Sermon

Sermon # 1032
March 13, 2011
Matthew 4:1-11
James 1:17-27
Dr. Ed Pettus

“Living by the Word”

When Jesus was lead into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil, Matthew says it was the Spirit who lead him. It seems amazing to me that the leading factor to Jesus’ temptation story is the Spirit. It reminds me a little of Job’s experience when God allows Satan to have his way with all the Job had, and yet could not touch Job himself. For me, it begs the question of why. Why does Jesus need to be lead into the wilderness to face temptation? It is the question the story of Job seeks to answer – not specifically about Jesus or course, but the “why” question of: why things happen the way they do? Why me? Why do the innocent seem to suffer? Why do bad things happen to good people? Why does an earthquake and resulting tsunami happen and bring so much loss of life and destruction?
We have not received answers that satisfy. We leave it up to God knows best or some things are too high for us to know. Mystery is our answer and the only way we can live with such mystery is by faith. As Paul says it: “We walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Cor. 5:7). If there is a verse of scripture that has the most modern feel to it, I think it is that we walk by faith and not by sight. Modern life is so oriented to what can been seen.
Jesus was lead into the wilderness. For forty days and nights he fasted. Then, the devil comes to tempt him. Jesus turns away every temptation with a quote from scripture: “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Deuteronomy 8:3). “Do not put the Lord your God to the test” (Deut. 6:16). “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him” (Deut. 6:13). The first temptation reminds us that we live not by bread alone, not just by the food we eat, but we live by the word of God. Not only does Jesus quote a verse from Deuteronomy that says we live by the word, but he demonstrates that very point by using the word to resist temptation. Jesus puts into practice what it means to live by the word that proceeds from the mouth of God.


What helps us live in the mysteries of life? God’s word. What enables us to walk without answers? God’s word. What sustains us in the face of natural disaster or war or sickness or death? God’s word.

By the word everything was created. God said, “Let there be light.” In this speech creation began. In Romans Paul writes that it is God who “gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist” (4:17). The call into existence is by the word that proceeds from the mouth of God. We live and we are alive by the word. It is no small matter that our name is spoken when we are baptized, for in this symbolic act and speaking of our name, a new creation is beginning. In one way we are spoken into existence at our baptism as a new creation.
We proclaim in creation theology that God created everything by speech, a series of words. “Let there be light.” “Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters.” When a prophet said, “Thus says the Lord,” everyone knew to listen and listen well. Speech making is extremely important in biblical writings, for it is in speeches that we see much of the action and the density of a passage. Not just in words, but in actions, actions that in essence speak a word. Jesus hanging on the cross is a kind of speech that reveals more than words can say. And, of course, speeches are words, words of encouragement or judgment, hope or despair, promise or threat, and so on.
Speeches usually intend to bring some kind of response or action or new thought to the hearer (and the speaker). The epistle of James, a speech given to believers in exile, is a speech that seeks to get people into action. James does not want a Church that just listens to a word, but a church that responds with actions that speak out those words and even speak louder than words.

James 1:22 – But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves.

ABC news once did a special on religion in America and told the story of a man who had recently converted to the faith. He read the Bible for the first time in his life and he visited a local church for several weeks and nothing seemed to be going on like he expected. So one Sunday he asked an elder of the church, “when do you do the stuff?”
“The stuff?”
“Yes, the stuff.”
The elder was kind of puzzled, “What stuff?”
“You know, the stuff of the Bible. When do you care for the orphans, fed the hungry, make the blind to see, and multiply the bread? When do you do that stuff?”
The elder responded, “Oh, that, we don’t do that anymore, we just talk about it.”

This new believer raises the question, what ever happened to doing the stuff of the Bible? James seems to be saying we ought to be about doing “the stuff.” Be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves.

