Practice What He Preached

Introduction:

Engage: I have a confession to make. I’m a fake. Now, before you call the Ozark ministry center and say “You guys sent me a defective preacher.” You might want to hear me out. When I say that I’m a fake, it’s because of this: It seems like no matter what I do, I struggle be the person I tell myself and others to be. Sometimes I succeed, my attitude changes for the better, I feel great joy in God, but it seems that when my situation is really great, something soon knocks me off course. It’s my sin, my pride, sneaking up on me when I least expect it, and trying to devour me like a lion on the prowl. The truth is, I struggle to practice what I preach.

Focus: I suspect, that like me, many of you in this room might have a similar struggle. We listen to God’s word, and we preach it to ourselves and maybe even others, as we live our lives, but we still fail to put it into practice. One way or another, our pride, our anger, our hurtful words, or our gossip seems to pounce on us when we least expect it. Maybe the issue isn’t that we don’t practice what we preach, but that we don’t practice what He preached.

You see, God has given his instructions in his word to help us, as a Father helps his children, so that we can guard ourselves against the sin that tries to rip us away from him. And that’s what our passage is today, and I think that in this passage God has given us three actions to help us practice what He preached.

Set The Stage: The letter from James is a book of action. Amidst social tensions and persecution, he wanted his audience to hold fast to the wisdom of God, revealed in the way that Jesus lived his life But he didn’t just want them to know this wisdom, he wanted them to apply it to their lives. Many have called this letter “the proverbs of the New Testament” and for good reason, it really does show us practical wisdom to help us live the Christian life.

Our passage today comes right after James tells us about the gifts of God, namely how his word brought us life by the will of God, and what we do with that word is what we talk about today.

So go ahead and open up your Bibles to James 1:19

Transition: And so the first action step we receive from James is this:

I. Humbly Receive The Word

Restate

When God’s word of salvation is planted in us, we must submit ourselves to it. To receive his word in humility is to put ourselves under the authority of God.

Summarize

And that’s how James approaches our sin problem. When we struggle to practice what we preach, he shows us how the word of Christ transforms us into the people God made us to be.

So Let’s read verses 19-21.

James 1:19–21 CSB

My dear brothers and sisters, understand this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger, for human anger does not accomplish God’s righteousness. Therefore, ridding yourselves of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent, humbly receive the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.

Understand This: The first thing that James tells his audience here is this command: “Understand this.” He wants to show us the importance of what he is about to tell us.

Our Behavior: And so what does he want to bring our attention to? Our behavior. Many of us have heard the saying, “We made born with two ears and one mouth.” and the point of that saying to teach us to listen first and speak second, and this wisdom is what James brings attention to first. We must be quick to listen, to count others more significant than ourselves, and not immediately spout our opinions. We also must be quick to listen to God, and his word. Prayer isn’t very effective if you don’t know who you’re praying to, and he gave us his word to listen to who he is and what he’s done so we can respond in prayerful obedience.

Righteousness: Next he talks about our temper. He says we should all be slow to anger, because our anger does not accomplish God’s righteousness. And when we hear that we might get a bit confused and think, wait. Doesn’t getting right with God come by faith? Not by cleaning up my act? And you are right. That righteousness comes to us in Christ through his sacrifice on the cross, but James is talking about a different kind of righteousness. The character of God.

Paul speaks of the declaration of our righteousness, but James talks about the demonstration of our righteousness.

D.A. Carson

So saying that anger doesn’t accomplish that righteousness is saying that it’s rare to look like Jesus when we’re angry. The almost all of the time our anger comes from arrogance and a lack of forgiveness, and that is ungodly. There is a godly anger from the Spirit toward injustice, but that is not human anger, so we must be very careful when our emotions flare up.

Humbly Receive: And so what can we do to rid ourselves of the filthiness of ungodly behavior? We receive the implanted word, “humbly.” The word that Christ has already planted in us, the word of salvation. And so how do we receive something that’s already within us? We humbly receive God’s word by living it out. The good news that we’ve heard, we live it out. The commands of God we’ve heard, we live it out, and we do this because we know that God’s word holds more authority over our lives than we do.

