How To Avoid Fooling Yourself (Part 1)
James 1:19-21
Pastor Tony Miano
Pico Canyon Community Church
January 7, 2001
Introduction: Last week we looked at some of the reasons why we, at times, are too busy to sit quietly before the Lord and listen for His direction. The distractions in our lives, the complaints we make, and our worries and troubles can cause us to set prayer and personal Bible study aside for the things we convince ourselves are just more important. In fact, I would encourage you, if you weren’t here last week, to request the CD on your Welcome Card. I think you’ll be encouraged by what God’s Word has to say on the subject.
This morning we’re going to get back into our study of James. It’s amazing the way the themes of God’s Word intertwine throughout Scripture. What we studied last week in the Gospel of Luke fits nicely with what we’re going to study this morning in the Book of James. We’re going to take a couple of weeks to look at what can be a consequence for not taking that quality, uninterrupted time with the Lord and in His Word.
As we will see in our passage for this study, if we do not receive the Word of God in our hearts, we run the risk of fooling ourselves—fooling ourselves into thinking it’s enough to simply be a hearer of the Word instead of being people who act upon what we learn from God’s Word. We can fool ourselves into thinking we are more spiritual than we actually are.
But as we will see in our study, it doesn’t have to be that way. There are positive steps we can take to keep from fooling ourselves and, instead, develop a genuineness and depth of faith that will not only be lasting, but effective along the way.
If you haven’t already, go ahead and turn to James, chapter one. We’re going to spend a couple of weeks looking at verses 19-25. Let’s begin with a word of prayer.
This week our focus is going to be on verses 19-21. We’re going to focus on three things we find in these verses that, if we apply them in our lives, will keep us from fooling ourselves about our spiritual health. We need to get control of our anger. We need to get rid of the repetitive sin in our lives. And we need to get implanted with the Word of God.
What we see in verses 19-21 is “a third test of a true believer. The first was his response to trials (1:2-12). The second was his response to temptation (1:13-18). The third is his response to the truth revealed in the Word of God (1:19-27)” (MacArthur, p. 65).
James begins verse 19 by saying, “This you know, my beloved brethren.” Verse 19 is a tricky one to translate from the original Greek. The first phrase, “This you know,” seems to be a simple statement. But it is actually better understood, considering the context and James’ style of writing, as a command. What James is saying here is, “Take note of this.”
Without turning this morning’s message into a class on ancient Greek, let’s take just a few moments and see why we can look at this phrase as a command. For one, the immediate context supports this since we see another command in the phrase that follows—“But everyone must be.” Another reason is that imperative commands have already been common in James’ letter, especially when we see the phrase, “my beloved brethren.”
James is telling his readers that it is imperative that they pay close attention to the contrast between “their knowledge and practice as Christians. James [is reminding] them that their knowledge of the new birth through the Word must lead to a new life directed by the Word” (Hiebert, p. 111). Some of James’ readers must have been fooling themselves into believing that factual knowledge of Christ and salvation through Him was enough.
Someone once said that the longest and most difficult journey is 18 inches—the distance from our head to our heart. Having knowledge rattle around in our head is not as important as having it penetrate our heart to the point that we not only believe the truth, but we obey it and live according to it.
Getting Control Of Your Anger
One thing we should do to complete that 18-inch journey, to keep from fooling ourselves about our spiritual health, is to get control of our anger. James gives us a three-step process for controlling anger.
Look at the second half of verse nineteen. “But everyone must be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger.” James’ wording is that of a command. And, as James often does, he makes the command in the present tense. That means that the command is to be followed continually. The word “everyone” is important here. The command is being made to every believer because, no matter how mild mannered a person may be, they are still subject to dropping the ball and allowing their anger to have control over them in a given situation.
The first step in James’ anger management process is to “be quick to hear.” This fits right in with what we talked about last week. Last week we looked at the Greek word for “hearing.” The Greek word, which is the same as in the phrase “be quick to hear,” has a deeper meaning of “comprehension through hearing.”
I think we will have a better understanding of what James is saying if we insert the word “listen” where we see the word “hear.” There is a difference between hearing and listening. You can hear what someone is saying without really listening.
