Doing God's Word

Well, good morning and welcome to Christ the King. I'm James Sutton, the associate pastor. One of the things that's fun about being an associate pastor is that I don't always get to pick things. There's a senior pastor that sometimes decides things, and then I have to roll with that. One of the things that the senior pastor of this church decided that I didn't decide was the title of this sermon series. This is James on James. We're doing a study of the book of James. When this was originally talked about with me, Jeff said, "Hey, I'd love for you to do your own sermon series. Just preach through the book of James. Anytime you're up, you just get James." That was all that was told to me. I said, great. Then he was up here one Sunday and said, "We're going to do a series called James on James." And every time I get up here on James on James Sundays, I feel like I should be like Mr. Rogers, you know, walking over, getting my cardigan sweater, singing about the beautiful day it is in the neighborhood. Anyway, this has been really fun for me because it is exciting to consistently be looking at passages back to back and get to elaborate on them and study them with you.

So we are up to our third sermon on James on James, and we're in James chapter one still, but we're at verse 19 through 27. So we're going to read that together and I'm going to pray. Let's read together.

My dear brothers and sisters, understand this: everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger. For human anger does not accomplish God's righteousness. Therefore, ridding yourselves of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent, humbly receive the implanted word, which is able to save your souls. But be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. Because if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like someone looking at his own face in a mirror. For he looks at himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of person he was. But the one who looks intently into the perfect law of freedom and perseveres in it and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer who works—this person will be blessed in what he does. If anyone thinks he is religious without controlling his tongue, his religion is useless and he deceives himself. Pure and undefiled religion before God the Father is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself unstained from the world. — James 1:19-27

Let's pray together. Lord Jesus, we pray that you would bless this study of your word. Lord, it was written by your brother, but it was written by you through him. Speak now through me as we talk about this passage. Lord, don't let this be about me, but let it be about you. Lord, may we see you clearly, and may we be transformed by that encounter. Lord, would you work through this time? We pray in your name. Amen.

Review of James 1:1-18

Alright, so I want to give a quick summary of where we've been so far. Remember in the first sermon, we talked about who James was, and I just alluded to that in the prayer. He was the brother of Christ who saw the resurrected Lord, who later became the leader of the church at Jerusalem, and who died for his faith. The context of who is the author of this book is incredibly important, and what is incredibly important to not forget is that he saw his brother raised from the dead, and that radically changed his outlook on life and everything that he believed. Prior to that, he was very down on his brother, as many brothers are. After that, he was all about his brother because he realized that his brother was more than just his brother. His brother was the incarnate God who had been resurrected from the dead to save mankind.

And then he goes on to exhort us to see whatever situation we find ourselves in in this life—whether we're rich or poor, whether we have wisdom or we don't have wisdom—all of these things are tests. Whatever station you find yourself in comes with some sort of test, doesn't it? And we're invited to see those tests as one of two things. We either see them as gifts from God. Sometimes you're going through something hard, and you have this outlook where you're thinking, "God has given me this and I have this hope that somehow he's going to use this for his glory and my good." Maybe not now, but I have this outlook that one day I will stand in heaven and I'll see all the ways in which he used this, and I'll see all the ways in which he used this suffering for his glory and as a witness to the world, and it'll be great and glorious. Sometimes you have that outlook.

Other times, James says, we see these things as temptations, and we wrongly attribute them to God. But these tests come, and they do come with temptations. Those don't come from God—those come from within our own hearts or from the evil one. But those are things that reveal our idols. The things that we're tempted in during these trials reveal our idols.

Either we see these things as something that God is going to use, we rightly see them as that, and we rejoice in that, and we count it all joy. Or we are tempted, and we see imperfections in our heart, idolatries in which we're going after some other god, and we're called to repent. Either way, God is doing through these tests something that's revealing something either to you or to the world, and it's great, and it's glorious for him, and it's good for you.

