As the kids are heading out, we are going to turn our attention now to the book of James. We are still in chapter 1. We are now at verse 19. For those of us who are maybe dropping in for the first time this week, we are in the book of James. It's way at the back of the New Testament or towards the back. So look towards the back of your Bible if you're looking for it. If you don't have a Bible with you, the text should be up on the screen as we go this morning. We're going to drop in there and we're continuing this letter.
Before we look to the text though, I want us to bow our heads and pray. Lord, we are constantly in need of Your words. You have appropriately designed us to need You. You have appropriately constructed our being, formed us in such a way that we need Your words to know what is true, We need your words to know how to live and to know how to love you, to know how to do, to know how to follow all the things that you call us to. We need your words so that we can see Jesus clearly. I pray that you would help us as we turn now to James, to a passage specifically about Receiving your word, that you would speak in fresh ways. Blow out the cobwebs of our busy weeks, remove distractions, now extend your grace. Speak, Lord, in the preaching of your word. We pray this in your name, Jesus. Amen.
Alright, as I said, we're in James chapter 1, verse 19. Continue our series, James: Faith in Gear. So beginning at verse 19, hear the holy and authoritative Word of God this morning. 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.
Now, as I was researching the passage today, I actually came across a story that I think is a helpful introduction to the topic we're going to look at. We're actually in the middle of a section that we could have bit off more this morning, but I think there's just too much there to actually unpack in one message, so we're going to We're going to break it apart and we're going to save the next verses in this passage for subsequent weeks. But as I was researching, as I was looking, I came across a story about Napoleon. Everyone knows who Napoleon is, right? It's not just a little short guy on the big white charger. He was the emperor of France and he rose to that fame even though he wasn't French. He was from Corsica, which is kind of a funny thing. But he was a military genius. That's what Napoleon is known for. He was such a military genius that he took France— and this is kind of funny. I mean, we think of the French as kind of the guys always losing the wars, right? Well, Napoleon is such a military genius that the French could actually win wars when he was their general. And he took France and essentially, with their forces, conquered most of continental Europe. So you think of most of what we think of as Europe, and Napoleon ruled that at one time. And it's not until he overreaches and tries to conquer Russia that his empire falls apart. One of the things we don't know about him as well, that I came across in my reading, was that Napoleon's Grand Army, as it was called, at its height, had over half a million soldiers. So 500,000 troops. This is a day when horses pull everything. When the army marches, 95% of the army is walking, right? They're not getting in Humvees. 500,000 people, and he had this massive army, and so there's just massive administrative challenges that come with running well that size army. You can take that size army into the field, but if you're going to be successful, you have to be able to send orders effectively, and that was one of the challenges that he faced. How do you communicate effectively to half a million people? Just generally, saying we're going to go to this location, much less in the heat of battle. How in the heat of battle, when bullets are flying and cannonballs are exploding, do you make sure that your orders are going out, that they're getting received in the proper way for half a million people? That's oftentimes the difference between victory and defeat, right? How those orders come in, how they go out. Well, Napoleon realized that there was a breakdown in communication in his army. Some of those orders weren't going out well, weren't being received well. And so he devised a strategy that's actually pretty ingenious. He required— and this is what the place I was reading this called it— a marginal idiot to be in his command post at all times. And marginal idiot is just a phrase they used in that day for Basically, an individual who, you know, he's not a complete idiot, he's just a marginal idiot. So he was not intelligent. He could read, but barely. Only the most rudimentary of words. Simple sentences. He wasn't completely stupid, but he was hardly intelligent. And the whole purpose of this was Napoleon realized if he sent out an order, and the marginal idiot understood it, then the order would be relayed effectively. If he wrote an order and they put it in front of this guy and the guy read it and just kind of looked up with that look that I guess a marginal idiot has on his face at times, Napoleon realized, 'I have to rewrite the order.' The idea was ingenious. If the fool couldn't understand it, he had to rewrite it. Because Napoleon knew, and this is part of the point of our passage, that it's not enough to convey wise instructions. We have to do work to make sure that those wise instructions are comprehended, that they're properly received.
