What does a “religious” person look like? What do you envision when you think of someone who is “religious”? Someone carrying a big Bible, or wearing a cross around their neck? Maybe somebody speaking from a pulpit, or singing a solo? What do you think of, when you think of a “religious” person?

Somebody might say, “Well now pastor, it’s not about ‘religion,’ it’s about a relationship.” And that’s true. The Bible doesn’t teach that we’re saved by doing a set of “religious deeds,” but through faith in Jesus’ death on the cross for us. We’ve got to have that personal relationship with Him to be saved — not just a set of “religious deeds.” But even understanding that, the Bible DOES use the word “religion” in a positive way. In fact, it does here in our text for today, James 1:26-27, where it says:

“If anyone thinks himself to be religious and yet does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this man’s religion is worthless. Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.”

So the Bible doesn’t use the word “religion” solely in a negative way here. In fact, it says here that there is both a positive and a negative kind of religion. It says there is a “worthless” sort of religion, but also a “pure” kind of religion. So “religion” in itself is not bad, James says — IF you have the right KIND of religion. How do you know if you have the right kind of religion? That’s what we are going to look at this morning: what the Bible says here about the nature of true and false religion.

I. What False Religion Looks Like
(:26) “If anyone thinks himself to be religious and yet does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this man’s religion is worthless.” So the Bible says there IS a kind of religion that is “worthless.” The word “worthless” here (mataios) means “vain, useless, ineffectual.” What kind of religion is “vain and useless”? We see three characteristics of it here in :26:

A. False religion “thinks” itself to be very “religious”.
A person with vain, empty religion may THINK themselves to be very “religious.” This is important: people with false religions usually don’t think they have a false religion. They THINK themselves to be very “religious.”

One example of this in the New Testament is the Pharisee in Luke 18. The Bible says that Pharisee “stood” in the Temple and prayed: “God, I thank You that I am not like other people; swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.”
Do you hear the “religion” all through his prayer? This guy THINKS he is very religious — lots better than those other guys. But his attitude gives him away: he’s “holier than thou.” Very SELF-righteous. He’s got all these “religious deeds”: “I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.” You’ve encountered people like this before: they tell you about how good they are, and all their pious works. You just want to say to them, “Yes, you’re very ‘religious.’” That’s how this Pharisee was. But significantly, if you read this story in Luke 18, you see that at the end, Jesus said this Pharisee did NOT go down to his house justified — in other words, he was not what we would call “saved.” He THOUGHT he was “very religious” — but it was a false religion. It did not save him!

And there are so many in our world today who are just like this man. They THINK they are “very religious,” and yet they’re on the wrong path.

B. Here’s the second thing about false religion that we see here: False religion “deceives its own heart.”
People with false religion THINK they are very “religious,” but James says they are fooling themselves. They aren’t on the right path. SO many today are just like James says here, having some kind of “religion,” but it’s a false religion. They are deceiving themselves. There are several kinds of people in our world today who are deceiving themselves about their religion:

1. People who think there are many ways to God are deceiving themselves.
   Mahatma Gandhi said “For me, religion is one in its essence, but it has many branches.” In other words, Gandhi believed that faith is like a tree with many branches, but they are all part of the same “tree” of genuine faith in God. He thinks all the paths lead to the same place.

This kind of belief is very common. Most people think that virtually everyone is going to heaven. I read a survey not long ago that said that over 90% of Americans think they are going to heaven! Many people think that you’re automatically going to heaven, unless you’re exceptionally wicked, like Adolph Hitler, or Osama Bin Laden, or someone like that.

But Jesus said in Matthew 7:13-14, “Enter through the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it.” People think that the way to heaven is wide, and virtually everyone is going there. But Jesus said the opposite is true: the gate is small; the way is narrow. In fact, Jesus taught that there is only ONE way to God, and that is through Him. He said in John 14:6 “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except through Me.” According to Jesus, if you think there is more than one way to heaven, you are deceiving yourself.

2. People who are not in a Biblical religion or church are deceiving themselves.
   Many people have some kind of “religion” or church, but it’s not based entirely on the word of God. It is either based on some vision or revelation or book outside of the Bible, or it has some a combination of the Bible PLUS some other book or revelation. Let me be very clear: if your faith is based on anything other than the word of God contained in the Bible, it is a false religion, and you are deceiving yourself.