Able to Save: And this word, James says, is able to save our souls. The bible talks about salvation in three ways. It says that we were saved, when we believed in Christ (justification), we are being saved currently while looking more like Christ (sanctification), and we will be saved on the day of judgment and united with Christ in heaven (glorification). The present and future salvation is what James has in mind here. And humbly receiving the word is a sign that these works of salvation are happening within us.

Relevancy:

1. Maybe humbly receiving the word means that you don’t blow up on your co-worker when they repeatedly and purposefully get on your nerves day after day, because human anger destroys Christlikeness in that relationship.

2. Maybe humbly receiving the word means being quick to listen to your spouse with full attention while they talk about their day, even if it seems uninteresting so that they feel heard and loved.

3. Or maybe humbly receiving the word means being attentive to your words before you say them, being slow to speak, so that you can glorify God and love others with every word you utter.

Transition: So after humbly receiving the word from God, what can we do next to practice what he preached what is the second action?

II. Remember the Word

Restate

In order to obey what God has told us, we must keep the word in our minds and hearts.

Summarize

In our next four verses, James will show us what it’s like when we don’t remember the word, verses what it’s like when we do.

Let’s continue by reading v.22-25

James 1:22–25 CSB

But be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. Because if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like someone looking at his own face in a mirror. For he looks at himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of person he was. But the one who looks intently into the perfect law of freedom and perseveres in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer who works—this person will be blessed in what he does.

Self-Deceit:

James says, “to hear, but not do, is self deceit.” Quit fooling yourselves! When we read our Bible, or listen to sermons, that’s us “being a hearer” but if we don’t follow through, and don’t do what you read in scripture, and what you hear in sermons, then you are fooling yourself, you are just hearing to hear.

And so, to illustrate this he gives an analogy of a person who looks in a mirror, and sees his face. What his face looks like could be anything, it might be mostly clean, but more likely it’s filthy, it’s covered in filth from taking in filth, it looks like the face of a baby after it ate spaghetti in a highchair. But this person turns away and forgets about what he saw. He made no effort to do anything about what he saw. What James is saying is that looking in the mirror is fooling yourself if you aren’t going to do anything about it.

Law of Freedom:

And then we get our parallel. Like the mirror, the word of God is something to be “looked intently into,” this is our hearing, our study, our meditating. But it’s not for us to forget and walk away from, rather it’s to persevere, it’s to be someone to does it and works. James calls the word “the Law of freedom” here, and I love that. Many of us can think that the word of God is a rulebook, a law. And that’s partially true, there are laws, and rules, but that’s not all of what it is. It’s also freedom. The gospel within it frees us from the burden of these laws, so we can obey without fear of punishment. And so James calls God’s word, the law that brings freedom.

Blessed:

He also says the one who does the word will be blessed in “what he does.” Some translate this word happy, he could be saying that godliness means a general happiness and joy around obedience, and I think this is right, but I also think that it’s the blessing of the future salvation that James mentioned in v.21.

Forgetfulness:

If we look at the crux of the whole analogy, we see that where the man in the mirror (not the MJ song) went wrong is his forgetfulness. And where the doer of the law went right is his non-forgetfulness. And so we see an important lesson for us, if we want to practice what he preached we must remember what he says. So many times throughout Biblical history, God tells his people to “remember” what he’s done, or do something in “remembrance” of what he’s done. God wants us to know that this is important. Do not forget his word.

Illustration: I’m a super forgetful person by nature. I’m not sure where I got it, but I forget things way faster than I take them in. Each day is a net loss for me in the ol’ memory bank. For example, I’ll be watching TV in the living room, and then go to the restroom, but forget I have the remote, and bring it with me. And then I’ll set it down and forget where I put the remote. I’ll search every room but the restroom, because there’s no way I’d leave it in there. And I have done this 6 times according to my wife, this is my testimony.

