Then y'all can pick one of these goodies out of here. Yes. I don't know if that's good or bad. I'm going to move up a little bit. I don't think anybody will mind that. Thank you, Ava. Appreciate that. You want a sucker? All right. Thank you, Salem. All right, we're gonna be studying together James chapter 1, verses 19 through 27. This is a big chunk, but I think we're gonna get it done quickly, because we have a business meeting afterwards we're supposed to. Yeah, I don't know what the rule for quorum was. I think we got it. All right. Let's pray. Father, we ask that you would bless us especially with the presence of your Holy Spirit as we look into your word, the word that you inspired, The Word that You gave to us out of love, so that we might know about Your character and what You're like, and about our character, and how far short we fall, and about Your grand plan of salvation, and what the life of the faithful should look like after that moment occurs. Help us put feet to faith, in Jesus' name. Amen. All right. Verse 19, and I'll just read this, and then we'll start looking at three things that faith in Christ changes. That's what we're going to be looking at today. So let's read it together. You follow along as I read aloud. Know this, my beloved brothers, 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. Therefore, put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls. But be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. 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. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets, but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing. Now 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 God the Father is this, to visit orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained from the world. All right, so let's look at how faith in Christ changes us. First of all, and this is what's going to be in your first blank there, faith in Christ changes how we respond to one another. Respond to one another. Now, He says, let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger. Now, I don't know about you, but... I sort of feel like I got, and there's others like me here in the room, you got the hereditary gift of not responding quickly. Unless I'm really angry about something which doesn't happen very often, here's what I'm saying, I'm naturally slow to respond. In other words, this sort of describes who I am, not because I'm spiritual, but because it's who I am. It's just the way I was born. Other people, though, they really struggle with this here, don't they? Quick-witted, quick to respond, always, you know, I'm the guy who goes home and thinks, you know, 24 hours later, I'm having this conversation with myself. Man, I would have said this right here. That would have been such a good comeback. That's me 24 hours later. Some of you, that might be you in the moment. You are, bam, you've got the good, the witty comebacks. But the Bible here says, he says, every person, let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger. And what that tells me, before we even get into point number one there, is that all of us from time to time, are not quick to hear. We're quick to respond. Have you ever heard, or have you ever believed, maybe you've even had a conversation with somebody like this. Lord help me if it was me. I try not to do this, but I think we all do it sometimes. Have you ever been talking to somebody and you could just tell they're not listening, They just wanna respond and they're thinking of what they're gonna say next. You ever had a conversation with, have you ever done that? Let's be honest, we've all done that from time to time. James here says, That's not what a Christian looks like. That's not what a person of faith looks like. A person of faith, faith in Christ, changes our interpersonal dynamics in the body of Christ and how we relate to people outside of the body. Now let's just ask this question. This is point number one here. What was happening to the Christians of the dispersion that might cause them to react in anger? It could, you know, you might could say, well, anything could happen. I could, you know, somebody could cut me off in traffic. And that's true. But this church was going through some very specific things. And if you take a minute to look at some of these passages that are outlined in the parenthesis there, you will see that some things were happening in this church. Very specifically, let's just take a look at a couple of them. Let's look at chapter 2, verses 1 through 9. We're not going to read it all, but he starts off by saying, My brothers, show no partiality. So, what was happening in that church? They were showing partiality. The person who was rich and looked like they were a person of means, they came in, they got treated better than the person who looked like a scumbag. Now, if you were the person who came in, and you didn't look rich, and you were kind of told, you sit in the back, how might that make you feel? You might want to react in anger? Maybe. We see in chapter 5, verse 4, Behold, the wages of the laborers who... Here he's talking to rich people. And basically he's saying, pay people what you owe them. If somebody does a job for you, you pay them. Now, what if you're the person who's not getting paid? And across the aisle from you is