Hearers and Doers
Text: James 1:19-27 ESV
Road Map and Dance Steps
As a kid, I'm probably like middle school age, my family takes a road trip from Colorado, down to Florida. We're going to go to Disney World. At some point, while we were walking to another ride, my sister and I started arguing. We were bickering back and forth, and then as she starts on another rant, I begin to say, “Abi, Abi.” But you know, she's angry at me and going on and on about something. But I’m trying to get her attention, “Abi, Abi.” Because I can see she’s about to walk into a sign. But she's angry, and not listening. Well, Boom! Right into the sign.
That's one of those stories your mom loves to tell over and over, especially to others while my sister is around. I thought of it this week because, in this section, James begins with a summary statement of where he is going. Here's what he says in verse 19:
“Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger.” (James 1:19 ESV)
Well, here's my sister, she was quick to get angry, she was quick to speak, and she was slow to hear me. Now, I'm sure I was doing the exact same. I just didn't happen to run into a sign, so we don't remember my faults. But James is trying to encourage believers that being quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry, is good for your soul—your life. It is what the Christian life of wisdom looks like.
Now, why do I say the Christian life of “wisdom”? Well, James has really three main topics he returns to over and over, and this section fits under his banner of wisdom. Let me then briefly remind us of the road map to James, which Andrew introduced two weeks ago.
I want to begin by giving a one sentence summary of the book of James. It actually comes from a professor in seminary that I had. I was really close to giving this same sentence for this assignment. But I didn't, I turned in a longer sentence. But I really like what he said. So here was his one sentence summary of the book of James: Faith works.
The idea is that this sentence would carry multiple implications. First, that faith works, meaning faith is the effective, always successful root that you need. If you have true faith, it will produce what it is designed to produce—works that please God. Second, faith works, meaning faith is active. Faith is not a couch potato, but a doer, a runner, a go-getter. Faith works: faith is effective and does things.
James unpacks what working faith looks like with three major themes that Andrew introduced. I want you to picture that you are going to a National Park, and the name of the National Park is “James: Faith Works.” What you will see when you come into the park are three huge peaks. These three mountains are so big that you always see one of them whenever you are. These are the big stones, the big concepts in the book of James. As you're driving through the National Park, you're going to see some other things and get off on some trails, yes, but it's almost always really just paths that connect to one of these three peaks.
Peak number one was what Andrew called: “think differently,” we could call it trials. In particular, that theme is capturing that James is going to talk about trials in the Christian life and how we should think about them differently. We talked about that last week.
Then Andrew said peak number two was “ask faithfully,” we could call it wisdom. And the idea is that there's a wisdom that James is going to talk — it wisdom from above. It's not wisdom that's learned in the world, or in textbooks. No, it's wisdom that comes from above — from asking God faithfully to make us wise. That's what we're going to really be under the banner today — a life of wisdom.
Then finally, we talked about boasting appropriately, we could call it riches, because it is talking about in the first chapter about not being rich. And touches on this theme in James — the theme of how the rich and the poor should relate.
Those are the three peaks: trials, wisdom, and riches in our national park called James: Faith works. And we are calling this series — to summarize all of that — “Hearers and Doers.” So when you leave the park, this is the exit sign summarizing your trip. This is the bumper sticker you put on your car showing you went there and took in all the scenery.
We're going to see James talk about a life of wisdom. A life of wisdom has three things — it's quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry.
I remember around the same age when I went to Disney World, my parents signed me up for a dance class. It was like formal ballroom dancing. And it was awkward. I mean, my hair looked exactly like Landin's, yellow blond hair. I was tall, squirrely, and just generally awkward. And we had to learn things like how to Fox Trot and some of these basic dances. They made you go and ask a girl to dance. The whole ball of wax. Yes, it's awkward. You're learning these dance steps. Slow, slow, quick. Left, right, right, Forward slow, back quick, etc.
I heard a pastor this week say that James here is giving us three dance steps to a life of wisdom. There are some other dances to learn. But here is a basic dance step: quick, slow, slow — quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry. That really forms the outline of where we're going today: When we look at this passage, here is the outline:
Summary: A life of wisdom is one where you are quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry.
