James chapter one, and we're reading from verse five. 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. 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. For let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord. A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.

Let the brother of low degree rejoice in that he is exalted, but the rich in that he is made low. because as the flower of the grass he shall pass away. For the sun is no sooner risen with a burning heat, but it withereth the grass, and the flower thereof falleth, and the grace of the fashion of it perisheth. So also shall the rich man fade away in his ways. Amen.

May the Lord bless to us this reading from his word.

when satan tempted eve in the garden of eden he did so by offering her the prospect of divine wisdom he showed her a tree and the fruit of that tree and he said in the day ye eat thereof then your eyes shall be opened and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. It was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And the Lord had said, do not eat of it.

Now Eve already knew good. It is all she had ever known, all she had ever experienced. She knew the good hand of the loving God. She knew the good company of her creator. She knew his good provision in every conceivable way. What she did not know was evil. but she was about to find that out. Not from the fruit, the fruit wasn't evil, but evil from the depth of her own soul. Stirred up ambition, the pride of her own heart.

We read in Genesis chapter 3, the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was pleasant to the eyes. And a tree to be desired to make one wise, sensual things attracted Eve. She took of the fruit thereof and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat. and the eyes of them both were opened and they knew that they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons.

God had said, don't eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But Adam and Eve did so anyway. Their disobedience robbed them of the good that they had known and brought them the evil that they now felt. Separation from God, shame and guilt in themselves, subjection to Satan, and exclusion from the garden.

Eve saw a tree to be desired to make one wise. and mankind has been learning ever since about the depravity of the human heart. Ever since Adam and Eve's removal from God's presence, man has been trying to find a way back to God and the paradise lost. Cain, by the work of his hands, tried but found no acceptance, nor can there be by that means. In fact, the phrase, the work of our hands, in scripture is a synonym for idolatry.

Abel, on the other hand, we're told by faith, offered blood. recognizing no doubt the pattern supplied by God of the covering made from skin for the first parents. Without shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin. And Abel, glancing back to that act of the Lord, looked forward to the coming of a fit substitute. and a suitable sacrifice for sin, hence his offering of a lamb of the flock.

Abel looked forward to one whose heel would be bruised in the crushing of the serpent's head. Eve sought wisdom, but found only sorrow. And all the wisdom man has accrued ever since is mere foolishness in the sight of God. And he has said, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. In our reading today, James 2 is speaking about wisdom. And here, a great distinction is made by the apostle. James tells us that there are two kinds of wisdom. There is a wisdom which is worldly and natural, and a wisdom that is from heaven and spiritual. There is wisdom that is earthly, sensual and devilish, says James. And he's going to speak a bit more about that wisdom in chapter three.

Now, he wants to address another kind of wisdom, the wisdom that is from above. And this wisdom, he tells us, is pure, peaceable and gentle. This is the revealed wisdom of God. This is the wisdom that is unto salvation. This is a wisdom that is bound up in the scriptures that are able to make men and women, boys and girls, wise unto salvation. It is the wisdom of God in Jesus Christ. that only Christ's church on earth knows. Furthermore, only believers know their lack, their want, their need of this wisdom. And it is a hidden wisdom as far as the world is concerned. It is this wisdom that James is speaking about. It is this wisdom that we are going to be thinking about today.

Spiritual wisdom. Spiritual wisdom is the practical and experiential application of spiritual truth. Spiritual wisdom is the practical and experiential application of spiritual truth. I dare say that there's not a listener here today who would not agree or who would say that they have no need for any more spiritual wisdom. But I want us to think about, I want us to understand where this wisdom comes from. This spiritual wisdom, James says, if any man lacketh wisdom, let him ask of God. This spiritual wisdom comes from the Lord Jesus Christ. There is no spiritual wisdom, there is no spiritual understanding outside of the Lord Jesus Christ. If we are outside of Christ, regardless of the fact that the world speaks about spirituality. If we are outside of Christ, there is no spiritual wisdom. There is no spiritual understanding. There is no spiritual experience of God. Outside of Christ, there is nothing.