I think men are wired in such a way that it is much easier for us to hear, especially those of the opposite sex, without really listening. Don’t worry men; I’m not going to divulge anything that women haven’t known for generations. We men have many methods in which we hear without listening. Out of a possible warped sense of loyalty to my gender, I’m only going to share a few of the more common strategies we men employ with the fairer, and sometimes wiser, sex.
The first is what I call the “Uh-Huh Method.” This is most often employed when men are engaged in an activity that they would prefer not to have interrupted by conversation. Those activities can include reading the newspaper, activities involving any kind of mechanical process, and what is probably the most challenging in this category—long car rides with members of the opposite sex (usually a spouse). I should add that married men most often employ all of the methods I am going to share with you.
The key to successfully employing this hearing without listening method is to properly space the key phrase—“Uh-Huh.” As men are engaged in whatever activity they do not want to be interrupted, it is important not to say “Uh-Huh” to quickly. Doing so will make it obvious to the spouse, girlfriend, or female relative that you are not listening. In fact, rapid fire “Uh-Huhs” will leave the other party thinking that not only are you not listening, but that you don’t care and are annoyed with the conversation.
Men should also avoid employing the “Uh-huh” too sparingly. Without some type of verbal response at regular intervals, the other party will think you are bored with the conversation. Either mistake, using either to many or too few “Uh-Huhs,” can have drastic and sometimes painful consequences.
The second method is what I call the “One Eye-One Ear Method.” Men will most often employ this method when they are engaged in watching any kind of sporting event, John Wayne western, or World War II classic film.
Now, this method is difficult to replicate without a television in front of me. But, for you, I’ll try. The trick in properly using this method is to let the other party think that both eyes and ears are focused on the conversation when, in actuality, you have one eye and one ear focused on the screen. It is also helpful, when trying to be convincing, if and only if you have incredible dexterity in your facial muscles, to have the half of your face closest to the person talking show a look of concern or deep interest. As you can see, this is very difficult to do.
Unfortunately, both of the first to methods are not only difficult to employ, but women have spent generations detecting and countering these subterfuges. Women will counter these “ruses of listening” with a simple yet piercing question. To add to the intimidation factor of the question, the consternated woman will often position herself with her hands on her hips, tongue in cheek, and eyes narrowed moments before asking the question. Then she will ask, “What did I just say?”
Knowing full well that you had made no real eye contact with her the entire time she was talking to you, she will hold the previously described posture until you turn around and look at her. Even the most seasoned husband experiences a certain amount of anxiety when he turns and sees “the look.”
This is when, as a man, you hope you had employed method number three for hearing without listening during the conversation—the “Selective Hearing Method.”
When using this method, the man tries to pick out key words or phrases uttered by his female counterpart. The trick is not only hearing these key words and phrases in the midst of football or baseball scores, or the dialogue of your favorite movie heroes; but remembering these key words and phrases until such time as the woman has caught on to the fact that you are not listening and asks the big question.
If we men were smart, we would realize that life is much easier when we listen than when we try to hear without listening. But, in spite of all of our schooling, training, and maturity, we’re not always as smart as we look, certainly not as smart as we sometimes think we are. The neat thing is that the women in our lives love us anyway.
I hope that was helpful. James says that every believer should “be quick to hear.” The Greek word for “quick,” tachus is found nowhere else in the New Testament. It also means, “swift or speedy.” The word carries with it a sense of eagerness, not foolhardiness. Remember, they were to be swift to listen with the purpose of comprehending what was being said.
So, to what were James’ readers suppose to be quick to listen? The answer is two-fold. James’ command was a call to be quick to listen to the Word of God as it was spoken to them. We need to keep in mind that when James wrote this letter there were no Bibles on every coffee table, or collecting dust on bookcases.
Letters from Peter, Paul, James and the like were circulated throughout the Christian world. There were not hundreds of copies floating around. Whenever a letter, like the one James wrote, made its way to a city or to a particular church, it was read aloud to the congregation by the pastor or elders of the church. It was therefore imperative that those who heard the Word of God listened intently to it. “To listen eagerly to the message was the first duty of discipleship” (Hiebert, p. 112).
