[Originally preached 5 September, 2004]
James 1.19-21
The heart of our text this morning is in verse 21 where James exhorts us to ‘receive the Word’. It appears that he is building on his thought back in verse 18 when he referred to the Word of truth. While this is the key thought of the text, James buttresses it with lots of qualifiers. He wanted to be sure that his listeners understood him. It’s these qualifiers that explain this command to us. It’s these qualifiers that will help us to see more clearly what it means to ‘receive the Word’. So, our goal this morning is to understand a bit better how to obey the command of God in our text, how to ‘receive the Word’. If we can grow here, everything else will fall into place.
Let’s start with verse 21. ‘Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.’ We have here something of a contrast. On the one hand, James is telling us to put away sin; get rid of it. And then, on the other hand, he is exhorting us to receive the Word. He is connecting two aspects of being faithful. But this is not a meaningless connection. He writes this way to make a point. These two are mutually exclusive. You cannot be content to see sin in your life, doing nothing about it, and at the same time receive the Word. The two just can’t go together. Now, a person can hear the Word preached and understand the main points that are being made. In that sense, he can know what the text is teaching. But that is not the same thing as receiving the Word. Receiving the Word is not primarily an intellectual matter. You can be very knowledgeable about some topic if you study hard enough. That’s true of history, of biology and even of the Bible. There are many who have studied the Bible and know its contents quite well, who have not received the Word. And the reason for that is clear. Receiving the Word is first of all a Spiritual matter. By that I mean that it is something that depends on the Spirit. It is the Spirit who takes what is in your mind, the things of the Bible that you have studied, and drives them home to your heart so that these things might show in your life. It is this process that involves the mind, the heart and then the outward life that James is talking about. This is receiving the Word. And so, James is telling us that there are two things that cannot peacefully co-exist: being comfy with your sin and receiving the Word. If you want to receive the Word – and James will show us in a bit how important that is – then be prepared to have a fight on your hands. You must get rid of your sin.
James has a specific sin in mind as he exhorts those first-century Christians. Now, this isn’t the only kind of sin that the saints need to deal with, but it probably was one that those particular saints had a problem with. And so, James uses it as an example of what he is talking about. ‘… let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness that God requires.’ [James 1:19-20] Here, James is teaching us how to deal with people. All too often, the tendency is to be slow to hear the other person and quick to tell him what you think. But when you don’t listen carefully and instead respond too quickly one common result is anger. That’s one result of people jumping to conclusions, of misunderstanding what the other person is really trying to get at, and of just being abrupt and abrasive as you rush along, not being careful to listen. James is quite clear. This will not result in the kind of living that God requires. And so, he commands us to be quick to listen and slow to speak.
Now, this is just an example of a sin that you must get rid of. If you won’t get rid of sins like this then you won’t be able to receive the Word. And so, we find a principle here in James. How you deal with the people around you will affect your ability to receive the Word. It will affect your ability to mature as a Christian. Let’s pursue this a bit. You husbands and wives, how do you talk to each other? Is there anger? Now, remember that anger doesn’t have to show as blowing up. It can also show as giving up. ‘I just can’t talk to him any more. He doesn’t understand me. He just won’t listen to me. Why should I bother?’ And then you leave the room even though you’re in the middle of a conversation. Could it be that this is a fruit of anger? Consider other interactions that you have with people inside and outside your family. Do the virtues of patience, love and a gentle spirit show in how you deal with others? Keep clearly in mind what James is telling us. How you deal with one another affects you Spiritually. And James isn’t alone in this. Listen to Peter. ‘Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.’ [1 Peter 3:7] Your social relationships affect your Spiritual relationship with your God. Peter focuses in on our prayer life, while James points to the ability to really get what God is saying in His Word. How many people think that they can have an argument in the car on the way to church and then walk into the building ready to worship as if nothing happened? The principle is true whether the conflict is as fresh as five minutes ago or as old as something that has been unresolved for years.
Do you see James’ point? It is so important that you receive the Word. But that will never happen if you don’t get rid of your sin. If you refuse to deal with your sin, don’t expect to be able to progress as a Christian. More and more of those trials will end up as temptations given in to, leading to death, instead of tests of faith passed, leading to life. So, let me urge you to deal with your sin. Get rid of it. And remember what that means. When the Spirit points sin out to you, quickly repent of it. Quickly. Then come again to Jesus in faith, asking for forgiveness and for change. If you do that, then you will see your sin fading away. Then you will be able to receive the Word.
