Word of Salvation – Vol.39 No.32 – August 1994

 

Doers Or Deceivers Of The Word

 

Sermon: by Revd. H. Pennings

Text: James 1:22

Reading: James 2:14-26

 

Brothers and Sisters

They came together that Wednesday evening as they usually did each week, except during vacation time, of course.  It was the Wednesday evening Bible study group.  Not a very spectacular name.  Quite forgettable, in fact.  Just the Wednesday evening Bible study group.  That’s what it was called in the weekly church bulletin.  That’s not such a spectacular name either.  Just the weekly church bulletin.  An ordinary name.  And every week it announced that the Wednesday evening Bible study group was meeting at the usual place, and at the usual time, and that anyone who cared to come along was very welcome, and yes, supper would be provided.

Occasionally the session received a letter of complaint from an irate member who wanted to know why the session allowed the youth club to announce insignificant matters in a certain issue of the church bulletin.  But the session never received a letter from anyone about the weekly announcement of the meeting of the Wednesday evening Bible study group.  Yet this group had been meeting for nearly twenty years!  This shows the value of always doing things ‘decently and in good order’, or so someone may have supposed.

About halfway through February that year, when the members of the Wednesday evening Bible study group thought that it was probably safe enough to start their weekly meetings for the year, they agreed that it would probably be to everyone’s profit to go through the letter of James again.  And for a few weeks they discussed the whole matter of ‘trials and temptations’ from the first half of James 1.  They all agreed together that it might not be such a bad thing, maybe, if believers ‘down under’ experienced some of the persecutions which many other believers in other lands experienced.  There might indeed be spiritual blessing arising from a time of persecution for the cause of the kingdom of the Lord.

This group had also discussed the extraordinary evil shown in today’s society, and that every believer should constantly be on guard to stay away from every sort of unholiness.  They all agreed that to accept ‘the Word’ of Jesus must always lead to a rejection of filthy and deceitful and unwholesome language.

That evening, when the group was discussing the relationship between listening to the Word and ‘doing’ the Word, something happened which changed the group forever.  Mind you, maybe it should never have happened.  For the question which led to it was not in the study manual they were using, and it did not come from the group member who was appointed to lead the discussion.  It was a question which somehow just happened.

The question came from a member of the group who was not always the most cooperative member.  She often seemed to be ‘off with the fairies’ as another member (with Irish ancestry) sometimes commented.  But that particular Wednesday evening she asked this question which changed the group forever.  She asked, ‘I wonder what would happen…. if every one of us here tonight… would do what it says?’

The sound of silence was deafening for a moment.  No one seemed to understand the direct simplicity of such a question.  So she added, ‘I mean…. what if we decided to read the Bible no further…. and to study nothing else…. until we all made a vow to do whatever the Bible says we should be doing?’

When the ticking of the old grandfather clock still drowned out every other comment she, this most quiet member of the Wednesday evening Bible study group, ventured to explain the exact import of her question.

‘Last week I was reading,’ she said quietly and hesitatingly, ‘that part of the Bible where Jesus was the guest of one of the more important members of the church in Jerusalem.  He told this V.I.P. member that all those who are true children of Abraham are those who, when invited to a gathering, go and sit at the lowest place rather than at the highest place.  It’s found in Luke 14.  And then Jesus added, still addressing this important church member in particular, that when believers want to invite someone over for a meal… that they should not invite those who will probably invite them back…. but that they should invite the sort of person, who because of their poor circumstances, is never likely to return the compliment.’

When there was still no movement from anyone sitting in that comfortable lounge room, she added, “I was just telling myself that I am every sort of hypocrite.  For I read these words of Jesus last week, and I haven’t done what the Word says, and I haven’t even thought about it any further, until tonight.  You have no right to read the Bible any further I kept telling myself tonight, for I have shown myself to be only a “listener” of the Word rather than a “doer” of the Word which I’ve read.’

