The Word of Truth
Notes
Transcript
What did the shy pebble wish? She was a little boulder?
Class downstairs . It will evolve
We have been walking slowly through the first chapter of the book of James, and we have learned so much together so far. We have learned to find joy in the middle of our trials because James tells us, the trials produce true faith in our lives and help us to realize how much we are depending on Him to get us through those times in life. Not only that he tells us if we can’t wrap our minds around that we need to ask God togive us proper perspective to see life in the right way, not with worldly wisdom, but with Godly wisdom. This idea always reminds me of one of our interpreters oh my first trip to Haiti. I spoke a little bit about how daunting the country is to us visually as you look around and just see all of the trash and squaller people are living in. I will never forget the last day we were there and we were on our way to the airport to get on our plane back to America. On of the young interpreters looks at me and he says, “I must tell you something,” and I said, “Go ahead.” He looked me in the eye, and said, “Every day you must smile and have Joy, because we have God, and he has given us so much.” Needless to say, I had just given this young man all the leftover food I had brought with me to eat so he would have enough to eat for the week. Can I just say that changed my perspective that day, I think this young man had what James was talking about figured out.
Then we looked over what truth faith is, and what to do in our lives when we are tempted and how we should handle it. This morning we will learn what to do with what James tells us is the Word of Truth. Lets look at verses 18-21
18 He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.
19 My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry,
20 because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires.
21 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.
If we are not very careful we could allow this wording and what he is saying here to really trip us up and leave us in some weird place not being sure what is going on. What could he possibly mean by all of this giving birth, if we are already alive, and for some of you, you may remember this story from John Chapter 3 as Jesus interacted with Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish Ruling council John tells us. They meet and Nicodemus knows when they meet Jesus is a teacher who has come from God, because of the signs Jesus has been performing, Nicodemus knows those things are only of God. And almost out of left field Jesus tells Nicodemus in verse 3 John 3:3
3 Jesus answered and said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
And Nicodemus responds to Jesus in the way I imagine most of us would respond to Jesus if he had said this, he says, “Jesus, how is it possible for a person who is already living to be born again, surely you are not telling me we have to re-enter our mothers womb.” Its not hard to understand where Nicodemus is coming from here; how can a person who is already alive be born again? From a worldly perspective this doesn’t make a lick of sense, but remember, we are dealing with James telling us to change our perspective to a Godly one, so what is it Jesus is talking about?
5 Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.
6 “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
7 “Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’
8 “The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
And I think I have preached entire sermons on these 4 verses before, but let me break this down pretty quickly to you so we can get back to what is going on in the book of James. Jesus is basically telling him here, “Nicodemus, you are spiritually dead. And unless the spirit comes and makes you spiritually alive there is no amount of good works or deeds, or church going, or demon casting as we talked about a few weeks ago, that will change anything for you and your relationship with God.”
Honestly, this is a ton of what the underlying theme of the Gospel is, this idea of rebirth is not something that is new or hidden away, it is center to the work Jesus did on this Earth. He came to give us this new spiritual life and to make us right with Him.
So that is what James is telling us in verse 18, he chose to give us birth. Isn’t it interesting because you and I were not born physically of some choice of our own, it was our parents who brought that upon us, and in the same sense he tells us Jesus chooses to give us birth. It wasn’t because he saw how awesome our acts were, it wasn’t because he saw how hopeless we were, he loved us and chose to give us this spiritual rebirth. This isn’t to say that we didn’t have some part in it. We truly must repent, and do a complete 180 from our sins and run away from them, and turn toward Jesus. We must believe in Jesus and trust him to save us and lead us from that life we once lived. So we had the work to do in repenting and trusting and turning away from sin and toward Jesus, but I guarantee if you look back on that period of your life, when you turned and gave your life to him what you are going to realize and see is he God was at work long before we were putting the pieces together in our lives to have us turn to Him. I bet for many of us we can see MANY places looking back where God had orchestrated events wanting us to turn to Him, and there were times we chose not to, and then finally it stuck and we understood. That is why so many Christians talk about how Jesus reached down and SNATCHED us out of a life a sin and poverty. Sure, we had a choice to make, but he was constantly trying to get our attention, and wanted to give us new life. So, it wasn’t just my decision, but it was God who was in control of everything in the universe wanting to give us this new birth and orchestrating events where we could choose him.
