Feet + Hands > Head (OPC Chapel)

Manuscript Template

Title: Feet + Hands > Head

Elevator Summary:

Focus Statement:

James encourages us to not just read the Bible, but engage with it, and allow the Holy Spirit to speak to you through it, act on what The Holy Spirit is prompting you to do, and be transformed by it

Function Statement:

Pause and consider what God the Lord sets before you. Be a doer of the word. Do what God bids you. As he bids you repent, repent; as he bids you believe, believe; as he bids you pray, pray; as he bids you accept his grace, God helping you, do it.

Tweetable Phrase:

Scripture: James 1:19-27, James 2:14-26

Main Text: James 1:19-27, James 2:1

Supporting Text: Matthew 13:1-23, Matthew 18:3

Redemptive Closure (point to Jesus): James 2:14

Benediction: John 14:15

WELCOME

Good morning!!! My name is Ryan Hanson and I have the honor of serving here at The Light KC as the lead pastor. I’m so glad you’re here with us.

ME/INTRO - Tension

So, my wife and I have done some traveling. When we were engaged we found out about a company in Michigan called GTI Tours. They do Bible study tours where you travel to the actual locations where the Bible took place. Each trip is led by a pastor who has been specifically trained to lead the trips and teach the bible while you’re at the location with a heavy focus on context. You learn about the geography, the culture, the language, everything the original hearers would have already known without being told, but we miss because we’re 2,000 years removed.

For our honeymoon we went on the Israel trip and walked the gospels, completing the marriage counseling triangular marriage; husband and wife at the bottom of the triangle, and God at the top. [show triangle with hands, we’re at base, God is the top] We have tried to be very intentional about both seeking God in an effort to get closer together in our relationship.

Needless to say the trip was amazing. So amazing in fact we went on all of the trips they offered. They had a trip to Turkey where you got to walk Paul’s missionary journeys and the seven churches in the book of Revelation. We went to Greece and learned about the final chapter of Paul’s life and Roman culture.

BUT… in 2015 we went on a tour of the Old Testament. We walked through Egypt, Jordan, and Israel over a 2-week time period. We saw the pyramids.

[picture of the pyramids]

I even got to make bricks in the same way they did in the time of Moses.

[picture of brick making.

I want to talk about this trip specifically because of what we were asked to do before the trip. You see on each of these trips we were given homework to do before we arrived. For the Israel trip we were told to read the gospels. For the Turkey trip we were told to memorize the Shema in Hebrew. For the Greece trip we were not given any homework as that trip was actually through IWU and counted as a course for credit and they did all the teaching while we were there. But for the Egypt, Jordan, Israel trip we were told to read the entire Bible.

Keep in mind, until that time, my preferred method of bible reading was to listen to the audio bible in the car while I drive to and from work. I ended up listening to it for about an hour a day. I got through the entire bible about every 4 months (75 hours of drive time). But to be honest, I didn’t have a very solid habit of reading actual paper bibles. For this trip, I was going to change that. I committed to reading the entire bible, front to back, Genesis to Revelation, starting in January and being complete by the end of August; as the trip was in September.

Now, looking back, I may have gone overboard. I didn’t just decide to read the bible. I purchased and decided to read the First Century Study Bible. I committed to reading the entire bible, all the foot notes, and all the extra commentary sections. I choose to read the biggest bible I could find. It was (without the index / glossary) 1,645 pages.

[picture of bible]

Being that I needed to have it done by the end of August I only had 243 days to finish. I included the weekends in there as I decided I didn’t need any “cheat days”. That equates to 7 pages per day. I remember when I calculated that, I was very happy as 7 is the Jewish number for completion / perfection. It just seemed right. Everything was lining up and 7 pages didn’t seem like that big of a deal.

I didn’t realize at the time that Bible pages are not the same as “normal” book pages. Since I had been listening to the Bible and not reading actual paper bible pages. In most books I can read a page in 2-3 minutes. I was happy to give 30 minutes a day to reading the bible.

