Listen Well

Well, good morning.

So, how are you doing with the weather?

I got up this morning and uh wind chill was um minus 41.

And then I came to church this morning, and a couple people said, Walt, apparently you've been wanting this.

Um and I guess someone I know, probably my wife, had been communicating to people that one of the things we were really looking forward to was an honest to goodness North Dakota winter.

So several people said, Well, Walt, how's it going?

How's that going for you?

And actually, that was only partially true that uh we were hoping for uh cold weather, which uh we're beginning now uh actually to receive.

Um I was always also talking about a couple of good blizzards.

Um how's that going for you, Walt?

My response to cold weather, uh my response to blizzards, uh, Lord willing, is today is the 17th of January, 2016, and God is still on the throne.

He was all last summer, he is today, and he will be forevermore.

He is good, he is trustworthy, and we put our thoughts and our focuses, focus on him.

And we listen to him, and that's really what this uh passage that we're looking at this morning, we're beginning this morning, a whole new section of the book of James.

And the focus on the first few verses, verses 19 to 21, that we're going to be looking at this morning, is that a faith that works not only works in times of difficulties, but a faith that works is a faith that is characterized by listening well.

Listening well.

And the question that this passage begs to ask, begs us to ask, is are we listening and listening well?

So that's really the focus here.

Um as we've said before, this was written by the younger half-brother of Jesus, written to another people in another place, and through what we really need to stop and reflect upon, the miracle of God's inspiration, which basically means that the writers of Scripture, whether they understood it or not, and probably most of them at the time didn't, God so led in that process, so superintended that process of communicating, that the very words that were written were not only James' words to the believers scattered across the Greco-Roman world, but were also exactly what God wanted to say to those believers, verbally, literally, inspired and inerrant, and what God wanted to say to them, precisely and trustworthy.

And the same is true for us today.

In the written form that we have it, God is speaking to us.

And it is precisely what He wants to say to us this morning.

My words are not the same as this word.

My goal is to try to open up this word so that it will be easier for us to understand the points that are being made there.

But what we're talking about is are we listening?

Not just listening to me.

You're stuck with me for a while because I got a microphone.

Um but the real question is: are you open and receptive and responsive to what God wants to say to us?

Um this passage, um the author, ultimately God, through the human author James, moves us now a little further.

He's no longer specifically talking about suffering and trials and difficulties and circumstances in our life that we don't like and understandably so.

He's not only saying that a faith that works works in the context of the trials and the sometimes agonizing experiences of life.

And it's true, if it doesn't work there, then it doesn't work.

And as we've seen, if it doesn't work when life stinks and God seems far away, then our faith doesn't work.

But James is now moving us on, and he's saying, a faith that works results in something within us that causes us to listen.

And to listen to God, and to listen to God's word, that causes us, that stimulates within us a hunger and a thirst to hear and to respond.

And in the next, actually, for quite a bit of this, uh, the rest of this book, um, James will be talking about a faith that works as a faith that is hungry and responsive and ready to listen to God's word.

Um without that, our faith is dead.

That's one of the things he'll be saying later.

A faith that doesn't listen is not a living faith.

Just as a faith that doesn't develop and respond in the midst of trials, where God can do some things in our lives that he can't do any other way any other way, if we're not being drawn to respond differently to difficulties, then our faith is not real.

It's dead.

And similarly, if we're not listening, if we don't have a heart to listen, an inclination to hear and respond to what God says, then there is a deep heart issue involved.

Then we need heart surgery, then we need a heart transplant, then we need a whole new nature.

And that's what the scriptures talk about being born again.

There's something that changes.

And one of those things that changes is we begin to long for and anticipate and listen and respond when God speaks.

The question is, are we listening?

Are we listening?

One of the major expressions of God working in our lives is a taming of our tongue that we might listen.

When we are talking, especially when we're using our tongue in wrong ways, it's an indication we're not listening.

And so he moves very quickly into this matter.

And he says, for uh for know this, and then he starts talking about listening and being uh, he says, Know this, my beloved brothers, let every person be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger.

Anger doesn't produce the righteous life of God within us.

Get rid of all of these other things in your life and respond to the word of God that is implanted in us, ultimately through the new birth.

