What Wisdom Looks Like
Notes
Transcript
Last week we talked about how joy is crucial to the Christian life. Life doesn’t always go our way, joy can remain.
When we’re joyful, our words and actions follow.
James exhorts his fellow Christians to be slow to speak and quick to listen.
Words Matter.
When we are quick to speak, we don’t consider our words very well.
Let’s use our words to build up, not tear down.
One of my favorite Toby Mac songs is Speak Life.
Pleasant words are a honeycomb:
sweet to the taste and health to the body.
James 1:19–26 (CSB)
My dear brothers and sisters, understand this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger, for human anger does not accomplish God’s righteousness. Therefore, ridding yourselves of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent, humbly receive the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.
But be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. Because if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like someone looking at his own face in a mirror. For he looks at himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of person he was. But the one who looks intently into the perfect law of freedom and perseveres in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer who works—this person will be blessed in what he does.
If anyone thinks he is religious without controlling his tongue, his religion is useless and he deceives himself.
We are consumed with speed and time.
We are ALWAYS ON THE MOVE and never have time to sit down and know peace or Hear the Voice of God!
We live in such a fast paced world where everything is catered towards speed. If we wait for than a few minutes at our favorite fast food restaurant we begin to get anxious. Pizza delivery joints have started putting insurance on delivery times to assure you get your pizza as soon as possible. We are always speeding up, never slowing down.
James calls Christians to not just be quick to listen, but to be slow to speak! This can be more challenging for some based on personality.
I read recently that over 100 billion emails are sent each day. That’s more than ten times the population of the whole world. Each day 5000 new books are published. This year the number of text messages will exceed 6 trillion.
If we take the year Christ was born as our starting point, it took 1500 years for all the knowledge in the world to double. The next doubling took only 250 years. It doubled again in 150 years. By the end of World War II, knowledge doubled every 25 years. Today knowledge is doubling every 12 months.
No wonder we can’t keep up.
We are being swamped by a tidal wave of information that pours in 24/7/365. The whole world is now “live” and in “real-time.” Stories change every few minutes, and the screen you’re watching may have an anchor reading a story with an image to the right, a sidebar to the left, with a screen crawl at the top and another at the bottom so that you’re following five different information sources at the same time on the same screen.
We are easily distracted
no wonder we are easily distracted. We look without seeing, we listen without hearing, and we speak without understanding. We are a wired up, tuned in, hyper-caffeinated generation. Some years ago Bob Moorehouse wrote an essay called The Paradox of Our Time. Here’s a brief excerpt:
We’ve learned how to make a living, but not a life.
We’ve added years to life not life to years.
We’ve been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor.
We conquered outer space but not inner space.
We’ve done larger things, but not better things.
1. The Wise listen well.
1. The Wise listen well.
Wisdom begins, when when we listen more and talk less.
C.S. Lewis says “if we were to meet a truly humble person, Lewis says, we would never come away from meeting them thinking they were humble. They would not be always telling us they were a nobody (because a person who keeps saying they are a nobody is actually a self-obsessed person.) The thing we would remember from a meeting a truly gospel-humble person is how much they seemed to be totally interested in us.”
A fool’s way is right in his own eyes,
but whoever listens to counsel is wise.
How quickly do you jump to conclusions.
When you want to help someone, often times the best thing that you can do is listen to them.
I have found that often when someone comes to me for counsel, what they really need is someone that they can talk to, someone who will listen to them and often times, when they are talking they often give themselves the answer that they were looking for, they walk away happy and they tell you how thankful they are that you were there to “help” them.
Now this is absolutely true but what about when we look at the context? Was James talking about to these dispersed Christians?
In context, this sort of listening starts by paying attention to what God has said in his Word. In the first century, believers didn’t have all the advantages we have. They didn’t have printed copies of the New Testament. For that matter, if James was indeed the first book of the New Testament, they couldn’t read Romans because it hadn’t been written yet.
Likewise for all four gospels, the book of Acts, the rest of the epistles, and the book of Revelation. They didn’t have the Bible on a smartphone app so they could read it wherever they went. For the most part, hearing the Word meant meeting with other believers and listening to the Word being taught.
It meant hearing, memorizing and then meditating on what you had heard.
Today, we listen to a sermon with no plans of applying what we heard, half the time we don’t even hear because the preacher goes past 12 or because there is a football game on and we are following the score on our phone during church.
Are you kidding me?
But no one gains wisdom by chance. Wisdom says, “If you seek me, you will find me.” Are we too busy, too worried, too preoccupied, too distracted (a very modern problem) to seek the wisdom God offers in his Word?
2. The Wise consider their words
2. The Wise consider their words
Ecclesiastes 5:2 says it this way: “God is in heaven and you are on earth. Therefore let your words be few.” It’s hard to argue with that.
There are two kinds of people - those who put the toothpaste cap back on and those who leave it off.
Get a volunteer to come empty a toothpaste container and then attempt to put it back in.
This task is impossible. We should consider our words because we can never take them back. Our words can be used to build up and tear down.
There is a time to speak and a time to be silent. Most of us are better at the former and not so good at the latter.
Proverbs 29:20 has a helpful word about this. “Do you see a man who speaks in haste? There is more hope for a fool than for him.”
Ogden Nash put this principle into a neat little rhyme: “To keep your marriage brimming, with love in the loving cup, whenever you’re wrong, admit it. Whenever you’re right, shut up.”
It’s so easy to kill a marriage or a friendship with unkind words. How many times have we said something in anger only to regret it a thousand times later?
As we consider out words we would do well to consider what James says in the first 12 verses of chapter 3 as well.
The power of the tongue:\
Damage
Lie
curse
accuse
degrade
Application
Application
This week...
Focus on listening not just hearing.
Seek to understand, not formulate a comeback.
Be slow to speak, not quick to speak.
Use your words to build up, not tear down.
If we believe that in Jesus Christ dwells all the fullness of God (and we do), and if we believe Christ dwells in our hearts by faith (and we do), then we may believe that in our lives this week the fullness of Christ, the beauty of Christ, the grace of Christ, the mercy of Christ, the holiness of Christ, and the kindness of Christ may fill us and drive out the evil—the lust, greed, impatience, unbelief, critical spirit, and the angry intolerance that holds us back.
When we are living in Christ and Christ is living in us, then by God’s grace we will be . . .
Swift to hear,
Slow to speak, and
Slow to anger.
Come, Lord Jesus, transform us by the power of your Word so that your beauty may be seen in us. Do it, O Lord! Amen.
Pleasant words are a honeycomb:
sweet to the taste and health to the body.