I love to look at building plans – especially of houses and churches. Whether it’s a floor plan or a full blueprint, I love it.
My love for plans began when I was in fifth or sixth grade and my parents were planning to build their house. Mom and dad involved me in the plan selection process, and once we had selected our favorite, Dad ordered a set of plans. For several weeks Dad worked to personalize the plans. When he finished we were excited about what was to be. Then we waited . . . and waited . . . and waited. For several years the house plans laid rolled up beside dad’s recliner. I can remember climbing into that recliner, straining over to pick up the plans, unrolling the plans, and slowly looking through every detail of this new dream house. I studied those plans. I knew those plans. I was just a fifth grader, but I dreamed of what every year would be like in that house. I imagined living there and walking through the rooms. I imagined going in and out to play. I imagined having friends over. I even imagined being a teenager and dating a girl on the front porch. I imagined my life fitting into those plans opened before me.
As we move through this sermon series, perhaps you’re imagining your dream family. You’re imagining what that might look like, wondering if it can ever happen. I want to encourage you to continue to dream, remembering that God can do immeasurably more than all we can ask or imagine (Ephesians 3:20).
However, in order for God to be free to work, you need to be dreaming the right dream. You need to be envisioning the right plan. Not just any plan will do for God. You need a divine plan to build your home. That plan is God’s written word.
We need to climb into our chairs, open the Bible, God’s plan regularly, and imagine. We need to imagine our family lives being lived out according to this book. We need to imagine every year of our lives, every challenge of family life, lived according to the dream home shared throughout this book. We need to imagine our life fitting into these plans opened before us.
Does that sound ridiculous to you? To some it may. Someone once wrote on one of their old history textbooks, “In case of famine, eat this book; it’s full of baloney! In case of flood, stand on this book; it’s dry!” Some people see the Bible in much the same way. They don’t see the relevance within it. They see at as just another history book or philosophy book. For it to be an exciting plan for a home makeover seems utterly ridiculous. The problem is they’ve never opened up the plan to see the exciting things God has there.
I read of a minister who was visiting one of his members. The lady of the house was trying to impress him about how devout she was by pointing out the large Bible on the bookshelf and talking in a very reverential way of it as “the Lord’s book.” Her young son interrupted the conversation, “Well, if that’s God’s book we better send it back to Him because we never read it!”
You’ve got to open the plans in order to know what your dream should look like. If you never study the plans, you can’t dream. If you never study the plans, you won’t know what to build. This morning, we’re going to get some help from James, the brother of Jesus, in learning how to study the plans.
In James 1:21-25 we can see a three-step plan for developing as followers of Christ. I think this three-step plan can also be applied to helping us make over our homes. James writes:
Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you. Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it--he will be blessed in what he does.
Let us consider the process James outlines, and let’s learn how to dream the right dream and then envision our lives fitting into that dream.
Step One: Gut your house (v. 21a)
This step was the point of the whole previous message in this series. The first step is gutting your home of the junk that is in it. You have to sledge that junk right out. You have to pray for the Lord to take that stuff away. Some of it is moral filth. Some of it is related to a bad attitude or a bad habit. Some of it is just pure evil. But you must sledge it out of your life and then scoop it into God’s wheelbarrow and say, “Take it. I’m through with it.”
That is step one. But we can’t stop at demolition. You have to destruct before you can construct. The purpose of the destruction is the eventual construction. If you never move on to construction you’re really missing out! Destruction is fun, but what follows is much more rewarding and enduring. I want us to focus now on steps two and three.
Step Two: Accept the plans (v. 21b)
Not only are we to get rid of all the sin-junk. James tells us we must accept the new plan. We must humbly accept the word planted in us, which can save us!
We must come to the point where out of all the plans of the world, we accept God’s plan. At times it may not seem the best to our human minds. We may think in our pride, “I’m not sure God’s word is right. It’s outdated. It’s too strict.” But James tells us we must realize that even though we may be the most intelligent creatures on earth, we’re still not God. God knows best. And we must come before Him in humility and accept His word. His word is the right plan for us.
I mentioned that when mom and dad were planning to build, they allowed me, even as a fifth grader, to help them in the plan selection process. Mom and dad had been talking about building a home for years. Finally one night, talk started to become reality. Dad called mom and me into the den and said, “I’ve been looking through plan books. Taking into consideration the things we’ve talked about wanting in the house, I’ve narrowed the selections to five plans. Here are copies for you both. Take these, look over them, rank your top three and then let’s talk about them.” So I went off to my room excited as could be. As a fifth grader, I seriously studied those plans. I looked at the architect’s rendering of each house and thought about how it might look on our property. I looked at the floor plans and thought about how our life might fit into them. I ranked my choices. When we got back together, we had all selected similar choices. We talked about the similar plans that night. Mom and Dad listened to my thoughts, and I listened to theirs. We talked a lot about what was best. We talked about how it would serve even after I was out of the house. Finally, we agreed on the plan. We did not pick the one that simply looked best. We picked the plan that was best for us – that met our needs and even a lot of our wants for the rest of our lives.
Just as we had to decide upon a plan for our house, you have to decide upon a plan for your home. What plan will you select? Will you select one of the many plans modeled by culture? They might be popular, but they’re probably not the best. Maybe you will select the plan modeled by your parents? Maybe that is easiest, you know what it looks like – but how does it compare to God’s plan? No matter who we are, God’s word is the best plan for our family. The best plan to follow is God’s plan in His written word. God’s plan fits real life. God’s plan will meet your needs and even a lot of your wants! It is this plan that can save your family.
