Welcoming the WordJames 1:19-27

sermon transcript8/6/17

Would you open your Bibles to James chapter 1 please? If you were here last week, you might recall how Pastor Barry helped us approach the book of James. He gave us an illustration that was memorable. I don’t have it with me to re-show you, so, if you were here, you can remember, and, if not—well—use your imagination. We often approach the book of James, and in particular chapter 1, as though it were a string of pearls, as though James thought of an idea that he wanted to talk about, spent a couple of verses on that, and then something else popped in his mind, and he addressed that, and then on and on we go through chapter 1. Pastor Barry suggested to us instead that we ought to view the book of James and chapter 1 especially more like a tapestry, where each of the topics addressed are interwoven intimately, and I fully agree with that perspective. I want you to see James 1 especially as flowing and interconnected in everything that it addresses.

He suggested that the main topic of chapter 1 is trials, and I think that’s pretty clear, at least at the beginning, but I’d like to suggest to you that that’s the topic that runs on through the whole chapter. If you remember back to last week, he helped us see how some of the pieces fit together, and I’ll try to continue that thread. James opens with this command to “count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds.” And then in verse 5, he starts talking about wisdom, and we might think, “Well, he’s talking about something different,” but I suggested to you a couple of weeks ago when we opened up this passage that he recognizes that what you need and what you probably lack as you go through a trial is wisdom. So, you need to get wisdom when you face trials of various kinds. And how do you do that? Well, you ask God for it. And then in verses 9-11 he seems to introduce the rich and the poor suddenly out of nowhere, but Pastor Barry helped us see that being wealthy and being poor each present their own set of trials that we might struggle with, and that seems to be why James introduces them here. And then, sure enough, in verse 12 he actually mentions the word “trial” again. That helps us see that he’s still talking about the same thing here: “Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial,” James says. But then in verses 13-15, he starts talking about temptation, and, again, we might think that this is something different, but Pastor Barry showed us that that’s actually the same word in Greek that’s translated “trial,” and now here it’s translated “temptation.” And you remember in those verses he showed us that what we need to see is that every trial that we face comes with its own unique temptations. And the way James characterized temptation is not something that comes from outside of you. It doesn’t come from the devil; it doesn’t come from culture; it comes from you. The source of temptation is your desire. And if you think about it, when you’re in the midst of a trial, you might desire very many things that are good things, perhaps. You might desire for the trial to end, for example. But, in that desire, you could be led into sin. Think about it: if you want the trial to end, you might start trying to manipulate people who are causing the trial or who are causing you pain. Or, you might try to manipulate God with your words. And so your desires “conceive sin,” and James warns that if you keep going down that path, sin will produce death at the end of the day. James emphatically that these temptations do not come from God; don’t think that! And so that turns his attention, in verse 16, to God himself. What does come from God in the midst of your trials? Only good things. And isn’t that

1

a temptation that we face when we’re going through trials, to think that God is angry with us, to think that God is punishing us? But, no, when you’re in the midst of a trial, God is giving good gifts throughout that trial, and the challenge is that we would remember and believe that in the midst of the trial. And then in verse 18, James turns to the great “good gift,” the gift of our very life as a child of God. Verse 18 says, “Of his own will”—by God’s own desire and decision—“he brought us forth”—he caused us to be born—“by the word of truth.” And Pastor Barry showed us how that phrase is probably a technical term for the gospel, the gospel message that brought you to life. You see, God uses the gospel to give life to dead sinners. That’s how he works. He uses that message about Jesus’ perfect life of obedience in your place, his sacrificial death for your sins, his glorious resurrection from the dead and exaltation to the throne of God, as the gospel message. That’s what God uses to save people!

And then when we come to verse 19 this morning, we might be tempted, yet again, to think that James is changing the subject suddenly. Look at verse 19. We use it as a proverb; we quote it often and think that it’s talking about one thing, and it seems to be that James has changed the subject drastically. In verse 19, James says, Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger. Haven’t you applied that to your interpersonal relationships? When you think of that verse in your mind, you’re thinking, “Well, when somebody is talking to me, I need to be eager to listen to what they have to say. I need to care very much about what they have to say, and not as much about what I want to say. I need to be quick to listen, eager to listen to my wife, to my boss, to my friend. And I need to be slow to speak; I need to be not so much caught up in what I’m going to say in response to what they have to say. And then, if I don’t like what they have to say, I need to be very slow to anger; I need to hear them out and give them the benefit of the doubt.” Right? We’ve all applied it that way, but I’d like to suggest to you that that’s not what on James’ mind. He hasn’t changed the subject; instead, he’s talking about the word that he just spoke of, the word of truth, the gospel. He goes into a section that focuses on how we respond to God’s Word, and I think verse 19 is very much caught up in that.

So, I’d like to suggest to you this morning that verses 19-27 continue thinking about the idea of trials. The question on the table, I think, for James is: How do you avoid giving in to the temptations that arise during trials?1 In temptation, if your desires can lead you into sin in the midst of a trial, how do you stop that process? How do you abort the process that James describes there? And I suggest to you that the way that James suggests is by how you respond to God’s Word, particularly how you respond to the gospel in your Christian life. So, let’s dive into this section and see what he says.

Verses 19-21 focus on the command to “welcome the word.” Let’s read those three verses together and see what he says. 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 all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls. So, again, in verse 19, I don’t think that he’s just grabbing hold of a proverbial saying and talking about our interpersonal relationships all of a sudden. Instead, he’s talking about the way that we respond to God’s Word,

1 This connection is suggested by Craig L. Blomberg and Mariam J. Kamell, James (Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament 16; Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2008), pg. 81.