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Slow to get angry (20–21)
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Quick to listen (22–25)
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Slow to speak (26)
This is surrounded by the intro statement we read in verse 19 and closes with a summary statement in verse 27
Dance Step 1: Slow to Anger
Let's look at our first dance step: slow to get angry. Let’s begin by looking at verses 19–20
“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.” (James 1:19–20 ESV)
First notice what James is trying to show us. He's trying to say, hey, these dance steps exist for a reason. This wisdom that I'm giving you is necessary because without it you don’t display the righteousness of God. The idea is that you don’t display what is right in God’s eyes. You are not producing the righteousness of God. That anger in our life doesn't produce the kind of righteousness in us that we could offer or give to God. It doesn't produce the righteousness of God that we're called to live out, that he demands from his followers.
You can think of it this way from 1 John 3:15:
“Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.” (1 John 3:15 ESV)
The idea is that Christians in our core, if God is alive in us, we are not the kind of people to live in anger. Anger and the Fruit of the Spirit are not compatible. Anger, at least the anger of man, does not align with godliness.
Listen to this, here's how God describes himself in Exodus 34:6
“The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (Exodus 34:6 ESV)
Our God is slow to anger. So when he is working within us, we are slow to get angry. You might be thinking that there is such a thing as godly anger. You are right. There are many times the Bible even talks about God getting angry. But I think that for most of us, we know that anger inside of us is most often not godly anger.
If you're hearing that, and you're getting a little nervous, because you know there are tendencies in you to anger, James is offering some tangible help. I’m going to read verse 21 but before I read that, I want you to just pause. I want you to be honest with yourself. I want you to be honest before God.
You are sitting before a God, whom you can be totally honest with. He knows you. He sees you. And even in your brokenness, he loves you. Don't be afraid to go here. I want you to be honest, and maybe not everyone struggles with this (that's okay), but for those of you who do, I want you to be honest and just admit if you're quick to get angry. I think some of us here (and I heard a pastor challenge his people this way this week) have trouble being honest with how easily angered we are.
For some of us, it comes out and in violent outbursts and yelling. For some of us, it comes out and passiveness, hiding away. If that's you, I want to read some hope for you. Here's what verse 21 says:
“Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness [okay, so if it’s not anger for you, then now James expands it —whatever filthiness and wickedness you have in your life] and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.” (James 1:21 ESV)
To be honest, your anger probably goes deeper than you can know. Or if anger is not a sin for you, whatever filthiness or wickedness, whatever brokenness you are prone to, it goes far deeper than you probably know. What James promises though is under that depth of that sin is something planted deeper. If you're a Christian, there's a “planted word of life” in you. That word of life can save your broken soul.
If you're here this morning and you're thinking, I am prone to anger, I am prone to [fill in the blank], I have good news for you. The good news is that you can't do it on your own. You might be thinking, why is that good news? Well, that's good news if what you do need has been supplied for you. You need help. And the help is this implanted word.
Meaning, the story of the gospel, the truth of the gospel, the fact that yes, you are broken, and yes, there is sin, but, yes, God is far more powerful, yes, God sent his Son to take your sin. Yes, that means that in you is faith and that faith works. Meaning it's effective. It will produce righteousness. Yet, hear your call then also to put your faith to work.
That means you don't just say, “Oh, I got the gospel one day, and I'm moving on.” No, it means you return and receive with meekness the implanted word. The picture is that there's this deep rooted word in you that's implanted, but you're also receiving it regularly, eating on it regularly — watering this planted seed. As you water it, what you're going to find is that that seed grows. The ugliness of sin begins to get pushed aside, and the fruit of righteousness begins to come up.
You might be thinking yeah, how do I receive this planted word of life? First, just by being part of the body of Christ. Here’s another way. We have Life Groups - midweek meetings where believers gather to share our lives, study the Word together, and pray for and love the lost. Plugging into one of those groups is a way to receive with meekness, this word. We get together and study the book of James each week. We can help connect you to one.
