Decision Making

You know, we live in a society that is most often believed that we can sort of solve whatever problems it is. I mean, big problems, little problems. All you have to do is to get the most educated people in the room and get enough knowledge collected and apply some sort of humanistic principles, and you can solve problems. You can make decisions. Well, there's some problems with that. I mean, with all the educated people we have and all the knowledge we have today, I mean, we're awash in knowledge.

You know, just look up anything and try to search all the different information out there. Of course, maybe AI will fix that for us by just selecting what we all need to know, as it may be programmed to do. But we're awash in knowledge, and yet nobody's solving their problems. You know, nobody's making wiser decisions. In fact, it seems like on governmental level especially, all around the world, the decisions are worse.

You know, decision-making seems to be such a problem we have as human beings. Now, here's a problem that we have to understand about decision-making, and that is knowledge of itself doesn't work. And that's an uncomfortable truth, but it doesn't, because acquiring of information is important if you make any decision, right? But the acquiring of the information doesn't solve the problem. I mean, you don't even know what information sometimes is right and wrong. You have to be very analytical of the information you get. Also, knowledge, even neutral knowledge, can be used for good or evil.

You can take something that's absolutely neutral and use it for good or for evil. Also, if you start with a false premise, if you start with a false premise, you will use the knowledge to reach a conclusion. So if you believe anything that's common today, if you start with the premise, abortion is a woman's right, you will always come to the same conclusion with the knowledge that you acquire. And it may be very logical, because you start with a premise. So the knowledge, once again, doesn't lead to the right moral decision in that case.

And also, there's a huge gap between acquiring knowledge and knowing what the Bible calls wisdom. We've talked about wisdom before. Wisdom is, according to Solomon, it's knowledge, understanding the knowledge and applying the knowledge. That's what wisdom is. You have to understand the knowledge. And that means you have to have a context to which to understand that. The pistol of James is one of the most practical letters in the entire Bible. James was a very practical man. When you read through it, his arguments are very practical. It's about how to live. It's about how to do things.

So it's a very practical book. There's one part in James where he writes like Paul. When I read this part, it always amazes me, because I think, well, James is always called, you know, sort of the simple evangelist or simple apostle who basically dealt with simple things. No, he's not. There's a point in the middle of his letter where he suddenly writes like Paul.

In other words, he gets down into, let's get into the core of this beyond the things you do. And it's about wisdom. He talks about wisdom, and in that little passage there, it's suddenly like James shows, no, no, no. I'm just not going to talk about the practical things we do. I'm going to talk about how we make the decisions to do what we do. And he talks about two kinds of wisdom. Now, we're going to talk about that today, and then in the Bible study, we have some exercises we're going to do as groups in decision-making.

So, we're going to talk about this, take the break, and then actually, like on marriage, remember, we broke into groups a couple of times? We're going to break into some groups and get some problems and some illusions thinking about how to make decisions with a certain premise where we start. So, just go to James chapter 3. James chapter 3. He says, Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show by good conduct that his works are done in the meekness of wisdom. He says, who has understanding?

Who has it? And who is wise? Who's able to take knowledge, understand it, and apply it in what he's going to talk about as wisdom from above, the way God looks at things? Who is the person that can do that? Because his conduct shows it, the person's conduct shows how they're making decisions. In other words, their decisions are reaching certain conclusions. Their decision-making process reaches certain conclusions. And there's the meekness of wisdom.

The wisdom he talks about has to have a humility before God. It has to have at its core a humility before God, the belief that only God knows certain solutions, and I have to seek that, and I must then live by that. Now, that sounds like a Pauline statement. Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show by good conduct that his works are done in the meekness of wisdom. So the whole book is about the works of Christianity, and then he gets here and he says, but how do you come to the conclusions of what is good works? How do you come to that conclusion? So then he starts. Well, let me say something here. This meekness of wisdom begins with the concept that you don't know, only God knows. That's the meekness of it. I don't know. I must search and seek. So that's where it starts for James, which is exactly what Solomon said.

He says, but, now you think, okay, he's going to tell us, here's point one, point two, point three. Now here's what he starts with something that seems like has nothing to do with decision making. He says, but if you have bitter envy and self-seeking in your hearts, do not boast and lie against the truth. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. We're talking about decision making, and he starts talking about bitter envy and self-seeking in your hearts.