the person who won't pay you. That's what was happening. In churches today, whenever we get our feelings turned out, we just leave. We just say, well, I can't get along with somebody there, so there's 30 other churches to choose from. They didn't have that option. And I think it's sad that we do that anyway in the church today. We need to work through our problems together. But there was no other church that James, when you were sitting in a local church, you had nobody else. So if somebody across the aisle from you wasn't paying you, well, there was no other church. Look at verse nine of the same chapter. Do not grumble against one another, brothers. So there was grumbling going on. There were lots of problems that these churches were enduring. Lots of opportunities to fly off the handle. Lots of opportunities to be quick to respond instead of quick to listen. We teach our children this and it's cliche, but it's true. How many ears? How many mouths? It is true. So guys, let's talk about this. What is the connection between speaking and anger? Why does he say, Be slow to speak, slow to anger. He says, be quick to hear, be slow to speak, be slow to anger. I don't think this one's real hard, but what are your thoughts? Yeah. In case you didn't catch that, she said, when you react suddenly, you may regret something that you said. Not only is that true, this is true for me, And since I'm a human being and we all share in Adam's likeness, I believe this is true of you too. Once I start saying it, it is so much easier for all the other feelings to just come out. It's like, that's why we say, hold your tongue, hold your tongue, hold your tongue, because once you stop holding your tongue, it can all come out. And you know, it's tempting to say, well, I said something I didn't mean. I don't think that's true. I think we always mean what we say. I just didn't mean to say it. Right. We regret what we said, and this is where we ought to be quick to forgive each other too. Right. Guys, we can't hold grudges when somebody does do that. Yeah, there's a big connection between our tongues and anger, and he talks about it a little bit later when he talks about bridling the tongue, but we'll get there in a minute. Number four, the word man in verse 20, the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. It would be really tempting there to just say the anger of mankind. And women can get angry, right? Can women get angry? Especially redheaded Irish women? I've always heard that about redheads. I don't know if there's any truth to it or not. Linda says it's a lie. But here's the deal. This word man here does, you know, there are words in the Greek language that refer to mankind. This is not that word. This is the word that refers to adult males. Why do you think that might be significant? Just think about the differences between men and women. What do you think about that? All right, that's a good point. Women didn't speak up as much then. As a general rule, who struggles more with anger, men or women? And you see it as far down as little boys. Not that little girls can't lose their temper, not that little girls can't speak out in anger, But I really do think that James and the Holy Spirit are targeting men because we, fellas, for whatever reason, it's just part of our fallenness. We have a harder time with anger than women do. And I think that's important that we keep our guards up, fellas, that we especially watch what we say. I think women should too. So if our anger doesn't produce, by the way, that was what went in the little blanks there if you missed that, and number four, adult male. Number five, if our anger doesn't produce the righteousness of God, and he doesn't answer this question, but we ought to be thinking, what does it produce? Somebody said sin. Yeah. So why do we make excuses for our anger? Is it possible to be anger and righteousness? It is. Jesus did it and Jesus never sinned even one time. But how often is that true of us really? That our anger is a righteous anger? I think not very often. Well, yeah. I'm sure we did. Every person that's ever gotten angry had a reason to be angry. Yeah. And we blame it on the person who made me angry. If it says here that anger of man does not produce righteousness, and if the implication is correct that the anger of man does produce unrighteousness, what are some examples of that happening? Maybe from the Bible, maybe from your own life, where anger produced unrighteousness. Okay, great example from the very beginning. He said Cain and Abel. Cain's anger certainly produced unrighteousness. What about in my own life? I get angry at my wife. I say something I shouldn't say. Who sees that? My children. And then they copy me. Now God's going to hold them responsible for their sin. But my anger is producing something in them, unrighteousness. I think we ought to really think long and hard about how we respond to each other, especially at home. At church, it's easy to have our guard up. We tend to not hold our tongue with people that we're comfortable with and we're familiar with. This is another put-on, put-off passage. He says, put off anger. He doesn't use these words, but Paul has these put-off, put-on passages. You should be familiar with these because they're very important for the believer. He says, don't be angry, don't be quick