Good morning. Got a Bible? Go ahead and grab it and turn with me to James, chapter one. We're going to be continuing through James. We have this week and next week in chapter one. And we're done with chapter One. All right. So I don't know, 1517 more, more weeks in James. But it's been really impactful for my own walk with Jesus. Hope it's been impactful for you guys as well as you're turning there. We live in some pretty trying times, don't we? And those trying times can be international stuff going on, right? Whether it's terrorism and war to national things. There's political division always it feels like in our own country, right. There may be turmoil in your homes, there may be anxiety in your own minds. There's just trying times that we deal with. What is the best way to impact our world in the midst of those trying times? What is the best way for us as Christians to impact the world during those trying times? Now, these trying times aren't new things. There's always been trying times. I think what's unique about where we live today is that everybody kind of has a voice to react to those trying times. And that voice is kind of on our phones, right? We see something and we want to respond to those trying times. And we can respond really quickly. We can respond really angrily, and we can respond. And a lot of people may even hear what you have to say, what your response and reaction is. And so as you consider that, you're like, oh, well, maybe if we're in the midst of these trying times and I want to make an impact in our world and I want to see change in our world, or I want to see change in my own heart, maybe I should just respond quickly and use my voice to do that. And you get in this mindset, we're like, oh, I'm hoping to change the world and I'm going to let my reactions kind of do that now. I think that's an honorable thing. We want to change our world. We want to change our lives. And if I'm given the benefit of the doubt, I think a lot of people want to do that. But when we respond this way and we have the ability to put our reactions and emotions on display, the thing that trying times does is this. It ramps up our anger, it ramps up our fear. It may ramp up our sadness. And so what you end up doing is you respond quickly and the quickness of your words may lead to actually worse things than better things. So what is James going to tell us this morning, like, how should we respond? How should we receive in our lives the trials around us? But more importantly, how do we receive the word of God, the Gospel, in a way that actually impacts our world for the good, and not just by responding angrily. So in the midst of trials, what do you need to know to receive the truth and respond in a way that leads to God honoring and God sized resUlts, not just something you can muster up. So God's going to answer that through James. So, James, chapter one, verses 19 through 21. This morning, James says this. 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 soul. Some of you, if you hear last week and we went through the previous paragraph here, it says, started in verse 16, do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Very similarly here, know this, my beloved brothers. There's something that the audience that James is writing to, they need to pay Attention, to take note of something, some knowledge that they need to have that's going to help them. He says, know this, my beloved brothers. This is his spiritual family that he's writing to. These are ChristIans that he's Writing to. Remember. James was kind of the pastor of these ChurcheS. The problem was because of persecution, persecution has come in and has scattered believers in a lot of different places. They've been dispersed to different places. So they're in a New normal. It's a New normal that's caused by persecution. So it's some trying times, right? And in the midst of that, James is saying, hey, there's something that you need to know now, all throughout the Book of James. What we have to remember is that James is trying to communicate to them, hey, you have been saved by the grace of God. How do you actively live out your faith? Now you have saving faith. How does that faith play itself out in the midst of these trying times so early on, you have, hey, how do you respond and receive the word of God? Or how do you respond and receive the trials of life? We talked about how do you receive and respond to temptation in life. And this morning we're going to talk about how do you receive and respond to the word of God in your life? How do you receive and respond to the word of God in your life? Now, how do we know this? In verse 18 we covered last week, it says this of his own will he brought us forth by the what word of truth, that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures. And remember, he brought us forth. He has saved us by his word. The gospel message, the salvation message. That's how we are saved. So salvation is kind of the beginning of this thought. Now I'm going to jump ahead to next week. I'm not going to preach to it. But in verses 22 and 23, it says this, but be doers of the word and not hearers, only deceiving yourselves. 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, and then it goes on to say he forgets what he looks like. So verse 18, you are saved by the word. Verses 22, really? Through 27, you're saved by the word. Now you got to do the word. Don't just hear it. So what is this paragraph that we're looking at intently this morning? What is James trying to say? Go back to verse 21. Therefore, put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted. What word? Receive with meekness, the implanted word that's able to save your soul. So you have this kind of sandwich. You are saved by the Gospel message, But saved by the word. I want you to live out and not just hear the word, but do it. What's in between? How do you receive the word? How do you receive the gospel into your life? He says, I want you to receive with meekness the implanted word. I want you to accept the word. I want you to welcome it in, and I want you to take it to heart, and I want you to