Sermon Tone Analysis

Real Righteousness

James 1:19-21

Good morning again everyone!

Welcome to the Baptist Fellowship of Randolph.

We are so glad that you chose to worship here this morning.

I want to take a moment to remind each of us that we are collecting an offering on Easter Sunday called the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering.

This is an offering where 100% of the proceeds go to support missionaries across North America in activities such as church planting, church revitalization, support ministries and much more.

Please turn your attention to the screen for a short Video.

Great!

Please make plans to give sacrificially this Easter.

Our goal as a church $1000.

We are going to continue our study in James this morning.

We have looked at the first 18 versus of the first chapter.

We have talked about facing Storms, how to deal with the trials of life that God might send our way.

We discussed how those trials are what make us stronger and how God refines us and teaches us to grow as His children.

We learned that we need to be still and seek his wisdom during a trial.

We also learned about temptation that may come into our lives.

We discovered that God never sends temptation.

Temptation always comes from either an external source, Satan, or internally, from within ourselves because of our sin nature we were born with.

The best way to deal with Temptation is to remove what we can and flee from the rest.

When we fall into temptation and succumb, we must confess that to God and claim victory over it through the blood of Christ.

Repent and turn away from our sin and start over in Jesus.

This week we are moving on to the next part of the book of James.

Remember, James wrote this book originally as a letter to maturing Jewish Christians who had left Jerusalem and had settled to the east and south of Israel.

It is written in many ways in the form of a letter of proverbs.

If you are reading it and seems to be jumping around a bit, go and read a few chapters of Solomon’s Proverbs, it will have a similar feel to it.

Speaking of reading… How are you doing in our challenge?

Did you make it through James 5 times?

6 Times?

Maybe Seven times this week?

Keep up the good work!

What jumped out at you that was new this week?

Let’s look at the next few verses.

Ok, so James, as we have discussed, starts this letter reminding these believers, who were going through some really tough times, Roman persecution, Jewish persecution, losing their homes, trying to learn a new religious system without a lot of clear direction or instruction… all of these things, James starts out telling them to count their trials as Joy!

He encourages them by telling them that their trials are evidence that God is at work and is doing a great work in them.

But then he also encourages them to not confuse their difficulties caused by temptations, , with trials from God Temptations are self-inflicted difficulties.

James then starts talking about what might produce the righteousness of God in our lives.

James really loves to focus on the opposites.

He likes to compare and contrast.

Trials sent by God, Temptation sent by Satan.

Anger of Man, Righteousness of God.

What is he doing here?

I believe that He is building an introduction in this first chapter of this letter that the rest of the text will rest upon as a foundation.

He is showing us that it is impossible to count it all joy, it is impossible to flee temptation, it is impossible to control anger, it is impossible to know the righteousness of God; without the Salvation.

Many people in church struggle with anger and do not know why they cannot have victory.

Many people in church struggle with temptation and sin and do not know why they cannot seem to overcome.

Many people in church cannot find any joy to celebrate.

Many people in church do not understand these writings in James because the truth is, while they are physically in the church, they are not spiritually saved.

They do not have the power of the Holy Spirit in their lives.

They have never experienced spiritual rebirth.

Jesus Said

I think that is what James is hinting at here to these early Christians.

Many people inside the church walls around our country, perhaps in our own church walls, do not know Jesus Christ as their personal Savior.

James is teaching that it really depends on what you do with the Word of God.

Let’s look at the text and break it out a bit.

These verses and the rest of this chapter teach us that we have three responsibilities toward God’s Word.

We are only going to have time to get the first one today, we will get to the other two next week.

First, We must Receive the Word of God.

In verse 21 James calls God’s Word the “implanted word.”

It is possible that he is referring to and remembering Jesus’ parable of the sower.

Let us look at that for a moment.

“In His parable, Jesus described four kinds of hearts:

The Hard Heart

which did not understand or receive the Word and therefore bore no fruit;

The Shallow Heart

which was very emotional but had no depth, and bore no fruit;

The Crowded Heart

which lacked repentance and permitted sin to crowd out the Word; and

The Fruitful Heart

which received the Word, allowed it to take root, and produced a harvest of fruit.

The final test of salvation is fruit.

This means a changed life, Christian character and conduct, and ministry to others in the glory of God.” [4] If you are Christian, you will bear fruit!

If you are not bearing fruit, is doubtful that you have a meaningful saving relationship with Jesus Christ.

The rest of James speaks of this exact thing.

We will start looking that in the weeks to come.

It is obvious that if we are to have a relationship with God, if we are to be born again, if we are to experience the righteousness of God, we must have a fruitful heart.

“The soil of the heart must be prepared to receive the Word.

If we have unconfessed sin in our hearts, and bitterness against God because of our trials, then we cannot receive the Word and be blessed by it.”[5]

James gives us subtle instructions on how prepare our hearts and our minds to be receptive to the Word of God.

James tells us

We must be swift to Hear the Word of God.

let every person be quick to hear

We have to make sure that we are making an effort to receive God’s Word in the right way.

It has been pointed out that Jesus not only told His followers to be careful of what they heard (Mark 4) but to also be careful of how they heard it!

(Luke 8) Jesus told us in Matthew 13 that many look but do not see, they hear but do not listen.

So often, we sit in church, listen to sermons, listen to Sunday School lessons, listen to God’s Word being read, and it has no impact.

We listen but do not hear.

We, for whatever reason, whatever excuse, do not allow ourselves to be well worked ground.

When I was a freshman in college, all freshmen had to take an orientation class.

Now in this class there were no grades.

All you had to do was show up and at least look like you were awake.

There were no tests, there were no notes to take, there were near zero obligations.

Show up and you pass.

I think there are many people who treat church the same way.

Like an orientation class, or like a class they are auditing.

They want credit for showing up and that is it.

The minute that something might be required of them, the second that they get a little uncomfortable, they leave to find another class to audit that they like better.

We often refuse to apply the Word, to allow it to take root and create actions.

“He wants us to absorb his message and change our lives because of it.”[6]

Paul wrote to the Romans, So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.