1There is an evil that I have seen under the sun, and it lies heavy on mankind: 2a man to whom God gives wealth, possessions, and honor, so that he lacks nothing of all that he desires, yet God does not give him power to enjoy them, but a stranger enjoys them. This is vanity; it is a grievous evil. Ecclesiastes 6.1-2
1. Injustice is prevalent – First Century and before – Today
2. Sin (of injustice) cripples our effectiveness
a. Neutralizes our impact/nullifies our influence
b. A problem comes between theory and practice
c. Disconnect from what we say we believe (scriptures) and what we do
d. Comes from – wrong views of God; making grace cheap; do not make the efforts to know God and learn his word
19 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. James 1.19-21
1. Red Flag: Anger (applies to other passions, too)
2. Avoiding anger and behaving as we believe observation and intentional action
I. Activate Our Hearing (1.19)
Two little girls were starting out to play. One insisted on going quite a distance away from her house. “Why do you want to go so far away?” the other asked. The first little girl said, “So that if my mamma calls me I won’t hear her.”
Some kids don’t want to hear their parents, but listening is not a problem of youth only. We ALL have this problem at times. We are selective in our listening. We only hear what we want to hear or only listen to certain people. ARE YOU LISTENING?
A. We Measure Ourselves by Yeshua (Jesus) as Revealed in Scripture
1. Do we hear God as Yeshua did?
2. Shema (Greatest Command) – Deuteronomy 6.4-9
4 “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. 5 You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
3. But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. James 1.22
4. “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Matthew 7.21
B. Reasons for Preaching and Teaching
Justin Martyr (early 2C) – early community of God’s actions when they came together:
On day called “Sun Day” believers gathered in one place [day of Helios – Greek Sun god]; writings of apostles or prophets read; then when reader has ceased, the President instructs to imitation of these good things; pray; bread and wine and water brought; President in like manner gives prayers and thanksgiving; people say amen and distribution to each; to those absent a portion is sent by deacons; give according to what they see fit; President gives to those in need – widows, orphans, sick, in bonds, strangers, etc.; but Sun Day is when we hold common assembly because it is the day when God changed darkness to create world; Yeshua rose from the dead. Yeshua was crucified before the day of Saturn and appeared to disciples on day of the Sun.
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. Colossians 3.16
1. Preaching and Teaching are stimuli for deeper study
2. Challenge to a higher call
3. Develop Obedience – Leviticus 19.18
4. Develop a serving spirit (story of Yeshua and people of God encourage service)
For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. Galatians 5.13
9 Show hospitality to one another without grumbling. 10 As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God's varied grace: 11 whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies—in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. 1 Peter 4.9-11
[A man came to worship service and asked, “Is the service over?” – “No our worship assembly is over, but the service has just begun.”
5. Salvation
14 How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? 15 And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” 16 But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?” 17 So faith comes from hearing Romans 10.14-17
C. Reactions to the Message
1. Ridicule – Athens (Acts 17)
32 Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked. But others said, “We will hear you again about this.”
2. Respect – Jerusalem (Acts 2)
3. Difference was in the hearts (Luke 8.14-15)
One preacher said: Giving a sermon one Sunday, I heard two teenage girls in the back giggling and disturbing people. I interrupted my sermon and announced sternly, "There are two of you here who have not heard a word I’ve said." That quieted them down.
When the service was over, I went to greet people at the front door. Three adults apologized for going to sleep in church, promising it would never happen again.
Listening to a sermon may not be the best or the easiest way to listen to God’s Word. You may endure listening to a sermon every Sunday but THE BEST WAY TO LISTEN TO GOD’S WORD IS TO READ IT FOR YOURSELF. (2 Timothy 2:15)
II. Suppress Our Speaking (1.19)
A lady named Betty said: Our manager at the restaurant where I worked was a much beloved, jovial man. But there was one subject you didn’t dare discuss in front of him -- his height. Or, should I say, his lack of it. One day, he stormed through the door and announced angrily, "Someone just picked my pocket!"
Most of my fellow waitresses and I were speechless, except for the one who blurted out, "How could anyone stoop so low?"
Be careful with caustic or sarcastic remarks. They can hurt people and mar or hurt relationships.
