James - Behavior Part 2 - Proportional Behavior
Date: 4/27/08
Sermon Series: James – Faith, Wisdom and Behavior
Sermon Title: Faith Behavior Pt. 2 – Proportion
Text: James 1:19-27
Theme: This message will be about living a life of balance where we keep all of the pieces in the correct proportion. It will focus on correct emotions, attitudes and actions.
Introduction: C.S. Lewis, in the “Screwtape Letters” presents a picture of a man who is on the road towards a full fledged faith. He has been targeted by a demon named Wormwood who has to make regular reports to his manager, a higher level demon named Screwtape. In the course of these letters Screwtape talks at great length about the object of their work on this young Christian. It is not their intention to make him believe that his faith has no foundation in fact or that he even believes the gospel story, their ministrations are intended to make his faith innocuous, never extending beyond some abstract philosophy and certainly not having an impact on his “real” life. Screwtape’s maxim for young tempters is: “If you can’t convince them, then confuse them – the next best thing to a damned soul is a neutralized Christian!”
Kyle Snodgrass in his book “Between two truths—Living With Biblical Tensions,” captures the same truth in his little parable.
Once the Devil was walking along with one of his cohorts: they saw a man ahead of them pick up something shiny. “What did he find?” asked the cohort. “A piece of the truth,” the Devil replied. “Doesn’t it bother you that he found a piece of the truth?” asked the cohort. “No,” said the Devil, “I will see to it that he makes a religion out of it.”
Transition: I suspect that one of the things that Screwtape would have adamantly opposed is having his young charge undertake a study of the book of James. A Christian cannot read the book of James without seeing that our faith walk is about exercising as much as it is about examination. What we do with our faith, the way it is displayed and employed, is the character which pronounces us Christian.
So for the person who is in the process of “putting on Christ,” (Gal. 3:27) as the Apostle Paul calls it, our lives become about living out of the notion that all we do, all the different little jagged pieces of our lives are subject to the overriding relationship we have with Christ as Lord and Savior. We have to be proportional in our living according the desire of God as He controls more and more of our existence.
I. Proportional in our thought life
a. This passage begins with an imperative verb which commands us “to know.” The translation I read from expressed this by the command “know this.” The question is: What are we supposed to know?
b. If you are the kind of person who likes to mark up your Bible in order to highlight important insights, I invite you to take out your marker and make special note of some phrases and words in this passage.
i. Underline know this (other translations express this phrase by: “take note of this,” “this you know,” or “Understand this.”)
ii. Now drop down to verse 21 and underline “the implanted word.”
iii. In verse 22 - the word
iv. Verse 23 – the word
v. Verse 25 – the perfect law
vi. And the law of liberty.
c. The point of this exercise is this: I want you to see that the fulcrum on which our lives’ are balanced is the implanted word of Christ. It is the message that we have been saved. Redeemed from our sinful state and purchased for a price so that we can receive the adoption the Father has in mind for us.
d. Included in this message is the idea that God wants us to be remade into the image of His Son. We are to become copies which more and more resemble Christ the longer that we live and experience the incredible grace and mercy God has bestowed upon us.
e. Although we have been given the key ingredient to be remade, the indwelling Holy Spirit, it still requires some effort on our part.
i. We have to intentionally put some things off and replace them with the implanted word.
f. Our lives will become more accurate reflections of the image which God desires.
II. Proportional in our emotional life
a. Being slow to anger – this means we have to be intentional in our emotional life as well. If we are creatures which are totally controlled by our emotions than we will never get to the point where we are remade into the person God desires us to be.
i. In Greek, just like English, there are several words that can be used for the term anger. The one that the author chose here is orgay. It is used 36 times in the New Testament and is more often translated as wrath. It is the word that is used when Biblical authors refer to God’s wrath or His coming wrath. Rather than the quick explosion of emotion that is short lived, this term carries with it the idea that we are mad and are kind of happy about being mad.
ii. The point of the admonition here is that if we are controlled by anger, if we have intentionally decided to be angry, then our ears are shut and the word which is intended to be implanted cannot make it past this blockage.
iii. Edward T. Bedford, who was a partner in Standard Oil back in the days when it was still run by John D. Rockefeller, recounted the story of a time when one of the senior executives made a decision which caused the company to lose 2 million dollars. On the day when the news came out everyone in the company was avoiding Mr. Rockefeller, assuming his anger would cause him to lash out at everyone who came near him. Mr. Bedford had an appointment with him that day and as he entered his office Rockefeller was standing up behind his desk, writing on a legal pad. As Bedford approached Rockefeller was so involved in what he was doing that he didn’t look up. As Bedford moved over to the desk he took note of what Rockefeller was writing. He was preparing himself to meet with the executive who had made the expensive misstep and was making a list of all of his good qualities including all of the decisions which he had made which had earned the company so much money over the past years. Bedford later recounted the story saying - “I never forgot that lesson. In later years, whenever I was tempted to rip into anyone, I forced myself first to sit down and thoughtfully compile as long a list of good points as I possibly could. Invariably, by the time I finished my inventory, I would see the matter in its true perspective and keep my temper under control. There is no telling how many times this habit has prevented me from committing one of the costliest mistakes any executive can make — losing his temper.
iv. People who are not able to control their anger are basically those who are so selfish that they believe that everyone should be
III. Proportional in our physical life
Several years ago, I heard the story of Larry Walters, a 33-year-old man who decided he wanted to see his neighborhood from a new perspective. He went down to the local army surplus store one morning and bought forty-five used weather balloons. That afternoon he strapped himself into a lawn chair, to which several of his friends tied the now helium-filled balloons. He took along a six-pack of beer, a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich, and a BB gun, figuring he could shoot the balloons one at a time when he was ready to land.
Walters, who assumed the balloons would lift him about 100 feet in the air, was caught off guard when the chair soared more than 11,000 feet into the sky — smack into the middle of the air traffic pattern at Los Angeles International Airport. Too frightened to shoot any of the balloons, he stayed airborne for more than two hours, forcing the airport to shut down its runways for much of the afternoon, causing long delays in flights from across the country.
Soon after he was safely grounded and cited by the police, reporters asked him three questions:
“Where you scared?” “Yes.”
“Would you do it again?” “No.”
“Why did you do it?” “Because,” he said, “you can’t just sit there.”
Leadership, Summer 1993, p. 35.
a. The truth is, all of us fill our lives up to the brim with all kinds of activities. Even if it only means spending time in front of the TV channel surfing we use up the resource of our time in an incredible number of ways.
b. For the Christian the proportional life is all about recognizing that God has control of all of our time.
c. Putting hands and feet on our faith life is one of the recurring themes of James. He has very little regard for those who espouse a faith that is not displayed in their lives.
d. Living out an active faith affects us in two ways
i. It displays the character of our faith and
1. It tells people who we are and what we believe in.
ii. It builds up the character of our faith.
1. One of the incredible things which are built into the human gene is the truth that we become what we practice.