But James wants to say throughout the book, he wants to avoid this concept that maybe we could be deceived. He wants to avoid deception. He wants to make sure that those who are reading his book—probably the first book written chronologically in our New Testament—he wants to make sure that actually this gospel, this realization that he had when he saw his resurrected brother, that the good news of the gospel has actually taken root in our hearts and is producing fruit. He wants to make sure that we're not just deceiving ourselves.

In this passage, that's what he turns to. He wants us to really look at whether or not the gospel has been implanted in our hearts, and whether we have thought it has and been deceived. Jesus in the gospels—in three of the gospels actually—he tells the parable of the sower. Do you remember that one? There's someone just kind of tossing seed on the ground, and then there's several different things that happen with the seed. Some seed falls on good ground. Other seed falls on rocky ground. Other seed is snatched up by birds. Other seed is choked out by weeds.

Anytime I read that passage, my thing is like, I just want to be the good ground. How do I be the good ground? James wants to talk to us today about what it looks like to be the good ground because he's been the bad ground, and he was transformed. And he wants to help us to see what it looks like to be soft to the gospel. And he wants us to see how we know whether or not we have.

So he's going to first talk to us about in verses 19 through 21: have you heard? Are you listening? And have you heard the gospel? Has it taken root in your heart? And then secondly, he's going to look at two different ways that often Christians are deceived that he wants to warn us against. So that's our outline—just two points. Have you heard and are you deceived?

Have You Heard?

Let's look at first, have you heard. This is verses 19 through 21. Let me read it again.

My dear brothers and sisters, understand this. Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger, for human anger does not accomplish God's righteousness. Therefore, ridding yourself of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent, humbly receive the implanted word which is able to save your souls. — James 1:19-21

Remember, every time in the book of James you hear "my dear brothers and sisters," think about this. James was once a brother of Jesus in flesh, but it wasn't until he saw the resurrected Jesus that he became a brother in the sense that we are all brothers with Jesus. That's a very important term of endearment for James, I think, because he recognized that he once wasn't a brother even though he was, and now he is. And he sees his readers as fellow brothers and sisters with the Lord. So he's writing to believers.

Do you hear that agricultural picture? It's very subtle. The implanted word. I want you to think about that seed that Jesus talks about with the sower. Has it been implanted? That is the thing that will save you, he says. It's able to save your souls. Humbly receive it.

And that's really what he's going to be getting at here—the question of whether or not you are humble enough to receive it. He's warning against two different postures that you can take that will make it so that the seed is hard to actually get into the ground. It's not humble. You're not soft. He's going to talk about self-importance, and he's going to talk about self-righteousness.

First, the self-importance. Be slow to speak, quick to listen. Sometimes when we're around other people, we feel like we know a lot, we've got a lot to say. Ever been in that situation where you're like, "I've got a lot to say and I'm going to say it, and you're going to listen"? Do you get the sense of how that can sometimes be a posture of self-importance, a way in which you can take a position in which you're not going to learn, you're not going to be soft, you're not going to receive? This is, of course, in general, good advice. Like if you want to learn something, shut your face.

There's the old saying that when you're talking, you're not learning. This is an especially important principle when it comes to actually engaging with the gospel.

I want to illustrate this by talking about being quiet and not talking. I'm doing a sermon series called "James on James," which you could interpret as, "Hey, I have special insight into the book of James. You know why? Because I'm James. I have all this insight that I have to share with you. Aren't you excited to receive insights on the book of James from an expert named James?"

It is always dangerous for us to assume a posture of importance—that I know the answer. I've said this before, but one of the most dangerous things for me is the fact that I have received a degree that says Master of Divinity, like I've figured it all out. And I can sometimes approach preaching that way. I get all tangled up over which illustrations I'm going to use, how I'm going to communicate this in a way that's really exciting and fun and engaging. I get real torn up about that because I think it's really all about me. I really think I'm important.