Being quick to listen to the Word of God, to listen with the purpose of learning what it says and means, and applying its truths to our everyday lives, will help us to control our anger. I remember working the gang unit how frustrated I would become with the young nonconformists in the valley. Day in and day out listening to their lies and excuses sometimes did a number on my patience. Every once in a while, some poor unsuspecting kid would serve as an opportunity to verbally vent my frustration.
It got to the point that I was worried that I wasn’t controlling my anger very well in my interviews and interrogations. So I went to the Book of Proverbs and wrote down every verse I could find on speech and anger, on 3x5 cards. I put the stack of cards in my desk and would refer to them when I felt my blood pressure and temperature rising. It actually helped.
If you sometimes struggle with anger, find a good Bible concordance and look up every verse that includes the word anger and memorize those verses that are helpful.
Here are a few examples.
“A hot-tempered man stirs up strife, but the slow to anger calms a dispute” (Proverbs 15:18).
“Do not associate with a man given to anger; or go with a hot-tempered man, or you will learn his ways and find a snare for yourself” (Proverbs 22:24-25).
“Like charcoal to hot embers and wood to fire, so a contentious man to kindle strife” (Proverbs 26:21).
“An angry man stirs up strife, and a hot-tempered man abounds in transgression” (Proverbs 29:22).
“Be angry, and yet do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not give the devil an opportunity” (Ephesians 4:26-27).
“But now you also, put them all aside: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive speech from your mouth” (Colossians 3:8).
The second step in the process for controlling our anger is to be “slow to speak.” The antithesis of quickness is slowness. In each of these three steps, James is not speaking about the actions as much as he is speaking about the attitudes that govern the actions. James is not saying that we should speak slower to make our point, but that we should wait, make sure we are understanding what we are hearing or what we are seeing, make sure that we have all of our facts straight, before responding.
Proverbs 17:27-28, says, “He who restrains his words has knowledge, and he who has a cool spirit is a man of understanding.” It is impossible to listen intently and with care to the words of others if we are doing all of the talking.
The next time you have an opportunity to watch and listen to two people having a discussion about something they are both passionate about, see if you can determine who is actually listening to the other. More often than not, it will be the person who is doing the least amount of talking who is doing the most listening.
R Kent Hughes is one of my favorite writers. His commentaries are certainly worthy of being part of any Christian’s library. In his commentary on verse 19, he wrote, “James is not barring a friendly, fast-paced conversation or repartee. Neither is he suggesting that Christians be inarticulate. But he is enjoining the commonsense principle to think before you speak” (Hughes, p. 65). As I studied for this morning’s message, I noticed that more than one commentator made a point of mentioning that God has given us two ears and only one mouth.
We can be too quick to speak, not just verbally, but in our thoughts as well. Apparently there were those among James’ readers who, while hearing God’s Word spoken, were too busy thinking about their own interpretations, thoughts and feelings to effectively listen to what was being shared with them.
Now, this is not to say that we should ever just sit mindlessly listening to whatever is being spoken. I would never suggest that. “We cannot really hear God’s Word when our minds are on our own thoughts. [There are times when] we need to keep silent inside as well as outside” (MacArthur, p. 70).
The flipside to this idea of being slow to speak is that we can sometimes take it to such an extreme that we fail to speak when we should. James’ admonition to be slow to speak should in no way be construed to mean that we should never speak up. We are called to defend our faith anytime and any place the opportunity presents itself. But a mature faith is one that doesn’t find itself at either extreme. It is not militant or offensive, and it is not timid or weak. Those who have this maturity of faith, those who have this balanced speech where they are not too quick or too slow to use it, are those who are in control of their speech. It doesn’t control them.
James is going to spend the majority of chapter three discussing the perils of a loose tongue. But for now, it’s important that we understand that in order to control our anger we have to be in control of our speech.
I remember when I first came to faith in Christ. I was on fire and ready to tell the world what I found and what they were missing. Without intending to, I would ambush people with the gospel. I would turn every conversation, whether or not the timing was appropriate, into a spiritual dialogue. I was very quick to speak. I was so quick to speak that people sometimes thought I was angry about my faith instead of excited about it.
