Sermon for January 26, 2020 - Listening and Doing
[I am thankful to William Barclay's exposition of James chapter 1, which influences much of this message directly and indirectly.]
Did you know that God truly cares about every aspect of your life? Sometimes people say that God is too big or too busy with more important things to be concerned with something as inconsequential as the details of our lives.
But this sentiment is not biblical. God absolutely cares about the little things that happen in our lives.
Luke 12:6–7 says: "Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God. Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows."
God remembers birds that people sell for next to nothing; they are of small consequence to humans yet are remembered by God.
Jesus tells us we are worth much more than that. Of course God cares! He cares enough to number the hairs on our heads. Each year it takes less time to count the hairs on my head.
Matthew 6:25–33 is a similar passage. Here Jesus counsels against worry, highlighting how God provides for birds and flowers, things that pass quickly and are considered small to humans. How much more will He care for His people?
Many of the Psalms give credence to the fact that God cares about our lives, including the small things.
In Psalm 139:13–14 he says, "For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well."
This is a God who is intimately connected with the lives of His people. https://www.compellingtruth.org/does-God-care.html
Now if you can receive this truth, that is really lovely. But a lot of us grew up believing that we didn’t matter.
Sometimes it was our parents, failing in their responsibility to reflect the love and goodness of God in their care of us.
In my case it wasn’t that. I’m grateful to have had loving parents.
Though in my case it was the understanding of life that my parents had - their materialism and atheism - that, once I was old enough to explore those 2 things in depth
- that understanding of life, which I adopted as my own at the time, left me believing deeply that I didn’t matter at all, that life was meaningless, that life was just suffering and hardship.
You have your own story, if you have struggled with believing that you matter.
So when I started to open up my mind to the possibility that God exists, it quickly dawned on me that if He did exist, that He was the Creator of everything, including me. I was made in his image, like every person.
That suggested a certain amount of dignity that I was not use to considering. This really began to shake up everything in my mind.
I started to wonder, do I matter? Do I matter, objectively? If God made me and God loves me, then the unavoidable answer was: “Yes, I actually matter!” [Pause]
So, God cares about every aspect of your life.
And as we continue to explore the Letter of James, the Epistle of James, we begin to see that God cares a great deal about us, and about how we live, AND how we relate to Him AND to other people.
And so we have today’s passage. We’re going to do a line by line, expositional study today of what this portion of God’s Word is saying to us.
19 My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry,
Why in the world does God care about the rate we speak at, or listen at? Isn’t that ridiculously trivial? What’s the point here? What’s the bigger picture?
The big deal here is that God cares deeply about relationships. He cares about our relationship with Him and our relationships to those around us.
The cross itself is a good representation of these 2 relationships [PIC].
19 My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry,
So, quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry.
Quick to Listen - not just hearing and ignoring what we heard. Listening with intent to learn. Listening because we trust God our Father in heaven.
Listen To God - because He is our Creator and Redeemer, the Lover of our souls.
Listen To the Bible - because the Bible is the Word of God, all that God wants us to know about Him, about His thoughts and about humanity and about spirituality is found in the Bible.
Listen To godly wisdom - because God puts people in our lives with lived experience in Him.
There are a lot of hard choices in life, and when we have access to godly wisdom, good advice, we will end up making better choices and living better lives.
Listen To hurting people - because God remembers the afflicted (God does not ignore the cries of the afflicted - Psalm 9:12) and wants to love others through us.
Your hands are the hands He uses to bless and support and help others. You words are the words He uses to speak words of life and truth.
Listen To those you love - we need to hear the hearts of those closest to us, to be open to hearing from God through them if they are in Christ.
We listen and we grow to more and more trust Jesus with everything. Trust the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit with every aspect of our lives.
So quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to become angry. And if we’re quick to listen to God, this also means we should be slow to listen:
Slow to listen
To Satan
To distortions of the Bible (that take away from the cross, from the Person and Work of Jesus, that correspond to the zeitgeist - spirit of this age)
To stupid advice from proven sources of bad advice (if someone misled you before, they’ll likely do it again).
We should listen so slow that we don’t listen at all, or we listen to discern and dismiss lies.
Slow to speak
Slow because you’re eagerly listening; if you’re really listening, you will listen more than you talk in conversations.
Because you value what the other is saying; because you don’t listen to speak or reply you listen to understand
Barclay: some ancient thinkers (Jewish Fathers) said this: "There are four characteristic in scholars:
1. Quick to hear and quick to forget; his gain is cancelled by his loss. (When we are wide open and eager to hearing from God but quick to forget what we’ve heard, however we might have benefitted is cancelled) 2. Slow to hear and slow to forget; his loss is cancelled by his gain. (Etc.) 3. Quick to hear and. slow to forget; he is wise. 4. Slow to hear and quick to forget; this is an evil lot."