We have learned that the Lord Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life. And everyone who would be wise in spiritual things must know Christ, who is the fountain of all the wisdom of God. All the wisdom of God that can be communicated to men must be discovered in Christ. In him, says the writer to the Hebrews, dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. And the personification of all spiritual truth and all spiritual wisdom is in our Lord Jesus Christ.

And we have good reason to view this wisdom as being in Christ himself because the scriptures show this to be the case often. God's revelation of truth is Christ's incarnation. The hymn that we read together from Isaac Watts there spoke about the greatest wisdom of God being revealed on the cross. of the Lord Jesus Christ. And the scriptures show this often.

Christ speaks the true words of spiritual wisdom to men in his gospel. The Apostle Paul tells the Corinthians, it is Christ, Christ the person, Christ the man, Christ the son of God, Christ the Redeemer, who of God is made unto us wisdom. If we would have spiritual wisdom, it must be found in Christ. So that Christ has made unto us wisdom as well as righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.

In the book of Proverbs chapter 8, the wise man there personifies wisdom saying, blessed is the man that heareth me. Whoso findeth me, findeth life, and shall obtain favour of the Lord. And this is Christ who is speaking, the wisdom of God, the long-anticipated Messiah, the divine wisdom revealed on earth and conveyed to sinners in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

It is the wisdom of God that Christ committed to his apostles and to his church.

And every believer seeks to know Christ better. And every believer endeavours to experience God's grace in Christ more. We do so because we love him. We do so because we long to be with him and we long to be like him.

But there are other reasons too why we should seek spiritual wisdom. And this is what James is telling us in this passage today. It's what he's telling us here. He is saying to us that knowing Christ helps us to understand the world around us. Spiritual wisdom enables us to deal better with the trials and challenges of life, what James calls divers temptations.

And though our trials are indeed divers, they are different, our trials differ one to another, person to person. We all, to some degree, to some extent or another, feel these troubles as members of Christ's body. When the Holy Spirit quickens a dead sinner, he creates spiritual life and he initiates a process of spiritual growth and development. And that process of growth and development incurs the diverse trials and temptations of which James is speaking.

We might think of these diverse temptations as growing pains. I don't know whether you speak of these things but we used to speak about it when the children were young and they would get these odd aches and pains and there would be no apparent reason for them and ultimately they would pass and we would say they're growing pains. Believers in their souls get growing pains. It's the pains that we incur as our spirit grows and as we grow in our spirit in the wisdom and knowledge of the Lord.

Believers first experience God's grace in salvation and then they grow in God's grace and they gain knowledge of Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour. How do we gain this knowledge? Well, we learn from reading God's Word. And I make no apology for reading the Word of God, sometimes at length as we meet together to worship, because this is the way, this is our nourishment, this is our food, this is how we grow and learn and understand. It is with familiarity with the Word of God.

So we learn from reading God's Word. We learn from hearing the gospel preached. We learn from worshiping the Lord, from praying, praising, receiving spiritual lessons. But there are other lessons too. Trials, and this is what we're speaking about. This is why we're coming to this today. This is what James is telling us. Trials are used by the Lord to encourage, to enable, and to expedite our growth. like pruning fructifies a plant, or lifting weight makes us stronger. By trials, our usefulness in the Lord's service is enlarged. We learn patience, we learn dependence, we learn humility and meekness. We grow individually in our own spiritual understanding and we grow collectively in fellowship, in love, in empathy by bearing one another's burdens.

Trials sharpen our awareness of our spiritual need. and they stir up our desire to deepen our experience of the Saviour. We learn that we need more of His help. We need more of His presence and His grace in our lives. We learn that through our trials. Our divers temptations teach us our need for more heavenly wisdom. Which is why, paradoxically, with James, we can call it all joy when we fall into them.

