How to Make Good Decisions According to the Bible

You know, we live in a society that basically believes that all human beings are capable of making good decisions based on three different things. One, they have a training in higher education. They, too, acquire the right amount of knowledge and that they have a humanistic value system. And if you have those three things, you should be able to make good decisions. And it seems like in the information age, everybody should be able to make good decisions, right? Where she starts to do any exploration. I just love looking at a baby sitting over that guy.

She's looking around like, wow, this is a new experience!

This is exciting! Now I forgot where I was. But in the information age, there's so much information, you can't decide or know how to make decisions. It's interesting, they did a remake of, was it Fahrenheit? Was it 451? Is that when paper burns? Remember, that was where they, it's a sort of science fiction book that was real famous a number of years ago, because they went around and collected all the books and burned them. And that's how they kept control of society. When the new version, it wasn't just books, it was personal computers. They said there was so much, that there had been a war that had almost destroyed the United States, because there were so many ideas on the internet that everybody fought over them. And that was the idea behind the new remake of the book. But how do we make decisions? How do we make decisions? It's obvious that human beings aren't making very good decisions. And we're struggling with making decisions. And education is important, acquiring information is important. But here's the reality. Acquiring more and more information of itself doesn't solve problems. Stacking up encyclopedias and memorizing information. You can memorize Wikipedia, and you won't know how to make any better decisions than when you began. So just stacking... now you need knowledge, I'm not saying that, but stacking up knowledge doesn't solve problems. It can, some. But the second point is that knowledge can be used for good or evil. Knowledge can be even neutral and be used for good or evil. There's a lot of knowledge that of itself isn't good or evil, but it's how it's used. Three, and this is important, you've heard me say this before, if you start with a false premise, you're going to arrive at a false conclusion no matter how logical you are. If the starting point's false, you end up at a false point, and yet you can look at it and logically it's perfect. Because, you know, one plus one equals two, plus one equals three, plus one equals four. Look, I've arrived at a perfectly good answer, but the premise was wrong. We do that all the time. And then there's a huge gulf between knowing information and applying information. You know, you could know something and still not do it. You could know and have the knowledge to be really good at a job, at a certain job, but if you don't apply the energy needed, you're going to fail no matter how smart you are. You know, just having smarts isn't the solution to all the problems. So that's the reality of just acquiring knowledge as the basis. We have to know even what our premises are. Where do we start in applying it? And that's what the Bible calls wisdom. Wisdom has to do with acquiring knowledge, because if you look in the book of Proverbs, it talks about knowledge, understanding, and wisdom. You have to acquire knowledge. You have to understand it in the context of God, and that's brought out the book of Proverbs over and over again. And then you can learn to make decisions. Now, all of our decisions aren't completely spiritual, right? What you're going to have for lunch isn't spiritual unless you decide I'm going to have shrimp and pork. Then it is!

So, but there still is a process by which we learn decision-making.

That's what we're going to talk about today. You know, the epistle of James is one of the most practical letters in the entire New Testament, and a huge chunk of it is how to make decisions.

Because that's what the Christians were struggling with in the first century. It's what we've struggled with ever since. It's what we struggle with now. How do we make decisions? And we're going to talk about that in the sermon, and then for the Bible study, we're going to do some exercises in decision-making. How can we break down to make better decisions in our lives? Now, James... Paul does this in 1 Corinthians, but James does this in a much greater extent than what Paul does.

Let's go to James chapter 3. Because James is going to tell us that he splits wisdom into two different types. Now, knowledge... Let's talk about knowledge for a minute. If you need to lose weight, you can go find the knowledge on how to lose weight.

And you can find out. You may have to go have some medical exam and say, well, your best way of losing weight is this. I mean, different people lose weight differently. And so you can go and find out how to lose weight with that knowledge. If we are a glutton, we're overweight because we're a glutton, it's a spiritual issue. Because it says gluttony is sin. Now, sometimes being overweight isn't. It's just age. It's just, you know, the pressures of life. There can be a whole lot of reasons we put on weight. But, you know, if we're truly, greatly obese, and it's because we're a glutton, it's a spiritual issue.

So, no matter what we look at in life, we have to see what the spiritual aspect is. So being overweight isn't itself a spiritual issue, but it could be. It could be, depending on why we are the way we are. Some people are grossly overweight because of, it wasn't, it was a genetic issue. You know, it's not their issue, it's a genetic issue. And they just have to live with it and do the best they can to have good health.

That's a reality. That's a reality. Unless God heals them, there's not a lot they can do. They can help themselves, but they can't totally fix the problem. That's the world we live in. Once we got kicked out of Eden, nothing simple. And nothing, so much of it isn't just, do this and this happens. That's not the way life is. Now sometimes it is. And God has things, He says, you do this and this happens.

