Theological term
Demonic Wisdom
4 sermons · All terms
Free Grace Baptist Church - February 25, 2018 PM
James 4:13-17 levels a charge of carnal presumption against professing believers who plan, buy, sell, and pursue profit as though God has no jurisdiction over Monday through Saturday. The sermon distinguishes between planning itself — which Scripture assumes and commends — and the godless self-sufficiency that excludes divine sovereignty from commerce, household, and daily routine. Three remedies are drawn from the text: recognize your ignorance of tomorrow, recognize the frailty of a life that is 'a vapor,' and recognize your utter dependence on the will of God. The sermon closes by connecting verse 17's sin of omission to the whole passage: those who know God is sovereign over all things and yet live as practical atheists do not merely stumble — they sin against knowledge.
The Call to Repentance
James 4:7–12 contains ten imperatives calling the people of God to repentance — first toward God and then toward one another. The sermon traces the gracious foundation of this call in verse 6 ('he gives more grace'), showing that compliance with these commands is possible only by divine provision, not by human self-improvement. Repentance toward God encompasses submission, resistance of the devil, drawing near to God, moral purity, mourning over sin, and humility; repentance toward one another requires laying aside evil speech, judgmentalism, and the arrogance of treating personal preferences as law. The conspicuous order — fix the vertical relationship first, then the horizontal — is shown to be the theological logic of both the Decalogue and James' own chiastic structure.
Free Grace Baptist Church - February 11, 2018 PM
James 4:1-6 exposes two devastating fruits of what James calls 'demonic wisdom': conflict with one another (vv. 1-2a) and enmity with God (vv. 2b-6). The source of both is unmortified lust — the unrestrained desire for pleasure, riches, and worldly greatness that breeds wars, fights, covetousness, and wicked prayer among professing believers. The sermon presses the congregation to trace every form of church conflict and spiritual adultery back to pride, and closes with the transitional mercy of verse 6: that despite all this, God gives more grace to the humble.
The Two Kinds of Wisdom
James 3:13–18 sets before the reader two mutually exclusive wisdoms — one descending from above, the other rooted in what is earthly, natural, and demonic. The sermon works through the origin, characteristics, and results of each wisdom, showing that demonic wisdom is marked by bitter envy and selfish ambition, producing confusion and every evil thing in the church, while heavenly wisdom is pure, peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy, impartial, and sincere, producing a harvest of righteousness among peacemakers. The connection between James's account of wisdom and Christ's Beatitudes in Matthew 5 is drawn out at length, grounding the call to meekness and purity in the character of Christ himself. Hearers are exhorted to examine their own hearts, confess the vices James condemns, and ask God — who gives wisdom liberally to all who ask — for the heavenly wisdom that alone produces peace and righteousness in the church.