It's Religion, Not Relationship

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I want to invite you to take out your worksheet, if you have been given one.
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If you haven't, we have one up here for you.
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And if you have your Bibles, to open them to the first chapter of James.
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Tonight is our eighth lesson in the epistle of James.
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And so ends, Lord willing, if we are able to get through two verses tonight, which I hope that we are.
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So we'll end our study of the first chapter.
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And when we come back together, we will be coming back starting the second chapter.
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And just to give you a small heads up, next week I will not be here.
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Next week I'm taking my family Wednesday through Friday on our family vacation.
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We didn't get to go on one back in the normal time that we would, which would be during the August time off because we had JJ.
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And so we pushed our little family vacation, we're going to take a three-day trip down to Orlando.
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Mike Collier will be teaching for me next Wednesday night.
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And then we have two weeks off of Wednesday nights, the week of Christmas and the week of New Year.
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We do not have midweek service.
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So it's good that we're finishing the chapter tonight.
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Mike's going to do something off, actually on the subject, I think, of Christmas next week.
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So that'll be off the subject that we've been on.
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And then in two weeks, we'll be right back in chapter two when we start back in January.
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So just giving you a heads up as to where we are.
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And when we look again at the first chapter of the Epistle of James, we recognize that he is speaking to people who have been dispersed.
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It says this in verse 1 that he is speaking to the 12 tribes and the dispersion.
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He's speaking to people who are essentially have been persecuted for their faith.
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They have been driven out of their homes.
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These are people who are undergoing severe tribulation and persecution.
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And as a result, he tells them to take joy in their trials.
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He tells them that they are to ask of God for the wisdom to see them through their trials.
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He tells them to rejoice even in their humiliation, their low position to understand that they have been exalted in Christ and to not allow this to drive them into spiritual depression or any type of lowliness, but to understand their position in Christ.
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And he continues in verse 12 to tell them to remain steadfast under trials, to understand that God loves them and that he is there to see them through their trials.
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And then beginning around verse 19, he begins talking about the Word of God.
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Actually it's verse 18, he says of his own will he brought us forth by the Word of Truth.
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He's talking about our salvation, our having been born again.
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We've been born again by the Word of Truth.
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And then he goes to talk about how we respond to the Word.
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He says that we respond to the Word, be quick to hear, slow to speak, and even more slow to get angry.
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And that we are to receive with meekness the implanted Word which is able to save our souls.
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And in verse 22 it says, be doers of the Word, not hearers only.
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And like we said last week, a person who just hears the Word is like a person who goes to a mirror, looks at the mirror, sees all the things that need to be changed, fixed or straightened, and yet walks away and forgets about all that and just goes on with life and doesn't consider the fact that that mirror told him something about himself.
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He just ignores what it said.
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And that's the same thing we do when we come and we read the Bible and then we go back home and it doesn't change how we're living, it doesn't change what we're doing, it just simply becomes an exercise in futility.
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If the Word of God is not changing how we live, then what is the purpose of our studying it? What is the purpose of our looking at it if it's not affecting how we behave? So, the context then is the Word of God of being a doer who acts, not just a hearer, but a doer.
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Then in verse 26, our text for tonight, he moves from the simple act of doing to the idea of the heart.
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What underlies what we do? What underlies our religious behavior? Well, it should be a heart for God and not just a desire to fulfill some type of religious duty.
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Tonight's lesson is entitled something different, something a little odd.
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And no, it's not a typo.
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The title is on the second page.
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If you haven't looked at it yet, I encourage you to turn it over.
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The title is, It's Not Relationship, It's Religion.
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And no, that's not backwards.
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That's not wrong.
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A few decades ago, a phrase got locked into the evangelical vernacular.
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The phrase was this, It's Not Religion, It's Relationship.
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How many of you have heard that? How many of you maybe even said it? Okay.
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Well, I'm not going to go around kicking in the shins if you've said it.
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But I am going to tell you that tonight I want to propose the idea that perhaps that statement has missed the mark a bit.
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The phrase, It's Not Religion, It's Relationship, has wild appeal because people don't want to be considered religious.
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And it's even created a subculture of people who say they hate religion, but they love Jesus.
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I don't know if you've ever heard somebody say that.
