At the age of 33, Erik Weihenmayer is a phenomenal athlete who loves to skydive, snow ski and climb mountains. Mountain climbing is his specialty. As a matter of fact, he is on track to be one of the youngest to climb all of the Seven Summits, the highest peaks on each of the continents. In 1995 he scaled Mt. McKinley, in 1996 El Capitan, in 1998 Mt Kilamanjaro. In 1999 he climbed Argentina’s Aconcauga. On May 25, 2001 he reached the summit of Mount Everest, a peak that 90% of those who begin to climb never finish. Since 1953, 165 people have died trying to climb Everest, but Erik made it. Now that is an extremely significant feat, but you don’t know the half of it. Weihenmayer suffers from a degenerative eye disease, and when he was 13 he became totally blind. All of his climbs have been without the benefit of his eyesight. Weihenmayer is a blind mountain-climber!
Now you have to ask yourself, “How is that possible? How can a guy who can’t see climb the highest peaks in the world?” If you ask him, he’ll tell you. He has learned to listen well.
- He listens as a bell tied to the back of the climber in front of him shows him which way to go.
- He listens to his climbing partners who shout back to him, "Death fall two feet to your right!" so he knows what direction not to go.
- He listens to the sound of his pick jabbing the ice, so he knows whether his footing will be secure or not.
For Erik Weihenmayer, being a good listener is a matter of life and death. (source: www.touchthetop.com)
The truth is, according to James, the same is true for every one of us too. Listening, I mean really hearing, is the only way any of us is able to follow the pathway that God has opened up for us. This morning my hope for each of us is that we will become better listeners, even straining to hear what God has to say to us and willingly deciding to follow His direction.
Text: James 1:19-27
Did you hear what James is saying to us? He is challenging us to take faith in Christ seriously enough that it changes our behavior. James is addressing Christian people here, and he is saying that we have to be willing to listen to what God says to us and then modify our behavior to conform our will to God’s Will. In order to do that, we have to do 3 things, Hear God’s Word, Accept God’s Word, and then Do God’s Word. It’s really as simple as that. Having said it, we could conclude the message and be the first ones to the buffet this morning. However, since we have some more time let’s consider those in a little more detail.
1. Hear The Word.
James might have easily pointed out here that it wasn’t by accident that God gave us 2 ears and only 1 mouth. He expects us to spend more time listening than he does speaking. But it’s hard, isn’t it. We believe that what we have is so important that it is just begging to be said. It is just our nature. With our kids we worked very hard to help them learn not to interrupt when someone else is speaking. And it was a slow process. Pam and I would be carrying on a conversation in the car and all of the sudden we couldn’t hear each other because of a question or a comment being hurled between us from the back seat. That made me so angry. But as we corrected that behavior in the kids, I noticed something. I was often just as guilty of it as the kids. In the middle of that time when we were stressing that the kids shouldn’t interrupt, I came up from the basement one day and Hannah and Pam were carrying on a conversation. I just had a little thing to say to Pam so I butted in and told her. “Dad, you’re interrupting!” What I wanted to say was, “Yeah, but what I had to say was important.” But of course it was no more important than what anybody else had to say.
When James wrote verse 19 “Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry” he wasn’t just talking about our willingness to speak and not listen to others. He was talking about our willingness to speak and not listen to God. You can’t miss it from the context. (read vv. 19-21) The only “Word planted in you, which can save you” is the Word of God. Don’t miss his point. We need to be more interested in hearing what God has to say to us than telling Him what we think! We need to hear the Word of God. I am convinced that people are much more interested in talking to God than listening to Him. Statistics bear that out. According to George Barna, a Christian pollster, in a given week about 37% of Americans will read their Bible, but 85% will pray. (source: barna.org) It sounds to me that we are quick to speak, but slow to listen to what God has to say. Can I share a pet peeve on this issue with you? I get to do that because I am the preacher. I have noticed that people are very respectful not to interrupt when someone is praying. If you are chatting and someone begins to pray aloud, if you are like most people you will stop talking until they say “amen.” I have noticed that people are nowhere near as respectful when the Word of God is being read. People will continue to chat just like someone was reading from the newspaper. So what is more important for us to respect, when people talk to God or when God speaks to us?
I do not apologize for saying that you and I need to make ourselves available to God’s Word. We need to hear it by reading it for ourselves, hearing it preached and hearing it taught. Solomon wrote in Proverbs 18:15, “The heart of the discerning acquires knowledge; the ears of the wise seek it out.” We need to be listening for the Word of God like Erik Weihenmayer listens for those bells, the warnings from his fellow climbers, and the sound of that pick in the ice. We need to be listening as if our life depends on it, because it does! (pause)
James goes on to say that it’s not enough just to hear the Word. You have to move beyond hearing to
2. Accept The Word.
I once saw a Bible with a very insightful inscription in the front cover. It said, “This book will keep you from sin; Sin will keep you from this book.” It’s true isn’t it? The more we allow sin to control our lives, the less we are willing to expose ourselves to God’s Word because we don’t want to be chastened. We don’t want to be convicted. It’s not pleasant to be confronted with the fact that we are not living up to our potential, so we avoid the subject all together and find ways to miss worship, to bypass Bible reading and to be busy when Bible study is going on. It is by an act of the will that we choose not to accept the Word of God into our life.
But on the other hand, it is by an act of the will that we position ourselves to accept God’s Word into our life. (v. 21) Notice that James says we must get rid of some things before God’s Word will grow and flourish in our heart. We have to rid ourselves of “moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent.” The KJV has my favorite phrase here, “lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness.” What James is saying here is that our heart is like a garden, and the things that we plant within it are the kind of fruit that we will bear. You don’t plant potatoes and reap corn. One of the absolute axioms of life is that you reap what you sow, and if you want to reap godliness you will never do it if you are sowing ungodliness.