So what he's talking about is doing the word that's received, and part of that is taming our tongue.

This matter of our speech and our tongue and how we use it and what that says about us will preoccupy us for a long time as we listen to the Lord through the writings of James.

A living faith expresses itself in this area.

It's a litmus test.

It's really a litmus test of what's going on within.

How we talk, do we listen, are we hungry to respond?

So doing the word and taming the tongue.

One of the uh the writers that I noted had looked carefully at the book of James and said that there was something like 40% of the verses in the book of James that deal with our tongue and words and how we use them.

And although suffering is a major theme, uh it's relatively, it's only about 20%.

There's twice as much in this book about getting us to be careful with our tongue and respond with our hearts instead of just talking.

And there's only about 20% dealing with trials and tribulations.

Now, I don't know about you, but when I'm going through trials, I sure want that 20% because I desperately need God's help.

I really care about how to respond in a righteous and godly way when I'm going through difficulties.

God seems, if these statistics mean anything, to be at least twice as concerned as other issues in our than uh how we respond to suffering by how we use our mouths.

I'm not as concerned about that.

I ought to be.

And so this is uh a major, major theme that we're uh that we're getting into here.

And at its heart, the the way he begins with this is don't talk, listen.

Mouth shut, ears and heart and soul open.

Okay.

And it's very interesting that James paid a lot of attention to his older brother when Jesus, in his own ministry, uh taught and instructed and molded and shaped and corrected his disciples, he had a great deal to say about the heart.

And he also said, the problem with our words is our heart, because it's out of our heart that our mouth is full.

What we say is an overflow, is an expression, is revealing of what's in our heart.

How we deal with this matter of our tongue is not an external issue.

You can be socially modified that you clean up your dirty mouth.

That happened to me.

I had a potty mouth as a college kid.

God and also the group of people I was with changed that.

But I can still have a heart that is full of vile things that sooner or later express itself.

And James, while he's talking about the externals, he goes very quickly and very deeply into the internals.

If we ever get the impression that our faith is primarily do this, don't do that, these external things, clean up your life, be this, be that, we're missing the point.

It's out of what's inside that the outward things flow.

The Bible is filled with exhortations to the inner person, the inner man or the inner woman, the heart, the soul, the inclinations, because those are the things that result in what we say.

So we must not pit the inner issues with the outer issues.

It's both and.

It's not head or heart, it's yes, both.

God is concerned about our understanding of Him.

He is at least as much as concerned with the transformation of us from within.

So sometimes in our circles, we pit the inner and the outer, uh, the heart issues and the external issues against each other.

Totally wrong.

Wrong.

It's yes and yes.

The fact of the matter is the outer things flow from somewhere, as Jesus said.

The mouth speaks out of that which has filled the heart.

So we're doing, uh we're talking and wrestling with both uh the inner and outer things.

Uh the fact of the matter is that when we're talking, um we're not listening.

Now, if if you've ever had teenagers and you were trying to get them to turn off the music uh or disconnect from the web so that they can focus on something else, you have tried to convince them, no doubt, you really can't be listening to that music and studying all at the same time.

But I can multitask, and you're inclined to say, as I uh was not only inclined, but did say, baloney, that's not true.

The difficulty was our kids listened to the music and they got straight A's.

So I don't know what the conclusion of that, not straight A's, but close enough.

But the fact of the matter is, when we are focused on what we're saying, we are not focused on hearing God's voice.

Um have been teachers, um, I taught a number of uh seminary students for a few years, and there were always people who were always ready to correct me.

Always had a question that had less to do about asking a question than to show off their own knowledge.

Now, not only did I find that irritating, because I'm a sinful person, but the very fact that they were more ready to speak than they were to hear said something about them.

And I understand that.

The saving grace for me with those obnoxious seminary students was I was one once, and I have a vivid memory of making a great point by asking a question.

And at one point one of my seminary professors said, Um, Mr.

Barrett, um, sometimes the questions we ask make clear that we don't know what we're talking about.

And I deserved that.

But the point is, when I'm concerned about responding to you and making my point and getting things across, I am not listening.

And what God is saying here is to listen and listen well.

Now, uh, as we look at this in verse 19, um, we start out by this phrase, know this, know this, my beloved brothers.

