BEWARE!

Can we stop for a second too and admit that last Sunday was incredible. Ms. Vivian thank you so much for following the Lord Jesus in baptism. It was great and wonderful seeing your daughter Cynthia give her life to the Lord but Ms. Vivian you not only gave your life to Jesus but followed it up with a huge physical act of bravery. You followed the Lord in Baptism. For most people in America the act of courage is to be brave in taking the stage. But you, we all knew that you would need help to get your body to cooperate but you kept asking for baptism!

I asked a few pastors and big thank you to Pastor Johnny from Hmong Baptist Fellowship Church who not only gave us the idea, but provided the inflatable baptismal pool, and the members of HBFC had it ready to go for us.

Then late Saturday night I thought, oh no, I didn’t ask anybody to help me. But Sunday morning I asked Pastor Phil and he said of course he was willing. Then I went up to Sam. I knew we could use his strength. Then as we walked out to the baptism I realized that Jeannie has a lot of experience in care for others, as does Ellie but I forgot in that instance, so I asked Jeannie can you give us advice if we need it. Help us out. She was so ready.

I’m grateful for all those helpers, but Vivian you were on it! I’m encouraged by your desire to publicly tell everyone that you follow Jesus. You worked hard to get your legs in the pool. It was such an honor to hug you as you gathered yourself before the baptism. Honestly, I will never forget the effort you gave to do what the Lord Jesus called you to do.

Thank you Holy Spirit for convicting Vivian and calling you to follow Jesus!

So today follow Vivian’s example and give all you can of yourself to Jesus because everyone who follows Jesus when you hear the words of the Bible lets remember that our physical, mental effort or real stuff we do today, tomorrow, and even as we lay down to sleep is about leaning on God to live out these words in our lives.

A little story to begin today in our recent history.

At the very beginning of Covid, March of 2020, I attended a meeting put on by our own Chaplain Roger at St. Joseph’s hospital. This was a medium sized room in the basement of the hospital filled with ministers of all different denominations. A room filled with people should be code words to say this was extremely early in the pandemic. It was one week before the first shut down.

There was St. Joseph’s chief of medicine,  Dr. Michael Dyer who happened to be a lung doctor, and County Public Health Director Dr. Park, the interim head of the department which would make all the shut down decisions for our county. It was early, we didn’t know much, except that Covid was a common type of virus but this strain could be deadly.

Dr. Dyer said that if the 1918 flu pandemic, which actually killed my great grandmother on my mother’s side happened in 2020 many lives would have been saved because of ventilators. But the problem Dr. Dyer talked about was not the people like us pastors and our members that would get sick. The problem was what happens when a nurse gets sick. If one nurse gets sick and then all the nurses that came in contact with that nurse, and the doctors, the pharmacy techs, the cleaning services have to quarantine so they don’t spread the disease, There are only so many nurses in a hospital. If the care givers are getting sick than it might become impossible to staff an emergency room.

Who will care for the sick from outside if those inside are all sick?

And this gets us to the Biblical book of James and the verses we seek to hear from God about today:

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.

These verses right here are dangerous. Revolutionary. I encourage you to read these words again, plan to listen to them this week. Meditate on them. Remember for those here who follow Jesus. These words part of the whole Bible that guides your life, directs who you are supposed to be.

We followers of Jesus have to be careful in how we live because we can have worthless religion and be stained by the world.

I am going to share with you the end. This is where we will get to

Love others, including our enemies. Love with no strings attached. Loving God first, obedience to God, not others. Humbling ourselves because we know God is the Savior of the World, we are part of His family.

Now I am going to show you how these verses get us there. Helping widows an orphans sounds so nice but there is so much in these words that makes it even deeper.

James 1:26 CSB

If anyone thinks he is religious without controlling his tongue, his religion is useless and he deceives himself.

Many people might call you religious. When they think of church they think of religious people and so this definition here might be helpful of what is a religious person but the weird thing is the original Greek word here, that we translate as religious, it’s not a Christian word. It’s not a common word early followers of Jesus would use. It only appears in the Bible once, right here.

The word is (Three-sks-sos) which in one word means religious, but if you have ever heard someone say that Christianity isn’t a religion its a relationship. They are wrong but they are right. Because words change meaning. If by relationship you mean that religion is about rules and regulations, how you dress, what motions you do or exact words you say, the way others see your actions but instead a relationship is about knowing Jesus who understands you, loves you and gets you better than you know yourself than yeah it’s not a religion it is a relationship. But religion also means a a system of beliefs, practices, and a worldview that relates humanity to what is considered holy, sacred, or ultimately real, often involving a commitment to a divine or spiritual power. In that definition we are a religion

Yet often when people talk about religious people what they mean is the rule follower. When people talk like that they are talking about (Three-sks-sos.)

