by: Pastor Ramil Carmen
They say “Men, by nature, are not very good listeners.” I don’t know… I haven’t heardabout it, maybe I wasn’t listening at that time.
They say --
1. History repeats itself because no one listens the first time.
2. If you want your spouse to listen and pay strict attention to every word you say,
talk in your sleep.
3. In the first year of marriage, the man speaks and the woman listens.
In the second year, the woman speaks and the man listens.
In the third year, they both speak and the neighbours listen.
After 10 years, nobody speaks… they both listen to their neighbours.
Studies say that men speak an average of 7,000 words per day. Women, on the other hand, speak an average of 20,000 …that’s more than double. If you ask a woman, they will tell you, the reason is… because men don’t listen! Men, did you hear that?
Studies also say that we only retain about 20% of what we hear. This is the reason why we need to keep reading the Bible and we cannot only rely on what you will hear on a Sunday morning.
LISTENING is a very important part in any relationship. Jesus summed up all the commandments and all the laws into two: Love God and love others. Loving God means having relationship with Him and with regard to our relationship with the Lord, we listen to Him through His words and this is one of the main reasons why we come here to church every Sunday, to listen to His words. We also listen to Him through our conscience, that still small voice that sometimes we ignore because our hearts and minds are occupied with other things. We listen to Him through other people. Loving others also means having relationship with other people. We have relationship with them as a spouse, as a parent, as children, as friends, as fellow believers in the Lord. LISTENING is also an important aspect in our relationship with other people.
So the only way for you to understand this message is if you LISTEN carefully. The apostle James did not only talk about listening. He also gave other important aspects in building relationships. Let us read from James 1:19-27
BACKGROUND
The book of James is thought to be the earliest letter in the New Testament written, in A.D. 48. The date of writing is important as it helps Bible historians to also confirm who the writer of the book is.
It was written by James, the half-brother of Jesus. He is also called “James the Just” and later the Bishop of Jerusalem.
The Bible mentions two “James” as disciples of Jesus Christ:
- James the Lesser, son of Alpheus
- James the Greater, son of Zebedee, brother of John
As you can see there are lots of names in Bible times that are the same so they need to use distinguishing names like James the Just, James the Lesser, James the Greater. Maybe the first question in your mind is this – if Jesus had a half-brother, who are James’ parents? Well, obviously, the parents of James are Joseph and Mother Mary. Jesus Christ, was conceived by the Holy Spirit through Mary so Joseph was only His foster father – Jesus was actually not related to Joseph by blood. So James becomes the half-brother of Jesus through Mary.
Your next question probably is this – how can Jesus have a half-brother with Mary if she is forever virgin, that’s why we call her the Virgin Mary, right? We call her the Virgin Mary but it doesn’t mean she was forever virgin. The Bible says --
But he did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus. (Matthew 1:25)
The “he” in this verse is Joseph. Does it make Mary less of a woman or do we respect her less by saying she was not forever virgin? Of course not! We respect Mama Mary so much and we love her as she is blessed by God being used as the earthly mother of Jesus but she needed to remain a virgin only up until she gives birth to Christ and since she was married to Joseph, it’s perfectly normal for them to consummate their marriage the way other couples do.
In Matthew 13:55-56 --
Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Isn’t his mother’s name Mary, and aren’t his brothers James, Joseph, Simon and Judas? Aren’t all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all these things?
So James, the author of this book, was not an original disciple of Christ. In fact, the Bible tells us that James did not believe Jesus Christ initially. John 17:5 says
For even His own brothers did not believe Him.
James eventually became an apostle when he had seen and believed the resurrection. and Paul called James one of the pillars of the church (Galatians 2:9). He said --
See how practical the book of James is? He is not saying “action” or works save us. He is merely saying how can we say we’re true believers that we have the correct faith in us if there is no fruit seen in us, there is no work to prove that we are truly disciples of Jesus and Jesus Himself said, the world will know that you are my disciples if you LOVE one another. It’s like the famous saying, the proof of pudding is in the eating … the proof of our faith is in our actions.
POINTS TO PONDER
It is very interesting to know that the points that James raised in these passages are addressing the two core areas of our relationships: our relationship with God and our relationship with each other. If you noticed, he kept on mentioning the WORD here. James said that –
If we claim to have a new life in Christ, then our hearts must be receptive to His words and our lives must show this Word in action.
There is no such thing as a theoretical Christian. In today’s day and age, with social media, smart phones, satellite TVs – listening to others is becoming less and less popular, in fact, they say our listening skills are getting extinct. So when James said, BE QUICK TO LISTEN – the first question we ask is “we are to be quick to LISTEN to what? The answer is in verse 21 – it says there “THE WORD PLANTED IN YOU.” So we should be quick to listen to God’s Words! He did not say we should be quick to listen to GOSSIP, he did not say we should be quick to listen to “trash talks” or “coarse joking.” Sometimes, even here in the church, when somebody tells a joke, even if it is offensive or sometimes “green jokes” we’re the first one to laugh. IN verse 21, he said “Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you.”