But you know, you can make a right decision and it still fails. And we have to talk about that. You know, sometimes you can make the right decision. And something bad happens. And there's reasons for that. And it's mainly, we don't live in God's world. It doesn't mean we're now justified to make bad decisions. Oh, I made a bad decision and something bad happened. You know, I made the right decision and I got persecuted. I made the right decision and I lost my job. So next time I'm going to make the wrong decision.

That's not how it works either. We have to learn to make the right decisions. So there is a spiritual element in decision making. And we have to look at that. If you got up this morning and said, oh, what suit and tie should I wear to church? Okay, there wasn't a whole lot of spirituality in that. If you got up and said, you know, today I'm just going to wear short pants and a, you know, wife beater shirt. You know what they call this. And that's, sorry women, but they call them that. And I'm going to wear that and come barefoot to church.

That would have been a possible spiritual problem. So anything we do, there's some point that there is a spiritual issue in it. So let's go to James chapter 3. And we'll start in verse 13. Who is wise and understanding among you? James isn't writing to the world. Like Paul's letters, John's letters, Peter's letters, James is writing to the church. Now James is writing to the church at large. It wasn't going to a specific church like the Corinthians or the Thessalonica.

It's going to all the churches. So it's got some very broad concepts in it, where Paul tends to get very specific with the issues he's dealing with. 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 said, so if you know how to make decisions, understanding, okay, wisdom takes knowledge and it takes understanding. If you have that, you know how everybody will know? Your conduct will reflect that.

Your conduct will reflect it. And he's going to talk about things here that have to do with wisdom that you and I would not normally put together with wisdom. We have to look at it and see why does he say that. Well, it'd be being logical, getting the facts. Well, that's part of it too. But James isn't going to just run through those things, which Paul would have done. He's going to break this out into the core human character that God's looking at in our decision making and how we do things. So it's done in the meekness of wisdom. And from that very statement, we begin to realize that the wisdom he's talking about has a humility to it.

If we are overly proud all the time, if we're one of those people that has to have our way and be the center of attention all the time, we actually have a wisdom problem. You wouldn't think, well, I don't have a wisdom problem. No, you do. Because wisdom is based in humility and it's based in humility before God. That's the point. There's humility before God that you and I at our best are pretty weak. You and I at our best make some really bad decisions, don't we? That's at our best. So we're humbled before God in understanding and wisdom. And then verse 14, he takes this in a route that just seems strange.

Because he's talking about wisdom, decision-making. But if you have bitter envy and self-seeking in your hearts, do not boast and lie against the truth. Well, what's that have to do with wisdom? Because this whole passage continues here and goes on about wisdom. Wait, wait, wait a minute. What does bitter envy and self-seeking have to do with decision-making? And what he's done here, he's taken the two core human motivations that lead us to bad decisions. Now, you and I can make a bad decision because we don't have enough knowledge. We can make a bad decision because we don't know how to make decisions. Okay, that's something different because you and I make bad decisions all the time. We just don't know. You can't guess what's going to happen next, right? So I tell people, you know, don't ask me certain investment questions. I've never had much money to invest, but let's just say I'm not a millionaire, okay? I never have the wisdom to know how to do that.

So don't ask me investment questions. Don't ask me certain questions because I don't know. I'll tell you, I don't know. Go find an expert because I'm not. My son and I are always talking and I always talk about investing. He actually doesn't. But, you know, with all his business acumen, sometimes it just fails because humans can't control what happens, right? You make the right decision, it still fails. That's the physical world we live in. So he's talking here about not those kinds of just decisions we make all the time. You go buy a new car and it's a junker, and you did everything you could do, right? And it's still a junker. Okay, that's not a spiritual problem. He's talking here about the core motivations that actually motivates us to make bad decisions. And so one is bitter envy and the other is self-seeking. Bitter envy. I think, what does that have to do with decision-making? It's amazing how many decisions we make are done out of resentment or because we want something that somebody else has.

We want to be like the rich and the famous, or we want some a job like what somebody else has, or we want clothes like somebody else has, or we're actually envious and it motivates us to do certain things. I remember one radio station I worked at, they told all the advertising execs, they said, get what you want in life. So they all had pictures of Ferraris, you know, and you would put in your cubicle all the pictures of what you want in life and every day say, I'm working for that. And I thought, what a terrible thing to work for. I'm actually working for my wife and baby. I'm trying to make put, you know, food on the table. That's what I'm working for. I'm not working for a Ferrari, but these guys were motivated for that. And at times it just becomes envy. It's just envy. I want this because I want it because it'll make me happy. It'll make my life better.

They're not working for other people, for their families. They're not working for the right reasons. So this envy is actually one of the problems we have. It gives us a sense of entitlement. I want what other people have. I don't have it. And I deserve to have it.