And, on your own, we receive this word as we study the Bible ourselves. There's James's first dance step, slow to get angry. The dance isn’t over. Next step is to be quick to listen. This is no surprise, having just talked being quick to listen to the implanted word. What's he gonna do? He's going to talk more about what it means to receive that word. What does it actually mean to listen and actually obey the word?
Dance Step 2: Quick to Listen
Let’s go there by beginning fist at looking at verse 22:
“But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves” (James 1:22 ESV)
In other words, be hearers of the word, but don't stop there. Be doers. Otherwise you deceive yourself. Now James is going to go on and paint a picture of what that looks like. He's going to give an analogy of what it means to hear only and then what a hearer and doer looks like. But let me just put it really simply. It comes from a title of a sermon I read this week, “Do what it says.” You're looking for a simple summary of what James is talking about here. Just do what it says. Do what the Bible says. Live it out. Don't just be those who hear it, live it. Make it a part of your life.
Now, here's how James's brother, Jesus, puts it. Here it says in Matthew 7:24–27:
““Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”” (Matthew 7:24–27 ESV)
I didn't grow up in church, but I've now been around kids ministry long enough now to know that we have some sweet little songs for this. You know, the rain came down and the floods come up, and the house came tumbling down. Very simply, you've got two options. Number one, you hear and you do the words of God. If you do, you're gonna have a rock solid, good foundation. You could do the opposite though. You could hear them and just blow them off. When you choose that, one day, and I don't know when it's going to be, but your beautiful house is just going to blow over.
I think every one of us in this room, if you're following God, you listen and you say, “I know which guy I want to be.” I do not want to build my house in the sand. I want to be building it on the rock.
James’s simple summary of that is that you would not just be hearers of the word, but doers. And here's this warning: if you are only a hearer, you're deceiving yourself. What that means is that there are people who are hearing the Word of God thinking everything is fine, but they're deceiving themselves. Everything is not fine with them.
If you're like me, you're sitting here saying, am I that guy? Am I the one that's deceiving myself? How would you know? What's the test? Because I really want to know if I'm that guy. Well, in some ways, James is going to spend the rest of his letter answering what it means to be hearers and doers. But he's got some immediate help for us. Look at verses 23–24:
“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.” (James 1:23–24 ESV)
Picture someone who is looking in a mirror, and he sees something, and he understands it, and he walks out and does nothing about it. You have to remember that we are talking about mirrors in Jesus's time — something like 2,000 years ago. It's not like mirrors today made of glass.
They were made of metal. It's not like you could really see yourself that clearly. You had to really look intently to understand what you saw. Okay, so you're looking and studying and trying to see and maybe you see something like a huge mark on your face. You see it, and you walk away and do nothing. Okay, now the question (and answer) I heard from someone this week is, “What kind of person does that?” The kind of person who does that is the kind of person who wants to forget. This is the kind of person that didn’t really want to see what was in the mirror. They forget because they don’t want to remember.
Let me give you another example. The Minnesota United Soccer Team got walloped this week—four to zero. That’s a lot in soccer. Now, here might be a typical comment you would hear, “Okay, let's just pretend that didn't happen.” James is saying, “Yeah, the Christian you can't be like that. You can't be the kind of person that hears the word of God, and then just conveniently forgets about it.” Instead, here's what true wisdom looks like. Here's what it really means to be quick to listen—to be a hearer and a doer, verse 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.” (James 1:25 ESV)
How do you know if you're the one deceived? I want you to ask that about yourself. Don't ask that about your neighbor. Or say, “I know a guy who's like this.” Just take a minute and ask, “Am I the one deceived?” “Am I the one who hears the word of God, and then when I hear it, I do nothing about it.”
Here's James's promise. If you would be a hearer and a doer, “he will be blessed in his doing.” Last week, we talked about the crown of life that comes at the end of the age. Here James is actually talking about in this lifetime, you will be blessed. You will feel the blessing.
Now there may be some of you in this room, who you've heard the word of God, and you've literally done nothing about it. First, I want to say thank you for coming and being with us. I also want to say, if you're hearing the Word of God, don't wait to be a doer. The doer would be the one who comes and confesses his sin before God, a righteous and holy God, and comes to his Son, Jesus, who takes away all the sin that you've committed. He takes the punishment you deserve, and you get eternal life.
