SUMMARY
In this sermon from James 1, Karl Ihfe challenges the church to move beyond simply hearing God's Word to actually living it out. Resilient faith, he argues, is not built by accumulating Biblical knowledge, but by humbly receiving Scripture and putting it into practice — in our speech, our compassion for the vulnerable, and our holiness. Like the wise builder in Matthew 7, every act of obedience lays another stone in a foundation that will hold when the storms of life arrive.
TRANSCRIPTION:
Well, if you have your Bible with you, I invite you to turn over to James, chapter one. We'll be there again today. We launched a new series last week, thinking together about what does it take to build a resilient faith. We started with James opening line, which is a bit surprising, right? Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds.
It's not really the advice that many of us are looking for, myself included, when we're facing hard things, but. But James says, consider it pure joy, right? Because James tracks along with us through this first chapter, reminding us once and once again that resilient faith is going to be tested. And so it's important that we have an opportunity to learn to trust God. We could talk some about it's easy to trust God when things are going great, but what about in the challenges and the hard things?
And James says, well, it's a good thing we serve a really good God. And so he anchors our trust in God, that he is faithful, that he's already been at work on our behalf doing things for us that we couldn't do for ourselves. And so our call is to keep trusting, whether we see and understand what's going on around us or not. We can trust him because he is good. And that's important why?
Because I think today James is going to show us that it's possible to go through difficult things, challenging circumstances and trials of many kinds, but actually come out less trusting of God. And we can survive a hard season, but we can wind up more bitter and resentful afterwards. We can endure suffering, but still become more cynical and jaded. James will show us trials alone do not produce a resilient faith. And so this question becomes, then what's shaping us?
What's having influence on us as we go through trouble, trials and hard things? Well, whether we realize it or not, every single one of us is being shaped by something or someone. Whether that's the local news outlet that we watch, or maybe it's a national news, online news, maybe it's the television programming, the social media that we choose to scroll, the podcast that we listen to every day. We're absorbing assumptions about life and the world around us, what it means to be good, what it means to be successful, what it means to have good relationships, assumptions about our politics and our happiness and what makes a person valuable. We like to think we are independent thinkers, and maybe no more other than us church or Christers, right?
We are independent thinkers. We think for ourselves. And yet the truth is we're being shaped and formed. And so James going to confront us with this question today, like, what if is it possible that we're being shaped by things that aren't Jesus? Maybe even shaped by things more than Jesus shapes us?
Because, see, you don't have to be intentional to choose the things that shape you. And it just happens to us. It's just the experience of being in the world around us. But you do have to choose what will intentionally shape you the most. And so what shapes or influences a resilient faith Today, James is going to point to one of the primary places, and that's giving God's Word.
But he's going to say it's not enough to just know it or even to believe it. He says we're going to have to put it into practice. You know, the first thing that James will point to is we've got to learn to receive God's Word with humility. My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this. Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires.
This is great advice for all kinds of relationships, whether you're married or dating, whether you want to have a good, healthy roommate relationship or just friendships in general. It's great advice. Quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to get angry. I mean, imagine how different our world would be if we adopted this kind of posture in our relationships with one another. But notice James isn't simply giving us advice for how to have better relationships.
He's actually talking to us about how we receive God's Word into our lives. He says, therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent, and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you. See, James is starting to describe the posture of someone who is willing to be changed by God. And that's a posture that assumes humility. You see, it's hard to be shaped by God's word when you already have the answers.
And it's hard to hear what God is trying to tell you when you're constantly defending the position that you already have. You know, it's hard to receive correction if your first instinct is to argue and to explain and to justify. I think that's one of the biggest challenges for Christians today. We live in a world that challenges us, and it rewards a quick response, doesn't it? Have an opinion, take a position and defend it no matter what.
If somebody disagrees with you, then it's your job to convince them otherwise. And if they won't listen. Just get louder. But James says the person who's being shaped by the word of God actually develops a different posture toward the world. You're slow to speak, you're quick to listen, and you're slow to become angry.
Not because truth doesn't matter, but because humility does. And also because anger, especially that self righteous kind of anger that comes when we're not behaving this way, it doesn't really help and it rarely produces the kind of life that God invites us to live. You see, James isn't saying all anger is wrong. There are things that should make us angry, things in our world that we ought to grieve and ought to provoke us to, to do something. I mean, Jesus himself became angry at hard heartedness and that injustice in the world.
