everyday living.”[3]
Scripture teaches that fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Psalm 111:10; Proverbs 9:10). For the Christian, this is not a distant reverence but one that is near to us in the person of Jesus Christ. 1 Corinthians 1:30 tells us that Jesus has become God’s wisdom for us. In our union with Christ, we are united to the wisdom of God and transformed. But we are also called to ask for wisdom. As we have already seen in the book of James, this is often provoked by the context of difficulty. In trials and hardships, we are made aware of our lack of wisdom. We can pretend to have it all together. We can put on a front. Or we can turn to the source of wisdom. Turning to the source means admitting we are not the source of wisdom. Now, God often uses secondary means to provide us with wisdom. But he is the ultimate source of all true wisdom.
Go knowing that God delights to give wisdom
God delights to give wisdom but we are often hesitant to ask. One reason is that we may not recognize the truth that God is a God who gives generously. We mentioned at the beginning of the series that James is not an overtly theological book the way that many of Paul’s letters are and yet we do see truths about God’s character and nature on display throughout the book. Take this verse, for example. Let him as God, James says, and then gives two aspects of the God who gives. It is this foundation of what we know about God that fuels our confidence in our request to this God.
Think about it if this sentence were different. Let him ask God, and it will be given to him. That is a perfectly true statement and is a shorter sentence. Why waste the ink? We believe that Scripture is God-breathed and that every word is what God meant for us to have. So why add that God is generous, why add without reproach?
Let’s look at “generous” first. This is a word that scholars actually debate a little bit about. It can also mean a single-mindedness. It’s translated as sincere devotion in 2 Corinthians 11:3 and sincere heart in Ephesians 6.5. 2 Corinthians also uses this word for generosity, as does Romans. It could be that the selfless concern for others is how the idea of generosity came to be. Motyer Writes, “This is how the ‘giving God’ gives—with a selfless, total concern for us and with an exclusive preoccupation as if he had nothing else to do but to give and give again.”[4]
This idea of single-minded devotion also works well in the passage because it contrasts the person who is double-minded and unstable. God is not like that. It is his character to give in abundance for the good of those who ask in faith. To not give is to betray his character. God is a giving God.
Go to God for wisdom, regardless of your past
There is another aspect within this verse. It tells us how God gives wisdom. He does so without reproach. The idea of reproach has to do with how God views the one who does the asking. He does not hold things against us.
Have you ever gone to someone for help only for them to mock you? Hey, could you teach me how to ride a bike? Are you kidding me what kind of person doesn’t know how to ride a bike? Could you help me understand this? Only an idiot needs someone to explain that. Maybe you have encountered this in the past, or maybe you have been afraid that someone would respond with this kind of hostility toward you. But that is not what we see in this passage. God is not looking to shame us when we come to Him for wisdom. He is looking to bless through wisdom. Kent Hughes puts it like this,
God will pour wisdom over us without putting us down or demeaning us. It is easy to wear out our human benefactors after they have repeatedly given to us, but not so with God. We will never encounter divine irritation, like “I gave you a head, why don’t you use it?” or “What did you do with what I most recently gave you? Have you ever been thankful?” Rather, his response is, “I’m so glad you asked. Here it comes!”[5]
Don’t: Be Double-Minded in Your Request
We can be divided in our trust
While God is passionate about giving wisdom to those who ask, we can be more hesitant in asking and with the right motives. It might seem like a bit of a contraction to say that God gives and doesn’t revile and then to say you better ask with faith, or you’re not going to get anything. One seems to be fully in relation to God and his character, irrespective of us, and the other seems to be fully in relation to us. So which is it? We saw that God does not revile or turn us away when we ask him. But this is when we ask him in sincerity. These things are not opposed. Think of the person who is praying to God for wisdom and thinks, “Yeah, this isn’t going to work.” Their double-mindedness works against their request because now – because they are not prepared to receive what God has for them. God is his care, and delight loves to give to others. But the idea of doubt here is not someone who is struggling to believe and yet persevering, but it is a person who is given in to a double-mindedness. John Bunyan phrases it this way, “Mr. Facing-both-ways.”[6]
The image that James paints is a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. This is not a wave that is coming up to shore but one in the middle of the sea. One that doesn’t have a definite shape but is ever-changing. It’s moving but going nowhere definite. It’s something but nothing permanent. It’s forever vacillating. This is the person who James is describing. The one who doubts. Again, there is a sense of double-mindedness or division within.
