“The Bible: Highly Revered but Seldom Read” was the headline for a Christianity Today article reporting the results of a Gallup Poll. Americans expressed their attitudes toward God, the church, the Bible and their personal faith. Interestingly, 42 percent recognized in principle that the Bible is God’s inerrant Word. But, the article continued:
There was a time when the American people were more biblically literate [than they are today]. They took pains to learn the Bible because they acknowledged its authority not only in principle, but also in their daily lives. Having committed its teaching to their hearts, they made it a lamp unto their feet; they hid it away in their hearts as a hedge against sin. But those days have passed.
If we are ever to recover the authority of Scripture for our lives, we need to fill our minds with its content. We need to search it, meditate upon it, memorize it, and make it a part of ourselves. Pastors need to emphasize its significance from the pulpit and parents need to read it with their children. We need a nationwide recommitment to letting the Bible matter in our lives. [“The Bible: Highly Revered, But Seldom Read,” Christianity Today (March 21, 1980), 369].
James could not have agreed more. Knowing that belief must impact behavior, he insists that the Word that is learned must link with the Word that is lived. His requirement is simple: “Do what it says” (v. 22).
James spoke of the Word of God in v. 18. Now he tells us how to react to and receive the Word (vv. 19-21), and then respond obediently to its demands (vv.22-27).
I. HOW TO REACT TO THE WORD OF GOD - vv. 19-21
James addresses Christians. That is clear from the reference “My dear brothers.” But the word, “Everyone...” (v.19) includes all Christians, not just a group of super-saints. He calls for three reactions that will prepare us to properly receive the Word. The Bible will make little impact on our lives until we are alert, calm, and clean.
A. Be Alert - “Be quick to listen” (v. 19)
There is such a need for good listening. Three friends went into town on a noisy train. The first said, “Isn’t it windy?” The second said, “No, I think it’s Thursday”; to which the third friend replied, “So am I, let’s get something to drink.”
“Quick to listen” means to be eager and attentive, ready to receive and assimilate the message heard. Listen well to increase your knowledge of the Word of truth.
James’ letter is sprinkled with references to Old Testament people like Abraham, Rahab, Job and Elijah, so it is obvious that it is the Scriptures we are to hear. Be quick to hear what God has to say.
James is a very practical writer, but with all his practicality he offers no plan for daily Bible reading. He was aware that study methods are meaningless unless we are alert and ready to hear God. If we haven’t learned to listen in daily life, we will probably not listen in our devotional life. Alec Motyer says it well,
There is little point in schemes and times if we have not got an attentive spirit. It is possible to be unfailingly regular in Bible reading, but to achieve no more than to have moved the bookmark forward. If we can develop an attentive spirit, this will spur us to create those conditions—a proper method in Bible-reading, a discipline of time, and so on—by which [our] spirit will find itself satisfied in hearing the Word of God. [Alec Motyer, The Message of James ‘[The Bible Speaks Today], edited by John R. W. Stott, (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1985), 64f].
Good listening makes a tremendous difference in the effect God’s Word has on our life. Leonard Mosley’s biography of John Foster Dulles, tells of one experience the late Secretary of State had at the beginning of his diplomatic career that may have had an immense effect on history:
In 1917 Dulles was serving on the staff of the American Embassy in Berne, Switzerland. Late one afternoon in April, Dulles’s phone rang. A heavily accented man introducing himself as Vladimir Ilyich Lenin urgently asked to speak to someone at the embassy later in the day. But most of the senior staff had already left and Dulles had an important date with a young woman in an hour. He told Lenin to come to the embassy when it opened at ten the next morning. Lenin protested but Dulles remained firm and hung up the phone. Lenin did not come to the embassy the next morning or ever. He journeyed back to Russia by train and took total control of the fledgling Communist revolution. Dulles often reflected later in his career the possible difference it might have made to millions of people had he taken the time to listen to a Russian exile that April afternoon of 1917. [Leonard Mosley, Dulles (New York: The Dial Press, 1978), 47f].
