Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] In 1862, at the height of the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln appointed Edwin Stanton to be his Secretary of War.
[00:00:14] And what made this decision shocking was that Stanton had a well known dislike for Lincoln, having famously called him a long armed ape and publicly mocked his intelligence. And when asked why he would put someone so blunt, critical in his cabinet, Lincoln explained that Stanton was one of the few men in Washington who refused to flatter him.
[00:00:39] He would be direct.
[00:00:41] Now, it might come off as harsh or feel uncomfortable, but it would be the truth.
[00:00:48] And that is precisely the role that the Book of James plays for us. Now, James is a short book. It's found near the end of the New Testament and it's just five chapters long. It was written by James, the half brother of Jesus, and it's likely one of the first letters written to the early church, as Jewish Christians were scattered across the Roman Empire.
[00:01:10] But what makes James so unique and distinct from other letters like the letters that Paul wrote, is that it reads much more like the wisdom literature of the Old Testament, namely Proverbs. And because of the way it is written, James can often feel confrontational or maybe even abrasive.
[00:01:29] But that style often leads to conviction. It also makes it an intensely practical book to read and to study. Like Edwin Stanton did for Abraham Lincoln, James speaks with fierce honesty and directness that helps us hold up a mirror to our lives.
[00:01:47] Now, we wrapped up our series on the Table last week and we'll be starting a new sermon series next week. And so today we're going to. While we're between these two series, we have the opportunity to look at a short passage from the Book of James that helps us move from being passive listeners into people who are active in our faith, following Christ with our whole lives.
[00:02:08] So if you'll open your Bibles with me, we'll dive into James chapter one, and we're going to start in verse 19 this morning.
[00:02:15] Know this, my beloved brothers.
[00:02:18] Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger, for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.
[00:02:29] Therefore, put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted Word which is able to save your souls.
[00:02:39] But be doers of the Word and not hearers, only deceiving yourselves.
[00:02:45] For if anyone is a hearer of the Word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away, and at once forgets what he was like.
[00:02:58] But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres.
[00:03:06] Being no hearer who forgets, but a doer who acts, he he will be blessed in his doing.
[00:03:13] If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue, but deceives his heart, this person's religion is worthless religion that is pure and undefiled before the God. The Father is to visit orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained from the world.
[00:03:34] So when we look at this passage, what we see is, is that it's broken down into three sets of heightened contrasts or comparisons. And as I mentioned before I read, this is a style James is borrowing from the wisdom literature of the Old Testament, specifically books like Proverbs. But it also mirrors some of Jesus's teachings from his earthly ministry. And specifically, this pattern involves contrasting two ways of living. In Proverbs, it's often the way of the wise versus the way of the fool. And what we see here is James leading us through a series of comparisons between what we are called to as followers of Christ when compared with what may be prevalent in the world around us.
[00:04:15] He begins by instructing us on how we should respond to the Word. And the world carries that into how important it is to act on what we know to be true, and from there, gives us specific actions to take that reflect these truths.
[00:04:29] Now, there's one thing I want to highlight before we dive into this, and that is that right there at the top of the verse 19, James addresses his readers as beloved brothers.
[00:04:40] The Greek word for beloved here comes from the same root word as agape, which some of you may recognize as unconditional love. It signifies that James cares deeply for his readers. And so James is signaling from his very first words in this section that what he is saying, he is saying from love.
[00:05:00] His intent is far different than that of Edwin Stanton in his directness with Abraham Lincoln. It's not hostility, and James isn't condemning his brothers and sisters in Christ. Instead, he is calling them to righteousness.
[00:05:14] So in this first section, we see three directives. Be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger. James goes on to say that our anger, the anger of man, does not produce righteousness.
[00:05:29] Candidly, this is a verse I come to often in parenting.
[00:05:32] When Lewis and I started talking about what passage we should look at together today, I was like, well, I've spent a lot of time here. My kids are going to love this, since they're right over here. Don't hit your sister.
[00:05:43] The anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. Listen to me when I'm speaking to you.
[00:05:49] Be quick to listen. Don't talk back to your mom.
[00:05:52] Be slow to speak.
[00:05:54] And while I think there is a practical application here for life and for parenting, there's a lot more to this passage that, as I've studied it, I've realized I'm. I'm probably oversimplifying a little bit. And a lot of that has to do with the way the very next verse, verse 21, begins.
[00:06:11] And it begins with the word therefore.
[00:06:13] Now, I'm sure many of you have heard this before, but when we're reading Scripture and we see the word therefore, we need to go back to see what it is, therefore.
[00:06:23] And so the phrasing at the beginning of verse 21 inextricably links the idea of being quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry with putting away filthiness and rampant wickedness and receiving with meekness the implanted word.
