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September 27, 2021 4:00 am
The Prince described to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger. If you're married, would your spouse say these things are true, the book of James tells us that these things ought to be true not just of some people. But of all of us today on Truth for Life. Alastair Meg helps us see not only why these things are so vital. Also, we can make them more of a reality in our own lives as we continue our study in the day of first 19 have I been included in Christ have I responded to the word of truth, the gospel of my salvation. I'll admit dear puts it quite masterfully when he explains the way in which we are made alive. Listen to this brief but profoundly helpful quote.
The father uses the gospel, the word of truth into ways. First, he speaks it inwardly to our dead souls imparting life bringing ice to birth.
Secondly, he presents the same word of truth to us as a preached gospel to which the new life within makes a personal and believing response. That's what James the brother of Jesus is reinforcing he's saying. Think about this.
He chose to give us birth through the word of truth. We are since Paul included in Christ through the word of truth. When we believe the gospel. I must leave it here, but I must say again to do you believe this is this you this is the vital question of life. There is no more vital question, not a tall.
The initiative that God takes the instrument that God uses the word of truth, unfairly in the verse, you will notice the intention that God has in doing this he intends that we might become like him that we might offer our lives in the way. In the Old Testament the offer, the firstfruits of the harvest to God as an expression of their gratitude so his intention is that we will offer our lives is an expression of our gratitude for all that God has done. He uses the word to bring about our spiritual birth and then going into verse 19.
You will notice that it is by the same word that he enables us to grow spiritually. They similarities between the beginning of James in the beginning of first Peter R art are striking. For example, verse 23 of first Peter one for you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God is by the word of God is been brought to faith.
And this is a word that was preached to you straight into chapter 2.
Therefore, rid yourselves of malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, slander of every kind I like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by you may grow up in your salvation. Now that you have tasted that the Lord is good to see this the same process. He describes using different language, but getting to the same point. It is God's word that not only gives us life but also transforms our life. God's word is it God's word transforms when you get to verse 19 with this very straightforward call to listen up, my dear brothers, take note of this lesson up, you will see that he then calls for us to do three things in relationship to the Bible to the word of truth. First of all, that we should be found listening to it.
Secondly, that we should be found receiving it. And thirdly, that we should be found doing it. First of all, listening. Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry. What a challenging little statement is only the first of a number that James is going to bring to bear upon us in a way that will make many of us squirm under the impact of its truth, forgetting that we have been given to ears and only one mouth, so that we could listen twice as much as we tall.
Some of us have a real problem with this over 100 years ago.
One pastor addressed as a congregation as follows, and I was reading this just yesterday and I thought I'd share a wee bit of it with you because it was so challenging to me. This is how the rights that are some people who are always talking, they cannot think and it is a relief to them to hear the sound of their own voices just as women who are in ill health, find a welcome relief in sewing or knitting and sore neck just to pass the time. There are some people who find relief in talking and by their incessant talking. The disable themselves from thinking they also disable themselves from listening, they lose the power of grasping the real meaning of anything serious that is sent to the their minds are like reservoirs with a large leak in a small supply of water everything that comes into them runs off at once, and there was empty incessant talking without careful and earnest listening makes them utterly frivolous reduces them almost to a state of idiocy and further, this habit prevents them from listening even to God's word and from thinking about, they are not accustomed to listen or to think and so when the divine word comes to them. They cannot really listen to it and they cannot contemplate what it says well I don't know about you but I find I just A Little Bit Too Close to the Cloth and What Is True in Terms of Interpersonal Relationships with Hundreds around the Dining Room Table with Friends That We've Invited to Our Home Who Came over to Eat, but Not to Listen to Us Talk or When It Is at Starbucks Where We Can't Wait to Get the First Opportunity to Read All the Tidbits That We Found in the Wall Street or the New York Times, Whatever It Might Be. Most of Us Are Due Far Too Much Talking of All That We Say in a Single Day with Never a Word Left out Were Written Each Night and Clear Black-And-White. It Would Make Strange Meeting.
No Doubt, and Then Just Supposed before Our Eyes Would Close. We Had to Read the Whole Record through Then When We Siding When We Try a Great Deal Less Talking to Do and I More Than Half Think That Many a Kink Would Be Smoother in Life's Tangled Thread. If Half What I Say in a Single Day Were to Be Left for Reverence Knifing the James Here Has in Mind Something More Significant Than Simply Our Interpersonal Relationships Because Remember He Is Introduced Us to the Thing Were Supposed to Be Listening to. Namely, the Word of Truth. We Are in Verse 21 to Accept This Word in Verse 22 and Following. We Are to Do This Work and I Think That James Has Expressly in Mind the Peculiar Danger of Being Too Quick to Proclaim the Truth to Others before Really Paying Proper Attention to It Ourselves Is the Warning in Verse One of Chapter 3 Know Many of You Should Presume to Be Teachers, My Brothers, Because You Know That We Who Teach Will Be Judged More Strictly.
