In 1993 there was an incident that highlighted yet again the potential control that one person can have over others. It’s the story of the Branch Davidians in Waco Texas, a Christian cult who followed a man named David Koresh.

They originally began in 1935 by purchasing a property and formed a group around a well-respected religiously devoted husband and wife. The husband believed he had been sent by God to cleanse the Church which was met with quite a lot of resistance from those in the church many of whom he despised. After the husband died in 1955, the wife became their leader and predicted that the world would end in 1959. Many frightened converts rushed to Waco probably to make sure that they wouldn’t be left behind as they had been taught that only 144,000 people were going to get to heaven. But when the world didn’t end, the cult divided and a particular leader drew some of the disillusioned with him. When this man died his wife, Lois, became the new prophet of the group of which David Koresh was a member.

David Koresh was a rising star in this cult and so was despised by the leader’s son who was not going to let go of his rightful place as the next prophet. Over the period that they were arguing, David charmed his opponents mother Lois into taking him as her lover saying that it was God’s divine command that they produce a child together. Anyway, to cut a long story short, eventually David Koresh ended up being the new prophet when Lois died, her son was committed to a mental asylum after failing to raise a dead body back to life during a court hearing.

What David did was become so revered in his group of followers that if he said a divine command they would comply. So much so that at one point he divided all the women from the men (wives from husbands) and claimed the women as his own. He was the only one who could sleep with them as they were the handmaiden’s to the Lord. He had by this time established himself as being so divine that he was pretty much calling himself Jesus.

He began to teach his followers about martyrdom for the cause and they began to stockpile weapons and food supplies for the approaching end of the world.

Apparently the only way to serve God was to die and he taught the children that suicide might one day be required and showed them how to do it with a gun and with cyanide.

As it turns out when the cult was going to be investigated a siege occurred and at the end of about a month of negotiating there was a gun battle where 20 FBI agents were wounded and 4 of them died. For six hours after tear gas had been thrown into the building, Koresh would not let them go. They were destined to die, for a cause that had no weight. After the six hours the compound where they were staying went up in smoke and killed many inside. By the end of that day, 80 people were found dead, 23 of them children under 17. Koresh had fathered 14 of them.

People are like sheep.

Here’s what happens in a flock of sheep without a shepherd. They appoint two leaders and follow them wherever they go. The first leader is the outlier. This sheep has tremendous responsibility. It decides where the flock will go. It controls the direction of the flock, where it will sleep, where it will graze. And all the other sheep give it full responsibility for their future. But with responsibility comes a cost.

When the flock move, the outlier goes in front—at a distance. When the flock sleep, the outlier sleeps alone — at a distance. The reason for the distance is simply this: if a wolf attacks the outlier, then the rest of the flock are warned of the danger.

Now, there’s the second type of leader in the flock. The bellwether. The bellwether monitors the status of the outlier but stays with the flock. When the warning is sounded — usually by cries of pain as the outlier is being torn to shreds by the predator — the bellwether guides the rest of the sheep away from the danger.

The point of this parable from sheep is simple. People are sheep. In the proverbial sense sheep people need to follow a leader in whatever situation of life they are in. so they look for who these leaders might be. Now the outlier and the bellwether are interesting examples of types of leaders that people want . . . but I don’t want to dwell on that at the moment — it might expose what type of leader you are wanting me to be . . . and I’d hate to think that I would be a disposable alarm system.

What I want to focus on is how we have this desire to be led. All of us. It’s a part of what it means to be human and relational. Some of us are drawn to be powerful and others of us are drawn to be with those who have power.

Look at the dynamics of how people are relating in their groups around you, at school, work or any other social context. Some of us are drawn to be powerful in these communities, some of us are drawn to that power. And it’s not limited to just within these groups. There are always big fish in small ponds depending on the context. I suspect that even Helen Clark would be a small fish in a discussion about astrophysics, since it’s not really her field of expertise. Eeryone is being played in these powergames that try to find recognition and acceptance. We manipulate people as much as we can just to gain some sense of control or to prop ourselves up and make ourselves feel better by making someone else feel smaller.

