Guard Against A Dead Christianity
Text: James 1:19-25
19 Know this word of truth, my beloved brothers. Moreover, let every person be swift to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; 20 for the wrath of man does not bring about the righteousness of God. 21 Therefore having rid yourselves of all moral filthiness and the superabundance of evil qualities, humbly accept the word planted in you, which is able to save your souls. 22 And always be doers of the word and not only hearers who deceive themselves. 23 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, this person is like a man who looks attentively at his natural face in a mirror; 24 you see, he looked attentively at himself and went away and immediately forgot what sort of a man he was! 25 But the one who stoops down to look carefully into the complete law, the law of liberty, and remains beside it, not being a forgetful hearer but an actual doer, this person will be blessed in what he does.
Sermon:
A characteristic common to all of us is the loss of our initial enthusiasm. This is because our sinful nature quickly tires of what we have in the present and desires what we do not have. So we lose the excitement we had at first. In other words, the novelty wears off.
All of us have seen the children’s excitement at Christmas. Their eyes light up when they see their gifts. They play with their new toys for hours at a time. But after a few days, or a week, the novelty wears off. They lose interest in those new toys, dolls, and games, which end up lying in a corner of the closet untouched, and desire something else.
We adults are no different. I once talked with a neighbor who told me that some years before he had purchased a new boat. The first year, he said, his family went to the lake nearly every week. The following year they used the boat only a few times. After that the boat sat in their back yard unused. He then sold it. What had happened to him and his family? Their initial enthusiasm wore off and they lost interest in the boat.
Something like this has probably happened to us as well. When we purchased a new car, or computer, or whatever it was, we were quite excited about it. After a time, however, the novelty wore off and we lost our initial interest in it.
Unless we are careful, such loss of interest and enthusiasm can carry over into our Christianity as well. The initial joy of the gospel and our love for Christ, who saved us and gave us eternal life, can wear off. The message of Christ and the promise of salvation can become “old hat.” We can slip into coming to church where we hear the good news of God’s grace in Christ and yawn, like someone who is bored, “So what else is new?” In time Christianity can become a mere outward habit of going to church. Christianity can become a matter of the head but the heart is not in it, as it was with the Jews, about whom the Lord said in Matthew 15:8: “THIS PEOPLE HONORS ME WITH THEIR LIPS, BUT THEIR HEART IS FAR FROM ME.” This happened to the Christians in ancient Ephesus, to whom Christ wrote in Revelation 2:4, 5: “But I have against you that you have abandoned your first love. Keep remembering, therefore, from where you have fallen, and repent and begin to do the deeds you did at first; otherwise I am coming to you and I will remove your lampstand out of its place – unless you repent.”
The Lord in his graciousness has opened our ears to hear and our eyes to see his gospel of salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. This sermon text encourages us to continue in the faith to which we were brought and warns us against losing our commitment to our Lord Jesus Christ and his Word. We are encouraged: “Guard Against A Dead Christianity. Humbly Accept The Word Planted In You. Do What The Word Says.”
James wrote for our learning: “Let every person be swift to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the wrath of man does not bring about the righteousness of God. Therefore having rid yourselves of all moral filthiness and the superabundance of evil qualities, humbly accept the word planted in you, which is able to save your souls.”
Heeding this word of our Lord, let us put away the sin in our life and believe the gospel of Jesus Christ, which has been planted in our hearts for our salvation. Our Lord urges us to get rid of all the moral filth and evil that is so commonplace in the world around us: the greed; the drunkenness; the sexually explicit magazines and videos; the internet pornography; the filthy language; the immorality; the dishonesty and cheating; the squabbling and fighting; and whatever else might be mentioned. This text specifically mentions the sin of unwarranted anger and the loss of one’s temper. Such abusive anger and temper tantrums do not bring about the righteous life that God wants to see in us.
Frequently sinful anger flares up in our Christian homes over the least little things. Someone in the family says or does something that ignites a sharp response from another family member. A simple misunderstanding of what was said, or someone’s not listening closely to what was said, sets off a family squabble that escalates into the banging of pots in the kitchen sink and the slamming of doors that rattles the whole house. Someone’s bad day that has brought one frustration after another erupts like a fiery volcano into an unleashing of red-hot anger and burning wrath that spews ashen words over everyone and everything in the house. Even the dog runs for cover and cowers under a chair. Such heated anger and unleashed tempers do not bring about the righteous life we are supposed to live as the Lord’s redeemed children who are righteous by faith.