2

particularly the gospel, the word of truth that he just mentioned in verse 18. “Let every person”—and remember, when you see the little word “let” in James or in the New Testament more generally, it’s a command; it’s an imperative. “Each person must be quick to hear.” Quick to hear what? Quick to hear the word of truth, quick to hear the gospel. That is to say that yours and my prime directive needs to be to hear again and again and again the good news, the gospel that saved us in the first place. We need to be eager to listen to it, ready to hear it.2

We need to be slow to speak. When we come to the Bible, we can oftentimes have an idea in our minds that we already know what this means, this passage that I’m reading or listening to preached. I already know what this says; I already know what this means. We’re already talking internally. We’re speaking about what the passage means, rather than letting the Bible speak and letting God’s Word speak to us and rule over us. We come with our own preconceived notions, and we need to submit those to what’s being said.3

And sometimes even we can respond with anger when we hear God’s Word. God’s Word cuts sometimes, when it challenges our preconceived notions, our opinions, or our habits that we just can’t seem to shake off. Sometimes we might respond with anger when we hear something we don’t really like to think about God, or that we really don’t want to do with our lives.4

I think James is actually drawing on Old Testament Scripture here. Now, most people would point to some of the Proverbs that talk, again, about how it’s important for you to listen to your neighbor or not to be quick to speak to your neighbor. You can pull Proverbs all over the place that support those ideas. All of that is good and true and right. But I think James is actually drawing from a different passage in the Wisdom Literature, Ecclesiastes chapter 5.5 Ecclesiastes chapter 5 says this: Guard your steps when you go to the house of God. To draw near to listen is better than to offer the sacrifice of fools, for they do not know that they are doing evil. Be not rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven and you are on earth. Therefore let your words be few. You see, the Preacher here in Ecclesiastes is talking to an Old Testament Israelite, and he’s saying, “When you come to the temple, come with a desire to hear God speak. That’s your prime directive when

2 Cf. John F. MacArthur, Jr., James (MacArthur New Testament Commentary; Chicago: Moody, 1998), pg. 69, who writes, “James’s appeal is for believers to seize every opportunity to increase their exposure to Scripture, to take advantage of every privileged occasion to read God’s Word or to hear it faithfully preached or taught.”

3 Cf. David Platt, Exalting Jesus in James (Christ-Centered Exposition; Nashville: B & H, 2014), pg. 16, who writes, “Be humble as you approach the Word, not coming with your defenses up, which leads to anger and resistance to the Word. Don’t we often approach God’s Word talking and not listening? Don’t we often come to God’s Word thinking, ‘Here’s what I want it to say?’ Don’t we often come to God’s Word looking to justify ourselves? We’re like people in an argument who are not really listening to one another, but instead we’re consumed with formulating what we’re going to say in response. We are not quick to hear and slow to speak but loathe to listen and anxious to argue.”

4 Cf. MacArthur, James, pg. 72, who writes, “In this context, James seems to be speaking particularly about anger at a truth in the Word that displeases, that confronts sin or conflicts with a cherished personal belief or standard of behavior. It refers to a disposition hostile to scriptural truth when it does not correspond to one’s own convictions, manifested—even if only inwardly—against those who faithfully teach the Word.”

5 Cf. Craig G. Bartholomew, Ecclesiastes (Baker Commentary on the Old Testament Wisdom and Psalms; Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2009), pg. 211, who suggests the connection: “As Qohelet says, however, we will focus on listening to God and be slow to utter many words, especially vows. James 1:19–20 could well be a reflection on this section in Ecclesiastes. James exhorts his readers to be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger, for one’s anger does not produce God’s righteousness.”

3

you come to the temple.6 Come, saying, “I want to hear God speak to me.” And he warns against how an Israelite might come to the temple just wanting to talk to God. He’s warning against the desire to think, “I really want to ask God for help; I really want to tell God what I think; I really want to talk to God.” And the Preacher in Ecclesiastes is saying, “Your prime directive needs to be to listen to God.” It needs to be more important to you that you hear what God says than that you would have God hear what you have to say.7

Now, he’s not saying, “Don’t come and pray. Don’t want to pray.” He’s not saying that. He says, “Let your words be few.” Not zero, but few. And let me apply this to us as Christians: when we come together in this place, our prime directive ought to be, “I want to hear what God has to say. I want to hear God speak to me in this place.”8 But we often come with other desires. We often come, eager, excited to come and sing, or to come and pray, or to come and fellowship. And all of those things are good, but there’s a greater need that we all have, and it’s to hear God speak. That should be the driver; that should be the prime motivation for why we come: we want to come to hear God speak, not to make sure that he hears what we have to say.

James doesn’t say, “Let your words be none at all,” either. He doesn’t say, “Don’t speak at all.” He says, “Be slow to speak.” We need to listen to God’s Word; we need to hear it and make sure that we’re responding appropriately, and that’s where James will turn in the next paragraph. But, before we’re done, let’s think about this a little bit in this place but also in our devotional reading, like when we’re reading our Bible at home. We need to be eager to listen to God speak as we read the Scriptures and as we hear them taught and preached. Sometimes we can get to where we have favorite parts of the Bible that we return to repeatedly, and we don’t really touch some other places, like Ecclesiastes, for example, or the Song of Solomon, or the book of Revelation. These things that we’re not really interested to go in and read; we’re not eager to go and hear what God has to say. But we need to be eager to hear all that God has to say, not just portions, not just the parts we like. And we need to be pursuing that, not only in our daily Bible reading, but also in our church setting from the preaching of the Word and the teaching in our Sunday school classes; we need to be focused on the whole of God’s Word here.

But we are to be slow to speak, that we would not be quick to jump up and argue. James’s setting in the first century probably was a little bit more dialogical than we do it here. They probably had a setting similar to what a synagogue would be like in the first century, where the person opening up the Scriptures would take questions and comments and arguments. It’s more like a Sunday school class that we might have here, and James is warning the person who comes to listen to God’s Word, “Slow down before you get ready to stand up and argue and say, ‘I don’t

6 Cf. Iain Provan, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs (The NIV Application Commentary; Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2001), pg. 116, who writes, “In worship, the first task of the worshiper is to ‘go near to listen’ (v. 1), with a view to obeying the divine voice (cf. the same language in Deut. 5:27).”

7 Cf. Provan, Ecclesiastes, pg. 119, who writes, “In fact, those who know God well understand that it is much more important that he addresses us than that we address him. The first requirement laid on his people in the Old Testament was not ‘speak, O Israel,’ but ‘hear, O Israel,’ and that exhortation is a common and insistent one—both in Deuteronomy and elsewhere (e.g., Deut. 4:1; 5:1; 6:3, 4; 9:1; Isa. 1:10; 7:13; 28:14). Without hearing there can be no understanding of the kingdom of God; thus Jesus repeats, ‘He who has ears, let him hear’ (e.g., Matt. 11:15; 13:9, 43; John 8:47).”

