So, have you ever been hunting, ever been hunting maybe for a deer or quail or wild boar or, or rabbit? Maybe you've been a little hunting or maybe you've been hunting for a bargain. Yeah, you went, went to the, uh, goodwill boutique and, uh, found yourself, found yourself a bargain over there. Uh, what does it mean to hunt for something? Well, it means to pursue something if you are sitting for many hours in the woods. Very quiet. This, today's special. Buy one, pumpkin spice muffin for the price of two and get the second one absolutely free. Yeah, that's it. Someone once said a bargain is something you don't need at a price. You just can't resist. I just gotta have it, you gotta have it. And what about when we're making decisions? What is it that we're hunting for when we have decisions to make in life? What are, what are we pursuing? Well, we're pursuing wisdom either for ourselves or for the people around us. We all like to make good decisions and in order to make a good decision, we need wisdom. We continue our series navigating life where we're considering the keys to what it means to make good, healthy, wise decisions. And we're going to be in the Bible in the book of James and James is going to help us to see one important ingredient that we need to make wise decisions. What is that ingredient? Well, let's find out together. Our message today is titled Turning Toward Pursuit. We're going to be looking in James chapter three. The second part of verse 17, James begins like this, but the wisdom from above is first. Pure, pure wisdom from above is the first and main ingredient. We need to navigate through all the decisions that we have in life. Now, we looked at pure wisdom a little bit last week, kind of unpacked it some and, and what we noted was that when it comes to making good decisions in life, we don't need first and most uh a good set of advisors we don't need first and most a lot of money, money, we don't need a college education we don't need on the job experience. We don't need to know how to, to change and rebuild a six speed transmission with a pair of pliers. You know, there's, there's things that, that we can know. But the thing that we first and need most foremost when it comes to making good decisions is pure wisdom from above. That's what we need more than anything else. And, and what kind of wisdom is that? Well, wisdom from above is wisdom from God. It's clean, it's pure, it's uncorrupt, it's perfect. Now, my wisdom is not like that. Your wisdom is not like that. We can't find wisdom like that on this earth. That's why James says this wisdom, this wisdom from above, this wisdom from God, it is pure, it is perfect but isn't, it isn't just clean wisdom. It's not just pure and, and perfect and uncorrupt. This pure wisdom from above also brings with it pure motives. It kind of feeds pure motives. No, we can watch Ted Talks and we can read a lot of books on, on business and leadership and success and time management and all those things are ok. But that's not where the pure wisdom from above comes from. The pure wisdom comes from God himself and it is from God himself. When we find His wisdom, it kind of fuels our decisions. It, it kind of feeds the way we make decisions and it forms what our decisions produce. That's right. Pure motives are actually seen in what your decisions produce. So what are your decisions producing these days? When you look at the decisions that you're making in life, are they creating a sense of, of help around your life? A sense of help around the lives of other people? Or are the decisions that you're making right now producing conflict and, and confusion, a lack of, of cooperation for lack of a better word. No, look, none of us are perfect. We're all going to make bad decisions from time to time. It's, it's just going to happen. But if we want to make healthy wise decisions, not, not just doing what we think is right? Not just doing what our parents or our grandparents did, not just doing what our, our favorite political candidate says that we should do. But in order to make good, healthy wise decisions, we need first and most pure wisdom from above. That's the main ingredient that we need. When it comes to making really any decision in life, we need a, a healthy dose of pure wisdom from above. But James gives us another ingredient. Let continue in verse 17. But the wisdom from above is then peace loving, pure first and most. But then peace loving. What is peace loving? Well, peace loving does not mean you need to wear tie dye shirts and, and Birkin stocks and sing folk songs and live in a Volkswagen van down by the river. OK? It's, it's not the idea of just of just peace here. Peace here means that as you're making decisions, what you want to do is to have right? Relationships with other people. Now, look, we're all sinful. None of us are perfect. We're all going to sin and do the wrong thing from time to time. But, but part of what it means to be a peace loving person to have peace loving wisdom is that it is your goal to pursue, right? Relationships with other people, relationships that move toward cooperation, not confusion and conflict. It means that when we have someone who disagrees with us, that we aren't easily offended, that we don't make a big deal out of minor offenses and then put up fences around us when people disagree with us, that means that generally speaking, we try to pursue right relationships with others. We, we try to create a sense of peace with other people. Peter was writing to some Christians who were living in an extremely difficult society, a hard time to be alive, especially as a Christian. And he wanted to encourage them about ways that they could live that would both honor God and actually help other people. And what he did in the course of his advice was quote the words from King David back