WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.179 I'm going to invite Sheena up. Sheena's going to come and read to us from the letter of James. 00:00:05.179 --> 00:00:11.560 Yes, I'm reading from the letter of James, chapter 1, verses 26 and verses 27. 00:00:11.980 --> 00:00:17.400 It's on the screen, it's in your bulletin, and it's on page 1011 in the church Bibles. 00:00:20.039 --> 00:00:25.620 If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, 00:00:25.620 --> 00:00:33.780 this person's religion is worthless. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father 00:00:33.780 --> 00:00:42.420 is this, to visit orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained from 00:00:42.420 --> 00:00:51.000 the world. Amen. May the Lord bless that reading of His Word. We're in week four, looking at the 00:00:51.000 --> 00:00:57.539 epistle of James, and Martin Luther, one of the great reformers, started the Reformation 500 years 00:00:57.539 --> 00:01:06.000 ago. He said that this letter, he called it the epistle of straw. So, hey, so he thought it should 00:01:06.000 --> 00:01:10.719 be taken out of the Bible, and the reason for that is because he thought that James was teaching 00:01:10.719 --> 00:01:17.799 justification by works. He thought that James was teaching that the way to get in God's good favor 00:01:17.799 --> 00:01:23.019 was by your performance. Now, he changed his mind over his lifetime on that, and that was right, 00:01:23.420 --> 00:01:30.939 because James is not teaching that. James is assuming new birth. We saw that last week, verse 18. He said 00:01:30.939 --> 00:01:37.620 that God brought us forth. That's a birth metaphor, and if you scan your eyes across the first chapter, 00:01:37.620 --> 00:01:43.299 you'll see that there's been a little theme that we haven't talked about, and that's that in verse 2, 00:01:43.299 --> 00:01:51.599 in verse 16 and verse 19, he calls the people he's writing to brothers and sisters, and that means 00:01:51.599 --> 00:01:56.719 he's talking to believers. He's talking to the scattered believers across the Roman Empire, 00:01:57.000 --> 00:02:02.140 and even in verse 16 and 19, he doesn't just say brother and sister. He says beloved brother and 00:02:02.140 --> 00:02:09.159 sister. So, he says that my audience are people who have been loved by God all the way to the point of 00:02:09.159 --> 00:02:15.900 becoming born again, new birth, new heart, and so he's assuming that, and so what he's doing in the 00:02:15.900 --> 00:02:21.699 rest of this book is he's assuming the gospel. He doesn't make it explicit, but it's always there, 00:02:22.500 --> 00:02:26.599 and he's saying that once you're born again, once you have the new birth in your life, 00:02:26.840 --> 00:02:31.560 now all these imperatives, there's lots of imperatives in this book, commands, things that 00:02:31.560 --> 00:02:36.479 you need to go and do. He's teaching the teaching of Jesus, the Sermon on the Mount, lots of commands of 00:02:36.479 --> 00:02:41.619 how to change, and he's saying now that when you're born again, those commands are no longer 00:02:41.619 --> 00:02:47.359 laws of condemnation. They are laws of liberty. They are making you more free the more you put them 00:02:47.359 --> 00:02:51.739 into your life, and so that's his assumption throughout the whole, the rest of this book, 00:02:52.359 --> 00:02:58.639 and he's already told us the big idea, maybe we could say it in a word in verse 4, you can become 00:02:58.639 --> 00:03:05.139 perfect, and he doesn't mean sinless. He means mature in that language. So, he's telling us 00:03:05.139 --> 00:03:11.139 when believers have been born again, that they can grow into maturity, and justification is the 00:03:11.139 --> 00:03:16.099 ground you're always walking on in this book, and so he's assuming that, and you have to be really 00:03:16.099 --> 00:03:21.539 aware of that, or you'll start to think like Martin Luther thought about the book, and we've already 00:03:21.539 --> 00:03:26.739 learned that he's told us suffering can make you mature if you think about it through God's perspective. 