And that's part of the point James is making in the text today. Now, the broader context— remember we said we're kind of truncating the passage— the broader context of James 17 to 27 centers on the topic of God's word. And in a very subtle way, even as we concluded last week's passage, James has been shifting our attention. Verse 18, listen how he concluded: 'Of His,' God's, 'own will He brought us forth,' how? 'By the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures.' The word of truth is a preview of what lays for us in the rest of chapter 1, a chapter that's now going to center and rest on the topic of Scripture. Today in verse 21, we'll see that that word is implanted, right? After that, we're going to see in the subsequent weeks how we become doers of the word that we hear. The next 8 verses, that's going to be James's obsession. How do we appropriately receive and respond and live out the things that the word of God instructs to us? He's got the Bible in his crosshairs. Remember what else we said about James? It's sort of the proverb of the New Testament. So James is a pastor at heart. He's actually the pastor of the Jerusalem church. And James, as a pastor, is always imminently practical. He's not just going to give us like a pie-in-the-sky theology of the doctrine of the Word of God. He's going to give us practical, usable things. To know about God's Word that affect the way we live our lives.
That make sense? We're going to see this morning, this morning specifically, the section of this passage that deals with hearing the Word.
6 · Oswald exposits James 1:19-20, noting the imperative structure and common misapplication to interpersonal relationships, while citing Proverbs 17:28 and Mark Twain to show the general wisdom of the principle before pivoting to argue this isn't James's primary intent in context
In order to hear properly, the first thing we see— and there's only two points in the sermon this morning— the first thing we see is that we have to be intentional about the way we approach the Word. To hear correctly, we have to approach correctly. So his first topic is considering and looking at the nature in which people correctly, wisely, prudentially approach God's Word. He says this in verse 19: Know this, my beloved brothers— so he's talking to believers— my beloved brothers, let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger, for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. James starts with a string of imperatives. At the front of that string, so, 'Let us do these things,' he says, 'Know this.' And you can actually translate that loosely to say, 'You already know this.' The implication being, you already know this and you already know to do this and live this out. He takes that, refers to his beloved believers, these Christians, and gives them a straightforward sense of practical application. If you've heard this verse quoted, you've probably heard it quoted in the context of personal relationships, right? Be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger as you relate to other people. And that's wise counsel. Once again, James sounds like Proverbs. Proverbs 17:28: Even a fool Even a marginal idiot who keeps silent is considered wise. When he closes his lips, he is deemed intelligent. Or the more earthy version from our American brother Mark Twain: It's better to have people think you're a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. That's how people often apply this passage. And it's wise counsel. You heard the folk wisdom: two ears, one mouth, right? Listen more than you talk. Well, that's helpful and it's true, but it's really not what the text is getting at this morning.
7 · Oswald warns against proof-texting by illustrating Ray Lewis's misuse of Isaiah 54 at the Super Bowl, then argues that careful attention to James's literary context reveals the passage's primary focus is not interpersonal relationships but our relationship to Scripture itself
Sometimes people quote texts of Scripture out of context. They proof text, we say. And so they'll grab a text and they'll use it, and they'll memorize it, and they'll quote it, but they use it in such a way that actually has no bearing to the context around it. And so it's not actually helpful. It's not being used correctly. So here's an example. Anyone see the buildup to the Super Bowl and the actual Super Bowl itself? Nod, raise your hands. You guys were following what was going on. Maybe you even stayed tuned during the half-hour blackout. Well, if you watched that, you saw a lot of Ray Lewis. And you saw a lot of Ray Lewis, the linebacker, for the Ravens proof-texting, grabbing scriptures completely out of context and then quoting them in ways that were completely separated from their original meaning. And so in the week preceding the Super Bowl, 2 weeks before, when he wins the AFC Championship game, they said, 'You know, how do you feel having won the game?' And he quotes from Isaiah 54, 'No weapon formed against me shall prosper.' Really? I was under the impression the opposing team was using footballs, not swords. That's proof-texting. That's grabbing a passage and ripping it out of its context and in doing so, losing the original meaning, the original intention of that author. So we don't want to do that this morning. We want to be careful to read the context around it. And so when we do that, we see there's wisdom about these words that can be applied to our interpersonal relationships, but the context guides us that the point isn't most about our relationships. Remember, he's dealing in this section with the Word. The context is dominated by that before and after references to Scripture.