8 Cf. Bartholomew, Ecclesiastes, pg. 211, who writes, “A recovery of preaching that facilitates our listening to God is urgently needed today; as Qohelet reminds us, it is our primary reason for gathering around Christ in the Christian community.”

4

think that’s right,’” or before you question.9 This is one of the reasons, historically, this passage and the application of it to that setting, why we have a more monologue kind of setting, and we have for hundreds of years if not thousands. The preaching of the Word needs to be heard and received well.

But also this idea of “slow to anger”—if when you hear the Scriptures or you read your Bible and you get angry at what you read, you’re wrong in your response. Verse 20: For the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. And I like the way the NIV, the old NIV, the ones in the pews, the 1984 edition, puts this verse: For man’s anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires. That’s what he’s talking about here.10 If you hear God’s Word and you find yourself rising up in anger, you need to check yourself, because you’re responding poorly. You’re not doing the right thing. I can remember a time in my college years, when I was a freshman in college I think, and I had been reading through the book of Romans, I guess for the first time all the way through, and I came to Romans chapter 9 and I read verse 18 that says, [God] has mercy on whomever he wills and hardens whomever he wills, and then I read a couple of verses later, Has the potter no right over the clay to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? And I threw my Bible across the room…literally, physically, immaturely. But I did. I have since come to terms with that. But I responded in anger, because I thought, “How can my God have those kinds of rights, and I not have any? How can that be?” I was outraged. And I was wrong. And isn’t it the case that we often come to the Bible with an attitude of standing over it and judging it? If it says something about God that I don’t like, well, I just won’t read that part. That’s not the attitude that James commends to us here. We must be quick to hear, eager to listen.

Verse 21 goes on to give us this command that we need to put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness. And he’s talking about this righteous life that God demands, and if our anger won’t get it, the question is: well, what will? What will get it? How do we respond righteously? How do we live a righteous life? Well, Paul tells us that it’s the Scriptures, and James has the same answer here. Famous verses, 2 Timothy 3:16-17: All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete—or perfect, or mature; it’s the same word that James has been using in chapter 1 to talk about our maturity as we endure trials and also that final perfection that we’ll reach on the last day; how do we get there? The Scriptures will get us there! The Scriptures will get us there. The Scriptures are what equips us for every good work. You want to do something good in your life? The Scriptures will enable you to do it.

So, what’s needed then? Well, less sin—he says, “Put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness”—and more gospel. He says, Receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls. “Receive”—that’s a word for welcoming. Welcome the word. Don’t

9 Cf. R. Kent Hughes, James: Faith That Works (Preaching the Word series; Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1991), pg. 65, who writes, “The churches to which James wrote were unstructured and thus both invited personal participation and created a climate where abuse was possible. The speaker could be easily interrupted, and hasty unthought-through comments could detract from the ministry. James commands those who had such tendencies to be ‘slow to speak.’”

10 Cf. Douglas J. Moo, The Letter of James (The Pillar New Testament Commentary; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000), pg. 84, who writes, “We are on firmer ground in thinking that James uses the phrase ‘produce righteousness’ with the meaning it normally has in the Bible: do what God requires of his people.”

5

just listen to it; welcome the Word. Welcome the word into your heart, into your life. Welcome its authority over you. Welcome it with meekness; that’s the opposite attitude of anger. That’s the opposite attitude of standing over the Scriptures. It’s an attitude that comes to the Bible and says, “Whatever this book tells me is true, I believe it. And whatever this book tells me to do, I will seek to do it.” It’s an attitude of teachability when we come to the Scriptures,11 that I might be wrong about what I think this passage means. Every time I re-read a passage of Scripture for the thousandth time, I need to come with an attitude that says, “I might not have understood this completely or correctly.” I need to be coming to this book allowing it to have free rein over my thinking and my living. That’s meekness in this case.12

Welcome the implanted Word. What does he mean by “implanted.” He’s using a metaphor of what you do with a seed; you put it in the ground.13 It’s implanted inside of us, and he’s borrowing this imagery from the Old Testament, the promises of the New Covenant. Jeremiah 31:33 gives us one such promise, and there are others: For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares Yahweh: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. You see, the imagery of putting the law inside of you is a metaphor that’s intended to mean, “He will enable you to believe and obey it! He’ll enable you to live it out!”14 That’s something that the Old Covenant did not have. The people of Israel were unable to obey God, and so God promised a day, “I will make a new covenant.” And I hope you know, Christian, that this promise is for you. This is the reality that you live in. God has put his law within you; it’s in you right now; if you’re a believer in Jesus Christ, God’s Word is in you. It was put there the moment you began to trust Jesus, fulfilling this covenant promise.

And James says the same thing: this implanted word—he says it’s “able to save your souls.” Now, don’t think when you see the word “soul” that it’s just talking about the spiritual part of us. Some translations don’t even put it in; they say, “This word is able to save you,”15 because this

11 Cf. John Piper, “Receive with Meekness the Implanted Word,” sermon preached at Bethlehem Baptist Church, in Minneapolis, MN, January 6, 2008, who explains, “In this context of hearing the word of God, meekness surely means something like ‘teachability’ or ‘readiness to submit’ to God’s word. The opposite of receiving the word with meekness would be to receive it suspiciously, because you doubt that all of it is true or good for you; or to receive it partially because you want to reserve the right to pick and choose what parts of it you will follow; or to receive it with the cocky self-assurance that you can understand it and apply it without God’s merciful help.”

12 Cf. J. Alec Motyer, The Message of James: The Tests of Faith (The Bible Speaks Today; Downers Grove, IL: 1985), pgs. 68-69, who writes, “As exercised towards people, meekness is ‘self-subduing gentleness’ (Adamson). But here the direction is God ward, or rather towards the word of God, and it is ‘that temper of spirit in which we accept his dealings with us as good, … without disputing’. It is the spirit which says a simple ‘yes’ to what the word teaches and commands, it is ‘the mind disposed to learn’ (Calvin)—and to do so with prompt readiness.”