00:03:27.119 --> 00:03:32.199 If you approach your suffering theologically, it can grow you, and we've learned that 00:03:32.199 --> 00:03:40.079 you can become mature by breaking the power of canceled sin in your life by growing through 00:03:40.079 --> 00:03:45.780 hearing the Word and letting the Word really get down into the bottom of your soul and living out 00:03:45.780 --> 00:03:50.359 of the resources of the gospel. We talked about that last week. That's what it means to become a doer of 00:03:50.359 --> 00:03:57.339 the Word. The gospel is actually shaping your day-to-day behavior. Now, in our passage today, the two 00:03:57.340 --> 00:04:04.099 verses we read, the commentators will tell you that these themes, the three things that are mentioned, 00:04:04.300 --> 00:04:12.400 how you speak your speech, caring for the orphan and the widow, and keeping yourself unstained from the 00:04:12.400 --> 00:04:19.019 sins of the world, are going to come up again the rest of the book basically twice each. So, we're going 00:04:19.019 --> 00:04:25.799 to have more time later to dig into specifics on each of these, where we can just focus on them one 00:04:25.799 --> 00:04:31.419 at a time. So, today we've got sort of the overview. This is sort of his step into the rest of the book, 00:04:31.579 --> 00:04:38.560 if you will, and it's a practical test. What it is, it's not asking—he's talking to believers. He's not 00:04:38.560 --> 00:04:45.979 asking you to question your justification. Instead, what he's doing is he's saying, what does it look like 00:04:45.980 --> 00:04:51.740 when someone who is born again and is committed to growth, becoming a doer of the Word, what does it 00:04:51.740 --> 00:04:57.100 look like when they are changing? So, it's a practical test. How do you know you're changing? 00:04:57.240 --> 00:05:01.900 How do you know you're growing? And that's really what he gives us here. Now, it's the difference 00:05:01.900 --> 00:05:09.379 between hearing the Word and doing the Word. And you can be a believer in hearing the Word every week, 00:05:09.720 --> 00:05:15.180 and you can be a believer in not doing the Word Monday to Friday. So, you can be in patterns, 00:05:15.180 --> 00:05:21.780 as a Christian, of not living your faith out. And so, that's specifically what he's talking about, 00:05:21.840 --> 00:05:27.879 and who he's talking to, I think. Imagine a medical student. There are a few medical students in the 00:05:27.879 --> 00:05:35.740 room. Imagine a medical student, and they read the textbook so well, and they memorized the textbook, 00:05:35.860 --> 00:05:43.540 the anatomy text, Gray's Anatomy. I don't know what text they use. So well. And they can recite it. 00:05:43.540 --> 00:05:50.140 They can pass all the exams with distinction. They can lecture the other students on step-by-step how to 00:05:50.140 --> 00:05:56.120 perform the surgeries. But the day is going to come when that student is handed a scalpel, 00:05:56.760 --> 00:06:03.160 and they have to actually cut the flesh of a living human being. And boy, on that day, 00:06:03.280 --> 00:06:07.720 you don't want them to just be a hearer of the Word. You know, you want a hearer of the textbook. 00:06:07.720 --> 00:06:14.620 You want them to be a doer of that text. If you're the patient, you don't want a person who's really 00:06:14.620 --> 00:06:23.340 good at memorizing texts only. You want a person who's an ace with the scalpel, right? And James is 00:06:23.340 --> 00:06:29.640 coming to us here and saying that he's calling on believers to look at their life, their religious life, 00:06:30.180 --> 00:06:35.280 and we're going to see all of life is religious, and ask, am I becoming a doer of the Word, 00:06:35.279 --> 00:06:39.679 or am I just coming and hearing only? Am I actually changing? Am I actually growing? 00:06:40.259 --> 00:06:45.919 Am I actually becoming whole in that way, complete and mature? All right, so he gives us a nice outline, 00:06:47.199 --> 00:06:53.619 two verses, two points. Worthless religion on the one hand, empty religion, and pure religion on the 00:06:53.619 --> 00:06:58.719 other. So let's think about those two things. First, worthless religion. Now, to understand what he means 00:06:58.720 --> 00:07:04.020 by worthless religion in our lives, first, we got to think just for one moment about the word religion 00:07:04.020 --> 00:07:08.860 or religious. The word religion, we use it all the time in the modern world to talk about the world 00:07:08.860 --> 00:07:16.780 religions. Christianity is a religion. The Bible only uses the word religion five times, sometimes just as 00:07:16.780 --> 00:07:21.780 an adjective or adverb, and it means something a little bit different than the way we use it today. 