That's kind of an anemic expression in comparison to the force that there is uh in the original language here.

It is not harsh, but it is clear.

It's kind of like a grade school teacher who has a class of distracted kids who says, listen up, come on, this, please.

Um it's uh it's not harsh, but it is clear.

It's a little bit like a coach.

Um we won't get into last night's uh Packers game, but it's a little bit like a coach who at a timeout gathers the team around and says, now listen up.

If it weren't for a softening phrase of my beloved brothers, this expression would be like a military situation where the commander walks in and it's ten chun.

But he says here again, as he said before, count it all joy, my dear brothers, when you go through various trials.

There's this soft relational thing that helps us here.

So he's saying, Here's something, guys, gals, people, dear believers, that you really need to know.

About the shepherding, loving heart of God, who is not out to smash us, but is out to stimulate within us that which he has implanted through the new nature.

So what he says is phenomenal.

Quick, slow, slow.

Quick, slow, slow.

Listen to this.

Now know this, my beloved brothers.

Let every person be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger.

Quick, slow, slow.

Do you know how I'm wired?

Slow, quick, quick.

And you are too.

Some of you just express it differently.

The stuff we're born with is not inclined first to listen to anybody, if you could get away with it.

And we're not inclined to first listen to God.

We are instead of being quick to listen, we're by nature, by the stuff with which we're born, not by our new nature, but by the stuff within, we are inclined to be slow to listen, quick to speak, and also quick with our anger.

And God wants to change the tempo.

He wants to change the tempo from slow, quick, quick to quick, slow, slow.

Um I have to ask the question.

I have to ask the question to the guy in the mirror as well as to you.

What's your pattern?

Are you quick, slow, slow?

Or slow, quick, quick?

And what God wants to produce within us is a heart's desire.

Not just social modification, but an inward change whereby our deepest inclination and desire and our longing is to hear from God and to respond to God.

How are you doing with that?

That's a question we have to ask ourselves.

There was a great, there is a great paraphrase of this verse in the message.

Paraphrases are not translations, they're paraphrases.

And they can sometimes mislead us, but they can sometimes sure help us get something we hadn't seen before.

And the message, paraphrase of this verse, uh, let every person be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger, Eugene Peterson put it this way.

Lead with your ears, follow up with your tongue, and let anger stay very, very far behind.

Lead with your ears.

I love the mental picture of that.

Wow, that would be a great Facebook profile picture.

What he's saying is, lead with your ears.

The first thing you do, listen, just listen, will you?

And then he very, very slow to respond and react and to speak.

And get rid of all that anger stuff.

Verse 20 for the anger of man does not produce the righteous life of God, therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness, receive with meekness the implanted word.

Lead with your ears.

Follow up with your tongue and keep anger way back there.

You don't have to be a Christian to realize that that makes sense.

And some 300 years before the New Testament, the Greek philosopher Zeno correctly declared, and I think it's kind of interesting, pretty good observation, we have two ears and one mouth, therefore we should listen twice as much as we speak.

That's kind of what James is saying in a way.

You have two ears and one mouth, connect the dots.

If we would be as intent on listening to God as we are to talking, we would be far better off.

And that's what God wants to produce within us.

A heart that wants to do that.

Proverbs are filled with this.

In fact, the book of James is very similar to Proverbs in the Old Testament.

A direct correlation in many cases.

Proverbs are short, pithy statements, distilling wisdom of how life really works.

The book of Proverbs was about 2,000, actually, it's probably more like 3,000 years too early because Twitter hadn't been invented.

Could you imagine how every proverb would become a phenomenal tweet?

Short, pithy things that just make you stop and think.

Well, James is giving us a proverb, that type of thing, when he says, quick, slow, slow.

Proverbs puts it this way in Proverbs 10, 19, when words are many, sin is not absent.

When words are many, sin is not absent.

But he who holds his tongue is wise.

See, James is wanting us to develop a heart that knows how to bridle our tongues and listen to what God is saying.

Proverbs 13, 3, he who guards his lips guards his life.

He who speaks rashly will come to ruin.

Proverbs 17, 28.

Even a fool is thought wise if he keeps silent.

It's kind of worth thinking about.