I think the body of Christ, in its zeal to reach the world with the gospel, can sometimes encourage new believers to speak too soon. Certainly, every believer, whether new or old, should be encouraged to share what God has done in his or her life. But the idea of sending out new believers to proclaim doctrinal truth or banter theological issues with unbelievers is premature and can be not only harmful to the new believer, but to the church as well.
The third step in James’ formula for controlling our anger seems almost too simple. We need to be “slow to anger.” When we think of anger, probably the first thing that comes to mind is the caricature of a person grinding their teeth, clenching their fists, and their hair on fire. The first thing that probably comes to mind is an explosion of sorts. But that’s not the kind of anger James is referring to here.
James uses the Greek word orge, which is translated as “anger.” This word represents the kind of anger that is deep-seated. It is an anger that just sits in the gut and simmers. It’s the kind of anger that may not be visible to others. It’s this unexpressed anger that is the most dangerous to a person’s physical health and spiritual well being. Had James been talking about the type of anger that was akin to the more visible outburst, he probably would have used the Greek word thumos instead of orge.
In order to control our anger, we must be constantly mindful to ask the Lord to search our hearts for this kind of deep-seated anger. This makes sense since this kind of anger is usually only known to the person who is angry and to God.
In fact, David, in a sense, probably had this in mind when he prayed, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me and know my anxious thoughts; and see if there be any hurtful way in me, and lead me in the everlasting way” (Psalm 139:23-24).
To “be slow to anger” is to be vigilant to not allow this kind of deep-seated animosity to fester in our hearts. This goes hand in hand with what James has already said. In order to be slow to anger, we need to be quick to listen intently to what is being said so we don’t misunderstand what we’re hearing. In order to be slow to anger, we need to be slow to speak so our many words don’t serve as a vehicle for this inner anger to grow. Now, I don’t know if any of you are like me, but when I’m upset about something I find that the more I talk, the more I whine and complain, the madder I become and the deeper the anger goes.
There’s something else that’s interesting about what James is saying here that may not be real visible at first glance. Remember, when we study God’s Word context is everything. So far what James has said has been in relation to hearing the preaching or teaching of the Word of God. The same applies here.
Many of the people James wrote to, just as there are many people today both inside and outside the church, were self-reliant, self-willed people. There are times when people who fall into these categories hear the Word of God are quick to resent what it teaches.
They resent it because it convicts them of their sin. They resent it because it doesn’t conform to what they want to believe about themselves, about others, or about God for that matter. James’ encouragement to “be slow to anger” includes the idea of being slow to resent what you hear from God’s Word. We will all do ourselves well to be quick to listen to the Word, slow to speak over the Word, and slow to resent what it is teaching us.
Why? Why does any of this matter? James, being an excellent teacher and leader, doesn’t simply tell his people what to do. He instructs them and cares enough about them to tell them why. Look at verse 20. “For the anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God.”
Have you ever heard the maxim, “I can’t hear what you’re saying because your actions are speaking too loudly?” In a sense, James is saying the same thing in his reason for not allowing anger to reign in our lives. Can you understand why some people look at Christians as hypocrites when we go around promoting the righteous life in Christ while, at the same time, seeming to be angry at the world?
When unbelievers look at Christians this way, it makes sense that they are sometimes difficult to reach with the message of the free gift of salvation in Jesus Christ. Albeit a lame excuse, unbelievers will use the behavior of Christians as their justification for not becoming one. Whether or not the excuse is legitimate, those of us who have a relationship with Jesus Christ should not take for granted, should not lose sight of the fact, that our own behavior can sometimes be the gospel’s worst enemy.
James talks of “man’s anger” in verse 20. Although there are times when anger is appropriate, James is not speaking of any sort of righteous indignation. We can’t fall back on stories, like the time Jesus overturned the tables of the moneychangers in the temple, to justify our own sinful bouts with anger. James is very specific here. It is human anger he is talking about—nothing more and nothing less.
