In the fall of 1871, explorer Harry Stanley found missionary Dr. Livingstone in Ujiji, Africa, after he had been lost to civilization for several years. It was then that he uttered those famous words, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume.” Staying there with Livingstone for some time, Stanley was immediately impressed with this Christian missionary, even though Stanley himself was not a religious man. Stanley said of Dr. Livingstone’s faith: “It is of the true, practical kind, never losing a chance to manifest itself in a quiet, practical way … It governs his conduct towards his servants, and towards the natives.” (Tim Jeal, Stanley, p. 122)

That is what genuine Christian faith does: it is not just something we “claim.” It should govern our conduct towards others: even servants. Even family members. And other church members. Towards everyone.

This morning as we continue our study in James, we see “What Real Faith Like” in relationships — and how even when we fail in our relationships, God can still give us His righteousness through faith in Jesus.

I. Relationships
I don’t know if I could have picked a better text for Fathers Day than this one: “But everyone must be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger” — a pretty good word for many of us dads! And not just dads, but the Lord gives us here some specific directions that will help us with every relationship in our lives. There are three, simple, but important things this verse challenges us to do:

A. REGARD: “Be quick to hear”
Too often, we fathers, husbands — and all of us — are just not “quick to hear.” We aren’t listening.

Sadly, one of the “best” examples of this comes from my own life last Monday. Cheryl & I took her car in to Jason Ramsower’s to get a minor repair done (by the way, it’s invaluable to have somebody like that you can really trust to work on your car!) Anyway, on the way back Cheryl & I were talking about how it had rained that morning and she said something like, “Yeah well it was enough to get an inch in the rain gauge.” I said, “We actually had an inch in the rain gauge?” She said, “I told you that earlier this morning!” I said, “You did? I know you told me It was coming down really hard and it rained solid for 20 minutes’ (you know how we men do, we quote what we heard to show that we really WERE listening to some of it at least!) but I guess I didn’t get the “we actually had 1” in the rain gauge” part. Then I said, “Well, I’m afraid this is probably going to have to go in this Sunday’s sermon!”

But unfortunately, that’s often how we are — and we men can be some of the worst, right? We’re not really listening. We listen just enough to scoot the person away so we can go do what we really want: watch our ball game, or go out the shop, or whatever’s next on our list. But we aren’t really listening. So God has this word for us on this Father’s Day today men: LISTEN.
— Listen to your wife.
— Listen to your kids.
— Listen to your grandkids.
— Listen to your supervisor or employees or co-workers or neighbors. 

And although we men really need this today, isn’t not only for us. The verse says “EVERYONE must be quick to hear,” so this is for ALL of us. LISTEN to people. “Be quick to hear,” God says.

It was the ancient Greek philosopher Zeno who first said “we have two ears and one mouth, therefore we should listen twice as much as we speak”! I think that’s a pretty good rule.

I once heard someone who was teaching on healthy relationships ask: When you finish a conversation, do you know more about the other person you were just speaking with, or do they just know all about you? Who did all the taking? That can be pretty convicting. (Cheryl & I have evaluated ourselves by this a lot over the least years: do we know more about the people we were just talking to — or do they just know more about US? Were we good listeners, or just good talkers?!)

The bottom line here is: God says don’t be so quick to speak; be quick to LISTEN! “Quick to hear.” This is true just as a general principle. But honestly, some things ARE most important to listen to than others.

WE SHOULD ESPECIALLY BE QUICK TO HEAR GOD’S WORD!
Of all the things we can listen to, nothing is more important to hear the word of God!
— Romans 10:14 “How will they believe in Him whom they have not heard?”
— Revelation 1:3 says “blessed are those who hear” the words of this book
— Jesus repeatedly says to His churches in Revelation: “He who has ears to hear, let him hear!”

Salvation comes from listening to God’s word; as we saw last week, when we hear, and believe, God’s Spirit comes into our heart and we are saved. But we have to LISTEN in order for that to happen.
And that’s also how we grow spiritually: by listening to the word of God, and again, God’s Spirit takes His word and grows us in our hearts. But we have to listen: listen to our Sunday School teacher; listen to our Bible study leader; listen to the preacher; LISTEN as God speaks to you in your own daily Bible reading.
“Let him hear”! “Be quick to hear”! LISTEN to the word of God.
It is one thing to be slightly inattentive to your husband, wife, or child — it is another thing entirely to not listen to the word of God, which is able to save your soul and change your life.

