Why Doesn't God's Word Change Me More? James 1:19-27

We're into week three of our series in the Book of James. It's about seven or eight weeks that we're spending working through this letter and I hope you've been enjoying it. If you have missed any of the previous weeks, the first couple of weeks, you can catch up. They're available online or on podcast and would encourage you to listen to those. But we're going to come to the last part of James chapter one this morning.

We'll be in verse 19 to start. We'll be there in a few moments. But as we come to God's Word, let's pray. Lord, we pray that as we come now to your Word that you would speak to us. Give us soft hearts, give us ears that are ready to listen, Lord.

Give us a willingness to be shaped and formed by you. We pray this in your precious son's name. Amen. My kids are experts at listening to what I'm saying without really hearing it. I can ask them to clean their rooms, to let the dog outside, to take the rubbish out.

You know, all the really fun things for kids. They look at me, they nod, they say, Yep. And then 20 minutes later, an hour later, they haven't moved a muscle. They can listen to what I'm saying without really hearing it. They're so good at listening that they can even more often than not repeat back to me what I said to them.

It's just that what I have said to them has never made the transition from their ears to their hands and feet. I left my sermon notes out last night and one of the kids found it and read this opening to the to the other two. And then it was quite funny because they said it's not fair, but they couldn't really disagree. And then one of them said, as they were getting ready for bed, this is what dad was talking about.

Now, I'd love to tell you that it's just a kid thing. I'd love to tell you that kids. It's only kids who have got that problem. But at least from my own experience as an adult, I suspect Cindy could attest to this. You can ask her later.

It is not just a kid problem. And it isn't just a home problem either. I did some math this week, and for those of you who know me well, that's always a risky thing. Don't add up these sums, but across the course of my life, I estimate that I have listened to or given at least 2,000 sermons. That's a lot.

At roughly 30 minutes each, that's about a thousand hours of hearing God's Word preached. And that doesn't even include podcasts and my personal devotional time. It's just the sermons on a Sunday. Now, I can look back across those messages, and I can see times where God has changed me by His Word. But if I'm honest, I know there have been lots of times where I've heard exactly what God's Word was saying.

And then I've left church, I've closed my Bible after a quiet time, and I've done absolutely nothing with it. And so, as I've been studying this section of James, it's a question I've been thinking about. Maybe it's a question that at some point you've asked in some shape or some form as well. Why doesn't God's Word seem to change me more? You see, sometimes that change and that growth in our lives is a slow work.

We. We don't always see straight away what it is that God is doing in us. But James isn't talking about that. Instead, he's warning us about something else entirely. He's saying that we can hear God's Word, we can agree with it, we can even feel challenged by it, and then we can go away without doing what it says.

And we can so easily fool ourselves into thinking that because we heard His Word, that we've responded to it as well. Last week, Pastor James finished the middle section of chapter one, and he finished it with verse 18. It's going to come up here, says he, speaking of God, chose to give birth to us by giving us his true Word, and we, out of all creation, became his prized possession. Now, that's an important starting point for us this morning, because as we come to verse 19, James is going to continue on from this important truth, the truth that God has given us the good news about Jesus Christ through the Word, and that Word has given us a new life. So if God's Word has given us life, how do we continue to respond to His Word so that it continues to shape us and to help us?

With this section of James 1, we're going to be in verses 19 through to the end. 27. We're going to look at these three points, these three ideas. Firstly, we're to receive the word humbly. Second, we're to look into the Word carefully.

And third, we're to live the Word visibly. So verse 19 says this. Understand this, my dear brothers and sisters. You must all be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry. Human anger does not produce the righteousness God desires.

Now, we often look at verse 19 here in James as good advice for relationships. And it is good advice for relationships that truth works in marriage, it works in parenting, it works in church community, it works in your workplace. It works particularly well in the online world. Be quick to listen and slow to speak. I wonder if you've ever made the connection that when a conversation ends with anger, it's often because we've done the opposite of that.

We've been slow to listen and quick to speak. More importantly though, James is placing this advice within the context of how we should listen to God. His question for us is this. Do we come ready to hear what God says? And he highlights anger as a roadblock to us hearing what God is saying.

