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James 1:18-25
18 Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.
19 Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; 20 for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. 21 Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.
22 But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. 23 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. 24 For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. 25 But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.
(ESV)
Redeemer exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
If you would, open your bibles to the book of James. Let me just point out a a couple of things. We we sold out of our Commentaries on James but we've ordered a bunch more. If for those of you want to read along during the week, they're available back there. I And, the text that we're going to be looking at tonight, we're going through the book of James at least for the next few months.
Joel Brooks:I'm not going to be able to get to everything. It's going to take 2 or 3 weeks just to go through the text. We're gonna look at tonight. So if I skip over some things or jump over, don't worry. We'll look at it next week.
Joel Brooks:And y'all are going to witness a first here. It's gonna show my age. But I I am now having to put on glasses for the for the reading of God's word. It's do I look more intelligent? I I figure I'm gonna read and then I'll take them off to preach.
Joel Brooks:So it's like I'm intelligent, but I'm stooping down to your level now to explain things. That's that's my strategy. Okay? James 1, we'll begin reading. In verse 18, Of his own will, he brought us forth by the word of truth that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures.
Joel Brooks:Know this, my beloved brothers. Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger. For the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of god. Therefore, put away filthiness and rampant wickedness receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls. But be doers of the word and not hearers only deceiving yourselves.
Joel Brooks:For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty and perseveres, Being no hearer who forgets, but a doer who acts. He will be blessed in his doing. His doing.
Joel Brooks:Pray with me. Our lord Jesus, we need to hear from you. We need to just see your beauty and your glory. And so we ask that you would reveal those things to us through your word. Open up dull hearts, dull minds to receive glorious things from your word.
Joel Brooks:I pray that my word would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore, but lord, may your words remain and may they change us. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. My generation, has paved the way for a lot of the cheesy Christian arts, which you now enjoy. I got to experience the very first Christian rock groups and rap groups, that were so controversial at the time.
Joel Brooks:I can remember going to a Christian youth conference in which the speaker got a poster of striper, a heavy metal Christian band, and ripped it in half in front of everybody, calling it the devil's music. The parents of one of my close friends would not allow him to listen to Amy Grant, because on one of Amy Grant's albums, there is the, there's the ignition of a car that kind of roars the life and the roar there, his parents said, is the devil's roar. And so to rebel, we had to listen to Amy Grant quietly in his room. This is also the time when, Christian t shirts came on the scene. A phrase.
Joel Brooks:And so, instead of something like Gold's Gym, you would have God's Gym. Or, instead of Budweiser's, this Bud's for you, you had this Blood's for you. I actually own that shirt. I own both of those shirts. But the most popular of them all was the just do it t shirts.
Joel Brooks:I mean, it was like perfect timing, perfect storm. Nike just came out with its campaign of just do it. The Christian marketers were looking at, oh, the t shirts was like, oh, it's a perfect heaven sent fit. And so the just do it t shirts were everywhere. I proudly wore a neon peach colored just do it t shirt that said this.
Joel Brooks:It said, just live it. Just preach it. Just share it. Just pray it. Just believe it, just do it.
Joel Brooks:James 1 22. And it was the most popular of all the Christian t shirts out there. And now many years removed from this and I look back and I think, why? Why did I do this? Not just for the cheese factor, but what a horrible message.
Joel Brooks:What a horrible message to the world. I can't think of a more condemning message to give people who are who are living in sin, already struggling with life and just say, Here's all the good things you need to be doing. Now just do it. Just do it and everything will be okay. I I mean, did anybody like as I walk by, read the back of my shirt and think, wow.
Joel Brooks:So I just need to I need to just live the perfect moral life. It makes such sense. I'm gonna do that. It wasn't gonna happen. It never will happen.
Joel Brooks:And the phrase just do it is is a great distortion for what James is actually preaching in James 122. James is not a a book of rules that he throws out there to to weigh us down. He he's not telling us, here's all the things you must do in order for you to be saved. No. He he describes the law this way.