And James says if we want to become the kind of people that God created us to be, we got to be the kind of people who can receive God's Word with humility first. Which means sometimes the most spiritual thing that you can do in any given situation is stop talking and listen. Sometimes the most courageous thing that you can do is admit you might be wrong. Sometimes the clearest evidence of spiritual maturity is not how passionately you defend your convictions, but how humbly you allow God to challenge them. You see, if every conversation you find that God always agrees with you.
What you may find is that you've created a God in your own image rather than the other way around. See, just a few verses before this one, James reminds us, he says God chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of first fruits of all he created. I think that's important to remember because before James tells us to obey God's Word, he reminds us that God's Word is what gives us life. We don't create spiritual life or maturity in us. God gives that to us.
He grows it in us. In fact, James will talk about God's Word being planted in our hearts. Now we know a little thing or two about planting out here in West Texas, don't we? As farmers know they're not giving life. The seed has the life.
They're just cultivating the soil and planting that seed in that cultivated soil. James will say God's word is the same. We have to be willing to let God plant that Word in our hearts. And if we'll receive it in humble posture, we have to be willing to let it challenge things that we've believed and the habits that we've developed and the assumptions that We've made. You see, we don't come to Scripture to justify the position and the beliefs we already have.
We come to Scripture so that God can continue to shape and form us into the people he's created us to be. And that church requires humility. So here's a question. When's the last time you read something in Scripture that made you uncomfortable? It challenged an attitude that you had, or it challenged a behavior that you were participating in, or it challenged a decision that you were making?
You see, if the answer is, it's been a while, it's been a minute, we might want to ask whether or not we're really allowing God's Word to speak to us or are we just going to it to confirm what we already know to be true. You see, resilient faith. It requires a teachable and a humble spirit, a humble heart, one that's willing to listen and be corrected, that's willing to admit we don't always get it right. Which brings us to the second part of James Counsel this morning. Not only do you have to receive God's Word in a humble posture, he says, we got to put it into practice.
Do not merely listen to the Word and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. That's pretty direct, and James is pretty clear. Don't just listen. Don't just hear it, do it.
You see, apparently it's possible to hear and know a great deal about God's Word without actually changing your life. But you can show up every single Sunday to church. You can go to Bible class, you can listen to Christian podcasts, you can memorize scripture and have strong theological convictions. You can participate in small group, and you can still not become more like Jesus. I mean, none of those things that I just listed are bad things.
They're actually really good things, things that we encourage you to be a part of. But there are means to an end. They're not the end itself. You see, the goal of reading scripture isn't simply to know more about scripture or to know more about God. The goal is to become more like Jesus.
In fact, one of my favorite preachers, guy named John Orberger, he says it this way. He says God's desire is not that we get all the way through scripture, but that scripture gets all the way through us. Now, James is going to give us a fascinating example of somebody who's wrestling with how do I not just hear God's Word but actually do something about it? He says anyone who listens to the Word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.
If you know my wife, you know, she's been traveling quite a bit lately with her job, and it's really exciting stuff, but you know what that means. I'm home alone. A couple of weeks ago, she was traveling. I got up in the morning, kind of did my routine. This was on a weekend.
And I went to go run a couple of errands. One of them was to come up here to church to grab a couple things out of my office. I had looked in the mirror. I had seen my hair look like I had just gotten out of bed. And I walked out the door, and guess what?
I forgot to do anything about my hair. And I showed up and there were people here, and I had a great conversation with them. Hey, how you doing? They were very kind and gracious. They didn't say, you look insane.
But I went back to my car and I got in the car and I looked in the mirror, and I had completely forgotten what I looked like. James says it's easy to do, friends. It's easy to do. God's word is like a mirror, he says, and it shows us things about ourselves that we wouldn't necessarily come to on our own, right? It shows us about our pride.
It'll be a mirror up to our hearts, about our souls and our fearfulness, our anxiety, our impatience, our lack of love. God's word is like a mirror, he says that it shows things about us, but not only that, it reminds us of who we are. Remember you are Christ, that God loved you so much that he wasn't willing to let that separation stand. But he sent his only son, right? God's word reminds us of who he is, but also who we are.
See, the point of looking into a mirror is not simply that we would see what's true about us or be reminded of who we are, but it's to respond, to do something about it, to live in such a way. So James is confronting the distance between what we believe and how we live.
See, reading a passage on forgiveness and understanding forgiveness is not the same as practicing forgiveness. Reading a passage and understanding generosity. It's not the same thing as giving away on behalf of another.