In verse 20, we read that human anger doesn't produce the righteousness that God desires. He makes a connection here back to verse three. For those of you who are with us on week one, James says the testing of our faith produces endurance. So here he puts this idea side by side with that one. He says, trials well received produce something good in us.

On the other hand, human anger produces nothing good in us. Now there's something really practical you can do this week. This is a way that God's word can go from your ears to your hands and your feet and to your mouth. When you feel anger rising this week, maybe it's at home, maybe it's reading a work email, maybe for some of you, it's in the car. When you feel anger rising, ask, what good is this going to produce in my life?

Get yourself into this pattern of checking in your spirit, what good will this produce in my life? Then in verse 21, so get rid of all the filth and evil in your lives and humbly accept the word God has planted in your hearts, for it has the power to save your souls. James tells us to do two things here. First he says, get rid of the filth and evil in your lives. The Greek paints this picture of taking off dirty clothes my kids love.

I think it's probably their favorite thing to do is to go into the backyard to turn the hose on and cover themselves in dirt. So my least favourite thing for them to do, but they love it. And at the end, they actually did it this week, at the end when they were covered head to toe in dirt, when they were wet and muddy, when they came inside, I didn't say to them, I just, just put clean clothes over the top. I didn't say, just throw some clothes over the top, you'll be fine. Of Course, I said take off the dirty clothes first.

So James is saying to us that when God's Word shows us something in our lives we need to be willing to get rid of, takes humility to do that. We have to come willing to be corrected. It's why he's just warned us about the fruit of anger. Anger makes us defensive. But here we're told to come humbly with a humble heart that says, lord, show me what needs to change.

I wonder how you come to God's Word. I wonder if when you come to God's Word, you ask that question. Lord, show me what it is that needs to change. Lord, give me a teachable heart. This is a great reminder for people like me, people who spend their days preparing, studying and then sharing God's Word.

It's very easy to. To read passages and prepare messages and think, oh, this would be great for the church. This is going to be an awesome sermon for the church to hear and miss the fact that when I open God's Word, when I hear God's Word preached, God is speaking to me as well. But. But it isn't just a struggle for me, I suspect.

I suspect, particularly for those of us who have been in church for a while, it's very easy to come to God's Word feeling like we know what it says. But James is very, very clear here. He says that knowing what God's Word says doesn't mean that we're being changed by it. So my encouragement to you this week is that as you come to God's Word, come with fresh eyes, pray intentionally, Lord, as I read this, show me where I need to change. And then we Turn to our second point.

Look into the word carefully, verse 22. But don't just listen to God's Word, you must do what it says, otherwise you are only fooling yourselves. Let me just remind you where James started. He reminded us that God gave us new life through His Word. So that gift, that new life, is not something we have earned, but it is something that calls us to obey.

And James warns us that we can fool ourselves about how we are responding to God. The language he uses here is the language of a calculation that's wrong. It's like getting the maths wrong. It's hearing and thinking, doing the calculation and thinking that hearing equals obeying. It's a calculation that says, I've heard it, so I must have done it.

And James says that doesn't add up. Hearing is not the same as doing. He's going to give us some really Practical examples of that across the course of the letter. And you'll hear these over the coming weeks. He says the same mouth shouldn't both praise God and tear people down.

And yet we can so easily praise God this morning and then go home and speak harshly to our families. He says, faith that sees someone in need and only wishes them well isn't worth much. You know, I can agree. I can agree that God's word tells me to care for people, but. But I can still do nothing about it.

He tells us not to grumble about each other. Yeah, I can hear that. I can agree with it. And then I can complain about the people that God calls me to love. He tells us to pray for one another.

I can see someone who is doing it tough, and I can say, I'll pray for you, and then actually not pray. I can do all of those things very easily. In those situations. It's easy to think, I heard what God said. I. I agreed with it, so surely I've done it.

But James says it doesn't add up. Thinking like that is foolish. And to help us understand it, he gives us a picture to illustrate it. In verse 23, he says this. For if you listen to the Word and don't obey, it is like glancing at your face in a mirror.