8 · Oswald exposits the phrase 'righteousness of God' in James 1:20, carefully distinguishing James's usage (practical righteousness/sanctification) from Paul's usage (imputed righteousness/justification), and establishes that James's concern throughout the letter is that believers produce the holiness God desires by reflecting the righteousness already declared over them
So let's look at those three exhortations again with an eye towards how they're set in the context of James chapter 1. 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. In verse 18, just before this, he reminded us about the power of the word to regenerate hearts, to save people. He's just talked about that, and now he talks about this. His point is that the same word that brings new birth in Christ that same word, that same gospel, that same word of truth has the power to sanctify us in Christ, to make us holy in Christ. In other words, it has the power, James says, to produce in us the righteousness that pleases God. Now, one thing that will trip us up as we go in here, and we just need to keep in mind throughout James, is that as we read the letter of James, we can't assume that this is a letter of Paul, right? James and Paul will use similar vocabulary, but they'll use those words and those phrases in different ways. In fact, James' letter is written before Paul's letters. And so James isn't writing this thinking in terms of how Paul uses that same phrase, 'the righteousness of God,' in places like Romans and Galatians. They're not contradicting each other. They're using that phrase to speak to different things. How does Paul use that? Romans and Galatians, he uses this phrase, the righteousness of God, as the righteousness which comes from God. It's at the heart of justification, the heart of the good news of the gospel, that when we believe in Jesus, A miracle happens. God takes the righteousness, His righteousness, Christ's righteousness, and imputes it to us, covers us with it. He declares people when they believe in Jesus to be righteous. In Romans, He says they are counted as righteous, right? James is using that phrase in a different way. In fact, these 6 words in verse 20 probably actually summarize well his intent for the letter. He wants to empower us, wants to exhort us, encourage us, command us to produce, produce the righteousness that God desires for his people. He's not talking about the righteousness that God covers us with when we first believe. He's talking about now living in such a way that we begin to reflect more of the righteousness we've already been covered with. Does that make sense? Start looking, God is saying, like what I've declared you to be.
9 · Oswald reconnects James 1:19-20 to the earlier trial context of chapter 1, using the Napoleon and telephone game analogies to show that clear communication becomes exponentially more difficult and exponentially more critical when under pressure—believers most desperately need to hear God's Word correctly in the midst of trials
Now to do this, to grow in holiness, to become sanctified as the Scripture says, we have to properly approach the Word. That's the point of the context. And even though we've shifted slightly, I think James still has in mind the context trials. We can kind of lose sight of that. You know, we preach a passage and all these messages, right, so far have come from chapter 1. And so you can have this sense, it was like, yeah, trials, that was like 2 weeks ago. That's only a few verses ago. James is still tracking through chapter 1. He still wants us to be thinking of that entire broader context of what he's talked about. And so we think back to that illustration of Napoleon that we started with, right? That introduction. Communication is sometimes tough. You think of playing the game of telephone, right? You pass the message down around, and there's always some yahoo in the circle that intentionally bungles the message just to make the game more weird. But it's hard. Even if everyone's playing it correctly, the message gets garbled. Well, that's under ideal conditions. What happens to communication in the heat of battle? Or as James would say, what happens to communication in the midst of trials? In the midst of various trials and hardships? There's never a time when a soldier needs correct communication and needs to know precisely what his commanding officer's orders are than when he's on the front lines facing a charge, correct? He needs to know, do I stand my ground? Do we try and flank? Do we retreat? What are my orders? Bullets are flying. The adrenaline is soaring. It's the same way with other trials. We always need to know what God is saying, but we need to know especially in the midst of hardship. That's what James is pointing us to. When we meet these various trials of life, He says we need to be quick to hear the Word.
