James 1:19-21

19 Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; 20 for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. 21 Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.

I. The righteous person has temperate self control

James 1:19–20 ESV

19 Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; 20 for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.

We must be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger

“Let every person be” is not permission

It is a 3rd person imperative, a command “every person should be”

We don’t do this in English except in 1st person

Example: “Let’s go get ice cream” is a contraction of “let us go get ice cream”

This doesn’t mean we are asking for someone to allow us to go get ice cream

It’s a collective imperative - “we should go get ice cream”

James is saying every Christian should be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger

There is a LOT of teaching in Jewish wisdom literature about the connection between hasty speech and anger

Proverbs 17:27–28 ESV

27 Whoever restrains his words has knowledge, and he who has a cool spirit is a man of understanding. 28 Even a fool who keeps silent is considered wise; when he closes his lips, he is deemed intelligent.

Ecclesiastes 5:1–2 ESV

1 Guard your steps when you go to the house of God. To draw near to listen is better than to offer the sacrifice of fools, for they do not know that they are doing evil. 2 Be not rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven and you are on earth. Therefore let your words be few.

Sirach 5:11–13 NRSV

11 Be quick to hear, but deliberate in answering. 12 If you know what to say, answer your neighbor; but if not, put your hand over your mouth. 13 Honor and dishonor come from speaking, and the tongue of mortals may be their downfall.

This is intertestamental

In the wisdom literature, hasty words and anger are linked

Quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to become angry

Most of, if we are honest, live these words in reverse

Our default is to be quick to speak and slow to listen

This in turn creates tension, conflict, anger

Anger leads to more hasty speech, doesn’t it?

“Uncontrolled anger leads to uncontrolled speech. How often do we find ourselves regretting words spoken “in the heat of the moment”!” - The Pillar New Testament Commentary

Reason for this character quality: The anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God

Anger of man is simple: human anger

What is the “righteousness of God?” There are a couple of ways that the Bible uses the word and concept “righteousness”

As an attribute of God’s character

His moral purity

His reliability and faithfulness to do all that he has promised

His gracious activity by which he puts people in right relationship with him

Paul uses it this way when he uses the phrase “righteousness of God” to describe and summarize the gospel in

Human behavior that conforms to a right standard, specifically God’s standard

Righteousness used this way describes a person who does what is right in the eyes of God

Behavior that is pleasing to God

This is the manner in which Jesus uses this word in

Matthew 5:20 ESV

20 For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

Matthew 5:19–20 ESV

19 Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

Summary: So James is essentially saying that human anger does not generally bring about the kind of behavior or life that is pleasing to God

Application

This concept is readily graspable to many of us - is it not true that in your anger you generally have less self control and tend toward doing and saying things you later regret?

Is James saying that any kind is wrong? Probably not - James is writing in a genre called “wisdom literature.”

The Pillar New Testament Commentary: The Letter of James A. Hasty Speech and Anger Do Not Please God (1:19–20)

And wisdom sayings are notorious for the use of apparently absolute assertions in order to make a general, “proverbial” point.

But this should not let us off the hook - don’t think that because Pastor Brian is saying that anger isn’t ALWAYS evil means that your anger is justified, and even if it is justified anger, that doesn’t mean its not still potentially harmful.

Let me give a couple of practical thoughts from the heart of what I think James is saying

Human anger tends toward giving us less self control and greater tendency toward sin

Human anger tends to produce hasty speech and causes us to say things we later regret

And as much as we want to later excuse ourselves by saying, “hey but I didn’t mean it, I was just angry,” we all know thats not how it works

Words are like toothpaste - once they are out you cannot put them back in

If you have ever been the victim of someone else’s rash and angry words, you know this: no matter what kind of later “I didn’t mean it” speech you get, those words still came out and still affected you, didn’t they?

If you have spoken rashly in a moment of anger, you are not justified because you later say you didn’t mean it - you need to repent and make it right

Therefore, we should work to develop the characteristic of good listening, deliberate and intentional speech, and reluctance to give in to anger

Practice active listening

Think about what you are going to say BEFORE you say it - consider:

Why am I going to say what I’m about to say?

To hurt them?

To build up myself and make myself look good?

To simply win an argument?

To further understanding and consensus?

What will my words produce or achieve in this situation or that person?

