True Religion — Tongue, Obedience, and Merciful Giving

Order of Service

• Hymn — Jesus Shall Reign Where'er the Sun (#417)
• Call to Worship — Psalm 72
• Prayer of Invocation
• Heidelberg Catechism Reading — Questions 86 & 87
• Hymn — In Christ There Is No East or West (#414)
• Pastoral Prayer
• Scripture Reading — James 1:19-27
• Sermon
• Hymn — Take My Life and Let It Be (#538)
• Benediction — Numbers 6:24-26

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Sermon Title: True Religion — Tongue, Obedience, and Merciful Giving

Scripture: James 1:19-27

I. True Religion Consists in a Watchful Tongue

A. James, the "wisdom book" of the New Testament, emphasizes the danger of the unbridled tongue, echoing themes throughout Proverbs

1. Proverbs 17:27 — "Whoever restrains his words has knowledge, and he who has a cool spirit is a man of understanding"
2. A hot-tempered, quick-tongued person mistakes angry speech for righteous zeal

B. James 1:19-20 — "Quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God"

1. Angry speech is fear coupled with laziness — lashing out rather than listening and responding constructively
2. In James's Jewish-Christian context, sectarian rivalry (Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes) produced hateful speech mistaken for zeal; a similar dynamic appears in 1 Corinthians 1

C. James 1:26 — The unbridled tongue makes one's religion worthless, deceiving one's own heart

D. James 1:27 — Christians are to keep themselves unstained from the world's culture of ugly, coarse speech

1. Fellow believers should never feel they are walking on eggshells; grace-filled speech invites even disagreement
2. We shine as those whose words are pure, filled with the grace, mercy, and love of Christ

II. True Religion Consists in an Implanted Obedience

A. James 1:21 — "Put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls"

1. The "therefore" draws back especially to James 1:18 — the new birth by the Spirit
2. The new birth converts and justifies, but it also convicts and sanctifies through active obedience

B. James 1:22-25 — Be doers of the word, not hearers only

1. The mirror illustration: a mere hearer glances and forgets; a true doer looks intently into the perfect law and perseveres in obeying it
2. Calvin: "Obedience is the mother of true knowledge of God"

C. James calls it "the law of liberty" — the law fulfilled in Christ, now written on believers' hearts by the Spirit

1. New covenant promise: Jeremiah 31:31-34 — "I will write my law on their hearts"
2. Illustration: a freed prisoner is not condemned by the law but is now free to live in obedience to it; returning to lawlessness would bring back the chains
3. The Reformed tradition (Calvin vs. Luther) — the "third use of the law": after justification, the law guides the believer in grateful obedience, as reflected in the Heidelberg Catechism's section on gratitude

D. The law is conducive to human flourishing as image-bearers; Christ redeems us so we may thrive in the obedience for which we were created

1. Psalm 119 models the love and thirst for God's perfect law
2. If the new birth is not both converting/justifying and convicting/sanctifying, we have grounds to question whether we have truly received it

III. True Religion Consists in Merciful Giving

A. James 1:27 — "Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world"

B. Psalm 68:5 — "Father of the fatherless and protector of widows is God in his holy habitation"

1. True religion reflects on earth what God does in his holy habitation — the Lord's Prayer: "Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven"

C. "Orphans and widows" is scriptural shorthand for all the helpless and afflicted, not a narrow category

1. Care for the afflicted must be perseverant and continual, not a one-time gesture — like the Good Samaritan who follows up on the one he placed in the inn (Luke 10:25-37)
2. It is not condolences at a funeral only, but a phone call weeks later

D. The liberty of the law frees us from waiting on our fluctuating emotions to act

1. True religion is obedient to the command regardless of feelings; our care does not wax and wane with empathy or cultural trends
2. Psalm 84 — the righteous make the valley of Baca (the valley of tears) a spring
3. Our obedience to Christ — who "though he was rich became poor" for us (2 Corinthians 8:9) — is itself a comfort and testimony to those we serve