James chapter 1, beginning at verse 18. Of His own will, He brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures. 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. But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away, and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing. If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue, but deceives his heart, this person's religion is worthless. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world. Father, we ask now that You would give us ears to hear what the Spirit says to the church. We ask that You would send Your Holy Spirit in power, that He would grant us hearts that would receive Your word and melt under the authority of scripture, hearts that would rise in worship and adoration and praise. I pray, Lord God, that You would empower both hearer and preacher alike, Lord, so that we would hear the voice of God, and that I would speak as it were, the oracles of God, and that Your church will be built up and the earth filled with Your glory. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. We're going to be considering this morning verses 19 through to verse number 21 of this text, which says, "Know this, my beloved brothers, let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger." This passage begins the section of James's portrait of true religion. Verse 27 helps us see that James is arriving at this conclusion that religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father looks like this. And what James is helping us to see is that this passage is not primarily about anger or our speech, although it is definitely addressing those issues, but rather one primarily designed to help us think what is the answer to this question, or help answer this question: What does true religion look like? What does a Christian look like? This flows on right out of verse 18. Verse 18 says, "Of His own will, He has brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures." And so here we have God the Father giving birth to spiritual children, pouring into our lives new life by the power of the Holy Spirit, so that we now are His new creation. These new creatures. And James is saying, "What should these new creatures look like? What should be their life? How are we to discern whether or not one is a true believer?" And as we follow this all the way through, James is going to explain this in chapter number two that faith without works is dead and go on to give a very clear demonstration of what true religion looks like in practice. But this section, particularly verse number 19 down to verse number 27, or at least down to verse number 25, James is helping us understand that the way that we can determine whether someone is truly a believer is how they relate to the word of God. The key word to understanding this section is the word "word." Now that's a wordy statement. But let me help you see James's point. It is the word of truth in verse number 18 that brings us forth as God's new creation, the word of truth, the gospel. And then in verse number 22, we are encouraged to receive the implanted word, which is able to save our souls. And then in verse number 24 down to verse verse 22 down to verse 25, James reminds us that the word that saved us and the word that we are to receive is the word that we are also to obey, and not just be hearers of that word, but doers of that word. That word that is none other than the perfect law of liberty, the fulfillment of the revelation of God in Christ Jesus and His glorious gospel. So that the mark of true religion is really determined by how you and I relate and respond to the word of God. And so in verse number 19, he says, "Know this, my beloved brothers, let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger." How then should we interpret the words "quick to hear"? Quick to hear what? See, ordinarily, we might think quick to hear others. And there is application to that. But I think in light of what we're considering in the context, there is something else James has in mind. This is not primarily about us having good hearing or excellent conversation skills whereby we know how to ask the right questions to really show that we are listening. Nor is it really the—you've ever heard it been said where God has given us two ears and one mouth, so we can do double the listening and half the speaking. It's true. But this passage is not primarily about that. James is alleging that the mark of true religion is hearing God's word and doing God's word, having a heart and a disposition that receives the word of God with meekness. So then why does James couple the instruction "be quick to hear" with "slow to speak and slow to anger"? I'm sure you're thinking that. I hope you're following. It's an important question to answer. Well, firstly, He does this because He's trying to show us that hasty speech and swift anger are signs of inattention and disregard. Let me explain it this way. The person who is quick to anger and quick to speak is more concerned to avoid what is coming out of the mouth of another and is not having and demonstrating a disposition of one who is teachable and desirous to learn. So quick speech and quick anger are signs of defensive mechanisms that close us out to truth or to whatever