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I hate religion, but I love Jesus.
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Even men who I really respect, men who I admire, have become enamored with the idea of downing the word religion and exalting the word relationship.
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But there's a problem with that thinking.
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The Bible uses the word religion in a positive way.
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It uses the word religion in a negative way too.
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The Pharisees were one whose religion was based on hypocrisy.
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It was based on themselves and pride.
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It was based on man-made traditions.
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There is such a thing as bad religion.
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There is such a thing as false religion.
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But that doesn't mean that we throw the baby out with the bathwater.
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I don't know if you've ever heard that phrase.
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The Bible uses the word religion in a positive way.
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There is a sense in which religion can be a good thing, even though popular evangelical culture may balk at what I'm saying.
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In fact, some people may hear what I'm saying and say, Oh, this guy's crazy.
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He's exalting religion.
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Well, James is going to exalt religion here.
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Pure and undefiled religion.
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Would it surprise you if you knew that the word relationship is not in the Bible? If you look up in the ESV Bible, there is no time where the word relationship is used.
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If you look in the King James Bible, there is no time where the word relationship is used.
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If you look at the NIV, the nearly inspired version, just kidding.
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The NIV Bible never uses the word relationship.
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The New American Standard Bible uses it one time.
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Matthew 19, verse 10, and it's in reference to the relationship between a husband and a wife.
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So even then, it's not in the context of God and man, or even man and Jesus Christ.
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It's the relationship between the man and the wife.
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I did some research, and I found one Bible translation that uses the word relationship a lot.
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And it might not be the only one, but it was the one that I found.
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The New Living Translation, which is a modern sort of hybrid between a paraphrase and what we would call dynamic equivalent.
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NIV is a dynamic equivalent, and the NLT, New Living Translation, is more of a hybrid.
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It uses the word relationship, but it uses it to replace some very important theological words.
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I want you to just hear a few comparisons.
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Colossians 1 and 28 in the ESV.
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Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom that we may present everyone mature in Christ.
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That's the way the ESV reads.
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The New Living Translation, same verse.
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So we tell others about Christ, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom that God has given us.
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We want to present them to God perfect in their relationship to Christ.
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So rather than presenting them perfect in Christ, it's having a perfect relationship.
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It sort of adds an idea there that's not in the original language.
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Romans 5, 18.
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Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification in life for all men.
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In the New Living Translation it says this.
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Adam's one sin brings condemnation for everyone, but Christ's one act of righteousness brings a right relationship with God and new life for everyone.
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That's different.
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They took out the word justification.
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That's huge.
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Yeah, what word have they removed? They've removed justification.
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Huge, important theological term.
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And replaced it with what? Well, relationship.
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2 John 1.9 Everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ does not have God.
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2 John 1.9 in the NLT.
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Anyone who wanders away from this teaching has no relationship with God.
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You might say that's not a big difference.
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I like the fact that it says they don't have God.
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Not just they don't have a relationship.
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They don't have Him.
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Now you could argue, well, the addition, subtraction, whatever.
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And I'm not here kicking the NLT translators in the teeth.
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I understand the difference between a dynamic equivalent, a paraphrase, and the attempt to hybrid the two.
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My point is this.
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My question is this to you, just for your thought.
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Over and over again we see the insertion of the word relationship, though it's not in the text.
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What is it that, why? Is it possible that the insertion of this word is based on the fact that it's become so popular in the evangelical vernacular that we had to find a place to put it? Is it possible that it became so popular that we had to shove it in somewhere because it wasn't there? Again, maybe I'm a conspiracy theorist, I don't know.
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And I'm not saying relationship is a bad thing.
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Please know this.
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I'm not here to, again, make anyone feel bad if you like that language.
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What I'm saying is that we've allowed the culture to replace biblical language with unbiblical language.
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And we've decided that we like the unbiblical language better because we've said we love relationship, but we hate religion.
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And the Bible uses the word religion in a good way.
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Why do we hate religion when the Holy Spirit doesn't? Isn't that a pretty powerful question? But does God hate the organized church? It is, I think it is an excuse, and that's kind of where I'm going with this.
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It's a way for them to have this pseudo kind of thing with Jesus where they don't have any responsibility.
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And that's what James is going to tell us tonight.
