Momentum – Part 9 – The Center

Greeting:
  • If you have your bibles please open them up to James 3 – if you want to follow with the notes – you can go to cornerbible.life and you can follow along with
  • We are going to be specifically in James 3:13-18 this morning –
Passage:
“Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy, impartial and sincere. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.” (James 3:13-18).
Intro
Who have we placed at the center of our universe?
James tells us there are two types of wisdom that we live our life by
  • Worldly wisdom – looking at life from man’s perspective –
  • Heavenly wisdom – which is looking at life from God’s perspective
He begins to unpack this – take a look
“Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom.
The first thing James does – is show us what worldly wisdom looks like in our life –
But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice.
  • So James here breaks down what worldly wisdom looks like – life lived from man’s perspective – the first thing he does that we wanna talk about is that he reveals the source of worldly wisdom – he says that this jealousy, envy, selfish ambition – doesn’t come from God –
      • he uses three words to describe where it comes from
    • but it’s earthly – or worldly – meaning does look outside of this life
    • it’s unspiritual – which literally means “belonging to breath” meaning man’s perspective
    • finally – it’s demonic – meaning – it comes from satan
Bitter jealousy – or another translation could be bitter envy –
  • And James is saying this attitude – it’s eating at your soul. It’s not coming out of love for your neighbor – it’s coming from an unhealthy love of yourself.
  • In fact, I would go so far to say that jealousy and envy – will prevent you from loving other people –
    • in fact, a jealous heart – is a heart that turns in on itself – it’s unable to love and give and be generous because it constantly want to take and consume.
  • That’s what jealousy does – the second one here is selfish ambition –
Selfish ambition:
Ambition can be a good thing – God gives us ambition – to do the things he has called us to do
That’s not what James is talking about here
  • He is not talking about ambition as much as he is talking about the motivation for ambition. of whose kingdom are we actually interested in building? J
and that’s James is saying – For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice.
  • He says holding onto jealousy and ambition never stays in our heart – it comes out in our actions – and just like the tongue is a fire and it burns down the forest – our selfish and jealous hearts – they do the same thing – and it leads to all kind of destruction and sin – and disorder – and chaos
Heavenly Wisdom:
But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy, impartial and sincere. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.”
  • The way of life – that God is wanting to grow in your life and show up in your conduct is exactly the opposite of worldly wisdom.
  • When Jesus is my lord savior and treasure, when people around me get, achieve, or accomplish something – I can be excited, happy and celebrate them – rather than push for my own way – and focus getting even.
  • When he is at the center – I don’t have to fight for the top – because he’s already at the top.
So my friends this morning – who is at the center of your world? Have you placed yourself there or have you placed Christ there?

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