James 1 teaches that true faith is demonstrated not by knowledge of God's Word, but by obedience to it. The sermon emphasizes that being a doer of the Word, rather than merely a hearer, is the key to spiritual growth and pleasing God. Hindrances to hearing and doing the Word include being quick to speak, slow to anger, and a forgetful or indifferent attitude towards its application. Ultimately, obedience to God's Word, understood as the law of liberty, is presented as the path to fulfilling our God-designed purpose.
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I thought this morning I would pick out some passages of scripture and relate them to specific people here at camp, but since the dinner is at twelve fifteen rather than twelve forty five, I will not do that. But I did want to send one to the cook. It's the word of the sons of the prophets to Elijah. When they were sitting down to a meal, there is death in the pot. But I do have one for our good friend Jay. What would it can't be without Jay? Now don't say better, but what would it can't be without Jay? Jay, one of my favorite verses in the book of Proverbs is that he that rises up early and blesses his neighbor with a loud voice that should be kind of a curse to him.
But without you, Jay, we'd be later than we are. We've really had a great time and I thank you all of you for the opportunity to be here. Now I know I'm not going to ask that. James chapter one, let's take the section that we haven't looked at yet in this first chapter of James. He has just talked in verse eighteen of God begetting us through the word of truth. And now he says in verse nineteen, know this might be a lot of brethren. Let every man be quick to hear, slow speak, slow to anger.
For the anger of man does not work the righteousness of God. Therefore put away all filthiness and right throes the wickedness. King James says, Superfluity of naughtiness. And that is absolutely beautiful, but I'm not sure what it means. Superfluity of naughtiness. I can look up those individual English words and they don't quite catch what James says. It's not a superfluity. It's not an overflowing, the extra. It's that rank growth of wickedness that we have to get rid of. Receive with meekness the implanted word which is able to save your soul. But be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourself. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who observes his natural face in a mirror.
for he observes himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But he who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer that forgets, but a doer that acts, he shall be blessed in his doings. We have the great good fortune to come from the tradition that has put a heavy emphasis within the Word of God. And that's a tremendous tradition to have, a tremendous heritage. All of us who grew up in the assemblies of grew up cheating ourselves on the Bible. That was the stuff that was always given to us. And our meetings have always put a great emphasis on the Scriptures. And we should know the Scriptures.
And we want to have our lives based on the Scriptures. And set the great heritage to be part of us. It's also a great danger that James points out here that we can substitute our knowledge for the Word of God, for our obedience to the Word of God. That is a danger. This is the danger that James addressed. He's again talking, it seems to me, about a test of faith, a test of volition of faith. It's not how much I know, but how much have I committed myself to. How much of the Word of God do I believe? Not how much of the Word of God do I believe is true. I believe that all of it is true. That's not the point. The point is, how much of the Word of God do I believe? And that's the believing in, again.
what I believe in, let me remind you, can only be shown by what I do. Believing that can be expressed by what I say. How much of the Word of God I believe in is revealed by how much of my life is controlled by the Word of God. So as I expand my knowledge of the Word of God, this means there are more and more areas of living that should be coming under the control of the Word of God. And what I mean by the control of the Word of God is nothing mysterious. It is nothing ethereal. It's not out there somewhere. It's nothing mystical. It's simply making my decision based on the Scriptures, the principles that the Scriptures teach, the ideas that the Scripture gets across when I come to a decision in my life.
There are all kinds of factors that come into that decision. there are my own desires there are the ideas i picked up from my society there is the pressure and influence of other people there is what i have been taught and there is the word of god now what controls my decisions very often it's an ad in a magazine very often it's what others have told me what ought to control my decision-making process is what scripture says And so I have to learn to adjust my life and its decisions to the truths of the Word of God. So the real value in coming to know the Word of God is so that I may more intelligently decide so that I live in a way that pleases God.
So the Word of God tests the reality of my commitment, of what I believe in. And this is the point James is making about the Word of God. Now I have two responsibilities to the Word of God in this section. The first is to hear it and the second is to do it. And in each section there are certain things that hinder my hearing. There are certain things that hinder my doing the Word of God. And James talks about those. My first responsibility is to hear the Word of God. All of you know there is a hearing and there is a hearing. Jesus said, Let him have ears to hear. Let him hear. in those messages to the churches. And he says even to his disciples, having ears, do you not hear?