[picture of bible page]

The problem was the text is much smaller in a bible, the number of words are much greater, and adding the footnotes and commentary sections really slowed me down. I ended up reading between 45 minutes (on a good day) to 1.5 hour each day (remember weekends were included) to get through the bible.

*** I did it. I read the entire bible, cover to cover in 8 months, BUT, I think it was the worst spiritual exercise I have ever attempted.

Very quickly into the journey, I stopped reading to hear the voice of God and discern what God wanted me to do, and quickly transitioned to checking the box for the day. I was about gathering information, and not engaging in Holy Transformation.

I wanted to do the right thing.

I wanted to listen to God’s word as I read, hear the voice of the Holy Spirit guiding and directing me to act and apply what I was reading.

I wanted to grow, mature, and become more Christlike through this experience.

*** BUT…I did not.

I did not accomplish what I think the leader of that trip had hoped I would accomplish in our preparation for the trip.

As Jesus warns in the Parable of the sower in Matthew 13, I was the wrong soil

If you remember the parable, Jesus equates the state of your heart to type of soils and how receptive they are to a farmer growing crops. Jesus explains that there are four types of people.

You could be a path, where the seeds of God’s word sit on the surface, never penetrating your heart, and are snatched away by the devil before they can take root.

You could be rocky ground, someone who hears God’s word, gets excited, the seeds of God’s word grow quickly but does not develop the roots to sustain you when things get tough and you fall away from faith quickly.

You could be thorny ground, someone who hears God’s word, the seeds of God’s word grow and starts to mature, but the plant of faith that is growing gets choked out by the worries of life, focusing on all the wrong things, making you unfruitful.

Or…You could be good ground, someone that hear’s God’s word, the seeds of that word develop strong roots when you do the work to understands it, the plant that comes from those seeds matures as you apply it to your life, and the plant of your life produces a crop 30/60/100x what was sown as you are continually fed by every word you hear from God.

When I was reading the bible back in 2015, I was thorny ground. I was excited, I was starting to grow and mature, but everything else in my life got in the way of giving God everything He deserved while reading the bible. The time required interfered with other things and my goal became reducing that time to “get everything done” instead of listening to God’s voice, no matter how long it took.

WE - Tension

Have you ever set a goal like this? You enter with the best intentions, but it quickly gets out of hand, it goes beyond your expectations, and it turns into something completely the opposite of what you originally intended?

Have you ever done one of those “read the bible in a year” plans? Did you fall into the same trap as me, worrying so much about keeping up with the plan that your focus got shifted from listening to God to checking a box? Or did you fall into one of the other traps Jesus describes?

If you were honest with yourself, what type of soil are you right now? How do you respond to hearing the Word of God?

This is exactly what we’re going to talk about today - How do we become the “Good Soil” that Jesus calls us to become? How do produce the harvest of fruit, 30/60/100x, that Jesus teaches we can produce?

To do that we’re going to look at a passage in James 1.

If you have a bible, please feel free to get it out and follow along.

Let’s dive in.

GOD - Text

Prepare the soil

James 1:19–21 (NIV)

My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires. Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you.

As we start this section, before we even start to think about doing anything, James starts by telling us that we need to PREPARE.

If we are going to be serious about becoming “Good Soil”, living the life that God calls us to live and producing the fruit that God created us to produce, we need to make sure that we have prepared ourselves correctly. James here tells us to get rid of all moral filth and evil.

We need to take an inventory of our lives and remove everything that can distract, cause us to worry, or get in the way of applying God’s word to our lives.

What habits (filth) have you found yourself engaging in that are getting in the way of you become all that God created you to be?

What TV shows do you watch?

What books do you read?

What hobbies do you participate in?

What addictions have you given up fighting?