So who cares?

Ever met someone that has a few years sober and now tells everyone else how to live their life? Starts to give them all the rules, telling people how they changed their life and now everyone else should be doing the exact same thing. Often they are demanding seeing that anyone’s reasons for not doing it their way is excuses or lies. They have low tolerance for failure, often they are pretty mean in how right they are. Did you know that it’s not just newly sober people but Christians do the same stupid thing too!

Yeah, I know, huge shocker, Christians can experience the freedom from sin that comes through Jesus, release from fear of death, release from addictions, and then when we try to lead other people to Jesus. We start telling people all kinds of rules and rituals. and start to become controlling jerks. How do I know? Because I’ve done it!

This part of the Bible gives us direction not to do that.

You see the phrase Three-sks-sos literally means

A Handbook on the Letter from James James 1:26

outward expression of pious and careful observance of ritual or liturgical practices

Dang, what the heck does pious and liturgical mean?

showing everyone that your religious symbols, public prayers, religious readings, extra rules, religious argument winning and because of that you are a better person

So got the mindset. That’s a lot for one word, but if we take all of that back to the verse

James 1:26 NLT

If you claim to be religious (showing everyone that your religious symbols, public prayers, religious readings, extra rules, religious argument winning and because of that you are a better person) but don’t control your tongue, you are fooling yourself, and your religion is worthless.

They know the Old Testament very well. What is said here in this verse, if you think you are good because you are religious but can’t stop yourself from saying the wrong things you are fooling yourself.

Older English translations would translate this as “bridled” capturing the original metaphor of a large animal being guided. Control what you say.

Remember that while I picked two verses out of the Bible these verses came after something important was said and they flow into the next important things. There is nothing holy about where chapters in the Bible happen or where verse numbers happen, its just an easier way to find the Bible words.

These words about controlling the tongue come after a long talk about anger and that man’s anger doesn’t produce righteousness. Then it said we need to do what God tells us to do don’t just listen to it. Now here when we do it, don’t then spend our time forgetting to pay attention to what we say, saying things we don’t mean, being just like everyone else in how we talk.

If you want to think that you are on the side of good, and don’t control what you say,

You’re religion is worthless

All that good stuff a person does, all that giving, all the praying, all those actions, if the tongue isn’t controlled, it’s worthless.

Stop saying things you don’t mean. And what you mean should be in the same way you think you should be with God.

Almost all of us should realize that we failed.

You see every time we think we are good enough to be be good with God, we forget that we can’t. We will always need a savior. Our religiousness, our rightness, is never right enough.

That’s why Jesus died on the cross. That’s why its so amazing that Jesus rose again and actually gives us the freedom and forgiveness He earned.

James 4:10 NLT

Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up in honor.

So does that mean because we know we are going to fail we just stop trying and do whatever, NO

We should control our talk, followers of Jesus should never say “well I’m just saying” as some way of excusing all kinds of meaningless and bad speaking of forgetting who we are Jesus. We need to be careful instead of focusing on displays of how church good we are, how much we know, how smart we are to prove everyone else wrong, instead lets do this:

James 1:27 CSB

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.

It feels like a water commercial, Pure and undefiled. 100% religion.

First we got to understand this verse closer to how the people way back then understood it.

Widows and orphans is a weird thing to say, but basically this is talking about the most vulnerable of society. The people who could easily be taken advantage of, abused, hurt. An orphan didn’t have to have no parents. They could possibly be a person whose father had died. The father had strength, property rights. It was easy to take advantage of them.

Bad things happen, bad choices happen and some people have always been in a bad place in life. So there God expects the practice of Mishpat, the hebrew word for justice

Isaiah 1:17 NLT

Learn to do good. Seek justice. Help the oppressed. Defend the cause of orphans. Fight for the rights of widows.

The justice system in all places for all time usually helps those who can help themselves and those who don’t have money or power might not know enough they can get taken advantage of in court, schools, in business.

Who is actually the people most at risk has changed a little bit throughout history,. There are some widows and orphans today who are not anywhere close to needing the help of others. Even back in the Bible times that was true .

We will remember that very early, people knew that even though you are poor, even though you might be a widow or an orphan you might be lazy and not take personal responsibility. The instruction was given:

1 Timothy 5:3–4 NLT

Take care of any widow who has no one else to care for her. But if she has children or grandchildren, their first responsibility is to show godliness at home and repay their parents by taking care of them. This is something that pleases God.

Widows and Orphans is a hendidays, a short combination of words that say a bigger truth, help those who have a hard time defending themselves and getting justice is who we are supposed to be looking after.

