One of the major television networks offers a series about people who are unhappy with their bodies and are willing to undergo surgery and all kinds of treatments to change. When they find someone willing to undergo a makeover, they bring in a team of plastic surgeons, eye surgeons, dentists, fashion stylists, and make-up artists, all with California addresses, to change the way they look. (http://abc.go.com/primetime/extrememakeover/)
For example, there was a top-notch car mechanic named Mike whose dating life was a wreck. His overhaul at the Extreme Makeover body shop included laser skin treatment, laser hair removal, acne surgery, lip and gum repositioning, and getting his ears pinned.
Then there was Cynthia, a mother of three who was born with Congenital Nerve Deafness, a condition that forced her to live with severe hearing loss. She compensated by becoming a master lip reader. But as Cynthia got older, her sight also deteriorated, making it more difficult for her to communicate. In hopes of changing these afflictions, Cynthia not only received a physical makeover, but she became the first person in the U.S. to receive a special digital hearing device. Cynthia also received a face lift, browlift, upper and lower eyelid lift, rhinoplasty, tummy tuck, Lasik eye surgery, 6 crowns, 9 upper and 9 lower porcelain veneers, and a dental bridge.
Maybe some of you have dreamed about getting an Extreme Makeover to change some aspect of your physical body. You’d like to have joints that don’t give you pain or you’d like more hair on your head or less weight to carry around. I can’t promise you a makeover like that, but I can promise that if you follow the directions you find in God’s word, your life can be full of energy, purpose, and beauty. You can have an Extreme Makeover that starts from the inside.
For five Sundays, we are going to focus on the book of James. I urge you to read it once a week for the next five weeks to get in mind what God may be saying to you. On each of the five Sundays we will focus on the makeover of one part of our anatomy. Today we’ll be thinking about our ears. It may surprise you that God wants you to have big ears, something like the wolf in the story of Little Red Riding Hood. Remember, when Little Red Riding Hood told the wolf, “What big ears you have,” the wolf said, “All the better to hear you with, my dear.” That’s the kind of ears we need, the kind that help us to hear well.
During the Sunday school hour this morning we had two specialists who went around to the junior and youth classes to measure the size of their ears. I have the results here and I want to award a pair of bigger ears to someone whose ears are not so big. I’m sure some of you have been told, “I wish you’d listen to me.” Maybe a pair of larger ears would help. Unfortunately, I have only one pair here today.
For you kids starting to school in a few days, you will need big ears so you can listen well. I don’t know how much listening kids do in one day. Some parents probably think they never listen! Some research says that adults spend about 70% of their waking time communicating and 45% of that time is spent in listening. And if you want to become a company executive you should be prepared to listen about 60% of the time. One writer said, “We listen a book a day, speak a book a week, read a book a month, and write a book a year.” You can see how important listening is.
Have you ever noticed that God gave us two ears and only one mouth? Why do you suppose that is? Probably so that we listen more than we talk. Many years ago the Greek writer Zeno said, “We have two ears but only one mouth that we may hear more and speak less.” James talks about the same idea. You really need big ears.
Our Bible verse from James 1:19 says, “Let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness.” Notice that listening comes first. You may know people who speak before they listen. It’s a temptation we all have, but the Bible says to listen first.
I really like the way these verses are written in the Message translation. “Lead with your ears, follow up with your tongue, and let anger straggle along in the rear. God’s righteousness doesn’t grow from human anger, so throw all spoiled virtue and cancerous evil in the garbage. In simple humility, let our gardener, God, landscape you with the Word, making a salvation garden of your life.” We understand from these words that it is really important to listen. Why is it so important to listen? We need to become good listeners for several reasons.
1. The first is to get information. Students, in your studies this year you will have lots of new facts thrown at you. You will learn about science, math, history, and language. You will learn dates and measures and events. You need to learn to listen well to answer questions on quizzes and exams. For example, suppose your teacher asks “How many months in the year have 28 days?” how will you answer? You will also need to listen for instructions to do an assignment, to play a game or to learn an instrument. The bigger ears you have the better!
Most of you have been in Sunday school classes and if you have been listening, you have learned lots of things about people in the Bible. You know about the Old and New Testaments. You know about people like Noah, Abraham, Moses, Samson, and David. Maybe you already know how many years Methuselah lived or who Jonah was or where Jesus was born. And you probably know the Golden Rule.
A lot of kids your age don’t know those things. Some adults don’t even know those things. You need to have that knowledge. Someday some of you will become Sunday school teachers, VBS teachers, pastors, or missionaries. And you will need to know all of those things about the Bible. The Bible says in II Pet 3:18 “Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”
The other day we were watching the news on TV and they were interviewing Condaleza Rice. As she talked about the insurgents in Iraq she said something about them not becoming “a law unto themselves.” That phrase comes from the Bible. I wonder how many people recognized it. Unfortunately, fewer and fewer people recognize allusions to Biblical stories in literature, drama, and public speeches. Students, ask God to give you big ears so you can hear the kind of knowledge and information you need to live the way God wants you to live.