10 · Oswald applies the three imperatives to the trial context, confessing his own natural tendency to reverse them under pressure—becoming slow to listen, quick to speak (grumbling questions rather than gospel), and quick to anger—and diagnosing this pattern as echoing Israel's wilderness rebellion, then calling the congregation to the opposite response: intentional listening to God's promises in the midst of hardship
We need to be slow to speak in how we relate to the Word. And we need to be slow to anger regarding what it says. Ever thought about this passage in that way? When the heat gets turned up, if you're anything like me, I'm more prone to do the opposite of what James instructs. Right? When situations get difficult, I'm slow to listen. When things don't happen the way that I intend them to, the way that I've planned, I am quick to speak. And not like friendly hellos. We become quick to get angry. Or we French that up and dress it up and say, 'Quick to get frustrated.' Yeah, you're angry. We can admit it. There's never a time when being quick to speak is more dangerous than during trials. See, instead of preaching the gospel to ourselves like Scripture instructs us to do, go to the promises. Build your heart on the promises of God. Instead of preaching the gospel in the midst of trials, I start preaching temptation. I start asking unhelpful questions. Why me? What did I do to deserve this? How could you allow this to happen to me, God? Those questions sound familiar. That's when we're quick to speak, not speaking how James would have us, and that speech devolves into fruitless complaining and grumbling. And if we could listen to ourselves accurately, or better yet, if somebody was recording what was happening and we laid it over the front of your Bibles, what you're saying in circumstances actually looks a lot like a 21st century version of what Israel was saying in the wilderness and at multiple points in their history, right? When we're quick to speak, we grumble and we moan and we accuse God. James is showing us what we should be doing is the opposite. When trials start howling in our ears, We need to be more intentional than ever to listen, to hear God's word. We need reminders in the midst of trials more than ever about the nature of our gospel, about the source of our hope, about the nature of God's provision for us in Jesus. We need to be reminded that he is good, And if we are in Christ, He promises that all He does to us is good. We need reminders of all sorts of promises that His word gives to us. But to hear that, we have to close our mouths, swallow our anger, and open our ears to God's word.
11 · Oswald signals a shift from trial-specific application to general principles for hearing God's Word in any circumstance, broadening the scope while maintaining connection to James's ongoing concern with trials
James also has in mind, I think, the basic ways that Christians are called to hear the Word in any season. So I think he cares about trials. He's going to return to that subject again and again in the letter. But also just generally, what does it look like to properly approach God's Word? To properly hear what God is saying?
12 · Oswald identifies the two primary contexts in which Christians hear God's Word—corporate preaching and private devotional reading—establishing these as the spheres in which James's instructions about approach and reception apply
Well, this is what he says. I think the two most obvious contexts are: You hear God's Word through the preaching of God's Word. He commends that to us in Scripture. Something the church does when they gather is they hear the Word preached. And through personally studying and meditating and devoting yourself to Scripture. You read the Psalms and you see that over and over and over again, right? The call to meditate, to digest, to read, to be changed by God's Word. So in those two contexts, the preaching of the Word and the private personal reading of the Word. What does it look like to properly approach?
13 · Oswald applies 'quick to hear' as eager anticipation for Sunday worship, calling the congregation to arrive with intentional preparation and recognition that distracted hearts need deliberate readying to receive God's Word after the demands of the week
Well, James says you have to be quick to hear. Another way of considering that is you have to be eager to hear. That's what quick means. You could read that not just quick to hear, but James really kind of saying hurry up and listen! It's the instruction he's giving us. So here's application. If you're quick to hear, it means you're eager to hear. It means there's an excitement for Sunday, particularly in arriving, in arriving in such a way that recognizes my heart needs to be prepared to hear. Because even in the best week, I'm coming in from a howling week. There is all sorts of stuff on my plate that I'm leaving behind. Maybe it's still sitting there in the back of your head, right? Maybe you've got it set up on your iPhone that to-dos pop up. Maybe you're sitting here in the midst of Sunday morning and to-do lists are going to pop up. That's the nature of our weeks. So we have to come prepared knowing I need to hear, I have to be eager to hear, and that means I have to be particular in the way that I arrive.