You know, I'm going to walk up to... I have a neighbor across the road that has a, I don't know, multi-million dollar house. What am I supposed to do? Walk up and say, I'm entitled to your house. Get out. I think I deserve your house more than you.

But we do that in an emotional way. I mean, if you think it through, it's like, that's ridiculous. They're going to shoot you, you know. But we do that in an emotional way. We want what other people have. We look at maybe their status, and we're going to attain the same thing. And we're driven by it. And we make our decisions on those reasons. So James is on to something here. The other point is a self-seeking. We just want what we want.

Just want what we want. How it affects other people, how it affects relationships, how it affects our relationship with God means nothing. People actually will turn this into, God loves me, God wants me to have what will make me happy, so I can get whatever I want. But it's self-seeking.

And so all the relationships end up failing. Everything ends up being a constant push and strife to get what I want. And he says, you think, man, where's he taking this? And you have to really read this, to get all this, because you think, what's that have to do with wisdom?

And his point is, if we're driven by those two things, which he pulls out and says, this is what motivates us so much of the time. When we're driven by envy and we're driven by selfishness, our decisions produce something.

And here's what it produces. Verse 15. This wisdom, first of all, boasts and lies against the truth, because it's based in emotions. Envy and this selfishness are emotions. Since it lies in emotions, it actually will lie. It'll go against. It's a self-deception. We will deceive ourselves against the truth of God. And people do that all the time. We deceive ourselves against the truth of God. We find a way to get around the truth because we're motivated by envy and selfishness. It has to be my way. I'm the only one that knows how this works. I'm the only one that knows this. I'm the only one who can do this. And we just get motivated by it.

He says, this wisdom does not descend from above, but is earthly, sensual, demonic. Man, this is wisdom again. This way of driving ourselves to seek what we want through our decisions. Envy and self-seeking is demonic. In other words, that's the way Satan and the demons are motivated. And that's why they make the decisions they do.

Boy, this is different. See, Solomon never... Solomon was practical. He said, these things are wise decisions. These things aren't. James, on the other hand, breaks us down and says, let me tell you why we fail so much of the time. You know, he's not talking about once again, buying a washing machine and realize later you bought the wrong model. You know, somehow you just didn't figure it out. Okay, that's just life. That's normal physical things. But he's talking about what drives us and motivates us, and many times is what's behind our decisions. What's behind our decisions? He says, for where envy and self-seeking exist, here's what it produces. Confusion and every evil thing are there. Well, with that, if that's what motivates us, and it's really hard to motivate your decision-making process and saying, is this driven partly by envy and maybe some selfishness?

Because if it is, you're going to produce confusion in your decision, or maybe even evil in your decision. Then he wants to talk about the wisdom that comes from above. But I want to take you to an example of this. You know, political decisions throughout history, no matter what the form of government, much of the time are motivated by envy and selfishness, and they end up producing confusion and evil, even though that may not be the intent. I'll just give you an example from the Bible of a political decision, and it's so obvious what's actually happening here. Okay? Because it's, oh, the king, he's very wise, he's making a good decision. Let's go to 1 Samuel 18.

Because whoever wrote Samuel probably was Samuel. We're not sure.

It makes sense that Samuel wrote it.

It's just like we know Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible, except the part that talks about him dying. Okay, he didn't write that part. 1 Samuel 18 verse 17. Saul is looking at David. He's up and coming. He's famous. He's, you know, he's well-liked. Then Saul said to David, Here is my older daughter, Merba, or I will give her to be your wife. Only be valiant for me and fight the Lord's battles. For Saul thought, Let my hand not be against him, but let the hand of the Philistines be against him. Now, this is very interesting. What is his motivation? To everybody, Saul's making, wow, what a great... He's taking a nobody, a shepherd boy, who's very famous, well-liked, and obviously, you know, wise and makes good decisions, and offering him his daughter. That never happens, you know? Royalty don't marry shepherds.

Saul's real popular, I'm sure, among the common people for this decision, but that's not why he's doing it. Now, to marry her, you're going to go out and really make a name for yourself in battles, and his motivation is, and one of these Philistines is going to kill you, and I won't have to fool with you anymore. See how it would look good to everybody else? It seems like a wise decision to everybody else. I mean, David even is a little surprised. Verse 18, and David said to Saul, who am I, and what is my life for my father's family in Israel, that I should be the son-in-law to the king? Well, that daughter was given to somebody else, okay, so he didn't get to marry her. Verse 20, now, Michael, Saul's daughter, loved David, and they told Saul, and the thing pleased him. Now, here's where this selfish and envious, because he's selfish here, and he's very envious, here's where it leads you. Your daughter says, I love this man. I love him. I've got to know him, and he's great, and it's like, oh, good, a good match for my daughter. No, I can use my daughter to get him killed. Look what it says. Verse 21, so Saul said, I will give her to him, that she may be a snare to him, and that the hand of the Philistines may be against him. Therefore Saul said to David a second time, would you like to be my son-in-law today?