00:07:21.900 --> 00:07:27.580 So the way we use it today comes from religious studies in the academy coming down to the popular level, 00:07:27.579 --> 00:07:33.979 and somebody like Emil Durkheim's famous definition, what is religion? Religion is a system of belief 00:07:33.979 --> 00:07:41.240 and practice related to sacred things. And so you could think about animism in sub-Saharan Africa, 00:07:41.360 --> 00:07:47.899 that's religion. You could think about Hinduism in India, or Tibetan Buddhism in Tibet, or Christianity 00:07:47.899 --> 00:07:53.500 in Scotland. This is how we think that that's religion. But the Bible is not using the word exactly like 00:07:53.500 --> 00:07:58.480 that. Instead, it's a little more nuanced, and the word religion has more of a sense of 00:07:58.480 --> 00:08:07.600 the practices of a God-fearing worshiper in their day-to-day lives. So it's less focused on the 00:08:07.600 --> 00:08:12.180 doctrinal side. What does that religion believe? That's not the way the word religion is used. We 00:08:12.180 --> 00:08:16.600 have other words for that in the Bible. But the word religion in the Bible is really, really focused on 00:08:16.600 --> 00:08:22.980 how you live your faith out. It's very focused on practice. So we could talk about what's the religion 00:08:22.980 --> 00:08:28.860 of the Pharisees. That's not asking what's their doctrine. It's asking, it's saying they fast on 00:08:28.860 --> 00:08:33.040 Tuesdays and Thursdays. That's the religion of the Pharisees. That's how the Bible uses the word. 00:08:33.820 --> 00:08:41.660 And so here, James says something very important, very strong. He says that words are religious 00:08:41.659 --> 00:08:49.719 because everything's religious. So because we're living our lives before God the Father all the time, 00:08:49.819 --> 00:08:56.959 there is no moment, not a single moment, where we're not religious. We're either following and 00:08:56.959 --> 00:09:01.839 practicing empty religion, worthless religion, or purified religion. There's no moment because 00:09:01.839 --> 00:09:07.659 anytime you speak, you speak before God the Father. He sees quorum Deo at all times. And so he says here that 00:09:07.659 --> 00:09:12.959 words are thoroughly religious. They've got immense power, and you're always speaking them before the 00:09:12.959 --> 00:09:19.759 audience of God. So in our first verse in verse 26, look with me and see what he says, 00:09:19.819 --> 00:09:25.139 if anyone thinks he's religious and does not bridle his tongue, he deceives his heart, but deceives his 00:09:25.139 --> 00:09:34.639 heart. This person's religion is worthless. Now here, what he's saying is very important, 00:09:34.639 --> 00:09:38.939 but it has to be clarified just a little bit, because the word that he used, worthless, is the 00:09:38.939 --> 00:09:46.899 same word that Paul uses in 1 Corinthians 15 7. And that's when Paul says, if you follow Jesus, but you 00:09:46.899 --> 00:09:52.659 don't believe that Jesus walked out of the grave on the third day, your religion is empty, or worthless, 00:09:52.779 --> 00:09:58.620 or futile, or groundless. And there we learn that the word means something more like without reason, 00:09:58.620 --> 00:10:05.460 empty. So here he says, if you are going to worship every week, if you're religious, 00:10:06.419 --> 00:10:11.299 and you're hearing the word, to connect it to the whole section, and then you're leaving Monday to Friday, 00:10:11.620 --> 00:10:19.820 and your speech patterns are not changing, then it's showing that the word is not really the ground 00:10:19.820 --> 00:10:26.220 of your speech. You see, it's saying your religion is empty or worthless. In other words, the way you're 00:10:26.220 --> 00:10:32.700 speaking is proving that you're not really letting the word of the gospel become the ground or the 00:10:32.700 --> 00:10:38.600 reasoning by which you speak. So he's talking to believers and saying, when you go to worship week 00:10:38.600 --> 00:10:43.519 by week, but you're noticing your speech isn't changing over time, that's a sign that you're 00:10:43.519 --> 00:10:47.940 hearing the word but not doing the word. You're not letting the gospel become the foundation 00:10:47.940 --> 00:10:53.920 of your entire life, of the speech patterns, especially in your life. And so he's saying