13 Surely James is again borrowing from the teaching of Jesus, specifically the parable of the sower, as in Mark 4:1-20. Cf. Motyer, James, pg. 67, who writes, “In the ‘parable of the sower’ there is both the planting of the seed and the reception of the seed that has been planted, so that, as Mark (4:20) records it, fruitfulness follows in the good soil as people ‘hear the word and accept it.’”

14 Cf. Jason A. Whitlark, “Ἔμφυτος Λόγος: A New Covenant Motif in the Letter of James,” in Getting “Saved”: The Whole Story of Salvation in the New Testament (edited by Charles H. Talbert and Jason A. Whitlark; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011), pg. 195, who summarizes his article: “[T]he implanted word in James conveys the notion of divine enablement, a notion that was especially suited for articulating the hope of divine enablement for faithfulness promised in the new covenant of Jeremiah.” He goes on to write on pg. 197, “The [implanted word] makes the imperatives of James possible. Without it, the ethical life of James’s audience is impossible.”

15 See NIV, for example.

6

word is a word that means your whole self, body and soul.16 The gospel that is implanted in you has power to save you, from start to finish and everything in between.17 This is the same that Paul teaches us in Romans 1:16: For I am not ashamed of the gospel, (he says), for it—the gospel—is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. So, it’s the power of God—it’s the power that God uses to save us, from start to finish and everything in between. God continually uses the gospel message; he speaks it into us, and that’s the power that saved us in the past, but it’s also the power that continues to save us.18 What does that mean? I think it means something like: God is keeping us safe. He has rescued from the slavery of sin and death, but now he has promised that he will continue to save us; meaning, he’ll keep us safe throughout our lives. How does he do it? He uses the gospel, the same word that he used to bring us to life in the first place. And it’s that same gospel that he will use to ensure that we will cross the finish line on the last day, that we will stand before the judgment seat of Christ19 and hear him say, “Well done, good and faithful servant; enter to the joy of your Master.”20 It’s the gospel that’s the reason he will be able to say that.21

But James says, “Receive this implanted word.” That’s weird! Think about the weirdness of that! It’s implanted in me, but he says, “Go on receiving it. You have to receive it again and again and again and again.” Why? How? What does it mean? Well, I’d like to read an extended quote from John Piper, who compares this to oxygen, and I think his explanation is really helpful, so I’m just going to let him do it. But before I read his words, I was interested to find that our bodies are composed of more than 65% oxygen.22 It’s just there; our body is made up of over 65% oxygen. It’s implanted in us, you might say. And yet we still need to breathe every day, all day. John Piper says this:

16 Cf. Ben Witherington, III, Letters and Homilies for Jewish Christians: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary on Hebrews, James and Jude (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2007), pg. 441, who writes, “Psychē does not mean ‘soul’ here, but ‘self’ or ‘life.’ The New Testament authors show no interest in saving only part of a person, but rather wish to save the whole person, and that is what the word means here—yourself, your being, you.”

17 Cf. Whitlark, ““Ἔμφυτος Λόγος,” pg. 202, who writes, “The [implanted word] has a connection with the [word of truth] in 1:18. As stated above, the [word of truth] is taken by many commentators as a circumlocution for the gospel. That same deposit of truth that brought the community life also continues to reside in the members of the community to sustain them in their journey to eschatological joy.”

18 Cf. Motyer, James, pg. 67, who writes, “[I]t it is surely suitable both to the word (emphytos) and to the present passage to think of God’s word as the ‘implanted’ agent of the new birth (18), and also as the agent in daily growth. Just as at conversion we were presented outwardly with the gospel message which was already secretly lodging in our hearts, so, throughout our life of Christian development, we promote the growth of the new nature by facing it with the same message which is the inner secret of its life.”

19 Cf. 2 Cor. 5:10.20 Cf. Matt. 25:21, 23.21 Cf. MacArthur, James, pgs. 75-76, who writes, “Able to save your souls first refers back to our initial

salvation, in which the Word brought the truth of the gospel to an unsaved heart, showing us the way of salvation and saving us from the penalty of sin (cf. 1 Pet. 1:23). It is also able to save by being a constant resource of God’s truth that the Holy Spirit uses to guard believers’ souls from being snatched out of God’s family by protecting us from the power and dominion of sin. Finally, it is able to lead us to ultimate and complete salvation, when we are glorified with Christ in heaven, forever separated from the presence of sin….It is the divine power behind the truth of Scripture that is able to initiate salvation, keep it alive and growing, and finally bring it to final glory, complete and perfect.”

22 So says Dr. Edward Group, “11 Facts About Oxygen You Probably Didn’t Know,” published 4/8/16 at https://www.globalhealingcenter.com/natural-health/11-facts-about-oxygen-you-probably-didnt-know/.

7

“Receive it—this implanted word. In other words, if you treat the word of God like your kidneys, you are making a big mistake. Your kidneys are implanted in you by your first birth. But you do not go on ‘receiving’ your kidneys. They just sit there doing their work, and you rarely think about them….But James says, ‘Receive the implanted word.’ It is already in you. And you should receive it. It is rooted and planted in you. It brought you life. It is there sustaining that life by feeding faith in Christ. But it is not there like kidneys. It is there like oxygen. It gives life and in giving life, it makes you breathe, and in breathing you receive oxygen. No one says: ‘I have oxygen; look how well it is working in me; it makes me alive; I don’t need to receive oxygen’….The implanted word is powerful; it produces life and breathing. It takes over the spiritual diaphragm and demands oxygen. It demands the life-giving external word. If the word is implanted in you, you can’t hold your breath forever. The implanted word will sooner or later conquer and be replenished. You will receive the word again. And you will love it….Finally, I would simply try to illustrate what it is to receive the implanted word, with the hope of inspiring you to do it every day…, so that if you miss a day you will feel like your spiritual lungs are going to burst with desire for another breath….The gospel is implanted in us, and we need to breathe it in every day. You never outgrow your need for the gospel. You never graduate to a class where that is not the center of the curriculum….The center of every ongoing growth in knowledge has Christ crucified, risen, received by faith alone like a little child, at the center of the curriculum….So my biblical exhortation is: Every day with meekness receive the word of God. That is, every day be in the Bible; read your Bible every day with the gospel at the center. Breathe the Bible. Don’t try to hold your breath from Monday to Wednesday. Breathe every day.”23

The challenge for us is to understand: how do we read the Bible and all of its parts through the Jesus lens, we might say. There’s a book by that title: How to Read the Bible through the Jesus Lens;24 I commend it to you. It helps you see how every book of Scripture, all 66 of them, points to Jesus and the gospel, and we have to learn how to see it that way. But that’s the key to receiving the benefit that we need from reading our Bibles, is to see it as connected to and opening up the gospel for us. That’s where the power is! And so we need that all the time, every day, indeed.