to speak, but instead we are to put on what? He talks about it in verse 21. Meekness. What is meekness? It's what? Okay. That is a quality of meekness. So you're right. It's not all that meekness is. The Bible says that who was the meekest man that ever lived? Outside of Jesus Christ. Y'all don't know this one? Moses. Moses. Moses was the meekest man. And meekness... Was Moses a listener? Yes, he listened to Jethro, for example, when he gave him advice. Meekness, it has been described as, and I think rightfully so, as power under control. So, you think of the Incredible Hulk? He's not meek. A lot of power. No control. That's why he goes crazy and just breaks stuff apart. Superman. Power under control. Paul says that instead of just going off at the mouth, we should be slow to speak, quick to hear, and put on, and I think this is how we do that, we put on meekness. And when we do that, by the way, look at verse 21, look at your Bible. According to verse 21, what is one way that meekness will manifest itself in you? Huh? Okay. The meekness is not what saves us. He says, receive with meekness the implanted Word. Now, he's talking about the Word of God here, right? Here's the connection I made. One of the characteristics of meekness, and we all need to be meek, is that we will receive the Word of God. Now, here's what that does not mean. That does not mean that everything I say, you just nod your head and say, yes, you're correct. But it does mean that when you sit under preaching, When you open your Bible at home, and you read something, or you see something, or you hear something that challenges you, and every day that you are reading the Bible or listening to a preacher, there should be something that challenges you to change. I don't care if it's the same message you've heard for the hundredth time, because we are not perfect. If you can open your Bible and not be challenged, I fear that you're not really meek. Because one of the characteristics of meekness is that you receive the Word. You're not just... And here's why I use this word receive so carefully. In a minute, James is going to make a distinction between hearing and receiving. Are you a person who receives the Word gladly? Even when that preacher says something, I've never heard that. And I'm, you know, I'm not just saying this about me. I've never heard that before. Listen, there's nothing wrong with being cautious, especially if it sounds outlandish. But we ought to be receiving the word. In other words, our posture ought to be such, like a child's. A child's posture ought to be such that when I speak something to my children, Their automatic response should be, trust, I will do it, yes. Is it possible I could say something to my children that would, I could give them a command that would go against God's word? Yeah, that is possible. And they should, you know, they're not young, they're not old enough to be thinking about that yet. They would probably do whatever I told them to do. Our posture should be one of humility. And that's the other word that is often associated with meekness. I will receive the Word. Our faith changes how we respond to one another, especially in our speech. But our faith also, let's go to the second section here. Our faith in Christ changes how we relate to the Word of God. And it sort of started there in verse 21. Our relation to the Word of God began changing right there. Instead of sitting over the Word of God and judging it and saying, I agree with that, I don't agree with that, that guy that we listened to this morning in the service, Sam Harris, that's what he does, right? He stands over the Word of God and says, I agree with that, I don't agree with that, I believe that happened, I don't believe that happened, and we don't do that. We sit under the Word of God and we let it inform us. And our faith in Christ is the reason that we do that. And it changes how we relate to the word. He says, be doers of the word. What an incredible passage, one that a lot of you probably have memorized. Be doers of the word, not hearers only. Now let's do something here. You see three little blanks there. There's step one, step two, step three. When you take verses 21 and 22 and you put them together, What are the three steps every single person should take any time you are presented with the Word of God, whether you are reading a devotional, whether you are reading your Bible on your own time, whether you're in Sunday school, whether you are in church, whether you're listening on the radio or the television. What are the three steps? Step one is what? Is that what your translation says? Okay, I'm not going to debate a translational issue. What I'm going to say here is hear the Word. In other words, everyone here is hearing the Word. Yeah, listen. That's good. Hear, listen. You might want to put what your translation in there says so that it'll make better sense. And this is the bare rock bottom. Anytime I stand up to preach, I assume, now maybe not on a Sunday night when there's less of us here, but on a Sunday morning when there's more people and there's some folks that only come every once in a while, I just assume there are some people here who don't know Christ. I just make that assumption. I mean, Jesus had 12 disciples and one of them wasn't saved, right? So do the math. Okay. Same thing when