So, James tells us, hey it was God who gave you this new life, this new spirit, but do you know how he did it? Look at verse 18
18 … by the word of truth…
What is the word of truth you may ask? It’s the gospel. It is the story of God reaching into humanity to save all people who were in direct rebellion against Him to drag them back to Himself. And the question that is inevitably asked around this, is well what about people who have not heard the Gospel, how is it those people are supposed to turn to God? Well, Paul tells us in his letter to the romans that creation itself points to the creator.
20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.
Without excuse, because when you look around you you should be able to see there is something much grander than all of ourselves putting the pieces together in this universe. I used to go to church with a man who was a missionary to Indonesia, and he would carry his ipad around with him when he prayed because he had pictures of the stars on there. He would have this picture of alpha centauri and he said it is amazing because it is larger than our sun. He would use the pictures while he was praying to remind himself of how big and how good God is, that He orchestrated the universe so perfectly to make sure we could live on Earth without burning up or freezing. It is hard to believe we could look at the universe and think it is all an accident.
Not only is God showing himself to us through the world around us, but also through our consciences and our morality. Let me ask you something, how do you know right from wrong? How is one action inherently wrong and another right? How do most people have a sense of the things we should or should not do, it is because God reveals himself in our conscience and we know right from wrong because of Him. This does not mean we will always do right, but apart from God, there is no such thing as right and wrong morals, things just would be.
So, you may ask, well if God is revealing himself through creation and our conscience, surly that is all we need. But Paul in the same first chapter of Romans tells us while we can see all of these things and know there is something greater, there still isn’t enough to make us right with God. So, he give gives us birth through the Gospel, the Word of Truth. We learn how we are we are to deal with all of this through His Word. It is where we learn that our sins have separated us from God, and it is only the work of Jesus who can make us right again.
Paul keeps this idea going in his letter to the Colossians. He says we have hope because of the Gospel
5 because of the hope laid up for you in heaven, of which you previously heard in the word of truth, the gospel
Then in Ephesians he tells us it is the Word of Truth that seals us in salvation
13 In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit,
It wasn’t the church that saved us and sealed the promise of the Holy Spirit, it was the Gospel that sealed us. I love the way Alec Motyer explains this, “The Father uses the … gospel,” the word of truth, “in two ways: first, he speaks it, inwardly, to our dead souls, imparting life, bringing us to … birth; secondly, he presents the same word of truth to us as a preached gospel, to which the new life within … makes a personal and believing response.”
It wasn’t our response that saved us, because dead people can’t respond, they are dead, thus the Father through the Holy Spirit speaks the gospel into our deal spirit and makes it alive so that we can respond. This is what James is telling us in verse 18. It isn’t enough to just give us life, God wants us to become more like him, he wants us to grow spiritual says James and he tells us in verse 19 how we are supposed to respond to the word of truth, God’s word, he basically says, listen, this is what we are supposed to do in relation to the word/
19 Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry,
Three things we should do with His word, Listen, receive, and go and do.
Listen, see what I did there, I use this verse for my kids all the time when they start arguing with one another and obviously it is effective in that manner. We should be listening more to others before we start to talk and not allow our hearts to overflow with anger quickly, but remember this verse is directly related to before it, and the the thing we should be listening to is the word of truth. This comes full circle with verse 21 James 1:21
21 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.
So our listening to this word, the word of truth, helps us to accept it and give it roots inside of us. And I think this comes as warning to us, we should make sure we listen, and really understand what it is saying before we try to teach or preach the word of truth too quickly. And this would make sense with what he later tells us at the beginning of Chapter 3 James 3:1
1 Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.
There is this fear in the mind of James if we jump and start teaching before we have really examined it we may lead someone astray and if we are declaring ourselves as teachers we are going to be judged more harshly in the end.