But it’s not enough just to hear it or read it; James goes on and says we must do it. Look at verse 22: But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. D. A. Carson says this: “What James says is this: ‘This gospel word, this Word of Truth saves you. Now don’t just be hearers of it. Live in it. Live under it. Do the gospel, because this gospel, written to Christians, is still able to save you.’ It’s this message of the gospel that comes to you and still transforms you, saves you, and teaches you that you are accepted before God because of Jesus, not because you’ve led a superb Bible study! You are accepted in the beloved because of what Christ has

23 Piper, “Receive.” This quotation is an amalgam of what Piper actually said (the video of which can be viewed here: http://www.desiringgod.org/messages/receive-with-meekness-the-implanted-word) and what he published as his sermon manuscript. I found certain sentences and phrases that he actually said during the sermon but which were not explicit in his manuscript especially helpful, so I merged them together in a way that I think reflects accurately what Piper intended.

24 Michael Williams, How to Read the Bible through the Jesus Lens: A Guide to Christ-Focused Reading of Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2012).

8

done, not because you attended yet one more prayer meeting.”25 James says that we have to live in it; we have to obey it. The gospel—we focus on the declarations of the gospel, the announcement of what God has done in Christ to reconcile the world to himself—the life, death, resurrection, enthronement, and promise of future return of Jesus—all that is wrapped up in the gospel. But that announcement has obligations that it lays on us. Because of what God has done, therefore, we should live a certain way. It has commands; it has a law, we might say, and that’s what James will say in just a couple of verses.26

But James points to the danger of deceiving yourselves. We can be self-deluded non-responders. We can listen to the Word being preached, we can read the Bible every day, and we can fail to do it, and, in failing to do it, we are deluding ourselves significantly.27 One writer says, “It is possible to be unfailingly regular in Bible reading, but to achieve no more than to have moved the bookmark forward.”28 Or, I would add, check off another box on the Bible reading plan. We could be like Old Testament Israel. Yahweh spoke to Ezekiel the prophet one time about his people, in Ezekiel 33:31; so, this is the Lord speaking to the prophet about the people: And they come to you (Ezekiel) as people come, and they sit before you as my people, and they hear what you say but they will not do it; for with lustful talk in their mouths they act; their heart is set on their gain. See how God speaks to Ezekiel about the problem of the people being, “They’re hearing you; they come and listen and say, ‘What do you have to say to us, Ezekiel? What do you have to say to us from the Lord?’ But all the while they’ve got lustful talk in their mouths.” They’re not being slow to speak when God is speaking. They’re talking about what they want; they’re not talking about what God wants of us; they’re not talking about what God’s done for us; they’re talking about “what we want,” their lusts, their desires.

The reality of self-deceived professing Christians is throughout the New Testament. Let me quote to you the strongest of these words in 1 John 2:4—Whoever says “I know [Jesus]” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him. We can say all day long, we can make professions of faith—“I’m a Christian! I follow Jesus! I know Jesus!”—but John says, “You can say that all day, but if you’re not pursuing obedience to his commands, you’re a liar!” A liar! That is to say, when you say, “I know Jesus,” you are lying. You do not really know Jesus. The truth, the word of truth, this implanted word that James is describing, this gospel—it’s not in you, if you’re not seeking to obey Jesus. David Platt says, “Those who have accepted Jesus obey Jesus. To think any differently is to live in deception. To say, ‘I have accepted Jesus,’ but then to live contrary to Jesus is to deceive oneself.”29

Well, James gives us an illustration of what this could be like. He points to the familiar image of the man in the mirror. Let me read verses 23-25 to get the whole comparison before us: For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his

25 D. A. Carson, “Making Sense of Suffering, Part 4,” sermon preached in 2008.26 Cf. Witherington, Letters and Homilies, pg. 446, who writes, “Thus, while commentators like Alfred

Plummer go too far when they say to read gospel whenever one see the word law in James, they are on the right track, for James is talking about the law or commandment portion of the new covenant.”

27 Cf. Peter H. Davids, The Epistle of James (New International Greek Testament Commentary; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1982), pg. 97, who writes, “To hear and not to practice is to deceive oneself. Παραλογίζομαι occurs elsewhere in the NT only in Col. 2:4, where it means to lead one astray from the faith. Here it must mean to deceive oneself as to one’s salvation.”

28 Motyer, James, pgs. 64-65.29 Platt, Exalting Jesus in James, pg. 21.

9

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. I’m very familiar with this illustration; I’ve lived it the last couple of weeks. I never really thought that my face would be a sermon illustration, but here it is. As you can probably see, I didn’t shave recently. And during the last couple of weeks, there were several occasions where I looked in the mirror and I said—even out loud a few times—“You need to shave.” And then, what did I do? I walked out of the bathroom and went about my business. And, eventually, I had an opportunity where I said, “I should save, and I could shave right now,” but then I said, “No, I’ve got a sermon illustration.” So, I left it. It’s the best excuse I’ve ever made to not shave.