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Our relationship with Christ comes with responsibilities.
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It comes with responsibilities with how we bridle our tongue.
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It comes with responsibilities with how we handle people who are needy, the widows and orphans, which he's going to mention in a second.
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And it comes with responsibilities with how we handle sin in the world.
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But the person who claims this, I have a relationship, not a religion, it's often an excuse for what? That they don't want to have any responsibilities.
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They just want, I just want Jesus.
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But they really don't want Jesus.
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They just want to have something to satisfy that need for spirituality, but not for obedience.
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Yes, sir.
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It could be also the church trying to flood the culture of creation and all.
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The move has been to make everything fit in to the Bible instead of, you know, the Bible is the absolute truth.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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I think there is, and that's what I was kind of doing with the NLT.
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Again, I'm not picking on the New Living Translation translators.
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I actually think the New Living Translation has some good parts, some very good parts.
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So just know, and this is on recording, the New Living Translation, there are times where the paraphrasing of certain things really helps, but I know how to read it.
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I read it as paraphrase.
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I look at a book like the New Living Translation, the Living Bible, and other paraphrases as almost like commentaries.
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And that's more like what it is.
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It's not a translation, it's a commentary built in to a translation.
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And there are times when it does a good job.
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So I'm not, again, picking on them.
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I'm just saying, why do we allow these things in? Why has it made its way in? Because of the culture's demand for this.
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Yes? I think so.
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It is interesting that the vast majority of the New Testament is written in a Greek that was very simple.
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So it's not difficult, but there are certain portions that are higher.
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Like Hebrews is written in more classical Greek, where the Gospel of John is written in a very simple, kind of like middle school language.
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And so there are different ways that the New Testament is written.
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But as far as the dumbing down, I think that that is true across the board.
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We have not just dumbed down the translations, we've dumbed down our teaching.
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I mean, I've told you all the story, and I think I've told it in here before, about I was asked to come teach at a church.
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And they said, what are you going to preach on? And I said, I'm going to preach on the necessity of regeneration.
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And they said, oh, don't do that, nobody's going to know what you're talking about.
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I said, well, how about I preach on why you've got to be born again? That's great, that means the same thing.
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But they really didn't want me to preach.
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They told me, do not preach a sermon entitled, The Necessity of Regeneration.
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They said, because nobody will know what you're talking about.
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I said, I'm going to explain it.
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Oh, but if you start with that, they'll turn you off.
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So I've seen it, absolutely, absolutely.
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Well, tonight we're going to examine what James tells us about pure and undefiled religion.
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And it begins in verse 26.
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If you look at your notes that I gave you, the worksheet that I gave you, you have it in four different translations here.
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Well, three translations in the original.
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It says, if anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue, but deceives his heart, this person's religion is worthless.
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So there, twice the word religion has come up already.
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Well, one in the sense of the adjective being religious, and then his religion, the use of the noun, is worthless.
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So the noun comes in again in verse 27.
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Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this.
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To visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep one's self unstained from the world.
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And we see in the NASB, it reads almost exactly the same.
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There's very little difference there.
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In the King James, of course, it has the King James vernacular, but it's essentially the same.
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Instead of saying the person's religion is worthless, it says it's in vain.
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And the rest reads pretty much exactly the same.
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Unstained is changed for unspotted.
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And I want to look at a few just simple things about these words.
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The word religious, you know, I've talked already.
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We've said the word religious is not a bad word.
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What does it even mean? Because obviously that's not what the word was in Greek.
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The Greek word for religious is threskos.
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Threskos is the Greek word.
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And threskos comes from the word threo.
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Threo would be to tremble.
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That's what the root of threskos means.
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It means to tremble.
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And you say, now, what in the world has that got to do with religion? What has trembling got to do with religion? Well, what is the heart of true godly worship? The fear of the Lord.
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What is the beginning of wisdom? The fear of the Lord.
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The fear of the Lord is what drives us to worship Him.
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And people say, well, I don't like to think about fearing God.
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I just want to think about loving God.
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Well, then, let's just think about how the different people in the Bible who were holy people, people like Isaiah and others, who experienced the presence of God, how did they respond to God's presence? Did they wrap their arms around Him, give Him a big sloppy kiss? No.