And there's a reason for this. He does something here that, once again, it's like Paul does. Let me tell you why you make bad decisions. And he hits at the very core of why you and I make so many bad decisions, why humanity makes bad decisions. At the core, there's two reasons. One is envy. We're driven by resentment, or we're driven by what other people have, or we look at other people, we're comparing ourselves to other people, and so this envy causes a bitterness in us. Why don't I have what others? Why am I always put down? Why am I not? An entitlement is actually a symptom of this. I'm entitled, and everybody else has something I don't. Everybody else gets position I don't. Everybody else gets credit I don't. And so you see the world as a victim, and you have envy, and it becomes bitter.

Now, that's actually the core, one of the core reasons we make bad decisions. Because it's not based on concepts of good and wrong, it's based on an emotion that says, I deserve more. I deserve better. Everybody's against me. I hate this person because they have this and I don't.

What's that have to do with wisdom? A lot. Because we're driven by that. The second one is self-seeking in your hearts. In other words, we're just selfish. So he starts with, you know, I don't start sermons about wisdom this way. I usually start with Solomon, and then let's go through point one, two, three, four, five, logically what we're supposed to do. And that's not what he does here. He starts with, this is why we make bad decisions. Because we're driven by a bitter endiness. It's motivated by other people. And we're driven by selfishness. And that will always lead us to bad decisions. So before we talk about how to make good decisions, we have to deal with this problem we have. We have to look at ourselves and say, how much am I driven by really bitter envy? And how much am I driven by selfishness? He says, do not boast a lie against the truth. He says, when you're driven that way, your decisions will be lies. You'll end up lying against the truth, and you'll end up boasting against the truth. That is that one sentence which I haven't even dug that one out to its fullest meaning. I'm going to take some time and just dig into that sentence. What is the depth of that sentence alone? That's a sermon right there. Then he says something that is a little disconcerting. You get the, well, okay, I don't have too much bitter envy. A little bit. A little self-seeking. This wisdom does not descend from above, but is earthly, sensual, and demonic. Now, I understand sensual. In other words, we're driven by the fact that we're physical. So we may be driven by what we see. We see something, or what we hear. We can be driven by all kinds of sensual input. I really like those clothes. I would like to have a suit just like that. So you get envious. It's like I've mentioned before, I remember one radio station I worked for, they would have the advertising salespeople post things inside their offices of a Lamborghini, and you work for that. You get up every day and you work for that.

And then these guys were like, they became envious of anybody that had that kind of car and they didn't. It was easy for me. Why do you work? Feed my wife and kids. I don't have to put that picture up. I know why I work. Why do you work? And they always had these things that they had to motivate them.

But he says it's sensual, but he says it's demonic.

You think, how does it demonic? That doesn't make sense. Well, you begin to understand the driving motivations of Satan, and therefore the demons who fall in, the angels who fall in, is envious of God. Who are you to tell me what to do? Envious of God and selfishness.

He says, when we are driven and we make our decisions based on those things, and remember he's talking about wisdom here. What makes you wise? He says, it's because you're driven like they are. They're driven. They're envious of God. They want what God has. They want His power. They want His authority. They want things done their way. And they're totally selfish in what they do. So it's actually the same sort of motivation that Satan and the demons have. And of course all you have to do is look around and say, how's that working out? How does Satan's way work out? It doesn't work very well. But we do that without even thinking about it. But he says, we're there as envious of self-seeking. Here's what happens with normal human thought process, no matter how much knowledge we have. Confusion and every evil thing are there. Because of these motivations, we can acquire huge amounts of knowledge and come to absolutely wrong conclusions. And you and I do that all the time. I mean, intellectual honesty is very hard for human beings. But when we are intellectually honest, sometimes you just look at something and say, how in the world did I come to that conclusion? And you realize you made a decision that was really unwise. And, you know, it's what we do. It's very hard to be intellectually honest. We can be honest about other people's faults, but we're very hard to look at ours. Especially our decision-making process. And so, this is where confusion comes from. And one thing that if you haven't noticed, the whole world is spiraling into confusion. Everything seems to be spiraling into confusion all the time. Yeah. That is the natural result of this kind of decision-making process. That's why Satan and the demons always create confusion. Eventually, all human beings on their own create confusion. It's what we do. We spiral into it. Because driven by envy and driven by selfishness, it's where you end up. It's just where you end up. But the wisdom that is from above, the wisdom that comes from God, once again, it sounds like Paul. He says it's pure. Now, interesting, that's the same... The Greek word there, the root word, is the same word we get holy from. What this means is that the wisdom that comes from God is never motivated by envy or selfishness. We need to be very thankful that God is never driven by envy or selfishness. God may display anger. He may display all kinds of things. But it's always under control because there's never envy and there's never selfishness. God never does something to you because He likes it or it's easy for Him. If Christ would have done what He did, and it had to be easy for Him, He could not have done it. He did it for us. That's totally unselfish. There's no envy involved. There's no envy involved because no matter what you and I do, we can't measure up. You and I can't... We're no threat to God. Today you can't say, I was so righteous, I was as righteous as God. Never will happen. So it's pure in that way. It doesn't have those other two elements in it that we tend to have. The Gospel isn't about just doing good works. Listen to this because this is important. The Gospel is about salvation and conversion, which produces good works. I've seen lots of people say, well, I do this, I do that, I do my good works because I'm a Christian, and I do these good works, and that shows I'm a Christian. Salvation and conversion produces good works, and we just do them because we do them. It becomes part of our nature. If we're doing them to show how good we are, we've missed the point. Remember, he says wisdom produces... You can see it in his works. Oh, good. If I go out and do a lot of good works, that means I'm wise. Not necessarily, because if you're driven by selfishness or envy, you're doing them for the wrong reason.

