I. Introduction
A. The first theme in the letter of James is trials.
1. How they’re sent by God for our growth in maturity
2. How God is ready and eager to give us wisdom & perspective when we ask Him in our trials.
3. How we must not blame God when we react sinfully to our trials.
B. Well, it could well be that the theme of trials continues.
1. For blaming God is not the only wrong way people react to trials.
2. They also get angry. They complain and grumble. They get selfish & think only of their problems.
3. They speak unkindly. They don’t listen to others, especially they don’t listen to
4. Sometimes they go on vulgar and profane tirades.
5. God invites us to come to Him to ask for wisdom, but sometimes that’s the last thing we feel like doing. We don’t really want to pay attention to all the things God has to say; we just want to do what we want to do.
6. And so, perhaps James continues talking about how we ought to live while we are in this life of trials and to warn against various wrong reactions to trials. Or, perhaps he moves on to new subjects. There is much disagreement about it. He doesn’t make it obvious. And that’s OK.
C. James 1:19–25 Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; 20 for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. 21 Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls. 22 But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. 23 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. 24 For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. 25 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.
II. The flow of thought in James 1:19-25
A. “Know this, my beloved brothers...”
1. Exhortations born of love
2. This passage contains the first really hard things to say to his readers, so he wisely begins by reminding them of his love for them.
B. “let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak”
1. I am filled with things I want to tell others, preoccupied with my own life/thoughts, as if the things which happen to me are more important than the things which happen to you.
2. But two things are involved:
a. Restraining our own speaking – Proverbs 17:27-28
b. Becoming an eager listener – it is key to close friendship, and key to ministry/love
C. Be slow to anger, for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.
1. There are ways to promote righteousness in the contexts where God puts us.
2. But one of the ways which seems most effective in restraining chaos is anger.
3. It’s not that it always wrong to express anger (Eph.4:26), but James calls us to be very careful.
4. Sinful anger comes very naturally to us all. And it’s always counterproductive.
5. “the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.”
6. Sadly, I’ve had to learn this lesson the hard way, especially as a father.
7. The best tools for parenting are the fruits of the Spirit.
8. Best book I’ve read on parenting: How Children Raise Parents by Dan Allender – and it’s not about letting your children be in control
D. This is followed by. “Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness”
1. Therefore: in light of the fact that the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God, put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness.
2. In other words, it makes the most sense to me that when James says, “Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness,” he’s referring primarily to putting away the kind of filthy and wicked speech which is often associated with anger.
3. Filthy: dirty but with a connotation of being so dirty as to be disgusting.
4. You know, angry tirades with filthy language are sadly a frequent occurrence. But they have no place in the life of a Christian. And there are two obvious problems with it:
a. It harms our witness. If a person claims to be living for Jesus, but then uses filthy and wicked language, people think he’s a hypocrite. “That’s who he really is!”
b. It reflects what’s in the heart. People with love ruling in their hearts don’t have filthy tirades.
5. Now, I’m not talking about a certain set of words which should be avoided. It’s a lot broader than that. It’s not that there are specific words which are filthy and we should avoid saying those. Rather, we should avoid speech which is considered filthy or wicked. All our speech ought to be born of love.
6. For instance, if you refer to a person as a scumbag, that is degrading someone made in the image of God. If you use lewd words which refer to the sexual act, it degrades something made by God to be beautiful and holy.
7. Now the person with a filthy mouth may well be a believer. James doesn’t imply that there aren’t actually believers, he just calls them to be done with it.
a. 21 Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.
b. He may well be implying here that this step will prove that your faith is real.
8. Now, it’s very possible that I’m wrong and this refers to filthy living and rampant wickedness in general, not specifically to speech.
a. Either way, God certainly calls us to put aside any filthiness, any wickedness in our lives.
b. In fact, Jesus tells us to do whatever it takes, even plucking out an eye, or cutting off a hand.
E. Then James continues v.21: “meekly receiving the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.”
1. He just said “be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger” and then he gives an extreme examples of each of these:
a. First, the extreme example of angry speech: “put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness”
b. Then, the extreme example of listening: “receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.”