we're hearing that we particularly don't like. So the defensive mechanism of anger, right? Through anger, we stop our ears and we shut down engagement. When the angry spirit rises, your ears stop listening. Even scientifically, this is verifiable, right? The reality is that when you're in that fight or flight mode, it is hard to hear what your husband or wife is saying or your partner is saying. And we all know what that's like. They could repeat the phrase a hundred times, but there's just something going on, right? That level of emotional rise in the heart and it just stops the ears. Of course, they're not literally stopped. But the teachableness of our hearts dwindles away at the moment that our hearts are filled with rage and anger and frustration, and by it what we are essentially doing is, is through anger, we are finding for many of us anyway, through swiftness of anger, we are finding a place of escape from accountability and from instruction and from that conversation that makes us feel so uncomfortable. And then you have the defensive mechanism of speech. These are the ones that perhaps aren't so quick to anger, although the quick to anger usually bursts forth in speech, but there are some people that may be a little bit better with the anger but a little bit worse with the speech. And what I mean by that is that they avoid what's being said and shut down conversation by controlling conversation. Instead of letting someone finish and hearing and trying to understand and seeking to learn what another is saying, they move the conversation or lessen its impact or avoid the last topic that was spoken or explain something away. Once again, a mark, another mark of the fact that we are not listening. But then we have to ask ourselves this question: Is this text about hearing God or how we should respond to people? You know, it says let every man be quick to hear, and if that means listening to God and listening to His will, then why does James say "quick to hear, slow to speak to others as it were, and slow to anger with others"? Or is he referring to being slow to anger towards God? And how do these things then relate? Well, I want to propose a solution to this apparent problem by the fact that God speaks through intermediaries. God speaks to us through circumstances, God speaks to us through trials, God speaks to us through temptations, and yes, through promptings. But one of the ways in which God often speaks to us is through the words of others. Godly counsel it may be, and I would even submit to you, even though the words that another person is saying is not the words of God, God is still speaking to our hearts even through conversations that we don't like, that even may not be true. For example, you may be falsely accused, and everything that is said is untrue. But God is still speaking to you. Are you listening to my voice, says God? Are you discerning my will in this? Are you learning about the destruction of speech that is ungodly? Are you learning about the danger of false accusations? Are you seeing how Satan himself operates as the accuser of the brethren? God is speaking. But as soon as we engage in anger as a result, and as soon as we engage in hasty speech as a result, what are we doing? We're shutting off the discernment that comes to us by the will of God as we allow ourselves to take in the moment and the reality of what's being said, or whatever we're confronted with. Now I want to make that distinction. I'm not essentially saying that everything someone says is God's word, but God speaks to His people, and we ought to discern His voice, and being angry and hasty in speech cuts us off from as it were that communication of God to our hearts. And James is also speaking of a state of being. So when he says, "Let every man be swift to hear and slow to speak and slow to anger," and quick to hear, He is talking about a state of being. He's saying, "This should be your disposition. This should be the way that you are marked out as Christians. This should be your ordinary manner of life, something that should you should be dressed in." So He's not necessarily talking about just quickly listen and do this and it's more than that. He is saying, "You should be marked by a teachable spirit that receives and is receptive to the word of God and the truth of God, whether it comes from wherever it may come." And therefore, you should also be someone who is slow to speak and slow to anger so that you can stay in a disposition of hearing what God may be saying to you through whatever happens in your life. In other words, don't be marked by anger, don't be marked by hastiness of speech, but be marked by a teachable spirit that is receptive, a receptive heart that receives the truth of God. Let me explain how this works in relationship to how God may be speaking through others. Your boss kindly reminds you, "Jack, it's 9:30 a.m. and you are late." Are you being attentive now to what God might be wanting to teach you through this? Perhaps God is challenging you about your lack of discipline, your lack of communication, or your disrespect for your boss or the business that God has placed you in. A heart that is receptive, a heart that is not quick to anger or quick to response, will receive what's being said