Will it needlessly offend?

Will I demean, disrespect, or hurt the other person?

Are my words true?

Are my words helpful and necessary?

Be difficult to offend

Transition: These words from James are not difficult to understand, but they are difficult to do, aren’t they? Every person must be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger. Easy, right? WRONG! This is much easier said than done. James, thankfully, does not just leave us with a difficult command; he sees a foundation and means by which this command can be lived out.

James 1:21 ESV

21 Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.

II. We are made righteous by humbly receiving the gospel

Therefore refers to the whole concept of verses 19-20

Anger does not produce the righteousness of God

So we need to be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry

Therefore…what should we do?

James gives both a negative command and a positive exhortation

Put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness

Filthiness - a word that is intended to remind James’ readers of just how offensive and detestable sin is

“Rampant wickedness” means abundant wickedness

Putting off sin involves a fight against a foe that attacks from many different angles and takes on many different forms

Illustration: Weeds in a garden, whack-a-mole

I hate weeding because it is never-ending

You pull a weed up today and there’s another one tomorrow in a different place

James is calling us here to a life long relentless fight against sin that takes on all kinds of different forms.

You start to get a handle on your pride and then lust starts creeping in

You get that under control and then your jealousy of others pops up

You

Receive the implanted word with humility

The “implanted word” is the gospel - reference back to - In verse 21, James says this is able to “save your souls”

James 1:18 ESV

18 Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.

Also a reference to , where Jeremiah talks about the New Covenant God would make with his people

Since the human heart is not capable of truly conforming itself to external law, God will put his law on the hearts and minds of his people so that they will be able to truly obey him out of love

So this is a call for Christians to constantly reaffirm and reaccept the gospel that God has planted in his people through the Holy Spirit to make the gospel real to his people so that they might live all of their lives in response to it

James says this must be done with “humility” - I like this translation better than the English Standard Version’s “meekness”

Because we don’t use the word “meek” very much today, and so its meaning is unclear and vague

Usually, we hear “meek” and we mean a timid person, perhaps a frightened person

But I think what James is trying to do here is to contrast how we receive the gospel with how yield ourselves to our anger

Our anger is all about asserting ourselves

our typical bout of anger comes from what we perceive to be a transgression against us, our pride, our self respect, our reputation, our desires, our plans, etc.

So in our anger we try to reassert our way to get what the result we want

We shout louder to try to drown out dissenting voices

In our anger we manipulate, control, and assert dominance over others because we didn’t get what we wanted

Receiving the gospel is completely contradictory to asserting ourselves

Rather, we yield ourselves humbly to a higher authority

We receive and accept the word of God as the authority over our lives

Our lives become not about asserting ourselves to bring about the result we want, but yielding ourselves to bring about the result that Jesus wants

And its in this yielding of ourselves, this refusal to assert ourselves, that we actually find ourselves in Christ

Response steps

If you have never believed the gospel and received Jesus by faith, that is your first response

James says that the word of truth is able to save your soul

Through faith and trust in Jesus and in his life, death, and resurrection, you are made righteous before God and reconciled to him, adopted into his family, given the Holy Spirit, and transformed to be like Jesus

Anybody tuning in here, I would really love to talk more with you if you are thinking on these lines about how to take some next steps of faith

For Christians, you have to daily and consistently put off sin and reorient yourself around submission to the gospel, yielding yourself to Jesus so that he will make you more like him

This is the path to wholeness and self control, its the path to learning to be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry

Specifically, I think perhaps today this means that we repent of our hasty words and rash anger, knowing that human anger does not produce the righteousness of God

This is especially needed in our world today

Look around, the discourse around us and dialogue we find is not characterized by people who are “quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger.”

We are living in a time where tensions are running high and stress is piling up - people need the calming presence of those who are even-tempered and wise in their speech

One example of this is on social media - can I just challenge all of us to be careful what we post on social media? Do you think we are ever “quick to speak and slow to listen” on social media? Are we in such a hurry to “be right” that we can’t even listen to others?

Let us be a people who receive the gospel every day with humility, that we would learn to be a people who are quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to become angry.

Transition to Communion

5 minutes to meditate and pray, remembering the broken body and shed blood of Jesus

Transition to Worship

One more song of worship

We are going to do an update on TUESDAY at 12pm this week.

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