Jesus once said that the wind, referring to the Holy Spirit who brings God’s Word into a person’s heart to renew it, ‘blows wherever it pleases’ (John 3:8).  That night the Spirit of God did His work of renewal among the members of the Wednesday evening Bible study group, for He (the Spirit of Christ Jesus) convicted every member of the group of a grievous sin.  Every member confessed and owned up to the sin of having read Jesus’ teaching in Luke 14 dozens of times without even once putting it into practice.  They each decided that before they would meet again they would allow the Holy Spirit to lead them into that “righteousness of God’ into which he calls everyone who reads and understands the Word.

The very next morning a member of the group (we’ll give him a name and call him Joe) decided that the blessing of God for “doers” of the word (1:25) was worth claiming.  So he called into the office of a firm of printers, and there he ordered 500 copies of the following letter of invitation:

• Joe (of the following address) representing Jesus Christ of Nazareth, invites you, and any of your friends, to a dinner party at my home.
• If you are free to accept Jesus’ invitation, be at the corner of XYZ and ZYX streets at 5.00 pm and a car will pick you up.
• Informal dress please!

Then Joe took these letters of invitation to the poorest part of the city and handed an invitation to everyone he thought might be the sort of person Jesus had in mind in His teaching of Luke 14.  He gave an invitation to a man looking into a garbage container, another to an old lady wheeling along a pram full of odds and ends of furniture, and so on until he had given out a whole fist-full.  And one evening later that same week he hired five taxis to go to the corner of XYZ and ZYX streets at 5.00 pm.  That night 15 people sat down for a meal at Joe’s house, and they had a grand feast indeed!  And Jesus was present at the breaking of the bread and at the pouring of the cup.

I am not suggesting that Jesus had not been present at other times when Joe had eaten his meals with other members of his family or when he had invited more well-to-do people to his home for a meal.  I am sure that Jesus was present when Joe had sat around the table of the Lord’s Supper hundreds of times over the years.  For Joe had truly loved his Lord and Saviour for a long time and was quite genuine about following Jesus.  But Jesus had been present that night in a different way, for Joe had handed over to Jesus a part of his life which he had previously always dedicated to the exclusive welfare of his own family.  He never again forgot that Wednesday evening when the members of the Bible study group felt the moving of the Spirit of Christ.  It was a time during which each member heard the Holy Spirit say that they are “deceivers” when they read the Word without becoming “doers” of Word.

I cannot tell you about that quietest member of the group or about the other members of the group.  The Spirit convicted each one of a grievous sin, but in practical terms their sins were not all the same, just as each of us here this morning have different areas of our lives which we have wilfully withheld from the Saviour.  We too have not walked hand in hand with the leading of the Spirit in various ways.  If the Spirit of Jesus speaks in our hearts today, it will be about different sins, about different passages and subjects of Scripture which have called us to discipleship.  I know of them and you know of them too.

‘Faith without deeds is dead faith,’ we read in James 2.  No one is right with God by faith alone.  Faith is made complete by deeds of faith, we read again in that same chapter.  Can a person claim to have true faith in Jesus Christ if what she or he reads about being disciples of Jesus does not lead to true and active faith?  ‘As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.’

I wonder what would happen in each of our homes this week if the Scripture we read, either with our families or personally, led to us going out and doing what we read.  I wonder what would happen in our homes and among our families this week if we decided that we would not read Scripture further until we had sought the blessing of the Lord as we attempted to put it into action.  There’s just one more thing I want to say about this Wednesday evening Bible study group to which everyone was always invited, and where supper was always provided.  I’ve already indicated that the evening when the group came to grips with the teaching of James 1:22, the group was changed forever.  This change can best be explained by the new name under which it met afterwards.  It became known as the Good News Action Group.  And it only met fortnightly, for every member was blessed with the doing of much good for the kingdom of God.  Good works which Jesus had been preparing for them to do since the very foundation of the earth!

AMEN