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How did they respond to the presence of God? Face down, prostrate before the Lord, hand over the mouth, woe is me, pronouncing judgment on themselves.
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God's presence is a fearful thing.
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So the idea of religion in the Greek is the idea of being in that position of reverence or fearful reverence of God.
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I want to read to you from the Launida.
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Launida is a semantic lexicon.
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This takes words and helps us understand what the words mean in their original language and the context that they're being used.
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This is what it says.
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Pertaining to being devoted to a proper expression of religious beliefs, devout, pious, or religious, these are all definitions of what that word threskos means.
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But it goes on to say this.
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In a number of languages, the concept is of living a godly life.
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That religion is being obedient to God.
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That's your religion is your obedience.
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It's following after your God.
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See, the idea here, I like to point this out.
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Everybody in the world is religious.
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Because everybody in the world has a God.
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Even the ardent atheists.
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In fact, ardent atheists are the most religious people in the world.
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Because they're so convinced and so excited about their atheism that they'll try to make proselytes.
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They'll try to evangelize atheism.
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They'll go out and tell everyone about how happy they are to be atheists and try to make other people be atheists.
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I've seen them.
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I was at a conference with Dr.
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James White doing a debate.
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He was doing the debate, I wasn't doing the debate.
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I was at the conference to watch him do a debate.
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After the debate, there were guys with tables set up with t-shirts about atheism.
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And they had money that was printed before In God We Trust was added to the money.
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You know, that was added last century.
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Yeah, that wasn't something that was always there.
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And so they bring those dollar bills around.
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Look at what our America used to be.
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This In God We Trust stuff is later additions.
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Almost like a ghoul.
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But these guys were so excited to proselytize their atheism.
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Yes.
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That is the exact point.
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And that's the point, I think, that Laonida is making.
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It's that the idea of religion is living a godly life or living a life that follows your God.
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You let me spend a week with you, I'll tell you what your God is.
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You know? Because our God is what we worship.
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Our God is what we live after.
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Our God is what we follow.
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You know, the Bible says some people their God is their belly.
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Some people their God is their bank account.
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Some people their God is their children or their wife or their husband.
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There are people who make gods out of everything.
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Some people God's a sports team.
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Some people God's some type of a popular culture character.
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You know? Make gods out of anything.
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So religion is this desire to follow after God.
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And the question is, is it the right God or the wrong God? Yes, there's a right religion.
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And then there's all the wrong religions.
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But everyone's religious.
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So, instead of being upset about people who are religious, the question is, are they following the right God? Is their religion the religion of Christ or the religion of anything else? So, that's James' use of the term here.
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He's saying, if a man or anyone thinks he is religious...
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Now, the context is clear.
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He is rightly religious.
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I mean, we can very easily determine that he's not saying if a man thinks he's religious with any kind of religion.
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Basically, essentially, he's saying, if a man thinks he fears the true God of heaven and earth, if this man truly is seeking a godly life, if he thinks he is, and that's a key there, because it's this way in the Greek.
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The idea is he thinks he is, but he ain't.
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If he thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue.
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Now, what is a bridle? Well, a bridle is a thing they put in a horse's mouth, right? And what does it do? It checks them.
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It controls them.
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It restrains them.
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Again, Laonida.
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I love that lexicon.
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I use it all the time.
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I don't quote it a lot.
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But today I was looking at it and really kind of eating up some of what it said.
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And it says this.
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It says it may be rendered as one who does not tell his tongue what to say.
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Somebody who doesn't tell his tongue what to say.
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Basically, your mouth's got a mind of its own.
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You ever met somebody like that? Mouth just runs off like a watered spigot that's been let loose.
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Another example that Laonida gives is one who cannot tie his tongue down.
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Or one who cannot stop his talking.
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If a man thinks that he is religious, and the thing that he can't control is this.
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What does James say? He's deceiving his heart.
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He actually deceives his heart.
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That's kind of scary.
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Because to be honest with you, one of the things that I find so sad, and not necessarily just here, but in the church in general, is how many people have been hurt by words.
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And how many people are willing to hurt other people with their words.
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There have been times that things have been said to my family, my wife, my children, myself.
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And I think, how do you go through life talking that way? How do you let your mouth just run off like that? Years ago, and I'm going to embarrass my son for a moment.