Even a fool appears to be wise if he keeps silent.

Even a fool appears to be discerning if he holds his tongue.

Verse 29-20 of Proverbs, do you see a man who speaks in haste?

There's more hope for a fool than for him.

And especially Proverbs 18, 13.

He who gives an answer before he hears, to him it's a folly and a shame.

I spend so much of my life as a shameful fool, and by God's grace, he's changing a shameful fool who didn't want to listen and was quick to teach and instruct and talk and correct.

That's a shameful, foolish way to be.

And God changes us.

He changes the tempo to quick, slow, slow.

Now, when he's talking about listening here, it's not just generic listening.

It's not listening to the radio, it's not listening to a podcast.

It's not even, honey, forgive me, listening to your wife.

Although that's a really good thing to do.

But that's not what he's talking about here.

The context of the listening has to do with God's word.

It talks about in verse 21 receive with meekness the implanted word which is able to save you.

It's in the context of responding to who God is and what God is saying.

So let's just make sure we're understanding that this is a responsiveness to God.

And responding to God is a characteristic of the person in whom God is truly and deeply working.

Let me say that again.

Responding to God in his word is a characteristic of the person in whom God is truly and deeply working.

They go together because God is out to change us from within so that we want to hear and do respond to what God says.

Hearts that are receptive and an inclination of soul to respond.

Another writer put it this way: the person who is truly related to Christ through saving faith responds gladly to his word.

Conversely, the person who has no intent of hearing, much less obeying God's word, gives evidence that he does not belong to him.

See, this is a litmus test.

This outward thing is a litmus test of what's going on in our hearts.

If we do not care about what God says and we are not responding to his word, we have a deep and fundamental problem within.

Turn with me, please, to John chapter 14.

John 14 · chapter mention

John chapter 14.

John 14 · chapter mention

Jesus had a lot to say to his disciples.

And in the upper room discourse, John 13 to 17, he gave some very clear teaching.

And part of what he says is in John 14, 21 to 24.

So Jesus is talking with his disciples shortly before he was crucified.

And he says, Whoever, verse 21, John 14, whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me.

And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.

He who has my commandments and keeps them, he who is listening and responding.

Now Judas, not Iscariot, verse 22, said to him, Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us and not to the world?

And Jesus answers, but he doesn't answer the question Judas asked.

He answers the question Judas should have asked.

Verse 23.

Jesus answered him, If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.

Verse 24.

Whoever does not love me does not keep my words, and the word that you hear is not mine, but the father's who sent me.

Whoever does not love me does not keep my words.

This matter of responding to God is a litmus test.

It reveals something about us.

It's not just about the externals, it's about the heart inclination.

And that's what James is getting at back in James chapter one.

I guess one of the things that we need to think about, and a characteristic of a believer, I got thinking about it, and I would cast it in the context of different kinds of dogs.

I'm not comparing you to a dog, I'm just comparing myself to a dog, right?

There are breeds of Jane and I love dogs.

We've always had dogs.

For the last 10 years we haven't, but if we ever finish our assignment here, and if Jane is still speaking to me when that's over and we get back to Indiana, uh, we've talked about we're probably going to get at least one more dog in our life.

We love dogs.

It's very interesting the kinds of dogs that people choose.

You know, they often say that people begin to look like their pet.

Um, don't nudge the person next to you.

No, I'm sorry.

Um it's actually been observed, people tend to get dogs that reflect their own personality.

We always had stubborn dogs.

I wonder what that says.

The last dog we had was a fox terrier.

Beautiful dog, spectacular dogs.

Fox terriers have been bred for hundreds of doggy generations to be stubborn and determined and to do what they want to do.

And so you they bred them because they needed rodents and other animals out of rocks and wood piles and so forth to be gotten in and gotten out.

Golden retrievers.

Oh, for a golden lab.

Yeah, just wags and just wants you to tell them what to do and thanks you for it.

We've never once had a dog like that.

Does God have in me a Labrador or a fox terrier?

That's what James is asking us to uh to get into.

Which are you?

How do you respond?

Is your inclination, is what has been implanted in you, bred in you by the new birth?

Is it to be responsive or to be a stubborn rascal?

It's a pretty simple question.

