James

Faith and Wisdom

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Faith and Wisdom

Genre: Sermon

Lesson: 3 of 16

Track: #21

Year:

Dictation Name: RR328L21

[Rushdoony] Let us worship God.  Blessed is the man whom thou choosest, and causest to approach unto thee, that he may dwell in thy courts: we shall be satisfied with the goodness of thy house, even of thy holy temple. Let us pray.

Almighty God our heavenly Father, we thank Thee that by Thy sovereign grace Thou hast called us to be Thy people. We thank Thee that friendship with Thee is enmity with the world, and that we have been compelled to make moral choices, that we have been compelled by the adversity of the world to face up to the implications of our faith. We thank Thee for Thy wisdom, for Thy providential care, for the hard choices Thou doest force upon us. We thank Thee that Thou hast called us to maturity, to eternity, and to Thy service; make us joyful therein. In Christ’s name, amen.

Our scripture text is James 1 verses 2-7, our subject “Faith and Wisdom.” James 1:2-7

“2 My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations;

3 Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience.

4 But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.

5 If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.

6 But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed.

7 For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord.”

Last week we dealt with the first verse of James letter and we saw that James almost certainly is the brother of our Lord as was the author of the epistle of Jude. Now James’s letter is almost a commentary on the Sermon on the Mount. Certainly it quotes the Sermon on the Mount many, many times as Hendrickson has pointed out. James in the verses that are our concern this morning deals with a familiar theme in Old Testament thought, in Proverbs in particular, wisdom.

Wisdom is in the Hebrew perspective not a natural fact but the result of intense and disciplined living and study. It was seen as a product of discipline and teaching. Such teaching began in the family and continued under teachers; after all it was from God above all else. We see this same idea, wisdom, in such Psalm’s as Psalm 1 and Psalm 37. Above all God is wise and wisdom is not only a personal attribute of God but it is God in action in His works and creation. Thus wisdom is a very important concept in the Bible. In the New Testament we have echoes of the perspective of Proverbs and Psalms in such verses as Ephesians 3:10, Hebrews 9:10, and Revelation 15 verses 3 & 4. In Matthew 11 verse 19 Jesus Christ identifies Himself as wisdom. Wisdom thus is not an abstract concept, but the person of God at work expressing His nature and being, wisdom.

The wisdom of God is also a communicable attribute of God and it must be sought by believers. James thus has done two things in his letter in the first seven verses. First his starting point is, in verse one, the Lord Jesus Christ, so that his comments about wisdom are linked to the Godhead. Then second he begins on ground familiar to all Hebrews because wisdom literature was at that time very popular. He then declares first that we should count it as all joy when ye fall into diverse temptations, or literally, trials. Very early James shows his emphasis by his use of certain key words. These key words are rejoice, joy, patience, and perfect. The goal of the trials we endure is a God-ordained one. We shall gain wisdom and joy, and be made perfect, or mature. This process can be a painful one, we therefore cannot feel it as joy, but we are told it we can count it as such, a very important distinction. A great many things in our lives we cannot feel as good or as happy, but looking back we can count it as such.

The testing of our faith we are told in verse 3 results in patience. Your faith is tested in the fires of affliction and refined by fire. James Moffatt commented, and I quote, “The true view of faith is that any sort of trial, hardship, or misfortune of any kind or degree, is an opportunity for proving our mettle. James indicates that the ordeal of faith brings out endurance, the staying power of life.” Well, you see immediately from James letter that our life is not a bed of roses here, and we’re put through trials by God to refine us, as gold is refined; and this goes contrary to the modern illusion about the faith. One reason why I’m glad I am not in any place where I can hear testimonials is because one that is so common place was so appalling. “The Lord saved me and now all my troubles are over.” Huh? All my troubles are over? What kind of a dream world are you living in? Or are you living your faith? Because if you were in a sinful world, you would have troubles.