After World War II, C.S. Lewis told one of his friends that the real enemy of God was (the so-called) “religion” that denied the supernatural: “the vague slush of humanitarian idealism, Emersonian Pantheism, democratic politics and material progressiveness with a few Christian names and formulae added to taste, like salt and pepper.”(Harry Lee Poe, The Making of C.S. Lewis, pp. 325-326)

Lewis’ expression there at the end is significant, where he said “a few Christian names and formulae added TO TASTE like salt & pepper.” That’s so on target. People today want a religion that’s suited their own “taste.” We have such a consumer society today, we can pick or choose any brand of anything we want to buy, or eat or drink — and that’s a blessing! But unfortunately too many of us have let this bleed over into our faith. We want to pick or choose a church that’s “suited to our taste” instead of based on the word of God. Many people want to construct a whole set of religious beliefs that are “suited to their taste” just like they’d season a dish to their taste with salt & pepper.

But this is very dangerous. A religion “suited your taste” and not based on the word of God may be very palatable to YOU — and very convenient, because you get to leave out all the uncomfortable parts that you don’t like! But you are also deceiving yourself if think that a religion you made up, will truly give you a relationship with God, or take you to heaven. Genuine religion is based on the word of God, the Bible ONLY. Not the Bible and someone’s vision; not the Bible and the Book of Mormon; not the Bible and a little bit of other religions sprinkled in according to your taste. True religion is based on the word of God ALONE! Anything else is false religion.

3. People whose religion is based on SELF-righteousness are deceiving themselves.
   These are people like that Pharisee in Luke 18, who have all these religious works, and so they think they are right with God. “They fast twice. week; they pay tithes of all they get” — but they are deceiving themselves. The Bible says in Romans 3:20, “By the works of the Law, no flesh will be justified in His sight.” Religious works can’t save you.

Let me just put it like this: if your answer to the question: “How are you going to get to heaven” is “I have done __” then you are deceiving yourself! No amount of good works and deeds can make you right with God. It’s like old song says:

“Not the labor of my hands can fulfill Thy Law’s demands;
Could my zeal no respite know; could my tears forever flow;
All for sin could not atone; THOU must save, and Thou alone.”

Only GOD can save you, and only by His grace, through faith in Jesus Christ alone! If your religion is based on your own good works and deeds, you are deceiving yourself, and you have a false religion.

Yet there’s another characteristic of false religion here in 26:

C. False religion doesn’t impact their life.
Some people might say, “Oh, don’t worry about me, Bro. Shawn; I’m not in some false religion. I’m a good Baptist and I believe in Jesus and the Bible and not in some false cult.” That’s good — but James has one more word here about false religion: he says in :26 that there’s a kind of person who “thinks themselves to be religious — and YET does not bridle his tongue”!
He says this person is “deceiving his own heart.” This is interesting because if you go back to :22, it said the person who is a hearer of the word and not a doer of it “deceives his own heart.”

The middle part of :26 here gives us one example of what it means to hear the word and not do it. It says the person with false religion “does not bridle his own tongue.” The picture here is of a bridle like you’d put on a horse, to stop it, or guide it. This verse teaches us that real religion will stop or guide your TONGUE: the things you say. Now, we are going to look at how Real Faith affects your words when we get to Chapter 3 — about half of that chapter deals with our words! But the point here in :26 is: If your religion is real, it will affect the way you talk.

We all know this is right. You’ve probably talked to someone, and you could tell, just by the way they talked, that they were most likely a Christian person? You can just tell, both by a lot of things they did NOT say, on the one hand! — and also by just some of the things they DID say, too, like: maybe they said “Lord willing” I will do this or that; or maybe they just mention off-handedly that they were coming back from church; or maybe they say “have a blessed day,” or whatever. You can often tell by someone’s words, that this person is most likely a Christian.

Then on the other hand, can’t you often tell from someone’s words, pretty quickly, that that person is probably NOT a Christian?

For example, Cheryl & I were going to vote a couple of weeks ago, and on our way into the building a woman approached us and said, I know I shouldn’t be doing this, because I’m inside the prohibited area, but you should vote for so-and-so, because he’ll (blankety-blank-blank-blank). Number 1, what she was doing was illegal; Number 2, her language totally turned us off. We were already going to vote for the other candidate, but if we weren’t, that would have settled it for us.

Now, I don’t know that person at all, but the fact is, there are a lot of people like that in our society today, who talk and act like that who, if you were to ask them, they would say “Oh yeah, of course I am a Christian.” And they might be offended if you didn’t think so. But how real can their faith be, when it doesn’t lead them to obey the law, or bridle their tongue?

See, James isn’t just talking about words here. What he’s addressing is whether you have Real Faith or not. And he says if your faith is not real enough to impact the way you talk, you don’t have real faith. The point he’s making here is that if your faith is real, it will impact your life. You won’t just be a hearer of the word, but you will DO it. It will impact the way you talk, the way you live, every aspect of your life. Every one of us here today should evaluate the kind of “religion” that we have: Is your religion real enough to impact the way you talk, and the way you live? If it doesn’t, God says, you are just deceiving yourself. You may think you’re “religious,” but you just have a false religion that doesn’t really impact your life.