Are you a fox terrier?

I'll do what I want to do.

And you can't teach me a thing, at least I wasn't ever able to teach him very much.

Or is it a golden retriever who just longs, longs to do what the master says?

What is really being talked about here is being anxious to respond and being readily teachable.

How teachable are we?

As we come into church, put it this way, we often find the attitude among believers that the speaker is responsible for getting the people to listen by being entertaining, relevant, engaging.

James, according to this writer, who happened to have read the book of James very profoundly, James shifts the responsibility back to the audience.

As a preacher and teacher of God's word, I make, I work real hard not to make it more difficult than it needs to be to listen to me.

Okay?

I put a lot of time and energy in that because I don't want to make it more hard than it is to respond to God's word.

And sometimes the communicator gets in the way.

But you need to understand very clearly what I am hoping and working hard to do, and it is not to entertain you, it is not to make you feel good, it is not to give you what you think you want, it is not to coddle, it is not to respond to your consumer needs.

If you want that, send me back to Indiana.

That's but churches look for the wrong kind of person.

Let me be real clear about something.

Very soon we are going to begin the process of seeking a new senior pastor.

That's why I'm here.

Okay?

That's a big part of why I'm here.

I will not determine who comes, for which you can be profoundly thankful.

I'll coach the process.

But ultimately, ultimately, you will determine who comes here.

Now, let me give you a piece of advice.

Look for the right thing.

And the right thing is not cute stories, entertainment, an attractive outside, someone who can keep you awake.

If you have to be kept awake here, you have a problem.

It's not the speaker.

Now, the speaker can make it more difficult and can be sleep-inducing.

I get that.

It is not the pastor's task to try to get you interested in God's word.

If you are not interested in God's words, no pastor, no matter how clever and how many great stories and how entertaining, will change your heart.

Because if you are not interested in God's word, not just superficially, but deeply, you have a heart problem.

So look for someone who will, with all simplicity and humility, seek to open up the Word of God and make it easier for you to respond to God.

But don't look for someone who is going to entertain you.

You can draw crowds with that.

You do not accomplish the purposes of God with that.

I'll stop meddling for just a moment here.

Let me move on here.

What James is wanting to do is to get us, to get us, to show us what the opposite of listening is, and the opposite of listening, we've touched on it, is reacting and rejecting.

The anger of man does not produce the righteous life of God.

Now he quickly moves from responding to God with this issue of anger.

It's very, very interesting.

The difficulty is if we are both more intent to communicate than to listen, and more intent to make clear that I know what I'm talking about and you're wrong, when that's the case, there's a deeper problem.

I've told some of you I pastored a church years ago that was filled with pastors and vocational Christian workers.

Half the congregation were teenagers, a congregation of about 500.

Half of them were teenagers, and the other half were full-time missionaries.

That meant on a Sunday morning half the congregation was controlled by their hormones.

The other half of the congregation was convinced that God, that they knew what God was saying and were out to correct me almost every time I stood up.

It was a great group to work with.

Don't get me wrong.

But I had a guy come up to me one time and say, Walt, at the end of a message, Walt, I'm very disappointed in you.

I said, Oh.

And he was this big, tall, strapping guy.

He was Canadian, looked like Paul Bunyan to me, you know.

What did I do?

And he said, I'm very disappointed in you.

I said, Well, tell me.

What?

And he said, You should have used this illustration.

And he proceeded to give me the illustration that I should have used in the message.

And instead of wanting to knock his head off, and that wouldn't have worked very well because he could flick his little finger and knock me down, but I found my heart responding in a different way, thinking, why is it so important for you to correct me?

I mean, I I want to be open to correction, but and and there was this edge to what he was saying.

And I thought there's something deeper within, and that's really what James is uh is getting at.

There is a hunger and thirst that God places within us.

It's a hunger and thirst for righteousness, which basically means a hunger and thirst for the righteous life that God develops within us.

And what he says is the way to produce the righteous life of God within ourselves is to keep our mouths shut and to listen and respond.

And the antithesis of that is angry refutation.

Just real quickly, what he talks about in verse 21, he talks about filthiness and rampant wickedness that we're supposed to get rid of.

Those are very harsh words, and it's talking about attitudes in our hearts.

