Charmed, By Not Changed

Prayer

God, we thank you that you are a God of peace. In our anxious and angry age, we thank you that we can have peace in you. You tell us in your Word that peace is not a place or set of circumstance, but a person, and His name is Jesus. Thank you for sending Him to do for us what we could never do for ourselves. Thank you that He bore our sins on the cross and paid the debt we owed so that we could have a relationship with you. May we never cease to be in awe of your Gospel. May we never cease to be in awe of your Son. It’s in His beautiful name we pray, by the power of His Spirit…Amen.

Introduction

Group Question 1(Icebreaker):

Last week Kendra started her lesson by asking a question about Popeye’s and Chick-Fil-a sandwiches. This week we’re going to stick with the chicken theme for our opening question. Here it is: Take Chick-Fil-a out of the equation, what is your favorite place to eat chicken and why? And then explain why Popeye’s chicken sandwiches are better than Chick-fil-a (Kidding!). So when you take Chick-Fil-a out of the equation, what is your favorite place to eat chicken and why?

Group Question 2:

What are some of the best examples you’ve seen of Christians living out their faith? What are some of the worst? In other words, what are some examples of pure religion and defiled religion that you’ve seen?

Introduction (Part II)

Hold onto what you discussed in that last question because we’ll get back that a little later tonight.

Tonight, we’re continuing our series in the letter of James. In our time together this evening we’ll looking at James 1:19-27, James 1:19-27. So if you have your Bibles turn or tap with me there. James 1:19-27. While you turn there, let me share a brief story with you.

Grandma Pete Ice Cream Story

My Great Grandma made the world’s best homemade ice cream. Like it was incredible. And I realize that your family may have a great homemade ice cream recipe that’s been passed down, but if we’re just going to speak factually, my Great Grandma’s ice cream is the best. It’s actually my favorite food. Like my love for this stuff is on par with my love for sunset and Celine Dion. That’s how incredible this stuff is. When I was growing up, she would only make it a few times a year so it was a huge treat. She had a special recipe that she swore by. It was on one of those classic little index cards that said “From Grandma’s Kitchen” like all of our grandmas have. The recipe card was really faded and had food stains on from all the years of use, so you know it was good. One weekend while I was down at her house as a kid, I asked her if I could help her make the ice cream. She said, “Sure!” so we went about the task of making the frozen delicacy. Because the ice cream was technically frozen custard, we began by making the custard batter. We cracked the eggs and whipped them. Then we added the sugar, vanilla, marshmallows, and cream and mixed it all together. Then we poured the batter into a glass bowl and took part in the obligatory batter tasting. The next step after this was to cook the batter. You have to bring it to a boil to melt the marshmallows and finish the mixing process. To do this, you microwave the batter for several minutes, stirring every minute or two along the way. After we finished making the batter and got ready to cook the batter, my grandma had to step away for a moment so she told me how long to cook the batter and how often to stir it. As she stepped away, I typed the correct time into the microwave and began to cook the batter. Within a few seconds I became impatient. I was so excited to eat the ice cream. In order to speed up the process, I decided not to stir the batter since it didn’t seem necessary. Surely, it would cook just fine it I didn’t stir it, right? Wrong. The batter quickly burned and became unusable, which was a real bummer since we didn’t have enough ingredients to make more. When my grandma came back into the room and realized what happened, she looked at me and exclaimed, “I said stir the batter! Didn’t you hear me?” I responded, “I heard you but I didn’t think it was necessary.” She responded, “So you didn’t really hear me, did you? I wouldn’t have told you that unless I actually wanted you to do it. Don’t you think I know what I’m doing? I’ve made this for longer than you’ve been alive!”

I heard my Great Grandma’s words but I didn’t do what she said, which was essentially the same as if I hadn’t really heard her words in the first place. James talks about this very same idea in our passage tonight. Let’s see what he says. Look with me at James 1:19.

James 1:19-27

“Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls. But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing. If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person’s religion is worthless. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.”

“Be Doers of the Word, and Not Hearers Only”

If James was writing this passage as a school paper, his thesis statement would be found in verse 22: “But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.”

James is calling for his original audience, and us, to not just hear God’s Word, but to actually do God’s Word; to live it out. Everything else he says in this passage can be traced back to this theme.