The first thing we need to do, before we even start to look at how we respond to God’s word, is clean up the sins that are getting in our way. To do that we need to do 2 things:

Starve the sin

Identify triggers

Remove temptations

Filters on internet

Unsubscribe from TV services that pose issues for you

Identify times when you’re especially tempted and don’t be alone during those times

Feed your faith (starving sin is not enough)

Pray, earnestly seeking the Holy Spirit’s help and power to free you from the sin in your life.

Replace the sin with a new God honoring habit

Spend time with people - get a new hobby

Volunteer / serve

Exercise

Whatever it takes, don’t give up. When breaking habits you will fail. Rarely does anyone quit anything cold turkey. The goal is to keep at it and celebrate the victories as the duration between failures increases until you don’t fail anymore. Have hope, it is possible.

Apply what you hear

James continues in VS22. After we’ve at least started the process of getting rid of the sin from our lives, James speaks directly to the problem I had in 2015. Let’s continue in V22.

James 1:22–24 NIV

Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.

Have any of you done this? I am guilty of this almost every day. I get up at 5:30. I ride the bike or run for an hour. I take a shower and as I’m getting ready I look in the mirror. I realize I haven’t shaved yet, but hate shaving right after a shower because I have washed all the oil off my skin and with an electric shaver it doesn’t feel great. So I tell myself, knowing there is a problem with my looks that I will come back and shave after I have breakfast with the kids.

As many of you know that have come to the church mid-week, my success rate on shaving mid-week is only about 0%.

It is so frustrating that we can know what the right thing to do is, and yet, completely forget, and consistently fail to live it out.

The problem comes when we fail to do things that are important. Shaving arguably doesn’t matter. Reading God’s word, discerning His will for your life, and acting on it consistently. That matters. That will change your life. That will change the lives of your family and everyone else you interact with. When we fail to remember to do that, we’re all in trouble.

I’m reminded of a quote by J.A. Motyer, a commentator with the Inter-varsity Press. He writes.

It is possible to be unfailingly regular in Bible reading, but to achieve no more than to have moved the book-mark forward: this is reading unrelated to an attentive spirit. The word is read but not heard. On the other hand, if we can develop an attentive spirit, this will spur us to create those conditions—a proper method in Bible-reading, a discipline of time, and so on—by which the spirit will find itself satisfied in hearing the Word of God.

This was my problem in 2015. I was just “moving the book mark forward”.

Which begs the question of us all...

Do you intentionally seek the will of God through consistent time in His Word?

If you’re not reading the bible, regularly attending church, or praying…why not?

If you don’t have a bible to read, come to The Light KC on a Sunday, I’d be happy to give one to you.

If you have a Bible, maybe what you need to do is take time this week to do an inventory how you prioritize your time and see if you’re spending it in the areas you find most important.

If you’re regularly reading the bible, attending church, and praying, but not hearing anything from God, is there any filth you need to clean out of your life?

What do you need to do this week to start the process of becoming the “good soil” that is ready for the Holy Spirit to cultivate?

If you’re regularly reading the bible, attending church, and praying, but not hearing what next step God wants us to take, have you done the things that God has already asked you to do?

God is not going to give you a next step before you’ve taken the step he’s already asked you to take.

What’s stopping you from doing what God has already asked you to do this week?

Make it a habit

But… James isn’t done there.

James finishes this section in V25. He writes:

James 1:25 NIV

But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.

James writes that as we read the Bible, we’re not just reading for information. We need to look intently, expect to hear promptings from the Holy Spirit, and pray to be Transformed through it’s reading and actions to take to live it out.

I think we need to read the bible like kids read books, when you let them choose the book.

When we moved down here from Michigan we were blown away by the libraries. They are so far beyond the libraries in Michigan. In Michigan you have books and a few computers locked down so you can only search for books.

Here you have internet computers, gaming rooms, maker’s studios, cafes, and more. We’ve started to make the local library a weekly destination. The kids are excited to do their weekly craft in the marker’s studio, to search for, find, and check out books. Since there are programs to encourage kids to read with prizes, the kids are very excited to actually read their books so they can get more entries.