Reading Jesus words on loving our enemies is not the same thing as letting go of our hostile words and actions and taking a humble posture. I think that's why James calls it self deception. Don't look in a mirror and just forget, he says. It's easy to convince ourselves that we're spiritually mature because we're spiritually informed, not spiritually transformed. But spiritual maturity isn't measured by how much Scripture we can explain.
It's important to be able to explain Scripture, but that's not the measure of spiritual maturity. It's measured, at least in part, by how deeply that Scripture has shaped, informed us.
Now, see, this is where our understanding of how people actually change becomes very important. Because most of us, and many of us at least, I grew up in a tradition where change was a matter of thinking new thoughts. If I just understood something, then I would be different. But that's actually not how we change. In fact, there's a lot of research on this.
What we repeatedly hear, it changes what we believe. But what we repeatedly practice. Well, that shapes who we become. So we learn to be forgiving people by practicing forgiveness. We learn to be patient people by practicing patience.
It's the same for generosity or loving our enemies or any other spiritual discipline that we're trying to grow in. The more we practice the way of Jesus, the more our lives and our hearts and our minds get shaped in the way that he is. I mean, to be sure, it's not just a matter of habits, right? We need God's spirit, His power to help us. We need his grace to forgive us and to shape us.
Because we're going to mess things up. And we need community. We need one another to help encourage and challenge each other to live into this. But, but those things don't make obedience unnecessary. They actually make it possible.
He says whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom and continues in it, not forgetting what they've heard but doing it, they will be blessed in what they do. James here describes God's word as the word that brings freedom, which is kind of an interesting thing. And that's important because we tend to think of obedience to scripture as the opposite of freedom. At least in our culture, in our day, in our world, and sometimes even in the church, we think of freedom as my ability to do whatever I want, when I want, where I want, with who I want. But that's not, that's not true.
A musician who refuses to practice the scales is not free to play beautiful music. An athlete who refuses to train is not free to perform in the optimal way.
A person who refuses to develop self control is not free from the power of the impulses that drive them. You see, sometimes what looks like a restriction is actually a pathway to freedom. James says God's words like that it's not a set of arbitrary rules created to limit you and to make you miserable. James says it's an invitation to life, to the life that Jesus says is the life that's truly life. And so that teaching us about forgiveness and why it's important to practice forgiveness, it's not to make us bitter.
It's because Jesus knew and those first disciples knew. Bitterness will rot us from the inside out.
The reason we're challenged to be generous and to give stuff away and to not act like what we own is defining of who we are is not to limit us. It's because we know we've been taught, we've been shown. Jesus knew. Greed will rot us from the inside out. The reason we're taught and told to love our neighbors is not to burden us.
It's because we were created for community. We were created to be connected. And the one thing that will transition from earth to heaven is relationships, is connection, is the body of Christ. So James says obedience isn't the enemy of freedom. It's actually the pathway to it.
So what does this kind of obedience look like? Once again, James is going to get real direct. He's going to get real clear here. Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves and their religion is worthless. Religion that are God and Father accepts as pure and faultless.
Is this to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. So James points to three practices that the church needs to reflect on. Our speech. How we talk to one another. Our compassion, how we treat the most vulnerable around us.
And our holiness. The way we live in the world. And those aren't random examples, friends. They're windows into the kind of people that we're becoming.
So the first question for you might be, what do your words reveal about the kind of person that you're becoming? Not just when you're at church, but when you're at home, when you're at work and you're frustrated. Carl when you're driving down the road, when you're standing in line behind that person who has 15 items in the 10 item or less line, you know, some of you are that person. How are your words? How are your words when nobody can see because you're online and you're anonymous and you can just say anything?
Some of us know the deep wounding that can come because of someone's words.
How are your words? Church? You see, it's possible to sing worship songs on a Sunday than to tear people apart on a Monday. James is going to say in chapter three, friends, that should not be so. The same mouth should not do both.
He says, measure our words. How's your compassion for the most vulnerable? James lists out widows and orphans, two of the most vulnerable in his community in his day. And so the question comes to us, what about for us? How do we deal with the most vulnerable?
Still, often many would be widows and orphans still in our day. But there are other groups that you may be thinking of, those who've been trafficked, those who are struggling with homelessness, those who are trying to find a new life in a new country somewhere far away. James says resilient faith doesn't move us away from those people. Actually, it moves us toward them. That we be people of grace and love and hope, because God's heart is for those who are vulnerable.
Church has our compassion, right? We talk about unleashing compassion. We're in a season right now. We're raising money because we partner, partner with these ministries. You look around the room, there's posters of all the ones that we.