Charles Swindoll Illustration

In a piercing illustration from his book Improving Your Serve, Charles Swindoll reflects on the importance of the very principle that James is trying to hammer home. To make his point, Swindoll imagines a scenario. He says this:

For a moment, let's pretend you work for me. In fact, you are my executive assistant in a company that is growing rapidly. I'm the owner and I'm interested in expanding overseas. To pull this off, I make plans to travel abroad and stay there until the new branch office gets established. I make all the arrangements to take my family in the move to Europe for six to eight months, and I leave you in charge of the busy stateside organization. I tell you that I will write you regularly and give you direction and instructions. I leave and you stay.

Months pass. A flow of letters are mailed from Europe and received by you at the national headquarters. I spell out all my expectations. Finally, I return. Soon after my arrival I drive down to the office. I am stunned! Grass and weeds have grown up high. A few windows along the street are broken. I walk into the receptionist's room and she is doing her nails, chewing gum, and listening to her favorite rock station. I look around and notice the wastebaskets are overflowing, the carpet hasn't been vacuumed for weeks, and nobody seems concerned that the owner has returned. I ask about your whereabouts and someone in the crowded lounge area points down the hall and yells, "I think he's down there." Disturbed, I move in that direction and bump into you as you are finishing a chess game with our sales manager. I ask you to step into my office (which has been temporarily turned into a television room for watching afternoon soap operas).

"What in the world is going on, man?"

"What do you mean, Chuck?"

"Well, look at this place! Didn't you get any of my letters?"

"Letters? Oh, yeah—sure, got every one of them. As a matter of fact, Chuck, we have had letter study every Friday night since you left. We have even divided all the personnel into small groups and discussed many of the things you wrote. Some of those things were really interesting. You'll be pleased to know that a few of us have actually committed to memory some of your sentences and paragraphs. One or two memorized an entire letter or two! Great stuff in those letters!"

You can Swindoll’s point. Hearing and knowing God’s Word is good, but it’s useless if we don’t actually live it out.

Jesus fought the tendency to hearing God’s Word and not doing it with the Pharisees. The Pharisees knew God’s Word better than anyone and yet they didn’t live it out. They heard it preached more than anyone and yet failed to obey its commands. They professed the importance of the Word of God and yet showed they didn’t believe it was important enough to actually follow and live out.

Having knowledge about God and the Bible and going to church don’t make you a Christian. As Alastair Begg says, “It’s possible to be charmed by the Word of God and not changed by the Word of God.”

One of the scariest facts in the world is this: there will be people who read their Bible every single day, never miss Sunday service, attend weekly bible studies and community groups, and listen to tons of worship music and yet still go straight to Hell. Why? Because they never actually lived out God’s Word or showed the fruit of their faith. In his incredible book The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis talks about how Satan is not afraid of people going to church or knowing their Bible. That’s fine. He just doesn’t want people to live it out. Often times, the most trapped and damned people are not your most vile and debased non-Christians, but the people who sit in the pews every Sunday and yet never actually live out what they hear. Why? Because they have no idea they’re lost because they have lots of knowledge.

To be clear, I’m not saying that you must live out God’s Word perfectly to be a Christian. But I am saying that in order to be a Christian, you must strive to live out God’s Word which will show the fruit that the Spirit really has worked in you unto salvation. We must live out the truths we hear from Scripture. R. Kent Hughes say, ““Biblical hearing is doing. The Word of God becomes a millstone if it doesn’t become a milestone”

It’s easy to think about this whole hearing and doing business and point fingers at others, but before we do so we must recognize that it’s clear that we do the same thing. We listen to sermons, biblical podcasts, read Christian books, and listen to Christian music proclaiming the truths of the Bible and yet disobey and forget the very truths immediately after hearing them. This applies to me as much as anyone. Do you know how many times I’ve been writing a sermon and listening to worship music and suddenly lost my temper or disobeyed God’s Word? It’s embarrassingly easy to do.

In order to work on not just hearing God’s Word but also living it out we need to take some time to reflect on where we fall short in this. This is where I want us to discuss things in our groups. Talk about this:

Group Question 3:

What is a time where you heard the word and immediately forgot it or disobeyed it? Similarly, what parts of the Word of God do you struggle most to live out even though you know them?