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Not too bad.
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This is not really for your mother.
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Years ago, we were at a wake.
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We were at a visitation for a funeral.
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This is several years ago.
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Cody was probably six years old.
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And Cody was wearing high waters.
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Do you all know what high waters are? High water pants are just a little bit too short.
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Now, my pants tonight are just a little too short.
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So I know exactly, you know, it happens.
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We either grow too long or our dryer works too hard.
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I don't know, something happens.
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We get a little bit of short on the legs.
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And a lady walks up to my wife, and she said, in my day, if a child's pants were too short, it was a sign of a bad mother.
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Yeah.
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What did you say? Everybody goes, ooh.
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How many of you have heard things just as bad? How many of you have heard people hurt other people just as cuttingly? You know, my wife went home that night just brokenhearted.
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Am I a bad mother? No, you're not a bad mother.
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That lady's just not a very bright woman.
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She's willing to hurt somebody with her words and not care.
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You were going to say, Richard, I'm sorry.
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Yes.
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Yeah.
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Let's look at that real quick.
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That's a good parallel passage.
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Over at chapter 3 and verse 2, it says, For we all stumble in many ways, and if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, also able to bridle his whole body.
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That's an important thing.
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You know, it's that.
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Huh? Yeah.
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No, no, no.
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He says, For we all stumble in many ways, and if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is perfect.
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But nobody's perfect.
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Well, we know no one's perfect.
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Yes, of course.
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This is wisdom literature.
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We've been talking about this from the beginning.
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The call is what? Is anybody in here perfect? Does anybody in here have a perfect mouth? And obviously, James knows that, and that's true.
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But what is the standard? The standard is the perfect mouth.
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And the person who's not bridling his tongue, he does what to his religion at that moment? You can be the most, you can be the finest Christian in the world.
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You can be the nicest person on earth, but if that moment that your mouth runs just wicked, what happens to your religion at that moment? It's worthless.
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Whoever you've tried to minister to, that moment that your mouth runs off, it becomes vanity.
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I think that's what the heart of it is.
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Absolutely.
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Yes? To bring it a little further each.
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Ooh.
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You know, it's more than just the spoken word.
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I see people who say they're Christians, but then when they get on Facebook or Twitter and some of the stuff that comes out of their fingers, which comes from their mind, you go, whoa, you know.
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Yeah.
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You know.
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What I used to, one of my professors.
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I think that anonymity is, but it's not.
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One of my professors used to say, what's in the well comes up in the bucket, and that's really what's happening.
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But now it would probably be more apropos to say, what's in the well comes out on Facebook.
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Out of the heart, the mouth speaks, right? Out of the heart, the fingers type.
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And that's what has happened, and that's what Facebook has allowed.
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It has allowed a lot of people to show their true colors.
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It's allowed a lot of people to show where their heart really is because they're willing, because they're protected by the keyboard.
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They're protected by the pseudo-anonymity of being behind that, you know, we might not know each other very well, so I can just blast off.
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There was a guy just read today.
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Our neighborhood has a neighborhood watch, and they're on Facebook.
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Yeah, you live in my neighborhood.
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Did you know this? The San Antonio neighborhood watch.
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You should get on.
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But it kind of lets you know if there's things like there's been a person who's going around checking cars to see if they're unlocked to take things out.
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People have had guns stolen.
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People have had wallets stolen, things like that.
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So they're telling you, don't leave your wallet in this car.
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Don't leave guns in the car, things like that, which you probably shouldn't do anyway.
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But the idea is there are people going around doing that.
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And this lady put a thing on the San Antonio website.
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She put on there and said, she said, I was walking my dog last night, and this guy came down the road super fast.
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I had my flashlight on.
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He acted like he didn't even see me, and he almost ran me and my dog over.
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And please just drive safely.
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This is a neighborhood, and people walk, and it gets dark early.
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And she was very nice with what she wrote.
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Guy came on afterwards.
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I don't rely on anybody else for my safety.
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It's totally your responsibility.
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Stay off the street.
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Really mean.
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And I was like, wow.
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He just totally bit her head off.
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And all she's asking for is some civility, common courtesy.
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Yeah, we become keyboard commandos, you know, Facebook ninjas.