Surely no one enjoys having their home ripped apart by bitterness, arguments, and fights. These things happen, however, when anger gains the upper hand so that the family communication breaks down. Family communication cannot exist where, because of anger, no one is listening to anyone else, and everyone is interrupting everyone else, and everyone is jumping to conclusions before the other person can finish what he is saying, and everyone is talking and yelling and arguing at the same time. Such a situation is chaos, not communication.
Our Lord has the solution for preserving our family communication that will maintain the peace and harmony we desire in our homes and the righteousness our Lord desires in us. He says that we all should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger. We should be quick to listen, that is, quick to bite our tongues and say nothing, in order to hear the other person out. Rather than jump to conclusions and interrupt, we should hear what the other person has to say and think it through before responding. As the Lord says, we should be slow to speak. When we are slow to speak, we take the time to think through what we will say before we say it, rather than just blurt out whatever comes to mind. When we blurt out whatever comes to mind, we run off at the mouth before engaging our brain and put our foot in our mouth.
We know these things. If we would only remember to do them when we need to do them. But we don’t. Our sinful nature has a hair trigger. Before we realize it, we have already opened our mouths and added fuel to the fires of anger, fanning the simple misunderstanding or disagreement into a heated argument. Spiritually we are weak and impatient. Let’s repent of our sinful behavior and pray for the patience and self-control that will enable us to be quick to listen and slow to speak.
Being the sinners that we are, let’s humble ourselves before God and accept his Word, which has been planted in us, for it can save us. His saving Word tells us in 1 John 2:1, 2: “My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. And yet if someone actually does sin, we have One who pleads our case with the Father – Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. And he himself is the appeasing sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.”
We have sinned. But Jesus Christ, who was without sin himself and who gave his innocent life into death as the price for our sins, now sits at the right hand of God pleading our case as our defense attorney. As our advocate and high priest he pleads, “Father, forgive them, for I fulfilled the law as their substitute and suffered the punishment of their sins. Forgive their sins for my sake and do not hold their sins against them.”
This gospel of Jesus’ paying for our sins and reconciling us to God has been planted in our hearts in the past. Do we believe it today as we did when we first heard it? Do we still rejoice in it now as we once did? Or, has the novelty worn off, so that now it is only a head knowledge that is not heart felt? Our Christianity has not become a dead Christianity, has it? Do we know what the Word says but we do not take it to heart by putting our trust in it and finding comfort in it? Let us guard ourselves against a dead Christianity by humbly believing the gospel of salvation that has been planted in us and then doing what the Word says.
Our Lord says in the text for this sermon: “And always be doers of the word and not only hearers who deceive themselves.” We are not to merely listen to God's Word, and in the process deceive ourselves by thinking that merely listening to God's Word makes us the kind of Christian we should be. No, the Lord tells us to do what it says. Merely listening to the Word without taking it to heart and doing what it says profits us nothing. The devil himself has heard the Word and can even quote it. Yet it does him no good. Likewise, the Pharisees heard the Word Jesus preached, but it profited them nothing, for they did not do what it said, namely repent of their self-righteous ways and sinful pride and believe in Jesus to be saved. If like them, we merely listen to the Word but fail to do what it says, thinking that in itself is enough for a God-pleasing Christianity, we are deceiving ourselves.
God's Word says: “For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, this person is like a man who looks attentively at his natural face in a mirror; you see, he looked attentively at himself and went away and immediately forgot what sort of a man he was!” We probably looked at ourselves in a mirror today. When we walked away, we forgot about the image of ourselves to concentrate on something else. Let’s not allow our Christianity to become like our looking in a mirror. Let’s guard ourselves against hearing his Word one moment and forgetting it the next. Let’s be careful that our hearing the Word does not become like an air duct with God’s Word going in one ear and immediately out the other, at no time sinking down into our heart to take root there. Let us ask ourselves: “Do I love the Lord’s Word and do what it says as I first did,” or, “have I lost that initial attachment and commitment to it?”
The last verse of the text for this sermon says: “But the one who stoops down to look carefully into the complete law, the law of liberty, and remains beside it, not being a forgetful hearer but an actual doer, this person will be blessed in what he does.” The law of God when we follow it by faith frees us from the devil’s temptations and sin to serve our Savior God in the righteous living that he desires. When we hear that Word, not forgetting it but actually doing it, we are blessed in what we do. The Lord’s blessing rests on us and we find blessedness in doing what the Lord says.
So beginning now let us look intently into the Word of God that gives us freedom. In doing so, we will be taking the path to preserve our living faith for our salvation and to guard ourselves against a dead Christianity. We will be humbly accepting the Word planted in us and then doing what it says.