that our speech is a 00:10:53.919 --> 00:10:59.139 test, in other words, of our spiritual maturity in our day-to-day lives. So you can be a believer, 00:11:00.199 --> 00:11:08.899 yes, justified by faith, and finding that you're not growing in putting away gossip. You're not growing 00:11:08.899 --> 00:11:14.439 in stopping speaking words, stop speaking words of discouragement, so often in turning into a person 00:11:14.439 --> 00:11:20.079 that's encouraging. You're not growing in words of impatience towards patience. You can be a believer, 00:11:20.080 --> 00:11:24.840 and what's happening there, he's saying, is that we're not letting the word of the gospel we hear 00:11:24.840 --> 00:11:31.400 from the Bible really becoming the source of our whole lives, the way we live out of that day-to-day. 00:11:31.500 --> 00:11:37.720 Now, he gives us an illustration here, and the illustration is that if we're maturing, we'll be 00:11:37.720 --> 00:11:44.640 bridling the tongue. So this is a horse illustration, right? And he takes this image of a horse, 00:11:45.080 --> 00:11:48.800 and you take a bit, and you put it in the mouth of the horse, and you take a bridle, 00:11:48.799 --> 00:11:53.779 and you put it over the ears of a horse, and the big key with a bridle, it will not work unless 00:11:53.779 --> 00:12:00.479 it's connected to reins, and reins are connected to a rider. And so this image of the bridle is 00:12:00.479 --> 00:12:06.919 talking, asking the question, really, who is it that's driving your speech? The bridle doesn't 00:12:06.919 --> 00:12:11.539 work if there's not a rider steering the horse, right? And he's saying, if we're not bridling our 00:12:11.539 --> 00:12:17.240 tongues, that means that our heart, a gospel-changed heart, is not directing your words. In other words, 00:12:17.240 --> 00:12:22.700 the heart needs to be the rider. The gospel-changed heart needs to be the rider that's directing the 00:12:22.700 --> 00:12:28.480 reins of your tongue. Your tongue is bridled, your heart is directing. Why? Because out of the heart, 00:12:28.600 --> 00:12:34.159 the mouth speaks, Jesus says. In other words, this is a sign of has the gospel really gotten down into 00:12:34.159 --> 00:12:40.820 the bottom of the soul and started to change the way you talk? Speech is so powerful. God made you to 00:12:40.820 --> 00:12:46.220 be a speaker, and so it's the first and primary sign of Christian maturity. It's not—he doesn't say how 00:12:46.220 --> 00:12:50.980 much theological knowledge do you have. That's the first sign. He says, how are your speech patterns? 00:12:51.840 --> 00:12:56.139 Are you discouraging or encouraging? Are you gossipy and slanderous and assuming the worst? 00:12:56.540 --> 00:13:02.820 Are you growing into a person who's speaking like Jesus more and more over time? It's the first sign 00:13:02.820 --> 00:13:08.660 and the most important sign of what's really going on deep down in the soul. Now, to connect the whole 00:13:08.659 --> 00:13:18.379 section, if we are quick to hear the Word from last week, then we become slow to speak. You see, if we're 00:13:18.379 --> 00:13:22.600 quick to hear the Word, then we're—if we're really hearing the Word, then we're becoming doers of the 00:13:22.600 --> 00:13:28.100 Word, and becoming doers of the Word means we're slow to speak, slow to anger. And so back to the same 00:13:28.100 --> 00:13:34.379 application last week, because he's just reiterating it. Slow to anger because slow to speech, that means 00:13:34.379 --> 00:13:41.559 that when you're insulted, you're not like an over-inflated balloon about, you know, one last 00:13:41.559 --> 00:13:46.679 little needle prick will blow you up and you'll burst forth in anger. And instead, you're putting on 00:13:46.679 --> 00:13:53.100 cruciform patterns of speech. Now, the way to explain this is that if you remember the context of this 00:13:53.100 --> 00:13:58.480 letter, James is talking to people who have been scattered all across the Roman Empire because of 00:13:58.480 --> 00:14:04.920 persecution, and you can imagine that they are constantly being spoken at in evil ways. They're 00:14:04.920 --> 00:14:11.120 being insulted. They're being mocked. They're being spit at in the Greco-Roman world. And I think really 00:14:11.120 --> 00:14:18.420 what he's trying to get at is if you're growing as a believer, the main application is that you're 00:14:18.420 --> 00:14:23.740 willing to be insulted and not bite back. I think in the context of the letter, that's probably the main 00:14:23.740 --> 00:14:30.860 thing he's thinking about. In other words, he's doing what he's assuming. He's assuming that we are 00:14:30.860 --> 00:14:38.039 always thinking in this letter about our elder brother, Jesus Christ. Verse 1, James says, 00:14:38.139 --> 00:14:42.639 my elder brother, Jesus Christ, I'm his servant. And he's calling us to remember by the power of the 00:14:42.639 --> 00:14:48.240 gospel that we are following in his pattern of cruciform speech. And just think about him for a second 00:14:48.240 --> 00:14:57.600 in how he spoke, how Jesus Christ used his words. Isaiah 49.2 tells you his mouth was like a sharp 00:14:57.600 --> 00:15:06.580 sword. He could speak truth and wisdom with such power. And yet, Isaiah 42.2, he will be mocked, 00:15:06.600 --> 00:15:12.279 he will be spit on, and he will open not his mouth. He would receive an insult, but he wouldn't give it 00:15:12.279 --> 00:15:20.059 back. Or Isaiah 53.7, he was oppressed, he was afflicted, yet he was silent before his accusers. 00:15:21.100 --> 00:15:27.179 See, Jesus Christ would give a sharp word of wisdom and truth to the Pharisees when they needed it, 00:15:27.360 --> 00:15:34.759 but when his persecutors came, he would receive insult in silence. And James is saying, are you 00:15:34.759 --> 00:15:40.639 becoming day in and day out more and more a speaker like that, willing to be insulted and not bite back, 00:15:40.639 --> 00:15:49.480 not a kind word turns away wrath? This week, let me invite you, because we're going to come back to 00:15:49.480 --> 00:15:54.199 this theme two more times, but this week, let me invite you to do this. Examine your speech patterns 00:15:54.199 --> 00:16:02.899 and ask, am I quick to speak and slow to hear, or am I growing as a person who's slow to speak, 00:16:03.019 --> 00:16:09.139 quick to hear, because I've been shaped by God's word more and more? Do I retaliate verbally when I'm 00:16:09.139 --> 00:16:17.399 insulted? Am I quick to ask forgiveness and extend forgiveness with my words? Am I verbally extending 00:16:17.399 --> 00:16:22.860 forgiveness to people who have asked for it with my words? When I'm mocked for my faith, will I receive 00:16:22.860 --> 00:16:28.960 the insult like Christ and let it die within me like Jesus did? And how do you do that? How do you grow 00:16:28.960 --> 00:16:38.159 in that? You've got to say, even this week, Jesus spoke the galaxies into existence by the words of 00:16:38.159 --> 00:16:44.899 his power. Jesus Christ, the Logos himself, the very communication of God, the word himself. He spoke 00:16:44.899 --> 00:16:54.919 the galaxies into existence, yet he came and he was silent before his murderers. Why? Why? He was silent 00:16:54.919 --> 00:17:01.199 before his murderers so that he could offer forgiveness for every weaponized word I've ever spoken. 00:17:01.740 --> 00:17:06.119 That's how you do it. That's what you say to yourself. Jesus Christ was silent before his murders 00:17:06.119 --> 00:17:10.759 because he came to be my substitute. His silence is substitutionary, you see. 00:17:12.619 --> 00:17:16.839 You don't rely on moralism and say, boy, I just need to become a better speaker. No, you say, 00:17:16.939 --> 00:17:24.099 Jesus Christ's speech was wise and patient for me, so I want this week to grow in my speech, 00:17:24.239 --> 00:17:29.879 in my patience, in the way I speak. Now, that's the first test. The latter two, secondly, and finally, 00:17:29.880 --> 00:17:36.420 he calls pure religion. All right, so in our second verse, verse 27, he says, 00:17:36.500 --> 00:17:42.860 religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this, to visit orphans and widows in 00:17:42.860 --> 00:17:48.820 their affliction and to keep oneself unstained from the world. Now, if you look at that language, verse 27, 00:17:49.480 --> 00:17:56.520 religion that is pure and undefiled, that is Old Testament language. And so, James is writing to 00:17:56.519 --> 00:18:02.579 Jewish Christians, and so they would immediately pick up on the Levitical context of that language. 