“Pure Religion”
James 1:22-27
Scripture Reading
James 1:22 But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.
23 For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass:
24 For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was.
25 But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.
26 If any man among you, seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man’s religion is vain.
27 Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.
Have you ever wondered why there are religious people who seem to be the worse for their religion and others who are equally religious who are the better for theirs? Let me cite a couple of examples from my own experience to illustrate what I mean. First, I have a friend and I do consider him to be a friend, who talks about the church he attends and what is going on in his religious life yet I have learned from more than one source that he is a has a problem with alcohol, he is very religious but his behavior is a source of reproach on the cause of Christ. The second example is similar in that it is a lady who is very religious, attends church frequently, is involved in several aspects of the life of the church but is a notorious gossip! What could possibly explain this kind of contradiction between belief and behavior? Let’s see what the Apostle James has to say in our text:
I. The Inditement of Powerless Religion
a. A dangerous problem – James makes the following observation in verse 26: “If any man among you seem to be religious…” A literal translation of the word “seem” reads like this, “…this indicates his opinion of himself, not necessarily that of others…” FWB Commentary on James
ILL - Man’s capacity for self-deception is unlimited.
b. A revealing behavior – The man who makes this lofty self-estimation but fails to control his tongue is deceived.
ILL - The Japanese have two proverbs we would do well to remember. The first one says, “The tongue is but three inches long, yet it can kill a person six feet high.” The second one warns everyone: “The tongue is more to be feared than the sword.”
http://www.worldofquotes.com/proverb
ILL - Gary Richmond, a former zookeeper, had this to say: Raccoons go through a glandular change at about 24 months. After that they often attack their owners. Since a 30-pound raccoon can be equal to a 100-pound dog in a scrap, I felt compelled to mention the change coming to a pet raccoon owned by a young friend of mine, Julie. She listened politely as I explained the coming danger. I’ll never forget her answer.
“It will be different for me . . .” And she smiled as she added, “Bandit wouldn’t hurt me. He just wouldn’t.”
Three months later Julie underwent plastic surgery for facial lacerations sustained when her adult raccoon attacked her for no apparent reason. Bandit was released into the wild. Sin, too, often comes dressed in an adorable guise, and as we play with it, how easy it is to say, “It will be different for me.” The results are predictable.
Gary Richmond, View From The Zoo.
c. An ineffectual purpose – This man’s religion is useless, to no purpose. It is “vain” As a matter of fact this kind of religion is worse than “ineffectual” for it has a very powerful influence of those we come in contact with. George Elliot (Mary Ann Evans) was a Victorian author, editor and translator who was raised in the Christian faith but she later drifted away and eventually renounced it. She had an experience as a young woman with a professing Christian who had told a lie that had come home to her. The woman’s response to having been found out was, “Ah, well, I do not feel that I have grieved the Spirit much!” Elliot was horrified and saw to her disgust that a strong religious feeling could exist with flagrant dishonor! She was never the same again and as one biographer put it, “Her anchor relinquished its hold, and, almost imperceptibly, she drifted away,” into agnosticism.” This was the sin of the Pharisees and scribes for Jesus said:
Matthew 23:13 But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.
II. The Incitement to Powerful Religion
“Pure religion and undefiled are positive and negative statements of the same thing. The key phrase is “…before God…” It stands the test of:
a. He speaks of divine scrutiny - This is a judgment that is not a self-estimation or even the estimation of others but one that can hold up under the examination of the God.
ILL - An umpire named Babe Pinelli once called Babe Ruth out on strikes. When the crowd booed with sharp disapproval at the call, the legendary Ruth turned to the umpire with disdain and said, "There are 40,000 people here who know that the last pitch was ball, tomato head." Suspecting that the umpire would erupt with anger, the coaches and players braced themselves for Ruth’s ejection. However, the cool headed Pinelli replied, "Maybe so, Babe, but mine is the only opinion that counts." We need to realize that God’s judgment is the only one that counts…
b. He speaks of defilement – That is the action of guarding oneself from defilement by the world.
WHO INFLUENCES WHOM?
ILL - I heard a joke about Bill and Hillary Clinton recently. It seems they were on vacation one weekend, and decided to go for a drive to see the beautiful countryside. After a while, they needed to stop for gas. They pulled into a tiny gas station, and out walked a man to help them. Hillary looked up and screamed at the top of her lungs, "Charley! Is that you? I can’t believe it!" She jumped out of the car and gave the man a big hug, and proceeded to talk with the man for a long time. After they were finished talking, they hugged again, and Hillary got back in the car.
As they were driving away, Bill turned to Hillary and asked "Honey, who was that?"
"That was Charley, an old boyfriend of mine," she responded. "We dated for a long time, and almost got married."
"Just think," said Bill. "If you had married him, today you would be the wife of a gas station attendant."
"No," said Hillary, "If I had married him, today he would be the President of the United States!"
Who has the greater influence on the other -- you or the world? That is to say, has the world shaped you and made you what you are today, or have you changed the world around you by your influence on it?
III. The Incarnation in Pure Religion
a. Real religion involves character – Christ must penetrate every part of our lives. There must be a change from within. It is possible to be very religious yet not allow Jesus to “abide” in us.
ILL - There is a story about a little girl who proudly wore a shiny cross on a chain around her neck. One day she was approached by a man who said to her, "Little girl, don’t you know that the cross Jesus died on wasn’t beautiful like the one you’re wearing? It was an ugly, wooden thing." To which the girl replied, "Yes, I know. But they told me in Sunday school that whatever Jesus touches He changes."
From Howard Strickland’s Sermon "Another Testimony"
ILL - Revelation 3:20, “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.”
“Come and have breakfast.”
“I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.”
The invitation is to relationship.
The invitation is for Jesus to sanctify the offering of our lives.
The invitation is for Jesus to show up in the ordinary so that his being there makes it extraordinary.
b. Real religion involves conduct – We are to “visit” those who are needy and do what we can to both meet their needs and share the Gospel with them.
ILL - What is it to serve God and to do His will? Nothing else than to show mercy to our neighbor. For it is our neighbor who needs our service; God in heaven needs it not.
— Martin Luther
ILL - ‘Every Bible should be bound in leather, shoe leather’.
D.L. Moody
ILL - "The world cannot always understand a persons profession of faith, but it can understand service."