Didn't they hear his words? Oh, yes. They probably could have repeated them, but in Jesus thinking they didn't hear because they didn't understand. And remember again, understanding is being aware of the implications of the fact that I know. And very often Jesus said all kinds of things to his disciples, and they heard the word, but they never heard the meaning. They never got the significance of what he was saying. And so they very often misunderstood him. That occasion when they were going across the sea of Galilee in a boat, and Jesus said to them, Beware of the leaven of the scribes and Pharisees.
And they say, He's mad at us because we forgot to buy bread. We've got thirteen grown men in a boat. We're going across to the wilderness side of the Sea of Galilee where we can't buy bread. And all we've got is one loaf of bread. And he's mad at us because we didn't take provision. That's why he's saying beware of the leaven. And when he said leaven, they connected it with bread. He was talking about the doctrine and the lives of the scribes and Pharisees. So he really didn't understand the significance of what he was saying. And they couldn't put two things together. Here they're in a boat with one loaf of bread, thirteen men, and they're worried that they only have one loaf of bread. They've just come from the situation where he took a few loaves of bread and fed five thousand.
They shouldn't have worried that they only had a crumb. He could multiply that if he wanted to. They heard him, but they didn't hear him. And this, by the way, is one of the dangers of racing through the Bible. Being sure you read through the Bible in a year. That may be fine, I don't know. But as C. H. Spurgeon said, that gets the sheep through the pasture, but it doesn't get much of the pasture through the sheep. And what God is after is getting the pasture through the sheep. And I read a great deal, but I don't see the significance of what I am reading. And so I am not hearing what God is saying.
And my first responsibility is to hear what God is saying. And that's what James says. Now, in hearing, he adds another word to that in verse twenty-one. He's got the word hearing in verse twenty. Twenty-one, we come to the word receive with meekness the implanted word. So we start with the word here in verse nineteen, we come to the word we see. And this is one of the reasons I don't hear the word of God because I don't receive it. The idea of the word we see is to welcome. This, by the way, is where I need the ministry of the Spirit of God. And I think I misunderstand First Corinthians chapter two.
If I think the unsaved man can't understand the word of God, of course he can't. He can understand the word of God. Some of the clearest expositions of the word of God have been made by non-believers. Absolutely. One of the best commentaries on the epistles of the Galatians is in the International Critical Commentary series by a man who did not believe in the atoning death of Jesus Christ. But he sure understands what Paul is saying to the Galatians. Very, very clearly. He doesn't believe it, but he understands it. And a man who was a scholar at Harvard Divinity School back in the thirties, and was known as the high priest of liberalism, a great Old Testament scholar who wrote an introduction to the Old Testament, who was a classic for years, was a thoroughgoing liberal.
And when he ran against conservatives in the seminary, he could say, oh, yes, I know what you believe, and he could explain what we believe. He could explain what we believe about Jesus Christ and who he is. He could explain about his substitutionary death on the cross and physical resurrection. And he knew all the passages of Scripture to support that. He said, but of course the whole mind says. Can the unsaved man understand the Word of God? Absolutely you can understand the Word of God. What Paul says in First Corinthians chapter two, he cannot do is receive it. That's what he can't do. To receive it is to welcome it. to embrace it that he cannot do and he will not do what james is telling us to do is not only hear it but receive it to embrace it to welcome it i see the significance of what the words are saying and i welcome that significance into my life i don't hold it off at arm's distance i don't say that has nothing to do with me i don't say that's nonsense This, by the way, is where we've got to do a lot of things.
Where I need the Spirit of God is not to teach me the meaning of the Word of God. Where I need the Spirit of God is to embrace that meaning as valid in my life, because I have a moral resistance to that. And I need to not only hear the Word of God, I need to receive it, I need to welcome it. Now James says there are two hindrances to doing that, to hearing and receiving the Word of God. He says, let every man be swift to hear in verse nineteen. Slow to speak and slow to anger. And those are the two hindrances to hearing the Word of God.
