“The Word of God Received”
Preached at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, 1/27/02
The Rev’d Quintin Morrow, Rector
Let us pray: “Blessed Lord, who has caused all Holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God
for ever and ever. AMEN.”
21Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls. 22But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. 23For 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: 24For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. 25But 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 (James 1:21-25).
“I wonder,” said the vicar, Parson Jones
With a little troubled frown,
If there is any way to get
You folks seated farther down?
You see I have to talk across
So many empty pews,
Before my voice can reach the back,
I fear my point you lose.
And then I feel so lonesome,
Way up here—you clear back there,
Its hard to feel you’re with me
And that I’m preaching to thin air.
I wonder if you folks are scared
Of what I’m going to preach
That you hurry so to park your bums
In the furthest seat?
Or do you fear the church some day
Will suddenly catch afire?
Or do you want to slip out quick
If of my subject you do tire?
I wish you’d come up closer
So I wouldn’t have to shout—
If you don’t I’m going to have
Those back pews taken out!”
We are concluding our 3 part series of messages on the Word of God this morning. You will recall that in the first message we looked at the claims Holy Scripture makes for itself; namely, that it—the Bible—is God’s Word written. “All Scripture is God-breathed,” St. Paul says in II Tim. 3:16. In that message we also discovered that God’s Word is infallible—reliable and trustworthy in all that it teaches and proclaims. We discovered that Scripture is sufficient for salvation. “It is able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ,” Paul writes in II Tim. 3:15. And finally, we found that Holy Scripture is instructive—useful for doctrine, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.
And last week, as you recall, we looked at God’s Word Proclaimed: The Primacy of Preaching. In that message we concluded that preaching is essential to the Christian faith. “How can they believe in the one of whom they have never heard?” Paul asks in Rom. 10:14. “And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?” Faith comes by hearing, the Apostle continues, and hearing by the Word of God. We also discovered that true biblical preaching rests on 3 principles: The first is that God has spoken and continues to speak through His Word; the second is that God’s Word can change the human heart and alter eternal destinies; and third is that it is the preacher’s job to preach God’s Word and only God’s Word, not the fads of the day or his opinions. “Preach the Word!” Paul tells young Timothy in II Tim. 4:2.
Today we conclude with God’s Word Received: Being Doers of the Word and Not Hearers Only. In truth, today’s message is a perfect end to our 3 part series of messages, because this morning we will apply what we’ve discovered about God’s Word over the last 2 weeks.
Receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls.
What should our response be to God’s holy Word? James says in 1:21 that we are to humbly accept the Word. The NIV translates this as: humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you. If we have truly been persuaded that God has spoken, and continues to speak today, through His Word; if we are convinced that this Word is trustworthy, that it can change our hearts and save souls; and if we believe that genuine biblical preaching is the proclamation of God’s Word, then our first response to what God Almighty has said is to humbly receive it. “Humbly accept the word,” the Apostle James admonishes us.
Receiving the Word of God means, first of all, accepting it. This involves being in it regularly, studying it, and regularly being in the place where it is read, taught and explained. Receiving the Word means valuing it enough to make it a part of your regular spiritual diet, acknowledging its truth and believing what it says.
But James admonishes more than this. He says that we are to humbly accept the Word. The adverb there, “meekly,” or “humbly,” describes the manner in which we are to receive, or accept, the Word of God. We are to receive it with humility. Our English words “humble” and “humility” come from the Latin word humus, meaning “dirt” or “ground.” Humbly receiving the Words means to submit to the authority of the Word. It means to bow our mind, our will and our emotions to the authority of what God has revealed in His book, the Bible. It means to put ourselves, willingly, under the authority of Holy Scripture. Humbly accepting the Word means to conform our attitudes, beliefs and actions to what the book says.
Perhaps you’ve seen that bumpersticker that says: God said it. I believe it. And that settles it. I don’t mean to be coy, but in many ways, for the Christian, the “I believe it” part of that bumpersticker theology is unnecessary. According to James, the response of the biblical Christian is God said it. And that settles it. “Humbly accept the Word,” James says. Bow the knee of your heart and submit to what God has revealed in His Word, knowing and believing that what he has revealed in Holy Scripture is good, right, and the very best for you.