Joel Brooks:Look at verse 25. He says, but the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty Says these rules, this law is liberating. It doesn't weigh you down. It's supposed to set us free, and that's what I want us to look at tonight. How how does this perfect law, how does the word of God set us free?
Joel Brooks:And if it's not setting us free, what why is that? What might be going on in our life that inhibits that? So, let's begin by looking at verse 18. And, let me just say at the start, this is one of the most theologically dense and beautiful verses in all of James. We're just gonna kind of look at 3 things in this before we move on.
Joel Brooks:Of his own will, he brought us forth by the word of truth that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures. The phrase brought us forth is literally birthed us. Some of your translations might have this. It's describing the Christian experience of being born again. So right here, James is saying, being a Christian is not following a new set of rules.
Joel Brooks:It's not turning over a new leaf, it's not just trying to become a better person, it's not just doing it. No, in order to become a Christian, you've got to be reborn. You know, this is what Jesus said in John 3 to Nicodemus. He said, truly, truly, I say to you, you must be born again if you want to see the kingdom. And so you have to be given a new life.
Joel Brooks:And so a Christian, well, many things happen when when one becomes a Christian. But but one thing you could be assured of, one thing that absolutely defines a Christian is that they have been given new life. You can call it transformation, you can call it regeneration, you can call it rebirth. But the bottom result is this, a person is not the same as they were before. They're completely different person.
Joel Brooks:They're they've been given new life. And then when you look at verse 18 here, you you see how this new life comes about. Says of his own will, he birthed us. By God's own will, he did this. God himself is the one who is responsible for giving you new life.
Joel Brooks:And just as you did not contribute anything to your physical birth, you're not contributing anything to your spiritual birth. It's God's own will that births you. And so there's some that like to drive a wedge between, you know, the apostle Paul's theology and James's theology when it comes to the doctrine of salvation. But here you see James is in perfect agreement. He says, we've been saved by grace alone.
Joel Brooks:And then we see here that god birthed us by this word of truth. This word of truth is God's word found in scripture. It's the the gospel that scripture proclaims. That through the Holy Spirit, it quickens our spirit and transforms us, changes us. We become new people.
Joel Brooks:That's how one becomes a Christian. And then later, he's gonna unpack this even more because he says it's not just the word of truth that comes to you. This this word has actually been implanted in you. Look at verse 21. Therefore, put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.
Joel Brooks:This word implanted there is huge. It would it'd be so much easier to understand and to teach from if he had not added that one little word there of implanted. But he added it there because it's it's crucial. Without the word implanted, it changes the meaning of everything. According to the Greek dictionary in my office, let me, let me tell you what the word implanted means.
Joel Brooks:It means something natural and not acquired Something natural and not acquired. So when James says that God has implanted his word in us, he's saying that there are some essential truths about God that are now deeply put into us. They are now natural to us. They've they've been grafted into us. They're they're now a part of us.
Joel Brooks:These deep truths about God. And this is why we read at the start of the service from the prophet Jeremiah and Jeremiah 29 or Jeremiah 31. Because this is the fulfillment of Jeremiah 31. It's what Jeremiah is talking about when he says, but this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel, declares the lord. I will put my law within them.
Joel Brooks:It's the implanted word, And I will write it on their hearts. This is the implanted word. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And so when we look at this passage in Jeremiah 31, we're seeing Jeremiah look forward and he's saying, man, I long for the time and it's gonna happen. When God, your word is no longer etched in stone, it's no longer just carved in stone, but it's actually put in my heart.
Joel Brooks:And that's what happens when we become Christians. We hear the gospel, we hear scripture and God writes it on our hearts and it changes us, gives us new life. And here's the strange thing though, about this term implanted and why it's somewhat difficult to understand because it's natural. It's not acquired, But then James says, you have to receive it. Alright.