The problem is in our fickleness we can hear something and begin to speak like an expert immediately on the topic. So we must be quick to listen and slow to speak because it can b e dangerous to us if we were to try to talk on matters of the word of truth before we understand what we are truly talking about for our own life. Think about it this way, if you were having heart surgery today, who would you want to do the surgery, the person who has done it for ten years and taken in tons of lessons and education, or the student in their first day of medical school who is just beginning to learn? I think obviously most of us would say the one with experience and this is what James is telling us. He is telling us to really get into the word and the next part is important, the next step, so we can RECEIVE it.
If we speak too quickly before we have truly received the word into our heart what can happen often is our passions get the best of us and we speak quickly like an expert. If you’re not believing me, just scroll your facebook feed and you can see people who are experts on everything. We read a single article and all of a sudden we know more than everyone and want to be sure someone knows what we know and if we are not careful we can llow our anger at people to get the best of us and it will overcome us. And he talks about that anger in verse 20
20 for the anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God.
And he is telling us if we have all of this anger it is not getting us to the places we want to be, in fact it will take us away from the righteousness of God we are chasing after. James tells us the fear is if all we are doing is talking, we cannot receive it. Let me give you an example, how many of you know someone who is just comforted by the sound of their own voice, and love to hear what is coming out of it and take very little time to listen? So, this is not the time when you should have nudged or looked at the person next to you - thats kind of rude. But they just talk and talk, and it isn’t what they are saying is bad, or wrong, but they don’t even take a breath long enough for you to interject with some type of helpful information if you wanted to. They are just talking and talking and you’re ready to cover your ears because you have something that could help in the situation, but they haven’t stopped to listen, so they can’t even receive the good word you have for them.
So, if we want to receive the righteousness of God and allow this word of truth to work in us he says we must
21 Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.
We must receive it, and in order to receive it we have to put away all the filthiness and wickedness so we can. IF you want to have your soul saved we have to get rid of the sin in your life. He didnt tell us to pray about the sin in our lives so we could receive the word of truth, instead he says you just have to get rid of it, don’t play around with it.
It makes me think of the story of the man at the pool of Bethesda, and he had been there for 39 years, and remember, Jesus is stepping over people to get to this guy, because Jesus does what he wants and he doesn’t treat everyone the same in this life, he heals us all in different ways, in HIS timing. SO he steps across these peolpe and he ask this man, “Do you want to be made well.” And this is a serious question, and in quick response I think all of us would say absolutely. But its not exactly true or as easy, we may need to think about it for a second, because if I want to be well it means everything has to change. We cannot be the same person we were, we have to be something incredibly different and this is exactly the question Jesus asks us when he asks us if we want to be made well. Are you willing to give up the person you were for the person you were called to be. And for some of us that is a harder question to ask, and this is what James is telling us, we have to put that old life behind us and receive the word of truth he has to offer.
I told you earlier, there are three things we should do with the word of truth, we should listen, we should receive and we should do. We only have time for the first two this morning and we will look at the last one next week, but here is my question for you this morning. Are you listening to the word, and this could be in your daily reading, which I am hoping you are keeping up with, or just coming here on Sunday Mornings, or in some other Bible study. Are you actually listening, and what i mean is are you allowing it to come into you talking so much as God is speaking. For some of us that just looks like us arguing the whole time he is spoeaking through the word of truth, “Surely, this isn’t what God wants,” “I wasn’t asking you about that Jesus, I wanted you to speak about…” Are you listening, and secondly are you receiving. Are you tallowing that word to become rooted in your heart to change who you are and change not just waht you do, thats next week, but what you want to do. God’s word completekly changes our nature if we are receiving it to ourselves.
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Maybe you are here and don;t know Jesus…
Maybe you;ve been tlaking so much about what you think he wants for you uyou haven’t listened and received what he really wants.
IF you need prayer for anything else… don’t forget you are free to move and pray with someone who needs prayer. I want to encourage you to do that.
