“13 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. 14 But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. 15 Such ‘wisdom’ does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, of the devil. 16 For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice. ”
Almost no one sets out to cause trouble in their own church. We do it out of some dissatisfaction inside ourselves. A woman will invariably cause trouble in her church when she demands that others fill some void inside herself. We do it out of pride. A man causes trouble in his church when he considers himself more significant that other members and his ideas superior to anything else anyone might suggest.
Now it is easier for you to see this in others, but you must inspect yourself. James’ words tonight are a call for you to inspect yourself, and if you identify any of these trouble causing marks within yourself, know that these vices are a snare for all of us. If you see these marks in yourself but you love Jesus, don’t label yourself as hopeless. James wrote these words precisely because we are not hopeless; by God’s grace we are loved and we can change.
You can apply what you hear tonight to your family as well. Much of the trouble caused in families comes loved ones who are unsatisfied and want to change the family to satisfy themselves. Much of the trouble caused in families comes from loved ones who do in fact consider themselves more significant than the rest. Inspect yourself when it comes to your family. Inspect yourself when it comes to your workplace. Inspect yourself when it comes to this church.
Unsatisfied and proud people cause trouble; be satisfied in Jesus; be humble before God. That is what James is stressing and that is the claim of this sermon: unsatisfied and proud people cause trouble; be satisfied in Jesus; be humble before God.
We will see this in three points. First: the foolishness of bitter envy and selfish ambition. Second: the source of bitter envy and selfish ambition. Third: the results of bitter envy and selfish ambition. First, in verses 13-14, the foolishness of bitter envy and selfish ambition. Second, in verse 15, the source of bitter envy and selfish ambition. Third, in verse 16, the results of bitter envy and selfish ambition.
First: the foolishness of bitter envy and selfish ambition. There was conflict in the church to which James wrote. Part of this conflict appears to have arisen from what people were saying about one another, which is why James dealt with the tongue in last week’s text. Foolish words always have a starring role in any conflict.
Foolishness always has a starring role in any conflict, which is why James called the leaders of the conflict to inspect themselves; verse 13, “Who is wise and understanding among you?”
Each person involved in this conflict thought he was promoting wisdom. Each of them thought that she had understanding. They didn’t think they were causing the conflict. Each of them thought they were simply exercising influence and exercising influence is not a bad thing, but it does call for self-inspection.
You probably have some helpful thoughts about how we as a church can do justice to the miracle of church as we studied this morning. You express those thoughts in hopes of having an influence. James calls you to inspect yourself before you express yourself. That is verse 13, “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.”
You express your wisdom and understanding not by the genius of your criticisms or the applause of those who agree with you, but by inspecting your submission to God, “living a good life” as James puts it. You inspect your wisdom and understanding by whether you are living a life full of “deeds done in the humility,” as James put it.
Now none of us is consistently wise. Jesus is the only consistently wise man who ever lived. We fall into foolishness. James contrasts wisdom with foolishness in verses 13 and 14, “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.”
Bitter envy reveals foolishness. Bitter envy is a gnawing lack of satisfaction. You want something that you don’t have, and that lack is consuming you and it will cause you to act in foolish ways. You might envy what other parents in this church have with their children. You might envy what you think you know about other marriages in this congregation. Unless you find all your satisfaction in God rather than in the gifts He has chosen to give to you, your dissatisfaction will overflow into this congregation.
You might have some very helpful thoughts for the life of this congregation and you might have some substantial gifts to use on behalf of this church, but if your advice or service flows from a deep dissatisfaction that only God can fill, your service and advice will express itself in foolish ways. You will express your opinion rudely or impatiently. You will offer your service without love and so it will come to nothing. You don’t want that. You want your insights to be heard. You want your service to be fruitful.
Bitter envy is foolish; so is selfish ambition. Selfish ambition is a manifestation of pride. Men in the gall of pride consider themselves more important than others. Prideful women consider their opinions inherently weightier than those of others. Prideful people can’t or won’t see the preferences of others. Prideful people can’t or won’t see their similarities with others to empathize with others. If you have some need to exalt yourself above others that will overflow into foolishness in this church.
You might have some very wise reflections on the life of this church. If you are born of the Holy Spirit, you certainly have some gifts to use for the health of this church, but if your reflections or ministry among us are rooted in pride, they will cause harm even as they bless. You might belittle others as you express your opinions. You might be far too interested in what your work has accomplished as opposed to finding contentment in how God has seen fit to use your efforts. You don’t want that. You want your reflections to help this church. You want the work of your hands established.
Now each of us can fall into this foolishness. No one among us is immune from dissatisfaction and pride. We must pray for each other for the health of this church and we must pray most fervently and frequently for our leaders because the more influential the role, the more dangerous dissatisfaction and pride can become for the church.