Don't wait because, picture a farmer who says, “tomorrow I'll plant the seed. Tomorrow. The next day, tomorrow.” And the next day and the next day and the next day, and then winter comes and he has no crop. If you hear the word, don’t wait. Come now.
Dance Step 3: Slow to Speak
Let's move into our last dance step — slow to speak. So we've seen we’re to be slow to get angry, we're to be quick to listen, and now we're going to see we're slow to speak. This is verse 26:
“If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person’s religion is worthless.” (James 1:26 ESV)
That is pretty strong language from James to us. Your religion is worthless if you don't bridle your tongue, if you don't keep your tongue under control. He's going to have a lot more to say about this, and we're going to talk about that here in a couple weeks.
Basically, though, you could summarize James saying, “I look around, and I can hear the speech you're using, and I can just tell you're not Christians. Your religion is worthless, based on what I'm hearing you say.”
As the book goes on, we'll see some of the ways that they're slandering each other, especially the rich, speaking down to the poor. Here's Peter take on this:
“So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation— if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.” (1 Peter 2:1–3 ESV)
Peter calls us to put away malice and wicked speech of your tongue and instead what should you put on your tongue? Rich, good, pure spiritual milk. Again we are back to soaking in the word to cause growth. I'm not going to dive in deep here because we're going to have a whole section dedicated to the tongue coming soon.
Conclusion
Those are James's three dance steps. Quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger. This morning I want to simply ask, how's the dance going? My guess is most of us feel like we're stumbling around a bit. But you even stumbling means you are out there being a doer.
But if you are someone who hears this song and you think I'm done, I don't want anything to do with this anymore, James has a serious warning for you to heed. You are deceiving yourself.
For most of us, we are like little, awkward Don in middle-school ballroom dancing class. We are fumbling around and our dance steps aren't going to be perfect, but we are hearing the word and Lord, and coming today to say, “I need help to be a doer.”
If that's you, I want you to hear there's grace just for that. Hear our final verse. It's kind of James's summary where he's been in chapter one and where he is going:
“Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.” (James 1:27 ESV)
Pure religion is to visit orphans and widows — to care for the most vulnerable, to not speak down about them. But to care. And that faith also keeps oneself unstained from the world. You are putting away things like anger and picking up wisdom from above that is quick to listen and slow to speak.
In other words, religion that's pure and undefiled is someone that does not just hear, but does. There is someone whose faith works. And I want to call us this morning to now take communion together. Here's why. As I'm coming to this table, like you, I'm coming needy. I saw the dance afresh this morning and know how clumsy I can be. But I'm coming saying, “God, I long to not just be a hearer, but also a doer. But I need your help.”
Here is the good news. He offers help. He offers his Son. The help is twofold. First, it forgives when you fall short. For every time you’ve gotten angry. For every quick word spoken. For every failure to listen — especially to listen to the word of God. Forgiven.
But second, it offers grace to not just be a hearer but to be a doer. So we need this table. I want to invite any who are trusting in Jesus to join. If you aren’t, I would just invite you to watch what is happening, and perhaps to come to the Lord himself. Here's a quote from Charles Spurgeon as we prepare to take communion:
“What would you say of a cook who prepared dinners for other people and yet died of starvation? Foolish cook, you say. Foolish hearer, say I! Are you going to be like Solomon’s friends, the Tyrians, who helped to build the temple and yet went on worshipping their idols? Sirs, are you going to look on at the Table of Mercy, admire it and yet refuse its provisions? Does it give you a thrill of pleasure to see so many taken from the highways and the hedges and brought in and will you stand outside and never partake yourself? I always pity the poor little boys on a cold winter night who stand outside a steaming cook shop window and look in and see others feasting, but have none themselves. I cannot understand you! All things are ready and you are bid and persuaded to come–and yet you are content to perish with hunger! I pray you think of yourselves and I ask the Spirit of God to make you doers of the Word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.” [Spurgeon]