5th Sunday After Easter: Pure Religion

James 1:26-27

And if any man think himself to be religious, not bridling his tongue, but deceiving his own heart, this man's religion is vain. Religion clean and undefiled before God and the Father, is this: to visit the fatherless and widows in their tribulation: and to keep one's self unspotted from this world.

Not all religion is acceptable to God.

This thought shocks many religious people who can’t imagine their efforts would not be enough to satisfy God. In saying it this way, I wish to be entirely ecumenical. When I speak of “religious” people, I’m including Baptists, Methodists, Catholics, Orthodox, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Charismatics, Church of Christ, Brethren, Episcopalians, and members of all the varied and the different people who are independent and interdenominational.

Did you know you could spend your life being very religious and end up wasting your time? You deceived yourself, but you didn’t fool God.

But I had better not spend this sermon talking only to you. I need this message myself. One pastor said that before he gives a sermon, he always prays, “Lord, help me preach the sermon I need to hear.” I adopted that as my own prayer because I don’t stand above the congregation or apart from it. I need to hear the word of the Lord because I am just as likely to deceive myself as anyone else.

That’s the exact point James makes in our text. When he says, “if any man think himself to be religious” (v. 26), he uses a word that means to imagine....If any man among you imagine himself to be religious. Self-deception is the easiest and the worst sort of deception. It’s easy because we all tend to have an inflated opinion of ourselves, and it’s the worst because when you deceive yourself, you don’t realize it.

The word “religious” meant to James approximately what it means to us today. It refers to the outward aspects of the Christian faith, such as church attendance, taking part in public worship, singing, praying, giving, witnessing, and in other ways going through the motions of Christianity.

How do we know if our religion is acceptable to God? James 1:26-27 gives us three signs that prove our religion is real. It may surprise you that the list doesn’t look “religious” at all. James says the religion God approves impacts your conversation, your compassion, and your character. Sometimes we talk about “Monday-morning faith” as opposed to “Sunday-morning religion.”

What happens on Sunday is important. What happens on Monday is just as important.

To be clear about it, James isn’t saying Sunday worship doesn’t matter. Far from it. He’s about to deal with that in James 2. But he warns us no amount of outward religiosity can compensate for an unbridled tongue, an uncompassionate heart, and an unholy character.

Sign # 1: Your Conversation

“And if any man think himself to be religious, not bridling his tongue, but deceiving his own heart, this man's religion is vain.” (v. 26).

What does it mean to bridle the tongue? It is about controlling the tongue. It's about keeping a “tight rein”on the tongue.

Some people just talk too much. They have too many opinions, and they share them too quickly. Because they have an answer for everything and they have the “gift” of the clever put-down, they wreak havoc wherever they go. Some one once said that they instructed their team to “feel free to have no opinion about that.” That’s a good rule of thumb for all of us.

Here are some signs of an unbridled tongue:

Vulgarity, obscenity, indecent language.

Dirty jokes, off-color stories.

Pornographic language.

Racial or ethnic insults.

Humor meant to insult or to put someone down.

Angry outbursts, harsh words.

Mean-spirited comments.

Gossip, rumors, false accusations.

Imputing bad motives.

Public criticism of your spouse or children.

Yelling and screaming.

Threats and intimidating comments.

Endless criticism.

Quick, cutting comments.

Cheap shots.

Talking too much.

Talking without listening.

Condemning others.

Exaggerating the faults of others.

Excusing unkind words by saying, “I was only joking.”

Why is this so important? Proverbs 18:21 says, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue” Every time you open your mouth either life or death comes out. The Bible speaks of the throat as an “Their throat is an open sepulchre or grave” (Romans 3:13). When there is death on the inside, it will eventually show up in your words.

Did you know the average person speaks 16,000 words a day? That’s the equivalent of a 64-page book. In one week you speak the equivalent of a 450-page book. In a month you speak 480,000 words, the equivalent of a book of 1920 pages. In one year you speak 5,760,000 words, which is roughly equivalent to 4 volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica. If we stretch that out over 70 years, the average person speaks 403 million words, roughly equal to the entire 44-volume set of Encyclopedia Britannica, multiplied nine times.

Think of it this way. Today you will speak the equivalent of a 64-page book. Tomorrow another book. The day after another one.

Imagine if someone reads the contents of the book you are writing with your tongue today. Suppose it was recorded somewhere, written down somehow, caught on video, and then played back on the Internet for the whole world to see.

What would we learn about your vocabulary?

About how you speak to your spouse and your children?

About the offhand comments you make about your friends?

About how you react under pressure?

About the way you respond when you are criticized?

One person points out that social media increases the temptation of careless speech. He said:

“In a day of text-messaging, email, cell phones, Twitter, blogs, Facebook, etc., we need to be careful. We’ve created an entire culture that says if you have a thought, then you should immediately share it with the rest of the world. But followers of Christ, should not buy that line of reasoning”

It’s easy to make excuses, isn’t it? Let’s suppose 93% of your speech is totally praiseworthy. Or make it 96%. Or 97%. But what about the 7% or the 4% or the 3%? That’s James’ whole point. You can’t skate past this truth by saying, “My speech is morally upright 97% of the time.” That’s like saying, “I’m not really a murderer. Most of the time I never murder anyone. I only kill people 3% of the time.”

Perhaps we need to pray for the gift of silence. I remember reading about a famed linguist about whom it was said that he knew how to remain silent in seven different languages.

