What kind of wisdom is shaping your life?
The book of James is a bold and practical call to live with wholehearted devotion to God in a world full of competing voices. Across 11 weeks, we’ll explore The Wisdom of James—a wisdom formed by the teachings of Jesus and shaped through trials, trust, and daily obedience. In contrast to the world’s wisdom—rooted in self-promotion, divided loyalties, and idolatry—James invites us into a life marked by integrity, mercy, and Spirit-empowered action.
James teaches that real faith shows up in real life. It touches everything—how we speak, how we spend, how we endure, how we love. For James, wisdom is not abstract. It is the fruit of trusting God in all things, even in suffering. It’s a wholeness that forms not just whole people, but a whole community—one that embodies the peace, justice, and humility of Christ in a fractured world.
This is a call to live wisely, to live fully, and to live differently as “The Beloved Coommunity’—for the sake of God’s kingdom and the world He loves.
Sermon Breakdown
- 5/4/25 – The goal of wisdom: Perfection, wholeness, maturity (1.1-8)
What does it mean to be truly human? What is the chief end of human life? Our culture believes the chief end of life is (possessions, pleasure,??) But James says the chief end is Perfection, wholeness, maturity, its about becoming fully human the way God meant us to be. The goal of James and of wisdom is to bring about this maturity (teleios). To that end … God will give wisdom only to those who really, really want it. Double-minded is about waffling about whether you want to commit to God and his wisdom. But what do most people really want!
- 5/11/25 – The Brevity of life and what really matters (1.9-11) 4:13-17
Life is short. Our wealth can deceive us in what really matters. The poor can teach us what really matters because of their dependence on God. but the world teaches you only live once so grab as much gusto as you can now.
- 5/18/25 – Endurance and the crown of life: 1.12-15 + 5:7-12
Life is often difficult. The parable of the sower shows us that two things can uproot us from the kingdom (worries of life and the deceitfulness of wealth [Matt 13.22] and trouble, difficulty and persecution [Matt 13.20-21].). James is talking about the latter. As we bring both in we will look at how this wisdom contrasts this with the ease of our culture.
- 5/25/25 – The goodness of God and the birth into the new creation (1.16-18)
God is a good Father who cares for his people and gives them good gifts. But his greatest gift is birth into the new creation, which contrasts with our own entitlement and what we think the greatest gifts in life are.
- 6/1/25 – Hearing and doing the law of freedom 1.19-25 (1.25)(1.25).(2.8)
Hearing and doing the Word gives birth to The law of freedom and blessing which are rooted in love. This contrasts with the world’s view of freedom as autonomy, which leads to true bondage. Hearing and doing the Word brings freedom and blessings.
- 6/15/25 – True Religion: Using the Tongue Well (James 1:26, 3:1-12, 4:11-12)
Obviously speech ethics! How does the aspect of speech in James contrast with the use of language and words in our own culture?
- 6/22/25 – True religion: Care for the poor 1.27; 2.1-13, 15-16)
The wisdom of caring for the poor throughout Scripture from law, to OT wisdom, to prophets.
- 6/29/25 – True religion: Faith and Obedience (2.14-26)
The cheap grace of much of American evangelicalism shaped by the world’s wisdom contrasts with the wisdom of grace displayed through life lived in James.
- 7/6/25 – True Religion: Unpolluted by Cultural Idolatry/False Wisdom (James 3:13-4:10)
The contrast of Godly wisdom and the wisdom of our idolatrous culture. How do we live faithfully within an idolatrous culture? What idols assail us? How can we resist that idolatry and remain unpolluted?
- 7/13/25 – Justice at the heart of the Gospel (5.1-6)
Justice is not ancillary to the gospel but central to it all the way through Scripture. The denunciation of injustice here is foreign to us but what injustice are we dealing with?
- 7/20/25 – Prayer and the Power of Restoration (James 5:13-20)
Prayer is a radical contrast to the world’s wisdom of autonomy, self-sufficiency, and humanistic self-confidence.