A. There is a Time to Speak and a Time to be Silent – Ecclesiastes 3.7b
“a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;”
B. Controlling the Tongue Controls Our Anger
1. Can Talk when should be listening or thinking
2. Jephthah’s vow – Judges 11.30-31
30 And Jephthah made a vow to the LORD and said, “If you will give the Ammonites into my hand, 31 then whatever comes out from the doors of my house to meet me when I return in peace from the Ammonites shall be the LORD's, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering.”
C. Speech Reminders
Proverbs 10:19 "When words are many, sin is not absent, but he who holds his tongue is wise."
Proverbs 10:32 "The lips of the righteous know what is fitting, but the mouth of the wicked only what is perverse."
Proverbs 11:12 "A man who lacks judgment derides his neighbor, but a man of understanding holds his tongue."
Ephesians 4.29 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.
III. Realize of Our Anger (1.19-20)
A. There is a Justified Anger – limits
1. Anger without sin – Ephesians 4.26-27
26 Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, 27 and give no opportunity to the devil.
2. For a Great Cause – Romans 12.9
Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good.
Dishonesty; Crime; Corruption; Abuse; Jesus and Moneychangers
B. There is an Unjustified Anger – Self-centered
1. Out of control
2. Gain Control
A lady named Lesley said: My younger brother, I explained to a friend, had quite a temper as a boy. Our parents had tried extra love, attention and patience on him, with little success. Then, in the middle of one of his tantrums, they simply handed him a shovel, pointed to the backyard and instructed him to go out and dig and not come back until he had control of his anger.
"Apparently," I said, "the therapy worked, because he’s turned out very nicely." "What does he do for a living?" my friend asked. "He builds in-ground swimming pools."
How do you control your anger? Do you dig holes? Do you count to ten? Do you go for a walk? Or do you scream and holler?
Perhaps there is a better way to overcome our anger. We need to let the Lord do His work in us. We need His Spirit of peace to invade us and control us and that way we will be slow to anger. TRY THIS: whenever you are tempted to lose your temper (or any other sin), make a conscious effort to recite scripture – EVERY TIME. Before long the devil will stop sending these occasions to you because they will only bring up the words of God.
IV. Address Our Sins (1.21)
A. Removing Sin
1. We often wait to act -- Because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed speedily, the heart of the children of man is fully set to do evil. Ecclesiastes 8.11
Two guys who were not known for being the brightest crayons in the box were driving a delivery truck down a road when they came to a tunnel. The sign read: "Warning: Maximum Height 10 feet zero inches", so they got out and measured their truck. Unfortunately, the truck was just over 12 feet high.
They didn’t know what to do, when finally one of them looked both directions and said, "I don’t see any police, let’s go for it!"
As ridiculous as that sounds, there are many folks who take the same approach to sin. "If nobody sees us, then it’s OK to go ahead and do it. We can get away with it!"
2. Do not conceal sins – confess them Psalm 32.3-5
3 For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away
through my groaning all day long.
4 For day and night your hand was heavy upon me;
my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.
5 I acknowledged my sin to you,
and I did not cover my iniquity;
I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,”
and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.
3. Put it to death – Colossians 3.5-10
5 Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. 6 On account of these the wrath of God is coming. 7 In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. 8 But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. 9 Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.
B. Receive Scriptures/Word
1. Place of Meekness
2. Good Heart – sowing good habits produce a good heart
3. “This book will keep you from sin; sin will keep you from this book.”
On July 2, 1982, Larry Walters, a 33-year-old man who decided he wanted to see his neighborhood from a new perspective. He went down to the local army surplus store one morning and bought forty-five used weather balloons. That afternoon he strapped himself into a lawn chair, to which several of his friends tied the now helium-filled balloons. He took along a six-pack of beer, a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich, and a BB gun, figuring he could shoot the balloons one at a time when he was ready to land.
Walters, who assumed the balloons would lift him about 100 feet in the air, was caught off guard when the chair soared more than 15,000 feet into the sky -- smack into the middle of the air traffic pattern at Long Beach Airport. Too frightened to shoot any of the balloons, he stayed airborne for more than two hours, forcing the airport to shut down its runways for much of the afternoon, causing long delays in flights from across the country.
Soon after he was safely grounded and cited by the police, reporters asked him three questions:
"Where you scared?" "Yes."
"Would you do it again?" "No."
"Why did you do it?" "Because," he said, "you can’t just sit there."
Brothers and sisters, some people can just sit and take life easy but most don’t. However, not many people are as daring or as crazy as Larry Walters was.
Behave like what we believe! ACT!