14 · Oswald applies the regulative principle of worship to congregational singing, arguing that biblically-grounded songs function as preparation for hearing the preached Word, not merely as preliminary activity, and therefore require full engagement and attention
It's just also a recognition it doesn't just start when the sermon starts. All of worship— this is just kind of Reformed Theology 101. All of worship is meant to be shaped by the Word of God. So the songs that we sing, those aren't just songs where some hippie is sitting on a hill strumming a guitar and kind of coming up with words, right? There's songwriters that sit with their Bibles open, reading God's Word and writing music that comes from it. So when we come and sing God's Word, we're preparing our hearts for a more specific hearing of God's Word in the preaching. So that 30 minutes of singing, that's not just a massive prelude. That's not just sort of a time to kind of find your way in. It's not the time to go use the restroom if you need to a couple times. It's a time to recognize my heart needs to be tuned to hear. I need to prepare myself to receive God's words. Even as I sing about God's Word.
15 · Oswald gives concrete practices for attentive listening during preaching: note-taking if helpful, bringing and following the text, becoming an expository listener who filters the sermon through Scripture, and removing distractions (especially phones)—all in service of undivided attention to God's Word
That eagerness gets reflected in how we listen. The person who's quick to hear the Word preached is quick to sing it. He's also intentional. They take notes if that helps you hear. That's not the case for everybody. I'm not a legalist to be saying take notes. But if it helps you, if having that pen in your hand and writing helps you to recall and go back, do it. Bring your Bible. Open your Bible. Follow along. See the text. Read the text. Be an expository listener. Expository preaching means when we preach, we stand up here with the text and the text guides what we say. Being an expository listener means you take the text, you kind of hold it up to your ear, and you let the text guide how you hear what is spoken. You let the text filter the words of the preacher because that's what the text is supposed to do. You bring that intentionality to it. It means you put your phone on silent. Maybe turn it off so you don't get text messages. I've actually had it where I've had my phone on, and actually my phone's broken right now. I don't have the ability to turn it off. But I've had it where I've been up here preaching and I get a text message. That's a little distracting. I know it's distracting for you. I've got it set up where an ESPN app on my phone gives me score updates. That's not helpful on Sunday mornings. Getting a score update is not keeping your attention settled on the Word. It's causing your mind to drift. So put the phone away. Maybe you use the phone to take notes. Awesome. Excellent idea. But then you need to know and tell the person sitting next to you, whether it's your spouse or a friend or whoever, hold me accountable that as I'm taking notes, I'm not hitting the home button and then going to some other app to quick check Twitter or to quick check my email. I'm going to be undivided in my attention and intentionality to hear.
16 · Oswald extends Sunday eagerness to weekday personal devotions through an analogy to regular eating—we wouldn't eat only once per week and survive, so we can't spiritually subsist on Sunday-only Word intake—and measures hearing capacity by Bible engagement: dust accumulation indicates hearing loss
And it means just as quick and as eager as we are to hear on Sunday, We carry that same eagerness over to Monday. Wise people don't stop eating Tuesday through Saturday, right? That's not healthy. It's not good for your metabolism. It's not good for your survival. You don't eat one big meal. No one approaches the rest of the week and says, 'Man, I had a big Sunday brunch. I think I'm pretty good for the rest of the week.' So don't treat the Word of God that way. In the same way we set the calendar to hear the Word preached, we should set our schedules to approach the Word in personal devotions. And when we do this, James says we need to listen first. To hear the Word, you have to open the Word. Here's a way of thinking of this: the dustier your Bible is, the more hard of hearing you are. The dustier that Bible, the less you're hearing, the harder it is for you to hear.
