Slow to Speak

Let's pray. Holy Spirit, thank you for this living word that we have at our fingertips. Lord, may we avail ourselves of all its riches tonight as we meditate on the truths before us. Lord, in our hearing, may we also be doers of what you tell us, and in our doing, may we be sincere and not self-deceived. Open our eyes now to behold wonderful things from your word, I pray in Jesus' name, amen.

You can be seated. Well, James has just mentioned the fact that God's word, the word of truth, there in verse 18, is what brings us to life spiritually. It causes our spiritual birth. In verse 19, then he moves on to make the point that not only does that word regenerate us at the start, it also sustains us. It's what causes growth throughout the Christian life. Just because we get saved doesn't mean we don't need the word of truth any longer. We need the word of truth, the scriptures, the gospel, throughout our Christian journey just as much as we needed it at the start. We need that word in order to grow in our knowledge of the will of God and in order to grow in our ability to obey that will.

And in order to know and do the will of God with the right heart attitudes, with the right heart motivation. So, yes, the word of God saves us, verse 18, but our growth in grace, verses 19 and following, depend on continually hearing God's truth and obeying God's truth with sincerity. I think the key word here is that word implanted in verse 21.

You see, it's not as if God's word is just a bunch of letters on a page that make up words and sentences for me to read with my coffee in the morning and then go about my business for the rest of the day. No, this word is supposed to take root deep in my mind and penetrate my heart and shape my will and desires in such a comprehensive way that its truths take over my life. It's the implanted word. This word isn't supposed to be some rare flower blooming in the middle of the garden of my life. No, it's supposed to be kudzu. It takes everything over.

It covers it all. It's not the occasional word. It's the implanted word. It's not the dusty Bible on the shelf word.

It's the implanted word. If our growth in grace then depends on hearing and obeying the word of God with sincerity, then we can certainly expect, can't we, that there will be obstacles to that process. There will be hindrances to the fruitfulness of God's word in our lives.

The enemy doesn't like this. It will resist the fruitfulness of God's word. In our text tonight, James mentioned several of those hindrances, several of those obstacles, three primary hindrances, but he also mentioned several other incidental ones. The three primary obstacles to our growth in grace that we find in our text here tonight are, number one, talking without hearing, number two, hearing without doing, and number three, doing without bridling. Let's take a look at these three obstacles to growth so that we can be on guard against those things that hinder the fruitfulness of God's word in our lives. The first obstacle James mentions then is talking without hearing in verses 19 through 21.

I suppose this should be obvious to us, but often the greatest hindrance to hearing from God is not listening to God. James' listeners evidently had a problem of talking too much. They were quick to speak and slow to hear. I'm so glad that we don't have that tendency here tonight.

Oh, y'all, that was supposed to be sarcastic. We do have that tendency. We are quick to speak instead of being quick to hear. We like to be heard, not just by other people. We like to be heard in the private recesses of our own heart, in our own minds. We want to be the voice of reason. We want to be our own conscience. We want to determine what's right and wrong. We want to reserve the podium.

We want to hold the floor. We want to be our own word of truth. But God says, slow down. Quit talking so much and start listening. God says, I have the words of truth.

I am the truth. Ecclesiastes 5-3 says, a fool's voice is known by his many words. But a wise man will slow down, will be slow to speak and quick to listen, particularly when it comes to listening to the voice of God. The primary obstacle to growth here has to do with the failure to listen to God because we're too busy listening to ourselves. But we'll see that with each of these primary obvious obstacles that James will mention.

There are often several other underlying and more subtle hindrances to growth that are associated with the primary obstacle. So here in verses 19 and 20, James associates anger with the tendency of speaking too much and listening too little. He says, be slow to anger, for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.

Anger towards other people makes us poor listeners. Anger towards God makes us quick to interrupt and squelch the word of truth. Another impediment to the word that's associated with this failure to listen is filthiness and rampant wickedness, verse 21. These are very broad categories that refer to moral impurity of all sorts. Oftentimes the reason I don't want to listen to God's word is because I love my sin too much. Filthiness and rampant wickedness.