How can we accept this plan? James tells us we should allow it to become implanted in us. If you are a believer, that word is already implanted in you, but you must continually receive it. Therefore, you can continually accept God’s plan by studying it and dreaming of how your life can fit into it – which leads us to step three in our process.
Step Three: Follow the plans (v. 22)
This verse is better translated, “Prove yourselves to be doers of the word and not hearers only.” “Hearers” is the real word, not “listeners.” There is a difference between hearing and listening.
On the on hand, simply hearing means that sound passes through your ears. Hearing is a rather passive activity. On the other hand, listening is both passive and active. Listening means you hear attentively – you take heed to what you hear. “Leonard A. Stevens wrote a book entitled Are You Listening? Stevens advocated that real listening involve[s] more than hearing sounds. It involve[s] extreme concentration on the sounds, assimilation of the sounds and application to what one hears.” Listening requires heeding what you hear.
How many of you ladies try to talk to your husbands while they’re watching T.V. or reading and you get no response? My wife can raise her hand. Chances are we hear you. The sound passes through our ears, but that’s it. You get no response because we’re engaged in something else. Sound is passing through our ears, but we’re not listening.
Let’s be honest, we often hear Christian teaching without really listening to it. There are between 90 and 125 people sitting in this room each week and you hear sermons, but not all of us really listen because too often we’re just hearing and not listening.
If you want to follow God’s plan for your family, you can’t merely listen to the plan, or look at the plan, you’ve got to follow the plan. You’ve got to do what it says! Why?
The reason for this is simple: following the plan leads to blessings.
James gives us the illustration of two fellows who look into a mirror. The mirrors of the day were made of polished metal – silver being used for the more expensive – and were quite small, generally made so one could hold in the hand. The mirror might have been the size of ladies’ compact. Two men come to the mirror. The first guy looks at the mirror, sees some things he needs to change – maybe his hair is messed up, or he needs to shave, or he’s got a friend hanging in his nose – whatever. But then he just walks off and forgets what he looks like. He takes just a glance and then off he goes. The word there for “goes away” has the idea of going away and never returning. It is like the person who hears but doesn’t listen. He hears but he doesn’t do.
The second guy comes to the mirror. James says this guy doesn’t merely glance, he “looks intently” or “gazes into” the mirror. The word there has the idea of stooping down to look carefully. It is the same word used in John of the disciples who looked carefully into the tomb. The word is also used to describe a person who gives a careful investigation into Scripture.” This guy takes the mirror and looks carefully at himself. He sees a perfect reflection. He notices his messed up hair and uses the mirror to help him fix it. He shaves. He gets the friend out of his nose. He looks carefully and then makes the changes for which the mirror calls.
The careful looker does not forget God’s truths. Instead he becomes a doer. A. T. Robertson described the careful looker this way. Robertson said:
The man remains by the side of the roll of the law spread out before him and rolls page after page with the keenest interest and zest until he rightly grasps the meaning of God. Then he puts that word into practice.
When I read that I immediately thought of myself sitting in Dad’s chair with those house plans in front of me, rolling each page after page with the keenest interest and zeal and then watching those plans come to real life in the building.
We need to sit with God’s plan each day. We need to turn each page with keen interest and zeal. We need to see the plan. We need to see ourselves living that plan. And then we need to follow that plan to make the changes needed to make that plan come to life in our own homes.
James says the person who follows the plan, who doesn’t forget what he has heard but does it, will be blessed in what he does (v. 25).
When you follow God’s plan you will get blessings. When you don’t, you won’t. Following the plans is important.
I once served a church that had a really messed up floor plan – multi-level, no handicapped access, small doors, big lobbies where we didn’t need them, small lobbies where we needed big lobbies. We were constantly running into issues related to the layout of the building. We thought the reason for the mess was that the church had grown so fast at one point that they just added on here and there with little thought, and the result was a mess. One day, however, my friend and I found the original plans for the last addition. We opened them up to find a rather well-planned facility, with many of the problem areas alleviated. We said, “Look how that was supposed to be. If they had done that, we wouldn’t have the problems we have today.” We found out that when it came time to build, the church took a cheaper, initially easier route instead of following the plan, which called for more remodeling and aesthetic beauty. The result of not following the plan had resulted in 30 years of an inadequate facility and likely had contributed to the eventual plateau and decline of that church.
There are other plans out there that initially may seem easier than God’s plan. There are other plans out there that initially may seem cheaper than God’s plan. But if you don’t follow God’s plan, you will not reap the blessings. If you don’t follow the plan with your generation, the succeeding generations will pay a different price. If you don’t pay the price and put in the hard work now, the likelihood is that it will take several generations to repair your cheap and lazy attitude. You can break all the rules of the Bible except one – that which you sow you also shall reap.
You must follow the plans. And the plans are found in this word.
There are three steps:
Step one: Gut the house.
Step two: Accept the plans.
Step three: Follow the plans.
What is the result? The result is the blessing of a made-over, righteous family.
Will you accept and follow the plans today?
If you will, will you stand with me?
Now, will you take your Bible in your hand, hold it up, and repeat after me:
This is God’s holy and true word.
From this day forward
It will be the plan for my family.
With God’s help
I will not be cheap
I will not be lazy
I will love this plan.
I will study this plan.
I will dream of this plan.
I will follow this plan.
God alone knows the blessings in store for me
For my children,
For my grandchildren,
And for my grandchildren’s children
My family will never be the same
In Jesus’ name.