Human anger can never achieve, as the New International Version puts it, “the righteous life that God desires.” Human anger “does not produce the type of righteousness which reflects God’s standard” (Davids, p. 93). The phrase “does not” is in the present tense which means that human anger will continually and constantly fall short of reflecting God’s standard.
It’s also important to note that man is incapable of living a life that truly reflects the standards of God’s righteousness unless that life has first been changed by the inherited righteousness of God. That inherited righteousness comes from one and only one source—Jesus Christ.
If we want to live a life that reflects the true and authentic righteousness of God, if we want to avoid living a life in which we fool ourselves into believing we are spiritual when we are not, then we need to control our anger. Since human anger is born out of a human sin nature, the only real hope for controlling our anger to the point that we harbor no resentment toward God’s Word is receiving God’s forgiveness and the free gift of eternal life through Jesus Christ.
Getting Rid of Repetitive Sin
Maybe you are here this morning and you are one of those people who have a mild mannered personality. Maybe it takes more to get you riled up than most people. Maybe anger, whether expressed or internalized, is not an issue in your life. Well, I think that’s great and I would love to spend some time gleaning from you how you are able to keep it together so well.
James realized that his readers could fool themselves about their spirituality in other ways other than their handle on anger. But there are other forms of speech, speech that doesn’t necessarily have to carry an angry tone with it, which, if they are present in our lives, can lead us to fooling ourselves about the state of our spiritual health.
Let’s look at the first half of verse 21. It says, “Therefore, putting aside all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness.” The Greek word that is translated “putting aside,” or “get rid of” in the NIV, originally meant, “to take off clothing.” We see this idea expressed throughout the Bible in the use of metaphors that associate clothing with virtue.
For instance, In Zechariah 3:3-4 it says, “Now Joshua was clothed with filthy garments and standing before the angel. He spoke and said to those who were standing before him, saying, ‘Remove the filthy garments from him.’ Again he said to him, ‘See, I have taken your iniquity away from you and will clothe you with festal robes.’”
In Romans 13:12, Paul wrote, “The night is almost gone, and the day is near. Therefore let us lay aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light.” And the writer of the Book of Hebrews used the metaphor to describe wearing little clothing to run a race. “Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with the endurance that is set before us” (Hebrews 112:1).
By instructing his readers to “get rid of” the things he is about to describe, James is saying “there is a practical necessity of eliminating everything that is contrary to the word of truth” (Richardson, p. 90), everything in our lives that God would find displeasing. And what are the things that James would include in this category? They are “all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness.” The categories seem pretty broad.
The Greek word for “filthiness” is found nowhere else in the New Testament. I found James’ choice of words here, considering that the context revolves around speech and hearing, interesting. This same word would be later used in the second century as a “medical term for earwax that must be washed away to give good hearing” (Martin, p. 48).
James uses the word in the sense of moral filthiness or anything that defiles or is inconsistent with the Christian walk. James says that we should get rid of all such behavior. The category is very broad. It is all-inclusive.
James mentioned yet another all-inclusive category—“all that remains of wickedness.” To understand the difference between the two categories James mentions, we have to keep in mind that those who received or read James’ letter were predominantly believers. “All that remains of wickedness” is the same as saying any residue left over from the filthiness one practiced before coming to faith in Christ.
James is teaching us here that not only should we get rid of all the practices, the bad habits, that captivated us before we came to faith in Christ, but that we should also remove anything around us that would entice us to keep practicing the things we ought not do. The evil or wickedness that James speaks of is better understood as malice, the desire to cause injury to another, which resides in a person’s heart.
Jesus spoke of this in the beatitudes. He said, “The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good; and the evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth what is evil; for his mouth speaks from which fills his heart” (Luke 6:45). Do you see what Jesus associates with the evil things men do? It’s speech.
Any moral behavior that is inconsistent with the clear instruction of God’s Word should be removed from our lives the same way we would remove filthy soiled clothes. Now some disagree with this idea of an absolute moral code.
Those who disagree, who make the claim that they are basically good people, say that it should be up to them to decide what morality is or isn’t. It shouldn’t be up to the church, or the Bible, or God for that matter, to decide what morality should look like in the individual. They rely on their own perceived righteousness to set their moral standards. They look at this self-willed, self-reliant approach to life as a righteous thing.
