A Priceless or Pointless religion! (Part 2)
James 1:22-27
Last time we engaged in one verse of this chapter of James and I promise today we will finish chapter 1. We continue on with the last two points of living a priceless religion. This is all based on James last few words in verse 26 admonishing us to keep ourselves in the Word and avoid a “useless religion”. It should be important to everyone one of us to live a lifestyle that reflects our Christianity. Let’s read the whole and then we will look at it in parts. James 1:22-27. The first thing you want to do to avoid a useless religion is…
I. Practice listening, remembering and doing what the Word says (22-25)
a) Listening (Verse 22)
i) Do not let the emphasis of doing what the word says negate the effectiveness of listening
ii) For faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.
iii) I know many of you work a late shift, you have to do that. But if Saturday night parties and Saturday night clubbing effects your Sunday morning listening skills something has got to change. And you have to ask what is important.
iv) How many of us were paying attention to the radio while coming in, you were listening to the song being played or the words on the television and you were singing along perhaps…
v) Make coming to church like driving at 3 in the morning. If you fall asleep you will crash. Same with God’s Word if you fall asleep you will miss that warning and it could cause a wreck that effects your life. Many people are sleeping right through the most important hour of their week.
vi) Wake up! And Let the Word of God dwell in you richly (Col 3:16)
b) Remembering (verse 23-25)
i) For many of us it is not listening it is remembering what was even said. I have a hard time remembering things:
ii) We blame age, kids & hormones
iii) Yet we memorized lines movies, from Seinfield, from songs and what Bill O’Reilly or what Rush said. We are better at paraphrasing the Bible than quoting it. (Songs are repeated and so should the Word in your heart be)
iv) James knows our two most popular words “I forgot”
(1) Forgot the garbage
(2) Forgot that thing was back there
(3) Forgot her birthday, anniversary, dinner
(4) Forgot God’s promises
(5) Forgot you are a Christian
v) Jesus doesn’t give us an out for our forgetfulness and James tells us how to overcome it… That when you look into the perfect law of liberty which is the word of God (not the Constitution of the US) that as you look into it “continue in it”. If you continue by doing it immediately you won’t forget it. If you continue to read through it over and over you won’t forget it.
vi) I personally have a hard time remembering scripture verbatim so I always have a Bible that I know the location of the verses. If you can’t remember what it says maybe you will remember where it says it.
vii) I know my preaching Bible. I know the lay out of it. It is like knowing the lay out of your house. You may not be able to find where you placed your keys but you know where to look. You know where the bedroom is to look there or the Kitchen and so on.
viii) Know your Bible the same way. You may not know the details verbatim, but you will always know where to find it. But you have to have it in your hands you have to have it readily available. How many of you can say for sure that someone won’t come up to you in your work place or the grocery store or the park and give you an opportunity to share the word with them.
ix) I had a woman who asked me about hell… (Illustration) couldn’t remember verbatim what it said but I knew right where it said it.
x) You’ll be able to do more and say more if you are able to remember more.
xi) You will be a doer of what is said that is the goal…
c) Doing (verse 25)
i) A friend of mine spoke wisely when he said he went to Bible school to master the word, but realized that the word had not mastered him.
ii) We can study all we want read through the Bible in a year and still come away as ineffective Christians. In a few weeks we will be talking about how faith without works is dead how can you respond to that claim now?
iii) James tells us plainly that you are deceived to think you have any kind of an effective religion if you are warming a seat and not putting feet to the word.
iv) Perhaps the reason why we have many ineffective Christians is they are not getting the word. And if you are not getting the word then you are not hearing the word and if your not hearing the word you cannot be doers of the word.
v) But there is no excuse if you are not getting into the Word of God on your own. There is the NIV, KJV, NKJV, RSV, ASV, Living, literal, Good news and New century We have Bible on tape, CD, software and palm pilots. And if you are not reading it and getting it is your own fault.
vi) And if you are reading it and not doing it must be the fault of your church who is not providing you the right ministry to meet your needs. WRONG!
vii) Your needs should be centered around what God’s needs are. I know people who are sitting on their God given talents, because they are waiting for God to send the right thing their way.
viii) Like the story of the man caught in a flood sitting on his chimney saying God get me out of this as the flood waters rise. Just then a boat comes by. He says no thanks God will save me. Then a helicopter comes by No thanks he says God will save me and the man ends up drowning he goes to heaven and says Hey God why didn’t you save me and the Lord says I sent you a boat and a helicopter.