I go and preach to my soldiers. A lot of them, they'll be straight up front. I'm not a Christian. I just wanted to come hear what you had to say. So step one is to bear rock bottom. Hear it. Hear what it says. Step two is what he mentioned in verse 21. Receive the Word. See, this is going beyond just hearing it. We say this to our children. We have a little saying with them. Whenever one of them is not listening or one of them goes through a spell of disobedience on some issue, I'll say, now, you need to listen with your ears and with your heart. This gets to the heart of Samuel's problem with Saul, doesn't it? Y'all remember that story? Saul thought he did this great thing. He went and wiped out most of the Amalekites. Y'all should know this because we went over in our Esther series how Agag almost came back to bite him. And he saves a lot of the... the sheep and the oxen, doesn't kill the king, and he blames it on the people, and it probably was their idea. It probably was, and Saul, you know, caved to the pressure. And Samuel says to, you know, Saul said, we're going to sacrifice with this meat. This is going to bring honor to God. And Samuel said, listen, man, obedience is better than sacrifice. God doesn't care. ultimately about the blood of bulls and goats and sheep, He wants your heart. And this is the second step, not just to hear it, But, you know, in modern psychology, we use this word, internalize it. Here, receive it. Say, this is not just something that is true. This is something that's true for me, and I have to do something with this information. Because I have heard this information, I am now obligated to do something. That's what receiving it is. It is saying, this is true and it is authoritative over me. But unfortunately, there's one more step. And y'all, I think this is the easiest one, right? What's the last step? Do it. Nike, right? Just do it. Obey the word. Obey the word. I think this is where most of us sincere followers of Christ usually fail. If we fail. If we fail somewhere, you know, in a group of this size, of this faithfulness, when we fail, it's usually on this last step. We're anxious to hear the word. There's a reason you showed up on Sunday night, because you wanted to hear it and receive it. I believe that. The question now is, are we going to let the word change us? And that's what he talks about in the rest of this passage here. Matthew Henry said, when men are more concerned to seem religious than really to be so, it is a sign their religion is but vain. And I really do think there's a lot of people who want to seem religious. You ask them, what's your relationship with Christ like? Oh, me and the Lord are good. And you know, you're not trying to be critical, but you just want to ask them what their faith... James says, faith without works is dead, right? Isn't that what James says in chapter 3? He says that, guys. So then you ask him, well, where do you go to church? Well, I'm on the roll at... whatever. Maybe even here. But they haven't been in 4, 5, 10 years. They're not tithing. reaching out with their faith to impact anyone except themselves. They are sponges soaking in and never releasing. We don't want to be described like that, do we? We don't want to just seem religious. We want to be so. And that reminds me of the parable of the ducks. Parable of the Ducks goes like this. There's a Christian author that you may have read called Tony Compallo. Y'all ever heard of him? He's pretty good. He told a story. Actually, the story didn't belong to him. It belonged to a philosopher named Soren Kierkegaard. And he's the one that described, that I was talking about this morning, that described this phrase, the leap of faith. He's the one that came up with that. And he thought he was doing Christians good, and he really wasn't. But anyway, Kierkegaard told this story. He said, Once there was a town where only ducks live. Every Sunday, the ducks waddled out of their houses and down Main Street to their duck church. They waddled into the sanctuary and squatted down in their proper pews. The duck choir waddled in and took its place, and the duck minister came forward and opened his duck Bible. He would read to them, "'Ducks! God has given you wings!' With wings, you can fly. With wings, you can mount up and soar like eagles. No walls can confine you. No fences can hold you. You have wings and you can fly like birds. And all the ducks said, eh, no, not quack. Maybe they did. Amen. And then the ducks would waddle home. They would not fly. How descriptive is that of us so many times? We come in, we hear, we preach what we describe as life changing words, and then our lives don't what? We can do better. And faith in Christ, if we pursue Him diligently, will cause us to change how we relate to His Word. Which brings us to our last section here. Faith in Christ changes how we recognize religion. This phrase, if anyone thinks he is religious, I believe the King James says, seems to be religious. It really could be translated, thinks he is religious or pious. And I want to show that to you. Look at Mark 6, verse 49. We're going to see the same exact Greek word used in a different context in one of the Gospels. Look at Mark 6, verse 49. This is right after Jesus has fed the 5,000. He tells the disciples, get out on the boat, push out, and then He begins