Scripture: James 1:19-27

Rev. John W. Fowler

The Book of James is a letter of practical Christianity written by one of the brothers of our Lord Jesus, who, although he came to faith in Christ later in life, certainly grew up seeing Christianity modeled, lived in the family, in the carpenter shop and in His preaching ministry. In this second part of the first chapter, James begins to speak, really, what is the heart of this letter, that is, that if we profess Christianity, we should act like it. If we hear the word, we should not just be hearers of the word; we should be doers of the word. We should practice what we preach. One of the best ways to do that is through the reading and hearing of the Holy Scriptures, but also in the putting it into practice. Verse 19 James writes:

You’ve probably done it; I certainly do, from time to time. You get ready in a hurry and you don’t allow you enough time to get dressed and everything you need to do before you get into the car and go, whether to school or to work, but you have a deadline and need to be there. And so, I thought I was well prepared to go, to come here to the church. I showered and looked in the mirror; I combed my hair, I know that, and I had to put my contacts in because I wouldn’t even know where the car was if I didn’t have those in, much less be able to drive it. But as I took off in a hurry, I noticed in the rear view mirror, about half way here, that it looked like I had a little more shadow, kind of like a five o’clock shadow when I hadn’t shaved, but it was eight o’clock in the morning. And then I began to wonder, did I shave? And I couldn’t remember. And then I started to rub my chin and I realized that it was kind of scruffy, and so I thought, well, I don’t want to embarrass the people here at First Methodist; I don’t want your preacher looking rough like it was a hard night, or something, and so I pulled into the grocery store and got some shaving cream and a razor and came in here. I guess I looked rough to the construction people but one of the great things though: I have my own bathroom. You know, a preacher has really arrived when he has his own bathroom. And so I shaved and I really didn’t embarrass you for too long. But if I hadn’t looked in the mirror, there is just no telling. Everybody I had seen that day — well, I wonder why he’s not shaving; maybe he’s growing a beard; I don’t know. But when we read the scriptures and hear the word of God, but then we don’t put it into practice, it is like a man who looks in a mirror and then he just forgets what he looks like. It doesn’t change him at all. It’s just like hearing a sermon, “Aw, it was a good sermon; it was only twenty minutes; we got out before twelve; it was of God — I mean it was great.” But then, what are you going to do about it? How are you going to put it into practice? You go into Sunday School. You hear the lesson. You think: You know, I really should do that, but then you don’t do anything.

At one church I preached, they used to say, “Boy, you really stepped on my toes today,” and that was a compliment; I know that is the way it was intended, but sometimes I used to think: The only problem about stepping on toes, their foot’s going to be just fine by the time they get in the car and go home. The difference really comes about when we actually make up our minds that, this is God’s word; we are going to put it into practice.

How can we be blessed by this Bible? How can we do more than just feel guilty that we don’t read it enough? But even more so that we don’t really put it into practice like we’d like to. James says, When we put this word into practice, that we are not just hearers of the word, but doers of the word. We would be blessed.

I want to share with you what James says about how you can be blessed by the reading, the hearing, and the heeding of God’s Holy Word. First of all, there is step one. It is preparation. James says if we are going to hear God’s word, first of all, he says, we need to be quick to listen. Quick to listen. On the news it said that someone called 9-1-1. What they got was snoring. They weren’t listening. That’s not good when 9-1-1 is not listening.

He says that, first of all, we need to pay attention in our preparation. The Olympics are coming and Greece has had a lot of pressure to get ready, and they are going to be ready because the Olympics are coming so they have to be ready. I was reading about one woman who has been getting ready for the Marathon for this past year, running some one hundred and ten miles a week, if you can imagine, but she wants to be ready when she comes to the starting line and wants to be able to finish and finish well.

One of the ways that we especially prepare to listen to God’s word is to be quiet and still and listen and learn to listen to God. When we get quiet we pay attention. And then secondly, we are slow to speak. Sometimes when I pray, I am quick to start speaking and I realize, sometimes I am talking too much. I need to take time to just listen and pray before I read the scriptures. We should be slow to speak.

And then, we also should be slow to become angry. Sometimes there is anger in our lives and, really, it hinders us from hearing God. Cain killed Abel — brothers — and the first murder in the Bible. What happened? Anger got out of control. Cain killed his brother out of jealously, but God warned him that “sin is crouching at your door. It’s desire is to have you, Cain, but you must master it.” But he didn’t take the warning and anger took a hold of him.