Now none of us sets out to cause trouble in this church. I would hope that none of us has any schemes to harm one another, and yet we fall into this foolishness. You can see how easy it is to fall into this foolishness when you consider its source. That is our second point: the source of bitter envy and selfish ambition.
Genuine wisdom comes from God. Seeing things as they are and behaving as you ought—in other words wisdom—is a gift from above and such gifts are perfect. “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change,” as James has taught us.
Genuine wisdom comes from God. Foolishness does not come from God. The foolishness of bitter envy and selfish ambition do not come from God. James tells us, “such ‘wisdom’ does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, of the devil.”
Bitter envy is earthly or worldly. The world runs on bitter envy. The world believes that the right spouse will satisfy you; that is why so many people are dissatisfied. The world believes that the right job will satisfy you; that is why so many people are dissatisfied. Christians who operate by worldly wisdom believe that the right church will satisfy them.
If you have a deep dissatisfaction, stop listening to the world’s foolishness that satisfaction comes from your job, your marriage, or even your relationships in this church; you must find your satisfaction in God. A good portion of sanctification is learning to find satisfaction in God rather than in His gifts.
Bitter envy is not from God; it is worldly or earthly as James put it; it is also fleshly or unspiritual as James put it. Your flesh regularly informs you about your dissatisfaction. You have far more affluence than the great majority of humanity, but left unchecked you will demand more. You have a good deal of something that someone in this congregation lacks, but left unchecked you crave whatever it is they have that you lack. Your flesh believes that it has a right to what it wants.
Bitter envy is not from God; it is earthly or worldly; it is unspiritual or fleshly; it is also demonic or of the devil. We shouldn’t be surprised that the source of any foolishness is the world, the flesh, and the devil.
Bitter envy is, “of the devil,” as James puts it. Satan wants you to be dissatisfied. Satan wants you to be bitterly dissatisfied. He wants you dissatisfied in the sense that you find no satisfaction in God.
As Erik Raymond put it in his reflection on The Screwtape Letters, “What is so striking is the fact that Satan cannot create pleasure but only pervert pleasure. Sin is the perversion of what is good. And as we know from experience, the idols we pursue only leave us hungry and hurting, they cannot satisfy us.” Satan wants you dissatisfied, and he perverts the pleasures God gave to leave you hungry and hurting.
Given the temptations of the world, flesh, and devil, we shouldn’t be surprised when bitter envy rears its head in this church and when it does it will cause trouble; we will see the trouble when we reach our next point, but first we need to consider the source of selfish ambition.
Just as bitter envy comes from the world, the flesh, and the devil so does selfish ambition; “such ‘wisdom’ does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, of the devil.”
God has never trained a man in the ways of selfish ambition. God has never sat a man down and said, “let me show you how to get ahead for your own glory.” The world is more than ready to teach lesson to us in every sphere of life.
The world trains you to see life as a struggle in which you are a competitor. Considering the needs of others before yourself is foolish and putting yourself first is wise if you are a competitor and so it isn’t surprising that humility was seen as a rather foolish virtue in James’ day and that humility is rather rare in our own day. You don’t see a lot of secular books about humility and the few that are written only teach you how to use humility to get ahead, which is really no humility at all. We Americans don’t do humility; we do self-promotion.
God doesn’t train you in self-promotion or selfish ambition; the world does that; the Holy Spirit doesn’t train you in self-promotion or selfish ambition; your own flesh does that. Your flesh takes to selfish ambition like a drug addict takes to cocaine. Your flesh loves to think much of itself and often of itself. Your flesh considers its desires paramount. Now since every person’s flesh considers its desires to be paramount, conflict and resentment are unavoidable for those who live in the flesh. When a proud person encounters another proud person, there is trouble in the family, in the workplace, and in the church.
The world trains you in selfish ambition; your own flesh trains you in selfish ambition and Satan trains you in selfish ambition; “Such ‘wisdom’ does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, of the devil.”
Your pride is just a reflection of Satan’s pride. If you think that you deserve better than what God has given you, recognize that Satan thought he deserved better than what God had given him. If think that you really are more significant than other people in this congregation, recognize that Satan thought he was more significant than the others around him. There are many ways that we humans reflect God, but pride is not one of them. When we act that way, we reflect Satan.
The foolishness that is constantly paraded as wisdom by the world, the flesh, and the devil will have an impact on families, nations, workplaces, churches, and any communities in which these toxins take root. We see these impact in our final point: the results of bitter envy and selfish ambition.
You are a sensible person. You can imagine how a bitterly envious adult sibling will impact an extended family. You can theorize about how a selfishly ambitious coworker will impact a workplace. You can conjecture the state of a nation whose population consists largely of the dissatisfied and the proud. Now consider what happens when those vices invade the church. Consider what would happen if those vices gained the upper hand in this church. You would have verse 16, “for where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice.”