The prophet Isaiah in the Old Testament seems to disagree with this philosophy of life. The prophet wrote, “For all of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment; and all of us wither like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away” (Isaiah 64:6). Those people who rely on themselves to set their own moral standards are simply fooling themselves.
One last thing on this part of the verse—at first glance it would seem that James is commanding his readers to get rid of filthiness and evil. But he uses a participle here, not a verbal command. What this means is that James assumes that since he is writing to believers that they are already doing these things. They are either working on getting rid of those things that are contrary to God’s Word or they have already gotten rid of them.
If a person, any person, is living their life in such a way that they refuse to follow the moral standard that God’s Word provides, if they refuse to set aside the sinful practices in their life and make Jesus Christ the Lord of their life, yet they claim to have a relationship with Him, then they are simply fooling themselves.
As believers, we should have been getting rid of these contrary things from the day we came to faith in Christ. Now, it’s important for us to understand that James is not calling for the perfect life. James is not saying that if any of us sin in any way that we are fooling ourselves about our spiritual condition. All of us sin. All of us will continue to violate God’s Word from time to time because we’re human. If we could keep from sinning altogether, there would be no need for a Savior. James’ focus is on habitual behavior that is contrary to the Word of God, not the occasional sin that is an inevitable part of our lives.
Getting Implanted With God’s Word
Having addressed two negative things that can lead us toward fooling ourselves about our walks with Christ, James ends this section of the passage by encouraging his readers to do something very positive to avoid fooling themselves. James encourages his brothers and sisters to get implanted with the Word of God.
The second half of verse 21 says, “In humility receive the word implanted, which is able to save your souls.” Here we see James “drop the figure of clothing and introduces an agricultural figure of seed and soil” (Hiebert, p. 116).
The word “humility” comes from the Greek word prautes, which also means, “gentleness” and “meekness.” Humility is what marks the heart attitude of the believer toward not only other people, but also the Word of God.
John MacArthur describes humility as “selfless receptiveness . . . . . [and] teachableness” (MacArthur, p. 75). Martin Luther gave this example of humility. “[He] reportedly told of two mountain goats who met each other on a narrow ledge just wide enough for one of the animals to pass. On the left was a sheer cliff, and on the right a steep wall. The two were facing each other, and it was impossible to turn or to back up.”
“How did they solve their dilemma? If they had been people, they would have started butting each other until they plunged into the chasm together. But according to Luther, the goats had more sense than that. One of them lay down on the trail and let the other literally walk over him—and both were safe” (Morgan, p. 463).
The humility of which James speaks is a heart attitude. It’s an attitude that makes it possible for us to not only listen to the Word of God for the purpose of comprehension and obedience, but to receive it deep within our souls. As Lenski so aptly puts it, “It is that inwrought grace of spirit which accepts God’s Word without back talk, dispute, or questioning” (Lenski, p. 552).
Unlike the assumption James made about believers putting aside filthiness and evil, James’ call to receive the word carries with it a sense of urgency. The only way for believers to truly rid themselves of any filth or wickedness that they are involved in or carried with them into their Christian life from their past is to accept the Word of God into their hearts.
This idea of acceptance is not simply giving into the strong arguments Scripture makes, but taking it into and making it part of your heart and soul. This idea of acceptance or reception is most often used in the New Testament to describe an active faith in Christ, not just a simple, sedentary acknowledgement of the truth.
Like so many things in James’ writing, the expression “the word implanted” occurs nowhere else in the New Testament. James uses this metaphor because he knows that the Word of God is not indigenous to the human heart. It must be planted there. It must take root and be cultivated if it is going to grow into the flowering plant of Christian maturity. Every Christian needs to “offer their hearts as the good soil in which the ‘implanted word’ [can] easily grow” (Hiebert, p. 116).
James ends verse 21 with the reason we should have the Word of God rooted in our hearts—because it “is able to save [our] souls.” What does James mean by this?