When our kids were young and went sledding, often I would use one foot to hold their sled in place, and the other would be on the hill. If they all piled on or the hill was steep enough, they would start to go down the hill. This would cause me to start doing the splits. Eventually, I would need to make a decision, let them go down the hill or jump off the sled with them. This can be a little like us with one foot in the wisdom of God and one in the wisdom of the world around us.
Often, this splitting is driven by our desires. Asking God for wisdom in faith means submitting ourselves to how he answers and to his timeline to answer us. Wholeness in the Christian life comes by humbling placing ourselves before the Lord and trusting in Him. Maybe you have had people in your life who have asked you for advice only to get mad at you for what you suggest. Their attitude toward the advice given betrays their request for advice. They truly didn’t want your opinion on the matter; instead, they wanted you to affirm what they had already determined. But that is not a heart of humility. For Christians, when we approach God in faith, we are not asking God to stamp our premade decisions. We are – in effect – asking for God to transform us to align our wills with his. To align our decisions with the decisions he would have us make. Often, when we ask God for wisdom in the midst of a trial, it’s not the wisdom to see the solution that is revealed but the wisdom to see our lack of trust to see our faulty or selfish judgment.
We don’t need to be perfect in our pursuit
I want to reiterate that this is speaking of a double-mindedness. Lacking humble trust in the Lord. James is not trying to crush the believer who is struggling with doubt.
Is the Lord demanding perfect faith? Is he insisting that we never waver? I do not think so. If our faith had to be perfect, few would ever receive anything, for we are all doubters. Abraham and Moses were great men of God, but they were not perfect in their faith. Jesus honored the stumbling faith of the distraught father in the midst of testing—“I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief” (Mark 9:24). Moreover, faith is a gift of God (Ephesians 2:8).
In mentioning the double-minded man, James is not referring to one who is wrestling with doubt, but one who has two minds. He looks to God; he says he has no need. We must ask wholeheartedly for the wisdom we need[7]
This is further alluded to when James tells us that this person is unstable in all his ways. This is not occasional doubt but a characteristic of instability. It’s what Doug Moo calls “‘spiritual schizophrenia’… a basic division in the soul that leads to thinking, speaking, and acting that contradicts one’s claim to belong to God.[8]”
Have you ever fallen into this trap? You desire wisdom from God, but only when it’s convenient, only when it aligns with what you think is best for you in that situation. Your concern is wisdom on your terms, for your purposes, not for God’s glory and your ultimate good. Think about the words of Paul in 2 Corinthians
3 But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. 4 For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough.[9]
We heard from Jenny this morning about the wonderful truths they teach. God uses ministries like Pregnancy Resource Clinic to soften hearts and prepare people to receive His wisdom. But there are competing ideas of wisdom as well. These competing ideas distract and destroy while promising prudence. May God protect us, and may we hold firm to his wisdom in the midst of the chaos of the age.
Conclusion
Why do we know that we have to have faith if we are going to receive God’s wisdom? Because we can see throughout the Scriptures that not only is God the source of true wisdom, not the world, but that the most central things in life rise above human understanding. As we see in Scripture, the central truth of the Christian faith – the reality that Jesus Christ came to this earth to save sinners through his life, death, and resurrection. This is foolishness to those who are perishing, Paul says, but to those who are being saved, it is the power of God. That is what we celebrate this morning. The transcendent wisdom of God in providing a way for us to be united to him. The God who delights in giving wisdom is the God whose wisdom provided a way for us to be united to Him in faith. In this, we can boast of the generosity of God.
In the same passage that we read about God’s transcendent wisdom in the gospel of Jesus Christ, we hear these words
And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, 31 so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”[10]
Our greatest hope is not the wisdom that we have in this life but that we have a life that is united to wisdom. Wisdom is not a payment that we pay to God but a gift that flows from God’s abundant love for us in Christ Jesus Our Lord.
[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Pr 2:6–8.
[2] R. Kent Hughes, James: Faith That Works, Preaching the Word (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1991), 27.
[3] R. Kent Hughes, James: Faith That Works, Preaching the Word (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1991), 27.
[4] J. A. Motyer, The Message of James: The Tests of Faith, The Bible Speaks Today (Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, 1985), 39.
[5] R. Kent Hughes, James: Faith That Works, Preaching the Word (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1991), 29.
[6] As quoted in R. Kent Hughes, James: Faith That Works, Preaching the Word (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1991), 30.
[7] R. Kent Hughes, James: Faith That Works, Preaching the Word (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1991), 30–31.
[8] Douglas J. Moo, The Letter of James, The Pillar New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI; Leicester, England: Eerdmans; Apollos, 2000), 63.
[9] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), 2 Co 11:3–4.
[10] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), 1 Co 1:30–31.
Boonstra Babble 