Sermon Tone Analysis
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Good morning!
Thank you for the testimony this morning!
The last few messages in this series have been challenging and my hope is that you have been really internalizing and letting God work in your life.
and being challenged
If you were looking for some relief from the challenges, sorry, you won’t get it today.
I say that in jest, but I hope we all understand that being challenged is what it means to be a follower of Jesus.
We keep talking about having True Faith and how it develops as we come to know Jesus.
It is through our experiences as we are following, as we are being challenged, that we are changed from our own likeness into God’s likeness.
True Faith is the result of God’s work in our lives.
It is the result of God’s redeeming work.
It is the result of God doing what He said He would do.
True Faith is Jesus being more visible in our lives than we are.
We are going to be continually challenged because we are still being redeemed.
We see this active process in scripture, and we see it in one another’s lives.
For the last two weeks we have talked about Listening and Doing.
Listening to what God is saying and then Doing what He says.
Today we are finishing up chapter one with the last two verses.
These two verses are the culmination of this last section in chapter one, and James is going to wrap up this thought on listening and doing.
This doesn’t mean that we will be done with these thoughts, though.
James will go into deeper detail further along in the book.
Read this with me, and then we will dig into what God is saying to you and me.
James gives us three practical ways to be “doers.”
We will touch on all three of them today, but the bulk of our time will be on the overall message.
We will dig deeper into all three of them as we work through the rest of the book.
These three examples of being “do-ers” that James gives us are:
Controlling the tongue.
Concern for the “helpless.”
Avoiding “worldliness.”
The main idea that James is keying in on with these three examples is Genuine Religion.
Let’s talk about religion for a moment.
At TGP, we use that phrase often, but we usually refer to our personal experiences with “dead” religion.
We defined dead religion as the act of just going through the motions.
Our experiences were similar in that we did things or acted certain ways because we were expected to.
From the outside, our lives looked spiritual, but on the inside, there wasn’t a lot happening.
We were discontent with life and felt like there had to be more to being a Christian than just those empty activities.
This is the very thing that James is addressing!
The people that James is writing to grew up in the same kind of experience that many of us did.
They did a lot of religious activities.
The problem with dead religious activity is its inability to make real, lasting changes in our lives.
It was no accident that part of James’ teaching on genuine religion deals with controlling the tongue.
Our words are such powerful tools that can either build people up or tear them down.
As I think back through my own experiences, most of the times when the churches I was working in were struggling, it could be traced back to things people said.
I don’t think we give enough credit to the power of words.
Have you ever thought about the fact that God created with words and that we are created in his likeness?
Now, I can’t speak things into being, but with just a few words, I can change a person's life.
With just a few words, the trajectory of a person’s life can change.
I’ll give you an example.
Years ago, before I was involved with TGP, God called me to help with a church plant.
For at least a year, I prayed over the plant with the pastor.
We had hours of conversation about what the church would be like, how we would operate, and what our message would be.
I moved to Texas and began working the plan that we had put into place.
After about six months I began to notice a shift in things.
The plan we had discussed was all of the sudden different and as I challenged this I was met with opposition.
Eventually it ended with the pastor firing me with reasons that weren’t even related to my job.
That final conversation negatively impacted my view of myself, my call to ministry, my family, and my relationship with God for years.
That experience was one of the hardest things that I have ever endured.
Not because of the work, the moving, or the stress.
It was because someone that I loved and trusted lied to me and then tried to blame his failures on me.
As you can probably imagine, the church dissolved in no time at all because everyone could see what was happening.
What we say can and will have a major impact on people's lives.
What we say will always come from our hearts.
James has seen this first hand as he, Jesus, and the other disciples interacted with the Pharisees, the religious leaders.
They saw the disconnect between what they said, how they acted, and who they claimed to be.
The church he is addressing would have seen the same thing.
James reminds them that if they are not pursuing God but simply going through the motions, their tongue will reveal it.
That religious activity that they have been toiling away at is useless, and they have deceived themselves.
They have looked in the mirror, walked away, and forgotten what they looked like.
All the Old Testament practices were focused on outward cleanliness and purity.
While those activities made a person clean on the outside, it did nothing for the part that really matters: the inside.
James is purposefully using sacrificial language here, but he is redefining it.
Look at verse 27 again.
Pure and undefiled is a reference to thequality of the sacrificial animals that were used in their Jewish religious practices.
James is using this kind of language on purpose.
The purity of the sacrifice was important then, and it is still important now.
James is showing the church that what is happening on the inside matters.
All three of the examples that he uses are things that begin inwardly.
What we say about people.
How we care for others.
The condition of our hearts.
James says that if we are pure on the inside, our natural response will be to care for those around us.
If we are being made into Jesus’ likeness, we will see people how he does and respond the way he responded.
James isn’t calling out specifically the care of orphans and widows as the only pure things.
He is using these as “code” words, if you will, for those that have experienced a “reversal” in life.
Do you remember us talking about that in June?
The rich will become poor, and the poor will become rich.
Orphans and Widows are great examples of people who have received an unfair lot in life.
There are people all around us that have experienced reversals.
People who are struggling.
When the Holy Spirit reveals those people to us, we need to ask how God wants to use us in their lives.
I hope you see that James isn’t calling out specific sins in these two verses but instead asking us to evaluate our faith honestly.
Evaluating things can be scary, especially if you are the one that is the responsible party.
But, evaluations can be incredibly helpful tools.
I don’t know if y’all have ever really noticed, but we are constantly evaluating the ministries of our church.
If you have served with us on Wednesday nights, you may have noticed or remember that we often ask you “how things went tonight.”
Or we may talk about specific things that happened with kids and how we responded.
Bethany and I do that every week because we want to make sure that we are effective in our ministry to this community.
The changes we make in the ministries of at TGP, whether it is children, youth, worship, life groups, etc. is the direct result of prayerful evaluation.
What we are doing here has the potential to make life altering changes in people’s lives and we want to make sure that we are getting it right.
This isn’t a practice that we should only do in public ministry but in every area of our lives.
James’ intent is for us to look at our own lives and determine if we are experiencing Genuine Religion or, as we would say dead religion.
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