And Saul commanded his servants, communicated with David secretly, and said, look, the king has delight in you, and all his servants love you. Now therefore you come to king-son-in-law. And so they went to David and said, he really wants you to marry his daughter. He thinks you're great, and you know, he loves her, and he's picked her just for her, and this would be great, and David believed it, and David married her. But beforehand, he had to go out and kill a hundred Philistines, because no one's going to survive that. So David went out in the middle of the night and ambushed them one by one and killed a hundred Philistines. There you go, proved it, and so he had to give him his daughter. But you see how envy and selfishness can drive someone to do what looks like a good decision politically. And actually, it is not. It's destructive all the way around. And that was one of the first steps in Saul becoming self-destructive. He just kept destroying himself until God literally turned his back on him and said, I take my spirit back, and you're not with me anymore. And David would become king. So let's go back to James. I just want to show you that, because we talk about things sometimes, but it's nice to see an example. Okay, that's just a biblical example of where selfishness and envy drove a king to do something that made sense to everybody else, but it wasn't, of course. He had a different motivation, which was envy and self-seeking. That's why so many people get into government and they go in with the right intent and end up corrupt. They all end up—not all, that's not true. So many of them end up corrupt. Whether they started out corrupt or not, some start out corrupt, but you end up corrupt. And the reason why is they become motivated by envy and self-seeking. It's my chance to make some money, and they become corrupted by it. Okay, James 3, now verse 17. But the wisdom that is from above, in other words, from God. Now, once again, if I go to Proverbs, Proverbs has just a wealth of information about how to make decisions and what wisdom is and how it's trusting in God. And it's, you know, I have a whole list. In fact, I'll give you some at the Bible study, how you can go through the Bible and find out here's how you make decisions. But that's not what James does. So, first of all, before we just get into the mechanics of making decisions, James says, let's figure out why we're making our decisions. What are we doing it for? The wisdom that is from above is first pure. Now, the Greek word here that's translated pure is very interesting. It's a root word that we get the word holy from. So, in other words, it's holy. So, the first thing he says is this doesn't come from just human beings. The wisdom he's talking about is something we learn from God. We learn this wisdom from God. We learn it through the Scripture. We learn it by applying the Scripture. We learn it by talking to other people. We learn it through experience. Sometimes we learn it the hard way. We don't do what God wanted us to do, and we fail. And it's like, oh, I should have obeyed God.

But he says it's holy. We're learning holiness. So, wisdom is a process of learning holiness, godly wisdom. So, every decision we make, I mean, not the little tiny ones, but even sometimes little ones. Is it pure before God? It's an interesting question to ask.

Is my decision... And instead of looking at every decision, you have to look at your process. How do I make decisions? Most of us make decisions based on emotions and sort of the spur of the moment. Or we just fret about it, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, until sort of, hopefully, we think it takes care of itself. Or we make a decision based entirely on anxiety. There's emotions of all the decisions. And what he's saying here is set aside these two wrong emotions. Instead, think in terms of, is this pure before God? Well, I have to search the Scripture to find that. Is this something that's helping me be holy? Is this something that's making me be holy? He says, it's peaceable. It's peaceable. Now, you can't escape all conflict, but wisdom pursues peace if possible. Not always possible. But wisdom pursues peace if possible. So that means while you're making a decision, you have to say, is this going to create peace? Or is this going to create needless conflict? Now, sometimes you have to create conflict. You can't help it. But the question is, because sometimes we just, we don't care. Or we don't care for the cause of conflict. Or we just run blindly into the conflict. We don't even think about what's going to happen. Now, isn't that interesting? Decision making in this big concept of James, well, this is much, this isn't like the rest of the book, which is very practical. This is big concept stuff. It's got to be holy. It's got to be pure. It's got to be seeking God's will. And it's got to try to create peace when possible.

Perfect example, Abraham with lot.

Right? There was conflict between the servants of Abraham, the servants of lot. And Abraham got together and said, look, lot, there's just too many of us. Our tribes have grown and grown and grown. And there's so many people. There's so many animals. We can't just go through the land every place we go. I mean, there's just too many. So look around. Where would you like to go? Pick wherever you want and I'll go someplace else. Now, that's a peaceable decision. How many older men would look at the younger man and say, you decide. You decide. And I'll just do the, I'll go someplace else. Of course, lot chose the valley with Sodom and Gomorrah in it. Abraham with someplace house. Who made the wide decision there? I mean, lot's decision did not turn out very well, did it?

It just didn't turn out. It wasn't a good decision.