But...what I’m surprised by is how excited they are about the books. We don’t necessarily care what books they are reading at this point as long as they reading, so they each pick out quite a variety of books. Because there are entries attached to each book completed, I would have expected the kids to read these books like I read the bible. Get it done, get my entry, move on. But they don’t.

Wyatt has been reading books about animals. And he is so fascinated by everything he reads he doesn’t talk about anything else. Apparently, tigers have 4” long teeth and bears have jaws strong enough to crush bowling balls.

Grace is in ballet and checked out a book on ballet positions. She props the book up and page by page dances along with the characters in the pages.

*** There is a passion to their reading and a true desire to remember it and share it with others.

*** This is the way we all need to read the bible.

Charles Spurgeon once wrote

We get much more out of meditation than out of hearing. Like the cattle, we must chew the cud, if we would get nourishment from spiritual food: but few do this.

He’s talking about the way that animals with multiple chambers in their stomachs have to chew their food multiple time to get everything out of it. The term is Ruminate. Cows have 4-chambers in their stomach and to get all the nutrients out of the grass they eat, they chew each piece of food 4x.

That’s how we need to read the bible. When we feel a prompting of the Holy Spirit to stop on a verse we’re reading, we need to SLOW DOWN and stay there a while, making sure that we get everything out of that verse that God wants for us.

As reading the bible is not something that we all do, we need to have a method to help us do it well.

[show picture of bookmark]

What I suggest is a simple iterative process that starts and ends with prayer.

Pray - that the Holy Spirit guides your times in the Word

Read - Read until the Holy Spirit prompts you to stop.

Reflect - Ruminate on what God is teaching you. Write it down.

Respond - What is God asking you to do based on what you’ve read and reflected on? Commit to doing it, with a time frame.

Review - How did you do responding to the last verse you read? Is there still more to do? Do it.

Pray - Praise, Repent, Ask, and Yield (prayer is a conversation and these are good talking points)

YOU - Takeaway

So where are you at?

What type of soil do you think best describes your heart as it relates to hearing God’s word and doing God’s will?

What sins do you need to remove from your life?

How do you read the Bible, if you do at all?

How is God calling you to change the way you read the bible to hear more clearly and act more consistently?

What is God calling you to do this week?

WE / JESUS - Redemptive Close - Call to Action

Real Consequences

I titled this message “Hands + Feet > Head” because if we only read God’s word to check a box or get information, we’re missing the point.

James writes in the next chapter...

James 2:26 NIV

As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.

And to clarify the point further, James is very direct about the result of dead faith.

James 2:14 NIV

What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them?

If our faith is just in our head, an intellectual agreement with what Scripture says, but never works its way down to our hearts where we can’t help but live it out through our hands and feet, we’re in trouble.

God calls us to be “doers of the word”.

So what is God calling you to, this week...

Give your life to Christ as your Lord and Savior, do it.

Repent of a sinful habit you’re stuck in, do it.

Start a habit of reading the bible and doing what it says, do it.

Take the next step in your faith journey and get baptized, come see me and we’ll do it together.

Join or start a small group to study the word together and hold each other accountable, do it.

My prayer for all of us is that we’re not just getting smarter filling our heads with information, but that we let the Word of God penetrate our hearts, transforming us into the people God created us to be, and driving us to act through our hands and feet.

So to wrap up, what does James call us to do this week...

James calls us to be doers of the word, not just reading it to fill our heads and be information, but allow ourselves to be transformed by God’s word allowing our faith grow roots deep in our hearts, moving us to act, using our hands and feet to live out our faith in whatever manner the Holy Spirit calls us to.

Imagine what God could do through all of us if we collectively committed to not just hearing, but DOING what He calls us to do.

PRAYER

Will you join me in prayer...