and humbly take it to heart and consider and mull over and then discern what should be the lessons that are learned from such a word from my boss. But the person who responds immediately in anger despises the boss. Doesn't he know what it's like to drive from where I have to drive from to get to work? And he works from home. Or he works five minutes down the road. It takes me half an hour, and in this traffic, or I have to take transport because I don't have the money to buy a car. What's he complaining about? How dare he? And such anger shuts you off from whatever lessons you're meant to be learning from God through the voice of your boss, as you just burst forth quickly in anger. Or you may immediately respond with quick speech, justifying yourself and reasoning it all away. "9:30, mate, come on, it's not so bad. It's only half an hour. And you know what? I've got a lunch break. Just knock off the half an hour from my lunch break and everything will be fine. It's all good." And you're quick just to kind of explain it and settle it out and get it all moving on. You know, and we're all late anyway from time to time. Haven't you been late before yourself? And while you're doing that, what's actually happening is your heart is closing to what you've just heard from your boss and the effect that it should have in your heart. I'm not saying there's never a time to explain yourself or even, but it's important that we receive what is being said and hear what is being said and discern what it is that God may be teaching us through it rather than giving ourselves to anger and to hasty speech as a way of dismissiveness. The same ear that hears God is the same ear that will be open to hearing others. And this is what James is concerned about. He's concerned that we maintain a listening, teachable heart that is eager to know and to discern and to value God's truth, His revelation, and the lessons that life throws at us and come to us in all our interactions with others. And it's amazing how James does this because this is what John also does. He shows us that true religion is evidenced both vertically, yes, we're born again by God's Spirit, and yes, we're hearing God's word, but that should be evidenced also horizontally in how we relate to others. We like to separate those two things so that we can sort of live the way we please and feel like we're still right with God. But James wants us to realize that if you're really hearing God's word and you're really hearing God's voice, you should have a teachable heart that should flow out in your interactions with others that should not be marked by quickness of speech or hastiness of anger. And John does the same thing when he says in John 4, verse 1 John 4:20-21, "If anyone says, 'I love God,' and hates his brother, he is a liar. For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this is the commandment we have from Him: whoever loves God must love his brother also." James is so ruthless, isn't he? Keeps us from this sort of false spirituality that can say, "Oh, for God," and then nothing toward others. And that's what true religion looks like. And therefore the teaching is that persistent, reactive anger and speech are symptomatic of a hardening heart. A heart whose posture is no longer open to instruction. A heart that is closing, a heart that is becoming more callous, a heart that is becoming less teachable. Your ears may be opened, but as the book of Hebrews says, you may be becoming dull of hearing. And James says, as believers, this should not be the way that we live. This should not be the way that our hearts' disposition should be. But we ought to be, as Christians, those that put away such things. Look what it says in verse number 20, verse, verse 21: "Therefore, put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls." Verse 19: "Be quick to hear, be slow to speak, be slow to anger." Be as those that produce the righteousness of God, not those that give way to anger which does not produce God's righteousness. And then he says, "Now put away, put away all these things. Put away filthiness, put away rampant wickedness." Do to your soul what you do to your body every day, is James's illustration. Put it off as a garment. Every day, you take off your clothes, you put on other clothes. Every single day of our life, we do this as human beings. We get rid of the dirty things that smell and stink after a long day of work, and then we put on clothes that are fresh and new, that should be exactly representative of how our cleanliness is. I mean, I've had a shower, I don't put on dirty clothes. So my wife reminds me that that's what I'm meant to be doing. But the point is, do to your soul what you do to your body. You put off old clothes and you put on new ones. The old clothes that mark the old life, the life of false religion, the life of anger, the life of hastiness of speech, the life of defensiveness and callousness of heart, He's saying, "Put off all those things with all its other filthiness and sin and all the abundant wickedness around us that is so available to us." He goes, "Put it off like a garment. Take it off. Stop doing it. Say no to it. Examine your heart. Look in the mirror of God's word, see what you're wearing that is inappropriate, and say, 'I'm