James, Modern Apps for Our Faith Part VI

I invite you to take your outline of your North Way notes, please, and we're going to continue on in this study of James that we've been in for quite a season of time, and let me open with a word of prayer. Lord, I pray as we come to this moment, and we just allow Scripture to speak to us, and what you put in my heart today would penetrate through all the distractions, the stuff, the things in our minds. Lord, renew our minds, and by so doing, Lord, cause our soul and our spirit to be awakened to hear what you say to us. Thank you for the amazing exchange that can happen in these next moments. In Jesus' name, amen. Well, yesterday was a beautiful day. It happens to be right on Friday. I'm talking about Friday now. It was a beautiful day, and we had an awesome car cruise. Won't get into the details, but it was another terrific outreach for the whole city. I want to include, when I say that, I want to include Oakland specifically and other parts of the city. We have people that come as far away as Erie. We had a guy from Philadelphia, someone who picked up a car that he just bought in New Jersey and drove it here on his way to California, let alone the hundreds and hundreds, 1,200 cars here locally. But that's what I want to talk about. I want to talk about the week before when I jumped in my little car to come over here for the car cruise. I was all psyched up right here. It wasn't quite as nice a day, but it was still going to be fun, so have a good night. Turned the ignition. I'm not talking, you know how sometimes the starter will make a little sound or the solenoid or whatever, the old switch. Something electronic will go click, click, click. Didn't even do that. I mean, it didn't, nothing moved. And when I sat and thought about it, the battery or the key position was in the ignition in the on position, not the full on, but the like accessory on. And it had been that way for two weeks. So we're talking about this battery wasn't dead. This battery was underground, okay? This battery had no life in it. I had left it on. I had been delicately caring for my car and left it on during that process. Some of you get my drift on that. It was totally depleted. And it took a couple of days of trickle charging and jumping and so on. I finally got it going and everything's working fine. But when a car battery goes down like that, everything goes. I mean, the radio doesn't work. It loses all its stations. All, you know, the alarm doesn't work. I couldn't open the trunk. None of that, nothing works when the battery's that dead. And I only share that with you to give you just a bit of an insight as to why over the course of the last 15 years, almost 20 now, I've made it a practice of getting away for a few weeks right around this time of year to what I call my summer study break. Now, a lot of people don't understand that. They just call it, Jay's taking another vacation. I don't care what you call it. What I'm doing is I get away, and by the way, I don't go with my family. I usually go by myself and I go to a place that's usually kind of removed from a lot of media and a lot of different distractions. And I just say, Lord, I feel like that battery I just described. I feel somewhat depleted and I need to get the cells recharged and I need to restore my first love. I need to get back close to you and hear your heart. And so, that's what I'm preparing to do in the next few weeks. Not a long time, but enough time that I believe it's going to make an enormous difference in my life. Jesus said to His disciples in Mark 6, 31, after they'd been out ministering, He said, Come away with me and rest. Loved ones, there's something right about that. And all of us should work into our rhythm of life sometime of rest. He said, Well, I don't have all the freedom you have. Well, you have some freedom and you can make some time. And I count one of the reasons why I've, and I'll use this word advisedly, survived 35 years of ministry is because I've been given the freedom and I thank my elders for their freedom to take this time and get along with God and to seek His face. And I also usually at this point, because it's halfway through the year, give what I call sort of a, here we are today to halfway through the State of the Union address, you know. Here's half the year. This is what we've done. But I'm not going to do that today. I felt like that's not what was on God's heart for us. But rather, I wanted to take this James passage and as I pulled it apart and I sort of soaked in it, some rather powerful things came out. And I don't say this now to somehow get you to think I've got something so profound that if you miss it, you know, your life could forever, you know, miss the course of God. I, you know, that's crazy. But what I'm going to share is heartfelt and I believe is important for everybody that's going to hear it. And so I invite you just to follow along. If you have your outline in some place buried in here, I hope I have one. I'm not sure I do, but it's just been one of those weeks where I've worked my way through this. Now, what I want to talk with you about is what was read today from James chapter 3. And it has to do with understanding biblical wisdom. James is speaking to a group of people who are trying to live life in a culture that's sort of against what they stand for. And