“Who Is Wise Among You?”

Make the Book live to me, O Lord,
Show me yourself within your Word,
Show me myself and show me my Savior,
And make the Book live to me.[1]

Amen.

Well, thank you for inviting me. And I feel like I’m very boomy right now. Am I boomy? Is this boomy? Or is this normal? It’s normal? Okay. ’Cause I don’t want to boom if I can be… We don’t want Begg booming. We want to make sure that Begg is deboomed. But it was much better over here this morning. There was no booming over here. This wasn’t a boom section. Maybe it’s the microphone; they gave me a boom microphone. But anyway… “You’re a guest, Alistair. Just do as you’ve been asked.” All right.

Okay, so here’s the deal: We have before us these verses as delivered, as have been read. And I believe that you have a notebook that has some kind of direction in it. I must confess that although I was the one that created the direction, I haven’t paid any attention to it at all in preparing to speak to you now. And so that means that you’re going to have to do most of the work, and I will try and set us off at least in the right direction.

Let me begin, actually, by setting this whole matter of wisdom in a wider context, if that’s okay. Because the opening question in verse 13 is an important question, isn’t it? “Who is wise and understanding among you?” Because frankly, all of us know quite a lot of clever people. We know people who are very knowledgeable in all kinds of areas of academic study and theology. They’re credentialed people. But how many of them, if you were to be telling a friend about them, would you say, “You know, you really should meet her; she is a wise person,” or “He is a wise teacher”?

The chapter, 3, begins, of course, with a cautionary note being sounded by James: “Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness”[2]—which is, of course, perfectly understandable. If we’re going to use our mouths and our tongues as much as we do, then we’re going to be held to account for what we say. Because, after all, “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.”[3]

And I think it is legitimate to view verses 3 all the way down to verse 12 as not a separate discourse on the tongue, but James immediately moves to this issue of the tongue—which, of course, is perfectly understandable, because he’s addressing the question of teaching. And if you could see that, as it were, in parentheses, then verse 13, if you like, picks up from where he began. If the teacher is going to be a teacher who is a “wise” one, who is “understanding among you,” it will be the person who has displayed spiritual maturity in their control of their tongues.

And James is making the point that it is not about professional competence, but it is actually about practical godliness. In chapter 2 when he’s addressing faith and works, which you will have already studied, he says, “[Now] show me your faith.”[4] “Show me your faith.” And here, now, he is essentially saying, “Show me your wisdom”—that which is vital, practical, and observable.

He’s already informed the readers of the source of wisdom at the very beginning, in 1:5: “If [anyone] lacks wisdom, let him ask God,”[5] who is the source of all wisdom. It was, of course, what Solomon sought from God, and God rewarded him for his asking. What Solomon looked for he then urged upon his own children. And classically, in all of the proverbs that he wrote, you realize just how crucial this is: “My son,” quoting from Proverbs 2—and it could equally be “my daughter”—

   if you receive my words
 and treasure up my commandments with you,
making your ear attentive to wisdom
 and inclining your heart to understanding;
yes, if you call out for insight
 and raise your voice for understanding,
if you seek it like silver
 and search for it as for hidden treasures,
then you will understand the fear of the Lord
 and find the knowledge of God.
For the Lord gives wisdom;
 from his mouth come knowledge and understanding.[6]

Now, that is foundational to all that he’s saying here in this third chapter—that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”[7] But here’s where I want to pause for just a moment. Because we need to recognize that the world in which each of us has grown up in is a world that was radically changed during the period of the Enlightenment. And during the period of the Enlightenment, God was essentially set aside, and man was put in God’s place.

And you can see this in many ways as you rehearse the history. And because I’m in an academic institution and with students, I can illustrate this from arguably the most famous of American universities (that is, after Liberty)—namely, Harvard University. And let me quote to you from the handbook that was given to students who attended Harvard in 1642. The handbook called for every student to be “plainly instructed and earnestly pressed to consider well,” that “the main end of life and studies is to know God and Jesus Christ, which is eternal life … and therefore to lay Christ … as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and learning.” Seventeenth century. By the time the Enlightenment arrives, things have begun to shift. Most of you are aware of the word that is right there in the center of the crest of Harvard University. You may have got yourself a sweatshirt with it on. And it simply says “Veritas,” truth. But in 1642, it wasn’t just “Veritas.” It was “Veritas pro Christo et Ecclesia”: Christ, the church, and truth.