But that’s the picture: you look in the mirror because you’re trying to find stuff wrong with you, and then you should fix it, right? But the picture here is that you look in the mirror, you see defects, and then you just go about your way and forget about the big defects and don’t do anything about it. That’s the illustration.30

I just want you to see a comparison here, so that we don’t get bogged down in the details of the comparison, because there’s a major point that we need to make sure that we don’t miss. So, he compares the man with the mirror, on the one hand, to the believer with the Word, the believer with the law, as he says, on the other hand.31

So, the man with the mirror looks intently, he studies his face in the mirror, and then he goes away and doesn’t do anything about what he saw. He just forgets about it. But the believer with the Word, the believer who holds the Bible in his hands, listens to it being preached, looks into it and perseveres. That is to say, he keeps listening, he keeps looking, he keeps digging, he keeps on going back and back and back, but he acts on what he sees. Let me just ask you: can you remember a time—maybe it’s regularly; I hope it’s regularly—where you heard a sermon, or you

30 Cf. Ralph P. Martin, James (Word Biblical Commentary; Dallas: Word, 1988), pg. 50, who writes, “What is seen in a mirror is meant to lead to action, usually regarded as remedial. The face is seen to be dirty (going back to v 21) or blemished and needing attention. Instead the thoughtless person ‘goes off and forgets’ (gnomic aorists) what he has seen.”

31 This chart is adapted and slightly modified from Motyer, James, pg. 69.

10

were reading in your Bible, and you read something or you heard something and then, that day you actually changed something in your life because of what you heard? I hope that’s the normal pattern of our lives. But that’s the challenge here. When we read God’s Word, when we hear the gospel and what it calls us to do, how it calls us to live, we’ve got to respond. We can’t just forget about it.

But the promise is, “He will be blessed in his doing,” not blessed because of his doing.32 He will be blessed in his doing; the blessing comes from God as we seek to obey, not in payment for our obedience, not because we’ve obeyed. Blessing doesn’t come as a reward for those who obey; it simply comes to us as we obey. We are blessed in the doing, in the obedience. “It’s not simply saying, ‘Make sure you are even evermore obedient and perform adequately well, and then maybe God will bless you.’” (This is D. A. Carson). “No, you live out what it means to live under the gospel. You do what it says. You become a gospel person.”33

Now, James refers to the Word as “the law,” which can be jarring for us. We’re used to thinking about the gospel as one thing and the law as something else, and you might even be used to thinking about it as, “The law is one thing, and the gospel is opposed to it.” That was a problem throughout church history, since the Reformation. How do we understand the relationship between the gospel and the law? And James is happy to refer to the law here in tight connection with the gospel. If the word of truth that he’s described is the gospel—and I believe it is—then what is he talking about with “the law” here, “the perfect law,” “the law of liberty”? Well, I think we can say that he’s talking about what I’ve called “gospel obligations.” Folks, the Christian life has a law; we are free the Mosaic Law; we are not bound by it, in that we don’t relate to God, we don’t earn approval from God by our obedience to the Law. But we are obligated to live a certain way as Christians. There are commands in the New Testament, 49 of which are in this book alone! And God really means for us to obey them! Law is a good word for it. But it’s a law that is “of liberty.” It’s a law that actually sets us free; it’s a law that frees us to be servants of God. You see, we’ve been set free by the gospel; we’ve been set free from being enslaved to sin and self and Satan—and we were all enslaved to those three realities from birth until we became a believer in Jesus, and when we did we were set free from all of that! But then we were set free to serve, to serve Jesus, to follow Jesus, to obey Jesus, to keep the law of liberty. The gospel and the law are interconnected. We dare not separate them. That’s been true throughout the Bible, truly. God always rescues us by grace before he obligates us to live a certain way. He never commands us, “Do this, and I’ll be happy with you.” That’s not how our relationship with God works. But there are real commands, and he really does call for our obedience here, but it’s true freedom! It’s true liberty to obey these commands, and it is the place of blessing in the life of the Christian.34

32 Cf. Scot McKnight, The Letter of James (The New International Commentary on the New Testament; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011), pg. 161, who writes, “That the doers will be blessed ‘in their doing’ makes this ‘blessing’ concrete in the present world. Whatever that means ‘in the process of the doing’ or ‘as a product of the doing,’ it pertains to life on earth: they will be blessed not because of the ‘doing’ but in the ‘doing.’”

33 Carson, “Making Sense of Suffering.”34 Cf. Motyer, James, pg. 71, who writes, “We see, then, that the Lord gives his law not as a means of

salvation, but as a life-style for those who have been already saved. It is the way he wants his redeemed ones to live. But then he goes on to say that he is speaking to those whom he has brought out of bondage (Ex. 20:2b): not to those whom he is bringing into bondage by imposing his law upon them, but to those who are now (for the first time) enjoying liberty, and to whom he gives his perfect law in order to safeguard the freedom he has secured for them.”

11

All of this that we’ve been talking about—pursuing obedience to this Word, responding to it with a welcoming attitude, receiving it, and seeking to do it, to practice it, to be obedient to it—is the way, I think, that James is suggesting that we will not allow our desires to lead us into sin, to take us back to verses 13-15. When our desires, in the midst of trials, would lead us into sin and rejecting God, the key is to hear the gospel again, to hear again what God has done for us to save us from our sin, and how he has set us free to live differently, to not serve ourselves, but to serve Jesus, who died for us and rose from the dead for us. And so, when we’re in the midst of a trial, we need the Word; we need to hear it, and then we need to do it. We need to seek to practice it in the midst of a trial. But, isn’t it your experience that, very often, when you’re pressed and squeezed and suffering and in pain, that you often want to run from God? You often want to not worry about the particulars and the fine specifics about doing what God wants me to do. You’re just trying to survive! Well, James says that the very thing that you need most in that moment is to seek to obey God in the midst of a trial.

In verses 26-27, he turns to painting a more clear picture of this perhaps, and he uses the term “religion” and “religious.” These verses are probably familiar to you, but people often say, “Christianity is not a religion; it’s a relationship.” We need to throw that saying in the garbage. The Bible says that Christianity is a religion. Folks, a religion is simply the outward expression of devotion to a god. How do you show that you are devoted to Jesus? Whatever you do to fill in that blank is “religion.” And it’s okay! We shouldn’t try to deceive people in the world by saying, “It’s not a religion.” It is a relationship also! It’s a religion that’s based on a relationship.35 But let’s not throw out the word “religion.” James uses it here! It’s a biblical word! “Religious devotion” is perhaps a good way to put it, and there’s a particular way that it looks, James says, and I wonder if we weren’t familiar with these verses how we would fill in the blank. What comprises Christian religion?