We are swift to speak it. And that gets in the way of our hearing it. We want everybody to preach. We want everybody to teach. We want everybody to get out and say something. And we keep urging everybody. We don't stand as men, at least to stand up on your feet and say and talk and open up the scriptures. And that is what James says. He doesn't say let every man be swift to speak. He says, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak. And you find out why when you get to chapter three. But we are so interested in speaking the word of God that we don't hear it. there's a particular danger for a teacher.
And when I'm sitting in my study preparing my class lessons, and I want to do a third job of preparation, I don't want to waste their time nor mine nor the Lord's time. And when I go into class, I want to know what I'm talking about. And so I'll spend time studying and preparing. But I may be studying and preparing for that class. And if I am studying in order to speak, That means I am not hearing the Word of God. My goal is to speak it, and if that's my goal, I don't hear it. Before ever I speak it, I must hear it.
And if I am swift to speak it, in all probability, I don't have the time to hear it. And we are so anxious to speak it. We are so anxious to preach. We are so anxious to talk. that God has very little chance to get through to us. We are not hearing in the words of those letters to the churches in the book of the Revelation what the Spirit is speaking to the church today. Because we are too busy speaking what he said to the church in the nineteenth century. And that's our danger in the assembly. And we are a hundred years behind what the Spirit of God is saying to the church today.
When you get into conversation with a person, you know what very often happens? While that person is talking, you're waiting for him to come to a breathing spot, so you can jump in and say what you want to say. And while he is talking, what's going through your mind? The next thing you want to say. Now, when you're doing that, what's happening? You are not listening to what that person is saying. You are so quick to speak that you don't hear what the other person is saying. They're right. You wives know what I'm talking about. How many wives says, you don't listen to me. My secretary says, no, I'm going to be careful. My secretary says, that's me all the time.
You don't listen to me. I said, well, you don't say anything. That's not true either. But that desire to be quick to speak prevents us from hearing. And if anybody is in that danger, it's the assembly. we are so quick to teach everybody else that we never hear what God may be saying to us and we we must be swift to hear slow to speak and we've got to be able to say I think this is what it says none of us is infallible and it seems to me this is what james is saying of course i know that's what he's saying but i want to be polite and say it seems to me but you see the idea be swift to hear slow to speak and unless we are slow to speak the word of god we are not really going to hear what god is trying to say to us the second thing that prevents our hearing the word of god is anger We have to be swift to hear, slow to
speak, slow to anger. Now, this is what church fights are all about. And when we get into a disagreement over the meaning of a passage of Scripture, over its interpretation or over what is relevant and how it ought to be done, what happens? Our tempers begin to go up. Right? And when our tempers go up, how do we use the verses of Scripture that are our faithful? We use them, I don't need to tell you, no.
We use them to beat the other person in this admission. Now let's suppose we're in that kind of a situation. We're arguing over the meaning of a passage of Scripture. And let's suppose... you win the argument you finally batter me down with all these verses of scripture that i can't answer how do i go away from that having been battered into submission by your use of the word of god how do i go away from that how would you go away from that you want to tell me huh anger Is that one of the fruits of the Spirit?
What has happened in this angry confrontation over the Word of God? It has not worked the righteousness of God. You may have defended the truth, but you have destroyed righteousness, and that's the misuse of truth. And the history of the church and the history of the assemblies is littered with the wrecks of very capable men clubbing each other to death with the Word of God. And our quickness to speak and our quickness to anger keeps us from hearing the Word of God.
I'll guarantee you one thing, when you and I are fighting over the Word of God, neither one of us is listening to it. all i want to do is use it to beat you into submission to say that i want i would never admit that i'm defending the truth the truth of the matter is i'm defending my ego and i am using the word of god to defend my ego when i am doing that i am not listening to the word of god So the two things that get in the way of my hearing and receiving the Word of God are the quickness with which I speak and the quickness with which I get angry, particularly, about Christian things.