Moses’ temper got him into trouble when he took matters into his own hands and killed the Egyptian and had to flee into the wilderness. It also got him into trouble when he got mad at the rock and just hit it, and God would not let him go into the Promised Land. Think about that. Sometimes when there is anger in your life and you haven't brought it to God, it’s hard to hear. It’s hard to hear what God is trying to tell you. And then, He also tells us that we need to do some housecleaning. Some people enjoy housecleaning; a lot of people don’t like housecleaning. We need a spiritual housecleaning, that is, that we need …….(tape change)

...God to cleanse us when we pray, that if He brings up sin to our mind, we don’t just feel bad and guilty and leave it at that, but we are grateful that Jesus died on the cross to forgive us of our sins.

So, we prepare our hearts to hear God’s word. It is the blessing of those who prepare their hearts to hear God’s word. Jesus said this in the parable of the sower. In Matthew 13, He said it this way:

“A farmer went out to sow his seed. 4As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. 5Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. 6But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. 7Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. 8Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop--a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. 9He who has ears, let him hear," said Jesus.

And oftentimes His disciples would say, “Lord, that’s a great story, but what does it mean?”

So He explained it to them. In verse 18 it says,

We prepare our hearts to listen to God’s word by being quiet and listening, by not being so quick to speak, by asking God to deal with any anger in our life — or any sin for that matter — when we prepare to listen to Him.

Step 2 is an examination — that is, we don’t just glance at God’s word; we examine it and we let His word examine us. In verse 22, James says it this way:

How many times have you gone on a diet, and you got a book, like I did — I got the South Beach Diet book, maybe about a year ago — and I paid good money for it and read a chapter or two, but you know, when people start messing with my bread, I just put the book down and go on to the next diet; there’s got to be a better way. But you know, it doesn’t do you a lot of good, does it? I mean, just because you bought the book doesn’t make you any thinner or healthier. Just like exercise machines: they sell well in January; by February, sometimes, they are on the curb because nobody wants to have them. We need to put it into practice. And that’s what our Christianity is for. It’s one thing to be able to profess what you believe. It’s another thing, though, to really put it into practice, and that’s what James says. We hear his word and then we want to do it. He says,

One of the things you are going to find out when you get your picture made for the pictorial directory is that you may have aged a little bit since the last directory. But that’s alright. This is a good looking congregation, so you don’t need to worry about that. I remember when it first dawned on me — I guess it was about ten years ago — that my hair wasn’t dark brown anymore. I still have on my driver’s license that it is brown, but I know that next year when I go to get a license, it will just be a flat out lie if I say that again. The first time it dawned on me was going through the drive-through and noticing that the coffee and the biscuit I got didn’t cost that much. And then, one of my children started laughing and saying, “Well, they gave you the senior citizen discount.” That’s a sign that maybe your hair is getting gray. And I remember another time, stopping in the bathroom when visiting in the hospital, and thinking — Gosh, there’s something strange with this mirror; my hair looks so gray; it must be the light on it. And sometimes it’s just still hard to accept what you see in the mirror.

James says though that those who don’t put God’s word into practice are like those who look in the mirror and then they forget what they look like. But then he talks about the blessing of those who put those words into practice. He says:

Last summer they had this swan show where these ladies competed to be able to have this great makeover. I thought it was misnamed. I thought the name of the show should be How Much Pain Can You Endure? because they didn’t just get a personal trainer and their hair done. I mean, all this plastic surgery, I mean, you are talking about head to toe body makeover. It was just incredible. And then, if you saw the show, they would come and they say they hadn’t looked in the mirror all this time, which I found that hard to believe, if you had that much done to you and hadn’t looked in the mirror all that time, apparently hadn’t looked in the mirror since the makeover started, and they would come up before this gigantic mirror, it draped, and then, dramatically, it parts and they see themselves for the first time. And of course, they are emotional because they are not only pleased, but just overwhelmed with the change in the physical appearance.

What James is saying is that, spiritually, that’s what can happen with God’s word when we really read it and allow it to change us, that there will be a spiritual transformation and we will be blessed by it. The Word examines our hearts. We read about the Good Samaritan. Jesus was asked by someone, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” And He says, “How do you read it?”

And he said, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.”

Jesus said, “Do this and you shall live.”

And then he said, “Well, who is my neighbor? I mean, how does this really work out practically?”