So this purity leads us because we have the meekness of wisdom. It always starts with meekness before God, and that motivates us to do good. At the Monday night's parenting class, the thing we went through was the difference between being perfect, morally perfect. Everybody wants to be morally perfect.

The Bible says, be perfect as your Father is, and heaven is perfect. But nobody's perfect. So we're doomed. We're sort of trapped in a... I'm perfect, but I'm not. I'm perfect, but I'm not. And you just can't... And so we try to teach our children to be perfect by saying, no, no, no, don't, don't, don't, because we're trying to remove all evil from them.

But the problem is, if you remove all evil and don't put anything else in, they have no way to make decisions. They're left with no way to make decisions. So the whole point of the class was, stop trying to be perfect and try to live by moral excellence. This... Make morally excellent decisions based on the Bible. As you do, you're actually becoming perfect. But it's not because you're saying, I'm going to be perfect today.

And, you know, if you're a perfectionist, you know, sometimes you're not trying to be perfect for a good reason. You're trying to be perfect because you're trying to control everything. Actually, I've got to get control of everything. Everything's going to be perfect. And you're always unhappy. No, we're obtaining perfection through the process of making morally excellent decisions.

So you have to teach children what's right as much or more than what's wrong. And that's just applicable to all of us. That's wisdom. We have to be centered on what's right. Yeah, we have to teach what's wrong. And yes, children have to be punished and all those things. But that's not... The main point is, what is it? I want them to grow up and never do anything wrong.

They have corrupt human nature and they live in Satan's world. You're not... Nobody can do that. What you have to help... What we have to do is teach them how to grow up as children who want to do what's right and children who understand, sometimes I mess up and they know they can go to God. They know they can go mom and dad and they can be helped with where they messed up. If we demand perfection, we create people that do nothing but fail. If we demand moral excellence, we help people grow and help children grow so that what happens is, I messed up.

It's an acceptable part of life. I have failed. I need to deal with my failure. Instead of I have to hide it because everybody will think I'm not perfect. So this pureness that's talking about wisdom here is very deep. That's a whole other sermon in itself. He then says they're peaceable. It produces peace in your decision making. Now sometimes you can't produce peace in your decision making because that means you have to go along with somebody who's wrong.

You know what I mean? You can't go wrong with... along with evil. You can't say, well, I'll compromise for peace. But there are many times in life that a decision can create peace and that's the goal. And you know one of the greatest examples of that is Abraham with Lot. There was conflict between their herdsmen because there were just too many animals. Their tribes had grown so large they couldn't travel.

They're nomadic. Wherever they go, they just pretty soon... the sheep eat everything and they have to keep moving. I mean sheep will eat everything down to the dirt. So in the old cowboy movies, the cowboys always shot the sheep. That was actually true. There was reason for that because they would destroy the land. We lived in Texas. People used to bring in little herds of sheep and goats and mow their lawns that way. People would rent out their sheeps and goats and you wouldn't have to do anything with the lawn for two months because you had dirt for a while.