do that with meekness. Probably the best translation might be receive it with humility. It's speaking to teachability here. When you hear the gospel message, are you still teachable? Do you have an eagerness to still learn and a readiness to submit to the word? Or it's like, no, the gospel saved me, but now I just kind of get to act how I want to act. He says, I want you to receive it with meekness, and I want you to receive the implanted word. The implanted word. The gospel is already there. He's speaking to Christians here, and his concern is this, that the gospel that was implanted in you, now that you're going through trials, you're not as receptive to it as you once were. You remember when you were in this location and you love the gospel and you received it so well. Now you're dispersed and scattered about. Do you still want the same gospel in your life to impact your life? So in trials, how do we foster an environment for ongoing gospel activity and not just one time gospel acceptance? Like, oh, yeah, I remember as a child when I received the gospel. For me personally, when I was 14, I received the gospel following a revival service at a small town South Carolina church. Maybe you received the gospel at Fall Retreat last week, but how do we take this gospel and receive it continuously and not just have it to be something that, oh, I remember that one time that I accepted the gospel. How do we welcome it into our lives more regularly? Some of you may remember a commercial in the early 2000s. When I say it, some of you will remember this, a Verizon commercial that said, can you hear me now? Can you hear me now? When cell phones are just kind of coming aboUt, some of you're like, what? They haven't always been there. No, when they're coming about, the signal wasn't always strong. So you're on the phone and you're talking and it's like, right? And you're like, can you hear me now? Can you hear me now? And you have this little man, he's walking all over the place, and he's in these extreme places. Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now? Because if the signal is strong, you hear the message clearly. Is the signal of your heart strong to receive the gospel message clearly every single day of your life? How do we go about cultivating this life and fostering a life that strengthens the signal where we can hear the gospel message clearly? Verse 19. James is going to tell us how to do that. Know this, my beloved brothers. Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger. You want to receive the Gospel message clearly? He says, let every person be. He's speaking to identity here. When you encounter the word, when you encounter the gospel, this is the person that you're supposed to be. And he gives three types of people that you need to be. You need to be a quick hearing person, a slow to speak person, and a slow to anger person. So he says, you need to be quick to hear. It literally means hurry up and listen. Hurry up and listen. A rapid pursuit to slow down. It's like getting to a game early. I don't want to miss the kickoff because I don't want to miss what might happen. I'm going to show up early so that I can watch the whole thing. I'm going to get to the concert early because I want to see the opening act. It's saying, I'm eager to hear what the gospel is. It's not just showing up early on to church. All right, that would be helpful for a lot of you. All right? But it's a quickness to hear the gospel in your life to say, I want to hear this, and I'm going to put myself in position where I can hear the gospel more frequently and more regularly. Now, the problem is, for them in this context, the original context, they were in a verbal society. What? I mean, there weren't a lot of written scriptures down at this point. So James is saying, you need to be quick to hear because you might miss your opportunity. If James is coming around to a different church and he's sharing this, you're like, hey, you need to be quick to hear when the gospel comes because it's not going to be written down. You don't get a Bible at your house. You don't get to see it all the time. So you need to be quick to hear it whenever it comes because you don't have that many opportunities. That's not us, right? Many of you right now, you have your own Bibles. Many of you are sitting beside a spouse that has their own Bible and a child that has their own Bible. And if I went to your house, you might have 15 more Bibles. And if you don't have a Bible, you can download several apps that have the Bible on it. We have tremendous access to the word. So it's like, how do we bridge this context where they're going? Well, I don't have many opportunities, so that's why I need to be quick to hear for us. I think the application is many of us are slow to hear because we're too busy living. And this is what I mean. The pace of our lives is so frenetic that we can't slow down and hear and encounter the word. We are struggling to receive the word in our lives because the pace of our lives is ridiculous. You're like, I'm struggling to hear from God because your kids are involved in 45 different sports. There's only 30 of them, right? Like, your kids are involved in everything, and you're filling up your calendar so much that you don't have time to receive the gospel because you're just running. He's saying, slow down. Be quick to hear. Slow down the pace of your life. Not only do you need to be a quick hearing person to receive the gospel, you need to be a slow to speak person. Says, be quick to hear and slow to speak. This is speaking to a sense of hesitation or delay. A sense of hesitation or delay. When we receive the gospel message that as soon as you hear the gospel, you need to let it sink in, give it a chance to sink into your own heart. Now, this is not saying you should not proclaim the Gospel. It is speaking to receiving the Gospel, not proclaiming the Gospel. We all need to be representatives of God, his ambassadors, and proclaim the Gospel. And we need to be ready to share the Gospel. But in this context, he's talking about receiving the Gospel. And some people are struggling