And Jesus said, “Well, there was a man who was going down the road to Jericho. He fell among thieves, robbers. They beat him, left him half dead and really desperate. Two religious people came by, separately. Both of them passed by on the other side; whether they were too busy or didn’t want to get involved, we don’t know, but they didn’t do anything. Then a Samaritan, one who normally wouldn’t even have anything to do with a Jew, stopped, put the man on his animal, took him to the inn, helped him.” He said, “Well now, who was a neighbor to the man?”

He said, “Well, I guess the one who showed mercy.”

He told him to go and do likewise. That’s what happens when God’s Word starts to fill our lives. We begin to have mercy for other people. We begin to truly practice what Jesus said: to do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Jesus told the story of a man who had two sons and one went into a far country. Riotous living. He came back home; he came to himself. His father was thrilled. He threw a party. His older brother was not thrilled; he was upset. Why did Jesus tell that story? Because people were asking Jesus, “Why do you spend time with sinners, tax collectors? Why do you eat with them?”

“Well, because God loves lost people, simple as that.”

We allow the word to examine our hearts and lives, to encourage us, to challenge us to godly living, to correct sinful habits, but to raise the standard: Do we want to be like Christ?

And then there is the application. There is the preparation, the examination, and then there is the application. What does it look like when we truly put God’s word into practice? Well, three things, according to James. First of all, it’s going to show up in your speech. And James says this in other places. In Chapter 3 he is going to talk a lot about “taming the tongue,” almost like taming an animal is like taming the tongue. He says it this way,

A lot of damage can be done to a Christian witness if we have a reputation to gossip, if we have a reputation to lie. We need to have people of integrity. We need to have conversation that reflects that Christ lives in our hearts. We watch our speech and it will make a difference. And then, if we look after those in need. He says,

My mother lives in Asbury Care at the Methodist Home in Charlotte and when I go there I am proud, not only of the Methodist Home, but the Methodists in general are very compassionate with their homes for the aged. In fact, it is very well done and very caring and I am always impressed with those people who care for my mother.

Or I think of orphans. I think of our Children's Home that began in the early part of the last century, back when there was, I believe, a ‘flu epidemic and many children were orphaned, and still that is a great ministry. But Christianity at it’s heart, you really can see if it is real and genuine if the people who are most vulnerable are being shown mercy. Are they being taken shown mercy? Do people take time for them? Do we care?

And then, also he says to watch out for pollution. He says, . . .and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

When Lot went to Sodom, Lot did not change Sodom. Sodom changed him and he allowed the ungodly world around him to change him and his family, and he was just barely saved, with his daughters. That’s why Paul said,

What does it look like? Well, it especially will show up in your family. Jesus said it this way after he finished the Sermon on the Mount: If you put the words into practice, about having these blessed attitudes of not worrying, about not judging others — but you know, you go back and read the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5,6 and 7 — or any words of Jesus, for that matter. He said it is like a house that is built upon a rock and when the storms come, that house will stand. That’s the difference it makes when we really put God’s Word into practice. It makes a difference. Christ opens the door; He comes into the home and He is welcome and He is there and it is obvious, unlike the house on sand that when the storms come, it falls because the foundation is not sure. Jesus tells us we ought to put these words into practice and if we do we will be blessed.

In Mutiny on the Bounty, the story in 1788, Captain William Bligh set sail for Tahiti with his men in the south seas, and after ten months they arrived there. It was time to embark but the men liked the native girls; they didn’t want to leave. They had a disagreement and Captain Bligh and a few men got set adrift in a little boat. The men — the mutineers — stayed. Captain Bligh finally got back home and they sent out a punitive expedition and they did catch a lot of the mutineers but nine of them moved over to another island and set up their own colony and basically it was just hell on earth because original sin was just alive and well and just went its course. They also discovered how to make whiskey and they drank a lot of it, and so murder, immorality, you name it, and finally of those nine who went over there, eight had been killed or died off. The only one left was Alexander Smith. He was left alone with a crowd of women and children, but then he made a discovery: In this old chest, this battered chest, he discovered a Bible. And he got the Bible out and began to read it. As he read, he believed it. He became a Christian and determined to make amends for the evil ways of his life. He determined to teach everyone this book and this Christ that he spoke of. So much so that these young people grew up to be Christians and became a very Christian community. And some twenty years later, when an American ship came by, their comment was it was one of the most Christian places they had ever been. Why? Because they discovered The Book. But they did more than read it: they put it into practice. The blessing will still come today when we make up our minds, not just to be hearers of the Word, but doers of the Word. Let us pray.