walking to them. Right? Y'all remember that? And at the end of verse 48, it says, He meant to pass by them. That has always been curious to me. Was He just going to keep going? I guess He was. But when they saw him walking on the sea, here's our word, they thought, what? It was a ghost. He seemed to them a ghost. Now was he a ghost? No. He wasn't. He was real. He was flesh and blood. But he seemed to them to be a ghost. Just like I was talking about all those statues of Mary that seemed to be crying, right? James here is warning us against people that seem to be religious. In other words, they think they are one thing when they are in fact not. Just like they thought he was a ghost and he was in fact flesh and blood, there are many people who are deceived into thinking they are religious. Now guys, this is scary. This is serious. Because what we're not talking about here are people who are just putting on a front, and they know that they're not really serious about Christ, and they know that they're not really giving it 100%. I mean, maybe on some level they know, but this is describing a person like Saul of Tarsus, right? Did Saul of Tarsus, when he was persecuting the church, what is Paul's own description of himself? He thought he was serving God. And he was not. In fact, Jesus turned around and said, you are persecuting me, you're not serving me. Now, this verse, if anyone thinks he is religious, comes right after this passage on hearing versus doing, right? You think that's an accident? I don't think so. What kind of person, now think about it, think, let my people think, Ravi Zacharias says, what, according to this passage, what kind of people particularly prone to believe they are religious when in fact they are not. Come on. You said Pharisees, why'd you say that? Yeah. Let me give you some guidance here. Look at verses 23 and 24, and then think about the question. What kind of people believe they are religious when they in fact are not? Hearers but not doers. Now guys, I think the scary factor just went up. Let's be honest with ourselves. What percentage of most churches are described by the phrase, hearers but not doers? It's a big percentage. It's scary. And James would say, they are not religious. They think they are, and they're not. And here, he goes back to this problem of the tongue again. He's gonna talk about it a lot more in chapter 3, verses 1 through 12. So I'm not going to belabor the point. Let's just make note of it and move on. Our tongues are a problem. Our tongue, and you know, when we're tempted to use it in the wrong manner, boy, it can really get us in a lot of trouble. So James here speaks of bridling the tongue. And here and in chapter 3, verse 3, he uses that analogy two times. In short, James is comparing our tongues to what? What do you think goes in those two blanks? Wild animals. Might even say steeds. Now, he's comparing our tongues to wild animals. What do you think the Holy Spirit wants us to learn from that? They don't reason. They're not under control. Can they be tamed? They can, but we got to be careful because chapter 3 comes in and adds some more information. Chapter 3 comes in later and tells us, no man can tame the tongue. Boy, that verse alone should inform our understanding of whether or not we can ever be perfect in this life, right? We have Christian brothers and sisters. There are some Methodists who believe, I'm not saying these people over here, but there are some Methodists who believe that if you grow in Christ daily and daily, you can be sinless. And James here says, not a chance. You can't even tame your tongue. It's tough. Now verse number four here, the person who doesn't control their tongue, here's what goes in the blank, is kidding, my translation, they're kidding themselves. James here, listen, James here seems to be building a picture. There are a class of people who seem to be religious, but they're not. They're hearers and not doers, and one of their great downfallings is they do not control their tongue. Based on this teaching, now guys, listen to me. Based on this teaching, I don't say this lightly. So this is, I hope this is not my opinion. I believe this is the word of God. So try to receive this with meekness. Based on this teaching, people who profess Christ but cannot control their tongue need to stop kidding themselves because they probably are not Christians. And I don't think that's me. I think that's James saying this. James says they're not religious. They are fooling themselves. James says they're not hearers. I mean, they're hearers, but they're not doers. Now, what I don't think we ought to do with this is start thinking about people that can't control their tongue. Let's inspect ourselves, right? Let's do self-inspection. I think that's what we ought to do. Now, I think it's very interesting, finishing up here, that he says, there is such a thing as pure religion. And it's not marked by being quick to speak. It's not marked by anger. It's not marked by hearing and not doing. It is marked by this, taking care of orphans and widows. Don't you love it that in verse 27, He says, "...religion that is pure and undefiled before God..." The what? The Father. The Father. And then He immediately says we should take care of who? People without fathers. Now orphans and widows of the ancient world were