to receive the gospel because they're so quick to speak. They're excessive talkers, and you struggle to receive the word. How many of you were told at some point in your life? Maybe lately? Think before you speak. Or maybe you're like, you have two ears and one mouth for a reason, right? It's one's to be used double the amount of time. The Jewish rabbis had something similar. They would say this. This is the reason we have two ears and only one mouth, that we may hear more and speak less. The ears are always open, ever ready to receive instruction. But the tongue is surrounded with a double row of teeth to hedge it in and keep it in proper bounds. This is not new. This is not something your parents made up when they were trying to get you to be quiet, right, that God said, hey, you need to be slow to speak. You need to be slow to speak when you encounter the word of God in a sermon, when you read the word of God, slow down. And don't just be so quick to speak about it. When you get to your connection group, if it's every week, oh, I'm sorry I did this. I confess my sin, and you do that like a million times in a row. And it's like, I don't know that. I think you're quick to confess and speak about your sin, but you're really slow to repent of your sin. That's not how we're to receive the word. Like an excessive talker doesn't receive the word well, they're kind of quick to talk about it, but apathetic toward their actions. You know how to play the Christian game. You can speak the Christian jargon, but is the word going deep in your soul and affecting and transforming your life? Psalm 119 131 says this, I open my mouth and pant Because I long for your commandments. It doesn't say, I long for your commandments. And I open my mouth and speak. I open my mouth and pant. I'm thirsting for your commandments. I'm longing for them. I have this desire. I really want to hear the gospel every day. I want to be exposed to the word of God every day. I want to hear truth daily, and I'm longing for it. I'm not just talking. Says, be quick to hear, slow to speak. And he says, you need to be a slow to anger person, quick to hear person, a slow to speak person, and a slow to anger person. And again, remember, this is about receiving the Gospel and being teachable. Back to that idea of receiving with meekness or receiving with humility. How do you humbly receive the word of God? You're quick to hear, you're slow to speak, and you're slow to become angry. Somebody once said, an angry spirit is never an attentive one. An angry spirit is never an attentive one. Maybe you were in college one time and at the beginning of a class, your professor comes over and hands you a paper that you just wrote, a graded paper, and you don't like how he or she graded it, and you're just like, kind of seething inside. Can you believe this? This is terrible. If they handed you that at the beginning of class, how well do you think you paid attention to the lecture the rest of the day? You probably didn't because you were seething with anger and you weren't very attentive to what was coming. What James is saying is some of you are angry about your situations, you're angry about your trials, and because you're so angry, you can't receive the Gospel well. Now, James chooses a unique word here for anger. There's a lot of different words for anger in the Bible. This is not like violent outburst of anger. This is the type of anger where it's swelling up inside. And on the surface, everything looks great. You're going through a trial. Everybody thinks, man, they're handling this really well. But inside, if we go back to last week, you are constantly questioning the goodness of God. I can't believe God's doing this to me. Why is God doing this? But nobody ever knows that except you and God. He's saying, when you're going through these trials, don't be the person that's just quick to anger and let it swell and build up inside. Because that type of anger is easy to hide and it's easy to cover up, and we never share it with anybody. And what it does, it begins to block the signal of us receiving the word of God. And all we think is just our anger. Anger, anger. Be slow to anger about what the word reveals about the sinfulness of your life. Be slow to anger about what the word reveals about the sinfulness of your life. Some of you, you hear the Gospel, you sit down and you read it, and you're like, oh, I don't like what God's saying here. Some of us like, okay, it's good discipline, right? But for others of you, you start getting bitter and really angry, and then eventually it's just going to boil up. Or you encounter the word of God, and if you encounter the word of God, and if somebody in your connection group speaks the Gospel to you, confronts you with some sinfulness in your own heart, tries to admonish you, maybe even rebuke you, if you find yourself getting really defensive, if you find yourself quick to blame somebody else, quick to blame your circumstances, I wouldn't say you're being a slow to anger person. You're being a quick to anger person. So you start to blame and you start to justify your sin. Well, if you just knew this, if you just knew about how I grew up, if you just knew this, now, where does our sin come from? Jordan just referenced it. Ian talked about it. James, chapter 114 and 15. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own, what? Desire. His own desire, not his upbringing, not what's happened to him in the past. I'm not diminishing that, guys. He's saying, like, if you're just going to see with anger and swell up with anger, it's coming from within. It's coming from within your own desires. Some of you, you go through trials, and you're in the midst of really hard trials, and somebody says, hey, I just want to share some scripture with you. Now, there's an appropriate time to be a good friend, to just be a great listener, to just be present. But if you find yourselves, like, angry that your friend is sharing scripture with you in the midst of trial, you're in a dangerous spot. I don't want to hear the word of God right now. Be careful. Be slow to anger when it comes to receiving the word. So if we want to strengthen this signal where we can clearly hear the gospel message, it starts with humility. We receive the gospel with humility. But not only do we receive it with humility, James is going to say, we receive it with holiness as well. Verse 21, therefore, put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness. Put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness. The idea behind filthiness there is moral defilement. You're morally filthy. The word picture is a person wearing dirty clothing. I think about kids and last few days, you've got the pumpkin patch yesterday, all right, our family goes to the pumpkin patch. And I was like, this is going to be awful because it is so muddy in the pumpkin patch. And I don't know what our car is going to look like after this. So our kids are all in their rainboots, trumpet through the thing and there's mud everywhere. But if your kid goes and plays outside in the rain in the summer and they're muddy and they come in, they're like, hey, I want to watch the TV now. You're like, not until you clean up, right? Like, not until you get sprayed down with a hose or something. Like, you're not coming into this house with that kind of muddiness and filth. What James is saying is like, hey, you can't expect to receive the gospel well when you're filthy. Morally, you can't do it. He says, I want you to put away. Put away these things. Put it off. Put it aside. Quit holding on to. And the tense that James has here is not just like, you should do it now, but it's actually having put off. These are things that you should have given up a long time ago, Christian, but you're still hanging on to the old bad habits. What type of things do we need to be putting away? Says all filth. You know what all means in Greek? All. Every bit of it. I'm not going to just hold on to this thing. I need to put it all away. In Colossians three, verses eight through ten, this is what Paul says. But now you must put them all away. Here's some things that you need to put away. Here's the type of filth. Anger, wrath, malice, slander and obscene. Talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another. Seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge. This is something you should know after the image of its creator. And then in one Peter, this is what Peter says. So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander, like newborn infants long for pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation. If indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good. If you've tasted that the Lord is good, put away the filth. Put away the filth again, it's speaking to holiness here. Put it away. He says, put that away and put your rampant wickedness away. And the difference between filth and wickedness here is wickedness is speaking to internal character things, not just things that defile you on the outside, the things that you're watching or listening to or reading. We're talking about character issue, bad attitudes, the bitterness, he says, put away the jealousy, put it away, the coveting. Put away. Put these things away. Put away the sinfulness and embrace holiness. Some of you in here, you're like, okay, I can receive the gospel with humility. I receive the gospel with humility. But humility without holiness is a poor signal strength. If you say, man, I'm a great listener and I love to hear the word of God, but you can't stop listening to other filth in your life. You're in a dangerous spot. If you can't stop listening to the filthy audiobooks and filthy podcasts, filthy music, you'rE in a dangerous spot. To receive the gospel. You go, but I'm slow to speak. But the voices in your head are so bitter and jealous for what other people have. I love to hear the word and I'm not just going to speak quickly, I'm going to let it sink in. Are you? Because that bitterness is saying something different. The coveting is saying something different. Say, well, I'm a slow to anger person. You're also really slow to forgive and reconcile. They go together. If we want to receive the gospel message, it's humility and holiness. Now, I don't think James is just saying, hey, I want you to be a better person here because there's something bigger going on. To receive the gospel with humility and holiness is not just for our own good. And this is how we impact the world the best. In the midst of trying times, there's a way that you can impact the kingdom, impact the world around you, impact your life by the way that you receive the gospel. Because I think all of us in this room would say, yeah, I want to produce like God honoring God sized results in my life. I'm not going to ask you to raise your hand, but I don't want you to disagree with that. That's a good thing. We would love our lives to produce God honoring God sized results, but the way some of us go about that is different from the way others go about it. And how is James saying we need to go about producing kingdom results? You need to receive the gospel with humility and holiness, because if you don't, this is what's going to happen. Verse 20 for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. Do you want to produce the righteousness of God with your life? You should all say, yes, yes, we would love to produce the righteousness of God. He's talking about wise conduct here, produces the things that align with God. It's not talking about the same righteousness of God that Paul talks about. It's something given from God. He's saying when you live a certain way, it's going to produce things that honor God. But your anger is not going to produce the righteousness of God. Your anger is not going to produce the righteousness of God. The fruit of the Spirit isn't love, joy, peace, patience, and anger, but it's kindness and self control and peace. Your anger rarely produces God honoring outcomes. Your anger rarely produces God honoring outcomes. When your kids are going crazy in the grocery store and you start yelling at them, how many of you think your kids are like, man, Mom's God is awesome. And you yell at your kids at home, how many of you think, man, my