ix) That happened to a friend of mine. He was heading for church and a woman was in the middle of the road with her hood up. He stopped to help her she said no thanks God will send someone to help me and refused his help he came to church a little upset saying I was the one sent to help her.
x) We are waiting for the right thing to come our way, but it doesn’t meet our standards so we say not thanks and God is shaking His head saying when are these people going to wake up. I need workers. And those same people say, “why aren’t you using me God?”
xi) The second thing to know about a useless religion is what we find in verses 26-27 and those are…
II. Four things that create a useless religion (26-27)
a) No Practice of the Word of God creates a useless religion
i) Practicing religion is not as important as religiously practicing.
ii) What makes a religion useless is giving no practice to what is heard. You allow it to be dead in the water instead of giving life to God’s word.
iii) God’s word does not return void it will accomplish its purpose but we sure no how to make it void by what we don’t do with it.
b) An unbridled tongue creates a useless religion
i) We will get into talking about the tongue and the havoc that it can create in a couple of weeks
ii) But I can warm you up by saying “Could you prove you’re a Christian by your tongue” Could sing and they’ll know we are Christians by our speech. If you can’t speak in love you are just noisy in the ears of God. A clanging cymbal the brass trumpet blowing obscurely.
iii) What do you sound like to your husband or to your wife or to your kids?
c) Ignoring people in their trouble creates a useless religion
i) Many ministers believe this would be the perfect job if it wasn’t for the people.
ii) The whole ministry and position of a pastor is people. Your ministry and commission is people.
iii) Reach them, touch them, speak to them, help them.
iv) If Jesus stayed away from people and ignored people how credible would He be as a savior to die for people.
v) He wouldn’t have disciples no one would be healed and frankly you wouldn’t have gospel records about what He did because no one would care.
vi) People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.
d) Indulging and conforming to worldly standards creates a useless religion
i) You may believe in your mind, you may go to church, but are you acting the gospel message afterward. Are you wrapping yourself around worldly standards? Either you are going to conform to the Word or to the World.
ii) The Bible is clear that you cannot have it both ways. These contrast each other. The philosophies of the World contradict the Bible and the Bible contradicts the world’s ideas.
iii) If you are getting drunk on Saturday and worshipping on Sunday and then telling off-color jokes at work on Monday you are contradicting the what the Word tells us to do and your religion is useless.
iv) If you are coming in to prayer meeting on Wednesday and you go home at night and watch the filth on HBO or Cinemax at night how effective was that prayer meeting I would say for that person the prayer meeting was useless.
v) To convert people to our religion we must first show them that it is not useless or a waste of time.
vi) We cannot have a church that has a useless religion. No more tippy toeing around the truth because we are scared of reactions
vii) We cannot embrace what the world is doing and expect that to be acceptable to God
viii) It is dangerous to have a mind set that says if you can’t beat ‘em join ‘em
ix) It completely goes against scripture which says:
x) Romans 12:2 And do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
xi) But proving that good, acceptable and perfect will of God is getting all confused and jumbled up, because instead of separating ourselves from how the world does things we are integrating the World with the Word. (Pastors Corner About Christmas)
xii) It is a veil, it is a glass darkly and the Word isn’t as easy to see as it used to be.
xiii) What is truth and fact in scripture has made Satan go back to his very first deception and tactic “Has God really said that was wrong?”
xiv) “Well people are speaking against us saying we are legalistic, so may be we should let up a little.” They will say that until you cave into their acceptance of sin. You have to be careful of the wording people use to manipulate us.
xv) Be careful what might be legalism to you may be another persons attempts to holy living.
xvi) Do not judge the things that another person does or stays away from as legalism it may be their conviction according to what the Word tells them.
xvii) And what the Word says (literally) makes all the difference.
xviii) You see legalism is standards that others put on people that keep them from receiving Christ or getting to heaven. That is the problem Jesus had with the Pharisees. They added all these extra things that kept people from coming to God.
xix) But once people have come to Him, 1Peter 1:15 as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct.
Conclusion
Challenge:
What does your religion look like? Is it easily forgotten like the image in the mirror James talks about? Is your relationship with Christ, which is the religion you proclaim, priceless or pointless?
The important steps to take: Listen, remember, do what the Word says and keep away from worldly indulgences that would testify to others that your religion is “useless.”
Perhaps that is how many have looked upon your relationship with Christ. You may have said I am religious, I go to church, I am a Christian. And yet the evidence has been a contradictory statement, that what you have isn’t life changing, it isn’t powerful it has become useless.
Go and sin no more and begin brand new today. No matter how old or new of a Christian you are.