done with this garment. It doesn't suit who I am in Christ.'" And don't just do that as an external exercise, as it were. But James is talking about an internal thing. This is putting off filthiness of your own heart, of the soul is where He is referring to. It's as the book of Joel says it, "Even now declares the Lord, return to Me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, with mourning." But then he says, "Rend your hearts, tear your hearts, not your garments. Return to the Lord your God, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and He relents over disaster." Rend your heart, not your garments. Deal with those inner things that corrupt you and do not represent Christianity and God and the gospel as it should be represented. And so he says, "Put it away, the filthiness. Put away the rampant wickedness, all this pollution in our lives." And verse number 21 he says, "And receive." That's another word that although it's not directly synonymous with hearing, but it carries the same concept, doesn't it? Be quick to hear. Receive. The idea is posture yourself as one who is receiving the word. And it says receive what he calls here the implanted word. The word that is not merely superficial or ear-tickling or just a great idea that passes on through our minds, but the word that is quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, that pierces into your very heart and divides and discerns the thoughts and intents of your hearts. He says, "That word, that truth, that gospel," He says, "posture yourself as one who will receive it into the inner recesses of your heart." Don't stop your ears to it, don't block it, don't ignore it, posture yourself as one that receives that deep and powerful, striking word that strikes into the core of your very being and takes root in your heart. And James is saying, "Heed its instruction. Be done with the callousness and hardness of the flesh that keeps itself at arm's distance with the truth of the living God, but rather receive the word of God and posture yourself in such a way." And he says, "You receive it with meekness." Exactly, once again, the opposite to being quick to anger, right? And quick to speech. To receive the word with meekness is to receive it quietly and submissively. To humbly let the powerful word of God do its work in your life. To surgically remove and cleanse and shape and cut out all the cancer of your soul and all the anger of your life and all the pollution that exists in your soul. He's saying, "Let that word, receive that word as a holy word of God that gave birth to you. Keep receiving that word as a life-giving word, the sanctifying word, the life-changing word. Now you are clean," said Jesus, "through the word that I have spoken to you." He says, "Receive it. Receive it meekly." Don't buck against it, kick against it, fight against it, seek to explain it away. Don't get angry with God's truth. It may come from a person that you don't like. But if it's God's truth, it's God's truth. Let us receive it with meekness. That engrafted word. Be as the tamed horse who being broken in, no longer allows his natural tempers and and passions to drive it, but rather receives the word of its master under the bit and the bridle. And that's exactly how we should posture ourselves under the lordship of Jesus Christ, as true believers who have true religion who are hearing His word. Let that word penetrate you, he says, which is able to save your souls. You know, this word doesn't just give you life in conversion and make you a new creation. It is a word that preserves your soul to the coming of Jesus Christ. It is not about the fact that I've just heard the gospel now, I've understood it, and so yeah, I don't really need God's word now, or that God's word is about is Jesus and I've found Jesus, and now I've just got to go do life by myself and hopefully one day I'll enter into the kingdom of heaven. He says, "That's not a true believer. That's not true religion. True religion understands this: that the word that saved me is the word I must hold on to. I must continue to receive. And I must continue to posture myself in the same way when I first received it by faith." When you came to Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you were broken in your sin and understood that life was empty without Him, the living God. You tasted that the Lord is gracious and is good, and that He is a great Savior. And James says, "Keep postured in that way, where you keep receiving that word and that truth, because as you keep hearing God's word, and as you humbly sit under preaching, and as you humbly listen to instruction from good Christian fellowship, and as you stay tender to how God may be speaking to you throughout your life, understand this, that your soul will be saved in that final day. You know, but if you harden your heart through hastiness of speech and anger, your heart will close to those around you, ultimately to God, and you will stray from the path of righteousness, and your soul will be lost forever in the fires of hell, you who knew superficially the word but have never truly received it into your soft soil." How we respond to the word is important. This word of God and the instruction and the truth of God is life-saving but