Call it all joy when you fall into divers temptations. What? How is it a source of joy when we are tried? Because these lead us into spiritual wisdom and greater trust and dependence on the Lord.

James asks the question, do we lack wisdom? Well, who would say no today to that question? Who would not wish to be wiser in spiritual matters and to know Christ better? That we lack wisdom is not to say that we are totally ignorant of Christ. Every believer knows Christ, knows Christ savingly. And all believers afterward seek to deepen their knowledge of their savior and their friend. We wish to experience our spiritual union and enlarge our fellowship with the one that we love. We want to taste and see that the Lord is good. We want to taste experimentally, experientially, really and truly deepen our understanding and our knowledge of the Lord.

We have a desire that we have never had before. We have an appetite to learn more of Christ. That is a mark of spiritual life. And it is God who gives such an appetite. And it is God alone who can satisfy it. In the creation of the new man, believers lack no good thing. and in our subsequent growth in grace, we shall be denied no good thing. And that is what James is encouraging us to consider.

James directs us to ask the Lord for all that we lack. Our requests for spiritual blessings, of which spiritual wisdom is foremost, are to be made to God. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. He is God only wise, says Paul. He in whom all wisdom dwells. And James reassures us. He's large in his encouragement. He tells us, God gives to all men liberally. All who ask in faith receive. All who seek will find. The Lord does not upbraid. Upbraiding means that he doesn't withhold his goodness because of our past faults, because of our past failures. He gives liberally as only he can because he delights to give good gifts to his children.

Now James is emphasizing here the necessity of faith. And this ought not to surprise us. If we have no faith, we can neither ask in faith nor obtain anything by faith. Faith is the channel. Faith is the means by which God gives his good gifts to us and reveals them for what they are. Our Lord Jesus is the author of our faith and the giver. It is by the faith of Jesus Christ that we believe and receive. Without faith, we have nothing with which to receive or recognize God's blessings.

Furthermore, faith is essential to spiritual growth. A man without faith has no spiritual growth. Let me just make a little application on that point, if I may. The statement was, a man without faith has no spiritual growth. And that is why law has to be so heavily pushed in many churches in our day. because legal obedience and so-called good works is substituted for spiritual growth in order to deceive the spiritually ignorant. A man either has faith or he does not. If he has faith, it will grow. And if it grows, there will be growing pains. But once faith is implanted At the new birth, it receives knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. And after receiving Christ, every good gift follows. Every good gift, such as knowledge of sin forgiven. justifying righteousness experienced, pardon and cleansing of our conscience, adoption into the family of God and the fellowship that it brings, the knowledge of our everlasting inheritance and the hope and comfort that that gives us as we anticipate what lies ahead.

As faith grows, so does spiritual wisdom. Faith is the key to the Lord's storehouse of blessing. And we are to ask the Lord in faith for more spiritual wisdom. Listen, listen. I hope that you will do that today. That is what I want you to do. I want you, brother and sister, I want you who love the Lord, to ask the Lord for more spiritual wisdom.

That is what James is directing us to. That is what he is pointing us to. I hope you will take James' words at face value when he says, if any of you lack wisdom, Let him ask of God and it shall be given him. Let us be hearers and doers of the word. Let us be asking people. Let us ask believing in God and trusting his promise to supply our need.

were to ask in faith, believing that whatever is asked according to the will of God for his glory and for his people's good will be granted by divine wisdom in God's own way and time. Doubters and double-minded men need not apply. I repeat, only the born again, only those who have grace can grow in grace, but grow we shall. And James encourages persistence and constancy.

Doubting God is an affront to the love of the Lord for his own. It is to doubt his omnipotence and his omniscience his wisdom and his goodness. James employs the picture of waves at sea being blown by the wind to describe an unstable man. And James had spent plenty of time in small ships being blown around in Galilee to know that a ship adrift on a storm can end up literally anywhere.