II. What True Religion Looks Like
(:27) “Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.”

He says this is “pure and undefiled religion” — in other words, TRUE religion; “What Real Faith Looks Like.” As you might think, it’s the exact opposite of false religion; real religion WILL impact your life, in some very specific ways. And he gives two examples of some ways it will impact your life, and, as you’d think, they’re pretty much the opposite of false religion:

A. True Religion Will Make You Holy
“… and to keep oneself unstained by the world.”
We saw just a second ago that one of the characteristics of false religion is that it doesn’t impact a person’s life: it doesn’t change the way they talk; the way they live. But James says here in :27 that “pure and undefiled religion” will “keep oneself unstained by the world.” “Unstained” here is “a-spilon”; “not – spotted/stained,” not contaminated by the world. In other words, true religion WILL impact your life and make you holy. I Timothy 6:14 says “Keep the commandment without stain or reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

One of Cheryl & I’s favorite movies is “The African Queen” with Humphrey Bogart & Katharine Hepburn. They filmed that movie in 1951 on location on the Congo River in the African jungle. Hepburn later wrote about the difficulties they faced while filming there: “The country is like a great sponge, it finally absorbs you. Eventually you will get malaria or you will get dysentery and whatever you do, if you don’t keep doing it, the jungle will grow over you. Black or white, you’ve got to fight it every minute of the day.” (Katherine Hepburn, The Making of the African Queen, p. 68)

When I read that, I thought, that’s just like the world we live in. This world, the flesh and the devil, are constantly all around us like a “jungle”: television, the internet, the media, ungodly standards and practices are coming at us 24/7 — and just like Katharine Hepburn said of that jungle, we’ve constantly got to “fight it every minute of the day” or it’ll grow over us!

What James is saying here is that the genuine Christian person IS fighting this. He or she is not just giving in and going along with the sinful standards of this world. They fight to “keep themselves unstained by the world.” Now, that doesn’t mean you’ll be perfect, because we’ll never be perfect in this life; but it means that the tendency of your life will be to KEEP God’s commandments, not to BREAK them. Real religion will impact the way you live.

(Let me also add here: that this is one of the reasons for our upcoming “Fight Club,” Wednesday night July 31 at 6:30. Jared Wilson will share his testimony about the dangers of pornography on the internet and on our phones — and he’ll give us some ways to fight against it. I encourage everyone to be there. If we don’t fight it; it IS going to grow over us, and our kids, and our grandkids, just like that jungle.)

Let me ask you: IS your religion impacting the way you live, for the better? Is it making your more holy? I think a good way to put it may be like this: are there things you do not do in your life today, because of your faith in Christ and your commitment to God’s word? Are there things you are fighting against? Sure, sometimes you stumble, but are you fighting against the “jungle” of this world? If so, that’s a sign that your faith is real and genuine. That’s one sign of true religion. It will lead you to be holy.

B. True Religion will motivate you to Minister
“to visit orphans and widows in their distress”

Last week we saw that we aren’t just to be “hearers” of the word, but “doers” of it. In other words, we shouldn’t just come to church to HEAR about things to do, but come and listen, and then really go and DO them. James is indicating again here, that true religion will impact your life in real and specific ways. He gave one example of how it will affect your holiness, in your words. Now he gives another example: he says if your religion is real, it’ll cause you to care about other people and minister to them. And the example he gives of that here, is “to visit orphans and widows in their distress.”

Again, just like words aren’t the only thing in our lives that’ll be affected by the holiness of True Religion; so ministering to orphans and widows isn’t the only sign of how True Religion ministers, either. But it’s one example of it. He’s saying, if you have true religion, you won’t just come to church on Sunday morning. It will bring a love and concern into your life that will lead to you to minister to people in some way. And the example he gives, is of ministering to widows and orphans.

This was an especially great need in the first century. They didn’t have “government programs” like Social Security and Medicare. If there was a widow and she had no family, she could literally starve, as there was no one to care for her. That’s why the early church began taking food to widows; that’s what the first deacon ministry was about: Peter said we Apostles need to spend our time ministering the word of God; but we should take care of our own widows — and that’s why the deacon ministry began, to take care of the widows in the church.

But James says here that caring for others in the church is NOT just for deacons. It’s for everyone. He says “Pure and undefiled religion” (true religion) is “to visit orphans and widows in their distress.” In other words, take care of people who have needs. Genuine faith not only is holy towards God, but it also reaches out to care for other people. So evaluate yourself today: how is the “religion” you say you have, leading you to care for other people? In what specific ways are you doing that?