Really, I think the best way to understand the title of this sermon series, "James on James," is that I'm hopefully giving you some insight on how the book of James actually speaks to this James. Because that is the posture that we need to take when it comes to God's Word. Not that we have all the answers, that we know all the things, not that we're quick to show off all that we know, but instead, we ought to be patiently, quietly listening and pursuing the Word of God and allowing it to penetrate our hearts.

I don't know if it's just me, but I think that I am so into myself, so full of myself, and so convinced that I have figured the Bible out that sometimes I think I don't need it. Is it not the fact that sometimes you're like, "Hey, I have in my house 18 bibles. I literally have 18 bibles in my house. I counted." A part of that is because there's seven of us, but a lot of those are mine. And sometimes I think, "Well, I've got 18 bibles, so I don't really need to read them because I've already read them." And I walk away from engaging with the Word because I think, "Hey, I already know all the things that that says." And I don't spend the time in the Word that I probably need to because I'm not really soft to hearing it.

That's what James is saying. He's saying be slow to speak, quick to listen. He's in an environment where the only written word that existed until he wrote this book was the Old Testament. But he's also talking about the implanted Word—Jesus, who has been implanted into the apostles by the Holy Spirit, speaking through them for the benefit of others. So it's not just him saying, "Hey, go read your Bibles." He's also saying, "Hey, listen to the Spirit speaking through your brothers and sisters, the apostles, the elders. Be soft. Be open to hearing and listening and being convicted so that you can be changed."

Being Slow to Anger

Then the second thing that he says is he says, "Be slow to anger," which I think is a steering away from self-righteousness. We live in a world that's getting increasingly angry, and as Christians, we're getting a reputation that is increasingly more and more angry. To some people, anger is how they understand Christians and the framework in which they look at Christians because they see Christians as angry. We live in a world where everybody is very quick to get angry. Let me tell you all the things that I'm upset about. Rants are becoming more and more prevalent.

It's clear from this passage that James is saying there are two kinds of anger: there's man's anger, self-centered anger, and then there's righteous anger. He's not saying all anger is bad, but he's pointing to the character of God. In Exodus, God is repeatedly described as slow to anger. But oftentimes, we think of God as angry, and the world thinks of God as angry because we read these passages where God gets angry, and we think, "God's an angry God."

Well, let me take an aside for just a second. Doesn't God get angry? Isn't he an angry God? Well, yeah. He gets angry at injustice. And isn't that a good thing? Aren't you glad that we worship a God who gets angry at injustice? But consider how long the story of human history is. You read the entire Bible and look at the scope of how patient God has been with sinful humanity. Think about your own self. Think about how slow to anger God has been with regard to your sin.

How patient, and yet how consistent he has been in applying his loving kindness over and over and over again in spite of your sin. We don't worship a God who is quick to anger. We worship a God who is slow to anger, and we're called to be slow to anger.

As we get angry, oftentimes what happens is interesting. Our kids' elementary school did several workshops, and there was one on the zones of regulation. Does anybody know about the zones of regulation? A couple of educators here maybe, or people who've read about that. It talks about different emotions being different speeds. Sadness is a slow emotion. Happiness is a kind of moderate emotion. Excitement is a fast emotion. But you know what another fast emotion is? Anger. Anger is a naturally fast emotion. Human anger naturally speeds us up, and it makes our brains decide things really quickly. Because we're really angry, things become really black and white. We lose nuance, and we lose the ability to actually be spoken to because we're not soft. We're in a hurry. We've got to tell you what's going on. We've got to do what we need to do, and then we need to go.

James is saying, we need to be slow to anger like God is slow to anger. Patient with others, but also patient with him. Sometimes I think, and understand, I like to keep things real. I'm the guy that in the last sermon that was preached on this, I threw my bible in anger. I like to keep things real. But there is a sense in which sometimes when we first read God's word, we have these natural human reactions where our self-righteousness kicks in. We're like, how can he say that? How can God say that? Because I know what's right, and he doesn't know what's right, and that's not right. We get angry, and we reject it. We need to slow down and be patient.

