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00:38 Amen. Glory to God. Welcome to the program.
00:40 Welcome to the cafe. Pastor Clark Covington here today. I’m so glad to be here.
00:46 So glad you’ve decided to join me today on the cafe radio program KJV Cafe. Now look, today we are talking about something so powerful and so important it will bless you if you perk up and you tune in and if you tune out you’re gonna miss out. Amen.
01:03 Today we are speaking about God’s great wisdom, godly wisdom, and if you are someone that knows the Lord or desires to know the Lord then you too can get in on that wonderful wisdom. James 3:17. But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy.
01:35 Today I want to start at the beginning of this verse. James 3 is a fantastic chapter in the Bible and I am someone that likes truth pointed out plainly and James 3 has a lot of truth that is pointed out or explained very plainly. And it starts here in James 3:17, the latter part of the chapter, but the wisdom that is from above is first pure.
02:05 And so I want to focus on this idea of godly wisdom being pure. And before we get into why godly wisdom is pure, how about why aren’t more people talking about or seeking the Lord for His wisdom to begin with? Have you ever thought about that? I mean in this day and age what they call the information age, when anybody can pick up their phone and search up any statistic or they can do almost anything with these phones these days and you know you can read your heart rate and you can measure a wall and you can you know have graphics show up on top of someone’s face and you can film video and audio and all these things you can do with a phone and people just run to their phone and say I want to learn about this I want to learn about that. Why aren’t people running to their Bibles? Why aren’t people running to God? Because the phone, the internet, man, we are faulty, right? We have a faulty wisdom.
03:05 And I will say this with all authority because now here we are in in 2022, 2023 and onwards, look at what’s going on. The world is an absolute mess. So if man had evolved right and become so intelligent with all of their knowledge and information and as the Bible explains that information will will get greater and greater that learning will continue in the last days.
03:32 If man was so great then why are we having so many problems today? And if in fact we were having so many problems today and we can agree that man is flawed and that man does not have all the answers and that all the answers there are not located at that college campus or in that library or in that book unless it’s the Bible, Amen. If we can agree on that then why aren’t more people turning to God for His wisdom? I mean we look at God as a not all knowledgeable God. We look at God as an all-powerful God.
04:04 We look at God as an all-present God. But do we actually seek him in that light and in that way that we show faith that He is who He says He is and He’s a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him? As Hebrews 11:6 points out, do we then go in and seek hHim? Do we look to the Lord Jesus Christ for answers in our life? Do we seek wisdom in God’s Word, in His Holy Word? And you say, Brother Clark, well I wouldn’t know where to find it. Well, I mean the first step is praying over your Bible and asking God to reveal wisdom to you.
04:42 The next step is to realize the entire Bible is the Living Word, Amen. That means it all applies to you. It may not all be written for you in the sense that it’s, you know, if you’re reading the Old Testament, you’re reading about the laws and Deuteronomy or Numbers or Leviticus or whatever it might be.
04:58 No, you’re not under that law anymore, but you still can take a lot of information from that to understand. There’s so much learning in the Bible and wisdom about a usury or interest in lending, about taxes, about all manner of subjects, things that you wouldn’t even imagine, about food preparation, about eating, about resting, about relying on the Lord and the Lord’s great power, amen, to deliver you from your problems. And there are so many scenarios in the Bible that ring so true today.
05:30 There’s even a book in the Bible that is known as the Book of Wisdom. That’s Proverbs. It’s written by Solomon, David’s son, who was the wisest man to ever live, the Bible teaches us, because he asked God for wisdom and God gave it to Him liberally.
05:45 And we know the Bible tells us that God will give wisdom to those that ask for it. And so why aren’t we asking God for wisdom? Could it be that we don’t believe that he really is a God of all wisdom and of all knowledge? Could it be that we kind of picture him on the sidelines or just there to rescue us when we’re in a really bad pickle? Could it be that we think that man does have the answer? We need to go to God first. You know, when you have a question, when you need wisdom in your life, and we all need wisdom, and the Bible has much to say about the benefit of seeking wisdom and having wisdom, when you need wisdom in your life, go to God first.
06:21 Go to Him in prayer. Give Him the glory that he is due. Let Him know that you understand that he is the God of all knowledge, the God, the sovereign God, the God that delivered Israel out of the hands of Egypt.
06:38 Amen. The God that is still here today, the God that defeated the devil through Christ on the cross, the God that gave us that free gift of salvation, the God that loves us, the God that stick us closer to us than a brother, the God of the armies. You know, the Bible calls Lord God or Father God the Lord of hosts.
06:52 Amen. What does that mean? That means the Lord of the armies. That is our God.
06:57 He is all-wise, all-knowledgeable, all-knowing, and completely sovereign. And when we go to him, and we trust him to give us wisdom, I believe He’ll give it to us, and He’ll give it to us in droves. Amen.
07:08 So we hopefully are now motivated to seek God for wisdom. In James 3:17, it mentions that the godly wisdom is pure, but the wisdom that is from above is first pure. So let’s go to James 3, let’s say verse 13.
07:25 Who is a wise man and endued with knowledge among you? Let him show out of agood conversation his works with meekness of wisdom. And conversation there could also mean behavior. But if ye have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not, and lie not against the truth.