I don't want God's word implanted in my life because I know that it's going to weed out a whole crop of idols that I've been cultivating for a long time. James says, uproot all that stuff to make room for listening to the word of God. My niece recently married a farmer from California named Ben. Ben is a brilliant farmer. He studied agriculture in college.

He knows the science of growing crops. Now out in California where Ben learned how to farm, the techniques and procedures are not always the same as they are here on the East Coast. Well, some rich investors down in Georgia recently bought several hundred acres, and they hired Ben to come and establish a pecan orchard. Well, the first year Ben planted thousands of pecan trees. The second year he cut them way back.

The third year came around, and he cut them back even more. They just looked like little sticks sticking out of the ground. How in the world are these going to grow and become fruit-producing, nut-producing trees?

They just looked like a bunch of sticks. And the locals thought that Ben was stressing these young plants way too much. But now that the fourth year is coming around, the locals are beginning to see the wisdom of Ben's aggressive pruning because now these trees are flourishing. You see, the aggressive pruning above the ground enabled the root system of these trees to get far more established than they would have been had Ben not lopped off the tops of those trees season after season after season.

And so now, because the root system is so well established, the visible part of the tree, the fruit-producing part, is set to outpace other orchards where farmers were more concerned with the visible fruit than with the life-sustaining root. You get the analogy, don't you? If God's Word is to become implanted in my heart, it will require that those things which stand in opposition to God be pruned, be lopped off. Filthiness and rampant wickedness must be put away in time to become quick to hear from God and slow to hear from Eugene.

Let's stop speaking metaphorically for a minute and ask, how can we put away these unhelpful worldly affections? Jesus goes behind the metaphor and speaks plainly in his parable of the soils. He exposes some of those filthy and wicked impediments that ought to be put to death. The impediment Jesus mentions is Satan himself. Satan would love nothing more than to remove from your life the effectiveness of the Word. He does this through temptation, through accusation, through confusion.

Scripture tells us, in fact, James is the one who says, resist the devil and he will flee from you. Don't give Satan or his accusations the time of day. Speak the truth to yourself. Believe the truth.

Don't allow yourself the perverted freedom of listening to lies. But secondly, Christ identifies in his parable another impediment to the Word's effectiveness, and this time it's tribulation and persecution. When the going gets tough, some people abandon the Word. And the solution is to learn to love the Word and depend upon the Word of God before persecution comes, so that when persecution comes, you won't fall away. The third and final impediment to biblical fruitfulness from Christ's parable is the cares of the world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things. In other words, the Word of God is choked out in your life when you love other things that are contrary to the Word more, things like money, temporal prestige, reputation.

When your love for those things is greater than your love for what the Bible says is of utmost importance and value. We destroy this impediment of worldliness by controlling our affections, steering them in the direction of godliness. And this, of course, takes time and effort and consistency. Brothers and sisters, it can be done.

We're called to do this. The Christian, empowered by the Holy Spirit and equipped with the Word of God, can learn to love what he ought to love and learn to hate what he ought to hate. None of this will happen, though, until we stop interrupting God with our own ideas and viewpoints and start listening to what he has to say in his Word. So James says, put all these impediments away and receive with meekness the implanted Word, but then he adds one final thought that just sort of stings the heart of the Christian who has been negligent with the Word. He says this, receive the implanted Word which is able to save your souls. This Word of truth that you've not been able to hear because you've been so preoccupied with your own voice, your own ideas and desires, this Word that you have casually dismissed because you've been wronged by someone and you're mad at them or because there are just simply too many temporal concerns that need to be taken care of, this Word is able to save your souls and yet you've ignored it.

John Calvin calls this short little clause a sharp goad to chastise our idleness. Folks, our very salvation depends on listening to what God has said and so talking without hearing is indeed dangerous ground to be on. But there's another obstacle to our spiritual growth and it's hearing without doing.

Hearing without doing. James says in verse 22, be doers of the Word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. You see, a posture of submission toward the Word of truth is not demonstrated by mere knowledge of the Bible. It is at least that you do have to know the Word of truth but it goes far beyond mere knowledge to include belief in its truths, joy in its instructions, obedience to its commands.