For those of you who've written God off, you've gotten angry because there's something about his word or him that you just think, that's not right. Would you slow down and take the time to actually engage with his word and soak in it, experience what it's really saying? Because all of God's word points to a God who, yes, he gets angry at injustice. But he was so angry at injustice that he came himself and suffered and died in order to defeat it, so that those who would cast their lots with Christ would go to heaven, would have eternal life in spite of their injustice. He is a loving and caring God. But he does eventually, when people insist on rejecting him and rejecting his things, he eventually gives them what they want.

When you're so angry that you reject God, that you're like, "Hey, I'm so important and righteous, and it's really on me, and I got this, God, and I don't need you," eventually God says, "Go on then." — Romans 1

And that is the most fearful judgment of his anger being settled upon you.

Brothers and sisters, we need to be slow to speak, quick to listen with regard to God, with regard to one another. We need to be slow to anger and quick to listen, to allow our hearts to be soft so that the seed of the gospel can actually take root in our hearts and grow.

What does it look like to do that? What does it look like to be soft? It looks like showing up on Sunday mornings and going, "Maybe God's gonna speak to me today." It looks like approaching your Bible. It looks like being with other believers and allowing for the possibility that maybe you haven't figured everything out, and maybe their speaking to you will really turn out to be the Holy Spirit speaking to you, transforming you.

Social media is a big thing. One of the things about social media is you get on there, and that's an angry place oftentimes. One of the things that's really disheartening and really discouraging is sometimes you see somebody on social media who's really angry about something, and you're like, "Oh, man. I hung out with them the other day. They weren't angry about that, but I guess that's what they really think." Right? That's the perspective God has had on us for thousands of years. The way in which we dress ourselves up and cover ourselves, but the way in which our self-righteousness and self-importance is visible to him, it's like it's visible to each of us on social media. He sees everything. It's even worse than social media. And you know what? He didn't unfriend you. He actually went to earth to engage us on the topic. That's the God we worship—a God who's slow to anger in spite of our anger, and who loves us.

Doing God's Word

Alright. Let's turn to the second section, verses 22 through 27. James wants to make sure we're not deceived. Let me read it again.

But be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourself. Because if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like someone looking at his own face in a mirror. — James 1:22-23

For he looks at himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of person he was. But the one who looks intently into the perfect law of freedom and perseveres in it and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer who works, this person will be blessed in what he does. Furthermore, if anyone thinks he is religious without controlling his tongue, his religion is useless and he deceives himself. Pure and undefiled religion before God the Father is this, to look after the orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself unstained from the world. — James 1:23-27

In this section, James is really pressing in on what he thinks is an incredible danger to the Christian church. And I think probably this section of scripture is best for the church in the American South. It's probably the most helpful thing in all of scripture for us. It's such a wise section of scripture. And so I want you to try to be soft to this, to listen. I'm gonna press pretty hard because James is pressing pretty hard here. He has two different ways in this section where you could be deceived that he's warning you of. So be warned.

First Deception: Hearing Without Actually Listening

First deception is that some claim to be hearers, but they're really just listening. They're not hearing. Are you familiar with the concept of active listening? It's the process in which somebody says something to you, and then you say it back to them. I think that's a really good process in many ways. But if I'm honest with you, I don't really like active listening. I don't like it because sometimes you get so caught up in the process of active listening that you're not actually listening. You're going to say back to you what you said again and again and again, but you're not really hearing the implications of it.

I read one counselor who told a joke about this. A counselor who's engaging in active listening has a patient who says, "Hey, I'm going to kill myself." And the counselor says, "I hear you saying you're going to kill myself." And the patient says, "Yeah, you got it." Then he moves closer to the window and says, "In fact, I'm going to jump out of the window right now." And the counselor says, "I hear you saying you're going to jump out of the window." The patient says, "Yes, I did say that." Then he moves to climb out of the window. What should the counselor do? If he's been actually hearing him, he should grab him and pull him away from the window, not allow it.