life-preserving. The wisdom of the Proverbs teaches us about God's wisdom. It will keep you from the strange woman. The word of God will keep you from her. The wisdom of God will keep you from her. You will also see that the wisdom of God will keep you from anger. The wisdom of God will keep you from foolish talk. The wisdom of God will keep you from self-righteousness and pride. It will keep you from a hard heart. As the hammer of God's word continues to to to to crack and break the callousness around our hearts, we become more and more tender by the work of His Spirit in our lives. But to refuse the word, to no longer hear the word, is to set ourselves up for destruction. This cannot be illustrated, I think any better in scripture than the case of the children of Israel in the wilderness wanderings. A people slow to hear, quick to speak, and quick to anger. You know, throughout their wilderness journeyings and wonderings, they were faced with the bitter water at Marah, the lack of food, the lack of water at Rephidim, and the judgment that followed Korah's rebellion. And when they observed all these things, the children of Israel, instead of taking the lessons that should have learned from God who had been trying to speak to them from the day that He delivered them by the hand of Moses from Egypt and helped them and showed His power and might through the Red Sea and through all His provision in the wilderness, instead of that, they were not learning. Their hearts were growing harder. They were being more callous and were no longer responding to the truth of God. And so they quickly and repeatedly grumbled against Moses and against what he was teaching them about God, and they complained against God's presence, and they spoke rashly and rebelled against his appointed leadership because they had failed to trust in God's promises and in God's providential care. Demonstrating that they were slow to hear, quick to speak, and quick to anger. And the worst of this and the climax of this is when they finally arrived to the land of promise at Kadesh Barnea. And they send the spies in who go out and spy out this land and come back with a report. And they said, "Oh, there's giants in the land." "Oh yeah, there is milk and honey and grapes and all these wonderful things that God has promised, but there are giants in the land, and we can't go in because they'll squash us. We're like grasshoppers in their eyes." And Joshua and Caleb came back as two spies that also went, and they came back and said, "It's okay. This is a great land. By faith, we can take it. God said it's all ours. Let's go up and possess it. It's beautiful. Not only is it beautiful, what are giants to God, as it were. Just trust Him. Didn't he tell us we're going to have it?" The children of Israel, as they heard the report of the unbelieving spies, their hearts were hardened, and they hardened their hearts against Joshua and Caleb and the truth that they were saying about about having faith in the promise of God and the land that was before them, and they took up stones to stone Joshua and Caleb. This is wild. God's promise to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, they're in Egypt, the land of bondage. Now they're freed, and finally they get to have this opportunity to see the land promised to their forefathers. But because of the callousness and the hardness of their own hearts, as they continually shut their ears to God and His truth, and as they continually responded with hasty speech, they descended into such callousness and hardness of heart that they despised the pleasant land, as the psalmist says, and having no faith in His promise, they murmured in their tents and they did not obey the voice of the Lord. And they perished in the wilderness and they did not receive the promise. Take warning, friends. Be careful how you hear. Be careful how you hear the word of the Lord and the good news of Jesus. Be careful how you respond to the truth of the word of God. As it's read to us by brother Liam, "Therefore, while the promise of entering His rest still remains, let us fear, lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it. For good news came to us, just as to those children in Israel, as to them, but the message they heard did not benefit them because they were not united by faith with those who listened." Joshua and Caleb. "For we who have believed enter that rest, as He said, 'As I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest.' Although His works were finished from the foundation of the world, for he has somewhere spoken of the seventh day in this way, 'And God rested on the seventh day from all His works.' And again, in this passage He said, 'They shall not enter my rest.' Listen to this, since therefore it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly received the good news failed to enter it because of disobedience, again he appoints a certain day, 'Today,' saying through David so long afterward in the words already quoted, 'Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.'" That's what the Holy Spirit says to us today, every one of us, today, if you hear God's voice, don't harden your heart. Don't do it. Don't give way to anger. Don't give way to hastiness of speech. Don't explain away the penetrating