he's finding it difficult and he's finding false teachers and prophets come along. And he's, the people are just sort of getting pulled one way or another and it's not going all that well. And James steps up right into this moment and he speaks about wisdom. That Greek word sophia means not just knowledge, it means knowledge applied to life or another word you could use there is the way of wisdom or I like, what I like best is using the phrase living a lifestyle of wisdom so that your decisions reflect wisdom as a process of thought leading to a specific action. And James is asking, how's that going with you? And I want to ask, church, how's that going with you? Where are you when it comes to wisdom operating in your life? Because James makes a very interesting assertion here. He says there are two sources of wisdom. There's a wisdom, and I hope you caught it as it was read, a wisdom that does not come from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual of the devil. That's pretty strong language at the end of verse 14 and 15. The other kind of wisdom is the wisdom that comes from heaven. It's the wisdom that comes from God. And where we get our wisdom, loved ones, matters a great deal. Now James wasn't the first one to say this. Jesus warned of false prophets in the last times. Remember Jesus said, be careful, be on guard because many will be led astray, even the elect, by the smooth-talking, unspiritual wisdom of the spirit of the age. First John chapter 4, the Apostle John warns of people who speak this other kind of wisdom, this wisdom that leads people to believe things that are not from God but from man. And Paul is probably the most explicit, and I like this passage out of the message paraphrase in 2 Timothy chapter 3, and I'm going to ask the team to put that up on the screens. This is 2 Timothy chapter 3 out of the message paraphrase. Here's what the author writes. Follow along with me as I read this. We're going to put it up here. Here we go. If anyone wants to provide leadership in the church, good. Well, that's not exactly what I had in mind. That's not, that is 1 Timothy chapter 3. I wanted 2 Timothy chapter 3, which I don't have, and that's not their fault. That's my fault. So what we'll do, let me just paraphrase it for you. Paul warns Timothy of people, and he uses words like people that are conniving, underhanded, self-serving, looking out for their own interests. He warns against people who would do anything to hold on to control and power. And I urge you to look that up in your own translation. You'll see that it's accurate. 2 Timothy chapter 3. Let's be honest, friends. Let's be honest. How many of you would say we are in pretty difficult times overall? We're not just talking about... If I say... How many of you would say we're in pretty tough economic times? Hands? All right. Good. Most of you with me. If your hand didn't go up, God bless you. You're one of the few and one of the fortunate. But I would say that this is much bigger than that. And I want to talk about this in terms of not just the economy, because almost everyone that I know of in terms of the economy feels like, you know, it's a cycle, and eventually it'll work out. It might take six months. It might... I don't know. I'm not even going to speculate. Because I'm more concerned about what I believe the fabric of our culture is telling us. What do we stand for? What are we building our lives upon? What kind of wisdom are we trusting in? Now listen. The next few moments are going to be a little uncomfortable. I knew this, and I told Carol before I left, pray for me. Because this isn't about politics, but it can't help but be a little political. It's not about an issue like being pro-life. It's bigger than any single issue. It's not about being a Christian nation. But to ignore the Judeo-Christian heritage of our nation is to rewrite history for the sake of expediency. I recently, this past week and a half in preparation for this message, read some of the Journal of George Washington. And some of the things he said about his own personal faith. And we have a quote from George Washington and Ben Franklin. Let's see if I got these right to the folks. Here's what George Washington said just about his own conviction concerning the nation. I'm sure that never was a people who had more reason to acknowledge a divine interposition in their affairs than those of the United States. And I should be pained to believe that they have forgotten that agency which was so often manifested during our revolution, or that they failed to consider the omnipotence of that God who is alone able to protect them. What he is saying there is, I cannot believe that people would even dream that God was not the one that enabled the revolution to succeed. And Washington was outspoken about that. Then later Benjamin Franklin, also a signer of the Declaration, said this. Let's put up Benjamin Franklin's quote. This is powerful. This is something we all recognize. I have lived, sir, a long time. And the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth, that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid? What he's saying is, if a sparrow can't, I mean, the smallest detail, that goes without God being aware of it. So how could an empire even hope to survive without knowing that God is with them? You know, there's an interesting