Sometimes that can be us Christians. Like we're sitting in the service, we're repeating back the liturgy, we can say the gospel like we could quote it in our sleep. Some of you can preach the gospel left and right, but is it actually penetrating your heart? Has the seed actually taken root? Sometimes we can deceive ourselves and say we're a good listener just because we're repeating back to people what we've heard. But the gospel is more than that. It's more than just a message that you repeat, that you just have to say. It's something that actually holistically encompasses who you are.

One of the things I love about this church is I don't get a lot of negative feedback when I preach. You guys are really kind. I suspect you hold that to yourself or maybe you share it with others, but it never gets back to me. So thanks for that. I appreciate that. I like feeling good after I preach. A lot of times people come and say really kind things. "Hey, that was a really good sermon. You really captured my attention. I really love this illustration." But I would say, a lot of times, one thing I kind of walk away from some of those compliments is: Did they hear the message? Or did they just like the illustrations?

If you want to know how to compliment a pastor about a sermon, don't talk about the illustrations. Gosh, sometimes I think I'm just going to do away with illustrations because I don't want people to hear the illustrations. I want them to hear the word. I want them to hear the gospel. Really, if you want to compliment a pastor on the preaching, take what they're saying and run with it.

Alright. Here comes an illustration. You're all gonna love it, but just ignore it. It's March Madness. Yeah. It's great. One of the things that commentators are always talking about when you watch March Madness is does this team have a presence on the inside, and do they have good guards? Right? Do they have good bigs and do they have good guards? The guards are supposed to be on the outside. They take these air-war long shots.

But then they also distribute the ball into these ginormous people inside who bang around like the Incredible Hulk and then dunk it. And if you don't have both aspects of that, you're not going to go very far in the tournament. Brothers and sisters, sometimes we can approach this and it's like it's the Jeff and James show, but we're just the point guards. You guys are the bigs. You guys are the ones that are on the inside banging around. If you take the gospel and run with it, that's going to make us a really good team as a church. We're going to really engage the world. But more than that, we're going to know that the gospel has taken root in our hearts. We're going to know that we're not deceived. And there are some really great things that are going on in this church, some really reassuring things, but there are also ways in which we know that we need to grow.

I think if I use another basketball analogy, I think the thing that we're looking for is like this. Last week, when NC State won the ACC tournament for the first time in thirty-seven years, we got done, and I was like, I want to go to the Bell Tower. And Katie was like, you're a 47-year-old man. And I said, but you don't understand, I've been waiting for this since I was 18. That's how you know when something has taken root in your heart. When something that big is so enormous, it affects your life. You just can't help it. I gotta go to the Bell Tower.

That's what it looks like when the gospel takes root in our hearts. When the gospel is preached, when we look in the mirror, when we actually see ourselves as transformed and in the image of Christ, we're excited. I would love to look in the mirror and see a felt 18-year-old with all the nice jawlines and slim belly, but that's not what happens when I look in the mirror. But us Christians, when we look in the mirror, that's what the mirror is. We look at Jesus. We see the perfect person that Christ has made us to be through his perfect work and his death and resurrection.

But you know what happens? We look at that mirror, and then we walk away, and we forget. And we go, oh yeah, we're not that good. If the gospel's taken hold in your life, then you're excited about the work that Jesus has done, and you're so excited you can't help it. You're like, oh my goodness, I've been made perfect through Jesus. I can't wait to go and share that with others. I can't wait to go and do the things that Jesus could do. I can't wait to go love other people. We're not stuck in our own insecurities and selfishness.

And so James wants to say, hey, if you are, be warned. You could be deceived. You could be just doing active listening and not actually hearing. You could look really good, but not really be good.

The Warning Against Useless Religion

The second warning that he warns us against is religion.