And people will try to reach the top of their fields, or climb the ladders in the companies. At school you think about big picture stuff, I’m going to be a doctor or a lawyer because that’s really well paid. But when you become either of those you will find that you still have a long way to go before you get to the top in New Zealand, and then there’s the international scene. But we still try because we want to be accepted, but the truth is that there is no top. You can always pursue something higher because our society conditions us that way. So we diversify and become all that we can be. We have this need to fulfil all our potential and it’s actually quite destructive because it often distracts us from the things that matter.

And this is the thing, we are so swayed by this thing called “status anxiety.” Someone was telling me that it was talked about on TV last Monday night.

Status anxiety means that we strive for recognition nowadays. It’s not enough to have enough. We have to have more of stuff. Whether that be a better job, be top notch on the sport field, be the quickest on the computer games, be the best at the guitar, whatever it is, today’s society pushes us to do better and better all the time. Sometimes it’s not a bad thing, but sometimes it can go horribly wrong. But we look at the people who have more stuff, more respect, more mana in society and many of us want to be like them.

We all want it seems to have some recognition for who we are. None of us like to be rejected. None of us like to be sidelined. None of us like to be scoffed at. So we scramble around trying to make ourselves acceptable to other people. It’s amazing what compromises we’ll make just to be accepted by someone.

People are sheep. We’ll compromise ourselves just to be part of the crowd and yes even for you individualists out there, you’re still trying to be part of the individualist crowd. We can’t escape it. We want recognition and we want acceptance.

The scary thing is when it gets to the stage where someone like David Koresh has such control over you that you sacrifice family to him. It’s sick you might cry. How can a man let his family be abused so openly by letting them become lovers of the leader? How can he neglect his responsibility of being a protector?

Now we’re at a point in the sermon where there are a couple of threads that are being developed and at the moment I’m sure you’re wondering how this relates with James 3. What has this got to do with wisdom? Well before we can go forward we need to work out what wisdom is. So let’s break into our small groups again and for 2 minutes we’ll come up with 5 word definition of wisdom. This should be easier than the one we did on faith.

James is talking about two kinds of wisdom here. One that is Godly, and one that is not. The way you can tell the difference is basically to do with lifestyle. In the early church as in church throughout history, there were people who had elevated themselves above everyone else and they did this because they could speak in tongues. They were revered by the rest of the congregation because they appeared so spiritual. But in 1 Corinthians the apostle Paul slams them and calls them clanging gongs, just a bunch of loud and obnoxious noise because even though they speak with the tongues of angels they have not love. And love is what makes the difference between good wisdom and bad wisdom.

It’s clear that for someone like David Koresh, his followers saw him as wise even though we rubbish him as being a clanging gong. But it’s often not quite so simple as that.

It’s clear that some of us think that getting a good career is wise. It’s clear that we think a good education is wise to have. It’s clear to say that being the best you can be in whatever you do, is wise. For sure. But James makes it quite clear that selfish ambition in any thing that we call wisdom, is bordering on being devilish.

Take the current wisdom about sexual health that is being taught in school. The wise thing to do is to use a condom. Sure. That is wise if you want to reduce the possibility of pregnancy, reduce the possibility of sexually transmitted disease. Yeah that’s wise for those reasons. BUT where I think it goes wrong is that this wisdom has no love in it. Why? Because it’s primarily about protecting you as an individual from consequences and empowering individuals for selfish gain. And this is the thing that’s not popular here.

The negative consequences of sex are not just sexually transmitted diseases, or unwanted pregnancies—though there are some alarming statistics out there. The consequences are that teenagers give their entire intimacy over to someone too readily. The consequences are that many girls get abused, not violently, but emotionally. The sense where they feel used by the guys and discarded. That they have given away something of themselves that they can never take back. All that vulnerability thrown away just so a guy can get his rocks off. And what about the guy? He gets to get his rocks off without any sense of responsibility, he often nurtures an attitude where he needs to sleep with lots of women to have any kind of credibility with his mates or with himself.