I want us to apply this word in a practical way this morning. James says that “real religion” visits orphans and widows — so let’s don’t just be “hearers” of the word, but “doers,” right? You should have a card in your seat, with a list of the people in our church currently in nursing homes. According to James 1 here, what should we do for these people? We should go and see them — “visit them in their distress.” So take this card home with you, and use it to go and “visit them in their distress.” Don’t just be a HEARER of the word this week; be a DOERS; THAT, James says, is “real religion.”

Now, someone may say, “Well, Bro. Shawn, what if these nursing homes get flooded with visitors this week?” Wouldn’t that be nice! Wouldn’t it be great if they got so many visits that they had to tell us to cut back? I’d love it if our church made so many visits to the nursing homes that they’d have to tell us to cut back! Let’s do it! Go by yourself; take someone with you; go as a Sunday School class; take the youth; take your kids. And let’s not just do it this week; let’s pray for these people regularly, and keep seeing them all year ‘round.

Another specific ministry we have in the nursing home is singing hymns on Mondays. Just show up at the Memory Care unit (around at the back) at Country Village; Deb Peterson plays the piano, and you can just sit with the residents, and sing along. The card has the schedule info for that.

Another specific ministry in our church that helps widows is our deacon ministry. FBCA’s deacons are not a “church board;” rather they are committed to minister to our homebound and widows. But several of our deacons have become limited physically in their ability to minister in recent years. We need some more men to rise up and take their place. If you’ve served as a deacon in another church, or if you’d be willing to serve as a deacon, to minister to widows, indicate that on the card and turn it in.

One of our church’s missions partners that specifically works with the groups James mentions here is Dan & Meredith Shuman with “James Trail Ministries.” They call it “JAMES” Trail because it’s based on James 1:17, caring for orphans and widows. They go to orphanages all over the world, including Mazatlan, Mexico where our church went in March 2000, to minister in a special needs home there. Our church supports Dan & Meredith every month from our church budget, and some of our folks give on top of that. if you are interested in being part of a mission team to Mazatlan, or some other place, with them, we can get you their contact info. This is another practical way to do what James says here.

These are some very specific ways you can live out this verse. But another general principle these verses teach us is that true religion starts at HOME. I Timothy 5 talks about how the church should take care of its widows, just like James does here. But then it also says in :4, “But if any widow has children or grandchildren, they must first learn to practice piety in regard to their own family and to make some return to their parents; for this is acceptable in the sight of God.” THEN it adds in :8, “But if anyone does not provide for his own, especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith, and is worse than an unbeliever.” Those are some strong words, aren’t they? But Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, says the same thing James is saying here: that real religion takes care of people, and that it starts at HOME.

In Charles Dickens’ book Bleak House, there is a character by the name of Mrs. Jellyby. When Ada and Esther come to visit Mrs. Jellyby’s house, all Mrs. Jellyby can talk about is Africa; her ministry to the people in Africa; she hardly has time even to talk to her guests, because she is getting all these things ready for Africa. Even her own children get neglected: Ada & Esther watch as Mrs. Jellyby’s own son gets hurt, because she had focused all of her attention on Africa.

Now, obviously, we do want to care about people overseas. We DO want to give and pray and go, and send missionaries and share the gospel with people in other countries. But James and I Timothy remind us: don’t neglect the people God has placed right here where you are! Especially don’t neglect your own family. Ministering to Africa, while you neglect your own family, or while you ignore the widow in the nursing home here in Country Village, is NOT “true religion,” James says. TRUE religion cares for the people right around you — starting with your own family, and the most vulnerable people right here in the town in which we live.

CONCLUSION:
So back to the question I asked at the beginning: “What does a ‘religious’ person look like?” Do you have a different picture now? James shows us here that real religion doesn’t necessarily look like somebody with a big cross around their neck; it doesn’t look like a Pharisee making a big show in the Temple. No, he says True Religion may look like someone just like you or me— but it’ll affect the way we talk; it’ll affect the way we live; it’ll affect everything we do. True religion may look like someone pulling in to the nursing home, or to mow the lawn of a widow, or to take care of their own family. James says THAT is “What Real Faith Looks Like.”

INVITATION:
This is a very practical word from the Lord, so we have some very practical responses to it:
— You have that card: use it to go and visit whoever the Lord lays on your heart; use it to plan to go sing at Country Village next time; or to say you’re willing to serve in deacon ministry.
— There are a lot of other practical ways to respond too: is your religion real enough that it is making a difference in the way you live? Can someone tell you’re a Christian by the way you talk? By the way you live? Is your faith impacting your life.
— Most importantly, do you know there is just one way to heaven — and do you know for sure that you are on that way? If you don’t, you can make sure of it today …