The warning to the preacher in 3:1–12 makes the avoidance even more serious. “We all stumble in many ways.” The tongue exposes the heart, especially in teaching. When 3:13–18 follows, the description of “bitter envy and selfish ambition” is not distant analysis. It is a present danger in the very act of preaching. To speak of it as though it belongs elsewhere is to ignore the context’s direct warning to the speaker.

James then names the source: “earthly, unspiritual, demonic.” This is not rhetorical excess and to be fair, Rev Matthews acknowledges this. It is a diagnosis. In 1:13–15, desire conceives and gives birth to sin. The root is within. However, when the sermon explains these categories but does not locate them in the hearer’s own desires, it severs cause from effect. Sin becomes a pattern to notice rather than a power to confess within one’s own heart.

The contrast in 3:17–18 is no less searching. The wisdom from above is pure, peaceable, gentle, open, merciful, sincere. But this is not a list of refinements. It is the fruit of a life reordered by God’s gift. Without the prior verdict on my present wisdom, these qualities become aspirations that leave the root intact. The sermon may commend them, but it has not produced them.

James himself provides the authoritative interpretation in 4:1: “What causes quarrels and fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you?” The issue is internal; it is a heart issue. The call that follows is unmistakable: “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble… cleanse your hands… purify your hearts.” This is the movement of the letter:

TEXT → HEART → VERDICT → REPENTANCE → GOD → FRUIT. Any sermon on this passage that does not travel that path has not followed James.

This is where the sermon's failure becomes plain. When 3:13–18 is preached as:

 TEXT → LEADERSHIP DISCERNMENT → BEHAVIOURAL MARKERS,

The letter has been re-engineered! What was given to expose and convert is used to categorise and advise. The Word remains true, but its force has been muzzled.

The sermon is treating the passage as though James was primarily saying:

→ “Church, identify wise people.”

But James is actually saying:

→ “Each of you, examine what is ruling you.”
→ “And the church will become what your hearts are producing.”

Even the strongest material cannot recover that loss if the structure is wrong. Near the end of the sermon, there was a careful and pastorally helpful treatment of being “open to reason.” That is exactly the texture James intends. Yet it was presented as relational wisdom to adopt, rather than the fruit of a heart that has been brought low. Without the prior exposure of envy and ambition, “be reasonable” becomes a technique to adopt. It may improve tone, but it leaves self-will in place.

John Calvin is helpful here. He will not permit such a reading. For him, the question “Who is wise?” is a summons to self-examination. Envy and ambition are not traits to identify in others but evidence that one’s own claim to wisdom collapses. The language “earthly, unspiritual, demonic” is not filed away as doctrine; it is felt as judgment. Only then does he turn to God as the giver of true wisdom. The fruit that follows is not cultivated behaviour but granted transformation.

There is a deeper issue running beneath all of this. Epistle of James 3:1 has already warned that teachers will be judged more strictly, and that “we all stumble in many ways.” The preacher is not exempt from the searching power of the Word; he is its first subject. If the text has not first examined him—if his envy, ambition, and self-advancing wisdom have not been exposed in his study and repented of in his own heart—then he will, almost instinctively, redirect that examination away from himself and his hearers. The deflection we have traced in the sermon is not accidental. It is the natural outcome of a preacher who has not yet stood fully under the verdict of the text he proclaims.

The issue, then, is not whether the sermon says true things. It is whether it allows the text to do what it was given to do. When the heart is not searched, repentance does not occur. When repentance does not occur, Christ is reduced to a supplier of better qualities rather than the Lord who judges and replaces false wisdom. And when that happens, the church may speak often of wisdom while quietly operating on envy and ambition.

James leaves no room for neutrality. “The wisdom from above is first pure.” If what governs me is not that, then it is not from above. There is no middle ground. We are not naturally inclined to this wisdom. We are born with, and quickly learn to refine, the very wisdom James condemns—earthly, unspiritual, demonic. It is the instinct of the fallen heart: to advance self, to envy others, to secure position, even under the guise of service.

Either the Word is allowed to search every heart, exposing its envy and ambition, and drive the hearer to humble repentance before God, or it must be redirected, softened, and rendered safe. And where that happens, the outcome is not merely a weaker sermon, but a compromised church. For where envy and selfish ambition remain unjudged, disorder will follow. But where the Word is allowed to do its work—where that native wisdom is confessed, renounced, and replaced—there will be a harvest of righteousness sown in peace.

The difference then, is not in how well the sermon is preached, but in whether the preacher himself has first been judged by the text he proclaims. This sermon sounds strangely safe. The listener must therefore ask: has James been muzzled?

The sermon may be viewed at