00:18:03.799 --> 00:18:07.500 And that's language from the Old Testament that's talking about being clean or pure. 00:18:08.559 --> 00:18:12.240 And you can remember that there's all sorts of ceremonies in the Old Testament to make you 00:18:12.240 --> 00:18:17.599 ceremonially clean, but they were always pointing forward. And they were pointing forward to the 00:18:17.599 --> 00:18:23.559 one, the Messiah that was to come. And you can remember a moment like in the Gospels where the 00:18:23.559 --> 00:18:31.220 leper stands before Jesus, and the leper says, Lord, only you can make me clean. And will you make 00:18:31.220 --> 00:18:38.000 me clean? And Jesus says, I will be clean. You see, the language of purity or defilement, of cleanliness, 00:18:38.139 --> 00:18:43.779 uncleanliness, was always pointing to the Gospel. And James is assuming that. And he's assuming here 00:18:43.779 --> 00:18:49.639 that the only way to actually be pure is not by your religious practices, but because Jesus Christ says, 00:18:49.640 --> 00:18:56.320 I will be clean. Right? So, he's assuming the Gospel here. And another way to think about it then is to 00:18:56.320 --> 00:19:05.320 say purifying religion, purified practices of your Christian life where your clean heart is actually 00:19:05.320 --> 00:19:12.400 being, coming out, and the way you live is to visit orphans and widows and to keep yourself unstained 00:19:12.400 --> 00:19:17.220 from the sins of the world. So, he gives you two ways, two tests to measure, am I growing? Am I 00:19:17.220 --> 00:19:24.000 maturing? Is my religious practice actually reflecting a pure and clean heart that Jesus Christ has given 00:19:24.000 --> 00:19:32.519 me? Here are the two great tests. They are to visit orphans and widows, number one. Now, he's talking 00:19:32.519 --> 00:19:38.160 there about the two groups that are most vulnerable in the first century Greco-Roman world, and calling on 00:19:38.160 --> 00:19:45.940 us to visit the afflicted, the most vulnerable in our world. And the word visit there is not 00:19:45.940 --> 00:19:53.460 drop in, have a tea, and a chat. The word visit is used in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of 00:19:53.460 --> 00:20:02.519 the Old Testament, for the word that really is redeem. So, God visits or redeems the afflicted. 00:20:03.259 --> 00:20:08.539 In other words, it's a holistic call to seek justice for people, to visit the orphan, the widow, 00:20:08.600 --> 00:20:14.140 the most vulnerable, and stick with it till the end. Stick with it till you can bring justice for them 00:20:14.140 --> 00:20:21.300 in a situation, get them up out of their hardship. The second one is that you're increasingly becoming 00:20:21.300 --> 00:20:29.360 pure, undefiled, keeping yourself unstained from idols. And if you look at the Old Testament, 00:20:29.520 --> 00:20:36.680 you'll see over and over again that the most common association with purity and defilement language 00:20:36.680 --> 00:20:44.340 is three particular sins that the prophets addressed. I think this is what James is getting at. 00:20:46.380 --> 00:20:53.259 Sexual ethics, keeping a biblical sexual ethic, fleeing from idol worship, not letting idol worship 00:20:53.259 --> 00:20:59.039 grip your heart and become part of your life, and serving the vulnerable in their affliction. 00:20:59.720 --> 00:21:04.680 So, if you flip through the prophets, you'll find three things that God says over and over and over 00:21:04.680 --> 00:21:12.700 again. Serve the widow and the orphan, keep a biblical sexual ethic, and do not worship idols. 00:21:13.720 --> 00:21:19.380 Let me give you an example. Amos chapter 2. God looks down at his people, and he says, 00:21:19.500 --> 00:21:23.820 I'm condemning them. I'm judging them. Why? And he says, they trample the head of the poor 00:21:23.820 --> 00:21:27.460 into the dust of the earth, and they turn aside the way of the afflicted. 00:21:28.320 --> 00:21:33.799 They commit adultery over and over so that my holy name is profane. Do you hear? God says, 00:21:33.799 --> 00:21:39.279 here's the two reasons you are not abiding by a biblical sexual ethic, and you are trampling the 00:21:39.279 --> 00:21:46.419 heads of the poor. Now, many churches, many churches, we all know very well, you don't have 00:21:46.419 --> 00:21:53.339 to be a Christian to know that, many churches talk a lot about the first of these two, to care for the 00:21:53.339 --> 00:21:59.000 vulnerable, to meet the needs of the poor, to enact social justice into the world. And so, 00:21:59.000 --> 00:22:04.339 many churches really emphasize that, and they talk about being for the world and being in the world. 