Well this is our third Sunday in the book of James. Last week we looked at James 1:19-25 and this week we are primarily looking at James 1:26-27, but I want to back to James 1:19-21. One of you asked last week if I just skipped over the controlling your tongue and anger thing on purpose. Have no fear, I have a plan!
Well I had a plan! We have been looking at faith in action, and today we are going to look at what pure religion is. From our text today I hope you see three things. I hope you see we are:
1. called to be guarded
2. called to a life of compassion
3. called to be in the world, but not of it
We are going to talk about the tongue and anger and then look at what pure religion is. So often we hear the word “Religion” and it can conger up feelings of anger, fear and disappointment. And often religion has become about “manmade rule” instead of “God’s rules.”
Many have been hurt by these man made rules and therefore have left the church and have hard feelings towards the church. Before we look at what pure religion is let’s look at James 1:19-21, 26:
My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, 20 because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires. 21 Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you.
26 Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless.
I. A call to be guarded
Like I said before, we are called to be guarded. In these verses we see that we need to be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry. Let’s look at the listening and speaking idea first.
a. Watching our tongue
A stock boy at a grocery store was asked by an elderly lady, “Can I buy half a head of lettuce?” He walked back to the manager’s office, not realizing that the lady followed him. He said to the manger, “You’re not going to believe this, but there’s an old bat out there who wants to buy half a head of lettuce.”
He turned around and saw her standing right behind him. Quickly he added, “And this fine lady would like to buy the other half.” (sermon central)
Thomas Watson said: God has given us two ears, but one tongue, to show that we should be swift to hear, but slow to speak. God has set a double fence before the tongue, the teeth and the lips. (Thomas Watson)
I like that…think of your teeth and lips as a double fence guarding what may come out. I don’t know about you, but I have found my mouth can open up quickly before my mind has fully processed what I am saying.
The tongue can be the most deadly weapon known to human kind. It may not kill someone immediately, but it can start a massive war. Let me repeat that and think about it for a moment: It may not kill someone immediately, but it can start a massive war.
Our teeth, lips and most importantly, our minds are the fence which guards and filters what comes from our tongue. What are we saying out loud.
Later in James we read in chapter 3:9-10 we hear this: With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness. 10 Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be.
You may be familiar with Karen Carpenter, the popular singer from the seventies who died in 1983 of heart failure. Most people know that her heart attack was caused by anorexia.
Basically, she starved herself to death. But what started it all? According to a 1988 CBS television movie, the "Karen Carpenter Story," her "fatal obsession with weight" began when a interviewer called her Richard’s "chubby sister".
That little phrase was all it took to start her on a tragic journey of self-destruction. The author of that article had no intention of causing her harm. Nevertheless, those few words had a profound effect on her life. (Illustration by Alan Perkins sermon Central) Reference: USA Today, December 30, 1988, "Carpenter Story sings a familiar refrain," by Matt Roush. Citation)
What are we saying with our mouths? Will we be praising or hurting?
b. Watching our anger
Secondly we are to be slow to become angry. I use to be a very angry person and I would bottle up my anger, and like a tea kettle…all of a sudden I would start to blow. Now for many years I know God has given me victory in that area, however it is one area of my life I need to review daily and bring it to the cross.
We are to be slow to become angry: because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires. People that are always angry are not pleasant to be around and you do not think of them as being vey righteous. I worked for a Christian business man that screamed at his employee’s for any little thing. Even his two sons walked on pins and needles.
I believe it okay to be angry for the right reasons. I believe Jesus was angry when he saw injustice. He saw what people were doing in the house of God, using it for sales and money changing. He turned over the tables and drove out those selling sacrifices and changing money. He said: "'My house will be called a house of prayer,' but you are making it 'a den of robbers.'"
Like I said there are times that it is okay to be angry when we see crimes against the innocents and injustice. It is okay to be angry when we hear 200,000 unborn are killed every year in our country and when you hear of people that are being taken advantage of. Like Jesus, out of anger comes action.
However, anger should not rule and define our lives. If we are angry all the time the problem most –likely lies with us. 20 because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires.
James goes on to say: 21 Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you. I believe James is equating the effects of anger and a loose tongue to moral filth and evil. We are to get rid of all of that in our lives and seek God’s truth.
If the book of James is about faith in action then I believe this is prepping us to be prepared, to be effective and to be adequate for the calling of faith in action. I know if my heart is not in the right place, ministry does not come easy.
II. Religion
Well I want to transition to our last verse 27: 27 Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
So often in the church we have mix up mad made rules with God’s views. When we are focused on what man wants we will feel the need to perform for others, but when we are truly in-sync with God’s views it is not about the performance for others but pleasing God.
My Aunt and uncle worked with old colony Mennonites in Mexico to help them discover better farming practices. One of the guys they were working with had a “ah ha moment”. He made this statement: “There are God’s rules and Man’s rules and it is the manmade rules that cause us all the troubles!”
a. Manmade rules
Manmade rules cause us all the trouble. When asked why people have left the church there has usually been a hurt in the past. Someone said or did something and that has turned people away from the church and maybe even from God.
The church has been caught up in whether we should wear head coverings, how long our hair should be, cotton is okay, denim is not allowed. Our denomination even got caught up in manmade rules. Up to the 60’s pastors were not allowed to wear wedding rings or jewelry of any kind. Now my wife would beat on me if I didn’t wear a wedding ring!
Pure religion is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. Care for others and care for ourselves.
