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The Word of Truth
James 1:19-26
Online Sermon:
http://www.mckeesfamily.com/?page_id=3567
Does your form of religion get you closer to God? Are
the externals of your faith such as going to church regularly,
almsgiving, prayer, fasting, reading God’s word, and singing a
true reflection of what is in your soul?
Anyone can put on a
mask of religious pretentiousness and proudly sit in the seat of
self-assessed holiness and
fool the masses but when
it comes to God who
knows your every word,
thought, and deed there
truly is no place to hide.
In today’s passage James
tell us the glorious news
that God chose to give us
birth through the word of
truth!
We have before us a beautiful love letter from God that
is like a mirror showing many aspects of His holiness and how
far off, we miss the mark of being more like Him!
And yet if
we are going to be honest with ourselves, we must confess that
1
Grant R. Osborne, James: Verse by Verse, Osborne New Testament Commentaries
(Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2019), 44.
we rarely read God’s word outside of church and even when
we do, often we are merely looking to amass Scripture so that
we might convince other members of the church that our
religious mask is indeed genuine!
But to be holy as God is
holy His word must be like a double-edged sword that is not
only invited to judge the thoughts and attitudes of the heart but
also to be practiced by us the firstfruits of all God created!
Rarely do we listen to God’s word but instead try to speak our
truth into it so that we might receive justification for the sins
that we so thoroughly enjoy!
Surely the religion that God
accepts as pure and faultless requires far more from the
redeemed than platitudes of pretend righteousness that at best
can only offer ashes of hypocrisy upon His holy alar!
In
today’s passage in James 1:19-26 we are going to learn that for
religion to be pure and faultless it be based on listening and
obeying the word which means keeping a tight reign on one’s
tongue, taking care of the widows and orphans and to keep
from being polluted by the world.
Birth Through the Word of Truth
“He chose to give us birth through the word of
truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of
all He created” (18)
When James states “God chose” he does not mean
“election”1 but with the same free will that God demonstrated
in the creation story of Genesis out of His grace God chose to
give humanity the means by which one could be born into His
family and kingdom!2
This good and perfect gift did not come
from “human desire which leads to sin and death” 3 (1:15) but
from God’s desire to “take His word and write it upon our
hearts!”4
His act of grace demonstrates the essence of His
character,5 one who
“does not change like
shifting shadows”
(1:17) but always
filled with love, grace,
and mercy.
For James
the new birth is
accomplished through
the “word of truth.”
God spoke and all
6
creation exists, but the written word is the instrument by
which the Gospel and salvation are revealed.7
Paul states that
“faith comes from hearing the message” (Romans 10:17) and
Peter says that “you have been born again, not of perishable
seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word
of God” (1 Peter 1:23).
It is in the grand narrative of the word
of God that we learn “how God lovingly brought us back to
Him by sacrificing His Son on the cross so we could
experience forgiveness of sin and new life.”8
The new birth
James refers to is the same one that John expresses as “birth
from above” (John 1:12-13, 3:3), and Paul calls a SpiritCreated new life (Galatians 8:11; 1 Corinthians 15:22, 36, 45).9
James finishes verse eighteen by stating that the purpose of this
new birth is that “we might be a kind of firstfruits of all He
created” (18c).10
In the OT firstfruits “described the initial
portion of the crop that was set apart for God (Exodus 23:16–
19; Numbers 18:13)11 In the NT firstfruits is a term often used
to refer to Christians (2 Thess.
2:13; Rev. 14:4; and also Rom.
16:5; 1 Cor.
16:15)12 In view of both of these definitions
James is stating that those who experience the new birth
through belief in the Gospel message are to be consecrated
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