Can good listening make a difference? Can it change the direction of human lives? Foster Dulles asked himself that question many times. Ask yourself, “What difference would it make if I carefully, alertly listened to God?”
I very seldom go out on Saturday night because I want to be rested and ready to listen to the Spirit on Sunday morning. Church would be so much more significant to many of us if we made better preparation for it. Get ready early and eliminate some of the Sunday morning hassles in order to be a good listener.
B. Be Calm-”slow to speak and slow to become angry” ...v. 19
Anger and quick speech are closely related because anger is most often expressed verbally. We need to maintain a calm attitude that restrains hasty, improper reactions to what we hear. Freedom of speech involves great responsibility.
Anger must not be taken lightly. It can be dynamite! A woman once admitted to Billy Sunday that she had a bad temper. “But, she said, “at least it’s over in a minute. The evangelist said, “So is a shotgun blast! It is over in a second, but look at the damage it can do.”
Jonathan Edwards, the early American scholar and preacher, had a daughter with an uncontrollable temper. A fine young man, who had fallen in love with her, came to Edwards one day and asked to marry her. The father said, “You can’t have her.” The young man said, “But I love her.” Edwards said, “You can’t have her.” The young man said, “But she loves me.” Again Edwards said, “You can’t have her.” “Why can’t I have her?” he protested. “Because she is not worthy of you,” replied Jonathan Edwards. “... She is a Christian, but the grace of God can live with some people with whom no one else could ever live.”
James says it well, “...man’s anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires” (v. 20).
C. Be Clean - v. 21
We live in an age characterized by moral filth. Obscenity has become big business. Pornography floods the bloodstream of America with moral pollu-tion. The FBI says one out of four 12-year-old girls will be raped in her lifetime unless something is done about pornography. More than a million children are sexually abused every year in our country. 300,000 children and young people are used to produce kiddy porn every year according to 1985 statistics. An avalanche of pornography ravages America! Former Surgeon, General C. Everett Koop, said that the average child molester arrested by police has a store of pornography at home, including pornographic depictions of the sex act for which he has been apprehended.
It is especially tragic that the filth can be found in many Christian homes. We must “get rid of moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent” (v. 21). Society has moved away from fixed standards. Christians must at least hold to high moral standards.
Lewis Smedes in Mere Morality says, “... We are in a crisis of morals.... The crisis is the loss of a shared understanding of what is right. Worse, it is a crisis of doubt as to whether there even is a moral right or wrong at all.” Carl Henry writes:
We must address the world’s skepticism over moral norms, its distaste for work, the soaring crime rate, the need of prison to reform, mushrooming pornography and weak obscenity laws. The statistics of the masses of persons who attend porno films weekly and of the ‘top ten’ men’s magazines that gross a half million dollars annually curdle the soul. Television has helped inure us to the lustful look and casual sex, to prostitution and adultery, while it devalues evangelical morality as a vestigial remnant of the dinosaur age. Advertising sells its wares by titillating envy, greed, and lust. The gray mist of secularism stupefies the sense of holiness, stifles moral outrage, intimidates ethical indignation, questions the worth of purity. Godliness is gone as a virtue; evil seems respectable. In the words of Barbara Nauer, it has become good to be bad. [Carl F. H. Henry, The Christian Mindset in a Secular Society (Portland, OR: Multnomah Press, 1984), 40].
Harry Blamires compares the legality of abortion with the illegality of wearing seat belts and comments, “If physical safety is at issue, the weight of the law increasingly comes down in support of it. If moral or spiritual well-being is at issue, even the tacit codes of our civilized past are scrapped in favour of slogans such as ‘Be yourself’ or ‘Do your own thing.’“6 [Harry Blamires, Recovering the Christian Mind (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1988, 134].
The Greek word translated “moral filth” was a medical term. It referred to the wax build-up in the ear that causes a hearing loss. Moral filth and evil in our lives plugs up our hearing. Approach the Word with unconfessed sin and you’ll never receive what the clean heart does.