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We get on and say everything we want, cut people up, down, left and right.
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Yeah, that's true.
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You were going to say? People don't like auditors anyway, but, you know.
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Yeah, you're in a thankless job.
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It's like somebody on the other side is like, oh, good Christian.
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My coworker had experiences face-to-face where the guy is yelling, screaming, turning around like when they have a stroke and all.
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And it's like you call yourself a Christian, and your reaction is like, I mean, where are you exhibiting the characteristics of Christ, even in your business deal? Yeah.
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I mean, you may not like what we say or what somebody says, but your response says a lot.
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Yeah.
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Our words really do tell a lot about our affections and about what's really in our heart.
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And so that's what he's saying.
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If anyone thinks he's religious, and yet he doesn't even try to control his tongue, he doesn't bridle, he doesn't try to pull this, to rein this in, then really, what is he saying about his own religion other than that? It's not worth anything.
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And then verse 27, he gives us this great, powerful truth, religion that is pure and undefiled.
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The word undefiled there is amiantas.
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It adds the negative.
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I like to point that out any time when the addition of the alpha at the beginning adds the negative.
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May I know is defilement, dirty, unclean, and yet the religion that is not defiled, not dirty, not unclean, but is pure, that is the religion that does this, visits orphans and widows and their affliction, and keeps oneself unstained from the world.
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Now, that might sound kind of like he's being very specific.
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Why is he pointing out widows and orphans, and why is he talking about being unstained from the world? Seems awful specific to really boil it down to that.
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But the reality is, the language that he uses here is a lot more broad than maybe we think.
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The word visit doesn't simply mean to go and sit with someone, even though it can certainly imply that.
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But the word visit actually means to look after someone, or to provide for someone, to inspect their situation, so as to affect some type of filling of a need.
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And is it limited to widows and orphans? I would say absolutely not.
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But widows and orphans, in the day that James wrote this, were at the opposite ends of the spectrum of social difficulty.
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And by the spectrum, I mean the spectrum of age.
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The widows, typically older, whose husbands had passed, and if they didn't have children, maybe by virtue of the fact that they never had children, maybe by virtue of the fact that their children had died, because, hey, this was a time when people did die young, or maybe their children had disowned them because they're Christians and they were of another faith, or something like that.
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These widows essentially had nothing.
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And the orphan, what's an orphan? A fatherless child, a child who has no one.
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So the two spectrums are given.
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And I think anyone in the middle qualifies as well.
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But I think that what he's laying out here is he's laying out a from the top to the bottom kind of thing.
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From the highest age person in need to the lowest age person in need, we need to be looking after the needs of one another.
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Isn't that a heavy but simple thing? Looking in on those in need is the job of the believer, not just the elder or the deacon.
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Well, the pastor as one of the elders.
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But yes, absolutely, absolutely.
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Yeah, you know, I spend a lot of my time in hospitals.
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Not that I go every single week, but there's rarely a week goes by that I'm not at least in a hospital somewhere.
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I know where all the good parking spots are.
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I know where all the good coffee shops are, because I've been to every hospital in Jacksonville several, several times.
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But this is not limited to the pastor.
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This is not limited to the deacon or the other elders.
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This is something that is what? It is an expression of our religion.
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To care about one another, to care about the needs of one another, and to seek to meet the needs of one another.
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This is where many churches are weakest, because we meet together, we praise together, and we learn together, and then we pat each other on the shoulder, and we'll see you next week.
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And there's no one another outside of what we do on Sunday.
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The one another is the part that's missing in so much of what we do.
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Now, some of you I see several times a week, because some of you come here on Wednesday nights.
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Some of you come to American Heritage, or Dads and Dudes, or other times when I'm hanging around the church, or doing things here at the church, and I see you.
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But are we being intentional about helping one another, loving one another, looking in on one another? I want to ask a question, and I'm not saying this to pick on.
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In our church right now, how many people are home-bound and cannot come to church? Now, some of you have only been here for a couple of weeks.
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Huh? Well, there's Patsy Hoffman.
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There's Debbie Poole.
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There's Paul's wife, Edna.
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Right? How many of these folks, and again, I'm not picking on you.
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I'm trying to encourage you by way of pricking your heart a little.