That, I think, is the kind of wickedness, the change of saying I've got to get rid of, to receive with meekness. that implanted word which is able to save our souls. Meekness. The Greeks looked on meekness with scorn because they saw it as the result of weakness. Meekness is not the result of weakness. Meekness is not a horse that has been broken. It is a horse that has been tamed.
Meekness is the quietness of a man who knows he could do more. Jesus, filled with the Spirit of God, who could have dispatched his enemies and those who opposed him with a word, submitted. Because he couldn't do anything else. No, because he wouldn't do anything else. Weakness means the meekness that goes with weakness is not a choice of mine. I can't do anything else. I'm in a position of no power and I don't have a choice and therefore it's not a virtue.
But meekness is a choice. When Jesus could have done something else, he deliberately refused. that's me sure i could win the argument but to refuse to batter someone else in the submission of my superior knowledge and if you've read c.s lewis's poems you remember that one poem he has where he was such a skillful debater that he could cut an objector to ribbon And in one of his poems where he mourns over having done that, there's a couple of lines in the poems with the effect that while the audience laughs, angels wept.
Yeah, that's the idea. That's what happens. And meekness is the refusal to do that. I saw that in this conference in Chicago with Kevin Dyer sponsored back in the month of May and George Malone, teaching elder from one of the assemblies in Vancouver as the chief speaker. And I think I've mentioned it. Maybe it was in the afternoon's study. And as he was expressing his own personal convictions, he was getting to areas that the men as a whole who were there, men and the women, didn't really want to pursue. In a previous day, George had been talking about the fruit of the Spirit and talking about meekness and submission to one another. Submission is the willingness to give up your own agenda for the good of the others.
And when these objections started to come, George listened to them and he says, I understand what you're saying, very quietly, and I can live with that. Let's just go on. And what he had done for us was model what he had taught us about weakness and humility and giving up one's own agenda. He modeled it for us. That's what he had done. That's meekness. And I've got to get rid of this overflowing growth of wickedness that keeps me from hearing the Word of God that's tied up with this pride that wants to speak and wants to argue. I'm going to get rid of that. If I am ever going to receive the Word of God, if I'm going to hear it, then I'm going to receive it.
But my second responsibility, beginning in verse twenty-two, is to be a doer of the Word and not a hearer. And I'm sorry you don't have ice water, but I'm going to take advantage of the fact that I do. If I am satisfied with my knowledge of the Word of God, and this is a danger I said to which we were exposed, We talk about certain speakers, man, he really knows the word. If we are satisfied with that, we have deceived ourselves and we are living in a world of illusion. God is never impressed by the amount of the word that we know.
nor is he impressed by the amount of number of scriptures we've memorized. Doesn't impress him at all. I don't find anywhere in Scripture that God has a special star for those who know the Bible or who have memorized it. But I find over and over and over again God's special award for those who obey it. What God is looking for is for the individual who does it. Not the individual who knows it. It is possible to have a vast knowledge of the Word of God and be a Pharisee. The people who knew the Word of God's death during Jesus' public ministry were his enemies.
The knowledge of the Word of God will not save you. The only thing that will save you from becoming a Pharisee is obeying the word of God. That's all. So be a doer, James says, not a hearer only. And by the way, the kind of memory that James is talking about, not a forgetful hearer, is not developing a memory. You can teach a parrot to memorize Scripture. And there are people with trick memories. That's not important. The scriptures you don't forget are the scriptures you're obeying. It doesn't mean you've got the words memorized, but you're never going to forget what God has said in that passage when you start putting it in the practice.
A forgetful hearer, James talks about, is the man who is not doing the Word of God. The way to remember the lessons of the Word of God is to put them into practice. We are to be doers of the Word. In our Sunday schools, we give all kinds of awards to children who memorize the Word of God. Fine, I'm not saying don't do that. We give special recognition to the men who come and teach us who really know the Bible. I think we would be much more biblical if we picked out the kid in Sunday school who was struggling with something in his life because of what the Word of God said and give him a special award for putting the Word in the press. And I think we'd be far better off if we gave some sister in the assembly who is really living the way Christ wants her to live and choosing the sisters and not the brothers who are doing that.