And so what happened was that revelation—God’s disclosure of himself, the reality of knowledge, the source of wisdom—was then set aside in the embracing, essentially, of scientific rationalism, despite the fact that most of those scientists had arrived at their conclusions starting from the foundational basis that God was the creator of the universe, that we were made by him, that we were made for him, that we are providentially sustained by him, and that the order in the universe was directly tied to the wisdom of God himself. And then, all of a sudden, it goes sideways.

And the result is what? Well, the result is cultures and succeeding generations in crisis. You don’t have to be a pundit to note that many of your peers tonight are not here singing about the Lord Jesus. They’re not here establishing the notion that there is a foundation upon which their lives can be founded emotionally and intellectually and spiritually and in every way. No, the vast majority of them have imbibed the idea that they were born without reason, that they are prolonged by chance, and that they will die and go into oblivion.[8] Very hard, then, to take that and put it on the front of your T-shirt and on the back just put “Have a nice day!” And they realize that.

Those of you who are in the school of English literature will have suffered through Waiting for Godot (or “Waiting for Go-dot,” as they say here, with the emphasis on a different syl-la-ble). But Waiting for Godot—1953, the year after I was born. If you’ve gone to see it, if you’re a genuine intellectual, I mean, you will have survived it all. If you’re like me, you will have slept after about fifteen minutes. Because basically, nothing happens. Nobody comes. Nobody goes. Nothing happens.

You say, “Well, that was 1953.” Yes, but do you remember the Seinfeld programs? Do you remember… (I’m going to take that as a sign of something. I’m not sure what it is.) But the Seinfeld programs had to eventually collapse with a show that was designed “about the comical consequences of life in a world void of … ultimate significance or fundamental meaning.”[9] In other words, they said, “Wouldn’t it be clever to have a show about nothing?”—an expression of the ultimate degradation and deprivation of wisdom and understanding that is the final fruit of man’s rejection against God, the sense of futility. The actor

  struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then [he’s] heard no more. It[’s] a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.[10]

“Out, out, brief candle!”[11] Who cares about this? And when they turn the lights back on, they found the audience had gone, or maybe there just wasn’t one, ’cause nobody really cares—that sense of futility.

Now, you are so young, you won’t even know there was a group called Supertramp, do you? Three of you! All right. Three of you. “When I was young, it seemed that life was so wonderful, a miracle, … beautiful, magical.” I could sing it for you, but I won’t do that to you.

But then they sent me away to teach me how to be sensible,
Logical, oh, responsible, practical …
… clinical, … intellectual, cynical.

There are times when all the world’s asleep;
The questions run too deep
For such a simple man.
Won’t you please, please tell me what we’ve learned?
I know it sounds absurd.
Please tell me who I am.[12]

Now, where does this start? “Who is wise and understanding among you?”

Of course, the Beatles had it before that:

He’s a real nowhere man,
[Living] in his nowhere land,
Making all his nowhere plans for nobody.[13]

Paul Simon picks up on it and writes about alienation—does so masterfully:

“Kathy, I’m lost,” [he] said, [and] I knew she was sleeping.
“I’m empty and aching and I don’t know why,”
Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike.
They’ve all come to look for America.[14]

Imagine being “the only living boy in New York.”[15] Joan Baez, who’s now the grandmother of any kind of folk music at all, years ago she said, you know, that we’ve just discovered that we “are the orphans in an age of no tomorrows.”[16]

So, back to the text! Now that you’re all feeling greatly encouraged by this, let’s consider just the contrasts that are presented to us, and you can, again, follow this up on your own.

“The Meekness of Wisdom”

First of all, the contrast that is established between “the meekness of wisdom” and “jealousy and selfish ambition.”

Meek. Meek—a seldom-used word and a greatly misunderstood word. Most people think that meek actually is a synonym for weak. But in fact, that is not the case.

A meek person has a high view of God, a sober estimate of herself, a generous view of others.

James has already mentioned it in first chapter, where he says it is “with meekness” that we “receive … the implanted word.”[17] You remember he says if you’re an angry person or if you’ve got a filthy mind, don’t expect to receive anything from the Word of God when it’s preached, because your filthy mind and your angry spirit will squeeze out the benefit which only comes when the Word of God is implanted in the hearts and lives of those who are meek.[18] It’s part of the Christian’s uniform in Colossians 3.[19] It is “the meek” who will “inherit the earth”[20]—Matthew 5. Moses was known as a meek man—Numbers 12.[21]

What is a meek person like? “Let him show … in the meekness of wisdom.” Well, a meek person, I think, is an approachable person. A meek person is not the kind of person who, because they are wise, makes people who are not as wise as them feel like they’re really pretty stupid, makes the person feel as though they are somehow or another beneath them.