James tells us more about how to receive the Word. He tells us to do it ‘with meekness’, or as some translations have it, ‘in humility’, which is the same thing. The problem today, of course, is that these are qualities that are not well understood. That makes sense since one goal of our culture is to avoid such qualities. These are not the virtues that are being extolled in our day. Ours is a very proud era. The call is to be aggressive, self-assured, independent. Meekness just doesn’t fit in with that list. And even Christians misunderstand. The popular notion is that meekness or being humble is something akin to thinking of yourself as worthy as a piece of dirt. The meek person aims to be timid. But can this be true. Jesus called Himself ‘meek’, but did He try be a timid piece of dirt? This isn’t what James is exhorting us to. Meekness is not thinking less and less of yourself. Rather, it is thinking accurately about yourself. From time to time Joe and I will talk about math. Just a couple of weeks ago we were talking about one of the projects that he was working on. And he waxed eloquently about derivatives and all sorts of other things. Now, when it comes to me talking to Joe about math, meekness makes sense. That doesn’t mean that I should think of myself as stupid. But the facts are clear. My last course in math was calculus one, which I didn’t understand all that well. Joe has a doctorate in the field. So, when he writes out an equation and says, ‘This is how you’d solve that problem’, all I say is, ‘Okay’. But what is this but understanding myself accurately, especially when it comes to discussing math with Joe.
Receiving the Word with meekness doesn’t start by thinking of ourselves in some demeaning way. Instead, it means that we understand that it is the Lord Jesus who speaks to us by His Word and Spirit. So, when Jesus says, ‘How you treat the person sitting next to you makes all the different in the world’, we respond by saying, ‘Yes, Lord’. When Jesus says, ‘Your life is mine. Devote it to Me’, we say, ‘Yes, Lord’. When Jesus says, ‘This is the way. Walk ye in it’, we say, ‘Yes, Lord’. That’s meekness. Now, it may be that you’ll wonder about something that Jesus has said and ask, ‘Lord, are you sure about that?’ Ananias said that in Acts 9 when Jesus sent him to the blinded Saul of Tarsus. ‘Are you sure, Lord? I’ve heard disturbing things about this persecutor of the Church.’ But when Jesus told him, ‘Yes, I’m sure’, how did Ananias respond? ‘Yes, Lord.’ Does a different kind of response make any sense? That’s meekness.
But there are some who think that they can get away with a ‘No, Lord’. Understand that there are many ways to say, ‘No, Lord’ without actually saying those words. For one thing, you just ignore what you don’t like when you hear it taught from the Bible. So, you say, ‘That’s an interesting thought’, and then push it out of your mind. It’s not as rude as ‘No, Lord’ but just as effective. Or you say, ‘That can’t be right’, but fail to pursue it further to see if maybe it is. Or you say ‘Well, that’s just his interpretation’, and then thoughtlessly cling to what you’ve always believed. There are many ways to say ‘No, Lord’, but they all boil down to the same thing. Pride. So, whenever it’s time to hear from Jesus, as He speaks by His Word and Spirit, the attitude you need to have is quite simple. ‘Whatever you want is fine with me, Lord. Just help me to understand what it is you want me to do, then give me the grace to do it.’ If you adopt that attitude you won’t understand everything in the Bible. But you will understand everything you need to and it will show as you make progress as a Christian and as a person. But God help you if you refuse to meekly submit to Jesus as He teaches you from His Word. God help you if, by one scheme or another, your heart says, ‘No, Lord’. God forbid that any of you come even close to such an attitude.
That leaves one last thought. James tells us that this Word is ‘able to save your souls’. It sounds as if our salvation is somehow incomplete, that there is more of the Word that we need so that our souls will be saved. And that is exactly right. Salvation is not just a matter of something that happened in the past. It is also something that is ongoing and something that will be completed in the future. You’re not done being saved. Enduring the tests of faith, wrestling with temptations, fighting hard against sin and death – dealing successfully with all of these things is a part of being saved. It’s a part of the ongoing process of being freed from the bondage of your sinful habits to a growing experience of the life of God. Do you want to continue being saved until the day that the process is completed? Then receive the Word! Deal with sin by repentance and faith as soon as the Spirit points it out to you. Pursue the meekness that understands that He is the Lord and you are His disciple. If you do these things then you will be blessed by your God, in this life as well as in the life to come.