in Psalm 34. This is what Peter wrote. Verse Peter 3 10, the one who desires life to love and see good days. Does that sound like something you want life, love and, and good days. Do, do you need some of that right now? Anybody having a stressful life right now? If I got something stressful happening, let me tell you something. This is the most stressed I've ever been in my life hands down. Like, I mean, some days I can't function, let me tell you what happened this week. So I get up early and first thing I do quickly go to the bathroom and then I, I go do my exercises and there's this little hallway out of the bathroom that kind of goes into the bedroom, been doing this for nine years now. And so I opened the door to the bathroom to start walking down that little hallway. I turn around, cut the light off. I mean, I, I got a straight shot. There's, there's nowhere else to go. I, I've done this thousands of times. Open the door, turn the light off, start walking. I'm thinking I'm walking a straight line. I walk straight into the wall. I mean, hard, hard, like not, not even casual. I mean, I slammed into the wall and I'm standing there going, I'm going that, how am I going this way? I was going that way. Listen, that's just one of a million things that are happening to me right now because I am just so stressed out with everything that's happening in my life. Anybody else ever run into a wall? Just me. My guess is we, we all have walls that we're running into and, and all of us. We, we desire life and love and good days, man. We, we would love for the, the stress to release a little bit. So, is this a, a perfect prescription for relieving stress? But no, if we're looking for life and love and good days, this is a pretty good place to start and this is what Peter says verse 10, then you must keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit, speaking lies and then he goes one more. You must turn away from evil and do good. You must seek peace and pursue, it. Must seek peace. Just again, listen to what he said. Watch your mouth. Don't lie. Hate evil. Cling to what is good and seek peace. If you're looking for, for life and love and good days, these are part and parcel. This is what you need to pursue. And if you're looking for the opposite of life and love and good days, then then go ahead. Don't watch your mouth, say whatever you wanna say, post whatever you wanna post. Don't, don't hate what is evil like it, love it, support it, vote for it. But if you want life and love and good days, then you need to seek peace, you need to hate evil cling to what is good. If we take a casual look at the world of modern sports and, and religion and, and politics and just about everything else in life, watching your mouth, not lying, hating evil, cleaning, what's good, seeking peace. Those aren't really things we're commending. I mean, I mean, really, I mean, as a culture, we are commending and really applauding a level of pride and arrogance and, and boasting and brand loyalty that yet it may win you the game, it may win you the debate, it may increase some religious activity. But ultimately those things will lead to confusion and conflict. Why? Because they're not from above, pride and boasting and arrogant, brand loyalty. It's not from above, it's not wisdom from above. Therefore, it cannot produce the peace and freedom that we actually want the most. It will promise us peace and freedom, but it can't give it to us. It cannot and will not because it is not wisdom that comes from above. So as Christians, when it comes to engaging in sports and politics and religion and everything else in life, we need the wisdom from above and what does wisdom from above tell us we need to be doing in all of the spheres of life. Watch your mouth. Don't lie. Hate what is evil cling to what is good and seek peace, be a peace lover, be pursuing peace loving. If there's anyone on the planet that should be pursuing peace loving, lovers of truth, lovers of, of purity, lovers of cooperation and relationships with other people, it should be believers. Why? Because we have peace with God? Do you have peace with God? Are things right between you and God? If you start talking to someone about sports and politics or, or religion or anything else in life, do you sound like someone that has peace with God? Or do you sound like someone that thinks the earth is going to fall from the sky if the government shuts down? Well, what do we sound like when we talk do we sound like people who are confident that God is sovereign over all things. Now, I'll be honest if, if we put that into the context, you know, government shutdown, so to speak. If, if we were to say, well, you know, if, if it was just that more people that were in power when it comes to things like government shutdowns, if they were more peace loving everything would be ok. Now, does that sound like a silly fairy tale in our world? Sure. It does. It sounds like a silly fairy tale. But is it, is it a silly fairy tale? Not? Do you think it will happen? Not? You think? Well, it's too corrupt and it's too messy and there's, there's too many pro not that, do you believe that being peace loving is wisdom from above. Do you believe that peace loving is exactly the type of wisdom that God desires that we have not? Do you think it's silly? Not? Do you think it's hard? Not? Do you think it'll never work in Washington DC or in your home? But do you believe that peace loving is the wisdom from above much more than the pride and arrogance and boasting that we promote that? We see that we support that we vote for in the world that we live in today. We're all sinful people. We're never going to get everything right. We're going to make some really bad decisions, but we have to remember there will never be any kind of utopia on this earth until Jesus returns. It's, it's