quote in Scripture, and I just want you to note this. I didn't take the time to put it there, but just jot down the reference. It's in 1 Chronicles chapter 22, I'm sorry, chapter 12, verse 32. And I won't ask you to turn there. Chronicles is rather long and complex, and it's got a lot of stuff, a lot of minutiae. But there's one verse that's been off-quoted, and I love it because it talks about the kind of people we're looking for. Here's what it says. It talks about what are called the sons of Issachar. It says, the sons of Issachar understood the times and knew what Israel should do. These were men that were drawn to King David, these sons of Issachar, 200 chiefs with all their relatives under their command. And these were people that looked at the times they were in and said, you know what? This is what's going on. This is what we need to do. And friends, I would pray that God would give that kind of spirit to members of Northwest Christian community. We need this wisdom in our personal lives as events unfold in our government, in our public square, in our schools, in our businesses, and even in our churches. Because if we allow other sources of wisdom, earthly wisdom, to guide us... By the way, I don't see this as... Watch. I don't think we just go out and say, oh yeah, I'm going to just follow... I'm going to pick up the paper and do what the newspaper says, or I'm going to go online and just find some website. No, I'm... No one's that presumptuous, okay? This is the kind of thing that seeps its way into our thinking, and we just sort of... Watch. We sort of space out and see that, hey, you know, let's just sort of assimilate all the truth we can find, and we'll just make the best sort of potpourri of it all. And mark my words, friends. There are people that you... I could name that you know that have abandoned the faith of Jesus Christ by slowly drifting just small decision by decision into unbelief away from God. I see three things. I noted these on your outline. There are consequences of choosing. Again, sometimes just by default, earthly wisdom. Number one, it's the blurring of the lines between what is right and wrong. Slowly but very systematically and noticeably we are moving away from the assertion that there is such a thing as absolute truth, things that are either right or wrong regardless of the circumstances. Furthermore, if you are one that stands up to say, hey, that's wrong, you're the one that's vilified. You're the one that's called out and said, well, who are you to say that? You know, who made you king? And so on subjects that are just right or wrong, same-sex marriage, like the teacher that was fired because they said abstinence was a virtue and a sure way to be certain not to get pregnant. Teacher was fired. That's just wrong. Political correctness has replaced common sense. When God cannot be mentioned at a high school graduation, something is wrong and somebody needs to stand up and say, that's just wrong. The Congress of the United States, we have this quote, please. This is what they said. Again, written by George Washington. Here's what he said about the importance of this understanding. Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall be forever encouraged. In other words, the schools were to be a means whereby people laid hold of the reality of religion, let alone the reality that God exists. How many of you have a Webster's Dictionary, either on your shelf or on your computer? Noah Webster was called the father of American education. We have a quote by Noah Webster. This is something that he said that I think you'll find pretty convincing. Education without the Bible is useless. God's Word contained in the Bible has furnished all necessary rules to direct our conduct. James says, twisting the truth to make it sound wise isn't wisdom. James 3.14 in the Message Paraphrase. We're living in a system now where it's clashing with what God has said. And friends, I'm concerned because the more I go along, the more obvious it becomes. And people are shrinking back. People who know better aren't saying anything. The second area that concerns me is this. I'm seeing a growing ignorance of biblical knowledge amongst followers of Christ. You know, despite the number of ways that we can get the Bible, I'm watching here in the congregation and some of you brought a Bible, a lot of you didn't. Some of you are looking at your electronic Bibles, you know, following along. Some of you went to see what the heck that quote was. I missed. See if I had it right. You know, we have such access to the Bible. But do you know what? We know less of it now than we did 20 or 30 or 40 years ago. Scripture is being slowly just dissipated from the dialogue that happens even in families, let alone in churches. Sound doctrine, biblical understanding, and the teaching of truth, that's the reliable foundation that will help you and your family choose the way of wisdom in life. Scripture is the expression of God's more will. Someone once said to me, and I believe this is true. 95% of all the decisions you struggle with have exact answers in the Bible, 95% of them. There's only 5% that are sort of gray that you might need to find some counsel, get a little bit of help, maybe just do a little searching and praying about. Now, I know I can risk right now marking myself as a dinosaur in terms of