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Sermon: Doers > Hearers · North Raleigh United Methodist Church Podcast

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Well, as I said, this morning we're going to be beginning a series in the book of James, James towards the end of your Bibles, and we're going to start in verse 19 of chapter 1.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: I invite you to hear God's word this morning.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Know this, my dear brothers and sisters.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to grow angry.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: This is because an angry person doesn't produce God's righteousness.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, with humility, set aside all moral filth and the growth of wickedness, and welcome the word planted deep inside you, the very word that is able to save you.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: You must be doers of the word and not only hearers who mislead themselves.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Those who hear but don't do the word are like those who look at their faces in a mirror.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: They look at themselves, walk away, and immediately forget what they look like.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: But there are those who study the perfect law, the law of freedom, and continue to do it.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: They don't listen and then forget, but they put it into practice in their lives.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: They will be blessed in whatever they do.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: If those who claim devotion to God don't control what they say, they mislead themselves.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: Their devotion is worthless.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: True devotion, the kind that is pure and faultless before God the Father, is this to care for orphans and widows in their difficulties, and to keep the world from contaminating us.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: Friends, this is the word of God for us, the people of God.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks be to God.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Let us pray.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: O Lord, let the words of my mouth and the thoughts and meditations of all of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, for you, O Lord, are our rock and our redeemer.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: This summer, my girls asked me one day, hey Dad, what book of the Bible should we read?
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: And my pastor's heart was glowing, right?
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: And and and I told them, I said, Well, no question, you should read the book of James, right?
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: Read James and read just a chapter a day.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: And after a couple days, they said, Hey, that was pretty good.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: Like it makes sense, which I was very pleased with when they said this, because I remember when I was in middle school, I felt the same way about the book of James.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: I could read it, I could understand it, and I could try to put it into practice.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: What scares a lot of us away from reading the Bible on our own is that we've done what I call the point and shoot method before, right?
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like we just we just pop that thing open and kind of pick here, right?
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: And we say, and then we wonder after that, like, why didn't that say anything to my life?
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: Or I don't understand a thing about what I just read.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: We don't understand maybe the cultural or the historical context that we read, and so we give up reading the scripture.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: But James, we're gonna encourage you over these next four weeks to read it.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: Try reading this entire five-chapter letter this week.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: In his intro to the book of James, Eugene Peterson, who translated the message paraphrase, he says this wisdom is not primarily knowing the truth, although it certainly includes that.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: Rather, it is skill in living.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: Skill in living.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's what James is all about.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: We're following up talking about our purpose that has some very intentional words, right?
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: About belong as you are, become like Jesus, be loved for God's world.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: We're following that up with some very practical advice from James about skill in living.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: This is everyday life type of stuff in James.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: Discipleship is real life.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: It is grounded.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's about how we treat those closest to us.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's about our inward thoughts and desires.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: I have been living with our passage this week, quite literally, and one night this week, after a harmless accident in our house, I got angry with my daughter.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: I had literally spent two or three hours that day studying this passage about how to be slow to anger.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: I had read it multiple times during the day.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: I need this skill in living as much as any of you do.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: In the book of James, we don't hear a lot about the person and work of Jesus Christ.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: James, who is traditionally thought of as the brother of Jesus, assumed the churches around Jerusalem that he was leading and writing to knew about Jesus and his teaching.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's almost like James is this extended answer to a single question that Jesus asked the disciples in Luke 6 when he says, Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and do not do what I tell you?
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: This is why James makes sense for us.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: The question for us in James is not, do you get it?
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: Do you understand the nuances of theology?
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's are you going to do it?
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: James opens today with a verse that I should probably say and repeat and then go sit down, right?