Amen.
19 Know this word of truth, my beloved brothers. Moreover, let every person be swift to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; 20 for the wrath of man does not bring about the righteousness of God. 21 Therefore having rid yourselves of all moral filthiness and the superabundance of evil qualities, humbly accept the word planted in you, which is able to save your souls. 22 And always be doers of the word and not only hearers who deceive themselves. 23 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, this person is like a man who looks attentively at his natural face in a mirror; 24 you see, he looked attentively at himself and went away and immediately forgot what sort of a man he was! 25 But the one who stoops down to look carefully into the complete law, the law of liberty, and remains beside it, not being a forgetful hearer but an actual doer, this person will be blessed in what he does.
Sermon:
A characteristic common to all of us is the loss of our initial enthusiasm. This is because our sinful nature quickly tires of what we have in the present and desires what we do not have. So we lose the excitement we had at first. In other words, the novelty wears off.
All of us have seen the children’s excitement at Christmas. Their eyes light up when they see their gifts. They play with their new toys for hours at a time. But after a few days, or a week, the novelty wears off. They lose interest in those new toys, dolls, and games, which end up lying in a corner of the closet untouched, and desire something else.
We adults are no different. I once talked with a neighbor who told me that some years before he had purchased a new boat. The first year, he said, his family went to the lake nearly every week. The following year they used the boat only a few times. After that the boat sat in their back yard unused. He then sold it. What had happened to him and his family? Their initial enthusiasm wore off and they lost interest in the boat.
Something like this has probably happened to us as well. When we purchased a new car, or computer, or whatever it was, we were quite excited about it. After a time, however, the novelty wore off and we lost our initial interest in it.
Unless we are careful, such loss of interest and enthusiasm can carry over into our Christianity as well. The initial joy of the gospel and our love for Christ, who saved us and gave us eternal life, can wear off. The message of Christ and the promise of salvation can become “old hat.” We can slip into coming to church where we hear the good news of God’s grace in Christ and yawn, like someone who is bored, “So what else is new?” In time Christianity can become a mere outward habit of going to church. Christianity can become a matter of the head but the heart is not in it, as it was with the Jews, about whom the Lord said in Matthew 15:8: “THIS PEOPLE HONORS ME WITH THEIR LIPS, BUT THEIR HEART IS FAR FROM ME.” This happened to the Christians in ancient Ephesus, to whom Christ wrote in Revelation 2:4, 5: “But I have against you that you have abandoned your first love. Keep remembering, therefore, from where you have fallen, and repent and begin to do the deeds you did at first; otherwise I am coming to you and I will remove your lampstand out of its place – unless you repent.”
The Lord in his graciousness has opened our ears to hear and our eyes to see his gospel of salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. This sermon text encourages us to continue in the faith to which we were brought and warns us against losing our commitment to our Lord Jesus Christ and his Word. We are encouraged: “Guard Against A Dead Christianity. Humbly Accept The Word Planted In You. Do What The Word Says.”
James wrote for our learning: “Let every person be swift to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the wrath of man does not bring about the righteousness of God. Therefore having rid yourselves of all moral filthiness and the superabundance of evil qualities, humbly accept the word planted in you, which is able to save your souls.”
Heeding this word of our Lord, let us put away the sin in our life and believe the gospel of Jesus Christ, which has been planted in our hearts for our salvation. Our Lord urges us to get rid of all the moral filth and evil that is so commonplace in the world around us: the greed; the drunkenness; the sexually explicit magazines and videos; the internet pornography; the filthy language; the immorality; the dishonesty and cheating; the squabbling and fighting; and whatever else might be mentioned. This text specifically mentions the sin of unwarranted anger and the loss of one’s temper. Such abusive anger and temper tantrums do not bring about the righteous life that God wants to see in us.
Frequently sinful anger flares up in our Christian homes over the least little things. Someone in the family says or does something that ignites a sharp response from another family member. A simple misunderstanding of what was said, or someone’s not listening closely to what was said, sets off a family squabble that escalates into the banging of pots in the kitchen sink and the slamming of doors that rattles the whole house. Someone’s bad day that has brought one frustration after another erupts like a fiery volcano into an unleashing of red-hot anger and burning wrath that spews ashen words over everyone and everything in the house. Even the dog runs for cover and cowers under a chair. Such heated anger and unleashed tempers do not bring about the righteous life we are supposed to live as the Lord’s redeemed children who are righteous by faith.