Pure vs. Defiled Religion

We’ve spent most of our time reflecting on James’s thesis statement of being hearers and doers of God’s Word, but this is not all that He says in our passage. In many years, James spends the bulk of the passage providing examples of what it looks like to be a “doer” of God’s Word and what it looks like to be only a “hearer” of God’s Word. We could separate these examples into two categories of religion: pure religion and defiled religion. Doers live out “pure religion” and people who are only hearers live out “defiled religion.” We’ll spend the rest of our time looking at the contrasting examples James gives of “pure religion” and the opposing examples of “defiled religion.”

Let’s look at our first pair of examples of pure religion and defiled religion.

Pure: In verse 27, James gives us an example of pure religion when he says, “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.” In verse 26, James gives us the contrasting example of defiled religion when he says, Defiled: “If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person’s religion is worthless.”

Widows and orphans were the weakest people in the context of James’ audience. They needed help for sustenance and support. James is calling for his audience to display pure religion by caring for the weak and needy among them. James is calling for his people to live selfless and care for others. Scripture is replete will calls for this.

One simple way to live out this example of pure religion is to call up or visit those who might be lonely in your context with all of the social isolation from COVID. For example, there is a man who is a member of PV who is in a nursing home. Because of the current regulations he can’t have any visitors. What’s worse is that none of his family calls him. He’s totally alone. I’ve been able to talk and pray with him on the phone lately. The calls are short; maybe 10 minutes or less, but they mean the world to him. That’s an easy way to love the needy in your context. You can do the same. There are people in your life, maybe even some of you here tonight, who feel alone and isolated who would love for someone to show genuine care for them by connecting with them calling them up, or meeting them for coffee. We can all do that and live out pure religion.

One example where we see the clash of this conflicting view of pure and defiled religion is in how many people, especially our generation, handle causes on social media. It’s so easy for us to share a post or an Insta-Story about an important cause. It’s a lot harder for us to do something deeply productive about it. It all we do is share posts, we may feel righteous and appear be righteous, but we haven’t actually done anything to help those around us. I’ve absolutely be convicted by this before. How many posts have I shared without actually doing anything to help the need at hand? At that point, I’m essentially just signaling to people that I want them to know I have right beliefs and nothing more. At that point, I’m just uttered out things on social media and not bridling my social media tongue. At that point…I’m no different than the Pharisees. The Pharisees were great at saying all of the right things and doing things so that people would know they had the right beliefs and yet they never truly lived those beliefs out. May the same never be said of us. I’m not saying we can never share things if we don’t immediately act, but if we consistently share posts like that and rarely if ever actually act to bring about change and help then we should claim to really believe those things we share.

Now let’s look to our next pair of examples of pure and defiled religion.

Pure: In verse 19, James gives this example of pure religion: “let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger.” Defiled: Then in verse 20, James describes what leads to defiled religion when he says “the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God”

If there was ever a word for 2020 it would be verses 19 and 20: “let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.”

2020 has been a year of unbridled tongues and lots of anger. All it takes is a quick scroll through social media to see that. Every coming day provides a new opportunity for the eruption of anger. Pastor Jerry talked about this in his message this past Sunday. This an angry and anxious time. Are we feeding into that anger and anxiousness?

Now there are a lot of examples of anger I could point to an examples, but for our purposes tonight I’ll just point to one; it’s a bit on the nose…literally.

Masks have been the source of unspeakable anger recently. To be honest, let’s have the sense of humor to be able to say that if you would have told us 10 years ago that one of the biggest cultural debates of our time would be about masks we all would have laughed in disbelief. People on all sides of the debate are angry. We’re not just angry about whether or not masks are being worn, we’re angry about the responses of others to the debate. People blast one another about it from vastly different perspectives. I’ve literally been on phone calls where people have yelled and vented about masks from exactly opposite perspectives. And all of this is made harder by the fact that everything is politicized these days. Nothing is allowed to be apolitical and everything is assumed to have a political motive. That makes peace almost impossible. I don’t bring any of this up to make a political point or to advocate for particular beliefs even though I have them. My point is this: I would be willing to bet that the vast majority of us, if not all of us, have disobeyed James’ words to be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger. If not in public, then we’ve probably done it in a private conversation as we’re blasted someone who disagrees with us. I know I’ve broken this in private conversations and for that I’ve had to repent. Many of us have defiled our religion on this issue. We’ve been “hearers” of the Word of God but not “doers.” I’m not saying you have to agree with those you disagree with on this issue, but I am saying this: (continued on next page)