And we gave her a special award because she's obeying the Word of God. Instead of giving all this recognition to those of us who have spent a lifetime studying it and so we know a little bit about it. I want to say it again, God is not impressed with our knowledge of the Word of God. you may have memorized two thousand verses of scripture doesn't impress God a bit when you stand at the judgment seat of Christ he is not going to call everybody to order and get them all quiet so you can recite your two thousand verses he will not do that what impresses him is obedience obedience to what we know now there's some things that get in the way of our doing that one here James talks about that our hearing instead of doing He compares to the man looking, a person looking into a mirror, and then two minutes later he doesn't know what he saw.
And I don't know whether we've got time to do it. It's just from my class we just go talking about what are the things that make us do that. It's just naturally, physically. When we look into a mirror, we glance and go away, and I don't remember what I saw in there. What are some of the reasons we do that? Go ahead, let's go ahead. What are some of the reasons we do that? I don't like what I see. I'm not going to make any comment on that. That's one of the reasons we'd like to forget. We forget because I don't like what I saw. Okay, other reasons. Other reasons. Come on, hurry up. I haven't got much time. I don't mind the choir taking my time. What? I heard something back there. I'm thinking about something else.
My circuits are already jammed. There isn't room for anything else. So I really don't take in what I saw. Yeah. Okay, other reasons. It's not enough time. I just bang, I'm on my way to somewhere else and doing something else, and I'm very hurried to my answer. It isn't time really to see what's there. Okay. Anybody have anything else that want to answer that? What? In difference? I really don't care. Yeah, I'm a teenager. At least before you get to the age where you start recognizing those girls. Yeah, okay. But up to that age, you don't care. I don't want to change what I see in there. So I forget.
And I think we could take all of those. Are you another one back here, Chris? I don't want to believe it. I'm not going to touch that one either, but all right. What? I've given up. Okay, I've given up. And I wish we had time to take every one of those and talk about them in relation to the Word of God. When we come to the Scriptures so often, one or more of those same reasons are at work in our lives, then that's why we are not obeying. Our search for our redemptions and everything else, we hastily look at it and go on.
We don't take time really to see what's there. I don't like what that passage says, and so I'll find a way around it, forget it. because it's going to be too much of a major upheaval if I really take it serious. All those things come into play when we come to the Word of God. I've got to be aware of those. I've got to know that they're operating in my life to keep me from obeying the Word of God. I've got to know what's going on in my life. And very often James says the reason we don't obey the Word is because we're like that individual who can't remember what he saw. There are all the kinds of reasons why we can't remember what we saw. So we are to obey the Word of God.
I'm going to have to get to this rather quickly. Now, contrast to that in verse twenty-five. He who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres. Not perseveres so he can get through the whole Bible in a year. That there may not be good. I'm not against that, you understand. But that's not the point. He perseveres and walks in that looking into. He may not get more than a couple of verses, but he is taking time to see the significance of those verses and to relate them to his own life. He's persevering in it.
A.T. Robertson, the great beach scholar, said this picture is of a man going into the synagogue and asking the minister for a scroll of the scripture. And he unrolls that scroll of the scripture and he's pouring over it. And sometime later you come back through the scripture and he's still there on that same section he began with when you first were there. And when he rolls that up and gives it back to the minister, his prayer is, oh, God, now help me to do what I've learned. That's the picture here of a persevering man. it's not how much we know it's how much of the significance has been applied to our own lives and it's time we stop looking with scorn on those churches that don't know as much about the bible as we do it's time we started seeing the lives of those people who in their love and devotion and service to others in the name of Jesus Christ far outstrip us.
I can laugh at the Mennonites for their imperfect doctrines. My point of view all I want to. But people all over this country know when a tornado hits, when there's an earthquake, when there's any sort of a natural disaster, those towns are going to be flooded with Mennonites. And they're going to be there with their hammers and saws and tools, and they're going to go to work to rebuild without cause. And everybody in this country knows that. It's time I stop saying I know more of the Word of God than they do because they are putting the practice a whole lot more of the Word of God than I am.