never going to be perfect. It's never going to be right. There's no utopia without Jesus. So, although we would say, oh, well, well, you know, if more people were peace loving, it'll make the world fantastic. Well, and it definitely helped. But it, but it's never going to be perfect because the only perfection is when Jesus returns. But what is our motivation for being peace loving? Why should we as Christians be peace loving? It's because we have confidence that God is over all things. We should pursue peace and relationships because of our confidence in God. There's a man named Joe. We don't know exactly when he lived maybe sometime before Moses and the way the Bible tells job's story, it seems that in one day he lost all of his money, all of his possessions and all of his Children were killed in a violent storm. Here's one man who understands what it means to live in trauma and tragedy and, and a lot of troubles and trials and tribulations. And yet this was how he responded to God job 42 verse two. I know that you can do all things and that no plan is impossible for you lost everything. And yet he still says with a sense of humble confidence. But God, I know that your plans are good and right that your plans cannot be restrained, that your plans cannot be canceled, that your plans cannot be shut down. That's the confidence we have in God. God cannot be shut down no matter what. In 605 BC Nezar became of Babylon. About 23 years after that, he was walking around on the roof of his grand palace and talking to himself. And this is what he said. Daniel four verse 30. Is this not Babylon the great which I myself have built as a royal residence by the might of my power and for the honor of my Majesty, he's having a little little moment where he's kind of full of himself. Look at this great place. Look at what I built now, we can mock him. But how often do we look at our house once we get all the Christmas tree lights up, you know, or once we get the grass cut or look at our cars or our retirement accounts. So we go, hey, look, look what I did. Look what I built, look what I made. So we all have the ability to have this, this crazy level of, of pride and arrogance and boasting that will get us in trouble. So what happened to? Well, the Bible says that a voice came from heaven and said this, your sovereignty has been removed from you. Uh like boom, gone in an instant in a moment, the great grand king of the world lost all of his power. And then quickly he went to the wilderness and, and for maybe almost seven years live like an animal in the wilderness, really almost at the point of complete insanity. And then just as quickly as he lost everything, just as quickly, God brought him to his senses. And this is what he said. He lifted his eyes to heaven and he said this about God Daniel 4 34 for God's Dominion is an everlasting Dominion. And his kingdom endures from generation to generation. In other words, the great king, after seven years of great turmoil, understood. Wait a minute, I am not sovereign, only God and God alone is sovereign. There is absolutely no one like that. And then he said this verse 35 and no one can fend off his hand or say to him, what have you done? No one look truthfully if the powers that be did not come together and the government had been shut down last night at midnight, it would have caused problems for all of us in this room, ok? In some way, shape or form, it would have caused problems, things like government shutdowns. They caused lots and lots of problems. But do they have a single impact on the sovereignty of God? Does anything that happens on this earth and this place and this universe somehow push God off of his throne? Is there any millisecond of existence where somehow God says, oop, miss that. Oh, I didn't know that was going on. No there, there's, there's no second like that. No, we can always do the math on that. Ok. Remember if the government had shut down? It's not a reason for us to go. Oh, well, God, what are you doing? You know, God. God, you messed up. Look, we can't do the math on what God permits, what he allows and what he decrees. And that's ok. It is. Ok. You know why you're not God and neither am I. And if we were, I promise your life would be a much bigger mess than it is. But God is God. God is God alone. So it's ok that we don't understand the math. It'll make us mad, it'll make us angry. It'll make us sad sometimes. But it is ok, ok. That we don't understand all the math. We can't. Our kingdoms are not everlasting. Our kingdoms don't have Dominion from generation to generation to generation, but God's kingdom does so His plans his purposes, although we may not understand them all, they can be trusted and they can't be shut down. Now, if you believe that, then it'll change how you make decisions. If you believe that truth, it will change how you make decisions because you will remind yourself in the middle of whatever tragedy or trauma that you find yourself in. That there is actually no one who can with any integrity and authenticity. Say to God, hey, what have you done? No one has that Dominion no one has that power, no one has that authority. And so if you believe that it changes how you make decisions because when you are making decisions, you are reminding yourself that you are under the care of the one true sovereign God and his wisdom from above. Listen, even if you're not a Christian, it, it's, it's astounding when we think of this. Even if you're not a Christian, there is a sense of the common grace and care and mercy of God over everything in existence right now that you receive. But even more so as a follower of Jesus, you have the sovereign wisdom of God covering and caring for your life every single second of every single day. So that if you make the worst decision you've ever made in your life and man, you