Moses was not at all like that. You remember he had a heck of a past, didn’t he? I mean, he killed one guy. He had to go away for a long time, and when he came back, what do we discover? We discover that he’s overwhelmed with people coming to him. And you remember his father-in-law says to him, “What is going on here?” He says, “Well, all these people come to ask me questions.”[22] Why would you come and ask a question of somebody who makes you feel like a fool when you leave their study?

I had a teacher in Scotland—a hundred years ago now—who was perfect at that. He played the bagpipes and had a big head, and he just enjoyed tyrannizing everybody. And I remember he made me stand up in front of the class on one occasion, and he says, “Begg, you do not have a head on your neck. You have a turnip on your neck.” And he said, “I want you to tell the class what you have on your neck.” And I said, “Class, I have a turnip on my neck.” And for a long time I was Turnip Head, thanks to Mr. McFadyen, the bagpipe player. He, if he looked in the mirror, would never have seen an approachable person.

Jesus said, “I am meek and lowly in heart.”[23] We don’t have much autobiography from Jesus in the Gospels, do we? Can you think of things that he said about himself? “You can come to me,” he said. “All you who are weary and you’re heavy laden, I’ll give you rest. You can take my yoke upon you. I won’t chaff your neck out. Because I am gentle”—or “meek”—“and lowly in heart. And you will find rest for your souls.”[24]

Well, the contrast, then, is, on the one hand, meekness. A meek person has a high view of God, a sober estimate of herself, a generous view of others—saying routinely, “O Jesus Christ, grow thou in me, and all things else recede”[25]—a mind and a heart submitted to the Word of God, living under the hand of God, recognizing that even when we didn’t recognize it, God was overseeing the affairs of our lives.

When all thy mercies, O my God,
My rising soul surveys,
Transported with the view, I’m lost
In wonder, love, and praise.

Unnumbered comforts to my soul
[Your] tender care bestowed
Before my infant heart conceived
From whom those comforts flowed.

[And] when in the slippery paths of youth
With heedless steps I ran,
[Your hand] unseen conveyed me safe
And [brought] me up to man.[26]

You see, meekness in the soul of an individual is attractive. It is the antithesis of jealousy and selfish ambition—arrogance, rivalry, one-upmanship, resenting the gifts that God has given to someone else, being jealous of their usefulness, being a complete pain in the neck to play on any reasonable sports team, because it has become all about Ronaldo. It has become all about me. It is about me.

Take the test: meekness; jealousy and self-aggrandizement.

“Wisdom … from Above”

Contrast two, which is the main contrast, is between earthly and heavenly wisdom. That’s what he’s doing. He’s saying there’s two sources here. If you have bitter jealousy, selfish ambition in your heart, you shouldn’t walk about and talk about it as if somehow or another there was something to be said, because that actually is not “the wisdom that comes down from above.” He says it’s actually this wisdom which “is earthly.” “Earthly.”

Now, what is earthly wisdom? Well, earthly wisdom is really the wisdom of the Enlightenment. It’s the wisdom that the writer of Ecclesiastes adopts in seeking to unscramble the riddle of life, as he takes all the pieces in the jigsaw box of life and he tries to make them form up to the picture on the front of the box. It’s the kind of pathetic wisdom that is represented in so much basic American television.

You know, does… Well, I’m not going to ask this as a question; I’m just going to make it as an assertion. I have never seen this program. I have only seen the things that suggest it would be a really fun thing to enjoy. It’s called The Bachelor. Right? Now, are you kidding me? Wine, women, song, illicit sex, treating people as commodities—both male or female—being masterminded and produced at a level that is so attractive and so fundamentally earthly. It is an attempt to explain your life “under the sun.”[27] Ecclesiastes, remember? “I tried to find out what made life, life.” Earthly wisdom.

It is unspiritual—it goes without saying—isn’t it? It’s unspiritual. You remember the prophet says, “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom or the strong man boast in his strength or the rich man boast in his riches, but let him boast in this: that he knows me—that he knows me, the living God.”[28] That’s a spiritual dimension. It’s not earthly. The natural person doesn’t receive the Spirit of God, because it’s foolishness.[29] Why, then, would we want to be aligned with any of this at any point?