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How many of these people have we in the last year called on, visited, or sought to see? Can we meet a need? That's part of what he's saying here.
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That's part of what we should be doing.
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And not just for the home-bound people.
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There are people who've lost their wives.
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We have at least one man in the church, two men actually, if you just came to my mind, because there's Mr.
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Ron and there's Mr.
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Don.
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Both of them have lost their wives in the last couple of years.
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So, what do they do? They're home by themselves.
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Now, they have family.
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Thankfully, Mr.
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Don has a daughter who lives near him.
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Mr.
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Ron has family that takes care of him.
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But aren't we his family too? And shouldn't we care to look in on these men and to see, you know, there are things that a man who lives by himself might need help with.
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You know? And again, I'm not guilting us tonight.
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I'm trying to encourage us to say, have we looked? Have we thought about what we can do? This is what our religion is.
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It's pure and undefiled religion to love these people.
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It's part of being obedient and loving toward our God to be obedient toward loving His people.
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Right? So, that's part of this.
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And, we'll move now after that, visiting the orphans and the widows.
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Anyone who's in tribulation, that word affliction simply means tribulation.
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But finally, he says, and to keep oneself unstained from the world, that word unstained comes from the word spilos, which means to make a spot on something.
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You think of like making a spill.
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A spilos.
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And it's aspilos, meaning no spot.
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So, we have to engage the world.
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But we have to engage the world with the attempt to not stain ourselves in our relationships with the world.
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So, let's look at the back of the worksheet.
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I want to give you the fill in the blank, and we're going to make some application from this.
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Number one, biblical religion will affect the way we speak to others, and if you want to make a little side note, and of others.
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How we speak to others and of others.
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I want to read something to you.
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I call it the covenant of the tongue.
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I don't know what they called it.
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In 1752, a group of men, including John Wesley, were nicknamed Methodists, and they signed a covenant which every man would hang on his study wall with six articles.
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Number one, that we will not listen or willingly inquire about, or excuse me, after ill concerning one another.
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That we will not listen to or willingly inquire about ill of one another.
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Number two, that if we do hear any ill of each other, we will not be forward to believe it.
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Number three, that as soon as possible, we will communicate what we hear by speaking or writing to the person concerned.
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Number four, that until we have done this, we will not write or speak a syllable of it to any other person.
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Number five, that neither will we mention it after we have done this to any other person.
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Number six, that we will not make any exception to any of these rules unless we think ourselves absolutely obliged in conference.
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Meaning that this is something that must go before the others.
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Maybe it's something detrimental to the soul or something.
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Think about those six statements.
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It's an absolute promise to what? To bridle the tongue.
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It's an absolute promise to bridle how they're going to speak about one another.
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These are godly men who are concerned about how they would speak about one another and how they would hear about one another.
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You know what often we do when someone comes to tell us something ill about someone else? Well, I won't say what we often do.
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I want to tell you the two things we do.
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We either perpetuate it or we squash it.
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And we do that simply by how we respond.
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I'll give you an example.
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Somebody comes up and says, Did you see Sister so-and-so's dress today? I think that was too short.
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We can say, You're right, it was.
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And what have we done? We've perpetuated it and now we're talking.
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Or you can say, You know, I didn't notice and that's her business.
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Or, I thought it was pretty.
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And the person, They're going to go on their own way then.
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We...
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Yeah.
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I didn't see her, but maybe we should pray for you.
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But that's...
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We either perpetuate or we stop by how we respond.
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Well, tell the person involved and let them in on the joke.
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How about that? Yes.
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But how we speak to others and how we speak of others is a very valuable part of who we are in Christ.
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We ought to really try to bridle our tongues.
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I like something Thomas Jefferson said.
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Now, I'm not quoting Thomas Jefferson as a Christian here.
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I'm just quoting Thomas Jefferson as a man who said some intelligent things.
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And this is one thing he said, The most valuable of all talents is that you never use two words when one will do.
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What is he saying? Simply, being succinct in what we say and being brief and not letting our mouths run off like water fountains.
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You know those water fountains? You ever go to water fountains like if you go to the airport or anywhere else and they got the little spring-loaded, one-handed Alcatraz-style faucet that you have to press it and it immediately turns off? You know why those are there? Because little kids come in and turn the water on and leave it.