II. HOW TO RECEIVE THE WORD OF GOD - vv 21b
It is not enough to simply put off evil. Something good must take its place. So James says, “...humbly accept the word planted in you which can save you.” A heart and mind opened to the Spirit and Word of God experiences the mystery of redemption.
The Word of God is not only the agent of our salvation; it is also the agent of our daily growth. Two qualities are necessary to correctly receive the Word and grow. The first is an attitude; the second is an action. First, we must
A. Be Humble
Humility is the attitude that says, “yes” to what the Word teaches. It is one of the nine qualities of the fruit of the Spirit and one of the principle traits of Christian character. You cannot have a teachable heart without humility. What does God see when he looks at your heart? Are you teachable? Are you humble, pliable and tender?
B. Be Hospitable
“Accept the Word.” “Accept” is the New Testament word for hospitality. So James calls us to welcome truth into our lives. We welcome God’s Word into our lives because it is able to save our souls. James is not speaking of our original salvation experience. Receiving Christ into our lives was a beginning, but God continues to work in us to “save” us. He transforms our minds, our emotions, and our will through the instrument of the Word. Welcome that Word into your life.
III. HOW TO RESPOND TO THE WORD OF GOD - vv. 22-27
James now introduces his favorite topic — a faith that produces! “Do not merely listen to the Word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says” (v. 22). He reminds us that what we learn in the secret place must be lived out in the public place. Those who are content to hear without responding deceive themselves. Self-deception is pitiful, but it is the experience of all who hear the Word of God, agree with its truth, and then live an unchanged life.
Jesus never calls anyone just to be a listener. His call is always to follow and to go. James aligns himself with Jesus’ words: “Blessed ... are those who hear the word of God and obey it!” (Luke 11:28).
The one who hears without acting upon the truth is compared to a person who sees himself in a mirror, but quickly forgets what he has seen (v. 23-24). This is a ludicrous thought, but the one who hears God’s truth and fails to practice it is no less ludicrous. Listening to truth is not an end in itself anymore than gazing at one’s face in a mirror is an end in itself. The purpose of listening to truth is to do something about it.
The doer of the word, on the other hand, looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues (v. 25). He acts upon the truth he has learned. He is blessed for demonstrating the continuing impact of the Word on his life.
The Jews loved and delighted in the law, but they failed to keep it because of their human imperfections. The “perfect law of freedom” is “perfect” because Christ completed it. It is liberating because those who are free in Christ observe it.
Now James moves to an application of this truth - vv. 26-27. The received word makes a difference in how we live. We don’t receive the word so we can go out and speak learnedly about the Christian life. We are to go out and live that life. A genuine spiritual experience puts truth into practice. That life consists of loving others and being holy before God. One man says that genuine Christianity will cause you to “keep your tongue in check, get your hands dirty helping people in need, and keep yourself clean from the filth of this world.”7 [Simon J. Kistemaker, James and I-III John, [New Testament Commentary], (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1986), 63].
An uncontrolled tongue invalidates religious profession. If we extol the grace of love, but speak hatefully, who will believe that we know anything about love?
We give evidence that we are people of the Word by our social concern and our moral purity also. In our shrinking world the refugees and homeless, the hungry and destitute, the sick and afflicted need our help wherever they are. They need to see evidence of Christians’ “pure religion.” We show the love of Jesus by reaching out to help them.
Finally, we respond properly to the Word by avoiding the pollution of the world. No matter how busy we become in witnessing and helping others, we must avoid sin in our own lives. It is easy to get so involved in doing that we forget the necessity of being.
The values of the world are always opposed to the lordship of Jesus Christ in our lives. When we are constantly bombarded with eroding values and the clamor for our time, money and energy, we may adopt a way of life that avoids the open pitfalls of sin, but is hardly different from the lifestyles of the lost. A. W. Tozer once said, “Too many Christians want to enjoy the thrill of feeling right but are not willing to endure the inconvenience of being right.”
You have heard the Lord’s demand for purity - Just do it! You have heard the call for proper concern for the less fortunate - Just do it! You have heard the invitation for personal fellowship - Just do it! “Do not merely listen to the word... Do what it says!”