Notice the descent. It is “earthly.” It is “unspiritual.” It is “demonic.” In the ESV, the word is “demonic.” James doesn’t pull his punches. He says, “This isn’t just another way of viewing things. This is rooted in the spiritual forces of evil”—that we’re not wrestling, as Paul says in Ephesians, against flesh and blood but against spiritual wickedness in the heavenly places.[30] And that dimension of cosmic engagement settles down into the hearts and minds of men and women. And the distinguishing feature of those to whom he writes is to be that we are not like that! And the reason we’re not like that is not that we decided we didn’t want to be—although we may have—but because it is not I but Christ in me. It is Christ who has now taken up residence in the citadel of our lives. At least that’s what we’re professing.

Well then, what would the other wisdom look like? Heavenly wisdom! Well, you can see it there. We could spend a long time—and we won’t—working our way through it all. “But the wisdom from above is first [of all] pure.” “Pure”! Golly, there’s a word, isn’t it? Pure, uncontaminated by double-mindedness.[31] The wisdom of heaven is marked by moral and intellectual, spiritual, emotional integrity. The wisdom that comes from above says “Yes, yes” or “No, no” but doesn’t equivocate.[32]

It’s not argumentative, you will notice. It is actually peaceful. Peaceful! “Peaceable” rather than contentious. What I said this morning about contending for the faith, there’ll be some people who took that, and they said, “Oh, this is terrific! I can’t wait to go out there and be contentious. I love that. I’m just going to contend and contend,” and wait till the artery on the side of your neck, you know, fills up, and your face gets really red. No, you got it completely wrong. No. To contend doesn’t mean to be contentious. It means to hold the line. But in actual fact, the wisdom from heaven is peaceable. He doesn’t mean that it is acquiescent to any idea, but it doesn’t sit comfortably with selfish ambition. He’s going to end in that way, as we will see.

What’s more, it’s all in the text: “pure, … peaceable, gentle,” or considerate, fair, generous in dealing with others—the opposite of quarrelsome. “Open to reason”—entreatable rather than intractable. How’s your vocabulary? You got that one? Entreatable rather than intractable. In other words, willing to listen, willing to be persuaded, willing to be able to go into a meeting knowing your own mind without having your mind made up. Because if you go in with your mind made up, then all you want to do is make sure that you give the people a piece of your mind. And since some of us don’t have a lot of mind to give, that is a dangerous perspective.

Again, James wasn’t talking about being deferential in matters that are theological or moral. But you’ll notice what he says: It is “full of mercy.” “Full of mercy”! “Full of mercy”—an all-embracing mercy, a mercy that is without respect of persons—the kind of change that was brought about in the life of an arrogant Pharisee called Saul of Tarsus, who was able to say, “I went to the best place for study. I had the best teachers. My background is largely impeccable. When it came to the issues of the law, I really was almost faultless. I was ticking them off so very well, until I was uncovered by covetousness.”[33] The last of the Ten Commandments: covetousness! You’re saying, “‘Don’t covet your next-door neighbor’s donkey, or your next-door neighbor’s wife, or husband,’ or whatever else it is.[34] We know it.” Isn’t that interesting, that Paul says that that was what it was? I often said to myself, “What did Paul covet? What did Saul of Tarsus covet? You know, he went to the right place. He had the right background. What did he covet?”

I don’t know. But I’ve got an idea. Do you remember when he said, “Hey, put those coats here. I will look after them. Bring your jackets and put them here. I will look after them.”[35] The reason they were taking their jackets off was so that they could throw the stones at Stephen, so that they could destroy Stephen and kill him. And Saul of Tarsus stands there, threatening the very life of Christianity from his perspective, and he saw something that he didn’t have. He must have said to himself, “This guy has something that I don’t have. Oh, I would like to have that!”

Our acceptance before the face of God is in the strength of the righteousness of Christ.

And, of course, we just fast forward to the road to Damascus and the encounter there. And then the good fruit—the good fruit that has emerged. “Good fruits,” attractive. I’ve had so much lovely fruit here today! I’m spoiled rotten. I couldn’t live here for very long at all; I’d be, like, enormous. Because the fruit is just like a come-on. It’s not—it’s the other stuff that’s coming behind it; that’s the bit that gets you. But it’s so attractive! It looked so nice when I came in for breakfast, and it tasted so good. And it added a little bit of a zest to things.