Joel Brooks:You don't acquire it, but you've got to receive it. So you're now supposed to receive what you already have inside of you. And I read that and I was studying it and I still kept saying, what the heck does that mean? That we are now supposed to receive something that's already inside of us, already a part of us. And what James is saying here is that when you become a Christian, your relationship with the word of God changes.
Joel Brooks:It fundamentally changes the moment you become a Christian. When God plants deep within you, his word, you then begin to respond differently to the His word when you hear it. You begin to respond differently to the Bible. You begin to respond differently to scripture after God's word has been planted in you. Before God's word was planted in you, you might have studied the Bible.
Joel Brooks:You might have thought it was helpful, pretty interesting, but it never really emotionally grabbed you. It never really moved you. It didn't have any transformative power in you. But since you became a Christian and God's word was put in you, Now, you you you you come across scripture and you read it and you're like, yes. Yes.
Joel Brooks:That's there's a part of you that is saying amen. It's recognizing God's truth because his truth has already been placed in you. No, this is like receiving, welcoming it in because your heart's been changed. You know, before kind of the comparison I would use is you treated the Bible, like the novel Moby Dick. Okay?
Joel Brooks:It's a good book full of great quotes, really long. You're never gonna read it all the way through, but, you know, you gotta put it on on your shelf. And that's how you treated the Bible, but now it's altogether different. Your heart is crying out. Yes.
Joel Brooks:As it responds to the truth you hear, it's like the scripture in you is calling to the scripture, the word of God, and you're calling back and forth to one another. The Bible is no longer a luxury. It's it's like food. It's like oxygen. It's what you're made of.
Joel Brooks:It's what you crave. The there's an imperfect analogy. Don't ask me about it later. It breaks down on many levels. I can be home upstairs in my study.
Joel Brooks:Alright. And, my wife loves to bake, and she's fantastic at baking. And so I'm there studying, and, I catch, just a waft of cookies, freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. And, and so as those, you know, there's little teeny particles of chocolate chip cookies make their way up the steps and into my room and I'm smelling them in. I began really desiring these chocolate chip cookies.
Joel Brooks:I'm, I'm now craving them. I've got chocolate chip cookies on my brain. I've got to have something. So I go downstairs and, you know, open the door and I see fruit on the counter like, uh-uh. You know, I see yogurt there.
Joel Brooks:I'm like, uh-uh. And I'm looking all around because I know what I want. I want what I've already breathed in. What I've already breathed in, that's what I want. And so, I look to see where Lauren has hidden the cookies behind the toaster, and so I could go and I could get one of those cookies.
Joel Brooks:And I crave it, but now I'm putting in my body what what I've already smelled and in a sense breathed in. And nothing else will do. And this is what God is saying his implanted word has done. He's he's given you the aroma. It's in you, and now you're gonna find it, and you're gonna feed, and you're gonna feed, and you're going to feed on his truth.
Joel Brooks:If this has not happened to you, if this is not describing your relationship with the word, you need to reflect on that. Because if the word of God is in you, it creates that craving and that longing and that yes for his external word there. There might also be another problem. Right before James tells us to receive this implanted word, James often reads, like, the book of Proverbs, and you kinda get, like, this proverb here. It just kinda jumps out at you.
Joel Brooks:He he talks about anger. And look at verse 19. Know this, my beloved brothers, let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger. For the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. And so you have this random thing, seemingly random thing about anger here.
Joel Brooks:We're right before he's telling his thoughts about the word of God. Right after he's telling his thoughts about the word of God, and then all of a sudden he says, hey, you need to be slow to anger. But what he's explaining here is here's a pitfall, that you can fall into a danger here that will keep you from responding or receiving this implanted word, and it's anger. You know, if you're a parent, I mean, you have spent many waking moments trying to teach verse 19 to your children. And then when you lose your temper, they pointed out to you.
Joel Brooks:And you're like, you're right. I need to learn this. At least this is our household. I can promise you that at times, I think I see steam coming out of my 4 year old's ears. She gets so angry.