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to grow angry.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: Let's hear that again.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to grow angry.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: Let's hear that one in light of midterm elections and the barrage of nastiness that we will all encounter over the next month.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to grow angry.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: The message paraphrase says it this way: lead with your ears, follow up with your tongue, and let anger straggle along in the rear.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: The notion of being quick to listen is fascinating to me, probably because I am so often quick to speak.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: Many of us have been rewarded for being quick to speak.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: We prove that we have knowledge or something to contribute.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: But James does not praise those of us who are quick to speak, it is just the opposite.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: Be quick to listen, quick to understand, quick to place yourself in someone else's shoes.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: I had to learn the practice of active listening in classes about counseling and pastoral care.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: I learned that active listening is different than what I almost always do.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: In conversation, I was looking for connections with someone or thinking about how I want to retort to them, carrying out my own conversation and building upon what they are saying.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: But when I'm actively listening, I am not thinking about what I'm going to say or what my next move will be.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, I repeat back to them what I've heard them say.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: If you've ever been friends with someone who's a therapist or a counselor, you know this gift of active listening.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: You finally feel heard by someone.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: The fast-talking, rarely listening Alexander Hamilton is given this advice by Aaron Burr in the musical, right?
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: He says, talk less, smile more.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to keep going, all right?
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: But if you know it, you know it.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: But here's the deal.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: I think we should probably follow Aaron Burr's advice in the first part to talk less, maybe not on the part about being politically conniving.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: It didn't work very well for Aaron Burr there.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: But the talk less part is good advice for some of us today.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: I wonder if James were writing today, if he might include, be slow to type.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: Be slow to text.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: Be slow to reply on the email.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: Be slow to post or comment.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: If I am not quick to listen, and I fire off a response, it does not go well.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: It always escalates.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: And for what?
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: Does it ever end well?
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: Look at the wars that are raging between Ukraine and Russia, between the US and Iran.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: What keeps happening?
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: One side attacks another.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: The next side escalates.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: The conflict moves from only killing soldiers alone to taking out innocent civilians and destroying infrastructure that will take decades to rebuild.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: Are the world's leaders being quick to listen?
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: Hardly.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: An eye for an eye just leaves both of us blind.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: Retaliation does not work.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: As James continues, he hits another high note.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: You must be doers of the word and not only hearers who mislead themselves.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the thing, though, we have so many ways to be hearers of the word today.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: You can leave this service and find better preachers than me immediately on your phone.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: You can listen to their podcasts, you can subscribe to their YouTube channel.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: You can buy books that study the word of God.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: You can follow Substacks.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: You can watch TikToks.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: And here's the problem: hearing the word more and more doesn't always make someone a doer of the word.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: That was Jesus' problem with the Pharisees all throughout his ministry.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: Those guys knew the word.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: They studied it.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: They could quote chapter and verse and which rabbi said which thing about which particular law for each situation, but they were not doers of the word.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: James talks here about someone looking into a mirror and then two seconds later forgetting what they saw.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: That might seem like a strange example.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: So how about this one?
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: How many of you crammed for a test as a high school student?
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: You ever done that?
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it was in the subject you did not enjoy particularly, but you just had to get that information in the noggin long enough to spit it out on a test.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: I can visualize history study sheets that I made and just went over dates and battles and things that the teacher said that I needed to know.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: And guess what?
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: I did good on the test.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: But could I actually tell you anything about that three days later or even three hours later?
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: It was literally in and out of my brain.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: The information was just that.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: It was information.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: It had no formation upon me.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's what a lot of us do with Christian teaching.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we learn it along the way.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: We went to Sunday school or we show up here at church, but we don't allow the word to penetrate our lives.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: James says that there are those who study God's word and put it into practice in their lives.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's what being a doer of the word actually is: someone who does it, who puts God's word into practice.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: In Matthew 21, Jesus tells this story about two brothers, and their father asked them to come and work in the field.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: The first brother says, nah, I don't feel like it.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: No child has ever said something like that to their parents before.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: But then he ends up going out to work in the field.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: The second son, right?
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: He says that he'll be right there.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: He'll be right there to work in the field just when the show's done, Dad, right?
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: Because they had Netflix, okay?
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: And it probably started playing the next one, and you know how that goes, right?
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: But he never goes to work in the field.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus asked the Pharisees which one of these did the Father's will?
