Study of James - week 3
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James 1:19-27 Week 3
James 1:19-27 Week 3
Last week we looked at verses 9 - 18 as we looked at the perspective of the rich and poor, we also looked at enduring through trials, and that temptations do not come from God, but only good things come from God.
Tonight we are going to look at verse 19-27 of chapter one to finish out the first chapter of James.
This section of chapter one is titled “Hearing and doing the Word of God.”
We are given some practical advice in these verses, which is to be slow to speak, which is then followed up with reverencing the Word of God that gives life.
What is heard in the fellowship of believers should be speech formed by the present and active Word of God.
Here James introduces his concern with speech, that is, the tongue that functions so prominently in his letter.
Therefore, let’s get right to verse 19.
19 This you know, my beloved brethren. But everyone must be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger;
This verse gives the outline for the rest of the book of James.
Swift to hear, slow to speak, and slow to wrath.
Wherever wisdom is the goal, hearing will be a first virtue.
If we will listen up and let others talk then we can learn something.
I love to get around a group of older people and just sit and listen to them tell stories.
That is one thing I use to love and miss about my granddaddy, is listening to him tell stories.
This is the same with God, we need to just listen up when praying and allow Him to speak to us.
When you pray do you give God a chance to speak to you, or do you say your prayer and then just end and go on with your day.
Or do you stop and be still and listen for God to speak to you.
Do you pray before reading your Bible, asking God to speak to you, to reveal what He has for you through His Word.
We need to be swift or quick to hear or listen. This is not just to hear by allowing it to go through one ear and out the other but but truly listening.
Slow to speak, sometimes people just want someone to listen to them. And all we want to do is give them advice.
The younger generation, the teenagers, they want someone to listen, to hear what they have to say, not always to give them advice or to tell them - well in my day, it was this way or it was that way, or when I was your age we had to do this and we had to do it that way. That is all great and fine, but this is not your day, they are not growing up in the 80’s, or the 70’s, 60’s, 50’s 40’s they are growing up right now, so we need to remember to be slow to speak.
See PEOPLE WANT TO KNOW HOW MUCH WE CARE, BEFORE THEY CARE HOW MUCH WE KNOW.
Listen to what they got to say, where they are coming from, what they are dealing with, they may not even want your advice, they just might want a listening ear.
We are then told to be slow to anger.
This can be hard when it comes to someone treating our family wrong.
But we also must remember what Jesus has told us in Scripture in the Sermon on the Mount.
38 “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’
39 “But I say to you, do not resist an evil person; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also.
But we might think anger cannot always be controllable, but it can be checked by avoiding quick speech.
Another words by thinking before we speak, can make a big difference.
20 “But if your enemy is hungry, feed him, and if he is thirsty, give him a drink; for in so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.”
21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
We must listen, be slow to speak, and slow to anger.
20 for the anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God.
Trials require silence and patience because talk inflames anger, and anger inflames talk.
Anger also distracts from listening to God.
When I get really really mad, when I am really angry about something, I am not listening to God or even thinking about listening to God, even though that is when I should stop and take it to God.
The righteousness of God cannot be accomplished by human anger.
See anger will overtake the heart and replace the trust that is necessary for the relationship between the believer and God.
As Christians we are to be peacemakers and anger comes in the way of that.
We should be striving to be found righteous in God and we cannot do that if we have anger.
21 Therefore, putting aside all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness, in humility receive the word implanted, which is able to save your souls.
If anger is to be rejected as a motive for action before God and men, then the chief cause of anger must be abandoned.
We must rid ourselves of everything that is displeasing to God and destructive of the Christian faith.
What God calls believers to putt off, they must put off.
Otherwise the contradiction to God’s righteousness produces an anger-filled human being.
We have to repent of these wrong doings.
We have to turn away from them and receive the Word.
We need to hear the Word of God.
We need to receive the Word with meekness, we are to humbly receive the Word of God.
Why because it is powerful and will save our souls.
The wise believer lets the Lord speak through His Word to them.
22 But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves.
If the Word of God is dynamic, it is imperative that believers do what the Word says.
We are to be doers of the word and not only hears.
It is like the Parable of the sower in Matthew 13:3-9
3 And He spoke many things to them in parables, saying, “Behold, the sower went out to sow;
4 and as he sowed, some seeds fell beside the road, and the birds came and ate them up.
5 “Others fell on the rocky places, where they did not have much soil; and immediately they sprang up, because they had no depth of soil.
6 “But when the sun had risen, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away.
7 “Others fell among the thorns, and the thorns came up and choked them out.
8 “And others fell on the good soil and yielded a crop, some a hundredfold, some sixty, and some thirty.
9 “He who has ears, let him hear.”
Sometimes the Word of God falls on deaf ears, sometimes people hear it and do very little with it, sometimes people hear and they start out strong but they let worldly things like family and friends, or other activities choke them out and they quite doing what the Word says, then there are the ones that hear the Word of God and they bring forth much fruit.
They hear the Word of God and they share it with everyone that they can, they are always looking for opportunities to share their faith.
There is more to being a Christian then sitting in a pew and listening to the pastor preach sermons.
We have to take what we hear and live it out in our lives, we have to be doers of the Word.
12 For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
The Word of God is living and we as the children of God must live out the Word of God, we must apply it to our lives, and allow it to live out in our lives to make a difference in the lives of others.
23 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror;
Here James illustrates his teaching with reference to a man who looks intently at his reflection in a mirror.
This illustration is a negative one, picturing those who only listen but remain inactive and therefore unresponsive.