In verse 26, he begins, If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person’s religion is worthless. So, he begins, raising the possibility of self-deception again. A person can think that he’s devoted to Jesus. He can believe that about himself. He can say, “I think I’m a Christian. I think I’m a follower of Jesus. I think I’m devoted to the true God.” But if this person who thinks that way, who claims that, does not bridle his tongue, James says that he is deceiving his heart. That’s a very dangerous position to be in, to deceive one’s own heart at a fundamental level.36 He says that the key indicator here is the bridling of the tongue, the keeping under control of our words. The misuse of the tongue is something that James is going to talk about throughout the letter. In fact, in every chapter at least once he says something about the misuse of the tongue. He revisits this repeatedly because it’s an important indicator of whether we are truly following Jesus or not. David Platt says, “When you speak, you tell the truth about your heart. The way men speak to and about their wives tells the truth about their hearts. Likewise, the way women speak to and about their husbands tells the truth about their hearts. The way you speak to your friends, the way you speak to your family, the way you speak about others—all of these things are indicators of whether or not your faith is real. If you are engaging in gossip, if your words are biting, if they are cursing, if they are angry,

35 Cf. Motyer, James, pg. 75, who writes, “Religion is thus a comprehensive word for the specific ways in which a heart-relationship to God is expressed in our lives.”

36 Cf. Luke L. Cheung, The Genre, Composition and Hermeneutics of the Epistle of James (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2003), pg. 125, who observes, “The verb ‘think’ (δοκείν) in 1:26 is often used in the New Testament for false assumption (see Mt. 3:9; 6:7; 26:53; Mk 6:49; Lk. 8:18; 13:2; 24:37; Acts 12:9; Jn 5:39).”

12

even if they are just plain inundated with trivialities, then be careful; you are showing that your religion is worthless. James is saying that the tongue is the test of true religion.”37 Now, Platt goes on to say that it’s not the only test. But it sure is a big one. John MacArthur says, “The tongue is not the only indicator of true spirituality but is one of the most reliable. IT has been estimated that the average person will speak some 18,000 words in a day, enough for a fifty-four-page book. In a year that amounts to sixty-six 800-page volumes! Many people, of course, speak much more than that. Up to one-fifth of the average person’s life is spent talking.”38 So, it makes sense that it would reveal something in our heart, and isn’t that what Jesus said?39 “Out of the heart the mouth speaks.”40 So, James is drawing on what Jesus had to say.

Now, as James paints the picture of “religion,” “true religion,” what it means to express our devotion to Jesus, he doesn’t mention any of the things that we might typically think about. We come to church, we listen to God’s Word, we fellowship with other believers, we pray, we sing to him—all of those are marks that we might say are the religious things that we do. We do “devotions,” right? We read “devotionals.” Well, what is that? That’s a practice, an outward expression of our devotion to Jesus. We read our Bible every day because we’re devoted to Jesus, ideally. But James doesn’t mention any of those things. Instead, he focuses on warning us about the danger of not bridling our tongue, on the one hand, and he says that if you’re doing all of those things—I think James is assuming the typical stuff we would talk about; he’s assuming that we’re gathering together with each other, that we’re listening to God’s Word, singing, praying, and all the rest; he’s assuming that—but he’s saying if you’re doing all of those things and at the same time you’re not keeping your tongue under control, your words under control, your religion, all that other stuff that you’re doing, is worthless.41 It’s an empty sham. All the church activity you can fit in a given week might prove to be worthless religion, and worthless religion is actually idolatry. The word he uses for “worthless” here is used throughout the Bible connected to idolatry. Let me give you one example in Jeremiah 51:17-18: Every man is stupid and without knowledge; every goldsmith is put to shame by his idols, for his images are false, and there is no breath in them. They are worthless; at the time of their punishment they shall perish.42 James is saying that we can be coming to church, we can be singing, praying, reading our Bible, and if we’re not bridling our tongue, all of those things might prove to be worshiping someone other than Jesus. This is a strong warning.

In verse 27, he turns to a positive portrayal, a positive description of what’s a core element, what can’t be missing for it to be “true religion”: Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself

37 Platt, Exalting Jesus in James, pgs. 27-28.38 MacArthur, James, pg. 88.39 Cf. Motyer, James, pg. 76, who writes, “The tongue and the heart are linked so that the tongue is an

accurate index of what we are at the core of our persons. Was James, we may ask, quietly recalling and accepting the words of the Lord Jesus: ‘How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks’ (Mt. 12:34).”

40 Cf. Matt. 12:34; 15:18; Lk. 6:45.41 Cf. Moo, James, pg. 96, who quotes John Calvin: “[James] does not define generally what religion is, but

reminds us that religion without the things he mentions is nothing.”42 Cf. Dan G. McCartney, James (Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament; Grand Rapids,

MI: Baker, 2009), pg. 128, who writes, “When James says that this religion is ‘void,’ he is echoing the judgment of Jeremiah (2:5; 8:19; 10:15; 51:18 [28:18 LXX]) against idolatrous religion. In James’s eyes, uncontrolled speech and self-deception put a person’s religion in the same class as idolatry.”

13

unstained from the world. It’s interesting that he mentions these two things, and interesting in our setting, because in our culture, in our political climate, throughout my lifetime—maybe it was different before; I don’t know—but you could characterize “the left”—or at least one side; I can never remember, so y’all can correct me later; I don’t really care—one side of the political spectrum, Christians who want to engage with that side are interested in, “Let’s make sure we take care of orphans and widows; let’s make sure we take care of the homeless; let’s make sure we’re doing social things and taking care of the people.” And the other side of the political spectrum, “the right,” or the conservative end has typically been focused on, “We need to make sure we maintain our moral purity. We make sure that we’re living upright.” Those two ends of the spectrum of our political climate—James puts them together and says that you’ve got to have them both. You must have them together.43

I learned something interesting about the word “orphan” here that I didn’t know before. A person could be called an “orphan” in the ancient world if they lost one parent.44 That’s incredibly significant to me because what James is implying here by pointing that out, by referring to orphans who may have lost both parents—but they may have lost just one—what James is implying is that for a single parent the church has a responsibility to fill the gap in the home of a single parent. I’m not saying that the church is supposed to replace the absentee father, but we’ve got to do more than criticize the absentee father. We actually have to step in and seek to fill the hole that the absentee father leaves. James is saying that that’s an aspect of “pure and undefiled religion before God.” And I don’t know if we have any single parents in our midst or listening to this, but if we know of single parents near us, we have an obligation, a responsibility to step in in the loss that’s there. It doesn’t matter how the loss happened. It doesn’t matter. We need to be caring for the families that have these great losses.

