Hearing and Doing

James chapter 1, beginning at verse 19, and that's found on page 1196 of the red Bibles. You may have heard the story of a very pretentious man who was at a black-tie fundraising dinner, and across the table was sitting an African man. Throughout the dinner, the man was very rude and patronizing to the African man. When the food came out, he said across the table to the African man, "Yum yum good good." The African man smiled and nodded. Later, when the wine came out, he said, "Glug gug good good." The African man smiled and nodded. When the time came for the keynote address, to his surprise, the African man stood up, went to the lectern, and delivered in perfect and polished English an address on Einstein's theory of special relativity. He concluded to rapturous applause. The African man came back to the table, sat across from the man and said, "Yak yak good good." So, my friends, today is all about the word; that is what this passage is about. It's about the word and we're full of words, aren't we?

How many words do you think might be read in a day? How many words do you think he might hear in a day? How many words would be spoken in a day? Some of us are few of few words and some of us are many of many words. Some of us can talk underwater with a mouthful of marbles, as the saying goes. One estimate is that about 20 thou—you could be up to as much as 20,000 words a day that are spoken, although they would hesitate to say that all of those are significant, maybe a very smaller number. But imagine you could record 20,000 words a day and they were significant and they were of quality; that would be a PhD before Friday. That's a lot of words, and today James is talking to us about the word. Now one of the things you might have noticed about James is that James in his letter has these motifs that appear and then reappear later on through the letter. It's not that he's changing his mind all the time, but what he's doing here is he'll raise something and he'll come back to it and he'll come back to it again.

A couple of Friday nights ago, due to the kindness of some people here in the congregation, I got to hear Beethoven's Fifth at the concert hall of the opera house. It's a very iconic work, is it not? And one of the best parts about going to the concert at the opera house is you get to hear the talk beforehand—you know, sit on the floor and listen. This time it was a German cellist who was talking about Beethoven's Fifth, and he pointed out that it begins with that very famous motif, da-da-da-da, that four-note motif. But then it gets repeated over and over again just even in the first few bars, and then it keeps popping up all the way through the particular concerto. Beethoven's Fifth in C minor keeps reappearing throughout. I want to suggest you James does something similar; we see these motifs that keep popping up and he comes back to them, and you read something and you say, "Haven't I just read that somewhere before? That same kind of idea?"

And that's because you have. So today it's all about the word, and I have two points today. The first point is the word to you, and that's the middle section of the passage that Ian read, and then my second point is the word from you, and that's the very beginning and the very end of the passage. So what I'm saying to you is this is like an inclusio, and the middle part about the word to you, that's the key part: the word to you. So look at 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 someone who looks at his face in a mirror and after looking at himself goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom and continues in it, not forgetting what they have heard but doing it, they will be blessed in what they do." So this is the main point from this morning: it's about hearing the word, that is, hearing God's word to you.

It's kind of like an apple pie motherhood statement, isn't it? Of course, of course we want to hear God's word to us. Of course that's important. Of course that's a really crucial point, crucial part of our church life together. We meet together to hear God's word; we want to be studying God's word; we want to be taking it in. But is it possible to hear it and yet not hear it? Do you know what it's like to be here on a Sunday morning and the words are coming into your ears and coming into our ears and coming into our brain, and they're recognizable as words and sentences—they're not just random sounds—but it's just not going in? Do you know that experience? It could be the transmission, it could be the preacher who is preaching or the teacher, or it might be the reception, that is the hearer, but something's just not working. And for that reason, it's really important that you pray for the speaker and you pray for the hearers. That's really crucial because it's a supernatural work of God.

Pray for the speaker, pray for the hearers. You might know that each morning at 9:57 in that room there behind the organ, there are a group of people who are praying—more people praying there than are actually in church actually, to be quite honest. And if Helen had her way, everyone would be in the choir and everyone would be there before church praying. And what we do is we pray for those who speak the word and we pray for those who hear the word. We pray for the speaker who has hopefully wrestled with the word of God so they can bring it to you as a clean sharp blade; they've done all they can to get it as clear and compelling as possible. The way it works for me, I'll just be really honest, is I spend pretty much my Saturdays really wrestling with this for Sunday, and it's not unusual for me to wake up 5:00 a.m. on Sunday morning just to try and get it right, as right as it can be. And so personally, I really appreciate those who pray for me, but it's also in your interest as well to pray for me so that it's not a debacle of a Sunday morning.

