8th October 2024

8th October 2024


Pray (ACts)


Read (James 1v19-25)


Message (Scott Woodburn)


Last Christmas one of my daughters received the gift of a build-it-yourself miniature house. She and I started building it on Boxing Day and after just two hours I realised that the house wasn’t going to be finished before New Year’s Eve. I jokingly told my daughter that the house would be finished in time for her birthday next May and we laughed at how silly that sounded. Guess what? I finally finished the house just before her birthday in May. The instructions were so complicated that I went my own way only to realise in March that there was a certain logic to the instructions and I probably should have followed them closely.


James would no doubt agree with the “follow closely” approach as he was concerned for Christians to respond to the Word with both hearing and doing. Indeed, the only thing we should be quick to do is listen (v19a). We should carefully consider our words and be slow to speak (v19b). Furthermore, we should guard our temper as we understand that our anger does not produce the righteousness of God (v20). This does not mean that our cool temper makes God more righteous - God is righteous, completely so and we cannot add to Him or subtract from Him. Nor does this mean that a cool temper makes us righteous before God - God declares us righteous as we receive Christ by faith. This phrase means that the Christian who quickly shouts off at the mouth or threatens to swing punches or loses control of themselves in unbridled rage does not display the righteous character of our God. In simple terms, the unlistening, loud, boastful, angry Christian is not a good witness in this fallen world.


Instead, we should strive to put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness from our lives (v21). Do you remember what mortification is? Is the act of putting to death the remaining sin in our lives. It is a Spirit inspired and driven work that will not be complete this side of glory. Nevertheless, it is a necessary and vital work. Let me ask does your one glass of alcohol often lead to another Saturday night of drunkenness? Does your anger rise quickly within and cause you to destructively fly off the handle? Do you enjoy looking at your best friend’s husband day dreaming about what might have been?


Brothers and sisters, put to death the sin that remains. How? By receiving the mighty Word of God which is able to save your souls (v21). Each of us should read God’s Word and listen to it preached for it “is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” (Hebrews 4v12).


We should not just hear the Word and immediately forget it. Such a person is like someone who looks in the mirror and then goes away forgetting what he looks like (v23-24). Instead, we should hear and do the Word (v22). We do well when we take God’s Word seriously becoming doers who act and not hearers who forget (v25). Additionally, James calls us to look into the “perfect law, the law of liberty” (v25). What does he mean? The Ten Commandments or God’s moral law still have a place in the Christian’s life. By His active and passive obedience Christ has kept the law perfectly on our behalf. We have received Jesus by faith and therefore we are righteous in the sight of God. All of this means we are now at liberty and free to persevere in keeping God’s moral law - not to save us but as the unworthy saved of God who only do our duty (Luke 17v10).


I was wrong to set the instructions aside last Christmas but ultimately no harm was done. More seriously, woe is me if I ever become a mere hearer of God’s Word without action. Brothers and sisters, meekly receive God’s implanted Word and do it. 


Pray (acTS)


Sing


WSC


Q3 What do the Scriptures principally teach? The Scriptures principally teach, what man is to believe concerning God, and what duty God requires of man.
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