[00:06:39] So with this, James effectively categorizes the opposite of what he first told us to do. So being slow to listen, quick to speak, and quick to become angry, he's essentially saying those patterns of behavior are wicked.
[00:06:53] This is not how we are meant to relate with one another, or more to the point, to the Word of God.
[00:07:00] You see, when he talks about the implanted word here, another word that could be used is engrafted like a fruit tree. When we are grafted into the family of God, we need to understand that His Word calls us to live differently.
[00:07:16] And meekness can be understood as gentleness or humility.
[00:07:22] So when we receive scriptures with humility, when we are quick to listen to what God's Word is telling us, when we avoid impressing our preconceived ideas on Scripture, we are reminded that the Gospel is far more than good advice for how to talk to people.
[00:07:39] Instead, it's what saves us.
[00:07:42] Where in your life this week do you need to be quick to listen and slow to speak?
[00:07:48] In a conversation with your spouse, at the dinner table, with your kids, maybe on social media or a comment section where you want to win the argument rather than reflect the gospel, maybe just in the way you read and approach Scripture.
[00:08:04] In these three verses, James gives us a blueprint for the Christian life.
[00:08:08] Turn from wickedness, like being quick to anger and quick to speak. Approach Scripture rightly, which is to read and listen with humility to what God is saying to us through His Word. And we are reminded that the Gospel is the only thing that can save us from there, James goes into his next comparison where he stressed that we should be not just hearers of the Word, but more importantly, doers of the Word.
[00:08:34] Now, what we see here is a progression from where we started. First, we are told how we should receive the Gospel with meekness being quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger. But once we have received the truth of the Gospel, we cannot go away unchanged. If we do not put into practice what we have learned by becoming doers, we risk forgetting the truths that have been revealed to us all together.
[00:09:02] A few years ago, there was a tragic hit and run accident near the Florida State University campus in Tallahassee, Florida. Thankfully, there were several eyewitnesses. The accident happened when a pedestrian was in a crosswalk. It was light outside and there were lots of people around.
[00:09:19] One college student said she was sure that it was a white or maybe a silver suv.
[00:09:25] A different student from another vantage point saw the whole thing. Clearly it was a black suv and he was very confident.
[00:09:33] Another college student from another angle, well, that guy he also saw was a gray car that hit that poor girl.
[00:09:42] And yet another student from another angle saw the whole thing. And she described it to police in detail. It was a small black car with some silver trim on the back.
[00:09:54] In broad daylight, mere minutes after it happened, four witnesses confidently gave four different descriptions of the same vehicle.
[00:10:04] Every single witness saw the car, and every single witness walked away with a different picture in their head. They looked. They really looked. And then mere moments later, their minds begin to fill in the gaps with details that weren't even there.
[00:10:20] And this phenomenon is actually pretty well established. In recent decades, studies have found that eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable.
[00:10:29] And James tells us that that is exactly what happens to us when we don't apply the word of God.
[00:10:38] For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like.
[00:10:52] We sit here on a Sunday morning and write down a neat quote or underline a verse, and then we walk out those doors, and by Tuesday, it's gone.
[00:11:02] Not because we weren't paying attention, but because we failed to do something with what had been revealed to us.
[00:11:09] Hearing without doing doesn't preserve truth, it distorts it.
[00:11:15] Just like those four witnesses, we walk away confident, and then our lives quietly shift back into patterns that are comfortable, that are familiar, and that cost us nothing.
[00:11:30] So how do we Avoid being forgetful bystanders. We act, we are told in verse 25, to look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and to persevere. So what is this law of liberty? Well, here's a little example of what that might look like. So this summer, our family has been hosting a group of Sky Ranch summer staff on Wednesday nights each week.
[00:11:51] While we were talking this week, one of the counselors, one of the guys, mentioned that it had been a really awesome week for him and for his cabin. And it stemmed from the obedience of the boys who were in his cabin. He'd come off of a really challenging week the week before with some boys who were rambunctious and rebellious.
[00:12:09] And that resulted in a lot of discipline, a lot of correction. And it made the week a lot harder and less fun for those very same campers.
[00:12:19] And this week, his boys listened well.
[00:12:24] They followed rules. They challenged each other to be their best. They held each other accountable to what they'd been instructed to do.
[00:12:32] And the result is that the week's actually been a lot more fun for those boys.
[00:12:39] When we don't fight against God's word, but instead submit to him and obey his word, we find that we actually have more freedom, not less.
[00:12:49] We are not under obligation to fulfill the law in the hopes that we can do enough good things to gain God's favor.
[00:12:56] Instead, we are free to follow Christ.
[00:13:00] The law actually gives us more freedom and more joy. We are no longer enslaved to our sin. We are free to be joyfully obedient.