really missed what you were supposed to do and you bungee jump when you shouldn't have bungee jumped. It's ok because not to be too dramatic. But if you don't make it up from that bungee jump, you'll be with Jesus. That's the thing. It's not, it's not hooky religion. It's, it's a thing. The sovereign wisdom from above will push us and drive us to have a desire to be peace loving but not, not just a casual thing. We actually have a desire to do that. Why? Because you have peace with God. That's, that's the driving motivation of why it is that we would want to pursue peace with others. Apostle Paul was writing the church at Ephesus. He said this. But now in Christ Jesus, you who previously were far away. Can I just tell you if you've grown up in the South? You don't think you're far away from God. Can I just say if you grew up in the United States, you don't think you're far away from God? Can I say if you grew up anywhere in the, the western world in North America or Europe? Generally speaking, you don't think you're far away from God. We, we have this thing that we think we're, we're pretty good people, you know, I mean, we, we went to school or we worked hard at our job or we took care of our families or, you know, we kept the grass cut. So we, we're ok. We're ok. We're all right. But here's the truth. I was far away from God. I, I grew up in a great family. We were at church all the time. I heard the gospel every morning from my mom reading the Bible to me and, and I heard the gospel multiple times during the week. But as a 10 year old, I was far away from God. I was not a good kid. I was damned to hell and it was only the kindness and mercy of God that changed that story. So don't ever think that you're a nice person and everything's ok. You are far away from God without Jesus Christ, that's not being mean. That is fact, truth, universal intergalactic reality. And Paul says next though, you were far away. But verse 13, now you've been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace. He's our peace. When your life shuts down whatever causes it to shut down. It may be a, a tragic accident. It might be a disease that they can't find a cure for. It may just be old age. But, but when life shuts down, are you confident now that you've already been brought near? Have you been brought near? Are things right between you and God? Do you have peace with God? If so, it'll change how you make decisions. It'll change how you navigate life. You will hunt after and pursue being peace loving because you have been brought here because Jesus is your peace. Is that easy to do? No, I I can promise you being peace loving with your spouse will not be easy. Ok? Being peace loving with your parents will not always be easy. Being peace loving with your kids will not always be easy being peace loving with your boss or that jerk that works next to you at work and it's not always going to be easy being peace loving with that arrogant jerk kid at school and it ain't going to be easy being peace loving with that political candidate that you hate all of his views. Man ain't going to be easy. But it was, it's wisdom from above, even even if the person or the people that you're trying to pursue peace with, if they are difficult and they are unwilling to cooperate, it's still wisdom, it's still wisdom to hunt after and pursue peace. It's still wisdom from above. Does that mean we seek peace at any price? No. Remember the first and main ingredient is, is purity. So if that's the first and main ingredient, that means we don't throw out the pure truth of God just to keep the peace, so to speak, so to speak. Now, there are times where we have to stand up and affirm God's truth. But even in the face of the enemy and even in the face of people who seem to be acting like our enemies, we can still pursue peace. We can still long for peace and, and hunt after peace. How how could we possibly do that? That, that sounds impossible. This is what Paul told the church at Colossi Colossians 3 15. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts and be thankful and be thankful. I started a week or so ago sending, uh in my family group text with my wife and my kids. Just a simple question. What can you be thankful for right now? And every day I, I try to throw something like the other night, I said, you know what, what can you be thankful for right now? And then my response was none of my kids have been arrested yet. I don't think I can remember if I said yet or not. There, there's always something for us to be thankful for. Right? I mean, there's always something to be thankful for, but it's that first part. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts. Hugh says this, let the peace of Christ be umpire in your heart amidst the conflicts of life. If you're a believer, God has made peace between you and Him through the blood of Jesus Christ, you have peace with God. That means that every single moment of life, we should be fighting the good fight of leaning on that peace. We should long for that peace to be a part of who we are and we should use that peace to call all the balls and strikes in life. Now, in baseball, generally speaking, you only want to swing at the pitches that are in the strike zone, ok? You can swing at anything but you know, who knows where it's going to go but, but the strike zone is kind of the sweet spot. You kind of want it in the strike zone. Those are the ones you want to swing after what we have to do as believers is we have to make the gospel our strike zone in others. We we have to say, ok, is this in the neighborhood of the gospel? If so then OK, I I think I'm going to swing at this and if not, I'm going to let it go. I, I, I'm going to let it go. I'm not going to swing at this. I'm not, I'm not going to make a big deal out of this because this is going to be distracting