But last winter, I got strep throat. I didn’t want to believe it was strep, but it was, and clearly too. My insurance was here in the great plains of Kansas, but I didn’t want to make the drive to the urgent care in Pittsburg, so I tried to let it pass, I thought that the strep would just go away. It did not. And a week later, I couldn’t fall asleep because of the giant migraine, severe sore throat, plugged ears, and ringing that persisted for 14 hours. I did not forget to take my antibiotics when I went and got some. I knew that without these antibiotics, I would suffer, and so I forgot not a single one.

And similarly, when we grasp just how essential the word of God is to living in this world, we will not forget it. If we realize the cost of forgetting it, we will remember it with so much effort.

Relevancy:

Maybe remembering the word looks like Tim’s walk with God. Tim grew up in a family and neighborhood that was extremely poor. When his family sat down for breakfast, all they talked about was how worried they were about making ends meet. And so, now that Tim is an adult, each time he sits down in the morning for breakfast he starts to worry, those voices of anxiety and discontentment come back, and he starts to be anxious about how the bills are going to get paid. So he began a habit, that each time he sat down at the table in the morning, or became anxious, he would remember Matthew 6:31-34

Matthew 6:31–34 CSB

So don’t worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be provided for you. Therefore don’t worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

And so for Tim, memorizing four verses, which took him a few minutes each day for a week. Blessed him in the midst of anxiety. What is God asking you to remember?

g. Transition: So what do we do with the word that we have humbly recieved and remembered? What is the last action we can do to practice what he preached?

III. Worship God in Truth

Restate:

When we have recieved and remembered the word, we must worship God by doing what he said.

Summarize

And so, James tells us in v.26 and 27.

James 1:26–27 CSB

If anyone thinks he is religious without controlling his tongue, his religion is useless and he deceives himself. Pure and undefiled religion before God the Father is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself unstained from the world.

Useless Religious: What James calls “religion” here we can call worship. The greek word here for religion just means, devotion to spiritual things. But I think we can narrow it down a bit more to apply it to our situation. Maybe we call religion here, Christianity. If we think we’re alright with God just because we call ourselves a Christian, but there’s no evidence that Christ has a hold on our life, then our Christianity is useless. If someone calls themself a Christian, but there’s no change in their life from a love of the world to a love of God and holiness, then that Christianity is worthless. We must not put our hope in hearing the word of God weekly in Church, or reading our Bible, but rather put our hope in Christ, who changes us through the word of God.

Pure and Undefiled Religion: So what does a changed life before God the Father look like? It looks like this: Pursuing Love and Holiness.

Love: The first example he gives is is love, and that love is for the care of those who are uncared for, to look after them. This reveals the heart of God for people, and true worship of our God must look the same way.

Holiness: But not only are we to look like God in our love for others, but we are to look like God in our holiness. We must not let the world “stain us.” This means being in the world, but not of the world. He warns us in this way because it’s so easy to compromise. Our walk should be one that is washed by the word, not stained by the world.

Relevancy:

Maybe, worshipping God in truth means giving that one last area of your life to the Lord, whether it’s your checkbook, or your conduct.

Or maybe, worshipping God in truth look like going to visit widows in the nursing home, who haven’t gotten a visitor in months, maybe even years.

Now what? All of this talking about practicing what he preached might have you encouraged to take a step towards God in obedience, but I know that a lot of this might also be discouraging, because we fail, time and time again, to do the actions in this passage, and so, I want to say that there’s good news for you.

Conclusion

And that good news is the gospel. Jesus Christ, who saved us, has come. He always practiced what he preached, he humbly recieved the word from his father to die on the cross, he remembered the word when he was tempted by Satan, and he worshipped his Father in utter love and perfection. And now, even when we fail, we have no shame, we repent and move on, because we are united with the one who did what we could not, and took away our sins.

And so when we want to practice what he preached, humbly receive and remember the word, worship God, look to Christ for the grace you need to do it all.