It's our obedience to the Word of God. Now note how he describes it. This is the individual who looks into the perfect law of liberty. And growing up on dispensationism, there are two words that were antithetical. That's law and liberty. Only grace sets you free. We are not under law, et cetera, et cetera. And therefore the law has more relevance to the Christian today. And yet James calls it the law of liberty. Because I think we have failed to distinguish two things. One, the impossible burden of a man who is trying to be righteous before God on the basis of the law.
That is the bonding. That is the curse of the law. And along with that is the mass of human tradition that grew up around the law so that Peter says neither we nor our fathers were able to bear that burden. and people all over Israel gave up on it. They were classified by the scribes and Pharisees as sinners. These people who gave up on this impossible massive tradition and just opted out of trying to do anything in Judaism. Those were the people who flocked to Jesus. Because Jesus himself...
was outside that position, but inside the Word of God. And that's where he led people. And when he got up in the synagogue to minister the Word of God, nobody ever heard Rabbi Ben Aliaser says, what they heard was thus says the Lord. No wonder the common people heard him gladly. Now by the way, look, I know I've been off my heart on the assemblies this week, but since I'm part of them, I'm not throwing stones from outside, but from inside. and I hope I'm throwing bread and up soon. There are people leaving the assemblies all over the country. Many of them are leaving because they love the Word of God.
Not because they are indifferent to it, but because they can no longer tolerate a communion that puts its tradition on the same level as the Scripture. The law, James says, is a law of liberty, because we fail to distinguish between that that I've just described and a man who is justified by grace, who knows it's all the mercy of God, so that David in the Old Testament can say, Oh, how I love thy law.
I've got to take that seriously. Because David had no illusion that his obedience to it made him acceptable to God. He knew it was the mercy of God that saved him. And therefore, since the law was not the means of his salvation, but the revelation of God to him, he could rejoice in it. and we fail to make that distinction james calls it the law of liberty and by the way the new testament is full of commands it's full of law just as strong as the same commandment filled with law because that's our only liberties absolutely and i discovered that through reading gk chapters In his book on orthodoxy, another writer I would recommend to, much of his stuff is over my head and I'm not sure what he's getting at it.
Well, there's enough there that I can get hold of that would tremendous help to me. But in his book on orthodoxy, he talks about, oh, my goodness, I've got to get this point across, so just sit there. I'm sorry you're under law and it's not written. But anyhow, he talks about drawing a giraffe. So I'm going to go to the zoo and I'm going to draw a giraffe. And so I start drawing. As I look at this thing, I don't like that long neck. So I'm going to draw a giraffe with a short neck. I'm going to take the liberty to draw a giraffe. Now what have I just given up when I do that? I've given up the ability to draw a giraffe. The only liberty to draw a giraffe is to stay within the laws of giraffeology.
And if I want the freedom to violate the laws of the giraffe, I must give up the freedom to draw a giraffe. If I want to design an airplane to fly, and that's the purpose of an airplane, what must I do? Besides go to school. What must I do? Yeah, well, let's suppose I've got all the parts there. But when I'm designing this plane, what have I got to follow? What must I follow if that plane's going to accomplish its purpose? Laws of aerodynamics. The only thing that gives me liberty to design a plane that will fly is law. You see that? God is our designer.
The only way I can have liberty to accomplish his design is to obey his laws. And if I want the liberty to violate his laws, I must give up the liberty to be what He designed you to do. The law is the law of liberty. That's why James is so ancient that we obey the Word of God. It's only that way that we can become a God designed us to be. And all the garbage that we absorb from our culture, about doing their own thing and being free.
That is bondage that keeps us from becoming in full dignity sons and daughters of God. That is not liberty. That is bondage. Let's pray. Lord, there is that within us we have to admit it that kicks against us. Thus says the Lord, that restricts what we want to do and says you are to do what God says to do. There's something else that kicks against that. And yet we thank you there's something in us that says yes, that's right.
And that we want really to be what you want us to be. Now in that struggle help us by your spirit to respond to your word, to submit to what you have said in order that we might become what you've designed us to be. Now we pray you'll go with each of us, and if your blessing may rest upon us, it's with great gratitude we thank you for this week together. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.