You just eat everything down. Anyways... now I get off on sheep. But anyways... oh, the sheep herders. The sheep herders. I'm getting more like Fred Keller's all the time. I don't know where I am. So you have the sheep herders. And what does Abraham say? Abraham's the elder person there. He... everybody will submit to him. He has the authority to do whatever he wants.

And he looks at Lot and says, Lot, you pitch which direction you're going to go in and I'll go the opposite direction and we'll live in peace. And you know, we can see each other every once in a while. And Lot looks down at that beautiful valley where there's these cities. Sodom and Gomorrah, there's Lisa, another one down there, at least the third one.

He looks down and he sees these cities and he says, I want to go there. Abraham says, well, I'm going the opposite direction. Now Abraham made a peaceable decision how to work out for Lot. Because see, his motivation was different. His motivation was meekness before God, Abraham's, meekness before God, and peaceable. His motivation was, oh look, I can get something. See? A little bit of selfishness here. The result of his decision was terrible. Abraham's decision was fine.

Perfect example. Peaceable. There are times when you make a decision for peace. You're thinking about making decisions for peace. You know, husbands and wives, you can't always give in. But there are times where you don't care. For peace's sake. I'm going to say this, this is embarrassing. But I have, you know, I just use myself as an example. For a number of years when we first got married, Kim would say, slow down, slow down.

And I'd just look at her and just keep saying the same speed. And if she said it a couple of times, I'd just say, do you want to drive? No, I just want you to slow down. And I wouldn't slow down. I mean, I wasn't speeding, but you know, maybe it was raining or something. And then it dawned on me. She's over there nervous. And my concept is, oh, this is about will. And my will is bigger than your will. It wasn't about will at all. It was about helping another human being who was nervous because it was raining.

And all of a sudden I started slowing down. And now I drive slow in the rain. So much so that Daris McNeely called me an old man the other day. You drive like an old man. It's certain conditions. And I'm thinking, no, you're not, Kim.

I can speed up. But you understand peace, her peace of mind, is more valuable than getting some place five minutes difference in time. And she wasn't trying to control me. She was nervous. That's what peaceable is. I'm ashamed, but it took me a while to figure that one out.

Poor woman, just, okay, you know, it's your gripping things, you know. Yeah, okay. I understand now. So anyways, you grow. The next one is says it's gentle. It's very interesting. I quote here from William Barkley. He's a Scottish commentator, Biblical commentator. I don't always quote from him, but he knew Biblical Greek, and he really would get into the meaning of words.

And here's what he says about that word that's translated gentle here. Of all the Greek words in the New Testament, this is the most untranslatable. Oh, gentle means you're kind. You know, you're not rough. No, the word, they didn't have an English word to translate it into.

It is the ability to make a decision and look at the letter of the law and make a righteous decision that it's the law that goes beyond the law. There's one way it was translated. A perfect example of that is a woman brought to Jesus who was caught in adultery. And he said, oh, come on, you guys. You're doing all kinds of stuff. So he condemns them. They go off.

He doesn't then say, you're okay. Don't worry about it. No. Because according to the law, she could be stoned. That's the law. That's the law of God. He looked at her and said, what? Go and sin no more. You get caught again. I mean, if you do this again, it's your problem. I'm giving you grace. I'm giving you forgiveness.

Just go and don't do this anymore. That's this idea of gentle here. It's the law beyond the law. There was no way to translate it. It's understanding how to apply the law in its great principles, in the great principles that the law is based on.

It's interesting because in James 2, we won't go there, but in James 2, he talks about wisdom is kind. Versus 1 through 9 in James 2, he talks about wisdom produces kindness. In other words, it takes a step farther in your decision-making. You have to deal with practicalities in wisdom, but you also have to deal with people in wisdom. And so there's times you apply the principle. It doesn't mean break the law.

One thing about James, James never said break the law. That's why Martin Luther wanted the book of James taken out of the Bible because it just pushes the law so much. But the point he's making here is very similar to what Paul would say and Paul's misunderstood for.

There's a time when there are concepts, big concepts, but the letter of law demands this, but you apply it. It's not you do away with the law. You apply it in this greater context. And Jesus, what the woman caught in adultery, is a perfect example. He didn't say you can go break the law. He said, don't do this anymore. But I'm not going to have them stone you here in the street either because they're just as wrong as you are.