Well the word faith here carries the same meaning as in Ephesians 2 verse 8, it is the gift of God and it tests and develops us as it works in us. Similarly, patience is not a passive word here. In Trenches words, and I quote “It does not mark merely passive endurance, but the brave patience with which the Christian contends against various hindrances, persecutions, and temptations that befall him and his conflict with the outward and inward word.” Patience has its active and perfecting work our preparation to be perfect, and entire, wanting nothing, verse four. Life for us must not be a series of miscellaneous events, but a purposefully sequence to prepare us for our responsibilities in time and in eternity. The wisdom is from above, we are told. Well, and so too are our trials and testing’s.

“Therefore, if any of you lack wisdom let him ask of God that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not, and it shall be given him.” Wisdom comes from God and He it is that we should ask for it. There is no qualification. Everything else that God can give, and does give, is subject to His decision “if it be Thy will.” But no such qualification for wisdom, we can all have it if we want it, obviously it’s about the last thing we ask for. We can think of all things we want, but wisdom “well, I’m smart enough as I am Lord, I just don’t need any more wisdom.” So two thousand years of Christianity and how often has wisdom been prayed for? Not very often judging by the results; either there’s been a short circuit somewhere, or else they haven’t prayed for it, we haven’t seen it in evidence around us.

Sometimes I’m sure pastors are tempted to pray “Lord, give this congregation wisdom.” But we have to pray for it, we have to want it, then we get it. Well the price of the wisdom is testing and adversity, and most people are unwilling to pay the price for wisdom.

But if we do ask for wisdom we must ask in faith nothing wavering, “for he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea, driven with the wind and tossed.” Now the waves to which such people are compared are acted upon by the wind they are not themselves acting, and this is true sadly of most people, and certainly since he’s talking about people in the church, most people in the church. They are acted upon, they’re tossed around because they are fearful of being men of faith and wisdom, then they have to act, then they have to be determiners, not the determined. To many people in the church are concerned with self salvation rather than the service of the Lord. Another thing about testimonial meetings that left me cold, they are ready to testified how gloriously the Lord saved them, which in some cases where true, in some I had my doubts, but never, never that they had been saved to serve; nobody thanking God for the privilege of serving Him now, no, just that they’ve got a reserved seat in heaven, or so they think.

The wavering man is in conflict with himself, not with the world. Where the world is concerned he is like a concerned he is like a cork floating on the waves, now that’s the comparison here. Such a man, James tells us, will get nothing from the Lord- nothing. This is a very blunt statement, as indeed so much of James is. Prayer must be in faith, nothing wavering. When we finished two weeks ago, or three, with Hebrews, we studied a book which by common consent is the least read and the least studied in the New Testament, and when it is all the emphasis is on priesthood, not on service, which is why he deals at length with priesthood. But James with his bluntness takes that practical emphasis which we see in Hebrews, and rams it home irrevocably. The surviving stories about James are often exaggerations, they tell us that in effect he was a fanatic about the law and that’s why the Pharisee’s, up to a point, respected him; but they also killed him finally, he was a threat to their position. He was a champion of the law, he was a staunch and unwavering leader. James stresses very strongly a personal faith and commitment. Storms and troubles come from without, faith and wisdom come from above and within. From the hand of God, whose purpose for us is altogether righteous and holy, most men want to be spared from the storms of life, and too many people come into the church to run away from the troubles. But James makes clear that every faith shall be tested, no testing, no faith. God tests every real faith. It is therefore impossible for a man to survive without faith and wisdom. He will, without them, be like a cork bobbing on the waves on the waters. Faith and wisdom

James teaching on wisdom is tied to the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ as he declares in verse one. The very early date of James letter is in part likely because the whole of the revelation of the Old Testament and the coming of the Messiah are assumed by James to be an unbroken unity. James represents the kind of thing that prevailed for a couple of generations whereby there was no division between the Old and the New Testament, it was one unbroken word. The division of the Bible came about because of a heretic, Marcion, who said you had the Old Testament God of wrath and hate and justice, and now you have the God of love and peace and grace. They followed a heretic in dividing the Bible into two parts. In effect James says that if a division be made it will be made by others to their own judgment. He speaks as a Hebrew, loyal to the Old Testament, insisting that it is one unbroken revelation. All who make a division between Old and New will be unstable and worthless, and James’s contemptuous conclusion “let not that man think that he will receive anything from the Lord.” The Lord is Jesus Christ, the crucified one requires decision and sacrifice from his followers.