dad, man, his God is so righteous. When you see a different political party doing something and you decide, I'm going to respond angrily on social media because I want to affect change and I want other people to see my opinion, how many of those people seeing that post are going, man, their God's really good? When you're watching 18 to 22 year olds play a football game and you get mad because they're not doing what you would do, you would do, right. How many of those people standing beside you in the stands or sitting in your living room watching that game with you, you're going, man, their God is righteous. Their God is awesome. The anger of man, the anger of a person does not produce the righteousness of God. Now there's a thin line between anger and sin. Anger is not sin. But once you start moving in one direction with that anger or another, you get to sin really quickly because some of you in this room, you're like, wait, but Jesus flipped tables out of righteous anger and he was God. You're not. Can you have righteous anger in your life? Yes. But even if you look at, like, the frequency of righteous anger in Jesus, who was the Messiah, his life, it didn't dominate his ministry. Some of you, you need to look at the frequency of your righteous anger and compare it to the frequency of Jesus'righteous anger. And then you still need to remember you're not Jesus because some of you are like, well, I'm fighting for justice. I'm fighting for righteousness. And everybody I'm going to fight it and be super verbal about it, and I'm going to let everybody know what I'm fighting for. Just be careful because that line between anger and sin is really thin. And we kind of tightrope on that rope and we walk on that rope and on both sides is sin. And you can fall so quickly. So just watch out, Church. Just be careful. Not only does your sin not produce the righteousness of God, but your anger not produce the righteousness of God. Your anger also gives Satan a lot of opportunity compared to is what Paul says in Ephesians four. Be angry and do not sin. So you can be angry, but be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger and give no opportunity to the devil. If you're always seething in anger, just know you're giving Satan a lot of opportunity in your life. And if you're giving Satan a lot of opportunity in your life, you're going to struggle to receive the word of God. Maybe it's just a quick question when you start to get angry to go, what's my anger going to produce? What's my response going to produce today? Should I post this? Is it going to produce the righteousness of God or not? But it's not just about not producing the righteousness of God. If we go to verse 21, it says, therefore, put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word which is able to save your souls. The implanted word, the gospel message, has the ability, the power to save your souls. So your lack of humility or your lack of holiness will not lead to the production of God's righteousness, and it will not lead to the message of salvation going forward. If you want to impact the world around you, if you want to impact lives, if you want to see your life changed, walk in humility. Walk in holiness. If you want kingdom results, this is how to do it. Receive the Gospel with humility and holiness to cultivate kingdom results. Receive the Gospel with humility and holiness to cultivate kingdom results. We recently had some grass seed planted at our house. And you work the ground. You cultivate the ground beforehand. I don't know a lot about agriculture or farming, so just know that, all right? But you got to work the ground, right? The seed is there, the seed's planted. Then you got to keep working, right? You got to water a lot. But God's the one that causes growth. No matter how much you water and plant like, God's going to make this thing happen? You want to impact your world? Receive the gospel with humility and holiness. Receive the gospel with eagerness. My hope is that we would be a church that we're not just eager to post angrily on social media, but we're eager to come to church and hear the gospel proclaimed. We're not just eager to fight against injustice, but we're eager in our fight against sinfulness in our own hearts. We're not just on a crusade against unrighteousness in other people's lives, but we're willing to crucify unrighteousness in our own lives. That's how we'll impact the world the most for God's glory. That's how we'll see kingdom results. So what do you do when you hear this word this morning? One, I hope you receive it. Two, I want you to pause like a pause button in your own life is a really good thing. When you're angry, pause before you post. Please. Please pause. Pause before you respond in defensiveness. When somebody else through the gospel exposes some sinfulness and idolatry in your own life. Before you just start making excuses, just pause. Say, man, what is God trying to teach me here? Before you come into this room on a Sunday, pause. Slow your life down. When you're tempted to pursue filth and rampant wickedness in your life, pause and say, man, the goodness of God is better than what the world is offering me right now. Pause. I think we will be a church that makes greater impact. I don't think. I know. We will be a church that makes greater impact when we are a church that receives the gospel with humility and holiness. Is that the kind of church we want to be? Church? Absolutely. That's the kind of church we want to be. So let's pray that the Lord would help us do that. God, thank you. Thank you for your word. Lord, we need your help to be humble people. We need your help to be holy people. God, we want to be a church that is quick to hear from you, slow to give our own opinions, slow to get angry and defensive. Father, we want to see you put on display to the ends of the earth. Lord, thanks for the reminder that we are to be still and know that you were God, not for our own sake, but that you would be altered to the nations, to the ends of the earth, because of our stillness and because of who you are. That's our hope. Pray this in Jesus name. Amen.