See, it's just brilliant. It's the way God gave the law. So Jesus is showing there are times when the concept applies the law to a very specific situation. There's one right there. Now, what we try to do using earthly wisdom is to apply the law to break the law.

Oh, well, I have a chance to get a really good increase in my salary if I just work every other Saturday. So I'll be breaking the Sabbath now for the next two years every other Saturday, but man, I'm going to make $20,000 more a year. And God would want me to be blessed. It's a blessing from God.

Now, that's breaking the law, but that's not the law greater than the law.

See, we do that all the time. We'll find a way to think we're applying the law, and we're actually not. What this is, the wisdom is you know when you're applying the principle. You understand it. That means we have to understand the principle of the law. It says you're reasonable. The new international version says you're very submissive.

You're willing to work out problems. You're reasonable in your decision-making. Because see, the thing is, James is saying here, most decisions involve more than one person.

So you're reasonable. You only force something when God's forcing it.

You ever be at the Feast of Tabernacles with family? We'd be at the Feast of Tabernacles. We have 20 family members there. Where you want to go for lunch? And I just go and sit down.

Lunch is going to be late today.

Actually, we work it out pretty good now. It's pretty quick. With little kids, your decisions get, you know, narrowed down much more. They're hungry. We're going where they can get the serve the most. And you look at all these little kids over here crying. It's like, okay, I don't care. Let's go where it gets served first. You know, quickest.

But people would talk and talk and talk and talk. Then there's always one family member who said, I don't care where you're going. I'm going here. Everybody goes, oh, that's terrible. And sometimes everybody follows and someone says, oh, you've done that before. Where are you going to someplace else? And it's like, where do you go for lunch? And I just sit down. Let's be reasonable.

I really don't care.

But I had to learn that. I used to throw in, I want to go here.

They'd all look at me and say, oh, that's okay. But we want to go here. We want to go there. I'd just rather be with all of them. That's all I care about. I'll eat whatever's there. But it took me a while to figure that out.

I don't have all this. That's what I find so interesting in James. It's like, man, this is about decision making. Yeah, in a very practical sense, the way James thinks it is.

He says, full of mercy.

Understand something about decisions, even when we do it right. All decisions have unintended consequences, good and bad. Sometimes you make the righteous decision and you're persecuted for it, right?

Sometimes you make the right decision and you lose money because you won't be dishonest.

There's unintended consequences, even in right decisions. And no matter how thorough we are, you can make a decision that has an impact on another person that you never thought about. A negative impact. And it just never entered your mind.

You don't think about that impact on somebody else.

All decisions have unintended consequences, for good and bad. Sometimes you'll make a sort of mediocre, bad decision and it turns out good, right? And it's like, whoa, did I get away with that? Right? Thank you, God, for saving me on that one.

I always tell people, don't come to me if you want financial suggestions.

Well, I'll tell you the best financial decision I ever made.

I don't know. 20 years ago, Kim and I put together a little bit of money and bought a little bit of gold. I mean, just a little bit. And now, 20 years later, we've made enough money that I could buy a bicycle.

A nice bicycle. There you go.

That's the best I've done.

So don't come to me for those questions. Full of mercy. In other words, we understand there's unintended consequences. And we have to understand that sometimes a good decision can affect other people. It doesn't make it a bad decision, but you have to be able to deal with that. And when you make a bad decision, you have to deal with that. You have to go sometimes say, I'm sorry. That decision didn't work out the way I thought.

It says, bears good fruits. It brings forth good fruits. You know, Jesus said something similar in Luke 7, Luke chapter 7.

Luke chapter 7 and verse 35.

But wisdom, now this is Jesus, but wisdom is justified by all of her children. Now, in other words, wisdom is shown to be true by the results it produces by its children.

Which is what James is making a point.

Good works as a product of wisdom is a product of all this. Not just doing good works to show people you can do good works.

It's because it's a product of making right decisions in a godly manner, in the way that God wants us to make decisions.

And then it says, without partiality.

Once again, I think of without partiality, you think about not being unfair. And that can mean that, but the Greek here has a bigger meaning. And James in chapter 2, I mentioned that, he actually talks about partiality there. He says, you know what? You can't treat rich people different than poor people in the church. You just can't. Rich people and poor people are the same before God. You can't treat them differently.