Fred Craddock tells the story of a time when he was serving as dean at Phillips Seminary. It was for fifteen months. The secretary said, “There’s someone here to see you.” A woman asked me to come out to the parking lot and to her car. She opened the back door, and slumped in the back seat was her brother. He had been a senior at the University of Oklahoma. He had been in a bad car wreck and in a coma eight months. She had quit her job as a schoolteacher to take care of him. All of their resources were gone. She opened the door and said, “I’d like for you to heal him.”
Fred said, “I can pray for him, and I can pray with you. But I do not have the gift of healing.”
She got behind the wheel and said to him, “Then what in the world do you do?” And she drove off.
Fred says, “What I did that afternoon was study, stare at my books, and try to forget what she had said.”*

Be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves.

James may seem hard after hearing stories that seem to call us to do more than we believe capable. But what we do says a great deal. If we just read the speeches, hear the words, see biblical wonders and do nothing in response, James says we are deceiving ourselves. And we are very, very good at deceiving ourselves. Isn’t it odd how angry we will get when someone else deceives us and yet we so easily overlook our own self-deception? Perhaps that’s because a good deceiver never lets you in on the deception, which is why it works so well, and we, in deceiving ourselves, don’t even realize we are being deceptive, because we are so good at it. So how do we come to know that we are deceiving ourselves when the art of the deception is to never let the deceived in on the deception? Sounds too much like a complex psychological problem.
It is easy to deceive ourselves. James looks at it like a person looking in the mirror and on going away, immediately forgets what he or she looks like.

23 For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; 24 for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like.

We look into a mirror like we look into ourselves; we want to forget what we see. We invite the deception because we dare not look within and find the very deception we so comfortably live with. If we cannot help but be deceived by looking into a mirror, or by looking into the mirror of our soul, where shall we look for the truth? James writes,
25 But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act-- they will be blessed in their doing.

“But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, the law that gives freedom…” God’s word gives us freedom from the self-deception, freedom from forgetting what we see in the mirror on the wall or in the mirror of our life. It is a question of where we look. Do we look to ourselves for the truth? Do we look to human tradition like the Pharisees did in Mark 7? Do we look to our television screens? Do we look to the psychic hotline? Do we look to planets and stars? Do we look to Twitter?
No, we look to the perfect law, perfect because it does not deceive. The word of God stimulates us to look with honesty at ourselves and to act upon what we see and hear in the perfect law. The perfect law reminds us of what we so easily forget, that is, who we are and what we are to do and reminds us that we do not live by bread alone.
Unfortunately, we try to live by whatever best suits our ways, whatever suits our self-deception. Sometimes we live by our wits. Other times we live by our common sense. We might say we live by what our grandpa always said. Or another might live by a particular philosophy of life. But we are deceived if we think that anything outside of God and God’s word will bring us life and blessing.
To use James’ metaphor of the mirror, it is not easy to look into the mirror of God’s word. It is a mirror that reveals the truth about who we are and what we are like. We try to mask ourselves and put on happy faces even when pain grinds away at us. But unlike the mirrors of our homes where we put on our make-up or shave away our rough edges, the mirror of God’s law reveals all our faults.
But that is not all it does. It also reveals that our faces of deceit can be unmasked so that we may be both hearers and doers of God’s word. The Law reveals the forgiveness, the love, the mercy, the faithfulness of God. The word is the power of God to unmask our idolatries and reveal our self-deception.
The life that is open to Truth is one that looks to God’s law, the perfect law that reflects, like a mirror, our life, that reflects God, and self, and hope, and love. This word reflects all Truth.
We may indeed not be able to heal a man in the back seat of a car, or do the “stuff” of miracle, but we can do the word in ways that make those times of miracle possible. For only God can do the “stuff.” James calls us to do the word and God will do the stuff through us.
Do not be deceived by the speeches of this world or by the masks by which we deceive ourselves, but look to God’s word; it is the only way to live in the fullness of life God intends. Amen.

*Story from Craddock Stories, p. 21.