Some believers merely glance into the mirror of truth without letting God’s wisdom do its work on them.
The mirror is key for understanding this section of James.
In the ancient world the mirror, a specially shaped piece of polished metal, was used to inspect or decorate one’s body.
This believer does not act upon the Word, they read it but do not allow it to change them.
They are not following it.
As we read the Word of God it will change us and convict us and teach us.
We then take what we learn and share it with others.
The person in the mirror is looking at the mirror but not changing anything they see in the mirror.
If you look in the mirror and see that you have a spot on your forehead, you are going to wash it off.
The point here is if you are reading the Word of God, and it convicts you of something in your life, you need to repent of it and not continue on with that in your life.
You need to wash that out of your life, like you would wash that spot off your forehead.
24 for once he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was.
This verse is tied together with verse 23, and the person looking in the mirror.
See the man looked in the mirror and sees something wrong but yet turns from the mirror and goes on about his day not fixing the problem.
We look into the mirror and maybe we have missed a spot when shaving and instead of taking the time to shave the spot we just go on with our day.
It’s like asking God to show us what we need to change in our lives so that we can walk closer to Him, but when He convicts us of what’s wrong we just go on with our life and never repent of that sin.
We continue doing what it is that God has shown us needs to change.
As we read and study the Word of God, it is like looking into a mirror, God will show us things in our lives that need to change, but we need to take the steps to make those changes.
We have to repent, we have to change, we cannot look into the mirror and then just walk away, we have to stop and shave that spot off, we have to repent of that sin, change our direction.
We have to take things seriously.
25 But one who looks intently at the perfect law, the law of liberty, and abides by it, not having become a forgetful hearer but an effectual doer, this man will be blessed in what he does.
Now we see the other side of the story.
We see the believer who learns about himself and what God requires by concentrating on the mirror of the Word will be blessed.
The sense here is of an intense looking into Scripture for the purpose of self-change.
We are to apply ourselves to the Word of God and then apply what the Word of God says to our Lives.
This person is being obedient and doing as we all should, when God speaks to us, or shows us something that needs to change in our lives than we need to do what He says.
Sometimes doing what God says is not easy, or it means giving up something that we don’t necessarily want to give up, but it is doing it because we are living for God, and following His leadership in life.
It is giving Him complete and total control of our lives.
Ladies if you look into a mirror and you have lipstick on the end of your nose wouldn’t you wipe it off, men if you have a blood mark on your collar wouldn’t you go change your shirt.
If God shows you something in your life that needs to change, go change it, do not walk away with it still there.
26 If anyone thinks himself to be religious, and yet does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this man’s religion is worthless.
One of the chief characteristics of self-deception in the Christian life is that believers can make an empty show of religious devotion.
This person considers themselves to be religious but does not listen well to God’s Word.
The person is focused on the externals of religious actions such as public prayer, fasting, giving, and worship attendance.
But this person has no inner control.
They go through the motions of religion but they do not practice it within.
They come to church on Sundays and someone looking at them will think that they are a very godly person, but at home they do not follow God.
James says we have to bridle our tongues, we have to watch what we say.
We use a bridle to control a horse and we need to use a bridle to control what we say and how we say things.
See it is not always what we say, sometimes it is how we say it, our attitude, our body language or our tone.
From time to time though we get to going and maybe we stub our toe and we say something that we should not have, or we get into a conversation and we start saying things out of line, as Christians and followers of Christ we need to control what we allow to come out of our mouth.
James called the religion that goes with uncontrolled tongues worthless.
If one minute we are telling someone about Jesus and the next a dirty joke, or saying things we shouldn’t then we just made our witness invalid or worthless.
I worked with a guy that was constantly telling dirty jokes, and dropping the F-bomb and I had worked with him for weeks, and one day another co-worker asked me when we were having an event at church, and this guy pops up and says oh I go to such and such church, I was like oh you go to church.
Now I know should not have judged him, but after hearing the way he had been talking, I would have never thought that he attended church.
27 Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.
Genuine religion is that which is pure and undefiled before our God and Father.
The standard of true religion in behavior comes by the Word of truth and the reception of wisdom to produce a right relationship with God.
Genuine religion means that everything in the believer’s life is to bear the mark of service to God.
Two evidences demonstrate pur religion: deeds of compassion and inner purity.
We are to look after orphans and widows, we are to be involved in looking after those that have no one to look after them.
We are given a definition of what a true widow is in 1 Timothy 5
3 Honor widows who are widows indeed;
4 but if any widow has children or grandchildren, they must first learn to practice piety in regard to their own family and to make some return to their parents; for this is acceptable in the sight of God.
5 Now she who is a widow indeed and who has been left alone, has fixed her hope on God and continues in entreaties and prayers night and day.
6 But she who gives herself to wanton pleasure is dead even while she lives.
We need to have compassion for others.
We are to be unspotted or unpolluted from the world.
We are to be unstained from the world, we are to maintain both personal integrity and moral purity.
It’s to refuse to allow the world to set the standards for our beliefs and our conduct.
We are not to allow the world to influence us and drive who we are, we are to allow the Word of God to influence us and drive who we are.
We have seen that we are to listen well and not be quick to anger.
We need to separate ourselves from things that cause us to get angry and allow the Word of God to save us and change us.
We are to do what the Word of God says and not just listen to it.
Because what is the point of looking into a mirror if we are not going to fix the problem that we see.
When God shows us things in our lives that needs to change we need to change them.
We have to control our tongue and allow ourselves to be witnesses of the Word of God.
We need to be the Bible that people can see Jesus in and His Work.