the neediest of the needy, And so the purpose, James is basically saying the purpose of visiting them wasn't to shoot the breeze. It was to meet a need. And that's what goes in that final blank there. a material need, an emotional need. Can I pray with you? Is there some need I can meet? We talked a couple of weeks ago about, from another portion here, about giving out of our poverty, about giving out of our need. It's not just about tithing, it's about this. Do you know somebody, maybe a neighbor, maybe somebody that you've been made aware of that has a real need, a material need, or they have a real emotional need, or they have a real spiritual need, We ought to see how we can meet that need as a body. And it starts with you. It doesn't start with the pastor. So here's a challenge. When is the last time you visited someone who was truly hurting in order to meet their need? Number seven, James' final command is often forgotten. Keep oneself unstained from the world. And I'll just say this and move on. Taken with visit the orphans and the widows, the fourth seems to be this, while you're taking care of others, don't neglect to take care of yourself. I have read about people in ministry, pastors, fathers, youth pastors, people in other types of parachurch ministries that are so busy taking care of everybody else that they don't ever read the Bible for themselves. They've got time for the youth group, but not for their kids. They've got time to visit everybody else, but their kids don't ever see them sitting in the stands. Not that that's the most important thing, but it is a way that fathers show love to their kids, right? Take care of yourselves, spiritually. So what? Let's look at some applications here, and then we'll have our business meeting. Is your faith in Christ changing how you respond to others? And here's how I wanna think about it. Picture in your mind, okay? Picture in your mind someone who knows how to push your buttons. Who is that person? What do they say? How do they get under your skin? Guys. When someone pushes your buttons, do not be quick to respond. It's easy to obey this command when everything's going great, right? But when somebody's under my skin, that's when it's difficult. Is our faith in Christ changing how we relate to the Word? Are you looking for opportunities to be challenged? Or are you looking for shortcomings to criticize? And this is something for you to think about on your own time. What are the most difficult areas for you to change? Areas that you know the Bible says, hey, David, you're falling short right here. I mean, I know I'm never gonna be perfect, but the goal is to become more like Jesus today than I was yesterday. Where am I falling short? What areas are really difficult to change? And am I just receiving it or am I gonna obey it? And that's the decision that each one of us has to make. And lastly, is our faith in Christ changing how we recognize religion? Now, I think this is something we really need to think about as a church. On a scale of one to 10, how are we caring for the needy? First of all, are there needy in this area that we could be reaching out to? And I know in the interview process when I was coming out here, it was described to me that there are a lot of needy people. So, how can we meet their needs? Is it possible that they may be more open to believing that we're serious about our faith? That we don't just seem to be religious, but we are if we try to meet their needs. Jesus said this, people will know that you are my disciples when you love." Now, He was talking about disciples, He said, one another. He was talking about us, but He also said, as I have loved you, so love one another. And how did God love the world? Or how did God, does God just love Christians? I don't believe that. So, we don't have enough time to answer this question right now, but what steps You remember that little sheet I handed out to every single person two or three weeks in and I said, what are some ideas, maybe your top three ideas for how to reach the community? Let's do the same thing with this question. What steps could we take as a church to inject pure and undefiled religion into our ministry opportunities? to meet the needs of the truly needy. And I think that's something that the Lord would honor if we thought about it and we gave it some effort. Don't you? Any final thoughts from anybody? Of course, with nine verses, there's no way to hit every single thing. Anybody see something and was like, wow, the Lord showed this to me while we were sitting here. Could always count on one comment from Natalie, but she ain't here tonight. All right, let's pray and then we'll move into our business meeting. Father, I ask that you would grant us the grace that we need to be doers and not merely hearers. We're good at hearing. We're good at receiving. doing is more difficult, and that is true. It is more difficult. But by the power of the Holy Spirit, I know that we can obey the Word. We can change. We can become a church that is practicing pure and undefiled religion, meeting the needs of our community. We can do that through Your help. We can become a church that doesn't respond in anger. We listen more than we speak. We can become doers that love to hear Your Word and then to obey it. Father, make this change in us. In Jesus' name, Amen.