— So when you get up to start the day, be quick to hear what God has to say to you: look at His word first thing; it will change your day. Be quick to hear!
— Be quick to hear what God has to say to you through Sunday School classes, Bible studies, and the messages at church.
— Be quick to hear what God’s word says about the specific situations you face in life. Don’t just listen to your friends, and what “everyone says.” Be quick to hear what GOD says!
— And when you’re wrong about something, and someone shares with you what the Bible says, “be quick to hear” it. Don’t reject it in pride. Don’t shut it down. Be humble; be open to the word of God. “Be quick to hear.”

B. RESIST: “be slow to speak”
This is another good general principle: “be slow to speak.” That’s kind of the “flip side” of what we were just talking about, right? If we’re going to be “quick to hear” then we need to also be “slow to speak.”
Proverbs in the Old Testament repeatedly admonishes us to be “slow to speak”:
— Proverbs 10:19” When there are many words, transgression is unavoidable, But he who restrains his lips is wise.”
— Proverbs 13:3 “The one who guards his mouth preserves his life;
The one who opens wide his lips comes to ruin.”
— Proverbs 17:28 “Even a fool, when he keeps silent, is considered wise;
When he closes his lips, he is considered prudent.”

There are so many references to this in God’s word: Be slow to speak. And how true is that? How many times have you said something, that you wished you could take back? But can you? NO! Once you’ve “fired off” some word, you can never take it back again.

I once talked to a guy who said when he was young, he got a bow and arrow, and he was so excited about it. He said he just hastily took it, and shot off an arrow off, straight up in the sky — all of the sudden he thought: how foolish that was! He didn’t know where that arrow was going to land, on himself, or one of his friends, or something in his yard. But he said the terrifying thing about it was, that there was absolutely nothing he could do about it once he let it go. He couldn’t go get it back. Once he’d fired it, It was gone. It was gonna do its damage. He couldn’t take it back.

We need to realize it is the same way with our words. Once you’ve “fired off” some words, you can’t take them back. All you can do is helplessly stand by and watch whatever damage it does. The only remedy for that, the Bible says, is to head it off in the first place: “BE SLOW TO SPEAK.”

We had a deacon in our first church in Oklahoma City, who, when you were talking to him, he would often be silent for a few moments. He would not just immediately respond to what you were saying. It was a bit unusual, and could be a little unnerving. But I found out later, he was taking his time, composing his response to what you had said. He would often be just whispering a little prayer before he spoke.
A lot MORE of us should be like that deacon: “Be slow to speak”!

C. REFRAIN: “be slow to anger.”
Verse 20 follows this up by saying, “for the anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God.” What does that mean, “the anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God”?

Sometime we feel and act as if our getting angry, is the right response that will rectify a situation:
— If our spouse or child messes up, we yell at them
— If one of our work associates makes a mistake, we get mad at them
— If someone at church messes up, we get angry at them
— If things go wrong in our country, we go on a furious rant about it

But God says here, “the anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God.” In other words, your anger is not the solution to the problem. Getting mad about it is not going to “fix” it!

This is a good word for a lot of even very “religious” people. There is a kind of “religious person” who is just angry at everything all the time. God says here: DO NOT BE LIKE THAT. “The anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God.” You aren’t going to achieve what God wants, through your anger.

There is an old Jewish saying: “Thrice was Moses angry, and thrice he failed to produce the mind of God.” That’s not a “scripture,” per se, but I believe there is a lot of wisdom in it. The Bible says that “Moses was the meekest man in all the earth.” But upon occasion he got very angry — and those were NOT his best moments. In fact, one flash of his anger in particular cost him the opportunity to see the Promised Land. God told him: You did not treat Me as holy, when you lost your temper that day before Israel.

So hear this word — again, a very apt word for many of us dads today: don’t be that “yelling dad” — but it’s also for all of us: don’t be the “yelling mom,” or the angry child, or whoever you are. Remember, “The anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God.”
— don’t be mad at all the homosexuals
— don’t just be angry at all the abortionists
— don’t just lose your temper with your spouse or your kids
— don’t get mad at your church
That’s not how you get God’s work done, James says here. Your anger is not going to help the situation, and it may very likely make it worse!

There is another old Jewish saying: “To lose one’s temper is to lose the Shekinah.” The “Shekinah” is the visible glory of the presence of God. In other words, if you get all mad, you lose the presence of the glory of God.
Ephesians 4:30 says “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God.” We grieve Him with our anger, our gossip, our blatant sin and disobedience. As I heard an evangelist say years ago: when you get angry or start gossiping, Someone just left the room — and that “Someone” is the Holy Spirit of God! Now, is He still in our hearts, yes; He will always be with us. But His manifest presence, His glory, His power, is grieved and hindered by our sinful attitude.