17 · Oswald uses presidential speech attendance to calibrate the congregation's sense of proportion—if we prepare intently for temporal political authority, how much more should we prepare for hearing the eternal God speak through His Word, recognizing that preaching is God's condescending grace to give us knowledge that produces maximum joy in Christ
Think of it this way: anyone here ever had the opportunity to hear a president speak? Ever had a president of the United States come to your town and you've gotten to go to the venue? I think I've gotten to experience it on 4 or 5 occasions. It's a cool deal. And a couple of the occasions I was in high school, they let us out of school early and we got there and you marked off your seat and you made sure you were in a good spot and you were ready and you were prepared because POTUS was speaking. It's a cool thing. You sit on the edge of your seat. Maybe he's not your guy. And so you're sitting on the edge of your seat thinking, I'm going to catch every messed up thing this guy says, and I'm going to tweet about it, and I am going to be a personal vigilante against this guy getting elected. Maybe he is your guy, and you're sitting there thinking, 'Oh, this is just honey from the comb. This guy is amazing.' If the president was speaking, how intentional would you be to get there? To get a good seat, to make sure your mind was free of clutter and distraction, right? The Bible tells us on Sunday mornings when we hear the word preached, we hear God speak. That has nothing to do with me. Because when we preach expository sermons and we hold up the word, God promises us that His Spirit is there, and His Spirit is pressing these truths into our hearts. God speaks. Just consider that. God speaks. He condescends not just to save us, but then to tell us an entire book, things about Him and things about our lives that will bring us joy. You ever think about the Bible in that way? It's a book that tells us about who God is and what it means to live for maximum joy in light of who He is. That's grace. He's giving you instructions and words and promises that help you to be happy in Jesus.
18 · Oswald applies 'quick to hear' as consistent pattern rather than occasional burst—weekly in worship, daily in devotion—acknowledging New Year's resolution failure as common and offering pastoral restoration: confession, renewed dependence on grace, and God's promise to speak to those who return to His Word
Quick to hear doesn't just mean you're eager, though. It means you're consistent. It means that eagerness carries over and refreshes itself week after week because it knows week after week the Spirit of God will be addressing us in the word preached. It knows day after day when you get up in the morning or at night before you go to bed and you open your Bible and you pray and you turn your eyes to those words, God promises His Spirit will be speaking. Those words are His words. What you see on that page is His instruction. So we need to ask ourselves, are we consistent? Do we want to hear His voice? Do we think we need to hear His voice consistently? Am I going to allow God to speak to me every day by opening this book? Do I recognize my need for this book. I won't ask you to raise your hands for this, but how many of the people in the room are completely derailed off their New Year's resolution in the Bible reading plan? Here's the good news: turn to God, pray for forgiveness, ask for the grace and strength to reboot, to continue on, and He will give it. And He promises that as you come to His word, He will speak.
19 · Oswald exposits 'slow to speak' as redirecting critical attention from neighbor to self—resisting the impulse to audit others' need for the Word and instead applying it first to one's own heart, allowing God's Word to marinate and bring personal conviction
When He says we need to be slow to speak, here's what He's saying. He's not saying you should be really careful not to whisper to your neighbor in the middle of the sermon, although that can be distracting. That's not the point He's making. When He says be slow to speak, He's saying you need to be quick to apply to your own heart. I think that's part of what he's saying. So you don't read a passage or listen to a sermon and go home and think, 'Boy, I sure hope Harry wasn't in children's ministry on Sunday because he needed to hear that word.' I guessed if your name is Harry, that wasn't planned ahead of time. That's not the way you do it. You come to the Word and you hear and you listen and you apply to your own heart. Let God's words marinate in your soul. Bring conviction to your habits. It means when you come to the text, to whatever text, to any text, and you're reading Scripture, the exhortation, 'Be slow to speak, quick to hear,' means clean the wax out of your own ears and don't worry about the wax in your neighbor's. You need to hear.