2. So, let’s talk about this “receiving with meekness the implanted word.”
3. The word James is talking about isn’t just a word you listen to and accept, or listen to and understand. It’s a word which gets planted in you, that it might grow in you.
4. James here harkens back to his brother Jesus’ parable of the sower, where the seed falls on different kinds of soil. James wants us to be good soil which welcomes and embraces the seed of God’s word.
5. We have a number of ways we hear God’s word, both privately and corporately. But here the idea goes deeper than merely hearing it. We are told to receive it meekly.
6. Why does the word of God need to be received meekly? Because it says hard things, challenging things, humbling things. It says things which anger some people: it tells us not to do the things we want to do, and to do things we don’t want to do. “Who are they to tell me what to do?”
7. And most people sluff it off or even attack it. They don’t want to hear it!
8. In Jesus’ parable, three out of the four cases ultimately have no room for the word of God.
9. But then there are the precious few who do not rebuff it but who receive the word meekly.
10. And receiving God’s word meekly is more than just listening.
a. Ponder it; meditate on it; pray through it.
(1) Praying through the Scripture
b. Search for how it applies to your life. Do the work of applying it to your life.
c. Wanting to be corrected: search me and try me and see if there by any wicked way in me!
d. Don’t wait for it to jump off the page and slap you in the face. Go after it! This is God’s word! It’s not empty; it’s not irrelevant. It’s full of precious messages you need to hear. Dig for it like there’s treasure there – because there is!
11. What is your attitude toward the word of God? Do you receive it meekly?
a. It has been my privilege for 40 years now to preach to so many in this congregation who receive the word of God meekly. It has made my job a joy. What about you?
F. And then James goes on in v.22 to say that it’s not enough merely to hear the word of God. You’ve got to put it into practice. You’ve got to do it. “But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.”
1. It’s not enough to listen to God’s word. It’s not enough to know God’s word. God wants us to live His word.
2. And when I’m a hearer of the word but not a doer of the word I deceive myself. I think I’m doing OK but I’m not.
3. One of the things which drags down the Lord’s church is people who come to worship and listen to sermons and go to conferences and read books, but there is unchecked evil running rampant in their lives – they’re hearing God’s word, but they’re not doing it.
4. It may be that no one else knows what’s going on, and they may think they’ve got everyone fooled, but the Lord is not fooled. And He is not going to prosper someone who is knowingly clinging to idols in his life. James says that the one who hears and does “will be blessed in his doing.”
5. And so each of us has to ask ourselves the question: Am I the person James is talking about who is a hearer of the word but not a doer?
a. Is the word of God changing my life? Of course, all of us struggle with sins, but is my life being changed by God’s word? And I growing more humble? More loving? More trusting? More grateful? Am I fighting to give up my idols, or am I fighting to protect them?
6. And then James uses an analogy to illustrate how absurd it is to live as one who hears but does not do. He uses the analogy of looking in a mirror.
G. 23-25 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. 24 For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. 25 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.
1. We all look at ourselves in the mirror. It’s a helpful tool. How does our hair look? Is there any food on my face? Is there spinach on my teeth? Do I have a bloody nose? Is there a hair growing where it shouldn’t? Has any strange blemish appeared on my face or neck?
2. But what if a person looked in and saw something which needed fixing but as soon as took his eyes off the mirror, he forgot what he saw?
a. He never pulled the egg out of his beard. She never went to get a comb. He never washed the smudge off his face. She never wiped the lipstick off of her tooth. He never made a Dr. appt.
3. A person who hears God’s word but isn’t changed is just like this.
a. He hears God’s word but he doesn’t do anything in response to what it says. He doesn’t make any adjustments, he doesn’t repent, he doesn’t add something to his prayer list, he doesn’t share it with his brothers and sisters in Christ.
b. He listens to a sermon about loving your wife and then on the way home from church, instead of apologizing to her about how he’s failed to love her like Christ loves the church, he snaps at her because she spent too long talking to a visitor after church.
c. He reads proverbs about the know-it-all and then goes out and acts like one.
d. He doesn’t like a sermon on giving to the poor because it doesn’t fit in with his political views.