Seemed okay at the time. It's interesting that Abraham didn't argue with him. He's like, well, okay, because I'm not going there. I'm going over here. And lot ended up losing everything he had, including his wife, because of his decision. But notice Abraham's decision. I just, this isn't worth fighting over. So you pick, you choose. It's just not worth fighting over. Boy, that's hard to do, isn't it? Sometimes in a decision where it's just not worth the battle spiritually. It's just not. Now, some battles you have to fight, but some, instead of fighting the battle, you just say, okay, what's the peaceful, peaceful decision here? I've learned when I'm with family and it's the feast and we have to decide what restaurant to go to. My answer is, I don't care. And even if I have a preference, here's what I'll say. Have you thought of this one? And if everybody keeps ignoring me, I say, okay, well, we're not going there. So, okay. Because it's not worth fighting over, right? I want to go eat something. For one thing, I don't want to be, you know, it's an hour later and we're still talking about which restaurant to go to. Or have go to the restaurant and somebody's mad. Now, my family's not too much like that, but we've had a couple cases like that.

So, no, no, no, I don't care. The decision doesn't matter. I'll find something on that menu that I'll eat, right? So, it doesn't matter. And that's peaceful. And I find I enjoy the lunch a whole month. I just enjoy it because I don't, I have no, I'm just going to go eat. That's one of those little lessons in life I learned just by, wait a minute, man, alive. We've missed an whole hour here talking about where we're going.

So, peaceable. The next in verse 17 is, is gentle. What do you mean? How can decision-making be gentle? Well, this is a very interesting word. It can be translated equitable or fair or moderate. But it has a lot of interesting applications. William Barkley, who is a Scottish Anglican minister who's written an entire set of commentaries on the New Testament based on the fact that he knew Greek. And so, I don't always look at for his explanations, but I do look at how he explains Greek words. And he says that the word used here translated gentle. He says, of all the Greek words in the New Testament, it's the most untranslatable. He said there's no word in English that can fit it. Now, there's a number of words like that, but he just said, I don't even know how to translate this word. It's, he says, he went back and he says, I'm going to look at how the ancient Greeks used the word. So, he went to Aristotle. And he said, here's how Aristotle described the word, which is just beyond the written law. Beyond the written law. The point that James seems to be making by using this word is that wisdom has to know when to forgive and when not to forgive. Wisdom has to know sometimes the difference between the spirit of the law and the letter of law can be a little bit different. Wisdom has to know how to apply that. So, gentle here is wisdom knows when to condemn somebody and when not to condemn someone. It knows when to look at someone and say, you do this with children all the time. You're frustrated with them, but it's the best they can do. It's the best they can do right there. So, you say, okay, that's the best they can do.

And you accept that. And you accept that sometimes with adults. You have someone new in the church, and you're not going to go up and demand of them. You can't come to this church until you, whatever, fill in the blank. I don't mean committing adultery or something, but you know what I mean? They have an issue they don't understand yet. Like, you see them get out of their car and it's the first Sabbath, and they have to put out their cigarette before they come in. We don't stop them at the door and say, you can't come in here. Now, they need to learn not to smoke. That's not the issue. The issue is, and this is what this gentleness is, that's not today's issue. That's next week's issue. You know what I mean? That's another issue at another time. It's the ability to make decisions knowing that sometimes it's not going to be perfect, but you're working towards it. I can't even explain the word. I kept looking it up, and it was just this thing like, it's, you have to know everything's not, and that's my definition, everything's not always perfect, but you're always stepping towards it. So you make a decision now, knowing, okay, I have to deal with that later. It's not like, ignore it. Gentle was the only English word they could come up with, and it really doesn't get it. But now you start to, okay, wisdom is knowing. It's knowing.

Darris McNeely and I were talking, he said, sometimes you just smile and shake your head. I said, yeah. He says, I've learned that means you don't disagree, or you don't agree, but it's just not worth arguing over. I said, yeah. It's just okay, it's not that big a deal. He says, it took me a while to figure out when you're smiling and shaking your head yes, it's like, yeah, okay, that's, it's not worth arguing over. Because if it is, I'm going to argue, because he and I have had lots of arguments over the years. I mean, friendly, the good time of, good kind of buddy arguments, Steve and I, Darris, get into them. You know, we just go at it. I don't mean yelling and screaming, but man, you know, well, the Hebrew says this and this says that, and we're going on and on and on. But yeah, sometimes you just smile, shake your head. Yeah, that's not worth arguing over. I still think you're wrong, but okay, it's no big deal. Okay.

And he said, that's what I realized. You still think I'm wrong. Yeah.

I said, but when you think I'm wrong, you just keep pounding me. And he said, yeah, I do, because but that's his personalities. But you understand what this means. There's times when, nah, this isn't the time and place. It's just not the time and place.