[00:13:11] And when we are obedient, we see fruit in our lives. As we read back in verse 21, the implanted or engrafted word is what is able to save us. And when a branch is successfully grafted into a tree, it produces fruit.
[00:13:28] And the fruit that we are told of here is that we will be blessed in our doing.
[00:13:32] Now we move to our final section of comparison, which contrasts a religion that is pure and undefiled with one that is worthless.
[00:13:41] And what we see here is that James again drills down. He first examined the posture with which we should engage the Word and the world.
[00:13:50] Then he clarified that we should not only hear the word, but be compelled to action by it.
[00:13:56] And now he tells us what that action is.
[00:14:00] Now, one thing for us to just double click on here is the word religion. It sure feels like it has a lot of cultural baggage in our or baggage in our current cultural moment. I'm sure many of you have heard the phrase, I'm not religious, but I'm a Very spiritual person, or maybe more in our circles, in the church, you've heard it's not about religion, it's about a relationship with Jesus. And while it is true that through the sacrifice of Jesus by the power of the spirit, we have access to God the Father, that is one of the defining attributes of the Christian faith, the Christian religion. So relationship with God is not in place of, but a part of our religion. And here the word that James uses for religion refers to what would have been understood in the ancient world to be ritual acts that display commitment to a God, like a lowercase g God, even a pagan God.
[00:14:52] And so the temptation for converts to Christianity was to try to define what ritual acts they needed to perform, to accomplish, to do and to as a part of this new religion. And what James was saying is that this one is different.
[00:15:09] This one doesn't require a specific ritual because if your tongue is unbridled, if you can't control your speech and you think you're religious, you are deceiving yourself.
[00:15:21] James here explicitly ties this back to where he began in verse 19.
[00:15:26] The very first proof of genuine religion isn't a ritual or a ceremony or a sacrifice. It's controlling our tongues.
[00:15:35] Do you know what you do in almost any interaction you have with anyone else?
[00:15:41] You talk.
[00:15:42] So you can't perform a ritual act over here and then go back to business as usual.
[00:15:47] This religion requires us to change every interaction we have with every person we encounter. James is reclaiming and redefining the term this pure and undefiled religion. What we are being called to requires a complete change in the way we live.
[00:16:07] But how are we to live?
[00:16:09] Well, this is where James lands the plane. He tells us explicitly what we are called to do to care for orphans and widows and to keep ourselves unstained from the world.
[00:16:23] But why this focus on orphans and widows?
[00:16:27] Well, in almost any society, children and the elderly are the most likely to be abused, neglected and taken advantage of.
[00:16:40] And orphans and widows represent the most vulnerable individuals in their respective groups.
[00:16:47] What's more, showing care for these individuals historically would be the least likely to yield dividends for us.
[00:16:55] By most measures, there's not much that they can offer that would make it worth it for us.
[00:17:01] But that's the point.
[00:17:04] We can offer God nothing that he needs.
[00:17:07] He is holy and powerful and completely self sufficient. There is nothing we can bring to God that makes him more happy or more complete or more God. He gains nothing by extending grace to us.
[00:17:25] But he did.
[00:17:27] And he does.
[00:17:29] What's more, throughout the Old Testament and the teachings of Jesus, we see the heart of God for orphans and widows. So as those created in the image of God who have been grafted into the family of God. One of the highest ways we can share the love of God with a hurting and broken world is by showing love to those who have no way of repaying us.
[00:17:51] But there's one more thing to be unstained from the world.
[00:17:57] Now, one really interesting thing about the way this verse is phrased is that it says, and to keep oneself unstained from the world. And, and that and was actually added to English translations for readability. So in the Greek manuscripts that we have the word and isn't there. And the implication of what that is is that when we do these things, when we are quick to listen and slow to speak, when we are slow to anger, when we receive the Word with humility, when we are doers of the Word whose lives are marked by action, when we control our tongues and show care for the marginalized, all of that contributes to showing that in Christ we are different from we are unstained by the world.
[00:18:43] So James has taken us from a 30,000 foot view of how to interact with the world, which is to be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to anger. And he's given us a call to action, imploring us to be doers of the Word and not hearers only. And now he's made it intensely practical, giving us specific people who we are to care for.
[00:19:04] Now, if you've spent a lot of time in the church, you might be questioning this a bit. I thought we were saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. And here James has just given us a laundry list of things to go do.
[00:19:16] And you wouldn't be the first person to ask that question.
[00:19:19] Martin Luther, the 16th century reformer, famously called James an epistle of straw, claiming that it was insubstantial and that it overemphasized the importance of, of good works.
[00:19:31] And if you look at this passage we've studied together in a vacuum, you can see where he's coming from.