I think anything less than that would be like jumping out of an airplane knowing everything there is to know about parachuting but without actually wearing the parachute. That would be futile. That would be foolish.

That would bring harm. We need to be doers and not hearers only. I think there may have been a time when the church placed too much emphasis, perhaps, on the necessity of obedience but I really think the extreme to which the church is prone today is on downplaying the necessity of obedience to a fault.

I think generally, and this is a generalization, a stereotype I know, but I think generally we're more afraid of legalism than we are of antinomianism. And so we sometimes shy away from talk of obedient Christian living. But church, the Bible has a lot to say about the importance and blessing of obedience, of being a doer of the Word. The Gospel isn't just about justification by grace alone through faith. It's also about sanctification, the process of becoming more and more holy throughout the course of one's life.

If we have some notion that faithfulness is contrary to faith, we need to rethink our understanding of faith. God saves us in order to make us new creations who love and obey the perfect law of God. Consider these verses for a moment and what they say regarding the centrality of obedience in the Christian life. If you love Jesus, you will keep his commandments. John 14, 15.

Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. Therefore, let not sin reign in your mortal body to make you obey its passions, but present your members, the parts of your body, to God as instruments for righteousness. Romans 6, 8 through 13. On the day of judgment, when Christ casts the lost into hell, he'll say to them, I never knew you. Depart from me, you unbelievers.

No. Depart from me, you workers of lawlessness, you disobedient ones. Matthew 7, 23. Paul describes unbelievers on judgment day as those who do not obey the Gospel. 1 Thessalonians 1, 8.

Interesting. Not those who don't believe the Gospel, those who don't obey the Gospel. You see, the Gospel is something to be obeyed.

It's something to be believed and obeyed. And without both faith in the Gospel and faithfulness to the Gospel, that is without both justification and sanctification, we will be lost. Paul said, for it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. Romans 2, 13. Now, please understand I'm not denying that we are both justified and sanctified by grace.

Our good works will never merit salvation. What I am saying is that salvation, true salvation, will always produce obedient doers of the law. And so just as we should always be seeking to keep our faith firmly grounded in Christ and his finished work on the cross, so we should always be seeking to keep our lives conformed to the instruction God gives us in his Word. James refers to that instruction as the perfect law or the law of liberty. Isn't that a beautiful description of God's moral directives for our lives? It's perfect in that he's revealed everything we need to be thoroughly equipped for every good work. It's liberating, it's freeing, in that it frees us up from having to try to guess what a life pleasing to God looks like. He's told us what a life pleasing to him is.

One commentator I read had this to say. He said, those who fail to do the Word, who are hearers only, are guilty of a dangerous and potentially fatal self-delusion. If the Gospel by nature contains both saving power and summons to obedience, those who relate to only one have not truly embraced the Gospel.

A very important truth for us to keep in mind. Hearing without doing is dangerous because it introduces a subtle self-deception. Knowledge without obedience or faith without faithfulness slowly begins to instill a false confidence in the mind of a disobedient person.

They know so much truth that they think of themselves as having attained some measure of spiritual maturity when in actually they may have not even been born again yet. James describes this sort of person's relationship to the Word of truth with a very interesting analogy. He says in verse 23, 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 the mirror, for he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. Now don't misunderstand. This mirror analogy doesn't imply that the forgetful hearer has made his study of Scripture only a cursory, superficial sort of thing.

Not at all. In fact, the word for looks in this passage implies a very diligent looking with understanding. The forgetful hearer is not negligent for lack of attention, he's negligent for lack of retention. He studies the Bible hard and then promptly forgets what he read, what he's learned, because he had no intention of ever implementing any of it. It's like forgetting to button those pesky little buttons on your collar. Have you ever done that?

Am I the only one? You've been getting ready for the day, you look in the mirror, you notice, perhaps while you're brushing your teeth, that you haven't buttoned those little buttons on your collar, so you tell yourself to button them as soon as you finish brushing your teeth, but by the time you finish brushing your teeth, other things have happened, you forget all about your collar buttons and out the door you go. You get back at the end of the day, glance in the mirror, and there are those silly buttons mocking you for having gone through your whole day forgetting to button them, the whole day with a floppy collar, all because you looked in the mirror and then promptly forgot what you saw. James is not condemning the quality of one's Bible study, but the effect, the acting upon the Bible study. The forgetful hearers quiet time might be as consistent as Billy Graham's. His knowledge of the word might be equivalent to R.C.