That’s the kind of wisdom! That’s the kind of wisdom. Do you add zest to things? Do people say you’re attractive, “impartial and sincere,” neither wavering nor hesitant, untainted by hypocrisy? “Sincere”: without wax, without spiritual Botox, without injecting yourself or covering yourself because you don’t want anyone to know who you really are, so you got to make sure that you look so much better than you really look.

Listen, let me tell you: That goes away when you really believe what we just sang about the righteousness of Jesus Christ. Because now we have come full on to the living God, and he knows exactly what we are. And our acceptance before the face of that God is in the strength of the righteousness of Christ. Therefore, I don’t have to pretend to you. I don’t have to try and make out that I’m smarter than I am, or I’m cleverer, or whatever it might be. I can just let you know: On my best day, I am an unprofitable servant,[36] and Jesus is absolutely everything.

That’s what James is saying here. This is the brother of Jesus! He gets it! He’s basically saying, “This is a description of my half-brother, Jesus of Nazareth. He embodies this.”

Now, “If anyone is in Christ, [they are] a new creation. The old has [gone],” and “the new has come.”[37] Therefore, the contrast is established and is finally seen in the contrast between the outcomes of the two kinds: “disorder and every [evil] practice,” there in verse 16. Where do you go with the wisdom from below? “Jealousy,” “selfish ambition,” “disorder,” and “every [evil] practice.” Instability, chaos—the inevitable impact on society.

You get tired listening to older people like me tell you this, but I’m telling you, and you can work it out for yourselves: Take the statistics on divorce, suicide, violent crime, prisons overflowing, fatherless homes, illegitimate children, and abortion, and then speak to your friends and say, “Do you really believe that the Enlightenment was the best thing that happened to us—when we removed God from the picture and we embraced ourselves as the center of the universe?” Are we to believe that? From that kind of notion?

Meghan’s notion, “My own truth,” explaining to Oprah: “Well, it’s my truth.” What does that even mean? You don’t want someone like that flying you into Roanoke Airport in a single-engine plane and going onto air traffic control, and air traffic control says, “Descend and maintain four thousand feet,” and the pilot says, “What does four thousand feet mean to you?” No, no, no, no! No, you better know what it means! You better know it means four thousand feet, not what you would like it to be. You don’t want someone like that doing open heart surgery on you: “Oh, who cares? What’s a ventricle here, a ventricle there? It doesn’t really matter!” It matters! Relativism does not work. It doesn’t work. And our whole culture is filled with it.

“A Harvest of Righteousness”

No. Basically, what we realize is that the harvest is “a harvest of righteousness”: doing the right thing, living in the right way, living in the beautiful garments that Christ has given to us. And what happens is it’s “sown in peace,” it’s sown in shalom, “by those who make” shalom.

I always tell people—especially young folks—I say, “You know, be careful who you have for your friends.” Because there are people in whose company it’s easy to be good, and there are people in whose company it’s easy to be bad. And it’s real easy to know. If you want to go smoke dope, you can find the right people that do it. There’s no question about it. If that’s your design, you’ll find them. They’ll be here. If you want to do the right thing, you may find that it’s a different group you move with.

And the same thing in interpersonal relationships, male-female relationships: You better be really, really careful! Girls, I’m telling you: Be careful with these guys. Be careful. Put them through the test. Examine how they treat their sisters, if they have them. Examine how they speak about their mothers. See if they actually finish their cereal when they’re eating it or whether they leave stuff floating around—all the things, like, “What the heck are you doing with that? Finish that stuff! Don’t waste stuff like that!” You check and see when the last time is they shined their shoes, and see if they actually shined the back of their shoes—’cause if they only shine the front of their shoes, that’s not good. They’re only showing you from the front. You got to see, look how it looks from the back. Yeah!

Why would I mention this? It’s wisdom, for crying out loud! That’s what it is. Shalom. Shalom. “Since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.”[38] You go out and take this on the streets, you know, people will think you’ve lost your mind: “You got to be kidding me!” Do you ever say to yourself, “Why do I believe this?” I say to myself, “How come I still believe this?”

The only answer to the great longings of the human heart are found in the wisdom of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Well, let me finish with a song. No! No, no. No, no. Nah, it’s just… I’ve never heard this sung; I’ve only heard it said. And it came… There was a little guy called Burns who was some kind of comedian or something, and he had a big stogie that he used to have. He wore a, you know, a tuxedo, and then he had this thing. And they played music behind it, but we don’t have that, so you have to imagine it, kind of. And I’ll tell you why I’m doing this in just a moment. But it goes down like this. It goes like this:

At a bar down in Dallas, an old guy chimed in,
And I thought he was out of his head,
’Cause, being a young guy, I just laughed it off
When I heard what the old geezer said.