James 1.19-21
The heart of our text this morning is in verse 21 where James exhorts us to ‘receive the Word’. It appears that he is building on his thought back in verse 18 when he referred to the Word of truth. While this is the key thought of the text, James buttresses it with lots of qualifiers. He wanted to be sure that his listeners understood him. It’s these qualifiers that explain this command to us. It’s these qualifiers that will help us to see more clearly what it means to ‘receive the Word’. So, our goal this morning is to understand a bit better how to obey the command of God in our text, how to ‘receive the Word’. If we can grow here, everything else will fall into place.
Let’s start with verse 21. ‘Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.’ We have here something of a contrast. On the one hand, James is telling us to put away sin; get rid of it. And then, on the other hand, he is exhorting us to receive the Word. He is connecting two aspects of being faithful. But this is not a meaningless connection. He writes this way to make a point. These two are mutually exclusive. You cannot be content to see sin in your life, doing nothing about it, and at the same time receive the Word. The two just can’t go together. Now, a person can hear the Word preached and understand the main points that are being made. In that sense, he can know what the text is teaching. But that is not the same thing as receiving the Word. Receiving the Word is not primarily an intellectual matter. You can be very knowledgeable about some topic if you study hard enough. That’s true of history, of biology and even of the Bible. There are many who have studied the Bible and know its contents quite well, who have not received the Word. And the reason for that is clear. Receiving the Word is first of all a Spiritual matter. By that I mean that it is something that depends on the Spirit. It is the Spirit who takes what is in your mind, the things of the Bible that you have studied, and drives them home to your heart so that these things might show in your life. It is this process that involves the mind, the heart and then the outward life that James is talking about. This is receiving the Word. And so, James is telling us that there are two things that cannot peacefully co-exist: being comfy with your sin and receiving the Word. If you want to receive the Word – and James will show us in a bit how important that is – then be prepared to have a fight on your hands. You must get rid of your sin.
James has a specific sin in mind as he exhorts those first-century Christians. Now, this isn’t the only kind of sin that the saints need to deal with, but it probably was one that those particular saints had a problem with. And so, James uses it as an example of what he is talking about. ‘… let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness that God requires.’ [James 1:19-20] Here, James is teaching us how to deal with people. All too often, the tendency is to be slow to hear the other person and quick to tell him what you think. But when you don’t listen carefully and instead respond too quickly one common result is anger. That’s one result of people jumping to conclusions, of misunderstanding what the other person is really trying to get at, and of just being abrupt and abrasive as you rush along, not being careful to listen. James is quite clear. This will not result in the kind of living that God requires. And so, he commands us to be quick to listen and slow to speak.
Now, this is just an example of a sin that you must get rid of. If you won’t get rid of sins like this then you won’t be able to receive the Word. And so, we find a principle here in James. How you deal with the people around you will affect your ability to receive the Word. It will affect your ability to mature as a Christian. Let’s pursue this a bit. You husbands and wives, how do you talk to each other? Is there anger? Now, remember that anger doesn’t have to show as blowing up. It can also show as giving up. ‘I just can’t talk to him any more. He doesn’t understand me. He just won’t listen to me. Why should I bother?’ And then you leave the room even though you’re in the middle of a conversation. Could it be that this is a fruit of anger? Consider other interactions that you have with people inside and outside your family. Do the virtues of patience, love and a gentle spirit show in how you deal with others? Keep clearly in mind what James is telling us. How you deal with one another affects you Spiritually. And James isn’t alone in this. Listen to Peter. ‘Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.’ [1 Peter 3:7] Your social relationships affect your Spiritual relationship with your God. Peter focuses in on our prayer life, while James points to the ability to really get what God is saying in His Word. How many people think that they can have an argument in the car on the way to church and then walk into the building ready to worship as if nothing happened? The principle is true whether the conflict is as fresh as five minutes ago or as old as something that has been unresolved for years.
Do you see James’ point? It is so important that you receive the Word. But that will never happen if you don’t get rid of your sin. If you refuse to deal with your sin, don’t expect to be able to progress as a Christian. More and more of those trials will end up as temptations given in to, leading to death, instead of tests of faith passed, leading to life. So, let me urge you to deal with your sin. Get rid of it. And remember what that means. When the Spirit points sin out to you, quickly repent of it. Quickly. Then come again to Jesus in faith, asking for forgiveness and for change. If you do that, then you will see your sin fading away. Then you will be able to receive the Word.