So gentle. He goes on. Let's go look at him. So, oh, you know, we don't think of James. This just seems like something Paul would do. Here's James just breaking this down in a remarkable way, willing to yield. Now, there was not always having to force their way on others, but they're willing to be willing to yield. And it's translated in a couple of different ways and different versions. The new American Standard translated being reasonable. In other words, you have to be reasonable at times. We've done the best we can. We've taken this step. Let's talk about it again in a couple of weeks. You make your decisions. Okay, let's do this now and let's work through it.

Many times through collective wisdom, if people have the right attitude and they're all right with God, it's amazing how over a little time a decision will get made that's like, wow, how did we ever come to that? Well, that's the point. We have to let God work us through it. So it's reasonable. Okay, it's willing to yield. It's understanding that sometimes my personal opinion is no more valuable than anybody else's personal opinion. Now, if we're in the Bible, I'm going to go to the Bible. And if it's a baseball bat, it's a baseball bat because it's the Bible. But sometimes I have to stop and think, you know what? My opinion is just, it's just an opinion. And sometimes you just swallow your opinion or you state your opinion and everybody looks at you and says, that's goofy. And you say, okay, well, defend your opinions sometimes when they're just an opinion. Stick with truth, defend the truth. You don't always have to defend an opinion. That's wisdom in decision-making process. It's being able to honestly look at our own opinions. So we're able to yield.

He says then, full of mercy. Well, what does that have to do with making decisions?

Actually, quite a bit. Because almost all decisions involve other people.

And sometimes you can have the right decision and somebody else doesn't figure it out yet, or hasn't figured it out yet. And you have to say, okay, let's work on this. Let's do it. You make the decision and realize that some people may have to take a while to catch up and you just are patient with that. We don't live in a vacuum. If you're a single person, you're going home tonight and you're saying, oh, I'm single. I wish I was married. Oh, I think I'll have sushi tonight. Well, be thankful for that because there's a good chance your husband or wife doesn't like sushi when you get married. And you may never have sushi again.

I haven't had sushi in years. And it's okay.

Although I did have caviar this week. There's a woman from Russia at the home office. And, you know, there's only one kind of caviar that's clean. This comes from salmon.

And someone at the home office, the guy that cooks the meals for the ABC said, Tasha left something for you. I said, oh, it's food. I'm sure. He said, yeah. I said, she always leaves me some kind of Russian food. And I got it out and I said, oh, it's caviar. And now, I like a little caviar. It's not something you want much of unless you really like eating. You talk about tasting like, you know, fishy taste and fishy smell. This is the ultimate, okay? So she made two little pieces, put avocado on it, which covers the taste some. This is why the Russians drink it with champagne. You take a bite of that and drink some champagne. It's not bad at all. But, you know, sitting there with tea, iced tea, and you know. So I ate it and enjoyed it. And one of the students said, what is that? I said, caviar. I've never had caviar. So I said, here, have some.

He loved it. I said, take a piece. So he ate one piece. Oh, that's really good. I said, well, you can have the other one. He ate the other one. So, you know, between the two of us, we ate it. Why did I get into that? I have no idea. You know, the whole sushi thing was supposed to be funny. But getting into that, I don't know why I just went off that rabbit hole.

But, you know, the bottom line is that we have to know that when our decisions involve other people, we can't compromise with what's right. We have to show a little patience, a little mercy, as we make our decisions. And especially if it's a group decision. I mean, I don't care what, I don't, whether it's a family, I don't care whether it's, you know, you're having some social committee meeting, the choir, everything. There's somebody that has always stuck with making the last final decision. And there's always someone unhappy. Yesterday after the last class, I looked at the, I said, who's the class president? I raised his hand. I said, good. I'm going to teach you a lesson in leadership. There's something you always have to do because it's your job and nobody will like you for it. He said, what's that? I said, you are responsible for handing out the test, making sure it gets graded and gets sent to the person at the office. Oh, no. I said, no, that's your job. You're class president. This is who you do now. So I said, I'm leaving now. Here's the test. So he had to hand it out. Wait till everybody was done, collect it, and he handed it.

Somebody has to make the decision sooner or later, and it's yours. You get the job today.

So he did it. It says, it bears good fruits.

Good decisions bear good fruits. Now, not always. They bear good fruits in your mind, in your heart, in your character. In the direct consequences, they're bad. You can do a good decision and end up losing a job, right? You can make a good decision and end up losing out on money because you wouldn't be dishonest. You can make a good decision and have a friend turn on you because you just won't support LGBTQ. That's reality. That's what it is to live in Satan's world. But the long-term product of those decisions is good because God makes it good. You have to believe that. That's why this is in the Bible. You have to believe that God makes those things good, even though in the short term. Now, there's an interesting thing Jesus said in Luke 7. Let's go to Luke 7. We'll come back here to James. Not quite done with James yet. Luke 7.