He said, “Never again will I turn young ladies’ heads
Or run and chase after the wind,
’Cause I’m three-quarters done from the start to the end,
And I wish I was eighteen again.

“I wish I was eighteen again,
To go where I’ve never been,
’Cause I’m three-quarters done from the start to the end,
And I wish I was eighteen again.”[39]

Now, I don’t know what he was on about. I assume that was a kind of sentimental sort of mishmash thing. But the reason I end with it is because I want you to know that it’s a long time since I sat where you sat, listening to old guys like me saying the kind of things I’ve said. I’m not jaded. I’m not cynical. If somebody said, “You get a redo, and we’ll start you again at ground zero,” I would take it in five minutes. I’m jealous for you. Not jealous of you; I’m jealous for you. Because, as I said this morning, you have all the runway in front of you: contending for the faith, resting in Christ, embracing the wisdom that he provides. Into our culture, divided, broken—economically, racially—the only answer to the great longings of the human heart are found in the wisdom of the Lord Jesus Christ. Because Christ is actually the wisdom and the knowledge of God.[40]

But now I’m starting to start another sermon, so I’m done with that now. So, let’s go to the basketball game.

Let’s pray:

Father, thank you. Thank you that we have our Bibles. Thank you that these folks can go and check and make sure that at least some of the stuff that I’ve said is actually in there. And we pray, Father, that you will meet with us in these days when we walk around the campus on our own, when we drive in the car by ourselves, when we try to figure out stuff. When we’re sad, when we’re despairing, when we’re lonely, when we feel we don’t have friends, may we find that you, Lord Jesus Christ, are more than all that we could ever need. Help us, then, to be the shalom people. And may the peace of the Lord Jesus guard and keep our hearts and minds in the knowledge of him. For we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Thanks for your attention. Thank you!

[1] Richard Hudson Pope, “Make the Book Live to Me.” Language modernized.

[2] James 3:1 (ESV).

[3] Matthew 12:34 (ESV). See also Luke 6:45.

[4] James 2:18 (ESV).

[5] James 1:5 (ESV).

[6] Proverbs 2:1–6 (ESV).

[7] Psalm 111:10; Proverbs 9:10 (ESV). See also Proverbs 1:7.

[8] Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea (1938).

[9] Thomas S. Hibbs, Shows About Nothing: Nihilism in Popular Culture from The Exorcist to Seinfeld (Dallas: Spence, 1999), 22.

[10] William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 5.5.

[11] Shakespeare, 5.5.

[12] Roger Hodgson, “The Logical Song” (1979).

[13] John Lennon and Paul McCartney, “Nowhere Man” (1965).

[14] Paul Simon, “America” (1968).

[15] Paul Simon, “The Only Living Boy in New York” (1970).

[16] Joan Baez, “The Hitchhikers’ Song” (1971).

[17] James 1:21 (ESV).

[18] See James 1:19–21.

[19] See Colossians 3:12.

[20] Matthew 5:5 (ESV).

[21] Numbers 12:3.

[22] Exodus 18:14–16 (paraphrased).

[23] Matthew 11:29 (KJV).

[24] Matthew 11:28–29 (paraphrased).

[25] Johann Caspar Lavater, trans. Elizabeth Lee Smith, “O Jesus Christ, Grow Thou in Me” (1780, 1860).

[26] Joseph Addison, “When All Thy Mercies, O My God” (1712).

[27] For example, Ecclesiastes 1:3 (ESV).

[28] Jeremiah 9:23–24 (paraphrased).

[29] See 1 Corinthians 2:14.

[30] See Ephesians 6:12.

[31] See James 1:8.

[32] See Matthew 5:37; 2 Corinthians 1:17.

[33] Philippians 3:4–6 (paraphrased). See also Romans 7:7.

[34] See Exodus 20:17; Deuteronomy 5:21.

[35] See Acts 7:58.

[36] See Luke 17:10.

[37] 2 Corinthians 5:17 (ESV).

[38] 1 Corinthians 1:21 (ESV).

[39] Sonny Throckmorton, “I Wish I Was Eighteen Again” (1979). Lyrics lightly altered.

[40] See 1 Corinthians 1:24, 30.