So how then shall we live? Let us live and walk by faith. In the darkest times, even in the storms of life, God's children are brought into trials purposefully by God's love to be carried through them by Christ's grace and wisdom. Trials are not punishments. God has nothing to punish his children for. All our sins are taken away by Christ. We are clean.

Now he may discipline us by setting up guardrails to straighten our pathway or by wielding a rod to gain our attention. He may let us feel the burn when we touch such things as are too hot to handle. He may raise his voice when we wander too close to an edge. But our trials are educational. They are a means to the end of the greater trust and more dependence on the Lord. It is for this reason that James tells us that we can rejoice in divers temptations despite their bitterness. And our ability to see and understand this is our spiritual wisdom.

Brothers and sisters don't ever interpret your troubles as punishment from the Lord. Our days of punishment are past. There is no anger in God towards you. Every hardship you encounter in this life is personally designed by our all-wise, all-loving Father to assist our growth in grace and knowledge of Christ. And again, I say, I do not for a moment wish to understate how trying these trials can be. How painful, how frustrating. Sometimes it seems as though our hearts will break. Sometimes we are consumed by fear or crippled by regret and remorse. We may be pressed to the point of unbelief. Pain seems to consume us, body and soul.

Poverty, weakness, loneliness, apprehension concerning the future and what lies ahead. They all bring their own kinds of stress. Or maybe we feel helplessness. Maybe we feel inadequate to assist those that we love. We fear for their eternal well-being and we long for their souls to find Christ but we can do nothing about it. Or maybe we're tempted to sin. Maybe we feel addicted to activities that we know are damaging to our spiritual good and that hurt our testimony. James calls them divers temptations because there's no end to the variety. or diversity, with which troubles beset the Lord's people. But know this, neither sin, nor Satan, nor any other enemy can touch one of the Lord's little ones, except it be for our ultimate good.

Let the brother of low degree rejoice in that he is exalted, but the rich in that he is made low. Whatever strange or unusual event overtakes us shall in the end yield the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them that are exercised thereby. It shall bear witness to God's love and care for us. It will culminate in praise and rejoicing. Strange but true.

Think of the Lord's people of times past, the apostles, the young churches, men and women throughout church history, impoverished, persecuted, hounded by enemies until In the end, they are elevated to heights beyond their highest hope and imagination. Today, these brothers and sisters are in glory. Their trials are all past. They've received their well done. Good and faithful servant because they endured to the end. And that will be our portion too.

Think of what our brothers and sisters even now are experiencing. Those that we know, some that we don't know. Those in our own fellowship. Does not our own suffering assist us to feel somewhat the sufferings of our brethren? How are we able to sympathise and empathise if we have no concept of what a brother or sister is feeling? So the fact that the Lord touches our bodies gives us an empathy for those around about us who need our encouragement and our comfort.

And do not these trials teach us that where the doctor's wisdom ends, The Lord's wisdom begins. Where our own strength fails, the Saviour's proves sufficient. When everything else grows dark, the light of the world stays constant. We discover the Lord easiest. in times of trial because our divers temptations are opportunities to experience His grace. There are gaps in the armour of our own self-sufficiency where the light of God's grace shines through.

And think with me, will you not, on the Lord Oh, what he suffered. How he bore the contradiction of sinners against himself. How he bore our sins in his own body on the tree. How he bore our grief and carried our sorrows. How he must have loved us to endure all that he did for us. Is there not some value in pain even when it turns our thoughts and thanks to the suffering Saviour, the consequences of our sin and the nature of His love for us?

Spiritual wisdom, brethren, in times of trial enables us to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge. Spiritual wisdom is to be strengthened with might by his spirit in the inner man. We don't ask the Lord to send us trials, but we do ask for spiritual wisdom to endure our trials. It is what we all lack and need more of, and it is freely available for the asking.

May the Lord bless these thoughts to us today. Amen.