James does not use the word “soul” as if it were a part of the human body. He is using it to represent the entire life and being of a person. The idea of the Word being able to save has a couple of important meanings. For one, it is a call to believers to remember what Jesus Christ did for them through salvation. And we are going to take time to remember that precious gift as we share communion. My hope and prayer is that not only will those of us who know Jesus Christ remember what He did for us on the cross, but that there would even be one person here this morning who would come to the table for the first time as one who has come to genuine faith in Christ.
You see—the Word of God saves Christians. The Word of God saves them because Jesus Christ is the Word. The Apostle John tells us that “the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).
The Word of God, the gospel message of Jesus Christ, saves Christians because, as the Apostle Paul wrote, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Romans 1:16a).
The idea of the word saving our souls also means that the Word has the power to change the lives of those who carry it in their hearts. “The verb to save implies not merely the salvation of the soul but the restoration of life” (Kistemaker, p. 59).
Hebrews 4:12 says, “For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”
If we want to avoid fooling ourselves in our Christian walk, we have to plant God’s Word deep into our heart. The harsh reality is that if you have no desire to know God’s Word, if you have no desire to read it and understand it, then you should ask yourself some tough questions—and the first one should be, “Am I really a Christian?”
If you are here this morning and you do want to receive the Word of God implanted in your heart and begin to understand it and apply it to your life in ways and depths you’ve never experienced, then there are a couple of preliminary things you can start doing. One is memorize the Word, and the other is meditating on the Word.
In his book, How To Study the Bible for Yourself, Tim LaHaye, co-author of the best selling Left Behind series, lists seven things that Scripture memory can do for you:
It will give you victory over sin.
It helps you overcome worry.
It will give you a confidence in sharing your faith.
It speeds up the transforming process.
It assists you in discovering God’s will for your life.
It helps in your other Bible studies.
It outfits you for unlimited service to God.
Let me encourage you to start memorizing Scripture by picking a couple of verses a week that deal directly with something very important in your life. Memorizing the verses that talk about the genealogy of Adam might not be the most encouraging or motivating place to start.
The other thing you can do to begin implanting God’s Word in your heart is to mediate on the Word daily. Reading your Bible through in a year is great. In fact I would encourage it if, for no other reason, it will help you to become familiar with the entire book. But I think you will find the roots of the Word growing deeper into your heart if you spend more time pondering, studying and meditating on it than just reading it.
Biblical meditation is not sitting on a mat in a lotus position and chanting in front of a bowl of incense. It is not the mindless game of emptying your mind. Rather, it is the filling your mind with thoughts of God and the Word of God.
J.I. Packer defines meditation this way. It “is the activity of calling to mind, and thinking over, and dwelling on, and applying to oneself, the various things that one knows about the works and ways and promises of God. It is an activity of holy thought, consciously performed in the presence of God, under the eye of God, by the help of God, as a means of communion with God” (Packer, p. 23).
As you meditate on God’s Word, do so with a pen and writing pad nearby. Write down what God’s Word is saying to you. Confirm that what you are hearing and learning from God’s Word is actually what it says by sharing your thoughts and questions with other students of the Word you trust. I would love to help you in that process. After all, like you, I am a student of God’s Word.
I hope those ideas are helpful to you. And I hope we’ve all begun to see this morning how it’s not only possible to fool ourselves about our walks with Christ, but how we can avoid fooling ourselves in the first place. Be encouraged. None of the hills we identified this morning are insurmountable. In Christ, you can get control of your anger. In Christ, you can get rid of the reoccurring sin that frustrates you and your walk with God.
And, In Christ, because of His incredible gift and the ultimate sacrifice He made on the cross, we can get the Word implanted in our hearts. As we come to the communion table this morning, let’s take a few moments to ask God to search our hearts, ask Him if there be any hurtful ways in us.
Is anger keeping you from experiencing the depth of faith and relationship with Him you desire? Is there any other sin in your heart that is distancing you from Him? Have you really received the Word implanted in your heart and, if not, what will you do today to change that?
David cried out to God, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me away from Your presence and do not take Your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of my salvation and sustain me with a willing spirit” (Psalm 51:10-12). Let that be our prayer this morning, too.
Let’s pray.