00:22:04.880 --> 00:22:08.519 And we think of those often. Those often do tend to be more progressive churches. 00:22:09.519 --> 00:22:17.779 On the other hand, many churches talk about purity, holiness, sexual ethics, keeping yourself unstained, 00:22:18.279 --> 00:22:24.220 staying away from the world, and being protected. And you come here to James, and you read the rest of 00:22:24.220 --> 00:22:30.720 the Bible, and you realize that God's Word will never let us draw a false dichotomy between them, 00:22:31.579 --> 00:22:39.299 between being all about justice, all about the poor, all about mercy, and being all about purity, 00:22:40.039 --> 00:22:45.200 sexual ethics, keeping ourselves from idolatry. You see, one group says you got to be in the world, 00:22:45.299 --> 00:22:49.799 the other group says you can't be of the world. And what the Bible says is you got to be in the world, 00:22:49.799 --> 00:22:55.059 but not of the world. You got to be both. You got to be a ministry of mercy church, 00:22:55.220 --> 00:23:00.720 and a ministry of holiness church, at the very same time. See, the Bible keeps both together. It'll 00:23:00.720 --> 00:23:07.180 never let us separate the two. And that means true religion just doesn't play the game that often 00:23:07.180 --> 00:23:13.200 church politics tries to play. The Bible comes through and gives us both at the end of the day. 00:23:13.259 --> 00:23:18.039 And that means that what he's saying really, as we draw things to a close, is that maturing religion, 00:23:18.039 --> 00:23:23.940 maturing religion, purifying religion, a revelation of a gospel-centered heart that's growing and growing, 00:23:24.700 --> 00:23:30.819 is simply just to put on the heart of God in your life more and more. And you just think, if you just 00:23:30.819 --> 00:23:37.379 scan your eyes across the Bible and look at the heart of God, none of these three things are fringe 00:23:37.379 --> 00:23:42.539 ideas across the Bible. Let me give you a few more examples. Amos 2, Exodus 22, 22, 00:23:42.539 --> 00:23:48.720 you shall not mistreat any widow or fatherless child. Deuteronomy 10, 18, he executes justice for 00:23:48.720 --> 00:23:55.180 the fatherless and for the widow. Psalm 146, the Lord watches over the sojourner. He upholds the 00:23:55.180 --> 00:24:01.839 widow and the fatherless. Isaiah 117, seek justice, correct oppression, bring justice to the fatherless, 00:24:01.980 --> 00:24:07.359 plead the widow's cause. Zechariah 7, 10, do not oppress the widow or the fatherless or the sojourner 00:24:07.359 --> 00:24:13.619 or the poor. Galatians 2, 10, when Paul was commissioned on his first missionary journey, 00:24:13.619 --> 00:24:20.539 he records, the apostles asked me to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do. 00:24:21.919 --> 00:24:31.519 Now, I think the best story from King David's life was when he remembered his old friend Jonathan, 00:24:31.519 --> 00:24:37.779 who had died, and he remembered that Jonathan had a son, and his son's name was Mephibosheth, 00:24:38.400 --> 00:24:47.519 a great Bible name. And Mephibosheth was disabled. He was, the text says, lame in both of his legs. 00:24:47.940 --> 00:24:54.259 His legs had actually been crushed by running from King David's own men. And he was a slave, 00:24:54.259 --> 00:25:04.319 and he was poor and homeless. And David had a lot of bad moments. But this was great David's greatest 00:25:04.319 --> 00:25:11.440 moment. And it was when he remembered Mephibosheth. And he said, because of my covenant love for Jonathan, 00:25:11.900 --> 00:25:18.859 I want to remember his son. So he sought out Mephibosheth, this slave, this poor man. And he 00:25:18.859 --> 00:25:26.079 brought him into the king's palace, and he put on royal clothes for him, and he gave him lands and 00:25:26.079 --> 00:25:34.439 inheritance. He restored all the lands of Jonathan to Mephibosheth. And he said, today you are my son, 00:25:34.919 --> 00:25:41.399 and you will always eat at my table. You see, Mephibosheth was an orphan. And King David, 00:25:41.759 --> 00:25:47.099 in his best moment, remembered the covenant love of God that he received, and he wanted to shed that 00:25:47.099 --> 00:25:55.179 love abroad into the life of that orphan. And for the rest of his days, Mephibosheth would pull himself 00:25:55.179 --> 00:26:01.399 