It seems to me today that the final question is not whether we will submit to the authority of Scripture, but whether we will submit to the authority of anything or anyone. Like the generation of Israelites described in the Book of Judges, ours is a people which does that which is right in their own eyes. The question really becomes: What is shaping and forming your worldview, your morals, your ethics and your behavior—Madison Avenue, pop music, primetime television, Hollywood, or God’s Word? Mark Ashton, the Vicar of St. Andrew the Great Church in Cambridge, rightly puts it like this:
It is God’s Word that will disentangle our thinking from the thinking of the world in which we live. It is the Bible that will critique our culture, and realign our church’s life with the will of God rather than with the culture. It is at those points where the Bible and the culture meet head on, that we need to listen most carefully to what God is saying to us.
Our first response to God’s Word written is submission. Humbly accept the Word. Receive the Word with meekness. Submit to the Word. Conform your attitudes and actions to it, because, as James says, it “can save you.”
Secondly, our second response to God’s Word should be meditation. We should hear the Word, humbly accept it, and then reflect upon it.
James says in verses 23 and 24:
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: For he beholdeth himself, and his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was.
James likens the person who does not respond rightly to God’s Word to a man who looks at himself in a mirror, and then leaves and forgets what he looks like. In the Apostle’s analogy, this man does not stand in front of the mirror long enough to correct the flaws he sees in himself, but quickly sees himself, walks away and forgets. Our second response to God’s Word written should be meditation and reflection upon it.
Thomas Manton, the 17th century Puritan preacher, said, “What is the reason there is so much preaching and so little practice? For want of meditation.”
Ladies and Gentlemen, we live in a fast-paced, hurried, task-oriented culture that squeezes out time for quiet meditation and reflection. That is the reality. But in this hurried frenzy we are missing something important. We are missing the opportunity for God to allow His Word to sink deep within us and change us.
The Lord tells Joshua in Joshua 1:8:
Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on
it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written
in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.
Psalm 1 says:
Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, or
stand in the way of sinners, or sit in the seat of mockers. But his de-
light is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and
night.
And the word “meditate” is used 7 times in Psalm 119.
Now, of course I am not admonishing you all to quit your day job and to retire to some monastery to meditate all day long. But what I am saying is that we all need to make time to read, hear and reflect upon God’s Word. Truly, I would rather you spend 5 minutes a day reading the Bible and 15 to 20 reflecting and meditating upon what you’ve read, than to spend an entire hour reading and not reflecting and meditating upon what you’ve read.
There is a beautiful custom in the Church of England, which I love and think valuable. After the conclusion of the Sunday service, people do not rush out of church but rather stay in their pews, listen to the Postlude, kneel and pray in a time of quiet. And why do they do that? They do that to reflect and meditate upon what they have just heard read and proclaimed from God’s Word that morning.
If you know anything about bovine anatomy, you know that cows have multiple stomachs. And cows will hurriedly eat some grass, swallow it, and deposit what they have eaten in a temporary stomach. Later on, however, they will bring back what they have previously eaten, chew it some more to get more nourishment from it, then swallow it again and send it down to another stomach for assimilation in their bodies. That may not sound very appetizing to us, but it works wonders for the cow.
Likewise, we ought to hear God’s Word. We ought to humbly accept it. Then we ought to keep it in our hearts and minds to reflect and meditate upon, so that we can get the most out of what we have received.
Meditating upon the word requires memorizing the Word. The Psalmist cries out in Psalm 119:11: “Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee.”
Just here the men will yelp: “But you don’t understand, I have a lousy memory and can’t memorize things.” Oh really? How much money do you have in your retirement and investment accounts? in your checking account? Which NFL team won the first Superbowl? The truth is, we remember the things that are important to us. And we need to start hiding God’s Word in our hearts.