the Bible commands us to treat our neighbors as people made in the image of God. We are supposed to love our neighbors. In order to do that we must work to assume that they have the best of intentions until given explicit reason to believe otherwise. We must be willing to respectfully talk with them and listen to their perspective. One of the best ways to slow your anger be quick to listen is to work to understand opposite perspectives, no matter how much you disagree with those views. We must be “quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger.” The best way to change someone’s mind on this issue, or any issue, is not by yelling at them or berating them on social media. It’s by having respectful conversation with them to the best of our ability. And where we’re not able to do so, we should hold our tongue or typing fingers. We forfeit and defile our Christian witness when we let the anger of man take over us when we berate others. And if you can feel yourself welling up with anger and anxiety just at the mention of masks right now, that’s a sign that you probably need to work more at this. I know I do. Since masks will probably be part of our daily reality for the foreseeable future, maybe even for 12 or 18 months or more, we should work to foster our witness and pure religion by being “quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger.”

Let’s move to our next set of contrasting examples of pure and defiled religion.

Pure: For our next example of pure religion James says in verse 21 to “put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.” James goes on to describe this example of pure religion in 25 by saying that, “the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.” Defiled: The defiled example of religion is exactly what James says in verse 21, namely “all filthiness and rampant wickedness.” To partake in “all filthiness and rampant wickedness” is to reject God’s perfect law of liberty and to be a hearer of the Word only rather than a doer.

Rather than embracing sin and the ways of the world, which is contrary to God’s Word, are should “receive with meekness the implanted word which is able to save our souls.” Receiving the implanted word with meekness means to humbly accept and live out God’s commands in his law. Like we just heard, James describes this law as the law of perfect liberty. Now we don’t often think of laws as freeing. We usually think of them as restricting our freedom rather than increasing them. But that’s not what the Bible says. Ironically, the logic of the Bible is that when we reject God’s law we are enslaved to sin and “all filthiness and rampant wickedness.” It is only when we embrace God’s law and live it out that we are truly made free. God’s laws are not meant to kill joy but foster it. Puritan preacher Thomas Manton puts it this way: “God never requires something of you that is not for your own benefit.” God created us for joy and flourishing. He knows what we need better than we do. He sent His very own Son for us so that we could have joy and peace for all of eternity. That means that we can trust him in whatever He says. His laws and wisdom are not meant to constrict us but to make us flourish. Think about how differently we might view God’s Word and fighting sin if we saw things in that light. It would change everything. Everything we’ve talked about from God’s Word tonight is for your joy and flourishing and will help you foster pure religion that pleases God.

Group Question 4:

I want us to take a second and pause to talk about ways that you can live out pure religion in your own lives related to the examples of pure and defiled religion we’ve just talked about. It’s doesn’t have to be masks or social media or those things in particular, but rather related to the broader categories we discussed of caring for the needy, living selflessly, and being slow to anger and quick to listen and following God’s perfect law of liberty. How can you live out pure religion? How might you be living out defiled religion?

Our final set of contrasting examples of pure and defiled religions goes back to where we started:

Pure: Pure religion is to be “be doers of the word, and not hearers only. Defiled: Defiled religion is to be “hearers [of the Word] only, deceiving ourselves.”

May we seek to not just hear God’s Word but to actually live it out. If we all actually did that it could change the world.

So will you hear the words of God from this message and immediately forget them when you walk out of the door tonight or will you live them out?

Conclusion

(Referencing the Charles Swindoll Illustration): “Letters, Lord? We got every one of them. We even meet every Thursday to discuss them and hear them explained. We sing about them and hear them proclaimed on Sunday mornings and on podcasts and studies.” To which God will say, “I’m so glad you’ve received my letters. I’m so glad you’ve studied them and meditated on them. But did you obey them? Did you live them out?”

Pray