If anyone thinks he's religious without controlling his tongue, his religion is useless and he deceives himself. Pure and undefiled religion before God the Father is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself unstained from the world. — James 1:26-27

The term here for religion is the only place in the Greek New Testament that this word appears. It probably comes from the root meaning to tremble. So if you show up on Sundays, a part of the religious gathering of God's people, and you act like a God-fearer, you tremble, you're honoring him, you're showing honor to him, you're being respectful.

Next Sunday, we're going to have Easter Sunday, and all of you guys are going to dress up. And that's good. You can do that. That's great. It's not a bad thing. We don't dress up every Sunday because we're kind of a casual church, and that's also not bad. That's a good thing. But when we come and we dress up, or however we come before the Lord respectfully, that's what he's talking about in terms of religion—coming with that kind of respect.

But he says, you know what? If you do all of that, if you act super religious, super like I fear God on Sunday, but then your tongue displays that that's not really the case, you might not really be practicing true religion. And I know we have a hang-up with that word like, is it supposed to be a relationship? Is it supposed to be a religion? When he says religion, he's talking about the relationship. But that's the thing—if we show up on Sundays and we're acting all respectful, we might just be doing the active listening thing without actually hearing.

The best place to determine whether or not you really fear the Lord is in your car when you're by yourself and someone cuts you off. This last week I was driving my son—one of them, I won't say which one—driving him to the doctor, and I actually did something wrong and someone honked at me. And I had some choice words for that person that came out because I didn't realize my son was in the car.

Your tongue often reveals where your heart is. That's what James is saying. If you don't put a bridle on that thing, it reveals where your heart is, and you may not actually be practicing true religion. God's in the car all the time. He sees that, and he knows that. And James is saying, hey, you pay attention to that. Look at what your tongue is saying. Put a bridle on that thing.

It works the other way too, by the way. Oftentimes, I think we get into these habits where we start saying things and they function like mantras. Sometimes people talk about it like listening to yourself versus preaching to yourself. That's what it looks like to bridle your tongue. Instead of just spewing vitriol out of whatever place your heart is, you can speak truth to that place in your heart. And then you keep doing that—eventually you believe it more and more and more. Or you can speak truth to that place in your heart and you can experience that less and less and less.

As I said earlier, I'm a big fan of keeping it real. We need to keep it real. You need to be able to talk to God. If you look at the Psalms, he talks to God. We talked about this in the trauma class this morning. Incredible conversation about this. You need to be able to speak to God. You need to be able to lament. You need to be able to cry out to him. But in addition to keeping it real, you also have to keep it true. There's a place in which you have to push back on that and say, but there is hope. The redemption of Christ is real. James really did see his brother resurrected from the dead, and he has offered that resurrection to me. Bridle that tongue.

Caring for the Poor

Another thing that he says is, do you care for the poor, those who are at risk, the widow, the orphan? That's code for those who have experienced great defeat in life, who are without recourse, who have great needs. I think we do a lot programmatically to care for the poor. But here's my question to you: I don't think James is just talking about giving money to some organization. I think he's talking about personal engagement. It would blow my mind if you don't know a widow or an orphan—not necessarily a literal widow or orphan, but maybe somebody who has experienced that kind of brokenness in life where they have very little hope or resources.

James is saying that if you have looked in the mirror and you have seen yourself transformed to look like Christ, and that has taken root in your heart, then you want to go towards those people just like I wanted to go to the Bell Tower. Because you want to share that hope. You want to hold that mirror up to them. You want to show them that they have that kind of hope, and that Jesus loves them and transformed them and that they're incredibly valuable.

And I will offer you this: if somebody here is like, I just don't know anybody like that, we can talk about how you structured your life—that may be a part of that discussion—but I would love to introduce you to one this Sunday if you need me to.

Personal Holiness

And then thirdly, he says, are you concerned with your personal holiness, right, to keep oneself unstained from the world? Sometimes I think we look in the mirror and we see Jesus, and we're like, cool. Now we can go do all the bad things that we want, which is maybe an indication that we've deceived ourselves. Because if we're really looking at Jesus, if we're looking deeply at who He is and what He's done, we want to be like Him. We don't want to be like the world. We don't want to spend the rest of our lives causing damage to other people around us. We don't want to spend the rest of our lives defiling ourselves. We want to spend the rest of our lives worshiping Him.