Some ancient writers had the same idea. One said, "We have two ears but only one mouth, that we may hear more and speak less."
Another said when was asked how a someone might rule or lead best, he answered, "Without anger, speaking little, and listening much."
Another said, "If you hate quick speaking, you will not fall into error."
Finally kudos or big compliments were once paid to a great linguist or polyglot (who spoke many languages) that he could ‘be silent in seven different languages’. (I can be silent in dozens of languages!) Many of us would do well to listen more and to speak less.
19 My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, 20 because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires.
Has anything good ever come into your life from being angry, from lashing out at another person? (I wouldn’t call feeling good about tearing down another person a good thing)
Or have you witnessed someone in their anger producing positive results, good fruit? For the most part, I’d say it would be incredibly rare for human anger to produce anything good.
That’s why we’re told to be sloooooooooooow to become angry.
When we’re angry we’re often overwhelmed emotionally by something.
When we’re overwhelmed emotionally, we’re unable to think at our best, with clarity and balance.
This is across the board for all humans. Our anger doesn’t produce the kind of character that God wants in us, it doesn’t produce righteousness.
That’s often something we learn early on in life. Have you ever seen a toddler have a tantrum?
Have you tried to reason with a toddler who is having a tantrum? How did that go? Not well, I’m guessing.
Most often toddlers learn over time that when they get angry because they don’t get what they want, the anger doesn’t get them anywhere.
It might get them the opposite of what they want. That understanding of the negative outcome of anger contributes to us maturing.
We continue: 21 Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you.
21 Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent
James continues to describe what it looks like to truly trust God our Father.
How does that show up in our daily lives? Here, he writes that those who trust God reject sin. Sin is what happens when we choose to serve ourselves first, and above all.
Since it’s true that God perfectly provides for all of our needs, what do we need sin for? “So let's put sin away”, James says.
The Greek word used here means: to remove something as one would remove clothing. https://www.bibleref.com/James/1/James-1-21.html
God through James is telling us to get rid of sin, everything that defiles us the way we strip off soiled garments or the way a snake sheds its skin.
To take off something is a choice, a conscious action.
The challenge is that to live in moral filth, to participate in the evil all around us, is really quite normal for humans. It's how most people continue to live throughout their lives.
This is why we speak of "lesser evils," or say certain decisions are "just business." Or we justify‘white lies’.
It's why we always want to compare our morals to other people, instead of comparing them to God.
Those who trust the Father, though, choose to opt out of sin, no matter how bizarre and alien that may appear in the culture of the day.
And what do we opt in to? What do we choose instead? It's interesting that James doesn't yet give us a concrete list of good things to do here, instead of the bad things we were doing.
He writes that we should, in humility, accept the Word planted in us.
Throughout the Bible, Christ is often described as "the Word."
James likely refers to Christ, to the message of Christ, when he calls us to accept, with humility, the Word that was planted in us when we believed in Jesus.
James doesn't tell us to stop sinning and just be better people. He tells us to stop sinning and accept—or keep accepting or accept on a deeper level—the message of Christ, with humility. It is Christ's goodness in us that counts, not our own efforts to be good. Christ in us is what will save our souls.
This reminds me of another passage that is helpful here: 13 No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it. 1 Cor 10:13
Part of the way God loves you is by not letting you be tempted beyond what you can bear.
In fact He promises to provide a way out that helps us endure the temptation til it’s gone.
21 Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent
Barclay: The word we have translated filth is “ruparia” in the original Koine Greek that the Bible was written in; and it can be used for the filth which soils clothes or soils the body. But it has one very interesting connection.
“Ruparia is connected to another Greek word: “rupos” and, when rupos is used in a medical sense, it means wax in the ear.
It is just possible that James is telling his readers to get rid of everything which would stop their ears to the true word of God.
When wax gathers in the ear, it can make a man deaf; and a man's sins can make him deaf to God.
God wants us to be able to hear His voice. His sheep hear His voice.
So the things we might do, the sins we might indulge in, that can have the effect over time of making us deaf to God - we need to just get rid of it.
As Sandra said last week, we need to run away from it and run TO Jesus.
When I’m feeling tempted or just blah, I often pray the very simple Jesus prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner!”
I do that TO continue to hear from God. I need to hear from God. We all need to hear His voice. He is our shepherd, and His sheep hear His voice and follow him.
22 Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. 23 Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror 24 and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.
The message paraphrase of the New Testament is helpful here: 22-24 Don’t fool yourself into thinking that you are a listener when you are anything but, letting the Word go in one ear and out the other. Act on what you hear! Those who hear and don’t act are like those who glance in the mirror, walk away, and two minutes later have no idea who they are, what they look like.