James tells us more about how to receive the Word. He tells us to do it ‘with meekness’, or as some translations have it, ‘in humility’, which is the same thing. The problem today, of course, is that these are qualities that are not well understood. That makes sense since one goal of our culture is to avoid such qualities. These are not the virtues that are being extolled in our day. Ours is a very proud era. The call is to be aggressive, self-assured, independent. Meekness just doesn’t fit in with that list. And even Christians misunderstand. The popular notion is that meekness or being humble is something akin to thinking of yourself as worthy as a piece of dirt. The meek person aims to be timid. But can this be true. Jesus called Himself ‘meek’, but did He try be a timid piece of dirt? This isn’t what James is exhorting us to. Meekness is not thinking less and less of yourself. Rather, it is thinking accurately about yourself. From time to time Joe and I will talk about math. Just a couple of weeks ago we were talking about one of the projects that he was working on. And he waxed eloquently about derivatives and all sorts of other things. Now, when it comes to me talking to Joe about math, meekness makes sense. That doesn’t mean that I should think of myself as stupid. But the facts are clear. My last course in math was calculus one, which I didn’t understand all that well. Joe has a doctorate in the field. So, when he writes out an equation and says, ‘This is how you’d solve that problem’, all I say is, ‘Okay’. But what is this but understanding myself accurately, especially when it comes to discussing math with Joe.
Receiving the Word with meekness doesn’t start by thinking of ourselves in some demeaning way. Instead, it means that we understand that it is the Lord Jesus who speaks to us by His Word and Spirit. So, when Jesus says, ‘How you treat the person sitting next to you makes all the different in the world’, we respond by saying, ‘Yes, Lord’. When Jesus says, ‘Your life is mine. Devote it to Me’, we say, ‘Yes, Lord’. When Jesus says, ‘This is the way. Walk ye in it’, we say, ‘Yes, Lord’. That’s meekness. Now, it may be that you’ll wonder about something that Jesus has said and ask, ‘Lord, are you sure about that?’ Ananias said that in Acts 9 when Jesus sent him to the blinded Saul of Tarsus. ‘Are you sure, Lord? I’ve heard disturbing things about this persecutor of the Church.’ But when Jesus told him, ‘Yes, I’m sure’, how did Ananias respond? ‘Yes, Lord.’ Does a different kind of response make any sense? That’s meekness.
But there are some who think that they can get away with a ‘No, Lord’. Understand that there are many ways to say, ‘No, Lord’ without actually saying those words. For one thing, you just ignore what you don’t like when you hear it taught from the Bible. So, you say, ‘That’s an interesting thought’, and then push it out of your mind. It’s not as rude as ‘No, Lord’ but just as effective. Or you say, ‘That can’t be right’, but fail to pursue it further to see if maybe it is. Or you say ‘Well, that’s just his interpretation’, and then thoughtlessly cling to what you’ve always believed. There are many ways to say ‘No, Lord’, but they all boil down to the same thing. Pride. So, whenever it’s time to hear from Jesus, as He speaks by His Word and Spirit, the attitude you need to have is quite simple. ‘Whatever you want is fine with me, Lord. Just help me to understand what it is you want me to do, then give me the grace to do it.’ If you adopt that attitude you won’t understand everything in the Bible. But you will understand everything you need to and it will show as you make progress as a Christian and as a person. But God help you if you refuse to meekly submit to Jesus as He teaches you from His Word. God help you if, by one scheme or another, your heart says, ‘No, Lord’. God forbid that any of you come even close to such an attitude.
That leaves one last thought. James tells us that this Word is ‘able to save your souls’. It sounds as if our salvation is somehow incomplete, that there is more of the Word that we need so that our souls will be saved. And that is exactly right. Salvation is not just a matter of something that happened in the past. It is also something that is ongoing and something that will be completed in the future. You’re not done being saved. Enduring the tests of faith, wrestling with temptations, fighting hard against sin and death – dealing successfully with all of these things is a part of being saved. It’s a part of the ongoing process of being freed from the bondage of your sinful habits to a growing experience of the life of God. Do you want to continue being saved until the day that the process is completed? Then receive the Word! Deal with sin by repentance and faith as soon as the Spirit points it out to you. Pursue the meekness that understands that He is the Lord and you are His disciple. If you do these things then you will be blessed by your God, in this life as well as in the life to come.
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