age, but I remember sitting in a public school classroom and praying out loud with the other students and the teacher leading us. Now, some of you younger folks look at me and say, boy, did you go to a Christian school? No, no. I said a public school classroom. Remember it clearly. Now, here's just a little proposition to submit to you. When the government shut that down and said there'll be no more prayer and no more Scripture reading in public schools, I'm going to ask you a question 40 years later. Are we better off? Are the schools better off than they were then? Has the moral fiber of our country and particularly of our students gone up in the last 40 years? Are there fewer crimes or more? Are there more addictions or less? Are there more pregnancies or less? Is there more violence or less? You know, call me a fool, but I'll submit to you that something happened. We pulled God out of schools. God said, well, go ahead. Run on your own. And we're having a difficult time. Someone needs to be willing to stand up and say biblical knowledge is important. By the way, churches haven't done a great job either. And I don't want to just beat on churches, and certainly no churches around here. I don't have any churches. Our church can be thrown in the bunch, if you will. The church by and large across America has drifted somewhat, and we have in some ways and in some cases exchanged just biblical, simple biblical truth for just, you know, a little more hip version of religiosity, trying to remain relevant and squeeze the Bible in when we can. And in some cases, I believe that's cost the church dearly. And I'm concerned about that. Christian students that grew up in churches are having just as difficult a time as students that grew up outside of the church. I'm just going to read a portion of a very interesting article that came out in Christianity Today this year by Gary Burge who teaches at Wheaton. How many of you have heard of Wheaton Bible College, one of the most prominent, well-known Bible schools in the country? Here's what they found when they tested over the last few years the incoming classes of new students. I'm just going to jump into this quote. It may or may not come up on the screens, but listen carefully. When asked to complete a test in which a series of biblical events must be placed in order, our students returned surprising results. One-third of our freshmen could not put the following in order. Abraham, New Testament prophets, the death of Christ in Pentecost. Half of our students could not sequence Moses in Egypt, Isaac's birth, Saul's death, and Judah's exile. One-third of our incoming students could not identify Matthew as an apostle. When asked to locate the Bible book supplying a given story, one-third could not find Paul's missionary travels in the book of Acts. Half did not know the Christmas story was recorded in Matthew and that the Passover was in Exodus. The results of the test we gave were shocking. The average grade was 50 to 55 out of 100. When these students were polled, their responses gave a dramatic picture of ignorance. Fully 80% could not place Moses, Adam, David, Solomon, Abraham in chronological order. Only 15% could place in order the major events of the life of Jesus and Paul's life. Only 20% knew to look to Acts to find the story of Paul's travels. 60% could locate the Exodus story, but only a third could find the Sermon on the Mount in the New Testament. And 80% did not know where to find the Lord's Prayer. What does that mean? That means that, hey, we're good at carrying Bibles around, whether they're electronic or real, you know, but we don't know really what they say. And we're not building a life of wisdom based on that. And that's the danger that I fear is increasing. How many of you have watched, and now it's now history, one of my favorite segments of when the Tonight Show was hosted by Jay Leno was the Jaywalking program. And he'd go out and he'd walk through the streets of Hollywood and he'd ask people, name one of the Ten Commandments. And person after person after person could not name one of the Ten Commandments. God helps those who help themselves. No, no, no, that's not one of them. And on and on. I mean, just crazy things like that. They could name the four beetles, but they couldn't name one of the apostles. I mean, these big softballs. Who was the guy that parted the Red Sea? Didn't know. Who was the guy that was swallowed by a fish? No idea. And on we went. And that's why, by the way, we're making every effort to ramp up the number of opportunities that you can find for biblical instruction here at North Way on weekends with Jim Platt, with Beth Moore, Gene Yannikos, many of our small groups, the You Discover course that our pastors have put together, the Truth Project, and many others. Because we believe where you find your truth, where you find your wisdom matters. I want you to watch this video of a newer believer in our church who discovered early on that he had some important decisions to make and he needed wisdom. And he had to find that wisdom in the right place. Let's watch this very intriguing testimony. I basically lived in Pittsburgh my entire life. I was raised by two wonderful parents. My mom was a stay-at-home mom. Back then I would have called her a lukewarm Catholic. My dad was a workaholic father and a semi-practicing Jew. It