2. The second reason we need big ears is to build friendships. Kids, you already know it’s no fun to play with someone who only does what he wants and never listens to your ideas or your way of doing things. Listening to each other is absolutely necessary if we are going to have a good time. For you adults who are married, marriage counselors tell us that one of the biggest communication problems in couples is that they are unwilling to look at things from the other person’s point of view. In other words, they don’t listen well to each other. You need big ears for that!
When James wrote this letter to Christians nearly 2000 years ago, he wanted to help them get along with each other. These Christians came from all kinds of backgrounds. Some were rich; some were poor. Some had Jewish background; some Gentile. Some were educated; some probably couldn’t read. And sometimes they didn’t listen to each other very well. They argued and said hurtful things.
If we are going to get along in school or in church or in our neighborhood we need to learn to listen. Dale Carnegie says that you can make more friends in two weeks by becoming a good listener than you can in two years trying to get other people interested in you. In fact, by listening, you might be able to make a friend out of an enemy. Even though I’m over 60 years old, I’m still learning to listen well, too. Sometimes we need to listen not just with our ears but with our eyes and our hearts.
We have an 11-year-old boy in our neighborhood who sometimes does destructive things like throwing rocks, breaking things and messing with things that aren’t his. I’ve seen him do it more than once. And I have told him to quit more than once. One evening he was outside throwing rocks at a For Sale sign in front of a house. He had pretty good aim. He had good rhythm. He’d put a rock in his hand, danced a step or two and then let it fly. When he got tired of doing that, he kicked the sign over.
I saw this from our window and I got angry. Have you ever noticed how easy it is to get angry? I went outside to tell him that he’d better put the sign back up and I’m afraid my voice wasn’t very kind when I said it. I went back into the house, but I didn’t feel right about what had just happened. I was still thinking about it the next day. How could I make this boy a friend rather than an enemy?
I had a piece of old sidewalk I needed to break up so I could put new cement in its place. As I used my big hammer to break that old concrete, a picture came to mind of that boy. He had the right rhythm to do this. He had the energy and he likes to break things. I thought maybe he would like the opportunity to use my hammer and break up concrete. I invited him over. He probably thought I was going to scold him. I asked if he would like to use my hammer to break up the sidewalk. I showed him where to hit it so it would break at the right places. He hammered and hammered. In fact, he did the whole thing and I didn’t have to do anything. And together we got it broken up in pieces. And when we were done, he thanked me!
Since then he has come to me a couple of times. One day a puppy bit his toe and he needed a Bandaid. Another time his older brother threw rocks at him and he wanted to tell me that it hurt. I’m glad I learned to listen to him. We all need to learn to listen to each other, no matter how old or young, large or small, educated or uneducated we are. We need to listen in the family of God. We need to listen in our families at home. Married people: Never think you don’t need to work on nurturing your friendship with each other. We all need big ears to build our friendships.
3. But there is another important reason we need big ears and that is so we can understand who God is and how he wants us to live. And that is why we have the book of James. Let’s think of the book of James as a letter or sermon to a church or to several churches. This short book did not come in book form or on a CD. Someone had to read it aloud to them. They needed ears to hear it the first time.
Most people think that the writer of this book was James, the brother of Jesus. In fact, if you read Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and then read the book of James you will notice that some of the words and phrases sound very much alike. I think James must have had his ears wide open and listened to Jesus very well.
Even though the people he was writing to may have been scattered in more than church and even though they had different backgrounds and experiences, they all had one thing in common: they knew what it was to believe in Jesus, to have their sins forgiven, and to follow him. So, James was writing to help them live up to what they already knew. He wanted them to understand what God wanted for their lives, to live in the right way, to produce God’s righteousness, he says.
And the way to do that is to listen to God’s voice. James is not the only one in the Bible who talks about listening. Remember the story Jesus told about a farmer who sowed his seed? Jesus explained that some seed fell on the path, some fell on rocky ground, some fell among thorns, and some fell into good soil. Which seed grew the best? The seed that fell on good soil. Then Jesus said, “Let anyone with ears to hear listen!” (Mk. 4).
What did Jesus mean? He meant that if you want the joy of having God in your life, then you need to be ready to hear what he says.
Conclusion
Most of you students are ready for school. You have used your lists to buy pencils, notebooks, and back backs. You have registered for your classes. You are ready to learn new things and make new friends. One thing you probably haven’t thought about is that you need a pair of big ears. I’m not talking about the a pair of big red ears that Jimmy received this morning, but ears that respond like our text says--- Let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger.
As you start your school year, I want to give you a list of things that will help you develop big ears so you understand who God is:
1. Keep a Bible close by. If you can’t read it yourself, ask your mother or someone to read a verse to you every day. Listen to God’s voice in the Bible.
2. Pray every day. Thank God before you eat. Ask him to guide you before you leave home. Pray before you sleep. Listen to God’s voice when you pray.
3. Find other friends who love Jesus. And then make new friends, not just by talking, but by listening.
4. Show up in Sunday school and church every Sunday wide awake, ready to listen to what the teacher has prepared. This is your best opportunity to understand who God is and how he wants you to live. In two weeks we begin a new Sunday School year. I want to encourage every child and youth here to do everything in your power to attend regularly, to encourage your parents to come with you to S.S. and to invite a friend to come with you. Ask God to help you every Sunday to come with BIG EARS.