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Those spring-loaded devices are in all the schools I work in because children will come on, turn the water on, and you'll get a $5,000 water bill because somebody left a water spigot on all weekend.
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That's the way I think about with our mouths.
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We let it run and run and run and run.
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We never even attempt to bridle the mouth.
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Yes? I'm sorry.
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Oh, yeah.
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Oh, sure.
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Yeah, kids want the water.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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All right, number two.
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Biblical religion will affect the way we treat those in distress.
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Again, this is all just coming from the text.
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It's going to first affect how we speak to others.
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It's also going to affect how we treat those in distress.
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John Bunyan said this, You have not lived today until you have done something for someone who cannot repay you.
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You have not lived until you've done something for someone who cannot repay you.
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Oftentimes, we have an attitude of you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours.
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And thus, with that kind of situation, we never ever help somebody who doesn't have hands, right? If that's our attitude.
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So biblical religion will cause us to...
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It will affect the way we treat those in distress.
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And finally, biblical religion will affect the way we interact with the world.
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We have to interact with the world.
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You're going to interact with the world.
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But that doesn't mean that you have to live like the world.
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Neither does that mean you have to bring the world into your home.
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Neither does that mean you have to be of the world.
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And I know that's hard.
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That's hard to...
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It's hard to really define what that means.
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And worldliness can sometimes be such a broad thing.
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And anybody who goes to see a movie is being worldly to some people.
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And I don't believe that's necessarily true, but to some that's true.
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And so there's a lot there to be said.
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But ultimately, we do interact with the world, but we have to understand that if we're Christians, it's going to affect how we interact with the world.
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We began tonight by talking about the evangelical language of relationship versus religion.
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And as I said from the beginning, I have no problem with the language of relationship.
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That is so long as it is not an excuse to relieve us of our duties of being devoted to the religion of Jesus Christ.
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I do not fear, neither do I despise the word religion, for my God saw fit to put it in His holy Word.
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So too can I find a place of context in my life for that word.
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I do fear, however, that some have in fact used this phrase as a way to shirk the calling of Christ to righteousness, love, piety, and faithfulness.
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And as such, a use of the idea is absolutely inexcusable in that way.
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I want to end with a quote, if I might.
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It comes from Joel McDermott.
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He's a writer.
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And he wrote an article about the subject of relationship versus religion.
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And this comes from his article.
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And I think he kind of hits the nail on the head and I thought it would be a good place for me to end.
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He said, what is really happening today in most circumstances when people are taught and trained in the mantra relationship, not religion, is that they're being deceived with an emotional type of faith in place of the full judicial oriented faith that applies to every area of life.
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Those that really embrace the mantra and then begin to wear it as a badge of distinction or even superiority, are practicing a very shallow form of self-righteousness.
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To the extent that they are bound by this belief and practice, they are not free from religion, but only bound to a false one.
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There is no such thing as no religion.
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There is no neutrality in covenants.
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What you have is either true religion or false religion.
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Choose ye.
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If you have a relationship with Christ, you have it only by virtue of the fact that you are in judicial covenant with Him.
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And if you are in covenant with Him, that relationship will of necessity drive you to perform the works of true religion, which James makes unequivocally clear.
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Our social taking care of orphans and widows along with personal holiness.
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What we've got instead are generations of Christians who have ignored the social goals and left them to the pagan state, all the while they are self-assured in their relationship with Christ.
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And often self-righteously criticizing anyone who would dare speak of religious obligations based on our faith.
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We have soap opera Christianity, effeminized, vain, emotional, drivel, void of any substance, but big on the drama of relationship.
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It's a long quote, but I think it draws everything together that we've said tonight.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank You for the opportunity to discuss this subject tonight.
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May it be, O God, that we do see Your calling to understand the devotion that comes with a right religion, the religion of Jesus Christ.
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The religion of seeking to be like Him and trembling before You.
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May we not shirk our responsibilities with some claim to some type of emotionalism, but understand, God, that You have called us to something more than just an emotion.
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You've called us to action.
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You've called us not to just talk about Jesus, but to be like Christ, to love those who need our love, to care for those who need our care, to avoid that which would stain us, and to keep our mouths bridled.
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Father, thank You for Your Word.
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In Jesus' name, amen.