would be safe to say that some of the primary values in our home were success, power, competition, and control. My world was rocked when I found out my wife was pregnant. Talk about having zero control. I remember feeling overwhelmed. I remember feeling anxiety and stress. I remember feeling like, how am I going to be a father? I don't know anything about being a father. How am I going to protect and provide for my family? This was so new to me. Fortunately, this was right about the time that I was brought to Jesus. I learned that one of the most difficult things in my life was going to be changing the way I found wisdom. See, I was no longer finding wisdom through worldly sources. I began to find wisdom through God's Word, and I used His wisdom to guide me. It wasn't long after that that Beth Ann and I had an opportunity to purchase a relatively well-known business in the area. It was an exciting time in our life, but it was also a time that provoked a lot of stress and a lot of anxiety. I was already operating a profitable, stable business, and the thought of uncertainty, change, and possibly failure were definitely worth considering. For the first time in our lives as a married couple, we decided to consult God together. We prayed for wisdom. We prayed for guidance. It was amazing how quickly God opened and shut doors. It was amazing how He just gave us the wisdom to be at peace with our decision. However, it wasn't long after that that I got to use God's wisdom again. I was in my first men's small group, and after about ten weeks, our leader had decided that he wanted to start another group. So he asked me to consider leading this current group. I remember thinking to myself, whoa, talk about being outside your comfort zone and having no control. I remember being plagued by worldly questions and thoughts like, am I a good enough Christian? What if this group of men ask me questions that I cannot answer? There's got to be somebody in this group that is on a different spiritual level than I am. I looked in my closet. I only own two sweater vests to Scott Stevens, 15. He's the type of person that leads men's group. However, people I respect and people I look up to encouraged me to pray about it. So I prayed, and I listened to God tell me that a man of God is not defined by worldly standards. I did not need to have all the answers. God has all the answers. He would lead through me. All he wants me to do is love him. All he wants me to do is try my best to lead an honorable life. I know what it's like today. I know in the economics of today how difficult it is. And I think we need to put down newspapers. I think we need to put down all these how-to books. And I think we really need to take a look at the only true word. I think we need to examine God's word and use his wisdom to guide us. Was that an excellent testimony? I thought it was really great. I don't know if we saw the name. That's Mark Feldman. His wife, Bethann, read the Scripture early on in the service. He's been a believer about two years. I mean, I couldn't have written a script any better than that. He wrote that. Now, I wish I could tell you, once you decide to make God's word your source of wisdom, and you set your heart to say, Hey, God, I want to go, you know, I just want to stay on track, that everything's going to go great. Sometimes it doesn't, OK? Life still happens, right? Most of you know Pastor Scott Stevens recently moved back up from his lifelong home of Munhall up here to the North Hills. Carol and I wanted to take Scott and his wife Tina out to dinner and just, you know, introduce them to some of the nice restaurants in North Hills. And he said, Well, I'll have the dinner, but I want to go to a real, you know, just a joint. I said, I don't want anything fancy. I want to go, you know, I want some of that home-style stuff. So we asked around. Pastor Mike knew some joints, but Scott had already been to those. But we found a place. I won't name it because the owner might be here. I don't know. We sat down, expecting a good evening. The first bite, and they served one of these places that had chips and salsa, the first thing they put on. It wasn't Le Petron, by the way, for those of you who are trying to think. No guessing here, OK? Point is, stuck in the chip, took a bite. First bite, nice dinner, nice evening. Just blew up a tooth in my mouth. How many of you know that's like the worst feeling when you know it's broken? And, you know, it didn't, like, fall in my hand, and it didn't fall into the salsa. It's just sort of hanging in there. Now I'm getting gross, right? Not meaning to, but it's, I'm thinking, this is going to be a long night. But it was fine. After the night, we made a few jokes about the salsa and the tooth and all the rest. I said, hey, I'll get home, call my dentist, I'm going to be fine. Got home. Hi, I have my dentist's cell phone. Call him up. Hey, I'm Dr. So-and-so. I just left for vacation. Hey, hey. Great. How many of you know it's a great thing to know that the dentist that you've been going to for years is gone, and you've got this tooth dangling, and now you're at the mercy of some guy you've never seen before? That's not my favorite thing. Might be yours, not mine. Life doesn't always work out right. But it does matter where you get your wisdom. Let me just close with this one last thought, because