[00:19:38] It can quickly lead to an expression of Christianity that is driven by works.
[00:19:45] Am I doing all the right things? Am I doing enough to earn God's love? And so to rightly understand this passage, we need to understand it not in a vacuum, but in the context of what comes before it.
[00:20:00] That sets it all up.
[00:20:02] So we're going to look at a couple verses right before we just read. It's going to be James 1:17 and 18.
[00:20:08] Every good and every perfect gift is from above.
[00:20:13] Coming down from the Father of Lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change of his own will, He. He brought us forth by the word of truth that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures.
[00:20:30] Here we catch a glimpse of God and who he is and how much he loves us.
[00:20:37] Every good and perfect gift is from Him. He is good, perfect, loving, generous.
[00:20:45] Here he is called the Father of Light. That title points to his eternality, to the fact that he was there before creation and that he is the Creator. We've been working on establishing a rhythm of family worship in the hunt house. And let me just pause and admit that our attempts at this are imperfect and often inconsistent. But if you're a parent here, and I can just kind of just encourage you for a minute and, and say there's few things you can do in parenting that are more important than discipling your kids in the truths of the gospel, even when it's hard, keep at it. And so in our family time together, we. We've. One of the things we've been doing is reading the creation account in Genesis. And in Genesis 1:3, we see God creating light. He declares, let there be light.
[00:21:29] And the psalmist goes on to reflect in this. In Psalm 74, 16, yours is the day, yours also the night. You have established the heavenly lights and the sun.
[00:21:41] He's the eternal One, the Creator.
[00:21:45] And James goes on to remind us of the immutability of God, that is, that he is unchanging.
[00:21:53] There is no variation or shadow due to change and of his own will.
[00:21:58] This God, who's eternal, who is there before everything, who created the world, created light, never changes.
[00:22:06] He chose us.
[00:22:08] He brought us forth by the word of truth.
[00:22:12] That is the Gospel.
[00:22:15] It's the truth that God has stepped in to reconcile sinners like you and me to Himself through Jesus Christ, who died on the cross as a sacrifice for our sins and rose from the dead. This is the word of truth that he's referring to.
[00:22:30] So in these verses we see that God is good and perfect, that he is loving and generous, that he is the Creator and eternal, that he is unchanging, and that he chose us of his own will.
[00:22:44] In his choosing, he has given us what we call positional holiness. It is the position we now have before God through the work of Christ on the cross. There is nothing we can do to earn this position. It is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.
[00:23:04] And so we sit here, right, reflecting on these incomprehensibly wonderful attributes of God.
[00:23:11] And James goes on to tell us that through the word of truth, through the gospel, we are now a part of the first fruits of his creatures.
[00:23:19] That is, we who are in Christ are a glimpse of what is to come in eternity. We are a sliver of hope in a broken world.
[00:23:29] And so as we sit in that truth, it is then that James calls us to action.
[00:23:37] And this is what we call behavioral holiness. That our behaviors, the way we speak, the way we act, the way we live, should all point to Christ.
[00:23:49] The right response to the goodness of God is a life of worship. A life marked by being quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger. A life marked by being not just doers of the Word, but hear, or not just hearers of the Word, but doers of the Word.
[00:24:13] A life marked by the pure and undefiled religion of caring for orphans and widows, tempering speech and remaining distinct from the world. It's not a low bar, it's a high bar. Calling Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor who was put to death in 1945 for his opposition to Hitler and the Nazis, famously contrasts what he calls cheap grace with what he calls costly grace. In his well known work, the Cost of Discipleship, he says cheap grace means justification of sin without the justification of the sinner.
[00:24:53] Cheap grace is grace without discipleship.
[00:24:56] It's grace without Jesus, grace without the cross.
[00:25:00] By contrast, costly grace, real grace, calls us to change, to follow Christ.
[00:25:10] So how are we to respond to this God, who created everything, who is perfect and loving and good, who never changes and who chose us?
[00:25:24] We respond in humble obedience.
[00:25:28] So as you walk out these doors today, don't leave your notes on the chair or forget what you saw in the mirror.
[00:25:36] As you drive home, ask yourself this question.
[00:25:40] What is one area of my life where I am hearing God's word but holding back on actually doing it?
[00:25:50] Let's pray.
[00:25:55] Lord, we stand in awe of who you are, the unchanging father of lights, the source of every good and perfect gift.
[00:26:06] Thank you. That although we bring you nothing that makes you stronger, happier, or more complete, you. You chose us and showered us with your grace through Jesus.
[00:26:16] Don't let us walk out these doors as forgetful hearers.
[00:26:20] By your spirit, give us the courage to be doers of your word, quick to listen, slow to anger, and eager to reflect your love to a world that needs you.
[00:26:35] In Jesus name, amen.