truths of God that are rattling your life, causing you to see your sin and driving you to Jesus. Realize that the land of promise must be had through faith and trusted, trusting in Jesus and trusting in His word. Many of you here the gospel week after week and week after week, and I know not what's in your heart. But I tell you now, if you refuse and harden your necks as the Pharisees hardened their hearts to the truth of Jesus, all that is before you is destruction. And you will not enter God's rest and into His promise. And I plead with you through the grace of Jesus Christ, do not harden your hearts. Take the warning, brothers and sisters, take the warning, friends that hear the word week after week, am I hearing God's voice? Am I listening to Him? Or am I dismissing the very word that calls me to repentance and faith? It is the word that is able to save your soul. My encouragement to you this morning is to receive with meekness the word of God. Receive with meekness Jesus Christ the Lord. The one who lived for you, the one who died for you, the one who bore our filthiness, our abundant wickedness in His body on the cross to set us free, to let us enter into God's rest, into God's heaven, and to taste of His fruit and have everlasting life. Oh, our pride, our anger, our lying, our self-justifying speech, our rebellion, and our rejection of God's word and His ways will send us to a devil's hell forevermore. But here before us is the promise of love and life. Do not buck against God's commands, do not despise His love, do not ignore His mercy any longer. Perhaps you have said to yourself in an excuse, "I will come to Jesus at a more convenient time, or when the day is better, or when my friends come, then I will come." My friends, that's just one way of explaining it away and all you're doing is hardening your heart to the voice of God. You say, "Oh, when it's more acceptable in the society in which I live, then I will come." Or maybe you're angry with God and say, "I will come to Jesus, but if he can first explain to me why He allowed this to happen in my life and why God does this and why God does that." Oh, be careful of such anger that will make your heart harder and close it and close it to the voice of that sweet Savior that calls you to come. Do not ignore His mercy. Stop doubting His promises. Stop refusing the implanted word, refuse not this Savior anymore. He is good and gracious. Receive His implanted word of truth with meekness and hunger and long for that word to be deeply placed into your heart that it will give life to your soul. Hear the word of Jesus that says, "Repent and believe the gospel." Hear the word of Jesus that says, "Come to me, all who labor and are heavy burdened and I will give you rest." Hear the word of Jesus that says, "If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink." Hear the word of Jesus which says this to you, "Whoever comes to me I will never cast out." Today, you hear His voice. I tell you today, brothers and sisters and friends, do not harden your heart. Today is the acceptable time. Today is the day of salvation. Let us then be teachable, listening attentively to our Lord, refusing in us every impulse to anger and every impulse to hasty speech that closes up our hearts defensively. Let us pray to God for a heart that is tender, that is eager, that longs for His truth. Let us be as God's people leaving this place and in our conversations with others and in our lives, let us be as those that remember every time that I give way to anger and every time I give way to to hasty speech, I am blocking my ears to a lesson that I probably should be learning at this point of time in my life. Let us be fearful, not only of the fact that it might ruin our relationships, but let it be fearful of the fact that it may ruin our walk with God. Because the more callous you are to others, the harder your heart will be to God. And every time you give way to anger and hastiness of speech, the wax in your spiritual ears begins to grow and silence more and more the voice of the living God in your life. Do you have listening ears? You know, when Jesus told the parable of the soils, He said to the to His disciples concerning the Pharisees, "For this people's heart has grown dull, and with their ears they can barely hear and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and turn and I would heal them." Are you like that? Or are you like those that have true religion? You know what he said to his disciples? Just following that verse, the just Matthew 13, that was 15, verse 16 says, "But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and for your ears, for they hear." You want to know if you really belong to Jesus? How's your heart? Or how's your ears? Are you teachable? Are you listening? Or are you angry and explaining away everything with hastiness of speech? Let us hear the word of the Lord. Let us pray. Oh, Lord our God, give us ears to hear and hearts to believe the word of the living God. How merciful You are, O God. How merciful and gracious. Lord, we would trust in Jesus today and hear His loving kindness to us in the gospel of our the Lord Jesus, Your Son. We ask that You would guide us, Lord, and help us to be careful of a callous and hard heart. In Jesus' name. Amen.