You see yourself, you walk away, and then you forget what you look like. Notice what happens in this example. The person looks. They see what has been reflected. The seeing wasn't the problem.

The problem's with what happens next. His point is this. What do you do with what God's word shows you? You see, the Word reveals to us who God is. It reveals to us who he has created us to be, what our lives really look like.

The danger is that we see that picture clearly reflected to us on a Sunday morning, and by Monday morning, we've forgotten all about it. Perhaps this morning, as you were getting ready for church, you brushed your teeth. Well, at least I hope you brushed your teeth. Don't ask my kids if they did, because I have no idea. But I hope you brushed your teeth.

If you looked in the mirror while you're brushing your teeth and you saw that you had toothpaste smeared across your cheek, I suspect you didn't think, oh, okay. And then walk away and do nothing about it and forget all about it and turn up to church, we can so easily find ourselves doing that. With God's word, we can come on a Sunday morning, we can come to it in our quiet time, and it will reflect something back to us, something in Our life that doesn't line up and then we close it or we walk away and we forget all about it. But James says there's another way to respond. In verse 25 says this.

But if you look carefully into the perfect law that sets you free, and if you do what it says and don't forget what you heard, then God will bless you for doing it. James describes a second person. This time it's someone who gives their attention to God's Word and stays with it. They keep coming back to what God has said, and then they put that into practice. That's the difference between the two people.

Both have looked, but the second person has carried what they have heard, what they have seen into the way that they live. Notice here that James calls God's Word the perfect law that sets you free. That might sound a bit strange to us this morning because we don't think of laws as something that set us free. But as we come to God's Word, his commands show us how to live as the people he created us to be. Through Jesus, we've been forgiven, we've been set free from the power of sin.

And God's Word then shows us how to live in that freedom. James doesn't promise us that that obedience will make our lives easy. But he does say that there will be blessing not waiting for you at the end of it, although there is blessing there. But there will actually be blessing in the doing as you obey, as you put God's word into practice, there'll be blessing in the doing. Back at the start of this series, we talked about the fact that throughout the letter, James is going to reference one of Jesus's sermons.

He's going to speak repeatedly about the Sermon on the Mount. And this is one of those places, because over in Matthew, Jesus speaking to the crowd, he tells the story of two builders. He says the first one hears his words and follows them. And that builder is like a person who builds on a foundation of rock. When the storms come, the house stands.

But he says there's another person. There's a person who hears and doesn't obey. That person is like a builder who builds on sand. When the storm comes, the house collapses again, it's the same message. There are two people, both of them have heard the same words.

The difference that Jesus highlights and now James is highlighting for us is that one of them puts them into practice, one of them does something about it. So here's the challenge for you this morning and for me. Where have we heard God's Word and Walked away from it unchanged. Where has God shown you that something needs to change? And you've quickly closed or you've quickly looked away and you've let it slip away and fade from view.

So James has told us how to receive the word humbly, how to look into it carefully, and in the last two verses, he's going to tell us how to live the word visibly. Let's look at verse 26 together. If you claim to be religious but don't control your tongue, you are fooling yourself and your religion is worthless. Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you. James gives us three pieces of really practical advice about how we can respond to God's Word.

First, he says it will show up in the way that you speak. He says if you claim to be religious but don't control your tongue, you're fooling yourself. It's a serious warning. James is saying to us, we can turn up, we can sing, we can serve, we can feel that we've ticked all the boxes. But if we keep using our words to tear people down, if we're unkind and careless, if we're crass, James says our religious activity doesn't make us right now.

What he isn't saying. He's not saying that one harsh word means there's no faith in you. Later in the letter, he's going to say to us that we all stumble in many ways. But he is saying, don't be fooled into thinking that ticking the boxes and is the same as obeying. I want you to take really seriously what your speech reveals and be willing to repent.

You know, I wonder if some of us maybe need to deal with that this week. Maybe that could be our practical way of applying God's word. Maybe when we're tempted to drag someone down with our words, instead we use them to build them up. Second, James says living the Word will show in the way that we care for others. And to illustrate the point, he says it's the way you care for orphans and widows that shows God's word at work in your life.