While We Can Be Sure That What Were Doing All the Talking Were Not Listening.
This Is True in Relationship to the Bible and Theology As It Is to Anything Else Because We Know That the Individual Who Talks A Lot Gets in Trouble.
The Individual Who Talks the Lord Is Often Opinionated beyond What Is Acceptable Individual Who Talks A Lot and Is Opinionated beyond What Is Acceptable Is Very Likely to Become Animated in His Opinions Are Opinions and Winning It Animated and Heated up in Their Opinions. If Somebody Doesn't Seem to Be Adopting Their Opinions Very Quickly and the Chances Are They Going to Get Very Angry about the Fact That People Are Not As Animated As They Are about What It Is There so Opinionated about and Wanted Everybody to Hear You Might've Met Someone like This. I Don't Know. I Really Don't Have To Go Very Far at All to Meet Someone like This. I Want to Leave My Own Bathroom. The Fact of the Matter Is, We Dare Not Assume That Our Heat and Our Passion Are Expressions of Fidelity and Usefulness. They May Simply Be Heat and Passion and Are Very Forcefulness May Be a Cause of Stumbling Rather Than a Cause of Helpfulness See the Anger of Man Is Going to Bring about the Righteous Life That God Desires Our Intensity, Our Focus, Our Emphasis, Whatever It Might Be Does Not Ultimately Work God's Righteous Purpose. If It Did, I Think Jesus Would Have Operated in a Different Way and That's Why It Is Not That That That the Cleansing of the Temple Is so Striking in All of the Life of Jesus That We Have in the Gospels. Why Because It Is Such an Unusual Expression of Righteous Anger, but in the Main, Jesus Is Not Known for Such Displays His Anger Was Legitimate, but It Still Stands out Einstein on One Occasion Define Success As a a He Said Is a Success in Life and He Said If Any, Is a Success in Life Then Is a Equals X Plus Y, Z with X Being Work and Why Being Play and Z Being Keep Your Mouth Shut. Pretty Good.
I Try and Remember It but It's Hard. I'm a Friend on the West Coast States She's a Friend of My Wife and I on One Occasion in Washington DC in a Conversation Went along These Lines That Fell into the Realm of Personality Types in All the Psychological Profiling about Whether You Are an a or B or C Year and Have Whatever You Were We Agreed That We Learned Is Similar from One Another and She Said She Would Send Me Some Stuff to Help Me and Try Make Me a Better Person and You Can Imagine What a Large Amount of Information That Was, but Actually She She Gave Me One Particularly Helpful Little Piece That I Keep with Me All the Time and It Gives Me a Drill for Each Day of the Week and Is Forced to Put a Check Mark Every Time I've Completed My Drill for the Day.
If You Are up Close You Could See That There Are No Checkmarks on This or Talking Is Unnerving. Successful in in Doing This, Let Me Give You Some Indication of It on Monday.
My Drill Is Don't Interrupt Anyone Today Don't Finish Any One Sentence and Avoid Speech Hurrying Okay, Usually by about 730 Monday Morning. I Completely Blew That When I Choose the Be Aware of How Clear and Asked That You Are Today or First I Needed a Dictionary for That. I Went to Ed and I Discovered the Plea and Is Him Is the Use of Words. The Use of More Words Than Are That Night That Is Necessary in Order to Give a Sense of Something Violation Number Two Wednesday Avoid All Lecturing and Pontificating. Don't Tell Anyone What to Do or How to Do It. Would You Please Just Keep Closer to the inside Lane. Susan, Thank You All Their Bars Wednesday Thursday Don't Contradict or Correct Anyone Today. Don't Be Argumentative. Forget Thursday Friday Avoid Being over Definite and How You State Your Opinion Saturday. Avoid All Probably Phasing When Someone Is Talking to You Whether in the Telephone or Are Face-To-Face. In Other Words, Don't Be Multitasking When Someone Is Talking to You Look at Them in the Eye and Stay Focused on the Care They're Everywhere Going Making Notes and Start Saturday's a Bad Day, and Sunday Speak in an Unhurried, Even Paste Way, Avoiding Rapid This Rhythmic Speech. See Why There's No Checkmarks. I Don't Know Why You're All Looking so Smug.