Sproul's himself, but that's as far as it goes. This knowledge, this devotion to the Bible never translates into action, into obedience. Hearing without doing is dangerous because it fools a person into thinking he or she is far more spiritually mature than God knows him or her to be. There's a third and final obstacle then that James includes here, an obstacle to our growth in grace.

First we looked at the obstacle of talking without hearing, then we consider the danger of hearing without doing. Finally we see the fruitlessness of doing without bridling. Doing without bridling, verses 26 and 27.

And there are several things here that we are to bridle, to bring under control, to restrain, although the most obvious one is put up front. Look at verse 26. If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person's religion is worthless. Now let me say a quick word about the concept of religion. I suspect that most of us have a negative connotation in our minds when we hear that word religion.

If I refer to someone as a very religious person, I probably don't mean it as a compliment in our current use of the word. I probably mean that they're very committed to the external forms of their faith without much heart engagement to speak of. Religious people, as we typically use that designation today, are the sorts of people who come to church on Christmas and Easter, they have their babies christened and insist on being married in the church and by a minister, but otherwise they have no real interest in Christ or genuine faith or repentance of sin. Their religion is merely external.

Those of us who see the hypocrisy in that like to describe ourselves as spiritual rather than religious, as if religious activity is always a sign of insincerity or of a shallow faith. But we need to understand that James' use of this word here does not assume that religion is entirely negative. In fact, he assumes that a sincere faith in Christ will of necessity be accompanied by certain external forms of worship and visible obedience. The Lord's Supper that we observed just this morning in our worship service is an external form that gives visible expression to our faith. It's a religious ritual that we do and if we neglected this external form of our religion, we would be disobedient to Christ. Now sure, the Lord's Supper can be observed in an insincere way.

In fact, we warn about that very danger every time we observe communion and I would go further and point out that any act of obedience can be performed in a perfunctory and insincere way. But just because religious practices have the potential of being performed insincerely doesn't mean those practices are bad, right? Religion isn't bad. Bad religion is bad. Religion is not the problem.

False religion is the problem. So when James starts talking about religion, he's not condemning religion. He's condemning pretentious religion, hypocritical religion. He's condemning fake obedience, obedience that is concerned merely with appearances.

He's concerned with unbridled acts of religion. In fact, there are three things James calls us to bridle, to restrain. First, we are to bridle our mouths.

We're to bridle our mouths. James kind of comes full circle here by returning to the original theme of speech. He began this section by telling Christians to be listeners, not just talkers. Then he tells us to be doers, not just listeners. But some of the things that we're called to do as Christians involves talking, right?

Part of obedience involves using our mouths. We're to speak the truth. We're to preach and teach. We're to bear witness to the gospel with our mouths. And so James returns to this theme of speaking in order to tell Christians that in their doing, they need to bridle, first of all, their tongues.

Their speech. They need to put a restraint on the things they say. So the first caution about speech up in verse 19 has to do with speaking too much. But the second caution here in verse 26 has to do with speaking in the wrong way. It's possible to preach and teach the truth with harshness.

It's possible to tell someone a truth that they need to hear but in a cruel and harmful way. James admonishes us in our truth-telling to do it with a bridle, do it with restraint. Remember what Paul says about restrained speech in Ephesians 4.29. Paul said, let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up as fits the occasion that it may give grace to those who hear. So that our words be true is not the only criteria for godly speech. Our words must also be appropriate. They must be edifying.

They must be gracious. So in our doing, that is in our obeying the word of truth, we are to, first of all, bridle our mouths. But secondly, we're to bridle our motives. James goes on in verse 27, religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this, to visit orphans and widows in their affliction. And I should point out that the word visit includes the idea of caring for, meeting the needs.

You're not just sitting down and having a chat. You're meeting the needs of orphans and widows in their affliction. Now James is not suggesting here that the only valid expression of religious fervor is helping the needy. What he's doing is describing the kind of religious activity that is unmistakably sincere. The kind of obedience for which there is no reward. No payback, no praise, no accolades.