Now, he chooses these two groups, I think, for a reason, because they are the most vulnerable in the ancient world. They've got no one to support them, no one to care for them, no one to speak up for them. If you showed care towards them, they weren't in a position to give you anything in return. This is what James is saying. The way you care generously for People who can't give you anything in return is a visible sign of the transformative power of the Word in your life.

But it's more than that because James makes a connection Back to Psalm 68. And there the psalmist says, father to the fatherless, Defender of the widows. This is God whose dwelling is holy. God places the lonely in families. He sets the prisoners free and gives them joy.

You see, when we're caring for the vulnerable, we're reflecting the very nature of who God is. We're showing our family resemblance, we're looking like the Father when we care for the vulnerable. I wonder who that is for you this week. I wonder who it is in your life that is vulnerable, that is lonely. Wonder who it is that you can care for, that can't give anything back.

I'd encourage you to go this week and care for them not in just thoughts or ideas, but care for them in a practical way. And then third, James says that the way that our response to the Word is visible is how we live in the world. It's there at the very end of verse 27, he says, we refuse to let the world corrupt us. You see, we still live here, we still raise our families here, we still love our neighbours here, but we shouldn't be shaped by here. As we go through this letter, James is going to speak about a variety of things.

He's going to speak next week about favouring wealthy people, about envy, about selfish ambition, about quarrelling. It's attributes that are so often praised in our world. They're admired, they're presented as good, good things, and they can so easily sneak into our lives as well. His message to us is really clear. It's be shaped by God's word, by what God values, not by what the world values.

As we close this morning, let me take us back to that question that we started with. Why doesn't God's Word change me more? James has called us to humbly receive the word God planted in us. He's called us to put it into practice, to let it shape how we speak, how we care and how we live. And as we respond to that this morning, we need to remember that God has given us his spirit to help us.

He didn't leave us on our own to try and figure out how to live for God in a world that's constantly pulling us the other way. You see, long before James wrote this letter, God made a promise through the prophet Ezekiel. Listen to what God says in Ezekiel 36. Then I will sprinkle clean water on you and you will be clean. Your filth will be washed away.

And you will no longer worship idols. And I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you. I will take out your stony, stubborn heart and give you a tender, responsive heart. And I'll put my spirit in you. So you will follow my decrees and be careful to obey my regulations.

God says, there, I will. Five times. He promises to wash away his people's filth. It's the same picture James uses in verse 21. He promises to give his people a new heart.

He promises to put his own spirit in them. And notice what he says the Spirit will do. The Spirit will help us follow and obey what he says. And in Jesus's life, his death, his resurrection, we see how God keeps that promise at the cross. He washed away the filth of our sin so that we can respond to God's Word.

As we respond, we respond as people already forgiven. But there's a second part to that promise. We have the gift of God's Spirit, the Holy Spirit in us, God's presence alive in our lives, convicting, correcting, encouraging, empowering and equipping us to change. So when God's Word tells you something that needs to change, we can ask the Holy Spirit to help us respond to that, to soften our hearts where we become stubborn, to help us put away our excuses, to give us the strength to continue and obey even when it's difficult. You see, Paul tells the church at Ephesus, be filled with the Spirit.

You know, we can keep praying that church. Holy Spirit, fill me. Would you help me to hear God's Word and do what it says? I wonder if some of us, we need to pray that again this morning. Maybe there's something that God has revealed to you, something in your life, something that His Word has encouraged you to deal with.

Why don't we pray together? God, we thank youk for your Word. This morning, we are challenged by this encouragement to not just hear your word, but to do what it says. Lord, let us not be fooled into thinking we can hear your Word and that hearing is the same as being changed by it. But help us to hear and be changed.

Help us to live it out. Help us to conform our lives into your likeness through the power of your Holy Spirit. Lord, I want to pray this morning for people who maybe you've already spoken to them this week over the last few months about something that needs to change. Lord, maybe they've been running from that. Father, I pray that through your Holy Spirit that you would empower them, encourage them, help them to obey.

Lord, make all of us not just hearers of your word, but doers as well. We ask you this in Jesus precious name. Amen. Amen.