So James gives us two vivid pictures, William Barclay notes.
First of all, he speaks of the person who goes church and listens to the reading and expounding of the word, and who thinks that that listening has made him a Christian.
But sadly she or he has shut their eyes to the fact that what is read and heard in Church has got to THEN be lived out.
It is still possible to identify Church attendance and Bible reading with Christianity, but this is to take ourselves less than half the way;
the really important thing is to turn that to which we have listened into action.
Second, James says such a person is like one who looks in a mirror.
Now ancient mirrors were made, not of glass, but of highly polished metal--so this person sees the dirt and mess that disfigures his face and that the his hair is a mess, but then goes away and forgets what he looks like, and so forgets to do anything about it.
It’s like walking around all day with your wake-up face, with your hair all disheveled.
In listening to the true word it’s revealed to her what she is and what she ought to be.
She sees what is wrong and what must be done to put it right; but, if she is only a hearer, she remains just as she is, she remains unchanged, and they all her hearing has come to nothing.
James is really saying that what is heard in the holy place must be lived in the market place--what is heard at church must be lived out in the community, or there is no point in hearing at all.
25 But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.
Perfect law. Perfect law. Where have I heard that? “The law of the LORD is perfect, refreshing the soul. The statutes of the LORD are trustworthy, making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart.” Psalm 19:7-8a
In 1:25 James takes the Jewish notion of freedom—obedience to the Law—think the 10 Commandments - and applies it to Christ's law, His commandment to love others as He loved us.
Romans 10:4 says: Christ is the culmination of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.
Jesus says in Matthew 5:17 ‘Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them.
So it’s all about freedom. In contrast to the unrepentant sinner, who is a slave to sin, obeying the moral law fulfilled in Jesus gives Christians the joyous freedom to be what they were created for.
God’s Word is the perfect law of liberty. It doesn’t enslave us to the bondage of legalism, but rather frees us to keep it by something inside us.
Someone inside us - the Holy Spirit who takes up residency, makes His temple, in the church’, and in all who follow Christ Jesus.
So this freedom comes not from hearing the Word and ignoring it, it comes from replacing old habits with new habits.
It comes from gradually learning to put into practice all that we hear in the Word of God.
I experience it this way: As I read God’s Word, as I make it a daily practice to hear and pray while hearing, and as I think about what it says, submitting myself to God, God does this amazing thing.
He rewrites the programming in my head. He overlays my sinful and faulty beliefs about life, about God, about myself –
He overlays those wrong thoughts with His Word, with the pure truth and reality of His Word.
So as I read the Word of God, I am being rewritten. And the short-term and long-term result of this is that story of my life has been rewritten.
There’s no way you can calculate the blessings of spending time in God’s Word and in the presence of Christ as we pray.
And we have our last 2 verses:
26 Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless. 27 Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
God truly cares about every aspect of your life. We established that at the beginning of the message today.
And He wants not a one of us to waste our time. He wants us to have honest-to-goodness faith in Him.
But religiosity - ceremony, dressing up all fancy, having elaborate decorations, fabulous music
- none of these mean a thing, if that’s what we’re all about as Christians.
Genuine faith is found in practical service to other people, and in the purity of our own personal life. Please don’t ever think coming to church makes you a Christian.
As Keith Green once said “going to church doesn’t make you a Christian anymore than going to McDonalds makes you a hamburger”.
James is speaking very seriously here. And what God is calling His church to through the Letter to James is that we would care deeply about other people,
people who are suffering, and that we would care deeply about our relationship with God.
We have to live what we believe. If we don’t do that, we will end up believing what we live.
We will conform our understanding of truth so that it comfortably matches our lifestyle.
Throughout a lot of human history people have made, or tried to make ritual and liturgy and religious appearances a substitute for sacrifice and service.
This isn’t to say that we should neglect the worship of God in God’s house, but it is to say that such worship is pointless unless it sends us out finally to love.
To love God and demonstrate our love for God by loving our fellow human beings.
AND...AND keep ourselves from being polluted by the world. To walk more purely despite the tempting ways of the world we all live in.
The message paraphrase summarizes this well for us:
26-27 Anyone who sets himself up as “religious” by talking a good game is self-deceived. This kind of religion is hot air and only hot air. Real religion, the kind that passes muster before God the Father, is this: Reach out to the homeless and loveless in their plight, and guard against corruption from the godless world.
So may we be inspired to draw near to God. To walk carefully. To listen fast and talk slow. To be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry.
And may we respond to God’s call to let our lives be pure - by His grace and mercy – and may we choose to demonstrate the love of God through our actions. Amen.