Orphans and widows are both examples, representative examples, of those who have lost the most important relationships in their lives, and James is saying that we have a responsibility to fill in for those losses, to some degree. Now, it’s interesting here that he specifically calls God “the Father” right here. He just tacks that on; he is God “the Father.” And I think he wants to remind us here that God has adopted us into his family. All of us together, God has drawn us into his family. We are all his children. We were not his children before we became believers in Jesus. We were not. He adopted us into his family and made us his children by grace. And so, since we’re in his family, he calls us to imitate our Father. We are to imitate our Father, and our Father, God, has a special concern for orphans and widows, a special concern for those who have lost in this world, in this life. So, we should imitate our Father in his care for orphans and widows and reach out to those people who have lost the most significant relationships to them.45

43 This point was brought to mind by John Piper, “The Peril of Partiality,” sermon preached at Bethlehem Baptist Church, in Minneapolis, MN, January 18, 2004. He said, “True religion visits orphans and widows, and true religion ‘keeps oneself unstained from the world.’ Here is something to provoke the liberal and something to provoke the conservative. James gets in the face of leftward leaning democrats and James gets in the face of rightward leaning Republicans: To the one he says: Care about social justice and works of compassion. To the other he says: Care about private morality: chastity, honesty, fidelity, modesty, purity.”

44 See the research summarized by McKnight, James, pg. 170, where he writes, “Recent study of papyri has shown that to be called an ‘orphan’ requires only that one has lost one parent and not both. In other words, ‘orphan’ often meant ‘fatherless’ (or ‘motherless’) rather than ‘parent-less,’ bringing into sharper focus why for the ‘fatherless’ James may be pointing to God as ‘Father’ in this text.”

45 Cf. McCartney, James, pg. 127, who writes, “But although his concern is highly practical, James, unlike many of his later interpreters, does not lose his grounding in the gospel. Pure and undefiled religion is possible

14

We cannot replace what’s been lost; we cannot replace the intimacy that’s lost for a widow. But we can provide some measure of companionship to remedy the loneliness that’s there. We can seek to alleviate some of the financial burden that’s often there when a spouse is lost. And God calls us to do whatever we can in that case.

I suspect that the reference to orphans and widows is representative. There are other classes of people that have needs like this. One writer suggests that we extend this thought to those people such as “immigrants trying to adjust to a new life, impoverished third-world dwellers, the handicapped, or the homeless.”46 It is significant and beautiful to me that we just had a team of people in Kentucky last week serving the handicapped and helping them, and I wonder if there’s more we could do here, if there are handicapped in our families or in our midst, in our community that we could be reaching out to help.

The point here in all of this is that if we’re truly welcoming the Word, welcoming the implanted gospel, we will welcome other people. We will welcome other people. We will welcome people that are different that us; we will welcome people who have lost significantly; as uncomfortable as it make us, we will welcome people if we welcome the Word.

The other aspect that James mentions here is “keeping oneself unstained from the world.” I hope you know this: the culture around you will tarnish you. It doesn’t matter if you were living in 1950s America or whatever golden age you want to pretend there was, every culture on this planet made up of sinful human beings will tarnish Christians. It will! It has that tendency. And so what James calls for here is not to withdraw from the world. He calls for the same thing that John calls for, to be “in the world but not of it.”47 To live in the world, to engage with the culture, to engage with non-believers, and at the same time, to stand apart and not allow the taint, the stain, the dirt to rest on us. Now, ultimately we have great confidence in this because Jesus has made us clean by his blood…permanently!48 And so we stand in this world—in a world that’s filled with dirt and grime and muck—we stand as people who are truly cleansed by the blood of Jesus. Nevertheless, we must still stand firm against the onslaught of dirt and filth that could get on us and tarnish us and tarnish our reputation. The claim to be Christians in this world, the claim to be followers of Jesus—you know what Jesus did? He was a friend of sinners!49 He ate with them!50 He went to them; he touched them. Do you remember the story at the end of Mark 1?51 It’s one of my favorite stories in the Gospels. He touched the leper! And in their world, if you touch a leper, you get dirty! But Jesus touched a leper, and he didn’t get dirty! The leper got clean! That’s now our responsibility in this world. It’s to reach out in a dirty world and bring cleanness. We’re the only people who can! We have this gospel implanted in us. Paul used the imagery of a “jar of clay,” remember? It’s not because we’re so impressive; we’re just a clay pot!

because God is Father, particularly a father for the fatherless, who brought forth his people by the word and continues to implant that word which produces the good works in view. This is what constitutes true religion that is acceptable to God.”

46 Moo, James, pg. 97.47 Thinking of 1 John 2:15-16. However, this exact phrase is not actually in the Bible at all, but it more

closely reflects Jesus’s words in John 17:11, 15-16, 18.48 Cf. 1 John 1:7; Rev. 7:14.49 Cf. Matt. 11:19; Lk. 7:34.50 Cf. Mark 2:16.51 Mark 1:40-45.

15

But God has put his gospel, his saving power in us! We carry it everywhere we go. Let us speak it to the people around us.

As we come to the Lord’s Table this morning, these are the ideas I want you to think about and remember. God has made us his children. He is our Father; this table that we come to is the family meal. He invites us to come at his table. He has welcomed us into his family, into his home, dirty sinners though we are. He welcomes us into his family, and he says, “Come, eat at my table.” And we come as those having been cleansed by the blood of Jesus. As we take these elements of cracker and juice, as you hold them in your hands and put them in your mouths, take a moment and feel, taste, touch what Jesus has done for you. His death has brought you into God’s family; he’s made you a child of God. His death and his resurrection have cleansed you permanently from the stain of the world. And so, the call on our lives is to live in the world in such a world that we avoid the muck, but not by running from it, but by cleaning it up, reaching out into it and providing the one thing that no one else can: the gospel message that God has given to us.

16