So James says “Be slow to anger. The anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God.” Your angry outbursts will not get your husband, or your wife, or your child, or your employee, or your church, or your country, where God wants them to be. “The anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God.”

II. Righteousness
So with God’s help we should do the best we can in these “relationship” areas. But when you fall short — and you WILL — James says, receive the word implanted which is able to save your soul Verse 21 says “Therefore” — that’s an important word. It means, because of all that’s just been said — all the things you should do, but might fail to do — what then? He says:

A. REPENT
“putting aside all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness.”
The words “putting aside” here picture shedding one’s self of some shabby clothing you need to get rid of. A.T. Robertson also tells us it can picture the “weeding of a garden.” Gardens sprout weeds, and you have to constantly weed them to keep them under control, or the garden will get overgrown. In the same way, the Bible says here we need to “put aside” the old garments of sin; we need to “weed” filthiness and wickedness out of our lives.

What he’s talking about here is called REPENTANCE. We’ve been studying Acts 2 in our Sunday School classes the past couple of weeks. We saw where Peter was filled with the Holy Spirit, and preached to the crowds that had gathered on the Day of Pentecost. When the people in the crowd’s hearts were touched, they asked Peter, “What should we do?” Do you remember the first word out of his mouth? “Repent.”

Repentance is a change of mind (this is literally the meaning of the word “metanoeo”: a change in mind) which leads to a change in your life. To me the great example in the Bible is the Prodigal Son, who “came to himself” and got up and went back to his father. He had a change of mind, that led to a change in direction in his life.

This will happen in each person who really responds to God’s word. When we are “quick to hear” His word, it will lead us to repent, to change some things in our lives, because of what we have heard. Repentance has to happen if we are going to be right with God. Our whole problem is that we have sinned against God, and we are going in the wrong direction with our lives. So when we really hear God’s word, we’ll realize we have been going the wrong way, and we’ll turn around and start going in the other direction. This is repentance.

And the Bible says we must repent if we are really going to be saved. Being a Christian is not just a matter of saying, “I believe in God, and I am going to go to church.” In Chapter 2 James says: “the demons also believe and shudder.” Listen: the DEVIL believes in God and goes to church!” He really does! What difference is there between you and the devil? The devil has never repented! A genuine Christian is one who believes in God and who listens to His word and has REPENTED, who’s life has been changed because of what he’s heard from God’s word.

We must repent. Jesus said, “Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” (Luke 13:3) The first word of the gospel Peter preached at Pentecost was “Repent!.” And if you’re going to be saved, you must repent.

This is what so many people just do not get today. They think (perhaps due to the poor theology of so much of the preaching they’ve heard) that they can just continue in their sins and follow Jesus. They’ve heard people say too many times, “you don’t have to change anything to become a Christian.” And that is just not true.
— People say today: “I’m going to be a ‘gay Christian.’” NO! You can’t just continue blatantly in a sin that God’s word clearly condemns, both in the Old Testament and the New Testament, and think you’re following Jesus. You have to repent of that sin. Even if you struggle with it; you have to admit that it’s wrong, and ask Him to help you turn from it. You can’t just be content to stay like you are and think you’re following Jesus.
— And listen: that’s for ANY sin. You also can’t say, I’m going to be a selfish, materialistic Christian, and money is going to be the most important thing in my life. NO, for you to come to Jesus you have to repent of your materialism, and make JESUS your only God. Even if you struggle with it; you have to admit it’s wrong, and keep asking Him to help you turn from it every day. You can’t just be content to stay like you are, in any area of your life, and think you’re following Jesus. You have to repent!

“Be quick to hear” God’s word today, because there has been a lot of false and incomplete preaching around: YOU MUST REPENT IN ORDER TO BE SAVED. You cannot just blatantly continue in your sins and think you’re going to heaven. You have to repent. You have to admit your sin is wrong, and ask Jesus to help you turn from it. This is just what some of us need to do today: admit you’ve been going the wrong way, turn to Jesus, and ask Him to forgive you, and help you follow Him in a new direction.

And repentance is not just a one-time thing, either. Even as a Christian, we need to understand that God is not content with our lives the way they are. We are to be continually repenting. Every day we are to read in God’s word what He says we should be doing; every day we’re to confess whatever in our lives that doesn’t match up with that; every day we are to repent. THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IS TO BE A LIFE OF CONTINUAL REPENTANCE. It’s not just “get saved and coast to heaven.” No, it’s continually repent. Continually “weed the garden.” When do you get to rest from weeding the garden? Never, right? It’s a never-ending task. You’re always weeding the garden! Repentance is like that in our lives. It is a continual, life-long task. And it never ends.