I don’t know how you feel about this, but I’m convinced that sleeping around as a teenager is actually really damaging precisely because I don’t think it is motivated so much by genuine love and concern for the other person. If you’re doing it at the moment, you’ll disagree with me for sure and that’s how it is, but you won’t be able to convince me otherwise. Sex is so complex that to treat it as entertainment will only damaging those who are involved.

I firmly believe that marriage is the appropriate place for sexual relationships, because of all the relationship models we have out there marriage is the most dedicated and committed and loving. And sex should be in that context because sex is so vulnerable and intimate.

And this ties in with James’ point here. I have presented two types of wisdom here. One is to do with simply preventing consequences the other is protecting the individual’s emotional health because it is love centred not lust centred.

So wisdom that has no love is a waste of time.

We need to assess the wisdom of that those in society present to us. Is it actually out of love for us? Or is it pushing an agenda? Is that agenda actually in line with God’s agenda? How then do we respond? And I’ll tell you, that more often than not, we go with the wisdom that is not Godly.

You see we are sheep. We follow the strongest voice. We look out for the best leaders and we gravitate to them. We respect them and revere them and hang on their every word. But if they have not got love at the absolute center of all that they do, and we can tell that by the fruits of their lives, then it’s all kaka.

David Koresh’s fruits are really obvious to us, but this is how insidious the effect that leaders can have on us. We can be so blinded by the wow factor of this amazing person recognising us that we can actually lose any sense of what’s going on.

We will follow advice from people and think it is wisdom, but I think that to put everything on the line by following someone blindly is just asking for trouble. People are people, no matter how great we think they are, they are still selfish and make mistakes. People are people, so I think we shouldn’t just take other people’s opinions as being absolutely trustworthy. You can gain an idea of how trustworthy the advice is by how they live their lifestyle, but it is still just what they think.

James has given us some helpful guidelines here to judge whether something is truly wise or not.

But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy.

Now that’s quite a list. And I have to say it’s actually not that common in Christian circles to see this. Often there are disputes about wisdom in the church that are not full of mercy and good fruits, often not peacable, and seldom without a trace (note the word trace) of partiality or hypocrisy. And get this. I don’t know of many debates where either side goes in willing to yield to the other side.

Why? Because when we dispute things often the thing we dispute is not actually the issue that’s on the line, but our reputation. It’s often not our position that’s at stake but how others will view us. And that’s difficult to get past.

It’s the nature of politics to stand up for what you believe in, but are you prepared to admit you’re wrong? That’s what it means to be able to yield, to know when enough is enough and to back down. To know when to admit you’re wrong, or that the other person will not be persuaded and to back off in the name of peace and gentleness.

I want to finish with this.

There’s this church just up the road from me and every Sunday you can see them going into church, clean shaven, well-dressed and with their bibles under their arms. And I’ve often thought to myself, “that is just so scary.” I put myself in the shoes of people who don’t go to church and would probably look at them as being fanatics. And until this morning I would dismiss them as being just a bit too over the top with their faith and out of touch with reality.

But this morning as I was walking up the ramp to my office with my little black bible under my arm I thought to myself, those people are actually making a statement in a way that I am embarrassed to. They are saying that this book is dominant in their lives.

What am I saying when I hide this book, or turn its spine away from the neighbour’s window just in case they are looking out? What do I think of this book? And I thought that actually this book is the thing that has saved me. The contents in its pages have taught me about God and his love for me. The stuff inside here is what has kept me alive, stopped me from going over the edge, helped me work through some really important issues, given me hope for the future, hope in people around me, taught me to love God and love people and that if I don’t do that successfully that God still loves me no matter what. In these pages are the gift of a life worth living, the inspiration of the words and life of Jesus, the wisdom of people who are really connected with God. In these pages we catch a glimpse of the heart of God, what makes him tick, what makes him want us so much.

That I truly believe that the only place I can reliably find true wisdom is here. Because in here is a description of a love that is pure, of mercy that is vast, of patience that is unending, of faithfulness that does not falter all of the wonderful relational aspects of God our Father who loves us all to bits.