Warren Wiersbe writes in his book, God Isn’t In A Hurry,
Whether we like it or not, it takes time to be holy. Too many of us are
caught up in the evangelical rat race, and we simply do not take time
to digest the Word of God…. Are we cultivating a fast-food faith
when we should be taking time to be holy?
I encourage you to take notes on the Sunday sermons. Re-read the Sunday lessons later on in the week and reflect upon them. Carve out a small amount of time each day for quiet and reflection. Commit the Word of God to memory, small bits at a time, and allow it to sink deep into your soul to shape and form you.
I love that prayer, which we prayed at the beginning of this message, and which is from the Book of Common Prayer. It says:
Blessed Lord, who caused all Holy Scriptures to be written for our
learning: Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly
digest them…
Don’t be like the man who sees himself in the mirror and then walks
away and forgets what he looks like. Stand before the Word. Meditate
and reflect upon it, that it may shape and change you.
Our first response to the Word of God written is to humbly accept it. Next we are to meditate and reflect upon it. And finally, we are to do what it says. Put simply, we are to obey it.
James writes:
But be ye doers of the word and not hearers only (1:21); 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 (1:25).
The Puritan pastor Thomas Watson once wrote:
It was by the ear, by our first parents listening to the serpent, that we lost paradise. And it is by the ear, by hearing of the Word, that we get to heaven.
Yes, hearing the Word is vital. But James adds that you must also be doers of the Word and not hearers only. Hearing is important, but does not go far enough.
James says that the one who merely hears the Word and does not respond by doing what it says deceives himself. The Greek word he uses for our English word “deceive” literally means to reason beside or alongside, as in someone “reasoning beside oneself.” The word James uses here was used in mathematics to refer to a miscalculation, or a wrong answer. You have miscalculated, James says, you have figured erroneously if you think merely listening to the Word is what please God. Doing the Word, obeying what it says, putting into practice in your life its commands, is what pleases the Lord.
The Nike ads continually demand that we purchase their product and Just Do It. That is sound advice for the Christian desiring to be faithful to God. Just do the Word. The one who does what the Word says, the Apostle contends, shall be blessed in what he does.
In the Old Testament, the Lord warns the watchmen, who stood guard on the walls of a fortified city that if they saw danger coming and did not warn the people, the blood of the inhabitants of that city would be on their heads. But, God continues, if the watchmen warned the people of impending danger, and they did nothing about it, then their blood would be on their own heads. What an incredible connection there is between those watchmen and preacher’s of God’s Word.
The preacher’s job is to warn sinners of the wrath that is coming, and he is to warn God’s people about the danger of sin and to proclaim the blessedness of faith and righteousness. But then it is up to them to respond by action. “Bring forth fruits that are worthy of repentance,” John the Baptist warned those who came out to hear him preach on the banks of the Jordan River.
Once you have heard the Word, the excuse of ignorance disappears. “Be a doer of the Word and not a hearer only,” James warns us.
Folks, that Bible you hold in your hand is God’s Word written. It is His self-revelation to mankind. It is reliable, trustworthy, useful and sufficient for salvation. It is the job of every minister to preach—both often and well. It is his job to preach God’s Word and only God’s Word, because God has spoken and continues to speak through the pages of this book. And our response to God’s Word should be to humbly accept it and to submit to its authority. Our response should be to reflect and meditate upon it. Our response should be to obey it.
I’m on a mission. I want to begin you all on a lifelong love affair with this book. If I succeed in doing that, my ministry will have been a success. If I fail in that, I will have failed you.
This precious book I’d rather own
Than all the golden gems
That e’er in monarchs’ coffers shone,
Or on their diadems.
And were the seas one chrysolite,
This earth a golden ball,
And gems were all the stars of night,
This book were worth them all.
Ah, no, the soul ne’er found relief
In glittering hoards of wealth;
Gems dazzle not the eye of grief;
Gold can not purchase health.
But here a blessed balm appears
For every human woe,
And they that seek that book in tears—
Their tears shall cease to flow.
AMEN.