But this word expands us beyond, because it means that the best way I can put it is that you're not double-minded. You're not trying to make decisions based on partiality to two different ways of making decisions.

Because we all can be affected. Let's look at what Solomon says in Proverbs 9.

Proverbs 9.

Proverbs 9.

We all know this, but I want to read it, because I want you to think about the power. Proverbs 9.10. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Meatness, see? Just what James is saying. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding. So you start with, I look to God in my meekness because He knows what I don't.

And I fear making decisions that are against Him. And two, His knowledge gives me understanding. I search for His knowledge. And we're fortunate we have the Scripture where we can look for answers to our issues, at least principles to our issues. Now think about that, because that is one of the greatest statements of wisdom in the entire Bible. Then let's go to 1 Kings 11. Because I'm going to show you how this, without partiality, actually extends out into a greater concept.

1 Kings 11. That is one of the greatest statements, as I said, of wisdom in the entire Bible. Verse 1, Now He said, you can't marry pagans. Pagans will turn you against Me. Now we know Ruth was a Moabite. Ruth converted to the worship of the true God, and she was accepted.

So it was this paganism. They will trawl you away. In other words, you will be partial. You're going to be caught in two worlds making decisions based on the values of two worlds. And He had 700 wives, princesses, and 300 concubines, and His wives turned His heart. There isn't a man in this room that in this issue isn't wiser than Solomon. Who in the world would want a thousand wives? That's insane!

Right? So gentlemen, in this issue, you're all wiser than Him. One's enough. And I say that in a positive way. Because if you had a thousand, you would never have that one. If you had a thousand wives, you'd never have that one. And the thing is, that one is the point. The one that you have. And it was so when Solomon was old that his wives turned his heart after other gods. And his heart was not loyal to the Lord is God, as was the heart of his father David.

Perfect example of a man who understood wisdom from above and became partial. And he made his decisions back and forth. And it basically ruined his life. He wasn't a very happy man when you read the book of Ecclesiastes. He's turning back to God and he's not a very happy man. This cost him his happiness. Now it appears he turned back to God at the end, but that's a hard way to do it.

As long as he remained grounded in the basic wisdom from above, Solomon was amazing. Then he tried to live in two worlds. You and I constantly, because we do, we live in two worlds.

We have to decide which values we're going to live by. And that's how we have to learn to make decisions. Because the decision-making process and the basic morality of the world will always lead to confusion. Now they have some basic good ideas for making decisions when it deals with how to buy a house in terms of what you look for in a house. The Bible doesn't tell us that, right? Basic physical things. There's good wisdom on how to make those decisions. But there's the greater context of decision-making has to come from our relationship with God. There's two other things he says here.

One, he says, without hypocrisy. Now remember, hypocrisy isn't the fact that a good person makes a mistake. I'll hear teenagers say that. Well, they're just a bunch of hypocrites. No, they're good people. They're people who are trying to obey God, and everybody makes a mistake. Once again, if you're looking perfection, just look at yourself. You're not perfect, and nobody else is perfect either. Hypocrisy is when you make a show. You pretend to be something you're not. And, you know, kids do see that, by the way. When we're just making a show of our Christianity, they see it. They can see it.

But then they have to differentiate between mistakes and, you know, making a show. Because God forgives us. But this is without hypocrisy. In other words, you make decisions based on what's right and wrong, not how good it makes you look. And when I wrote this down, the first thing I thought about was Ananias and Sapphira. Remember Ananias and Sapphira? People were selling in the early church. They were selling some of their property, and they were giving the money to the church because there was a lot of poor people.

Ananias and Sapphira sell some of their property, come to Peter and say, we sold everything we had because they wanted the acclaim, because Barnabas was well-respected, because he had donated a lot of money to the church. So they wanted that envy, bitter envy and selfishness. Their decision-making process here in the spiritual realm is driven by bitter envy and selfishness. And they bring all this money to Peter and say, look what we're giving to the church.

And Peter says, you're lying. He said, you didn't sell all that you had, you only sold part of what you had. And secondly, it's your money. You can do with it whatever you want. You weren't required to do this, so why are you doing it? You're doing it for a show.

You're doing it so the whole church will look up to you. Who knows? Maybe Ananias thought he would get ordained or something. You know what I mean? They're doing this for a big show. And you know what happened? This is what's frightening in this case, because this isn't in the Old Testament. God killed those people right there in front of the members of the church. Killed them. He said, because all this is is bitter envy and selfishness, and you're going to create confusion in the church. And he killed them.

