This morning’s sermon….
Slowing the game down
Sometimes in a frantic football game you need the player with skill, experience, patience just to put their foot on the ball, pause and slow the game down a bit giving everyone time to get their breath and their bearings. Then they get things moving again with a surging run or killer pass.
That’s the kind of thing James is saying as we turn to James 1:19. He’s saying “Slow it down a bit.” This means being slow to speak and not in a hurry to react, comment, pronounce, preach and teach even.
The background to this advice is as follows.
- The need to get wisdom, we are to ask in faith without doubt (v5-8)
- The fate of rich and poor (v9-11)
- A right understanding of trail and testing …that doesn’t blame God
I think as well for us that James speaks to our tendency to ask the question “Why?” when the wise question is “what next?” That better question gets us thinking about how we are to live our faith well in the face of suffering. So what does James recommend? Well, here are three bits of wise advice from the brother of Jesus.
- Doing a heart check (v19-21)
Quick speech is associated with quick temper. Are we quick to blame others when things go wrong and even to blame God? James encourages us to check in on anger/bitterness in our own hearts. What is it that is feeding your heart? Is it what James refers to as “moral filth? This might get us to think narrowly about the particular poison that saturates our media and our TV screens from pornography to violence. However, it also challenges us to think about the other things that feed our hearts, especially anger and bitterness.
Don’t let those things take root in your heart. Instead by fed by God’s Word. This means getting rooted into Scripture, through Sundays, Life Groups, daily meditation. It also means allowing others to speak God’s Word into your life, for example through prophetic words and pictures. God’s Word saturates us in order to shape our thoughts and words. On a side point, if you want to grow in those kinds of gifts, make sure you are saturated in Scripture too.
2. Learning to remember (v22-25)
You wouldn’t forget yourself having just looked in the mirror *under normal circumstances). The thing is that we remember things when we grasp their importance and significance. When I was a kid, everyone made a big deal out of bonfire night, it doesn’t seem such a big thing now. Part of the reason is that we’re not too sure what it is we are meant to be remembering and celebrating. Was Guy Fawkes really a baddy, or a freedom fighter who just got the timing wrong?
When something is important and worth remembering it, then we’ll remember it, not just with fireworks and parties but we will let it change our lives.
Here in James 1:22-25 the sense is that if we don’t let God change our speech and behaviour then this suggests that we’ve forgotten the power and depth of the life changing victory he has won for us and in us through the Cross
What difference is the Cross making to you in how you relate to others?
3. Prioritising love (v26-27)
The Cross is meant to change and shape our lives, first, in what we say,. This means that slander, gossip, grumbling and harshness should not characterise our speech (v26).
Secondly, in what we do. This means that our church as a community should be characterised by practical care and protection for those in need and vulnerable (v27).
So what …
The Gospel is meant to change our lives. Note, it’s the Gospel that’s going to do this. Our deeds/works are an outworking of faith, not instead of it.
James is going to keep building on this and we’ll be seeing in the coming weeks how this affects our words and our actions. So, I want to pause and go back to the first point about the need for a heart check. When we were working through Galatians, we saw that Paul was against circumcision for Gentile believers. Why was that? It was because external circumcision pointed to inward circumcision of the heart.
In fact, more radically still, we need a new heart. If I were to give you a piece of stone, what could you do with it? The answer is not a lot. As strong and tough as you are, as creative as you might be, you wouldn’t be able to mould it and shape it. You would have to accept it as it was. However, if I gave you soft clay or playdough, you could shape it and mould it into whatever you desired.
When you put your trust in Jesus, this is what he does. He swaps your rock hard, stone cold, stubborn heart for one that can be moulded and shaped into his likeness.
What is the heart work you need?
Faithroots 