I Know Some of You As Well. Listening to It and Receiving It in with This We Finish Receiving It. How Are We Going to Listen to God's Word.
If Were Always Talking How Are We Going to Listen to God's Word. If We Have Angry Hearts. If You're an Angry Person. You Don't Hear Was Being Said You Angry People Are Not Listening. They're Just Rearranging Their Prejudices. They Don't Listen to Arguments They Don't Process Information Simply Become Increasingly Recalcitrant and Are Led to You As an Absolute Definite That If You're Angry with Me or Angry with Anybody Else's Ever in This Pool. Frankly, You Might As Well Go Work in the Nursery except That You Be a Jolly Nuisance in the Nursery Because the Anger of Man Does Not Work the Righteousness of God. That's Why You Can't Be Angry in the Pulpit with the Word of God, and You Can Be Angry Out Of the Pulpit, Listening to the Word of God.
If Anger Needs to Go, so Does Moral Filth.
That's What He Says Here Is a Second Barrier to Listening to the Bible and Profiting from It. If an Angry Mind Will Spoil It so Will a Dirty Mind a Dirty Mind Hands the Issues of Prevalent Evil As He Mentions It Here, Which in the King James Version. I Think Used To Be or Wall Is or Is a Superfluity of of Naughtiness.
Remember As a Boy Reading That and Thinking I Probably Know A Lot about a Superfluity of Naughtiness. I'm Not Unaware of the Evil That Is so Prevalent around Me Are Not Unaware of How Easy It Is to Sin Very Quickly with My Eyes House How Easy It Is to Send It in My Mind How Easy It Is to Get Myself in a Completely Tied up Tangle and Mess and It Is Ultimate Naivety and Stupidity on My Part to Think That All of the Absorbing of Moral Filth Can Be Flushed Away by a 30 Minute Sermon Once a Week by Well-Meaning People Coming to Try and Fix Themselves up and Go out and Fight the Battle All over Again.
It Won't Happen, It Just Won't Happen. You Will Notice Even Say Pray about It. He Says Get Rid of It. Get Rid of It. How My Going to Get Rid of It by the Enabling Power of God.
How Does He Enable Me He Enables Me by His Spirit through the Word.
That's Why the Psalmist Says I Have Made a Covenant with My Eyes That I Will Not Live Lustfully on the Woman. How Will a Young Man Keep His Way Pure by Paying Heed Taking Heed. According to Your Word for Word Acts As a Purifying Instrument, but Our Part in Preparing to Hear It, Is to Make Sure That We Do Not Come Angry and We Do Not Come Dirty Every so Often Someone Will Say to Me What What We Are Leaning against Not Say Why Is It Will of Your Jacket or Look Your Coat Is Clear That You Been Leaning up against Something Just in the Same Way That We May Very Quickly Become Physically Dirty and Sometimes Even Inadvertently so We May Become Morally Messed up the Care for Your Leaning against, I Want to Be Careful about What I'm Leaning against Is If You Think about It. Here I Preach Sunday by Sunday and Others Due To to This Congregation.
Some People in the Congregation Grow and Mature in Some Don't. Is the Problem with the Message.
You Could Say Yes If Nobody Grew and Nobody Mature Hearsay. While the Message Is No Good Is Not Possible Immediately. Don't Learn It and We Can Grow. We Can Mature but Are Some Grow and Mature and Others Don't. What Is Expected to Speak to the Seat Speaks to the Soil and Some of Us Have Acidic Soil in Our Hearts.
The Acid of Anger or the Clay of Living Compromise to Prevalent Evil into Moral Filth or the Weeds Are Being Willfully Disobedient. I Am Not Going to Do This. I Don't Care What It Says.