That's a scary thing. Just on a decision, a decision-making process that wasn't from above. But it was an earthly way of thinking of things. And then back here, verse 18 then, ending up here in James. And verse 18. Now the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. That has to do with wisdom. We find peace in ourselves when we make the right decisions. But they're hard, aren't they? You can make the right decision and lose money. You can make the right decision and lose your reputation.

You can make a right decision and nobody at work likes you ever again. Or nobody at school likes you. You can make the right decision. But there can be peace inside of you.

That's what we look for. God brings peace into us because we're making His decisions. And sometimes there's bad consequences for making the right decision. But the peace comes from within. Now the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. You make right decisions and it's hard and sometimes you feel bad. But in the end, you will find peace. The NIV says, Peacemakers who sow in peace raise a harvest of righteousness. They reverse the words, and it may be more what it meant in the Greek. They reverse the words. So you live with this peace of making right decisions, and there's righteousness in your life.

Righteousness in Old English, the oldest English Bibles translate righteousness as right-wiseness. Right decision-making. That's how it's translated in the oldest editions of the English Bible. Right-wiseness. In other words, you're living by the decisions God wants you to live by. So when you sow peace, you start when there's peace within us as we grow in our relationship with God, and we live what's right.

We start making decisions to produce right-wiseness. James impressed. I've always liked James because he's so practical, but here it's like, man, that's as good as Paul. This is as great as any of the stuff that Paul, you know, passage that Paul does. Earthy wisdom seems sensible to us. Remember that. It makes sense. It feels right. But the wisdom from above doesn't always feel right at the time, but you know it's right.

You've reasoned it out. You've looked at what God says, and you know it's right. Now, let's finish then in James 1. James 1. Now, I'll tell you what we're going to do this afternoon. James 1. Verse 5, If any of you lacks wisdom, and here he's talking about that wisdom that comes from above, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him.

Now, here's the problem with wisdom. Oh, good. I'll just, like, open my mind and God will pour in wisdom. There's only one way to learn wisdom, and that is knowledge. So you've got to acquire knowledge, both biblically and physically, for decisions.

Understanding. You have to really process, and that's where sometimes you have to get help from other people, to process so you have understanding, and then you have to make a decision. In other words, you learn wisdom by making decisions, which means sometimes you learn by making a bad decision. There's the problem. It's like free will. Free will presents a problem that sometimes we're going to mess up. Wisdom, since it's not something God just pours into our brain, wisdom is something we learn by doing, which means sometimes we're going to make a wrong decision.

And God's going to say, didn't work, did it? Child, that didn't work. I love saying that to my grandkids. Wow, that didn't work. No, it didn't. Yeah, I just love that moment, because it's like, I can teach you something now.

Not like, I'm going to tell you how bad you are. I'm going to tell you why it didn't work. And so those moments where they know something didn't work, now I have an opportunity to teach wisdom. And, you know, I live for those moments. When you can do that, you can pass that on, and they start to figure that out. All I know is, is, you know, I've been living God's way for a long time, and I still make bad decisions.

I haven't figured all this out. But the process is what God's doing. And there's lots of times God looks at us and says, didn't work, did it?

That one turned out real poorly. What did you, what, what, what do you have to do to make that right? Think this through, kid. Think this through. What do you have to do? I'm telling you, it's here.

Think through what you have to do next time.

So what we're going to do for the Bible study, and actually those of you that were in the men's club, remember we had a, we created for the men's club an actual manual, and there was one on wisdom. So what we're going to do is we're going to break up into groups after we eat, and we're going to look at, I'm going to give you this information, and we're going to pick out some real-life scenarios that you all get to come up with. And then you're going to apply a list of things that are in here to say, okay, how do we make this decision? You may not get through it all, but at least you'll be able to discuss things. And then each group can give sort of what conclusions you came to, applying what we know from the Scripture. Okay? So that's what we're doing in the Bible study. Don't run off. Okay? Well, that doesn't sound like fun. Actually, it is. And so we'll eat. So good. We'll be eating about quarter to 12, a little early, but the kids probably are ready. And then, I don't know, 1 o'clock or so. We'll play a little bit by ear. We'll come back and do the Bible study.