20 · Oswald exposits 'slow to anger' as resisting defensive responses when God's Word exposes sin or threatens cherished idols—diagnosing anger's subtle forms (arguing with the text, justifying behavior, constructing rebuttals) and warning that such anger blocks the righteousness God intends to produce through His Word
And it means that we have to resist responding in anger. And this is maybe the one where you're like, 'Responding in anger? That's kind of a weird thing to think in terms of God's word.' But the reality is sometimes God's word says things that we don't want to hear. Sometimes it says things that don't describe us in the most flattering terms. It says things, and if you look back at your week, you would realize the things it's saying not to do were a part of your previous week. Sometimes it makes us feel vulnerable, leaves us feeling exposed. Sometimes it just flat out hits a nerve. I like that idol that it's exposing. I don't want to have to say no to that idol. When that happens, James is warning us, don't respond in anger. Instead of listening, our impulse at times when the Word does that is we want to argue with the Word. Or we start to justify the way that we're living, right? Or, you ever done this? You're reading a scripture and you start to construct a rebuttal to it. You start to design a way to get around what the text is saying because you don't want to actually be changed by it. James warns us, 'Be slow to anger, for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.' Now, he is talking about anger generally, but in this context we see he is speaking about an anger that relates to the way we receive and hear God's Word. Have you ever gotten angry during a sermon? And not angry at the preacher. Angry during a sermon. Hopefully no one's ever had the impulse to stand up and throw their Bible against the wall or something like that. But there's another kind of anger. There's all sorts of kinds of anger. I think James is warning us about the broad spectrum of those angers. We have to be honest. Sometimes God's Word makes us uncomfortable. And there's going to be points in this letter where if you're listening with ears to hear, that James is going to make every person in this room uncomfortable. And when that happens, you can't respond in anger.
21 · Through the illustration of his children's pouting response to parental 'no,' Oswald makes anger tangible and relatable—showing that anger toward God's Word often takes the form of sulking resistance rather than explosive rage, wanting what God forbids while knowing we can't have it
And just recognize, sometimes anger is not road rage kind of anger, right? Most people don't respond like that in sermons. I've never had that experience where someone flipped out to that extent. You know what else is anger? When I tell one of our kids no and they go sulk in the corner. I wanted that, why can't I have it? In fact, it's become an unfortunate practice in our house. Case started it, Sadie's picked it up. When we tell them no and they don't like it, hmm, cross their arms in very exaggerated fashion, hmm, and they let you know over and over and over again, I am not happy that you said no! There was a period where Sadie didn't even know what was going on, but Case would do the 'Hmm!' arm crossing and Sadie would follow. 'Hmm!' We can respond to God's Word like that. 'Hmm!' Sulk in the corner. 'I want what He says I shouldn't have.' Don't approach God's Word that way.
22 · Oswald signals the structural hinge between the sermon's first major point (approaching the Word) and second major point (receiving the Word), clarifying the distinction between the two and preparing the congregation for the second half of the exposition
Second thing: Final point. Not that it's a brief point. I don't want to give you false hope that we're 5 minutes away here. You should be excited. We're hearing the Word. You approach the Word very specifically. Quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger. And then James talks about the way that we receive the Word. And there is a distinction between the two. We've seen how we're to approach the Word. And now we're at verse 21. We're barely midway through the passage here. You see how we had to break it up.
23 · Oswald exposits the shift from verse 18's regeneration (the Word bringing new life) to verse 21's implantation (the same Word remaining at work), establishing that the gospel seed planted at conversion continues taking root throughout sanctification—the Word doesn't visit and depart but stays and grows
This is where he's going. After telling us to approach, and he says this, you approach this way: closed mouth, open ears, grateful heart. It's the appropriate way to approach God's Word. James now instructs us how to receive it. Verse 21: Therefore, put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness. Put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word. You see there why the context is the word. Which is able to save your souls. Talking about not just our need to hear it, but to receive it. And to make sense of that, we have to remember again verse 18, which is right before this. Remember, we've read it a couple times this morning. Of His own will, God brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of His creation. Now remember, we said verse 18 is referring to what? It's referring to our regeneration. The power of God's Word to create new life in our hearts. So, it means we're born again when the Spirit speaks into our hearts. The Spirit creates life through the proclamation and the power of the Gospel. And it also reminds us that dead men, people before they're regenerated, dead men are inherently deaf men. And so we need the Spirit in our hearts to give us ears to hear. And so we heard, and as we read God's Word for the first time, we see because the Spirit is at work that it's true and it's desirable. We see our need for the Savior. That's what's happening in verse 18. The first spark of realizing this isn't just any other book. It's God's book. It's God's truth. It's God's word. That's what happens with regeneration. Verse 21 now is looking at that same word, and James says the word of truth that regenerates us, that word is implanted. The point is the Word didn't just come to us and then we received it and then the Word left us. The point is the same Word that brought us life remains at work in our life. So when the Spirit plants the seed of the Gospel, He also ensures that the Gospel will take root.