4. He’s resisted the radical demands of Jesus so long that they no longer impact him or impress him. So, the feedback from God’s word doesn’t help him! It doesn’t do him any good!
5. God’s word is supposed to help us see ourselves, to see what we’re like, to see how we need to change. But simply looking in the mirror isn’t enough. You’ve got to follow through and make the adjustment which the mirror showed you needed to be made.
6. The word of God isn’t just for my enjoyment or curiosity. It is meant to teach me, to open my eyes, to show me who I am and who God is. It is meant to change me from the inside out.
7. The word of God is powerful and active, sharp as a two-edged sword (Heb.4:12).
8. It transforms lives. It revives the soul, it makes wise the simple, it rejoices the heart, it enlightens the eyes – Psalm 19:7–8.
9. But sometimes hearts grow calloused and impervious to the word of God.
10. Calloused hearts are never cut to the quick. They may be interested in the word of God, they may even know the word of God well, but they never tremble at the word of God (Is.66:2), for them God’s word is never “like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces.” Jeremiah 23:29
H. Of course, all of us have ways that we are hearers of God’s word and not doers, and this is a call to not be content with any ways that is true in our lives.
I. But what James is primarily calling out here is Christians who are impervious to the word of God. It doesn’t matter what the word says, they have things they will not let go of: idols they will not give up, habits they will not fight to change, opinions they are not willing to question.
J. And now in the final part of this passage, James contrasts the person who is a hearer but not a doer of the word with a person who is a hearer AND a doer of the word. The hearer who doesn’t do is like one who looks in a mirror but immediately forgets what he sees. But the hearer who also DOES God’s word “looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts.”
1. He carries what He sees in God’s word with Him after he closes the book or leaves church. His memory of it perseveres, it sticks with him, like a seed implanted in his heart, and continues to grow.
2. It’s interesting that James calls what this person looks into, “the perfect law, the law of liberty.” Why does he goes out of his way to embellish what he calls the word?
3. In the letter so far, he has referred to God’s word four times:
a. 1:18 the word of truth
b. 1:21 the implanted word
c. 1:22 the word
d. 1:23 the word
e. But here in 1:25, he suddenly refers to it as the perfect law and the law of liberty.
(1) First of all, the two are connected: “the perfect law of liberty” or “the perfect law which gives freedom.”
4. Why does he refer to it as this? He seems to be saying that a person hears and then does God’s word because of how he views God’s word. He views it as “the perfect law of liberty.”
5. And that suggests that people who hear the word but don’t do it see the word wrongly. They see it as a rule book of how we should be living, when in reality it is a book of truth which sets us free.
6. As an example, think about the person who struggles to stay within the boundaries of God’s laws on sexuality, as many people do.
a. Do they view God’s laws about sexuality as unfortunate restrictions or as the secrets of freedom?
b. Do they view God’s laws as prohibiting their freedom or promoting their freedom? James says God’s law promotes our freedom, but Satan wants to deceive us into thinking of God’s law as repressive and contrary to human happiness.
7. The law of Christ is not a set of chains to drag through life, as some would argue. The law of Christ is just the opposite. It opens up for people the way of freedom, the way of beauty, the way of peace, the way of love.
8. God loves us! His law is for our good, for our prosperity, for our happiness! It’s the perfect law of liberty!
III. Whatever the relationship between this passage and what has gone before, trials are often God’s tools to help us receive His word with meekness.
A. It’s a beautiful thing when trials plough our souls and prepare us to receive the seed of the word.
B. Many times in my life I wasn’t ready to hear God’s word until God allowed me to suffer. And then I could see it. I think this is what Psalm 119:71 is talking about: “It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes.”
C. And that is the way it’s supposed to work. But we’re very capable of fighting against God, and resisting His discipline and His word.