We get a clue to that here in this text. Notice he says: “ALL” filthiness; “ALL THAT REMAINS” of wickedness. In other words, it’s not just “get the big sins out” of your life. We’re not to be content with any sin, any compromise, any evil in our life. I think one of the big problems in many of our Christian lives today, is that we have become “comfortable” with a certain level of sin in our lives. We have just become used to it. God says here: DON’T get used to it! HE is not “used to it.” He is a holy God. HE is not “comfortable” with any sin in your life. So He says, put aside ALL filthiness; ALL that remains of wickedness in your life. “Be holy, for YHWH your God is holy.”

Is there something in your life today, Christian person, that you have gotten comfortable tolerating, that God is not comfortable tolerating in your life? (He may be bringing something specific to your mind right now.) God is calling you today to repent of that. Set it aside. “Weed it out.”
The first step to righteousness is to repent.

B. RECEIVE
Salvation is not just a matter of “putting aside.” It’s not just a matter of “weeding the garden.” It’s also a matter of what we put in its place: “In humility RECEIVE the word implanted, which is able to save your souls.”
Several things here:

— He says “in HUMILITY receive the word implanted.”
It takes humility to say, I have sinned; I’ve fallen short of what God told me to do. I I need to change; I need Jesus to come into my life and save me. That goes against the “American self-made man” image we talked about last week. This is what could keep some of us dads from going to heaven, because to be saved, you have to humbly admit: I am not all I need to be, and I need Jesus’ help to be saved. That goes against our grain as men. You have to humble yourself to inherit the Kingdom of God.

— Then He says “receive the word implanted.” “The word implanted” means let the seed of the truth of the word of God get planted in your heart. Especially the truth of the Gospel: that Jesus died on the cross to pay for our sins. that’s “the word implanted” that will save your soul.

This is second part of our response to the gospel. We must repent in order to be saved, but it is not only repentance saves us. We must also RECEIVE. We must also put our trust in Jesus as our Lord & Savior, and receive the forgiveness He bought for us on the cross, and receive His Holy Spirit into our life.
It’s like there’s both a “positive” and “negative” aspect of being saved:
— “negatively,” you turn away FROM your sin. That’s “REPENT.”
— “positively,” you turn TO Jesus as your Savior. That’s “RECEIVE.”

Return to that picture of a garden: if you want strawberries to grow in your garden, not only do you have to get RID of the weeds; you have to positively PLANT a strawberry plant in there, right? You could weed that garden bed every day, all year long, pluck out every single weed, and still never grow any strawberries. You have to put something IN there; you have to a plant a strawberry plant in there!

And that’s what James is saying here, too. To be saved, you have to REPENT of your sins (you have to weed the garden) but you also have to have “the word implanted” — you have to “plant something new” in your life, and RECEIVE the message that Jesus died for your sins, in YOUR own heart. It’s just like we saw last week: if you will admit your sins and be willing to turn from them with God’s help, and if you believe that Jesus died for your sins and will save you — the moment you believe that in your heart, the Holy Spirit of God, God Himself, will come inside you, and save you. This is what James says here: “In humility receive the word implanted, which is able to save your souls.” God will save YOU today, if you will humbly repent of your sins, and trust Jesus to save you.

CONCLUSION:
James says here today in :19-21, Do your best in your earthly relationships: try to “be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger,” and so on. But the truth is, you are going to fail in that. But when you fail, trust that it is JESUS who saves you. Receive His “word implanted which is able to save your soul.”

This is what real Christianity looks like:
— Real Christianity does NOT look like someone who’s not even trying to obey God’s word. That’s not genuine Christianity.
— And real Christianity does NOT look like someone who achieves perfection on their own – because none of us do!
— NO: Real Christianity looks like someone who is putting God’s word to practice in their life every day, who like Dr. Livingstone lets every relationship in their life be affected by their walk with God; who is being “quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger” in their relationships — but when they fall short, they’re grateful that their salvation is not based on the good works they did for God, but on the good work that Jesus did for THEM, when He died on the cross for them. This is the message that has been implanted in their soul! THAT is “What Real Faith Looks Like”!

INVITATION:
Evaluate YOUR own life today by what God’s word says here:
— Are you quick to hear?
— Are you slow to speak? (Or just waiting your turn to talk?)
— Are you slow to anger? (What would others say about you?)
— And when you fail in trying to be all that you “should,” what do you lean on; what’s your hope of heaven? Make sure today that you are trusting in Jesus’ righteousness alone for your salvation!