07:43 This wisdom descendeth not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish. For where envying and strife is, there isconfusion and every evil work. But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, and then peaceable, gentle, easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy.
08:04 And the fruit of righteousness is sownin peace of them that make peace. And so we see here a contrast, don’t we, in James 3 in the latter part, that here we see that you have the wisdom that descends not from above. Well where is that from? Well that’s from hell itself, Amen. And that is earthly, sensual, and devilish.
08:35 And this is that wisdom that has people being bitter, envying, and strife, glorying in this, lying against the truth. Think about what the devil came here to do. He came here, the Bible tells us, to kill, steal, and destroy.
08:41 We know that the Bible is the author of confusion. For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work. Think of what envying is.
08:51 It’s coveting, is it not? It’s pride. It’s desiring something that someone else has. The Bible tells us in everything to give thanks, to be content with what we have, Amen. And so when we envy or we covet what another has, that’s going to create strife.
09:07 That is a sin. And we know the wages of sin is death. And then we know that confusion will kind of creep in as we desire something.
09:16 Maybe we even obtain that thing we desire and we aren’t fulfilled. And we have more problems than we ever had before. And we realize that spiritually we are dying because of this sin.
09:21 And we realize that that is not godly wisdom. And so for the sake of time here, what I want to do is take a step back and say, why is godly wisdom pure? It is not from the devil. It is not from hell itself.
09:38 It is not from the world. It is not carnal. It is not about gossiping or backbiting.
09:44 It is not about vengeance. It is not about selfishness. It is about love.
09:51 It’s about love. Seeking the other’s best interest. True love.
09:56 What did Christ do on the cross? He obediently and willingly died for your sins and my sins so that we could be forgiven. See Christ was sinless. He had no sin debt Himself.
10:09 He was born of a virgin. He lived this life 33 and a half years completely sinless. He was perfect.
10:14 He was God in the flesh. He did not have to die. He did not have to be quote-unquote defeated, arrested, whatever you would say.
10:23 He willingly did that. Amen. There are signs in the Bible when he’s praying in the Garden of Gethsemane and they come to get Him and they ask His name and he speaks and they all fall down.
10:38 That’s an example of his power that’s in the New Testament. Amen. We see that Christ has all power and yet he obediently and willingly allowed Himself to be humiliated, to be condescended, to drink that bitter cup of sin for all mankind for past, present, and future, to suffer the most brutal death that anyone has ever suffered.
10:53 That he was unrecognizable. He had been beaten so much. He did this because he knew out of a loving heart that God the Father wanted to save us sinners and that while we were yet sinners he died for us so that we could then accept that free gift because it had already been done.
11:14 He was buried three days and resurrected from the grave. Now it’s already been done. When we accept His free gift of salvation, when we realize our need and our sin debt has been paid on the cross and we accept Christ as Savior, then we’re saved.
11:26 Amen. And now we don’t have to live in the bondage of sin. We are now freed from sin.
11:32 We are eternally with God and we see that love is a pure love. There was no hidden agenda. There was no gain over something for Christ.
11:41 That was all loss on His part so that he could have us together with Him in heaven and that is for our sake and for the love of us. It was a substitutionary death. It was called the Passion because it’s Christ’s great love for us.
11:56 Oh what a God we serve and oh what great wisdom. Could anyone imagine doing this? Could anyone contemplate this kind of plan? It was only by the triune God before the world was even formed that they got together. God the Father, God the Son, and the Holy Spirit decided man will fall into sin and here’s how we will rescue man.
12:17 Those that believe, Amen, can and will be saved by the blood of Jesus Christ. And my Bible tells me that the Lord does not lose not one of His, that everyone that’s truly saved will be with him in heaven for an eternity, Amen. And on top of that we’ll be friends with Him.
12:29 We’ll be brothers. We’ll be in heaven. We’ll have a great reward.
12:33 We will be co-heirs with Christ, the Bible says. We will inherit a godly inheritance and most importantly we will not go to hell. We will not be separated from God and that is the true hell to be separate from a loving God who created this great plan out of perfect wisdom and out of pure wisdom that desired the best for others.
12:55 And so what can we do here today with this? Number one, we can accept Christ as Savior. Accept Him as Lord and Savior. If you haven’t, make today the day you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.
13:05 Do not put it off. The Bible says to work your salvation out with fear and trembling. Go to Christ, ask him to save you, believe on His finished work on the cross, and you will be saved.
13:16 And once you believe on Christ and what He did for you and once you’re saved, seek the Lord’s wisdom in all that you do. He intimately wants to be with you and instruct you and guide you and walk with you and He can and will if you will get into His word and you will get on your knees in prayer and you will seek Him morning, noon, and night and you will get totally sold out for Him because He’s sold out for you and you’ll live for Him with your whole heart and you’ll be blessed for it because you will start to receive that pure wisdom and that pure wisdom, that godly wisdom, will guide you throughout your life. You will have problems, yes, but you will overcome them all through Jesus Christ.
14:00 The Bible says the many are the problems of the righteous but Christ delivers them out of them all. God does himself deliver us out of them all. And so let’s seek Christ today and his perfect wisdom that is so pure and so lovely and so great.
14:16 Thank you for listening. Take care. God bless and Amen.