Years ago in Europe, there was a young Jewish boy who had a profound sense of admiration for his father. His family’s life centered on the acts of piety and devotion prescribed by their religion. The father was zealous in attending worship and religious instruction, and he demanded the same from his children.
While the boy was a teenager, the family was forced to move to another town in Europe. There was no synagogue in the new town, and the pillars of the community all belonged to the Lutheran church.
Suddenly the father announced to the family that they were going to abandon their Jewish traditions and join the Lutheran church. When the stunned family asked why, the father explained that changing religions was necessary to help his business.
The youngster was bewildered and confused. His deep disappointment soon gave way to anger and a kind of intense bitterness that plagued him throughout his life. He thought his dad was committed to his faith, not his business.
That disappointed son went to England to study. He sat daily at the British Museum, formulating various ideas and writing a book. In that work, he introduced an entirely new world-view, envisioning a movement that would change the social and political systems of the world.
Drawing from past experiences with his father, he described religion as an “opiate for the masses” that could be explained totally in terms of economics and personal gain.
Today, millions of people still live under the system invented by this embittered man, and millions more suffered under previous regimes that incorporated its values. His name, was Karl Marx, and his idea was communism. It all began when his father valued his business more that his religion and modeled that religion was only a stepping stone for profit. (SOURCE: James Emery White, You Can Experience an Authentic Life, pp. 33-34)
That puts a lot of ones on us as parents and grandparents. What is the religion we are modeling to those behind us? Is it one that is focused on God’s view?
b. God’s view
God’s view is a call to a life of compassion reaching out to those less fortunate than ourselves. At the beginning I said we are called to be guarded and we are also called to be compassionate. When we look at the Great Commission, Jesus’ life, and this passage we see that religion needs to be focused on serving and ministering to others. So often manmade rules focus on the comfort and preference the people making the rules. It is an inward focus.
I would love to see a worship services someday that has a component of service build into it. We worship in singing, in giving, in learning and then worship in serving. I want to look for ways we can focus on this more, celebrating the ministry of service as part of our worship experience.
c. Finding the balance
There is the call to serving others, but God’s view also goes on to say to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. I think this is where many Christians want to scream. How can we be in the world and not of it? We are called to be guarded, to be compassionate and now to be in the world and not of it.
On one hand we are called to be in the world, reaching out to the lost, serving others and being Jesus’ hands and feet, but how do we keep being polluted by the world. Good question?
I have had friends that have communed themselves and their families thinking that is what God wants. I don’t get that from this passage. But there has to be a balance. This week is Halloween. It is the one time a year where all the neighbour kids coming running to your door without an invitation.
Now I know there are a couple views on this: We as Christians do not celebrate holidays for the dead and evil and so many opt out and turn their lights out and go for a nice supper out.
Or when I was single I would see someone dressed up and realize it was Halloween and turn all my lights out, close the blinds, make popcorn and sit in the dark and watch T.V.
But there are some Christians that take the opportunity of having all these kids coming to their door without an invitation and they give candy, they may even get to know some of their neighbours that bring the kids around. There even is a little comic that many are adding to their candy bags that shares the gospel message in a comic form.
So maybe this is a way to be in the world and not of it. We can also work for a secular company, but shine our lights. We can go to neighbourhood block parties, but choose what to partake in and what not to partake in. Same goes with those we hang around with.
Jesus met the people where there we at. He talked with the woman at the well even though it was forbidden…do you know what she has done? He let his disciples pick grain to eat on the Sabbath…Jesus ate with sinners and tax collectors.
Matthew 9:10-12: While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. 11 When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
12 On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.
Finding the balance we need to be in the world, but not let the world corrupt us. We do not have to look too far to see corrupt values seeping in everywhere. The battle is much harder today to fight. We need each other, we need God and we need to be in His Word. Romans 12:2 states: Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. With the renewing of our minds we will be able to guard ourselves against evil. We need to be renewing our minds daily so that we can fulfil the call to of the great commission, to live as Jesus did and to serve the less fortunate.
Conclusion
In conclusion I would like to close with this illustration adapted from Shane Hipps book "Selling Water by the River: A Book about the Life Jesus Promised and the Religion that Gets in the Way,"
CHRIST IS THE WIND, CHRISTIANITY IS THE SAIL
One thing that might ease our anxiety is to remember that Christ and Christianity is not the same thing; If Christ is the wind, then Christianity is the sail. Some sails are better than others at catching the wind, some sailors are better at using the sail…but there is only one wind. A sail without the wind is a limp flag; wind without a sail is still the wind.
The wind (Christ) is the pre-existent creative power of the universe with no beginning or end. The sail (Christianity) on the other hand is an institution built with the intention of harnessing that power. If the institution goes away, the power remains. Put simply, Christ is much, much bigger than our religion.
Listen to me, just because my religion bears his name doesn't always mean it bears His likeness. Such misconception is a dangerous, even an arrogant illusion. If we buy into this assumption, we become like the sail who believes it controls the wind. (Ken Pell, sermon central)
Let us always strive to make our religion about the wind, not the sail!
Let’s pray!
Benediction
Go now from this service of worship
To the service of God’s people near and far,
Refreshed by the living water that Jesus offers to you.
Listen for the parched voices of the least of these;
Search out the dry places and the arid souls,
And become for them a spring of living water.
And as you go,
May the blessings of the God of life,
The Christ of love,
And the Spirit of grace
Be upon you this day and forevermore. Amen