And verse 35, just a little verse stuck in there that something Jesus said, but wisdom is justified by all her children. Justified. Shown and made right. Wisdom is shown to be right and made right by the children it produces. That's a real colorful way of saying that. You will know a wise decision by what it produces. People who understand wisdom from above can see a decision that produces a bad consequence, but will still say that was wisdom because it was the right thing to do. And the children it produces are what God wants. It's what God wants. So we have to remember that. That it does bear good fruits, even though sometimes in the short run it seems like it doesn't physically, but it always does spiritually. If it's the right spiritual decision, it produces something good in who you are, inside who you are, and it produces something between you and your relationship with God in your decision-making process. And then he says, back in, let's go back to James, and as you can see we can spend a lot of time on each of these words, but I'm just showing you James is just spreading this, just expanding this concept out.

He says it has good fruits without partiality. Now, once again, we know James talks about, here in the same letter, about don't being partial to other people. In other words, if you like to hobnob with the rich and famous, and he even uses that, the rich people in the church, if you're just trying to hobnob with them and don't take care of the poor, he says you're not keeping the law of God. That's not the law of God. That's not wise decision-making. So James explains that partly, but the word he uses here just doesn't mean partiality in the way you treat people, but it means that you're undivided. You're undivided.

We become divided in our wisdom-making process because we try to keep one foot in God's way and one foot in society. And the more we try to do that, the more divided we become.

You want to see a great issue of a man who became divided in his wisdom. Proverbs 9.

Proverbs 9.

And let's go to verse 10. Here is one of the greatest beginning starting points of understanding wisdom from above that James is talking about. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding. So understanding God and fearing God in the right way, His power, His majesty, His greatness, so that you want to understand what He teaches. So the knowledge you have is based on what God teaches.

Now, I read a Jewish man and said one time, a Jewish preacher or rabbi, that the difference between the Western educational system, which is based on a Greek philosophy, and the Jewish philosophy of education is the Greek philosophy of education is based on knowledge. We just acquire more and more and more and more knowledge, and it makes us smarter and smarter and smarter. He said the concept of the Jews is that education is based on wisdom, and wisdom begins in the Scripture. That's really important. Wisdom here begins with God. This is the wisdom that's from above. We have to learn to make our decisions by knowing what God tells us here. Now Solomon wrote that because Solomon had been given great wisdom from God. First Kings. You probably guessed where I'm going here. First Kings. Let's go to chapter 11. As long as he stood close to God, God did great things through Solomon. Verse 1, first Kings 11, but King Solomon loved many foreign women as well as the daughters of Pharaoh, women of the Moabites and Amorites and Edomites and Sidians and Hittites. Sidians. Sidians. Anyways, those people. From the nations of whom the Lord had said to the children of Israel, you shall not marry with them, nor they with you. Surely they will turn away your hearts after their gods. And Solomon clung to these in love. So he had just multiple relationships, as the king would have. You know, you would make treaties and they would give you their daughters as part of the treaties. And his harem, just getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and these women began to have a profound effect on him. He broke what God had commanded him to do in terms of marriage. So he had one foot in his society and one foot with God. He had 700 wives, princesses, and 300 concubines, and his wives turned his heart away. You know what? I admire Solomon, but he was an absolute idiot to have 700 wives, okay?

There isn't a man in this room that doesn't have more wisdom in that situation than he had.

But 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, his God, as was the heart of his father, David.

One foot in one place and one foot in the other, you eventually have to choose.

Wisdom forces you, because it's your decision-making process. You either make your decisions eventually by one set or by the other set of standards. That's how it ends up. But we try to live in both. We try to make our decisions with principles from here and principles from there, and it doesn't work. And Solomon, the man who is known in the Scriptures as the wisest man, lost his wisdom because he lived with one foot in this culture, which was absolutely acceptable for kings to have lots of big harem. In fact, the bigger harem you had, the more manly you were. And Solomon wanted to make sure everybody thought he was the biggest, baddest guy in the entire Middle East. And there he was. And they turned him against God.

As long as he's remained grounded, we see all of his wisdom. The last comment is made in James. So let's go back there as we wrap this up so we can take our break. And then we're going to come back and work on some practical ideas of decision-making.

So we go back to James chapter 3. He says, without partiality and without hypocrisy.

Remember, hypocrisy isn't simply doing something wrong out of weakness. Hypocrisy is making a decision to pretend.

Hypocrisy, the word, the Greek word, goes back into actors in a play. It's to act one way in order to be something else. You pretend to be something you're not. Pretending to be something you're not. So you can't approach decision-making by pretending to be someone you're not. Your decisions eventually will come from your basic core values. They will come from the way you think and the way you feel. That's how we make our decisions. And eventually you can't hide that. And I've seen people seem to be making all these righteous decisions and then just walk away from all of it because it was all play-acting. They pretended and they weren't true.

You know the prime example of that? In the New Testament? And in Ios and Sapphira.