That we partner with, like open door and St. Benedict's and Habitat and Children's Home. We've got a counseling center. We're trying to invest in domestic missions here at Broadway. Why? Because God's heart is for the vulnerable, for those who've been left out and pushed aside and forgotten.
And James says resilient faith are the kind of people who help care for the most vulnerable around them.
The third question he asks is, how's our holiness? James defines our holiness as not being polluted by the world around us. I don't think he's talking about withdrawal here, like pulling away. Jesus never called us to isolate from the people who needed help the most. In fact, he was often criticized for the people that he chose to spend time around.
His prayer for his followers as he knew it was close to his death in John 17. This was his prayer, part of his prayer, not only for his current disciples, but. But for you and I today. He says, my prayer is not you take them out of the world. My prayer is that you would protect them from the evil one, because they're not of this world, even as I'm not of this world.
And that's the distinction that James is trying to draw here when he says, don't be polluted by the world, that we've got to be present in the world around us to those who are most vulnerable, who are hurting, who are lost, who are in the Dark. But we can't be formed by it or maybe misformed or misshaped by it, he says. How we speak, how we show compassion, how we live in the world, our holiness, he says, that speaks to it. So resilient faith can't just be about new ways of thinking. It certainly is, but it also has to be new ways of living, including our speech.
Which brings us back to that question I asked early on. What's forming you most these days? What are you allowing to disciple? You see, I think this is at the heart of the question that Jesus was speaking to at the end of the Sermon on the Mount. In Matthew chapter seven, he would say these words.
Everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down and the streams rose, the winds blew and beat against that house, yet it did not fall because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash. See, the difference between the two builders was not that one heard the words and one didn't.
It's one put them into practice and one didn't. I mean, from the outside, their houses maybe looked really familiar. Both are going to face some storms. Jesus says the difference was one had a solid foundation built on the rock and one didn't. You couldn't necessarily tell what their house was built on.
On a sunny day, when the stars are out bright at night, when the sun is shining bright during the day, the houses maybe looked really similar. The difference became clear when a storm arrived, when a trial came, when a challenge surfaced. And that's what James is talking about here, how we build resilient faith, a faith that can withstand the storms of life, a faith that doesn't collapse around us when things get tough. A faith that remains rooted in Jesus even when things around us don't seem to be making sense. You see, because a resilient faith isn't built on by just hearing words, but putting them into practice.
And so church, every time you choose to forgive instead of holding onto a grudge, and every time you choose to be generous instead of being greedy, every time you choose to speak words of peace and hope and life instead of insults and curses, right, you're building a foundation on the rock.
You're building resilient faith. I know for many of Us, most of those decisions are not going to seem overly dramatic. They're going to seem like every day, just kind of normal, average circumstances, just simple acts of obedience. But James says over time, those choices, those decisions, those actions begin to form a foundation of a resilient faith. And so, church, I just invite you to reflect as we finish this morning.
Where do you need to practice obedience?
Where do you need to put the word of God into practice in your life? Maybe it's a conversation that you need to have this week with a friend or with a co worker or with a family member. Maybe what you need to do is practice listening, that you be slow to speak, slow to get angry. Maybe it's in a tough relationship where you need to work on forgiveness. Maybe it's an assumption that you have absorbed from our culture and it's shaping the way that you interact with people either online or in person, in God's words, challenging that.
Is that the way it needs to be? Whatever it is, let me offer you the same counsel that James does. Don't look at yourself in the mirror and then walk out the door and forget what you look like. You see, one day a storm will come. And when it does, what will matter most isn't just what you've heard, but it's what you've built your life on.
See, that's how we build a resilient faith, through obedience. Father, may that be true of us this week. I know many of us are facing storms right now, and so, God, would you help us? Would you help us to hold on, to continue being faithful to the things that we know to be true, even when there are other questions around us that we aren't sure? God, would you help us to be sure and true to your word, what you've called us to do in those moments when we can feel the anger rising?
God, would you help us to take a pause, take a breath, step back to listen? God, in those moments when things threaten to break apart, God, would you help us to take a pause, to be calm, to lean into your spirit? Now, would you remind us once again that you are good and faithful, that you have not brought us this far to leave us here, that you will be with us every step of the way? And so, God, would you do that work in us this week? Would you help us to continue to build a resilient faith by being obedient to who you've called us to be?
Lord, let us not just hear your word this morning and walk away and forget it, but instead, God, would you help us to put it into practice. Oh, may we do so. In Jesus name we pray.