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: And the Pharisees can clearly answer, well, the first one, the one who actually did the work.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: This is the issue for Jesus.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: He did not teach for the sake of knowledge.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus is not making sure that you can cram for some heavenly exam.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: He taught for the sake of action.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: Over and over we hear Jesus say, Blessed are you if you go and do these things.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: Or after he tells a parable, he tells the crowd, go and do likewise.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: So if we're going to develop the skill of living, we have to practice.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: Brennan Manning, a Franciscan priest, said it this way.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips, walk out the door, and deny him by their lifestyle.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: What's the cause of atheism?
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: Manning asks.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: The preponderance of drugs?
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: The hypersexualization of our culture?
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: The constant growth of consumerism?
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: No, says Father Manning, it is Christians.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: Christians who are in the church building, acknowledge Jesus with their lips, walk out the door and deny Jesus by the way they live.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, the problem is that we are hearers of the word, but not doers of the word.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: If we are becoming like Jesus, then we better be love for God's world.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: We could just follow the command that Pastor Laura preached about earlier this year.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: Thou shalt not be a jerk.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: So what does the skill of living look like?
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: Is it just saying the right things and avoiding saying the wrong things?
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: No, James says.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: He says at the end of our passage, true devotion, the kind that is pure and faultless before God the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their difficulties, and to keep the world from contaminating us.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: James tells us that to be a doer of the word means that we always look out for the outsider, the oppressed, the marginalized.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: In the Old Testament, God calls the people of Israel to look out for the orphans and the widows together no less than 30 times.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: These are the people who a society has made powerless.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: These are the very people who Jesus spends his time with, those on the margins, those who make us a little uncomfortable.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: It is a challenge to love the outsider because we love being on the inside.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: It feels good to be part of the group, to be included.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: And if we are so fortunate to be included, there is something in our nature that wants to exclude others, to keep the circle small.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: The marketing of our world preys upon this.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: Join the exclusive members-only club.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: Get status so that you can be part of the Platinum Club or Lounge.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: The world's logic encourages us in this notion.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: Find who is like you, exclude everyone else.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure that you're in the club, that you have the status, that you have secured your spot.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: If anyone is having traumatic flashbacks of middle or high school right now, I'm sorry.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: But I think this is what James means by keeping the world from contaminating us.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: The logic of the world says ignore the needs of the struggling.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: Find a scapegoat or someone else to blame and assuage your guilt.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, hide those who are experiencing homelessness.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: Ignore the plight of the immigrants when the news cycle has forgotten them.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: Forget the cries of the foster kids who need a stable home.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: Friends, at our baptism, and when we join the church, we say vows.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: We make these vows to God and to our fellow church members.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: The second of those questions that we ask, right, is will you resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves?
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: And those joining the church, those baptizing their children or getting baptized say, I do.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: That's not just talking about you avoiding swear words.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's talking about you and the church caring for the outsider.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: When we become insiders in the church, we immediately become concerned with who is outside the circle.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: When we become insiders in God's church, we immediately become concerned with who is outside of the circle.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: Friends, we are called to expand the circle and to ask who is not at the table.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: For loving God compels us to loving our neighbor.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: You see, James is not that hard to understand, but it is hard to do.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: Because the gospel of Jesus requires something of us.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: In his essential work, The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes about the difference between cheap grace and costly grace.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: He writes that cheap grace is grace that requires nothing of us.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: Baptism without church discipline.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: Communion without confession.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, cheap grace is just hearing the word.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: Cheap grace is a faith that doesn't require something of you.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: Costly grace, however, is just what it sounds like.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: It is costly because it calls us to give up something in order to follow.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: And it is grace because we are receiving Jesus, the greatest gift of all.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you are here today to be reminded that you can't encounter Jesus and just go on living in the same way.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you are tired of a life of cheap grace.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: Well, my friends, you've got a practice plan for the week.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: Coach James has it laid out for you in the huddle.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: He's drawn it up on the clipboard.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: Be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to grow angry.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: Do the word, don't just hear it.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: Take care of the outsider.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: The question for us are you going to do it?
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: Are you going to put his words into practice to grow in the skill of living?
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.