to the work of the gospel. I'm not going to lose my mind over this. I'm, I'm going to seek peace over this because it's not in the gospel strike zone. This may be a silly example, but just for the sake of conversation, imagine that the church decides to repaint the sanctuary and you're in charge of buying the paint. And the building grounds committee says, all right, we want, we want it to be white. Ok. So that's the color we're going for. So you go to the paint store and they give you 763 versions of white to pick out front, right? And you finally boil it down to 21, one's called cotton white and one's called Q tip white. Ok. Here's the thing. Just pick one. Ok. It doesn't matter. They're both white. It's all right. Just pick one. Ok. But that's outside the strike zone. It's, it's not a big thing. However, if you decide, ah, let's have some fun. I'm going to pick humorous green as the color that we're going to paint the sanctuary. Well, that may not be a laughing matter to everybody else in the church. Ok. That, that could be something that, that causes conflict that would be inside the strike zone. So what we have to do when it comes to letting peace rule our hearts, we have to be the kind of people that say, you know what, I'm going to pursue peace until it's something that's not going to create peace until it's something that's going to distract people from Jesus. And then, then I'm going to have to engage with it. And even in that moment I'm still going to let the peace of Christ rule my heart as I engage with it. If something's bad for the gospel, what we have to do is find a way to bring peace to the pitch, we have to bring peace into that moment. Do you have any relationships that are a problem right now? Do you have any relationships that, that need some peace? Maybe it's someone directly in a relationship with you or, or maybe you're aware of a relationship that just needs some help. How could you provide peace to that relationship? Could you provide some some more communication? Could you help give some solutions? Could you at the very least lessen some of the tension? If so then then do it, don't, don't wait for the other person. You do it. Find a way to pursue peace. John Wesley and George Whitfield were, were friends and they couldn't come to agreement when it came to the theological issues between Armenians and Calvinism and John Wesley, he wrote Whitfield a letter you know, promoting his views and his thoughts and Armen and trying to win him over and, and Whitfield wrote him back and said, look, man, I'm sorry, I just cannot go with you on those things. And, and then he wrote this nothing but a single regard for the honor of Christ has forced this letter from me. I love and honor you for his sake. And when I come to judgment will thank you before men and angels for what you have under God done for my soul. That's peace loving. I don't agree with you. I'm never going to agree with you. I'm, I'm never going to come to a place where, where we're going to have the same view on that. But brother, I will praise and thank God for what you've done for my soul. How would an attitude like that change your marriage? How would an attitude like that change your relationships with your kids and your family? How would attitudes like that change? 99.100 100 9% of conflict in the life of churches or conflict in the life of governments? See, we cannot always agree on everything but in Christ, we can fight the good fight of being peace loving. We can let the peace of Christ rule our hearts. Peace loving is not popular. I promise you will see nothing about peace loving, watching college football coverage. Ok? You ain't going to see nothing about being peace. You won't see it in any coverage of the NFL today either. All right. And you're not going to see a whole lot of peace loving between now and the November elections. Ok. I'm just, we're not going to see it in our culture. So be careful, be careful. But you're downloading all of your wisdom from what you're hearing and seeing because peace loving is wise. It's wisdom from above, it's wisdom from God. Is it easy? No. Uh Is it super, super difficult? Yeah. Will it always feel good? Not at all? Will it always magically prevent things like government shutdowns? Nope. But it's wise, it's wisdom from above. It's wisdom from God. So if you're a Christian generally speaking, are you turning toward the pursuit of peace? Is that part of, of how you think and how you act on a regular basis? Not are the other people pursuing peace because they may not. But are you pursuing peace or are we doing it because God's called us to do it? It's not going to be easy. It'll feel impossible and, and truthfully there will be some moments. We won't wanna do it. We won't, we'll stomp our foot down. We'll say, mm I, I'm not even going to try but you know why we should do that. Here's why because we're no longer far away Christian, we're no longer far away, no matter what happens this week. If you are in Christ, you are no longer far away, you've been brought near by the blood of Jesus. Jesus pursued you. He hunted you down with his grace. He made peace between you and God. So if that piece has been made, then we can pursue peace. What decisions do you have right now in life? What are some things you're facing tomorrow? Man? I got, I got 13 things I'm facing tomorrow. I'm not exactly sure how I need to do any of the 13, you know, and that, that's a short list. I'm sure there's more. What decisions are you facing this afternoon, tomorrow, this week in the weeks ahead, what people are involved in those decisions, regardless of what they are, whether they're big or small. Start them with this question when you begin to engage with, what should I do start with this question? Very simply is Jesus himself your piece if he is and that changes everything.