We pray for the speakers and we pray for those who hear the word, and we pray that those who hear it would be good soil—to use the words or the metaphor that Jesus uses in the parable of the sower—that we'd be good soil so when the word goes in it produces good fruit. But you know the real thing that will stop you from hearing is to have the wrong posture or the wrong mindset towards the word of God. So look at—just back it up and look at verse 21. He says, "humbly accept the word planted in you which can save you." Humbly accept it. You can listen to the word but not do it humbly. It's possible to as it were sit over the word in judgment. It's possible for people like us to be connoisseurs of Bible talks, to be a little bit like the wine taster, you know, and here are tasting notes: "It has deep aromas of ripe dark blueberries and plum cakes, spiced dark chocolate, sweet oak spice..." I don't know what any of this means—dried orange peel and mahogany with attractive lifted star anise, sage, bay leaf combines the basic mechanics of plush velvety tannins and vanilla warm oak support." I don't know what that tastes like in wine, but we can be like that, can't we? We can be sort of connoisseurs of Bible talks and we can easily become judges of the word, and it just doesn't get in. And sometimes we can say, "Well you know, the preacher just took too long," or "it was just too dry," or "he moved around too much," or "it wasn't dry enough, it wasn't technical enough, it wasn't academic enough." Now when it comes to preaching here at Christ Church, you mostly get me and that can be a good thing because you know what to expect, but it can be a bad thing because you know what to expect. You see, you can just get used to my voice and the way I do things and I might try and change things up as much as I can, but you know, you might just get tuned out, you might just switch off, and I'll do my best to be interesting...but you know, it's just me each week. And it's possible—I know this is hard to believe—but you might not actually even like me very much. You know, I might be annoying to you or irritating. I'll try my best to not be irritating; I am a work in progress, I'm doing my best at this. But that might be the barrier. You need to know that I come in the name of the king and I don't want you to ignore him. He's good, he loves you, he's spoken. That's why you need to be a good listener. And then when it's not me you get all these other people, which is great—such a rich diversity of people who, when it's not me, sometimes they're young, sometimes they're old, sometimes they're different backgrounds, different ethnicities, they have different hobbies and styles and maybe different politics. And we need to listen as they open the word too. And that's a rev up for the next few weeks when you'll hear a lot of different people come to preach. We need to be thankful for that, and for me, I think of myself... a little bit as a professional communicator, so this is my thing. So when I listen, I listen with a naturally critical mindset because what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to go, "Okay, what's working here and what isn't working?" I listen to the method quite often, and the risk for me is I don't hear the word because I'm focusing on the medium or the method. The other really dangerous thing we can do when it comes to the word of God is that we may have already made up our mind. We might have made up our mind already what God's allowed to tell me or I'm allowed to accept from him. I've decided against certain parts of his word perhaps; that's a really dangerous thing, and really I need to stop and put my ideas aside. Or I can come to it and I can say, "I know what this is about," because if you think you know what it's about, you maybe not ready to listen to what God might have to say to you through it. Could the word of God reform your theology? Could the word of God reform your experiences?

Sometimes it's a good idea to ask yourself, "What are my presuppositions as I come to this? What's the framework I bring to it?" A framework's important, presuppositions are important; it's just worthwhile being thinking about what they are. We've all got them; can God change them? That's the point. Now over in chapter three, there's one of James's motifs which he comes back to: it says, "we who teach will be judged more strictly." Someone's going to talk about that in the next few weeks, but I want to say to you today that that is a somewhat disturbing text for me. The seriousness of that sits very heavily on me, I promise you. We who teach will be judged more strictly. See, I will need to give an account one day of my speaking and for me it's been a lifetime, so that's a lot. I'll have to give account of my speaking, but we are all listeners. You and I are all listeners and we will need to give an account of our listening. How well did we listen? You might know that in Acts chapter 17, Paul goes to the Bereans—I'm told that's a place in northern Macedonia, I'd like to visit there one day, maybe soon, who knows—but Berea, Acts chapter 17, the writer says of them they were of noble character for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true. Well, may that be so of us. But he says don't just be hearers of the word, accept it humbly. Don't just listen but do it. See verse 22: "Do not merely listen to the word and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says." Everyone who listens to the word but not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in the mirror and after looking at himself goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. There is a neurological condition which is described as—it's called facial agnosia, which means you can look at a face and forget it straight away. Sometimes I think I might have that, and this passage is famous—a very famous passage—but that's not...

...what it's talking about. What's being said here is to hear the word and not do it is to deceive yourself, and he says it's like going to the mirror and looking and then forgetting immediately of what you saw in the mirror. Jesus in the sermon on the mount—which is the passage that Margot read to us, Matthew chapter 7—he says the one who hears my words and puts them into practice is like the person who builds on the rock, and the person who hears my words and doesn't put them into practice is like the person who builds on the sand. And when the judgment comes, that's where you'll see where you've been building—have you been building on the rock or on the sand? I think James' point here is you look in the mirror to make a change, don't you? That's the reason you look in the mirror. I mean, you could look in the mirror just to admire yourself, you know, you could look there and say, "Hey, you're looking pretty good." Well, man, that's good, but mostly we look in the mirror because we want to do some work on ourselves, right? Would you allow the word of God to change you, to have its effect on you? It's not all plain sailing; sometimes we go forward, sometimes we go backwards, but hopefully under God we're moving in the right direction. Would you allow God's word to change you? Progress is not linear. I love the quote of Joe Schmidt, the current Wallaby coach, because he talks about that a lot, I think it's a great quote: "Progress is never linear." We go forwards, sometimes we go backwards, but hopefully we're moving roughly in the right direction. Sometimes you go up, sometimes there's a correction, but in the grace of God, what are you working on? Could you say, "As best I can, I'm going to try and put into practice what God is saying"? So that's the word to you now, and quite quickly—and I've taken a lot of time on that main point—but fairly quickly a segue into the word going out from you. What about the words going out from you? Is that something you could put into practice? God has given his word to you; what about the words from you? Okay, verse 19: "My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry." Isn't this good stuff to put into practice? Human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires. Could you wake up in the morning and say when you've got a challenging thing in front of you, "You know what, I'm going to be slow to speak, I'm going to be slow to become angry"? Is he speaking here about the angry word? Put that into practice. You might be the sort of person who finds it hard to self-regulate. We're different; if you are someone who is like that, the Bible is saying you need to slow down—slow down, think before you speak. I was in a meeting during the week and I knew it was going to be tense and I said, "You know what, I'm just going to be slow to speak, I'm not going to just because people are wanting me to say things I'm not going to necessarily say the things." God's anger is slow, human anger is fast—we need to be like God. And then look at verse 26: "Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves and their religion is worthless." So again, it's about the things you speak. So interesting to keep a tight rein on your tongue. My son—who I think is amazing—he spoke to a group of about 600 teenage boys at the school he teaches at, and he was speaking at the middle school assembly—he didn't tell me this but one of my friends told me what he said—and in the talk, at the beginning of the talk, he pulled out an ox tongue from his lunchbox that he'd ordered from the butcher. I did think about doing this this morning, but he put out an ox's tongue. Do you think 600 teenage boys listened? They did; they thought it was very, very interesting, and the gist of what he said is, "You know, this looks pretty bad, doesn't it?" and it did come out of an animal, but you know what? It hasn't said some of the things that you've said. It hasn't sworn, it hasn't uttered a profanity, it hasn't destroyed a person in criticism, it hasn't torn them to pieces or shamed them or teased them or slandered them or made a racist comment or a sexist comment. It's done none of those things. So even though it looks pretty gross, it might be a better tongue than you've got. But you know what? It hasn't said anything nice either. It's never thanked a person, it's never offered a word of encouragement, it's never offered words to build people up. So your tongue's got a lot more potential than this one. And I wonder whether James here is focusing on the way you speak to those who are kind of like below you on the ladder. He talks about to look after orphans and widows in their distress, and I wonder whether the context is the speaking context once again. You know the people that are maybe especially in that culture of lower social standing—how do you speak to them?

You know the sorts of people who, when they're speaking to someone above them they're very nice, but when they're speaking to someone below they're not so nice at all? Okay, what's the saying? How do people treat the wait staff in the restaurant? You know the sorts of people I mean. Well, this is James—this is James' scrapbook. This is James talking about the word to you and James talking about the word from you. And you know, in reality, the word of God is going to be the central thing. The word of God is the way of God; the word of God is the way things are going to happen; the word of God is the way things will change in our particular church. And it's good to know that because on a cold and wet Sunday morning and we look around and we think to ourselves, "What's going on? What's happening?" It's really important to know that the word is the way.

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