Surely no one enjoys having their home ripped apart by bitterness, arguments, and fights. These things happen, however, when anger gains the upper hand so that the family communication breaks down. Family communication cannot exist where, because of anger, no one is listening to anyone else, and everyone is interrupting everyone else, and everyone is jumping to conclusions before the other person can finish what he is saying, and everyone is talking and yelling and arguing at the same time. Such a situation is chaos, not communication.
Our Lord has the solution for preserving our family communication that will maintain the peace and harmony we desire in our homes and the righteousness our Lord desires in us. He says that we all should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger. We should be quick to listen, that is, quick to bite our tongues and say nothing, in order to hear the other person out. Rather than jump to conclusions and interrupt, we should hear what the other person has to say and think it through before responding. As the Lord says, we should be slow to speak. When we are slow to speak, we take the time to think through what we will say before we say it, rather than just blurt out whatever comes to mind. When we blurt out whatever comes to mind, we run off at the mouth before engaging our brain and put our foot in our mouth.
We know these things. If we would only remember to do them when we need to do them. But we don’t. Our sinful nature has a hair trigger. Before we realize it, we have already opened our mouths and added fuel to the fires of anger, fanning the simple misunderstanding or disagreement into a heated argument. Spiritually we are weak and impatient. Let’s repent of our sinful behavior and pray for the patience and self-control that will enable us to be quick to listen and slow to speak.
Being the sinners that we are, let’s humble ourselves before God and accept his Word, which has been planted in us, for it can save us. His saving Word tells us in 1 John 2:1, 2: “My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. And yet if someone actually does sin, we have One who pleads our case with the Father – Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. And he himself is the appeasing sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.”
We have sinned. But Jesus Christ, who was without sin himself and who gave his innocent life into death as the price for our sins, now sits at the right hand of God pleading our case as our defense attorney. As our advocate and high priest he pleads, “Father, forgive them, for I fulfilled the law as their substitute and suffered the punishment of their sins. Forgive their sins for my sake and do not hold their sins against them.”
This gospel of Jesus’ paying for our sins and reconciling us to God has been planted in our hearts in the past. Do we believe it today as we did when we first heard it? Do we still rejoice in it now as we once did? Or, has the novelty worn off, so that now it is only a head knowledge that is not heart felt? Our Christianity has not become a dead Christianity, has it? Do we know what the Word says but we do not take it to heart by putting our trust in it and finding comfort in it? Let us guard ourselves against a dead Christianity by humbly believing the gospel of salvation that has been planted in us and then doing what the Word says.
Our Lord says in the text for this sermon: “And always be doers of the word and not only hearers who deceive themselves.” We are not to merely listen to God's Word, and in the process deceive ourselves by thinking that merely listening to God's Word makes us the kind of Christian we should be. No, the Lord tells us to do what it says. Merely listening to the Word without taking it to heart and doing what it says profits us nothing. The devil himself has heard the Word and can even quote it. Yet it does him no good. Likewise, the Pharisees heard the Word Jesus preached, but it profited them nothing, for they did not do what it said, namely repent of their self-righteous ways and sinful pride and believe in Jesus to be saved. If like them, we merely listen to the Word but fail to do what it says, thinking that in itself is enough for a God-pleasing Christianity, we are deceiving ourselves.
God's Word says: “For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, this person is like a man who looks attentively at his natural face in a mirror; you see, he looked attentively at himself and went away and immediately forgot what sort of a man he was!” We probably looked at ourselves in a mirror today. When we walked away, we forgot about the image of ourselves to concentrate on something else. Let’s not allow our Christianity to become like our looking in a mirror. Let’s guard ourselves against hearing his Word one moment and forgetting it the next. Let’s be careful that our hearing the Word does not become like an air duct with God’s Word going in one ear and immediately out the other, at no time sinking down into our heart to take root there. Let us ask ourselves: “Do I love the Lord’s Word and do what it says as I first did,” or, “have I lost that initial attachment and commitment to it?”
The last verse of the text for this sermon says: “But the one who stoops down to look carefully into the complete law, the law of liberty, and remains beside it, not being a forgetful hearer but an actual doer, this person will be blessed in what he does.” The law of God when we follow it by faith frees us from the devil’s temptations and sin to serve our Savior God in the righteous living that he desires. When we hear that Word, not forgetting it but actually doing it, we are blessed in what we do. The Lord’s blessing rests on us and we find blessedness in doing what the Lord says.
So beginning now let us look intently into the Word of God that gives us freedom. In doing so, we will be taking the path to preserve our living faith for our salvation and to guard ourselves against a dead Christianity. We will be humbly accepting the Word planted in us and then doing what it says.
Amen.
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