Listening And Doing

Sermon for January 26, 2020 - Listening and Doing

[I am thankful to William Barclay's exposition of James chapter 1, which influences much of this message directly and indirectly.]

Did you know that God truly cares about every aspect of your life? Sometimes people say that God is too big or too busy with more important things to be concerned with something as inconsequential as the details of our lives.

But this sentiment is not biblical. God absolutely cares about the little things that happen in our lives.

Luke 12:6–7 says: "Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God. Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows."

God remembers birds that people sell for next to nothing; they are of small consequence to humans yet are remembered by God.

Jesus tells us we are worth much more than that. Of course God cares! He cares enough to number the hairs on our heads. Each year it takes less time to count the hairs on my head.

Matthew 6:25–33 is a similar passage. Here Jesus counsels against worry, highlighting how God provides for birds and flowers, things that pass quickly and are considered small to humans. How much more will He care for His people?

Many of the Psalms give credence to the fact that God cares about our lives, including the small things.

In Psalm 139:13–14 he says, "For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well."

This is a God who is intimately connected with the lives of His people. https://www.compellingtruth.org/does-God-care.html

Now if you can receive this truth, that is really lovely. But a lot of us grew up believing that we didn’t matter.

Sometimes it was our parents, failing in their responsibility to reflect the love and goodness of God in their care of us.

In my case it wasn’t that. I’m grateful to have had loving parents.

Though in my case it was the understanding of life that my parents had - their materialism and atheism - that, once I was old enough to explore those 2 things in depth

- that understanding of life, which I adopted as my own at the time, left me believing deeply that I didn’t matter at all, that life was meaningless, that life was just suffering and hardship.

You have your own story, if you have struggled with believing that you matter.

So when I started to open up my mind to the possibility that God exists, it quickly dawned on me that if He did exist, that He was the Creator of everything, including me. I was made in his image, like every person.

That suggested a certain amount of dignity that I was not use to considering. This really began to shake up everything in my mind.

I started to wonder, do I matter? Do I matter, objectively? If God made me and God loves me, then the unavoidable answer was: “Yes, I actually matter!” [Pause]

So, God cares about every aspect of your life.

And as we continue to explore the Letter of James, the Epistle of James, we begin to see that God cares a great deal about us, and about how we live, AND how we relate to Him AND to other people.

And so we have today’s passage. We’re going to do a line by line, expositional study today of what this portion of God’s Word is saying to us.

19 My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry,

Why in the world does God care about the rate we speak at, or listen at? Isn’t that ridiculously trivial? What’s the point here? What’s the bigger picture?

The big deal here is that God cares deeply about relationships. He cares about our relationship with Him and our relationships to those around us.

The cross itself is a good representation of these 2 relationships [PIC].

19 My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry,

So, quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry.

Quick to Listen - not just hearing and ignoring what we heard. Listening with intent to learn. Listening because we trust God our Father in heaven.

Listen To God - because He is our Creator and Redeemer, the Lover of our souls.

Listen To the Bible - because the Bible is the Word of God, all that God wants us to know about Him, about His thoughts and about humanity and about spirituality is found in the Bible.