Bitter envy brings disorder in the church. If you have a congregation in which many members are not finding their satisfaction in Christ, you will have disorder. Members will be grumbling about the church out of dissatisfaction. Their complaints will have very little to do with what pleases God. Their complains will have a good deal to do with what doesn’t please them.
Such an attitude breeds disorder. Members who refuse to find satisfaction in Christ will make demands of the leadership that if accepted will breed disorder and confusion in that church. The Scripture lays out the pattern for the church. If a group of Christians decide to follow a different pattern or more likely give no attention to the pattern which God has laid, then you will have disorder.
It is like the human body. You can’t just rearrange veins, arteries, ligaments, and organs with no effect. You can’t rearrange the created order without an effect. The same goes for the church. The apostles explained its order so it could be followed for the health of the church just like medical school explains the body’s order so that doctors can follow it for the health of the individual.
Remember that when a man talks about doing church differently. If his vision is different from the way it has always been done, he might be right. There are all sorts of wonderful practices in Scripture to which we are all blind at times. But if that man’s vision diverges from the order laid out in Scripture, if he is trying to rearrange God’s order, then the effect will be similar to rearranging veins, arteries, ligaments, and organs.
Just as bitter envy breeds disorder so does selfish ambition. If a well-meaning church member start pursuing a goal more for his own glory than the good of the church, that will disrupt the body. If a man or woman cares more about some agenda than the good of the church, the church will suffer. If any of us think that we are too smart or wise to listen to anyone else, then we are not only too smart for our own good, but we are too smart for the church’s good.
So bitter envy and selfish ambition breed disorder in any group including the church. They also breed, “every evil practice,” as James puts it. People who refuse to find satisfaction in what God offers will find satisfaction somewhere. Pursuing satisfaction is not bad. We all do it. We all should seek satisfaction. Jesus said, “I have come that they might have life and have it to the full.” Satisfaction is not the problem. The problem comes when we seek it apart from God. Any evil practice you can imagine arises out of dissatisfaction. We do wicked things to satisfy some urge. If you get enough people in any congregation who aren’t satisfied in Jesus, they will satisfaction somewhere and they will wind up finding it in, “every evil practice.”
That phrase “every evil practice” is instructive because dissatisfied people search for satisfaction in diverse places. One man might seek it in pornography. Other man might seek it in alcohol. One woman might seek satisfaction by dominating her husband. Another woman might seek satisfaction by abandoning her husband. People who refuse to be satisfied in Christ seek satisfaction in different places, but what God said about Israel is true of all of them, “my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters,
and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.”
Bitter envy leads to every evil practice. So does pride; “For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice.” Men who think they are more significant than others think their sexual needs are more important than the dignity of others. Women who think their prestige is more important than the reputation of others will find it natural to slander others.
Prideful people find it easy to excuse sin because they have no law higher than themselves. Each of us can fall into that. It is far too easy to excuse a sinful practice when you are the one who is committing it.
The greater the pride, the more the evil the practice. Think of the pride necessary to produce the Holocaust.
Now given that pride lurks in each of our hearts, we must be careful because we are constantly dealing with other people made in the image of God and we don’t want to do a thing to deface that. We don’t want to cause trouble in this church or anywhere else.
Next week we will see how to good to others rather than cause trouble, but for tonight it will suffice to consider the opposite of bitter envy and selfish ambition.
If dissatisfied people, that is people filled with bitter envy, cause trouble in the church, then you will to us all good if you are satisfied in Jesus. You will do each of us good if you can honestly pray with Augustine, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in You.”
One of the best things you can do for this church is to pursue satisfaction in God. If I am satisfied in God, then I am able to speak God’s word for your satisfaction. If our elders are satisfied in God, then they are able to lead us into green pastures and alongside quiet waters. If our deacons are satisfied in God, then they are able to care for our needs because they are trusting that God will care for their needs.
The supreme church member is also the most satisfied church member. Jesus has done more for the church than anyone else ever has or will and not surprisingly no one has ever been more satisfied in God than Jesus. Be like Jesus.
Be happy in Jesus. Also, be humble before God. If I am happily humble before God, then I will want to speak God’s word to you rather than my own word. If our elders are happily humble before God, then they will want to lead us by God’s wisdom rather than by human wisdom. If our deacons are happily humble before God, then they will happily serve us because God Himself has served them.
The supreme church member is also the humblest church member. Jesus has always disliked it when his disciples argued about which of us was the most significant. That is not surprising because he, who is clearly the most significant, considered our needs before his own. The greatest has always been the servant of all, and no one is greater and no one has served more than Jesus. Unsatisfied people cause trouble. Proud people cause trouble. Be satisfied in Jesus. Be humble before God. Amen.