Joel Brooks:I mean, she could look at me. The only thing that keeps her from killing me is strength at times. She just And she'll she'll just tighten up her whole body, and she'll just say, I am so angry. And I expect her almost to turn green, you know, rip out muscles and just start destroying everything. And so she just destroys everything.
Joel Brooks:But she has this huge just like anger problem. And you can't, you know, rational be reasonable with her because she's 4. And so she could get angry. The last thing yesterday, she got angry about this. Natalie got a birthday present And so Georgia got it and says, I want to play with this.
Joel Brooks:Now, I know Natalie knows the whole world knows that whatever Georgia my 4 year old plays with, she's going to break. We know that. And so Natalie is saying, please don't play with my toy. I'm saying, Georgia, you don't need to play with that toy. And Georgia says, I am so angry.
Joel Brooks:She goes, I will not break this toy dad. And I said, look in your hand. And in her hand, she had already broken the arm off the doll because she was squeezing it so hard in such anger. She also got angry because I wouldn't let her go outside without any pants on. She's like, I'm so angry.
Joel Brooks:You're so unfair. You know, I'm just We all struggle with anger. It's easier to see with a 4 year old. I'd probably say this one of my biggest struggles, anger. I just mask it really well.
Joel Brooks:When I get angry, I get really calm, really calm. So if ever I'm in a conversation with you, I look like I'm about to sleep, fall asleep. Just so like, he's really, really angry right now. I don't blow up. I just, it's just, it's very internalized.
Joel Brooks:It's causing lots of damage in there. Proverbs 14/29 says this, whoever is slow to anger has great understanding, but he who is has a hasty temper, exalts folly. And so have you ever like blown up in anger at somebody just like blown up? And then 2 hours later, you're like, oh my gosh, I feel like such a fool. Do you know why you feel like a fool?
Joel Brooks:Because you were a fool. You were. That's what it says. Whoever is anger has great understanding, but who has a hasty temper exalts folly. You are exalting folly.
Joel Brooks:You are a fool in your anger. This is why Proverbs says we need to be slow to anger. This is why James says we need to be slow to anger because you cannot have that type of anger and receive the implanted word. Let me just say here, not all anger is bad. Anger is not sin.
Joel Brooks:James does not say here, don't ever get angry. He says, be slow to anger. Actually, this is one of the things months back, I was trying to think of what I would be preaching through. And I hadn't thought yet about preaching through the book of James, but I had written down this verse and I said, I want to preach on anger at some point. I want to just do a whole sermon on anger.
Joel Brooks:And then, the more and more I started looking at James and some more verses on James kept coming up that I wanted to appreciate the whole book, I decided, well, we'll we'll get to anger when we get through James. But being angry is not necessarily a sin. God himself gets angry a lot. Jesus got angry a lot. Paul says in Ephesians 426, be angry and do not sin.
Joel Brooks:Paul actually commands you get angry, Don't let it cross over to sin, but there are some things that demand anger. And although Jesus was full of love, Jesus got angry so many times, and it would have been wrong for him not to be angry during these times. It was actually because Jesus loved so much that his anger came out, because the opposite of love is not anger. I think a lot of times we think that, alright, the opposite of love is anger. No.
Joel Brooks:The opposite of love is hate. And and the final form of hate is indifference when you could just completely care less. And so when Jesus got angry, that doesn't mean He hated it. It means He's not indifferent towards what's going on. He's going to respond to this.
Joel Brooks:Anger is a God given emotion that mobilizes you to respond to a threat. I've heard it defined this way. Anger is love in motion towards a threat of something you love. Anger is love and motion towards a threat of something you love. So, if you see something threatening what you love, you have a God given emotion of anger that makes you do something about it.
Joel Brooks:And so, we all get angry when something we love is threatened, and it it makes us not just sit there. The question that we need to be asking ourselves when you feel anger and get in the habit of doing this is ask this question, What is it that I love that is being threatened? What is it that I love that is being threatened at this moment? Is it a righteous thing that's being threatened? I love justice.
