This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

(upbeat music) - Welcome to day five, our last day of looking at James chapter
one. We're going to be looking at verses 22 to 27 today. We've been talking all
week about how faith works.

Faith makes a difference in our lives. It works when you have problems, it works
when you have doubts, it works when temptations come. And today, as we look at
these verses, they talk about how faith works to get us to be the kind of person
that God wants us to be.

It works to change my actions. If the Bible doesn't change the way I act, if
God's truth doesn't make a difference in who I am and what I'm doing, then I
really am not listening to it. But when I listen, it will change the way I act.

Listen to what these verses say. James one beginning in verse 22, "Do not merely
listen to the word, "and so deceive yourselves. "Do what it says.

" Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who
looks at his face in a mirror and after looking at himself, goes away and
immediately forgets what he looks like. But the man who looks intently into the
perfect law that gives freedom and continues to do this, not forgetting what
he's heard, but doing it will be blessed in what he does. These verses talk
about the blessing of looking at God's word and letting it change our actions
and then we're blessed in what we do.

Faith works to change my actions. We're really following up on what we ended
with yesterday as we talked about temptation. We talked about the fact that one
of the main ways that you defeat temptation, close the door on temptation in
your life, is to accept the word.

So let God's word speak to your life. And Paul, after saying that, makes very
clear what he means when he says accept the word. He's not talking about just
knowing about the Bible or just knowing the facts of the Bible.

You can know about the Bible and know the facts of the Bible and it won't make
one bit of difference in your life. He's talking about acting on it. Trusting
God and doing what God says.

Acting upon what you hear. Remember at the beginning of the week, we said verse
22 is really the theme verse of James. Don't merely listen to the word and so
deceive yourselves.

Do what it says. There can be something deceptive about going to church
sometimes. I know that may sound strange, but it's true.

We go to church and we sit and we listen to a sermon. And if all we do is
listen, we don't ever do anything about it. The Bible says we're deceiving
ourselves.

We may feel like we have more faith 'cause we listen to somebody talk about the
Bible, but faith works when I do something about it. Faith works when I act upon
what God has said to me. So a great question every time you're coming out of
church is God, what do you want me to do about that?

What one little prayer, what one little thing, what one big thing, what one
great prayer, what do you want me to do about that? Because hearing without
doing is a deceived faith. You think you're changing, but you're only watching.

These verses talk about how to be a good listener, how to listen to God's word
in a way that makes a difference. And basically they say, they give this picture
of a mirror and they say don't glance, do gaze. Don't just glance in a mirror.

Somebody who listens but doesn't do what it says is like a person who glances in
a mirror and walks away and has no idea what they just saw. They have no
recollection of what they just saw. It goes in one ear and out the other.

It goes in your mind and out the back. You don't even remember this last week's
sermon. You don't even remember what you read in the Bible this morning because
you haven't done anything about it.

I don't know about you, but I remember the parts of the Bible that I do. I can
hear a sermon and forget it just as easily as you can, but when I do something
about it, then I remember it. So you don't just glance.

And people are good at glancing. We sort of graze our way through the Bible
sometimes. We do it with television.

We graze a little bit of this channel, a little bit of this channel. We channel
surf all the way through. But the basic principle is this, we forget what we
glance at.

Our brain is just too much of a filter. So you need to not glance, you need to
gaze. Did you hear those verses?

Verse 25, you look intently. I mean, you take time with the Bible. You don't
just go over the surface of it.

You look intently. And the best way to look intently into God's word is to say,
what does God want me to do? You look intently into God's word as you ask, what
do you intend to do?

Because you've just read God's word. You gaze into it. The basic principle is
this, we become what we gaze at.

Whatever you're spending the most time thinking about, whatever you're spending
the most time gazing at, you're going to become more and more like that. It's
going to become more and more important to you. And faith changes the way that
we act.

But how does it do that? It does it as we gaze into God's word. That's the
action that God tells us to take in order for faith to change the way that we
act.

And you know what I've learned? I've got to do this every day. I can't depend on
yesterday's gazing, or last year's gazing, or five years ago gazing.

I've spent a good amount of my life as a pastor studying God's word and gazing
at God's word. But I can't depend on what happened in the past to get me to have
faith today. It's a daily decision.

Just like you look into a mirror every day when you get up in the morning to
say, how do I look? And let me make sure my hair and everything else looks
right. You look into God's word every day because you need it every single day.