It's a motive check. Am I willing to be a doer of the word when no one will see it? When nobody will praise me for it?

When I will get nothing in return? Because you see, if you only do the word when there's something in it for me, I'm really not doing the word. James says put a bridle on your motives. Make sure that your external obedience is not secretly driven by a longing for the praises of men. And church, I would just caution you that our sin nature is such that it's even possible to visit orphans and widows in a self-serving way, isn't it? We can even do that with wrong motives.

James picks that particular act of obedience, I think, because it is more difficult to fake religious sincerity when you're engaged in an act of service than when you're simply talking. It's easier to deceive your own heart, I think, with the words you say than it is with the deeds you do. But we need to be self-aware enough and self-skeptical enough to recognize that even the most humble menial acts of service can be performed with very selfish, proud motives. So we need to put a bridle on our motives. Finally, we need to bridle our morals.

Look at the latter part of verse 27. It says, religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this, to keep oneself unstained from the world. We need to guard our mouths, we need to guard our motives, we need to guard our morals, our actions. Being a doer of the word means your values and creed, your priorities and pursuits, your thought processes and choices and behavior will be distinct from the world. If our religious commitment produces no noticeable difference in these areas from those who have no interest in Christ, then we really need to question the validity of our religious profession. James will get more specific in the coming chapters with what that distinction should look like, but for now we need to know that being a doer of the word will require a bridling of our mouths, of our motives and of our morals.

As we wrap this up tonight, let me just spend a few moments thinking about how we might practically avoid these three obstacles to our growth and grace. I think for many of us, myself included, we might just need to learn to stop talking so much. Someone recently gave me a book that has a chapter on learning to listen, on the discipline of silence. The author says, when you meet a wise person, listen to him and you will learn wisdom. When you meet a foolish person, listen to him and you will learn patience.

When you are alone, listen to God and you will learn everything, everything necessary for the Christian life. At the end of this chapter in this book, the author gives a homework assignment. He says this refrain from having the last word in your next conversation might be a good practical application for all of us. We need to learn to be good listeners, which probably means we need to learn to talk less. Overcoming the second obstacle then requires that we approach God's word already resigned to the commitment that we will obey whatever command or principle God puts before us.

We've already settled the issue, I will obey whatever you say. Maybe implementing this will be as simple as writing down at the end of your time in the word each day an answer to the question, what does this passage require of me? And then maybe review that answer a week later to see if you're being a doer of the word. The last obstacle requires that we learn self-restraint. There is nothing more tiring than trying to exercise self-restraint in your own strength. And yet we are called to bridle our tongues, we are called to lay down our lives for others to die to the sinful affections and appetites that we find in ourselves. Christian, you can only do these things in the power of the Holy Spirit. But good news, the Holy Spirit lives in you. You have the Holy Spirit. Paul says, walk by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. This doesn't mean self-control is going to be easy.

The flesh dies hard. But it does mean God has given you the strength to bridle your propensity to sin and to walk in obedience. Perhaps you ought to begin every day with a prayer that the Holy Spirit would shut your mouth when it needs to be shut. That he would purify your motives when they are self-oriented, self-consumed. That he would keep you holy in a very unholy world. I know it sounds cliche, it is cliche, but God didn't save us to merely get us out of hell.

He is saving us to get hell out of us. Let's submit ourselves wholly and joyfully to that good work which God has begun in us and that he will complete on the day when Christ returns. Let's pray. Lord, thank you for your word of truth that is so much more than empty, powerless words on a page. Your words are living and powerful and able to do surgery on our sinful black hearts. May we be more diligent to hear that word, more committed to obeying that word, more humble in living out that word.

God, we have failed in this. Every one of us has failed to live up to this passage in your word and we will fail again. Thank you that when we sin, we have an advocate, the Lord Jesus Christ, who listened as he ought, who obeyed as he should and restrained himself with perfection. Thank you, Lord, that you attribute the obedience of Jesus to us. And may that act of grace on your part motivate us all the more to be hearers and doers of this sweet, sweet word of truth. I pray in Jesus' name. Amen.