Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Who here honestly enjoys going to see the doctor?

Like not as in you tolerate it or you don’t really care about it, but you’re on the edge of your seat the whole ride to the doctors office because you cannot wait to go and see this man or woman and hear them tell you some potentially serious news.

Does that excite anyone?

Most people would honestly answer and say that no, it doesn’t.

There are some situations, though, where going to see the doctor can be a huge blessing because problems can often be solved in various ways.

Years ago there was an older man whose hearing had gotten progressively worse and he finally caved in when his family tried for the billionth time for him to get hearing aids.

He went to the doctor and the doctor was able to get him fitted for some brand new hearing aids that finally allowed him to hear perfectly… in fact, he was able to hear a little too good!

A month later he went back to the doctor.

The doctor said with a smile, "Your hearing is perfect.

Your family must be really pleased that you can hear again."

The old man replied, "Oh, I haven't told my family yet.

I just sit around and listen to their conversations.

I've changed my will three times!"

We know that our hearing isn’t always the best as humans.

We don’t listen to things that we should listen to and sometimes we listen to the wrong voices and wrong people around us.

There are situations where we multi-task and kind of listen to others while doing something different but usually whenever we do this we miss something along the way.

We miss a word or we miss the way in which the word was said and that can cause problems down the road.

Think of the problems that not listening carefully to the Bible has in our lives.

Whenever you fail to listen carefully to a parent, friend, teacher, or spouse it will probably come back to bite you a little bit.

Maybe you lose a few points on an exam.

Maybe you don’t pick up everything you were supposed to at the grocery store.

Maybe you forget to do something that you were supposed to do… but those temporary things usually don’t result in super serious consequences.

Failing to listen to God’s Word, on the other hand, carries with it eternal consequences.

We must be people who listen carefully to God’s Word.

James has shared with us so far in this opening chapter that we serve a speaking God who brings dead people to life through His powerful Word of truth (verse 18).

Today, James will press that point even further as we conclude chapter 1 with a call for us to listen closely to God’s Word and to make sure that we are following it obediently in our lives.

Tonight, we need to clean our our ears and we need to get to work doing the things that God has called us to do.

Let’s look at what God wants us to do tonight.

Saving Faith Requires Active Listening (19-21)

As we get started looking at this passage and as we look at our 2 main points here, we have to be careful to make sure that we don’t equate our work as the thing that saves us.

You and I can listen to a million sermons from the best pastors, we can listen to the most amazing testimonies, we can hear reports of the countless miracles that God still does around the world and in our community, but if it’s up to us, we’ll fall short.

We cannot save ourselves and we can’t conjure up enough faith based on our power to be savable.

Salvation isn’t 99% God and 1% us, if so we’ll all get a 99% on that test and come up 1% short.

Look with me at Ephesians 2:8-9 to reinforce this truth before we dig into James’ point

This is God’s gift… not ours.

Not our works.

Not our action.

We cannot save ourselves because we’re dead in our sins and trespasses.

Faith doesn’t come by listening and walking an aisle.

Faith comes from the Holy Spirit helping us realize that we’re all in desperate need for a life-giving Savior.

Whenever that happens, we don’t just stop listening and kick up our feet and call it good.

We’re called to repent whenever we come under conviction of our sins and salvation isn’t the end of the road, it’s where the rubber really meets the road.

If we have faith in Christ, we are required to listen to Christ.

Look at these opening 3 verses in our text.

Specifically in verse 19.

James addresses these people as brothers and sisters - this is in reference to Christians, not non-Christians, which is incredibly important for what follows.

To these Christians, he says to be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger.

Now, why is it important for us to realize that this is addressed to Christians? Look at these commands: quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger… are those natural things as humans?

Absolutely not!

We look at our world and we see people who never listen, are always talking, and they’re like the anger person from the Pixar film Inside Out and they’re ready to explode at a moment’s notice!