A lot of us wouldn't dare go out into the world without looking into a physical
mirror. We want to make sure we look okay. But we don't look into the mirror of
God's word.

And so our heart is bitter, or our mind is selfish. And we don't look maybe ugly
on the outside, but the ugliness on the inside is coming out. We've got to gaze
into God's word every single day.

If you're not looking into God's word, gazing into it, it's not going to work to
change the way that you act. If you're trying to change the way you act without
gazing into God's word, won't work. On the other hand, if you're looking at
God's word without it changing the way that you act, you're glancing and not
gazing.

You start to gaze. God, what do I intend to do based on my intently looking into
your word? And we're talking about how faith acts.

And James goes on to give an example of that. He talks about real religion and
what it means. Listen to what he says beginning in verse 26.

If anyone considers himself religious and yet does not keep a tight rein on his
tongue, he deceives himself and his religion is worthless. Religion that our
Father accepts is pure and faultless as this, to look after orphans and widows
in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. It's
interesting these verses talk a lot about religion, one of the few places in the
Bible that this word is used so often.

What is religion? We often think of it as some denomination of churches, but the
idea here of religion is the outward working of my inward worship. Religion is
what I do on the outside based on my worship of God internally.

It's the expression of my worship. The Greek word here, threschia, has to do
with the outward expression of your worship of God. And these verses talk about
false religion and true religion.

We all know about fake religion, just empty tradition. James, throughout this
book, is going to go after some false teachers who were claiming that faith was
more a philosophy than a lifestyle. And he says, that's false religion.

If it doesn't change the way you talk, if it doesn't change the way you treat
people with your words, then that's worthless. Why even say you have religion,
he says. No, real religion, he says, and then he gives two identifiers.

He says, real religion is looking after orphans and widows in their distress,
and it's also keeping oneself unstained and unpolluted by the world. That's not
an exhaustive list, but it's a balanced list. Did you notice?

He talks about the fact that there's something we do on the outside, our
conduct, taking care of orphans and widows, but also something that happens on
the inside, our character. True religion isn't one or the other. It's both.

It's both conduct and character. To say, I'm doing great on the outside. I know
my character's not so good, but at least I'm doing good things for people.

That's not true religion, he says. And to say, oh, I'm really doing well on the
inside. I've got a great character going on, but you never do anything for
anyone else.

He says, that's not true religion either. It's both. You care for orphans and
widows in their distress, for people that are unable to meet their own needs.

And note, James is saying here, this is an act of worship. Now, the interesting
thing there is that means we do this together as a church body. Widows and
orphans are not just the responsibilities of individuals in the church who might
have adopted an orphan or have a widowed mom or a widower dad.

They're the responsibility of the whole church. What does that mean? When you
see someone who's worn out with helping an aging parent, you help them.

And if you're worn out from helping an aging parent and somebody offers to help
you, you let them because it's our mutual responsibility. We're not meant to do
this alone. It's an expression of worship of the body of Christ.

You care for those who are unable to meet their own needs, orphans and widows in
their distress, but you also keep oneself unstained, unpolluted by the world.
You recognize that God can meet your needs. This goes back to what we said about
temptation.

I recognize that God has my best interest at heart and he will meet my needs.
This balance is very vital. You care about the world, but you're not polluted by
the world.

You're in the world, but you're not of the world. True religion is the outward
working of our inward worship. It's expressing what's happened in our hearts
because Jesus is Lord.

It's expressing what's happened in our hearts because we know that God created
us. It's expressing in our actions what's happened in our hearts because we know
that God loves us. In one sense, religion is saying to the world, this is what I
do because God loves me.

I know there's lots of other definitions of religion out there. That's the
Bible's definition of religion. So you may never prayed this.

I want to pray together today that God would help us to be more religious. God
help us. Help me to be truly religious.

Not a religion that's filled with long sounding names and long standing
traditions. God help me to outwardly express the love that I have for you. Help
in my life worship not just to be something internal, help it to be an external
expression to the world around me.

Lord help me to care about those nobody else cares about. Instead of thinking I
don't have time, help me to realize these are people that you made. God do
something in my heart that helps me to care.

And God help me to decide to keep myself unstained, unpolluted by this world. To
realize that with all the world offers that seems so great and so wonderful, the
truth is you can meet all my needs and the world cannot. Help me to trust in you
today.

Lord help me to be more religious, truly religious. I pray this in Jesus name,
amen. Well, make sure you join us next week.

We're going to be studying James chapter two together. That is the chapter that
talks about faith without works is dead. See you next week.