Let's just turn here. Just look at it real quick because you know the story. Certain people were selling their land, some of their lands and houses and so forth, and they were doing this in order to give money to the church to help the poor. And in Ios and Sapphira, this is Acts 5, they decide to sell some land and then claim, look, we sold all of our land. We have sold everything we have and we're going to give it to the church. So they will become looked upon as just great people in the congregation. But Peter knew, as it says in verse 2, and they kept back part of the proceeds, his wife also being aware of it and brought a certain part of it in late at the apostles' feet. But Peter said to Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart with two lie to the Holy Spirit and keep back part of the price of the land for yourself? Why what remained was it not your own? He says, if you would have just sold a little piece and gave it everybody, we said, wow, those are really nice people, generous people. But no, you're play-acting. You're trying to lie to God. You're literally trying to lie to God by play-acting, oh, I sold everything I have.

And after it was sold, was it not in your control? Why have you conceived this thing in your heart? You have not lied to men but to God. Now, we see God taking very severe, severe actions in the Old Testament. God killed him. God killed Ananias for that. He made a decision, he and his wife, and you know his wife showed up later and lied, and God killed her too. God said, you're just play-acting. You're pretending to be Christians and trying to get a claim as being a Christian and trying to make everybody look at you. Wow, you're just, you are the most wonderful Christian. He said, it's all a play act. You know what you're doing is wrong and you don't care. Real decision-making, according to James, there can't be any of that in it. You have to be doing your best to make your decisions entirely on what you know is what God wants you to do, what you know the principles in the Scripture. And remember, here's another thing about wisdom. If you want God to make all your decisions for you, he won't, because you can't learn wisdom if he makes all the decisions. He simply gives us principles. Now, sometimes he'll actually show us what a decision should be. A lot of times he just gives the principles. It says, make your decision, and if it doesn't work out, I'll help you through it. That's the problem with wisdom. It's like the problem with good with free will. Oh yeah, free will. That's so wonderful. No, it gives us the ability to sin. Right? The guy said, yeah, that's the other side of it. But I could have made you into little dogs, you know, and petted you on the head, but I had to give you free will. If I, if what he wants of us is thinking, feeling people who deal with reality. He wants us to be real, not pets. Well, it's the problem with wisdom. God could open our heads and pre-programmed us to have wisdom, but we wouldn't know anything. We just do the right thing all the time. He says, learn wisdom. How do I do that? Make decisions. How do I do that? Here's the principles. No, no, no. Just make them for me. I wish God would make all my decisions for me. I really do, but he's not gone to, because you have to learn. We have to learn wisdom. That's what we have to do.

And then back in James again, the last little section here, he says, verse 18, now the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. And he goes back to the idea that decision-making should be for the good of everybody, if possible. And it should try to bring peace, if possible. It's not always possible. But we should try to think of peace, but never compromise. You can't say, well, okay, I'll... I'm going to attend the local Baptist church, because all my friends and neighbors are Baptists. I know I shouldn't do that, but at least I'll have peace with my neighbors. That's not peace, that's compromise. That's a totally different thing, because you know that's not what God wants. So I'm going to sin against God for peace. That's not what he means. What he means here, and he's saying, is that you seek it.

The NIV translates this, peacemakers who sow in peace raise a harvest of righteousness. So our decision-making is based in, I want peace. I want peace between me and God. I want peace in my family. I want peace in my business. I want peace with the people I deal with. Excuse me, and that's how I'm going to make decisions. I'm going to try to create peace in God's way. And sometimes if there's no peace, it's not because of me, it's because people won't do God's way. The New Revised Standard says, and a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace. The New American Standard says, and the seed whose fruit is righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. So the point, no matter how way you translate it, is righteous decision-making will produce when possible peace. Not when it's not possible. I'll get some water in a minute. It's okay because we're done. That's okay, I don't need it because we're done. So earthly wisdom seems sensible to us in our natural process. Okay, it just seems sensible to us. It seems to make sense, but it's not what God wants. It's not what God tells us. God wants us to learn wisdom from above, and we have to learn it. And the two basic driving forces of normal human decision-making process is envy and selfishness. So let's end with, for God, I do want to go back to James, but James chapter 1. James 1. If I seem a little slow today, I'm tired, so I'll catch up tomorrow. James 1 verse 5. If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God. Oh good, I'll go ask God, and God's got everything I do. I'll just wake up tomorrow and every decision will be perfect. No, God's going to say, okay, we're going to have to learn it. You're going to have to learn it. So I'm going to have you make more and more decisions. Ask God, for he who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him. So we need to go ask God for wisdom. And you know, if you're going to do that, you need to study Proverbs, and you need to study James, and you need to study where Paul talks about. You need to study what this book tells us, and you begin to realize the process we have to learn, and how detailed that process is when you get deep enough into the Scripture.

So ask God for wisdom. I ask it all the time because I wish I could make totally wise decisions.