Just as I wrap up, I think you can read James, and a lot of people do read James, as though he's saying, hey, you need to do all these things and clean yourself up in order to be saved. But I hope I have shown you that that's not what he's saying. What he's saying is that if those things are not true in your life, then maybe you are deceived, and you need to go back and soften your heart, and allow the seed to take root and grow.

What does that look like? Well, one way that it looks is every Sunday we do confession and assurance. Every Sunday, we do that. You know why? Because all of us are deceived to some level. All of us are sinful. All of us have fallen short. All of us are like James, who when we look at our lives, we say, all I've done is criticize my brother, but now here he is resurrected. All of us have sin that we need to confess. We need to come back to that mirror and be reminded through the assurance that it's okay, that Jesus has saved us.

And so that's the beautiful thing about the gospel—it is built in with correctives. It's like an engine that is constantly renewing and transforming and changing us to make us more and more look like Christ. And it's not designed to make us feel guilty; it's designed to make us rejoice.

So if you feel guilty, you come and you bring that in confession to the Lord, and he comes and he meets with you and he says, "But you look like Jesus to me because of what Jesus has done. Rejoice, worship, celebrate, go, and don't forget. I love you, and I died for you." That's what that is. That's why we do that.

Are you actively listening to that, just saying the things, or is it actually something that you're hearing? I hope it's something that you hear every week when you come here. It would be the absolute worst if I got to heaven and Jesus said, "Hey, you did a lot of preaching, but nobody heard you. All they heard was the stuff you said about the wolf pack." That would be the worst.

A Story of Passion and Grace

You know, when I was in college, I did a missions internship in Ireland, and I spent a week on Achill Island with this church planter who was just incredibly passionate, convictingly passionate for the Lord. All we did was walk around Achill Isle and pray for it. That's all we did for a week.

And this guy's prayers—when he prayed, it's like he believed God was there. Kind of like our friends at Mount Pleasant when we pray with them. It's not like this distant kind of thing, like he's over there and up there, and I'm just being respectful and doing this because it makes me look holy. It was like, "I'm in the trenches with you, God. Where are you? Why aren't you showing up?" Some of the things that he said to God were like, "Woah, can you say that to God?"

But it was clear that he was so passionate for the gospel to go forward. And you know what I became confronted with? My lack of passion for that. I felt so guilty the whole week.

I kind of went to this guy and I said, "Man, you're making me feel so guilty because you prayed so sincerely." He said, "Oh man, that's not my hope. My hope is that you would see that passion and you'd receive the grace of the gospel and you'd be transformed."

I said, "What does that look like?" And I went for this long walk on the beach, and then I realized Jesus died for that. And it transformed my heart.

Return to the Mirror

If you've walked away from the mirror and you've forgotten it, like you've forgotten all that Jesus has done, please walk back to the mirror. Don't feel guilty. Don't run away from this and say, "This is terrible. This makes me feel bad." Come back to the cross.

You have a great opportunity to do that next week. We're going to experience it on Easter Sunday. Rejoice in what Christ has done for you. Remember who you are in Christ. Remember, don't be deceived. The world is full of lies, but the gospel is true.

Prayer

Lord Jesus, we thank you that you suffered and died for us, that your gospel is true, that we can actually know that we are saved—not because of what we've done, but because of what you've done. And we can, Lord, even as we experience a lack of transformation, turn back to you and experience the law of freedom. And then we can be renewed in that and persevere in it as we go forward with renewed passion, wanting to make you known in the world.

Lord, would you work like an engine in our church to constantly be renewing us, to make us more and more like you, to move us away from self-deception into true realization of what you've accomplished. Lord, do that we pray. Come, encounter us, Lord. Engage us and change us. In your name, amen.