Now an important fact emerges, the exclusive stress in the church today is valid with respect to salvation, but not sanctification. James insists that true faith is marked by wisdom, and in a subsequent text he tells us also by works. He refuses to separate faith from wisdom and works. I think a lot of the foolishness in the church today is a result of that separation. James insists that true faith is marked by wisdom and by works. In other words, faith without wisdom and works can be both stupid, and dead. Let us pray.

Our Father we give thanks unto Thee for this, Thy word. We thank Thee that Thou hast promised to give us wisdom, make us zealous in praying for it, make us mindful for our need for wisdom that we may be wise and that our works may be the works of faith with wisdom. Grant us this in our Savior’s name, amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson?

Yes?

[Audience member] Rush it seems that to a lot of modern Christians, well at least I get the impression, their idea of wisdom is some sort of magical, supernatural disposition communicated immediately to the human mind. People will confront some difficulty and say “God give me wisdom” and think that there’s just going to be some immediate revelation, but that does not seem to be the Biblical conception of wisdom at all.

[Rushdoony] No, it’s very practical, it’s very practical. And therefore we must not see wisdom in terms of a Greek philosophical perspective where it is and abstract knowledge of things; it’s a very practical thing.

Any other questions or comments?

Yes?

[Audience member] If faith is a gift from God is it given in degrees then because how could we waver in our faith? You either would have or you don’t.

[Rushdoony] Yes. That’s a very, very important question and it brings us face to face again with one of the great mysteries of our faith. We are told that it is our faith, but it is a gift from God. We are told that the primary determination of all things is by God, so that the very hairs of our head are all numbered, but our human responsibility is not denied. Men want to think in either-or terms, either God or man. But we are told that we both have a part in this, while the primary determination is from God our part is very real. The Westminster confession says the contingency of secondary causes is determined by the primary causes, and yet so as not to lose its freedom, but rather to affirm it. In other words, where-as Islam says we are totally determined and it believes in fate, so much so that you do not speak of yourself except in the third person. You don’t say “I did it” but “Mohammed Ali has done thus and so” as though you were observing yourself because Allah has done it all, and as I’ve said before it used to be the custom that a guilty man would say “tismet, {?} it was so determined by Allah, not by myself” and the judge says “true, and it was so determined by Allah, not myself, that I sentence you to death.” They’re not in it, they’re observers of it; whereas we see both the total presence of God in all our being, in all our action, and yet our own total power and activity.

And this is the glory of Biblical faith which no other religion, no other philosophy, has ever been able to affirm. And this is what destroyed, as Charles Norris Cochrane in his magnificent book Christianity and Classical Culture, among a number of other things pointed out the pagan philosophers felt they had destroyed Christianity by saying “if God predestines everything then man is not free”. But their philosophies ended up denying man’s freedom; they made him a product of his environment, of his heredity, and so on. Whereas Christianity gave people in the empire freedom, and the matter was debated over and over again, freedom versus necessity, how could you reconcile those two? And apart from Christianity no one has been able to give an answer. The philosophers or philosophes of the 18th century ended up with a concept as La Mettrie formulated it in his book titled A Man A Machine - man simply an automaton manipulated by nature. This is why when Christianity wanes, so too does freedom. Because it is our faith that can alone reconcile freedom and necessity.

Does that help?

Are there any other questions or comments?

Well if not let us conclude with prayer.

Our father it has been good for us to be here, we thank Thee that where two or three are together, there our Lord is with them, welcome Lord Jesus. We thank Thee that Thou art closer to us than we are to ourselves. Go with us to guide, keep, and bless us. Make us ever joyful in Thy presence. And now go in peace, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost bless you and keep you, guide and protect you, this day and always, amen.