I'm Still Going to Divorce. I Don't Care What It Says. I'm Still Going to Sleep with. I Don't Care What It Says I'm Still Gonna Fiddle on My Income Tax. I Don't Care What It Says You Cannot You See Act in That Place of Instability and Expect As James Told His Earlier on That We Will Receive Anything from the Lord. Such a Man Is Unstable in All of His Way, What Are We to Do in a Phrase Humbly Accept the Word Planted in You, Which Can Save You Humbly, Humbly Thank You Thank I Didn't Get It All but I Got Something and Understand Everything, but I Did Understand This. Thank You. I Believe That You Knew All about Me This Week and You Spoke to Me through the Word of Truth. Thank You. See That's Why the Way in Which We Come to the Preaching of the Word Is so Vitally Important That We Don't Prepare and Deal with Our Anger and Deal with Our Moral Filth and Deal the Junk That's All in Us Were like Individuals Eating Snickers Bars on the Way Home from the 9 O'clock Service so That by the Time Arman Sends and Serves As up Our Favorite Lunch. We Were Not Tight but Don't You Love This Is an Issue. Please Let Me You Yes Communal Money Favorite Meal You Be Needing Something Else. Then She Goes in Your Pockets. Starburst Find All My Sins Eventually Snickers Those Long Packets of Peanuts That You Can Put the Whole Opening and Shove the Whole Thing. No Surprise You Filled Yourself up with Junk and You're Not Ready-To-Eat What You Make Perfect Sense. Physically and It Makes an Equal Sense Spiritually Wise and so Important Because It Is As We Humbly Accept the Word That Is Planted in Us That We Are Saved That Were Saved. The Word Saves Us, Saves Us from What Saves Us from Ourselves, Saves Us from Our Sin Saves Us from Our Secrecy. God Comes in Saves Us from Sin's Penalty. One Day We Will Be Saved from Sin's Presence. That'll Be Heaven and in the Meantime Were Being Saved from Sin's Power. How by the Work of the Holy Spirit through the Bible, Read Your Bible and Pray Every Day and Your Grow Grow Grow Grow Grow Grow Grow Grow. Read Your Bible and Pray Every Day and You Will Grow Grow Natural with Teaching the Children Back Here and We're Just Overgrown Kids the Lessons the Same Thing to Alistair Begg Hug Truth for Life Will Close Today's Program with Prayer in Just a Minute, so Please Keep Listening Simple Truth That We Teach Our Children to Read Your Bible and Pray Every Day. These Are Lessons We Never Outgrow You Have Young Children or Grandchildren. You Know How Eager They Are to Imitate the Activities of Those around Them. If You're Reading Your Bible Want to Read. There's Even If There Too Young to Read, so We Are Recommending a Colorful Book That Can Help You Share God's Word with Your Children. It's Titled Bible Stories Every Child Should Know It's a Collection of More Than 120 Stories from the Bible. All of Them Written Specifically with Young Children in Mind so They Can Easily Follow along Your Kids Will Enjoy the Popular Stories of Moses and the Burning Bush or Jonah and the Big Fish but the Also Hear Stories That Are Less Familiar Bible Characters like Bedlam and His Talking Donkey or King Josiah the Lost Book. This Book Does a Really Great Job of Linking the Old Testament Events with Their New Testament Fulfillment in the Gospel. Request a Copy of the Book Bible Stories Every Child Should Know When You Donate to Support the Teaching You Hear on This Program Online Giving Is Quick and Easy. Simply Tap the Image in the Apple or Visit Our Website Truth for Life.org/Donate and If You Brother Mail Your Donation along with Your Request for the Book Bible Stories Every Child Should Know. Write to Us the Truth for Life or Address Is PO Box 39, 8000, Cleveland, OH 44139 the Truth for Life.
We Are Passionate about Teaching the Bible, We Aim to Do It in a Way That Is Clear and Relevant. We Trust That As You Listen to This Daily Program.
The Seeds of God's Word Fall on the Soil of a Heart That Is Eager to Receive It, and That Its Truths Will Transform Your Life. Now Here's Alister the Closing Prayer Father, Thank You for the Bible. Thank You That It's Clear. Sometimes the Preacher Can Be Unclear, and We Can Be. They, in Our Response, but We Pray That beyond the Voice of a Mere Man We May Hear Your Word, That Word of Truth. I Pray for Some Who Do Not As yet Believe, Who Are Not yet Included in Christ. Pray for Your Work within Their Hearts That Inward Work of the Word, Bringing Them to New Life and Then Enabling Them to Respond to the Gospel As Its Preach, Calling Them to Faith and Trust in Jesus Is in the Hours of This Day and in the Days of This Week and We Pray That You Will Order Our Minds and Our Steps May the Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the Love of God Our Father and the Fellowship of the Holy Spirit Rest upon and Remain with Each One Who Believes Now and Forevermore. Amen about the Pain We All like to Imagine a Better Version of Ourselves, but When It Comes to Matters of Faith, There's No Sense Pretending Our Deception Can Have Eternal Consequences. Don't Want to Miss Tomorrow's Message Entitled, Don't Kid Yourself Bible Teaching of Alistair Begg Is Furnished by Truth for Life Learning Is Prolific