up, because he couldn't walk to David's table, and he would say, I used to be a slave. Now I'm a son. 00:26:03.039 --> 00:26:09.539 And you see, that was David's best moment. He didn't always have good moments. But in that moment, 00:26:10.259 --> 00:26:16.519 great David was pointing us to great David's greater son, Jesus Christ. You see, the only way that 00:26:16.519 --> 00:26:23.440 you'll ever give mercy like this, really love the orphan, care for the afflicted, be a person of 00:26:23.440 --> 00:26:29.859 mercy, is when you realize that you are Mephibosheth. You are the orphan. You are the widow. You are the 00:26:29.859 --> 00:26:35.500 poor. You are the afflicted. You are the refugee. You are the sojourner. You are the one who God, 00:26:36.079 --> 00:26:42.019 in his chesed covenant love, sought after from the beginning of history. You can't become a giver of 00:26:42.019 --> 00:26:48.000 mercy until you realize you are a receiver of mercy. And James is not saying justification by showing 00:26:48.000 --> 00:26:53.639 mercy. He is saying, for those that have been justified, are you growing and realizing you are 00:26:53.639 --> 00:26:59.539 an orphan without Jesus Christ? Therefore, you are becoming more and more a giver of mercy all your 00:26:59.539 --> 00:27:07.059 life. You know, how do you do it? We will finish with this. Last week, we talked about hearing the 00:27:07.059 --> 00:27:11.899 Word and then becoming a doer of the Word by letting the Word of the Gospel really embed down in the heart. 00:27:12.440 --> 00:27:17.759 And that one little Word, that man, remember, who looks intently in the mirror, in the window of the 00:27:17.759 --> 00:27:23.960 Word. And that's it. What James, I think, is asking us to do in this first chapter is to look 00:27:23.960 --> 00:27:31.679 intentionally at the Word Himself, the Logos Himself, the speech of God Himself, the giver of mercy 00:27:31.680 --> 00:27:38.200 Himself, the greatest King Himself, to stare at Him intently, intentionally. And that really does mean, 00:27:38.840 --> 00:27:46.660 are you looking and beholding Jesus and beholding the Word of the Gospel in the Word of the Bible 00:27:46.660 --> 00:27:53.720 every day? The way that you actually ingest the Gospel into your heart so it comes out through your 00:27:53.720 --> 00:27:59.039 speech, it comes out through your mercy, it comes out through keeping yourself unstained from the idols 00:27:59.039 --> 00:28:04.559 of the Word, is actually by implanting the Word of truth over and over and over again in your heart, 00:28:04.659 --> 00:28:10.220 and looking at Jesus ten times over every single day for every one look at yourself, every one look at 00:28:10.220 --> 00:28:17.059 your sin, beholding Him, intently looking in that mirror. Jesus Christ, when you look at Him, what do you 00:28:17.059 --> 00:28:26.799 say? Jesus Christ was perfectly pure, and He entered the lives of the afflicted. Jesus Christ was 00:28:26.799 --> 00:28:35.059 absolutely afflicted for you so that you could become pure, and the more you can be with Him, the more 00:28:35.059 --> 00:28:41.980 you'll become like Him. That's the invitation. Let's pray. Father, we want to change in our words. 00:28:43.919 --> 00:28:50.779 Lord, some of us today come struggling with gossip, slander, discouraging patterns of speech, 00:28:50.779 --> 00:28:57.160 and many other things, Lord, the sins of speech, and so we give that away today, and we want the 00:28:57.160 --> 00:29:03.220 Gospel to reshape us and teach us how to speak like Christ, and then, Lord, we also ask that you would 00:29:03.220 --> 00:29:11.559 teach us how to put on more and more hearts of mercy. So, we feel today probably that we don't know 00:29:11.559 --> 00:29:17.019 all the ways to do that in our city, and so we ask that until we look at that again, you would give us 00:29:17.019 --> 00:29:22.920 wisdom and train our hearts to become receivers of mercy more and more day by day so that we become 00:29:22.920 --> 00:29:29.420 doers of mercy. And then lastly, Lord, we pray that you would protect us from idols. So, teach us what it 00:29:29.420 --> 00:29:35.519 means to be in the world but not of it. Teach us what it means to guard a Gospel-purified heart from 00:29:35.519 --> 00:29:41.180 idol worship. So, we ask for these things today as we sing, and we close, and we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.