Sermon Tone Analysis

Veggie Garden

For those of you who have been in our backyard recently, you might have noticed our veggie patch under the stairs.

Now our veggie patch is rather an interesting one.

I suspect any keen gardener would look at it like it’s some sort of monstrosity.

You see it is rather haphazard in nature.

It’s a bit of a mix between somethings being carefully planned, some thing having some thought, and of course my favourites, the things that just pop up seemingly out of nowhere.

You see, we will sometimes place compost onto the garden, and one of the exciting things about doing this is that various seeds are transferred in the process.

And then after some time, plants will pop up.

You then have a fun game of trying to guess if its a weed or a plant.

And if it’s not a weed, what sort of plant is it?

Going back a while now, I remember the exciting finding out we had accidentally grown a capsicum plant.

And it even produced a number of capsicums for us, albeit, quite a bit smaller than what you get in the supermarket.

I’ve also got excited by our two tomato plants which have grown by themselves, and I must say, are looking rather healthy.

Now I know it is such a simple thing, but watching things grow can really produce a lot of joy.

Now while Fiona and I don’t put hours and hours into the garden, we do however give it some of our attention, and it is only because of this attention that we get some of the results that we do.

In the past, we have had tomato plants grow, but when they get to a certain height they topple over and run along the ground.

While some tomatoes intially grow, when we haven’t provided it with any attention, we’ve never been able to pick anything worth caring about.

However, when we stake the plants, provide it with water and give it just some basic attention, the results change.

I dare say if we gave it even more attention, we’d get even better results.

Lasting change in our life

This morning I want to consider how we can affect real change in our lives.

And because the Bible often uses the growth of plants as an analogy, I thought it would be a good place to start.

But before I get into that analogy, let me set out the problem that we face as Christians.

If you were here last week, we explored the Christian approach to suffering and tough times.

There were a number of different elements to this, however in part, it was about changing our mindset, and in the process, putting everything in God’s hands and allowing him to take control.

Now the problem with anything like this is that this is really easy to say this in theory, but much harder to put into practice.

Last week I addressed that by looking at James advice back in verse 5 that we need to ask God for wisdom and he will give it to us.

Now that advice still stands, but I want to dig a little bit deeper.

You see we ask for wisdom, we even receive it, but as I’m sure you are all aware, life keeps going and before you know it you are swamped again.

Wisdom is great - but just look at King Solomon and we can see the pitfall of it.

Solomon is one of the great examples of someone receiving wisdom after asking, and even receiving it and gaining worldwide recognition for it.

But do remember the ending of his story?

Well, it doesn’t end well.

He married many foriegn women and went down a path that did not honour God.

And so, while wisdom is good and to be sought, we need a change in our lives, one that is lasting.

And so the big question for us is: how to we get this lasting change in our life?

Link to passage

Now thankfully, as I said last week, James is full of very practical information and as we get into the second half of chapter 1, if we pay careful attention we can see what it is that is going to cause this proper change.

Now last week we actually got to verse 18, but I’m going to just go back a few verse because it provides some links for us.

And just on this before I delve into it, one of the things you’ll notice about James is that on the surface it appears he is jumping around quite quickly from one theme to the next.

But when you stop and pay attention, you’ll actually see that he links all these ideas quite masterfully.

Incidentally, it is this rhetorical skill that causes some people to suggest that James the brother of Jesus couldn’t have been the author because he wasn’t educated sufficiently to be able to craft this in such a clever way.

I’d say however that when you have the Holy Spirit as your mentor, James didn’t need formal education.

What is the seed?

But as I briefly delve back into some of what we covered last week, I want to find the first part of what I need to form the analogy that I started in my introduction.

You see, sustaining change is kind of like sustaining the plants in the garden.

But it all starts with the seed.

Now as in my garden, some seeds are planted very deliberately, some happen a bit more haphazardly, but regardless, it is important to distinguish between the good seed and the bad one.

Now if we look back in the verses leading up to the start of today’s passage we will see James tell us both what the good seed is, and what the bad seed is.

That being said, rather than using the language of seed, at this point he is using the language of giving birth, but the same principle applies.

The bad seed: sin

So let’s start with the bad seed, and James tells us about this in verse 15.

It starts with evil desires - greed, lusts, idolatry.

And that evil desire gives birth to sin.

And then when sin is fully grown, we get death.

This imagery of a life form can be quite confronting but this is what happens.

The good seed: word of truth

But compare this with the much better seed that James gives us in verse 18.

Let me read that verse again:

Did you notice what that birth came through?

Yes, it was the word of truth.

And it is this word of truth that I’m going to take as the basis of my big idea this morning.

As we look at verse 19 through to the end of the chapter I want to show how this word is the thing that will take hold of us, transform us, and make us into the very thing that will get us through this world and into eternity.

But first - what is this word of truth?

Well, we can explore a lot of different aspects of it.

In one sense, it is the Bible.

And in this regard it is great that it can be something so tangible.

But when we look at John’s Gospel, we see it taking on some new dimensions.

You might recall John 1:1 - “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”.

I don’t have time to fully unpack that now, but hopefully you can see that this word includes the words we hold in our bible, but is also Jesus Christ himself.

And what James describes for us is that when this word is able to take hold, it will truly change us and make us into something amazing.

So, we have this word - this life changing word.

But what do we do with it?

How do we allow the word to change us in such permanent ways?

Listen

Well, the first thing that I want to take from James is the need to listen.

Unfortunately, this is a skill that we are not usually very good at.

The reason we are so bad, is because we’re talking too much.

Now, before I continue, I want to take verse 19 and first try and consider what James was thinking when he wrote it.

The verse tells us that we need to be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry.

You see, there are two basic ideas that people suggest.

There are some that suggest that when James argues be quick to listen, that primarily he has in mind the idea of listening to the word of God.

This suggestion comes from the flow of the passage noting that verse 18 talks about the word, and verse 21 again talks about accepting the word that can save you.

Others however, suggest that James here is doing one of his quick changes of topics and rather than speaking specifically of the word of God, rather it is introducing the more general theme of controlling your tongue - a theme that he will pick up in greater detail in later chapters.

This second suggestion is perhaps the one that we are more familiar with.

You see, we might be familiar with this verse because after all, it is just good advice.

No matter who you are, whether Christian or not, you would be well to listen first and be slow to speak.

But as I was thinking about the two different takes on the verse, it occured to me that the difference isn’t quite as significant as we might think.

You see, while primarily we might be able to listen to God while we read the Bible and pray, the reality is, the more we stop talking and just listen, the more we can hear God’s voice.

The need to stop

I love the story of Elijah when he is up Mount Horeb feeling rather despondant.

And then the account tell us how he witnesses a powerful wind, followed by an earthquake, and finally a raging fire, but tells us specifically after each one, God was not in it - but then in a gentle whisper, or as some translation have it, in the still small voice, God speaks.

You see, we can sometimes become so preoccupied with what we think God is saying.

We’re quick to tell people our thoughts.

But the problem is, we haven’t stopped to actually listen.

I would actually suggest that this is actually good advice in our prayer time as well.

Sometimes when we pray, we can have this feeling that we have to keep speaking.

But sometimes in your prayer time, I want to suggest that it can be good to just sit there in the silence.

God doesn’t normally speak to us in a booming voice, rather we hear his word in much more subtle ways.

Lectio Divina