This is the world that we live in and it’s all because of our sin.

Do you remember what we learned last week in verse 14?

In this life we have trials and God gives us those tests and trials but God never tempts us to sin… that comes from inside of us

James shares to his Christian audience that they are going to face temptations and to not be deceived by their own sinful nature in the midst of the trials.

Instead, his call is to look to God and remember what God has done for them.

He gave them eternal life as verse 18 shares.

In the middle of their suffering and adversity and difficulty, James’ message is to do what?

Complain?

Act out?

Get mad? No… be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger.

These 3 things go hand in hand.

Whenever we are slow to listen, we are often quick to speak, and when we are quick to speak sometimes we say what we shouldn’t say and anger follows quickly behind!

This leads to problems for ourselves and for those around us, especially within the local church - and this is the context that James was writing to.

What is he trying to get at here?

Some argue that his main point is to provide Biblical counseling advice.

James 1:19 is wonderful advice to give to a Christian struggling with something or to a couple that is having difficulty communicating clearly because, after all, how many mouths do we have?

How many ears?

What’s the logical takeaway from that data?

We should listen more than we speak.

That is a true statement.

It is also true that James doesn’t say that we should never get angry, he just says that we should be slow to anger.

Because of this, some look at this verse as a great point to make in counseling or discipleship conversations because there is a fundamental problem that many people have with anger.

They get angry all the time over little things and if we’re open enough we’d admit that we’ve been there before!

We lose our temper at times over silly things unlike Jesus who got angry several times for a Biblical reason.

There’s a lot of good wisdom in this opening verse but we can’t misunderstand James’ overall point.

He’s not a Christian counselor giving anger management advice or Christian marriage counseling - James is giving Christians of every generation, age, and relationship status the same call: respond to God’s Word properly.

As we’ve heard God’s Word, we must respond to it and responding to God’s implanted Word as verse 21 puts it, requires us to grow in our spiritual understanding of what God wants from us.

This requires us to know God’s Word and to listen to His Spirit in this life.

So many people have heard the message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ but it hasn’t changed them.

They might’ve even heard Psalm 34 which we sang about tonight

They’ve heard about it, but they haven’t tasted.

The Word has been spoken to them, but possibly they were too busy being angry or talking that they didn’t truly hear it.

Do you know anyone like that?

Our responsibility as we talked about this morning is to believe in the Word and share the truth of Scripture with them.

People heard Jesus Himself preach and they still rejected His message - so it’s not as though everyone who hears the Word will respond, but some will!

Some will be forgiven of their sinful past through the Gospel message being proclaimed and that is the message that we share and we pray that they would humbly receive it.

Maybe you’re like the person in James’ audience who has experienced this new birth through the Word of Truth that has been implanted in you but maybe there is a genuine temptation to run towards anger all the time instead of listening to God’s Word first or to speak when you need to be silent.

What we all need is to listen more to God’s Word.

David Platt shared this before, “Like the blood that flows to our hearts, we need God’s Word.”

Our hearts need blood and our souls need God’s Word! God’s Word is living and active and effective and powerful and we must listen to it carefully because it changes lives as we listen to it and as we do something with it, which James transitions to in verse 22

Saving Faith Requires Action (22-27)

Verse 22 is one of the main verses in the entire book of James as it encapsulates a core truth he gets across in a variety of ways.

If the only evidence of our faith is that we have heard the good news or come to church or listened well but we haven’t done anything… there’s been no change… there’s been no fruit, then we have deceived ourselves.

Think about a sponge here.

What does a sponge do whenever it’s on the shelf?

Literally nothing productive other than take up valuable space.

It doesn’t look good, it’s an eye sore, it’s usually ugly, sometimes it smells.

A sponge has one purpose and it’s not to sit on the shelf and collect dust.

That same ugly sponge that doesn’t do anything good on the shelf, can be a lifesaver whenever there’s a spill in the kitchen, though!