Now some of you might immediately say, that’s me! Pure and undefiled religion would be helping me. More people should be helping me. Others might say, I need help but I’m not part of those groups. This is unfair.

Let’s take a detour. Sometimes I like to be really stupid. I think its funny. I like to hear a story and ask questions that don’t matter to the story.

In other words, I think it’s hilarious to act like I’m totally missing the point.

When we miss the point about whether people are deserving help or we are getting helped, it’s not funny. It’s spiritually dangerous.

The point of Pure and Undefilied religion is to not use our religious actions to be more right than everyone else. To get better than everyone. To be so right that everyone needs to listen to you so that they will be as good as you. The point is to help others, especially those who have a really hard time getting helped by others. Many people will stop for a nice cute child crying, almost no one will stop for a crying .

I was going to put a type of person in their but then I realized letting you finish that sentence will help you see who you might need to show the love of Jesus to.

Meditate on this

Almost no one will stop for a crying ______ but I will follow Jesus.

It doesn’t have to be big, it is living a life of generosity and willingness.

Sometimes that means if you know how to read well, you read for a person who doesn’t. Do you know how tragic it is to hear that some people don’t go to the hospital because they are scared to death of filing out a form because they can’t read it. Sometimes it means recognizing that someone is conning some one, saying lies to trick someone because you remember from the days of the streets people doing the same thing. You got wisdom.

It’s also about thinking about helping other people. Being focused on helping people but that is really, really dangerous. This is the point that almost all the commentaries I read missed but some of you in here right now, you know it.

Helping people can get you hurt. It can hurt your soul and make you not want to help other people thus making you disobey what God wants.

James 1:27 CSB

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.

You can be teaching a child who has no one to tell them the Good News of Jesus and they can be really rude and misbehaving. If you lose your temper, even though the child is totally in the wrong, you have ruined all good in the eyes of the child.

If you are helping the poor, you might get robbed, lied to, used, played. And if you try to protect yourself from this happening you might not ever actually help the poor. Sometimes when we help we can start to think of ourselves as better than the person we are helping. This stains us. Even if everybody we know would say that we are a good person for helping, if we have a mindset that we need to fix the other person we are no different than everyone else in the world. We have become a holier than thou, goodie too shoes, do-gooder, we have become stained by the world.

There is another danger. When we hang out with people who need help like widows and orphans who have been hustling all their lives to deal with corruption and hustle. We can become hustlers ourselves, all in the name of helping people. We can do the evil because in our mind it is doing good.

There is another danger. We can become so about studying the Bible, attending worship, surrounding ourselves with wise Christian brothers and sisters who speak such great truth, letting everyone know that we are a follower of Jesus with our t-shirts, bumper stickers, and everything that we become so unrelatable, so unreachable, so busy that we never encounter those who need the real help of God. Our religion is worthless.

But for most, we will forget to care. Some will say that it says in the Bible

2 Thessalonians 3:10 NLT

Even while we were with you, we gave you this command: “Those unwilling to work will not get to eat.”

This is very true, Followers of Jesus we have a duty to take responsibility for ourselves. Remember just because someone is a widow the Bible doesn’t give direction that they must be helped and live a helpless life. We are all to take personal responsibility. And this direction is given to those who follow Jesus not to those who do not. Also this direction of giving help to others is not about taking our personal responsibilty and giving it to the government. We don’t have to fix everyone but we can’t act like it’s someone else’s job to be kind.

All of us will be in places of needing help and able to give help. This is pure and undefilied religion give that help without falling into the traps

There are four powerful temptations and honestly these temptations are not easy. Helping others is dangerous. The temptation of sin is all around. We could become

Holier than thou - Use goodness to become unavailable to help those in need.

Self-centeredness - Avoid helping those who make us feel unsafe or appear unworthy. Thus avoiding helping others.

Moral Failure - Help others to the point of excusing doing sin because its a plan that helps others.

Messiah Complex - Seeing people as our projects and ourselves as the only way Jesus can fix others.

Finally the hardest one

Unwillingness to suffer - Being Kind, generous, and helpful will sometimes cause people to hate you, even from the people you are trying to help.

The world is an evil place. Yet we are supposed to be in it. Living for Jesus and being unspoiled, unstained, undefiled from the world.

That is impossible.

If only we knew a God who makes the impossible possible. If we had a savoir who could fix us. If we have a Holy Spirit who guide us in what we are supposed to say.

Obviously

we do. Will you pray that God calls you out to share His love especially with those whom others reject.

Because we can

Love others, including our enemies. Love with no strings attached. Loving God first, obeying God, not others. Humbling ourselves because we know God is the Savior of the World, we are part of His family.