Let me ask you, what habits are you sowing in your heart? Do you lie regularly, or are you scrupulously honest? Do you lean more toward greed or generosity? Have you trained your mind to meditate on God’s Word, or are you more apt to stew over the wrong that someone has done you? Is something draining you of your spiritual vitality so that you can’t imagine what it would feel like to be in a vital, growing relationship with God? James says, “Make a choice to rid your life of that filthy weed and allow God’s Word to grow and prosper in your life.”
That is so easy to say, but so hard to do. Let me give you a tip on how to do it. If you are really serious about this, find someone you trust and make yourself accountable to them. Say, “Look, I’ve got this problem and it is destroying my vitality. Will you keep me honest on this? Check with me about this.” We all know we will have to answer to God about our lives some day, but if you know that this week you will have to look someone in the eye and answer for what you’ve done, it will keep you from sin and get you into the book more.
Now James dives into the conclusion of his discussion by urging us to do more than just hear God’s Word. He even challenges us to go beyond simply accepting God’s Word. In the words of Nike’s old add campaign, he says “JUST DO IT!
3. Do The Word.
James is very insightful. He is an elder in the church in Jerusalem. He no doubt sees people coming to worship who hear the word, and even accept the word, but who continue to live the way they want. Notice what he says in v. 22. “Don’t deceive yourselves, there is no value in just listening to the Word. Don’t think there is some value in simply accepting the Word as true. You must act upon it.”
Several years back, the annual convention of The American Heart Association met in Atlanta. That year 300,000 doctors, nurses, and researchers gathered to discuss, among other things, the importance a low fat diet plays in keeping our hearts healthy. Some smart-aleck researcher did some checking around and found that during meal times, those people consumed fat-filled fast food—such as bacon cheeseburgers and fries—at about the same rate as people from other conventions.
When one cardiologist was asked whether or not his partaking in high fat meals set a bad example, he replied, "Not me, because I took my name tag off." (source: Boston Globe [11-10-93] as quoted in PreachingToday.com)
Isn’t it amazing how we can disconnect our behavior from our knowledge? We can hear something, even accept it as true, and never let it change our behavior. That’s humorous to me when we are talking about doctors and researchers. It’s disheartening and incredibly damaging when we are talking about our ability to hear and accept the Word of God and yet live lives of disobedience.
Let God’s Word change you!
You see, there are alot of Christians who mark their Bibles, but there are all too few who let their Bible mark them. It is so easy to hear a Word from God and say “Yeah, I hear that, and I accept that as true,” and that is the end of it. But to let God’s Word dwell in you, and grow within you, and swell within you until it motivates you to do something, that is a challenge. James says that we become motivated to change by looking into the mirror of God’s Word. (read vv. 23-25)
Men and women look in the mirror for different reasons. For men it is usually to inspect the pillow damage from the night before. After shaving it is to check out the razor damage. Women look at the mirror and they find ways to cover up the pillow damage with powder and stuff. I’m not complaining, don’t get me wrong! But every once in a while there is a time when you check yourself out in the mirror and you really see yourself. Maybe it is the appearance of a new worry line, or a sag where your flesh used to be firm. When that happens it can profoundly affect you. You look in the mirror a little differently. That reflection makes you think about who you are, what you have become, how you have used your years on this earth. That kind of introspection is all too uncommon. James says it should come when you look at God’s Word.
Now there are two ways of looking into the mirror of God’s Word. Sometimes, in a very superficial way, we read a chapter and are proud of our accomplishment. We move from the listening to the talking phase of our conversation with God and pray. When we do that we are glancing in the mirror. But it should be more than that. When we read God’s Word, it is the time for God and us to consider who He is and who we are. You don’t do that in a glance. It takes some inspection, some pondering. We need to listen to God’s Word as if our life depends on it, because it does.
Notice again what James says will happen if we do that. (v. 25) We don’t go beyond the surface because we don’t want to see the imperfection. But God says, “Keep looking, intently! I will bless you and remold you into who I want you to be!” An amazing thing happens when we look intently into the mirror of God’s Word, when we hear the Word, accept the Word, and then choose to do the word. A transformation occurs.
In the book of Exodus there is an account of when Moses was able to enter into the presence of God. It says that his countenance was changed, you might say he glowed from experiencing the presence of God. When he came back among the people he wore a veil to hide the fact that the glow was growing dimmer. In 2 Corinthians Paul reminds us of that occurrence and then He tells us that if we hear, accept and do the will of God, a supernatural transformation occurs in our lives. In 2 Corinthians 3:18, Paul wrote, “And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.” So when you look in the mirror today, is what you see more like the Lord than what you would have seen 2 years ago? If you are really listening to God’s Word it is.
Just in case you don’t know what life looks like when God transforms you, James points it out in vv. 26-27 (read). When you let God’s Word affect you, when you not only hear it and accept it, but you determine to do it, it will cause you to seek purity in your own life and it will drive you to find ways to help others, especially those who can’t help themselves.
You see, the more like God you become, the less self absorbed you will be. The more you listen to Him as if your life depends on it, the more you will be captivated by God and motivated by the needs of others to help. That is when you are most like God, when you are loving others so much that you can’t help but help them when they can’t help themselves.
Thank God He is like that, because we need His help. Our life does depend on His mercy and grace. When we were separated from Him by our sin, helpless in our state of death, God reached out and spoke. “The Word became Flesh” the apostle John wrote, “and dwelt among us.” How foolish we would be to not listen to the one who came to direct us from this life into the next one. He called us to follow, then He gave His life away on our behalf. Now that’s what He calls us to do on His behalf.