Joel Brooks:And when I see somebody trampling on the poor, I get angry because I see justice being threatened. That's a righteous anger. Ask yourself, what is it that is being threatened that I love that is being threatened? More often than not, you're gonna answer, It's my pride. It's my image.
Joel Brooks:It's my ego. Those that's, what's being attacked. That's what's being threatened, and that's why I'm lashing out, and that is an unrighteous anger. When you don't get what you want and you get angry. So, you need to be asking that question every time you feel emotion.
Joel Brooks:What is it that love that's being threatened? What am I defending here? And so, if you find yourself having outbursts of anger, quick anger, it is almost always because your pride has been wounded. Almost always. And that's what James is talking about here.
Joel Brooks:It's that type of anger. You know, someone who doesn't listen, someone who's quick to give their opinion, quick to anger will never receive this implanted word. They're not open to it. Some of the qualities of a person who's full of this type of anger is a person who always wants to prove himself right. Always has to be right.
Joel Brooks:Dogmatic over every issue. Will not listen to others. No such thing as a minor issue. Everything becomes a major issue. And it's it's never a little thing.
Joel Brooks:It's always a big thing. I've I've had huge arguments or tried to be drawn into huge arguments because people have been so angry. Just, just actually, it's one person who's been so angry how we would take communion. The technical way that we take in communion is called intinction. If in case you didn't know, it's when we break off the bread and we dip it into wine and we take it.
Joel Brooks:And the person was furious over this saying it was all the gospel was at stake, everything, because we weren't taking it. You know, we were actually drinking from the cup and taking of it. I'm like, this is a minor issue. But it wasn't. For him, it was huge.
Joel Brooks:It's like he almost had his whole identity wrapped up in it. And And I found that this was the case with everything with him. It's the quality of an angry person. When little issues become the issues, angry people will never admit when they are wrong and will never see themselves as being wrong. If you pointed out to them, the only thing they're gonna do is point out something else that is wrong that they could be angry about.
Joel Brooks:And all of those types of angers, all those, those qualities of anger, all are because pride has been assaulted. And anything that threatens how good, how great, how right someone is is gonna get an outburst of anger. And James tells us that this person cannot receive the implanted word, cannot. Says, you can't receive it because you think you already know everything. You're not open to it.
Joel Brooks:You you can't receive the word because you're too busy giving your opinion about it. Well, let me tell you what I think God is like. And, you know, my God would never do this. My God is like this. And so opinionated, but never actually open to being humbly instructed by the word of God.
Joel Brooks:So you cannot receive the word if you're so quick to make judgments, if you can never be corrected. Can't admit when you're wrong. And James says, You, you want to receive the word of God? You come with meekness. You come with humility.
Joel Brooks:You acknowledge, I don't know it all. I need to be shaped by the word. And then God will correct, God will teach, God will shape, and God will transform you. And it's only then as as James says that it will save your soul. So let me end.
Joel Brooks:I wanna save the rest of this for next week. Let let me end here just by asking this. Does the word of God to you feel like rules or does it set you free? Does it feel like rules or does it set you free? If it feels like rules that weigh you down, maybe it's because you have some of that anger that James is talking about.
Joel Brooks:You're just not open to hearing from the lord or or apostolic because his words never been implanted in you. Do you welcome the word of God into your life, or is it something you receive like receiving a blow? Is it something that you crave? Does in your soul you say yes when you hear from it? Ultimately, this written word here leads us to the living word of Jesus.
Joel Brooks:In Ephesians says, the word of Christ dwells in us richly. And so we wanna be transformed by this word because it helps us to understand the living word of Jesus. Pray with me. Lord, I pray that we would be slow to speak, slow to give our opinions, slow to assume what you are like, slow to demand what you should be like, slow to anger, but quick to listen to you in your word. May we receive this implanted word with joy.
Joel Brooks:We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen.