Shalom Aleichem...
Reflections is a weekly Christian Teaching Ministry. Each week we will talk about the Bible and lessons we can put to use in our daily life. We will try to, on a weekly basis, provide to you stories, thoughts, and just easy ways to live your life on a straight path.
THIS WEEK'S TEACHING....July 16, 2018
I had the honor of preaching last week at The Floor Church. I spoke on living a righteous life and if, in todays world, it was even possible to live a life of righteousness. The conclusion was, it takes a lot of effort on our part and of course having Jesus in our lives. We look at the Book of James in the 1st chapter, verses 19-27.
19 Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; 20 for the anger of mandoes not produce the righteousness of God. 21 Therefore putaway all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.22 But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. 23 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not adoer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face ina mirror. 24 For he looks at himself and goes away and at onceforgets what he was like. 25 But the one who looks into theperfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing. 26 If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person's religion is worthless. 27 Religion that is pure and undefiled before Godthe Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.
To Live a Righteous Life requires that we…Hear the Word (v.19-20) To really hear we need to…Keep quiet (slow to speak) Keep cool (slow to become angry) Accept the word (v.21) Do the word (v. 22-25)
Doing the word is evidenced by….Shutting your mouth (v.26) Opening your Heart (and wallet) (v. 27a)
Keeping yourself from the polluted world (v. 27b) Immersing yourself in the pure word (v. 21)
Intro
I’ve got a question for everyone today...Do you want to be known as a Righteous person?
To be Righteous is to be morally upright. This is not to be self-righteous, which means a person who thinks they can do no wrong, and goes about with a "holier-than-thou" attitude, judging and scrutinizing everyone else… but in humility, striving to live your life in a way that is pleasing to the Lord.
When we are doing that, I believe that we continually recognize how we are falling short.
So, do you want to be known as a person living a righteous life? Of course we do…however…
I think we believe that may be an easy answer to give, but I think there are many people who would struggle with that because they think that living a righteous life is not going to be enjoyable, or that living the righteous life is living a boring life.
Well, James tells us that living the righteous life is where the blessed life is found. And he also gives us some practical help not only in how we can live this righteous life, but he tells us a couple of things
that living the righteous life will entail.
In the verses of James, we find several things related to the word of God that we need to do if we are going to live a Righteous life that is pleasing to the Lord. The first thing that James tells us is that we need to
Hear the Word
James 1:19 - My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen… Now this section of Scripture we are studying today is all about God’s word.
And while this advice of being quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to become angry is great advice for any relationship or occasion, I believe in the context of this passage it is really speaking in the context of the word of God.
So, the question for us is “Are we open to hearing the word of God?” We may think we are, but that doesn’t mean we are. The Pharisees would have said they were quick to listen, that they were open to hearing the word of God, but Jesus said over and over when he walked upon the earth that "He who has ears to hear, let him hear." (Matthew 11:15, 13:9, 13:43, Mark 4:9, 4:23, Luke 8:8, 14:35)
He was saying this often in regard to the Pharisees who thought they knew all they needed to know but were full of pride and unteachable. Why do you think Jesus referred to them as hypocrites?? We need to be open to hearing the word of God. We need to be quick to listen and more interested in seeking to discern what the Lord wants us to know and how we can follow Him.
But being quick to listen cannot just stand alone. James tells us a couple of other things that need to be going on in our lives if we are really going to be able to hear the word of God and live the righteous life He wants us to. One of those things he tells us to do is to
Keep Quiet
James 1:19 - My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak…
Again this is great advice in all of our relationships, and James is going to hit on our speech and our tongue several times in this letter. But in this context talking about the word of God, I believe the Lord is telling us through James that we need to be cautious in applying the meaning of it in regard to what we think it says.
I believe we so often read something or hear something in God’s word and quickly believe we know its meaning and will tell ourselves this is what it means or tell others. This is where false teachings can get us into trouble….
I believe that James is telling us that if we are going to live the righteous life, then we have not only have to be open to hearing what the Lord is saying, but we have to slow down in telling ourselves the meaning to it.
We need to take some time and meditate on His word without being so quick to determine the meaning and move on. We need to be quiet long enough for the Lord to speak the meaning of it into our lives. This is why our devotions should not be a quick 10 minutes to just get through what we are reading. It should be time spent reading, and then just focusing on the words and what God is telling us about the verse.
This is a lot easier said than done, since we live in such a fast-paced environment and we live in a world that wants to see things getting accomplished, like immediately!!! We have got to understand that reading the word and hearing it is really not about us accomplishing something. It is about God accomplishing something in us.
Paul tells us in Hebrews that “the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” (Hebrews 4:12)
God’s word can transform us, but if we are going to hear what it is speaking into our lives, then we have got to keep quiet at times. God tells us through David in Psalms, to “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10)
We are going to look a bit more at the practicality of this at the end of the message, but take this to heart. We need to be slow to speak, take time to be still and meditate on the word so we can be quick to listen, so that we can really hear what God is saying to us. But we not only need to Keep quiet, to really hear God’s
word. James also tells us that we need to...
Keep Calm
James 1:19 - … be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry. Again, this is good advice for all of our relationships, but I believe this is more specifically meant concerning the word of God.
I think we can become angry at God or his word as it exposes our sin and we don’t like it. When that happen’s we begin to stop hearing His word.
But God is not exposing our sin just to make us feel bad. His word is seeking to transform us and he is trying to help us overcome these things in His strength. And while we need not become angry at God or His word, but there are times that we should be angry at sin.
Jesus became angry when he went to the temple and the people had turned it into a market place where they were ripping people off, instead of the house of prayer it was supposed to be. He was angry at the sin.
We typically are not so angry at the sin in our lives as we are at the One who is pointing it out. Don’t be angry at the messenger as much as we are at the sin.
We need to be slow to get angry, we need to keep calm and seek to meditate on God’s word as we are slow to speak and let God’s word teach us and penetrate us and judge our motives and actions and transform us.
God loves us too much to leave us the way we are, but to change us, we need our sin exposed. Don’t get angry about that, but be grateful that we have a God who loves us enough to help us overcome those things in our life that ultimately are harming us.
So we need to hear the word and to really hear it we need to keep quiet and keep calm. Now James tells us that hearing the word is only the beginning. After we hear the word, we need to...
Accept the Word
James 1:21 - Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you.
James implies a dichotomy here. He says as we hear the word of God and it exposes sin in us, the moral filth and the evil that we have allowed in us from the outside, we need to reject that and instead humbly accept the word of God planted in us that can save us. He is basically saying there is a choice here.
After hearing the word of God, really heard it, you have to choose whether you are going to believe it for you, accept its truth for your life OR reject it and live in the moral filth and evil that is so prevalent
around us.
Now that choice sounds easy. Who wants to live in filth? But I believe this is the struggle and the deception that Satan is using on this generation. Let me ask all of you…..how hard is it to quit a bad habit???
Satan is telling us that following Jesus, believing in Him and living the righteous life, the life that is morally upright, the life that is in tune and in line with God’s word is boring and
unenjoyable. Now, I don’t want to sell you a bill of goods. Believing in and following Jesus is hard sometimes and requires sacrifice.
Jesus said to his followers that they must pick up their cross and follow him. Like saving for retirement…
But the sacrifices of accepting the truth of God’s word into our life, of accepting Jesus Christ as our Savior, as the word of God tells us, are like the sacrifices we make to save for retirement. We could spend all that we get right now, but that is going to be bad for us in the long term when we are living in poverty.
Living in the moral filth and evil that is so prevalent is probably easier right now, but it leads to very serious
consequences for our eternity. Don’t just hear what God’s word says, accept the word into your life and truly believe it in your heart.
But James does not stop there. There is a progression to the word that shows the reality of our belief. We need to really be hearing the word of God if we are going to accept it. We know that we have heard it if we have accepted it into our lives. And we can know that we have accepted the word when we actually...
Do the word
James 1:22 - Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Hear the word, accept the word, do the word. This is where the rubber meets the road.
We can say that we hear what God is saying and that we accept it, but the reality of our faith is born out in the way we really live our life. A real faith…lived out in real life…in our actions.
Read what James says about the person who doesn’t do what it says
James 1:23-25
23 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 24 and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. 25 But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it-he will be blessed in what he does.
James is telling us that it is crazy talk to say that you have heard what God’s word says and accepted it but you don’t do it.
That’s as crazy as looking at yourself in the mirror and forgetting what you look like. When we look at God’s perfect word and hear it, accept it and live it, we experience freedom from the slavery to sin that we are trapped in and will experience the life that is blessed eternally.
So the reality is born out in what we do. So often in the church, emphasis is placed on knowledge. Do
we have a solid grasp of right doctrine? Now do not get me wrong. This is very important.
But I have met people that are doing multiple Bible studies, seeking to grow in their knowledge, and it would appear are truly desiring to hear and accept God’s word, but they are so busy with trying to have a perfect grasp of the truth, hearing and accepting God’s word that they aren’t doing the word.
They are missing the whole point of Bible study. I think we would be better off doing one Bible study, or even just reading God’s word with an ear toward really hearing Him and accepting it and then just do what we are learning.
God’s word is not something we are going to hear and accept and digest into our lives overnight. It is a lifelong process. His word continually transforms us over our lives.
Hear the word, accept what you hear, then do what you have accepted.
Now, James, never content to just leave us in the realm of the theoretical, tells us a couple of things that will certainly be evident in the lives of those who are hearing, accepting and doing God’s word. He tells us next that doing the word is going to be evidenced by...
Shutting your Mouth
James 1:26 - If anyone considers himself religious and yet does not keep a tight rein on his tongue, he deceives himself and his religion is worthless.
Now this is the second time that James has mentioned something about what we say and that we need to be
cautious about speaking. This won’t be the last time he focuses on the tongue either. James is telling us that doing the word in real life means what you say will be affected. Jesus told us the same thing...
Luke 6:45 - The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks.
Our ability to stop evil coming out of our mouth is an indication that God’s word is working in our lives. We are not always going to be able to stop evil thoughts from entering our head, but we can stop them from exiting our mouth as God’s word fills our hearts and strengthens us to overcome
Paul tells us in…Ephesians 4:29 - Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.
The advice your mother told you that if you don’t have anything good to say then say nothing at all is good biblical advice.
Sometimes doing the word is evidenced by what we don’t do and that is speaking when it is not beneficial or helpful to someone.
But James also tells us that doing the word is not only evidenced by shutting our mouths at times, but also by...
Opening Your Heart (and Wallet)
James 1:27 - Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress…
Widows and orphans were those in Jesus day who had little recourse in the law and had no means of support.
I think many times people look around seeing those who are poor and we think where is God? I think God thinks the same thing in regard to His people, “where are my people? Where are those who say they are followers of mine? There are many who claim to hear what I am saying and say they accept it but they are not doing anything about it.
James 1:27 - Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress
We need to be opening our hearts to those who are truly in need. To those unable to provide for themselves. When was the last time you gave a few dollars to a homeless person??
This may mean opening your home to someone to live with you.
This may mean adopting a child or… This may mean helping support someone who is adopting a child
This may mean sponsoring a child through Compassion International.
It may mean checking on some of the older folks, the widows whom the Lord has placed in your life.
It may mean helping them out financially as they struggle to live on an income that does not keep pace with inflation.
It may mean any number of those things, but it definitely willrequire sacrifice. Sacrifice in time, in money, in your life.
And James goes on to say that doing the word is not only evidenced by opening your heart and wallet by caring for widows and orphans, those who are unable to care for themselves, but it is also evidenced by
keeping yourself from a polluted world
James 1:27 - … and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
While we need to be in the world, we are not to be of…the…world.
Jesus, when he was about to sacrifice for the sins of the world, prayed for His disciples. And while he recognized they were in the world, they were not of the world and he asked the Father to sanctify them with his word while they were in the world.
The only way to keep yourself from being polluted by the world is by...
Immersing yourself in the Pure Word
James, throughout this section tells us to hear the word, accept the word, and do the word. Jesus prays for the disciples to be sanctified by the word...
John 17:17 - Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.
Peter tells us “Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk” (1 Peter 2:2)
We need to immerse ourselves in the pure word of God so we can live the righteous and blessed life that Jesus wants us to live, a life that is evidenced by doing the word, by bearing fruit in our life.
I want to remind you of James words in verse 25...
James 1:25 - But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it-he will be blessed in what he does.
The Righteous Life is the Blessed Life….
Open your ears to hear the word of God.
Be still before Him.
Keep quiet and keep calm so you can really hear him.
Meditate on His word.
Then accept it and do it.
Doing it will be evident in the way you talk to people and the way you sacrifice in your life.
Then, and ONLY THEN, will you know that the righteous life….is the blessed life. I love you all.
DID YOU EVER WONDER???
CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL BORN IN 1930's, 1940's, 50's, 60's, 70's and Early 80's !!!
First, you survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us. They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a tin, and didn't get tested for diabetes. Then after that trauma, your baby cots were covered with bright colored lead-based paints. You had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when you rode your bikes, you had no helmets, not to mention, the risks you took hitchhiking ..
As children, you would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.Riding in the back of a van - loose - was always great fun. You drank water from the garden hosepipe and NOT from a bottle. You shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this. You ate cakes, white bread and real butter and drank pop with sugar in it, but you weren't overweight because...... YOU WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!!
You would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on. No one was able to reach you all day. And you were OK. You would spend hours building your go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out you forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, you learned to solve the problem . You did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, no video tape movies, no surround sound, no mobile phones, no text messaging, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms..........YOU HAD FRIENDS and you went outside and found them!
You fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents you played with worms(well most boys did) and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever. You made up games with sticks and tennis balls and although you were told it would happen, you did not poke out any eyes. You rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them! Local teams had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!
The idea of a parent bailing you out if you broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law! This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever! The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas. You had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and you learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL! And YOU are one of them! CONGRATULATIONS! What do you think of this e-mail I received? Any truth in it? You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated our lives for our own good. And while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave their parents were.
BOOKS OF THE BIBLE...A TEACHING
We look this week at the third book of the Old Testament, Leviticus...
Who wrote the book?
The content of Leviticus relates directly to Exodus, providing evidence that the same hand penned both books. The arguments that support Moses’s writing of Exodus also uphold Moses’s authorship of Leviticus.
Additionally, we find more than fifty occasions when the text says something like, “The LORD spoke to Moses” (Leviticus 1:1; 4:1; 5:14; 6:1). The New Testament also refers to Moses as the author of passages from Leviticus (Matthew 8:4; Luke 2:22; Hebrews 8:5).
The word Leviticus derives from the tribe of Levi, whose members were set aside by the Lord to be His priests and worship leaders. As a title, the word is translated from the Septuagint, meaning “ ‘pertaining to the Levites,’ and although that tribe as such is not emphasized throughout the book, the priestly subject matter renders the title appropriate.”1 Its content was originally meant to instruct the new nation of Israel in proper worship and right living, so that they might reflect the character of their divine King.
Where are we?The Law found in Leviticus was spoken by God to Moses at or near Mount Sinai, where the Israelites camped for some time. Because God delivered these detailed laws after the original Ten Commandments, the most probable date for their revelation is 1446BC. Whether every law was written down at that time is impossible to determine; it may be that they were codified progressively during the ensuing forty-year wandering.
Why is Leviticus so important?“The book of Leviticus was the first book studied by a Jewish child; yet is often among the last books of the Bible to be studied by a Christian.”2 Today’s readers are often put off by the book’s lists of laws regarding diet, sacrifice, and social behavior. But within these highly detailed directives we discover the holiness—the separateness, distinction, and utter “otherness”—of God. And we learn how sin devastates humanity’s relationship with their Creator.
God established the sacrificial system so that His covenant people might enjoy His fellowship through worship; it also allowed for repentance and renewal:
When an Israelite worshiper laid his hand on the animal victim, he identified himself with the animal as his substitute . . . this accomplished a symbolic transfer of his sin and a legal transfer of his guilt to the animal victim. God then accepted the slaughter of the animal . . . as a ransom payment for the particular sin which occasioned it.3
Many years after Moses wrote Leviticus, Jesus came to offer Himself as the ultimate sacrifice, holy and perfect, once for all, fulfilling the Law and rendering future animal sacrifices unnecessary and void (Hebrews 10:10).
What's the big idea?The overall message of Leviticus is sanctification. The book communicates that receiving God’s forgiveness and acceptance should be followed by holy living and spiritual growth. Now that Israel had been redeemed by God, they were to be purified into a people worthy of their God. “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy,” says Leviticus 19:2. In Leviticus we learn that God loves to be approached, but we must do so on His terms.
How do I apply this?
This theme of holiness extends to the church. In the New Testament,
1 Peter 1:15–16 references Leviticus 19:2 when it says: “like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior; because it is written, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy.’” Those who are redeemed by the mercies of God offer different sacrifices today; they offer themselves (Romans 12:1).
Like He did with the Israelites, God has redeemed and consecrated Christians. Jesus offered Himself as the perfect sacrifice on our behalf, taking the punishment that we deserved so that we might be forgiven. Those who place their trust in Jesus’s atoning act become God’s children, saved by grace (Ephesians 2:8–9).
If you are His child, then He wants you to reflect His character. He is sanctifying you much like He did the nation of Israel. Does your life echo His? In what ways are you growing more like Christ?
HAVE A SAFE AND BLESSED WEEK:)
Ho'omaikaʻi ka Pua iā kākou