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Who We Are - Sermon, Sunday, October 12th, 2003
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James 3:13-18 as follows —
Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show it by his good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. Such "wisdom" does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, of the devil. For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice. But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. Peacemakers who sow in peace raise a harvest of righteousness.
It seems quite obvious. If a farmer wants to harvest a crop of sweetcorn, in spring he will plant sweetcorn in his field. If he wants to raise a crop of wheat, he'll plant wheat. If he wants to grow soybeans, then that's what he will sow in the ground. It is obvious; you don't need to be a farmer to understand that you will harvest what you plant. You sow what you want to grow.
That's true in agriculture. It's true in gardening. And it's true in our relationships with other people. In our personal relationships — in the home, in the family, in the church and in fact, in all our relationships — we will harvest what we plant. So, what kind of crop would you like to produce? What would you like to see growing in your relationships? Do you really want a crop of tension and disagreement, anger and argument, bitterness, strife, disorder, just all kinds of unpleasantness? In one Bible word, that would be a crop of unrighteousness — a harvest of all kinds of bad things, things that are not pleasing to God and not at all pleasant for us!
Surely what all of us would like to see growing in our relationships would be things like agreement, unity, harmony, togetherness, peace, and all the good things that grow with those. We could call that a crop of righteousness. This Word of God written by James speaks about two different kinds of crops, two different ways of planting, two different types of seed. It reminds us of this simple truth about all our relationships with other people: WE WILL HARVEST WHAT WE PLANT.
There's no doubt that relationships are important to us. If you had to make a very short list of things that mean the most to you, the things that have the greatest impact on you, your relationships would be right up there at the top. It's the source, at times, of your greatest happiness and at times your greatest grief — the relationships you have with other people. Here James invites each of us to examine the way we relate to other people. He asks, "Who is wise and understanding among you?" He wants each of us to ask ourself, "Am I wise and understanding?" Now, if you are a Christian, and that's how James addresses us, then you are already wise in a very special way. Paul called it being "wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus." That's the wisdom the Holy Spirit gave you when he called you to faith in your Savior. That's the wisdom that understands that God loved you and saved you through his Son. It's the wisdom that appreciates God's grace and his undeserved gift of eternal life. It's the wisdom that trusts in Jesus, relies on his life and his death and his resurrection for the forgiveness of sins and for the righteousness that God demands from you.
Through faith in Christ you are wise for salvation. That's the wisdom that comes from above. In this letter, as you know, James is talking turkey to Christ's people, people who have faith. To them, to us, he says, "Don't just listen to the word; do what it says." He tells us that "faith without deeds is dead." He says you ought to show your faith by what you do. Here, too, in our text, he's talking about how faith in Christ affects our lives, specifically, how it is to show in the way we relate to other people.
Who's the wise person? "Let him show it by his good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom." You and I need to put our spiritual wisdom to work in our relationships. And the one thing above all that should characterize our relating to other people is what James calls "the humility that comes from wisdom, or, "wisdom's meekness." That, my friends, is a truly spiritual quality; it means being humble and gentle toward everyone.
You know that the great Model of meekness is Jesus Christ himself, God's eternal and almighty Son who did not come to be served but to serve. He's the One whose mind we are to imitate; St. Paul wrote: "Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus, who humbled himself even to death on a cross." His humble meekness got you your salvation, your new status as God's child, your inheritance of heaven and all that goes with it. That humble meekness is God's way of doing things, and it is to become ours, too, yours and mine.
It's not, of course, our natural way of doing things. You and I, as born-with-sin human beings, do not naturally relate to other people in humble gentleness. There is, James says, another kind of "wisdom" by which people deal with each other, and he asks us to look in the mirror to see if this if this is true of us. You see, if I consistently have problems in many of my relationships, chances are the real problem is right here; it's the old, "I don't have a problem; I am the problem!" thing.
In other words, if the crop that keeps showing up in my relationships is one of tension and disagreement and argument and anger and all sorts of unpleasantness, maybe it's because of the seed that I've been planting. James describes it as "bitter zeal and selfish ambition." Now, that is a really bad combination! Zeal (being fired up about something) is neutral, but "bitter zeal" means being fired up in a bad way. You combine bitter zeal with a me-first, self-centered attitude, and what you have is some really bad seed.
What he's describing is, for example, when I have to be right all the time and at any cost, no matter what it does to the other person. Or when, in my relationships with the people in my family or my church or wherever, it's always "my way or the highway." Or when I'm never willing to yield, to compromise, to gently let the other person have his or her way. Bitter zeal plus a me-centered way of looking at things — that bad seed will not produce anything good. In fact, he says, "Where there is zeal and selfish ambition, there is disorder and every bad thing." Every bad thing — who wants that in his or her relationships?!
But it's not surprising that bad things grow, because that kind of "wisdom," that seed that we're sowing, is "earthly, non-spiritual, and of the devil." No wonder the crop is unrighteousness — all kinds of things that are not pleasing to God and are not pleasant for us. If, on looking in the mirror, this is what I see in my life — some or it or a lot of it, there's one thing for me to do. Admit that I am the problem, admit that this is sin in attitude and word and deed, and that I have no excuse for it. And then, in contrite faith, turn to Jesus my Savior and take comfort in the fact that he redeemed me! He not only took away my guilt, suffering on the cross what I truly deserved, but he also, by the way he lived, provided the flawless obedience that God demands from me.
Knowing that in Christ I am righteous in God's sight, that God has made peace with me, I can simply relax! I can relax because the pressure's off, because I am no longer cursed by the law, nor do I have to keep it perfectly to get to heaven! I can relax, and pray that the Holy Spirit would work in my heart, so that I more and more have the mind of Christ. That I not only have this heavenly wisdom, but actually put it to work in the way I treat everybody around me. I can pray that the Spirit will enable me to sow good seed in all my relationships.
So what's that seed like? James describes this wisdom, this good seed, as "first of all pure." It's a clean heart that loves God and my neighbor. Then, it's "peaceloving" — it never picks a fight, does not go around looking for something to disagree with. It is "yielding" — willing to listen, to compromise when possible, to let the other person have his way, even someone under our authority. It's "obedient" to those over us in authority. It's "full of mercy and good fruits" — it just never says or does anything that's bad for the other person, but dispenses what's good and helpful. It's "impartial" — it deals with every situation in the same way, not swinging wildly from one extreme to the other. It's "non-hypocritical" — it never wears a mask to disguise what's really going on inside. (It doesn't have to, because what's going on
That's the wisdom that comes from above. It is good seed, and when we sow it there will be a good crop. Of course, I can't control what the other person does, but I can control me. And what you and I then say and do will have a powerful impact on all our relationships. We will harvest what we plant! Or, as the Word assures us here: "Peacemakers who sow in peace raise a harvest of righteousness." Rest assured, dear Christians, that when we sow in wisdom's meekness, when we plant in peace, all kinds of good things will grow! Amen.