The word of filthiness is the word that was used for human excrement.

I don't know what children in your families, how they refer to human excrement.

We raised our kids in the Dutch-speaking world, and the Dutch-speaking world that's appropriate for children to use, they use inappropriate things all the time, too.

But an appropriate term is precisely the word, this Greek word that is here for filthiness.

Get that out of your lives.

That gets in the way of responding to God.

And this matter of rampant wickedness, it has a connotation of a cancer that is going to just grow and grow and be dis and ultimately destroy us.

And the response is to receive with meekness the implanted word of God.

That's where he's going with that.

All right, I want to close with fox terriers.

Uh to dog school.

And uh our dog could only get into puppy class.

Couldn't even get into first grade.

What I realized as I took our fox carrier to fox terrier to puppy class was that it was me that was being trained far more than the dog.

And what I learned was some very simple things that have, to me, great application for this, what God is saying to us here.

First of all, uh fox terriers enjoy doggy treats.

They just don't learn a bloomin' thing from them.

You cannot motivate, you can motivate a fox terrier to eat.

You can't motivate a fox terrier to do what you want by giving him a puppy treat.

The only thing that really works is a training collar.

You might call it a choke chain.

A good training collar is not a choke chain.

If you put a training collar on the wrong way, when you pull up on it, it just stays tight.

And that's harsh and cruel.

And some of the worst ones have spikes going around there.

But a training collar that is right and used correctly, you give a quick light jerk and it immediately releases.

What are you doing?

You're getting the dog's attention.

That's all there is to it.

You're motivating them in a way that they will respond to.

Dogs, fox terriers love doggy treats, but they need a firm, momentary jerk.

I think I see God doing that with us all of the time, getting our attention in loving and good ways.

The interesting thing is that the goal is voice command.

Um, the goal is that ultimately you could just say, Come here.

Not screaming the way we had to do with our dog, but just come here.

Or even just emotion.

So that the dog would be so trained to respond without, but just trained under voice command.

Psalm 32, verse 9 says, Don't be like the Horse or a mule without understanding, which must be curbed with bit and bridle, or it won't stay near you.

Psalms 32:9

He's saying, My people, don't be a stubborn animal that has to constantly have it chain jerked.

That's not what I want from you.

That's not what I'm all about.

It's voice command, responding, among other things, to the word of God.

I have to ask myself and I have to ask you, what might there be going on in your life that may be God's gracious collar jerk?

Just to get your attention.

Not to punish you, not to beat you up.

But boy, does God need to get my attention.

The stuff I'm made from does not naturally respond to God.

Now, over the years, it takes a whole I both need less of a jerk and I am less of a jerk.

But still sometimes God just long story, won't go into it today.

Jane and I had been in Belgium for 22 years.

We loved Belgium.

That was where God had called us.

We never wanted to leave Belgium, and one day God kicked us out of the country.

Long story.

We were kicked out of the country.

And I, we hated that.

After a while, we began to say, you know, we were so stubborn, it took that for God to get our attention.

I hope it's not that severe, but what is there in your life, perhaps, that you need to recognize is God trying to get your attention?

Do you have a teachable spirit?

Do you even want to have a teachable spirit?

See, that's an indicator of God working deeply within us.

And my final word of encouragement to this stubborn, ornery fox terrier is God specializes in training fox terriers.

You stubborn?

You resistant?

Don't make God use a bit and a bridle.

That doesn't really do you any good.

But have hope.

Be encouraged.

God specializes in teaching us voice command.

If we will listen.

And the question is, are we listening?

Are we listening?

Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, you know I don't say this cheaply, and you know how I have struggled over the years and still struggle at times.

Because I want to do my thing, and I want it my way.

And it's so hard to listen.

And yet you have given us your Holy Spirit, and you are transforming us from within.

And I pray that for my brothers and sisters here, there would be a deep and a growing desire to hear and to respond.

Lord, Lord, would you teach us?

Would you train us?

If need be, jerk our chain.

But Lord, make us into responsive people who are who are responsive, who do what you say because we want to do it.

Make us quick to listen and slow to speak.

And may we get rid of all anger.

And if that happens, it'll be a work of your grace.

And we will forever praise you for it.

Amen.