James draws a shocking conclusion when he says the unbridled tongue makes your religion useless. We need to keep this warning in mind at all times, but especially when we are tired, under pressure, and when others are trying to provoke us.

May the Lord Jesus grant us special grace so that we might keep a tight rein on our tongue.

Sign # 2: Your Compassion

Religion clean and undefiled before God and the Father, is this: to visit the fatherless and widows in their tribulation:(v. 27a).

True religion moves us to action. We don’t just see the need and then walk away after saying a few good words. Bob Rowland pictures the problem in his poem “Listen, Christian!”:

I was hungry

And you formed a humanities club

And discussed my hunger.

Thank you.

I was imprisoned

And you crept off quietly

To your chapel in the cellar

And prayed for my release.

I was naked,

And in your mind

You debated the morality

Of my appearance.

I was sick

And you knelt and thanked God

For your health.

I was homeless

And you preached to me

Of the spiritual shelter

Of the Love of God.

I was lonely

And you left me alone

to pray for me.

You seem so holy;

So close to God.

But I’m still very hungry.

We can never substitute going to church more or even more Bible reading for rolling up our sleeves and getting involved in this hurting world. True religion sees the distress of the world and then moves to meet that need.

James singles out two groups deserve special attention: orphans and widows. Then he adds a qualifying phrase—“in their tribulation.” He means those who are alone and forgotten in their troubles and difficulties. They are in distress precisely because they have no one to care for them.

This echoes a familiar Old Testament theme:

"You shall not hurt a widow or an orphan.” (Exodus 22:22).

“Judge/defend the fatherless, plead for the widow.” (Isaiah 1:17)

“oppress not the widow, and the fatherless” (Zechariah 7:10).

Widows had little legal protection in the first century. That’s why Jesus criticized severely the religious leaders who “devour widows’ houses” while making long prayers as a show of public piety (Mark 12:40). They made a show of their religiosity while taking advantage of the widows. They did this by preying on their vulnerable position, inducing them to give away their money until they were destitute. They “devoured” whatever money the widow had until she was left helpless and penniless.

Here, then, is one test of true religion. Will we care for those whose need is so great that they can never repay us?

God bless those who care for the widows.

God bless those who minister to single mothers.

God bless those who take in foster children.

God bless those who adopt children.

God bless those who care for the disabled.

God bless those who give to support orphans around the world.

God bless those who speak up for the unborn.

God bless those who support crisis pregnancy centers.

The religion God approves cares for those who cannot care for themselves. It includes the widows and the orphans, but it doesn’t end there. It must include the unborn, the sick, the dying, the homeless, the disabled, the immigrants, the victims of sex trafficking, prisoners, refugees, and many others the world would rather overlook.

Sign # 3: Your Character

“to keep one's self unspotted from this world.” (v. 27b).

Genuine religion keeps you from being stained by the world. Imagine a little boy coming home from school. It’s been raining so there is a mud puddle in his path. What does he do? Well, it depends. If he remembers what his mom told him, he will walk around the mud puddle so he won’t get dirty. But if he feels in a frisky mood, he may jump into the puddle, getting mud all over his clothes. What will his mom say then?

That’s the sort of picture James has in mind. We live in a dirty world. If we aren’t careful, we’ll end up stained by moral compromise. We need to see a connection between this command and the previous one. In order to care for the widows and orphans, we have to go where they are. But in our going, we must not lower our standards or somehow compromise our convictions. Somehow we must find ways to get deeply involved in this hurting world while at the same time not letting the world rub off on us. This speaks to where we go, what we do, what we read, the games we play, the people we hang out with, the TV shows we watch, the music we listen to, and it certainly applies to the language we use.

I don’t think we need to become fearful of the world, but we do need to be wise in the choices we make. Put simply, there are some places I personally can’t go. There are some people I don’t need to be around. There are some Internet sites I won’t visit. There are some TV shows that drag me down. To borrow the words of Clint Eastwood, a man’s gotta know his limitations. I need to know who I am and whose I am. As a practical matter, I need to know my own limits and stay within them even if others can do what I can’t do.

We sometimes think a little sin doesn’t matter. Would you drink a glass of water that had only 1% poison in it? Of course not. You want unpolluted water to drink. We hear a lot about air and water pollution. What about moral pollution? It’s easy to get dirty. The world rubs off on us more than we realize. Pretty soon we start to talk and act like the people around us.

It’s a good thing when we are in the world.

It’s a bad thing when the world is in us.

Here is the dilemma of James 1:27. We are to be fully engaged in the world. We have to get our hands dirty in the muck and mire of human pain and sadness. When we reach out to hurting people, we will end up in some difficult situations. We must go anyway, and go in the name of Jesus. But while we are going, we must not be contaminated by the filth of the world around us.

In all these things we have the example of Jesus who left the beauty of heaven for a barnyard birth. He left behind the purity of heaven to rescue us from the impurity of this world. He walked among us, lived with us, talked with us, ate with us, laughed with us, and wept with us. He rubbed shoulders with gluttons and drunkards. He knew the Pharisees and called them hypocrites. But he never became a glutton or a drunkard or a hypocrite. The prostitutes evidently knew him, and recognized in him a kind of man who was different from all the others they had known. Because he was the Son of God, he lifted the fallen but did not fall himself.

If we are to obey what James has taught us, we need Christ living in us. We will never unbridle our tongue, or reach out to the hurting, or keep ourselves unstained by the world in our own power.

We need Jesus!