this is important. There's a third area, and I put this on your outline. It concerns me, and that is the very clear shift in our culture to the embracing of postmodernism. You know, for years and years, I talked with fellow pastors and leaders here in the church about postmodernism, and we talked about it as a philosophy that Europe had succumbed to and that Great Britain had succumbed to. But the United States was strong, and we had been established in a strong spiritual foundation. It wouldn't happen here. Friends, I want you to know, I really believe that we are there. Postmodernism has basically crept into the life of the American culture. And if you don't know what that is, you need to really, I can't do justice to it. It's not the intent of this message. But in essence, postmodernism is living life in the moment and living life as you see it being right. You being the ultimate interpreter or arbiter of what's right or wrong. That's postmodernism. And that's what James is referring to when he said that selfish ambition is in your hearts. Postmodernism is driven by what's best for me and my own interpretation of things. Life is not interpreted by reality or by absolute truth. Life is interpreted by what I feel is the current reality. And notice what it says on your outline in James, what that leads to. It leads to envy, bitter envy, selfish ambition. Verse 14, verse 15, it says, You also find disorder in every evil practice. But biblical wisdom, look at the contrast, that comes from heaven is first of all pure, then peace-loving, then considerate, submissive, full of mercy, and good fruit, impartial and sincere. In my original sermon when I started out, I just took time and went down that list. That's like almost like the fruits of the Spirit in Galatians chapter 5 if you look at it. But God would not let me just let go of this whole idea that we need to see what's going on around us, friends, and take it seriously and decide are we going to just let it happen, or are we going to do something about it as a church? Biblical wisdom has eyes to see that what's really going on isn't in the seen realm, it's in an unseen realm, and we need to start applying ourselves to understanding what's going on there. And it's the job of leadership to take you there, and that's going to be something that I'm going to be praying a lot about in the next weeks as I get away. Postmodernism doesn't, by the way, never announces itself. It doesn't come in with a flashing badge and say, you know, it's not some person that says, Hey, I'm postmodernism, you know, just trying to work my way. It starts in the halls of academia, and then it works its way into the, you know, the influential leaders of culture. And then it finds its way into Congress because Congress wants to be, you know, always coddling up to the influencers and the wealthy and so on. And then it finds its way eventually from Congress down into the schools and eventually into our homes. And trust me, it's finding its way into the lives of people that you know. Jesus said the spirit of the Antichrist will come. And I believe anything that's against Christ is the spirit of the Antichrist, like a thief in the night. It works its way in secretly. Friends, it's time that we wake up and see that things cannot go on the way they are. You know, look at our church. We have a wonderful church. We have awesome things going on here in Oakland, the Worship Cafe. We have a clear vision and great, great expectation that God wants to use us. But you know what? Just look around and think for a little bit. How long has it been since you've seen someone respond to an invitation that you've given to them? How long has it been since God's used you to touch another life specifically? And the reason I'm suggesting isn't not because you don't want to. It's because people are increasingly resistant or indifferent. And that's because of the spirit that I'm talking about, the spirit of the age, the spirit that James says that comes from the earthly, unspiritual godlessness that we live in. I don't know how you resonate with this. Some of you might not say, I don't, see, I'm not living there. That's not where I am. But how many of you would say, I at least understand what you're talking about, Pastor Jay. I see a little bit of that. Many of you do, and I appreciate that. And I appreciate more than that, that you'll agree with us in prayer. As we look forward and we say, Lord, this isn't about Fox News versus CNN. This isn't about liberal or conservative. This isn't about pop culture, you know, versus some sort of, like, hyper-spirituality. This is about pure biblical wisdom. And it comes from knowing God's Word. And it comes from being resolute that we cannot do life God's way without His wisdom. Something is happening in our nation, and it's happening right now. And it's happening every single day. And you do well to be in touch with it and, you know, follow it and understand it. But you do much better, as Mark said so profoundly in the video, to get your wisdom from God's Word. And if you do that, then you'll navigate these difficult times, and you'll know that that Spirit of Jesus will guide you into all truth. As we move to take communion, I'm going to ask you to stand and pray with me, because that's the beginning point of growing in the wisdom of God. Let's stand as we pray.