So we should be QUICK to listen to God’s Words and quick to listen to Godly Advice.
The Bible tells us in Romans 10:17 – Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ. Hearing God’s Word increases our faith. Why? Because our faith is directly proportional to our knowledge of the object of our faith. Repeat – our faith is directly proportional to our knowledge of the object of our faith. The object of our faith is JESUS CHRIST. The more we know Him, through His words… the more our faith in Him increases.
In the context of listening to other -- you see, we don’t just listen to anything. We choose carefully what we listen. So wives – please don’t get offended if sometimes we don’t listen.
I’m sure you have heard about this – they say God gave us two ears and one mouth so it gives us an idea that we should listen twice as we should speak. And not only that, did you notice this … unlike our mouths, we cannot close our ears, right? We can close our mouths (close your mouth) but we cannot close our ears, right? Anybody here who can flap their ears “close-open?” Close-open, close-open! Just like an elephant. Of course not! Our ears are always open – it simply means that we should always be ready to listen, quick and eager but the second thing is – since our ears are always open, it is prone to hearing anything and we should carefully choose what we’re listening. Sometimes, we are talking with someone but you can tell, his or her ears are trying to listen to another conversation a few meters away. It’s like bionic ears.
There is another area of listening that I would like to point out at this time. It’s listening to God when we pray. Earlier we mentioned about that still small voice that sometimes speaks not necessarily through our ears but it speaks right to our hearts. Some people call it conscience. For a believer we know that it’s God speaking to us through the Holy Spirit. Sometimes, it rebukes us… it comforts us… it guides us…
James also said in Verse 19, we should be SLOW TO SPEAK. Albert Einstein was once asked if he had a formula for success. He said that he did, and that Success = X +Y + Z. He said that X stands for work and Y stands for play and Z stands for "Keeping your mouth shut!"
I think as a pastor, again, I am preaching to myself whenever we talk about being slow to speak. One of the gifts that a pastor usually has is the gift of speaking. Pastors talk a lot. We have a saying “silent water runs deep” of course I am not saying that pastors are shallow. But sometimes, we just talk too much. Even in simple fellowships, as the pastor to close in prayer and he will preach. Ask the pastor to pray for someone celebrating his birthday and you’ll find him praying for the missionaries in Nepal.
So it’s really important to be reminded of what James said – be slow to speak and I have experienced several times – somebody comes to me, for counselling or for whatever advice and they person is not even finish talking and he I am with my barrage of words …. Oh this is what you should do, the Bible says blah blah blah, you know, God is in control and the Spirit will help you and you have to be strong, you have to pray and if you do this, 1, 2, 3 bam! Your good! Next problem??
How many times we got into trouble because of what we said? Ooops – me and my big mouth! Sometimes, we say things we don’t even mean. How many times when you are talking to someone… first of all, you can tell that the person is not listening and second, you know he is already thinking of what to tell you next.
James is basically saying –
You know, I think most of the men here will acknowledge that a lot of times our weakness is really in listening. We are not quick to listen, right? If man’s weakness is they are not very good listeners, this second point that James said, we should be slow to speak, I think this time, it’s the woman’s weakness. In general, they are not slow to speak
The 3rd point that James made in verse 19 – he said we must be SLOW TO ANGER or SLOW TO BECOME ANGRY. Have you ever met a person who is always angry? Or quick to be angry? In Filipino, mainitin ang ulo! Anger is a major problem in our world today.
We’ve seen a lot of incidents in the news, family problems, even church splits – they were driven by anger. We hear about road rage, substance abuse, violence, suicide attempts, and alcohol abuse - all related to anger. And the problem is that when you experience anger, it seems so rational at that time.
Have you ever been angry with someone, and you get into such heated arguments and you said nasty words and when you calm down, and you think back over the things you said, and you wonder, "What was I thinking?"
I wonder how many people have, in a moment of anger, done something, said something, made a decision, that would affect the entire course of their lives?
The anger of man never achieves what God wants to achieve anyway; that's why God wants us to be "slow to anger". Another reason is that it reflects His nature; that's what He's like.
Psalm 103:8 says --
To be continued...
Prayer
Wherever you are, whatever you situation you may be -- you need the love of Jesus in your life. Please say this prayer sincerely from your heart:
Father God, I confess all my sins to you today. Please forgive me. Today, I open my heart to your Son Jesus Christ. I accept Him in my life as my Savior and as my Lord. May the Holy Spirit come to my life and make me the kind of person you want me to be. In Jesus Name, I pray.
Amen.
The above article is an excerpt from a sermon delivered at WCCC Richmond during its service on
Sunday, July 26, 2015.
I apologize if there are grammatical and spelling errors. I also apologize if I have missed acknowledging or making proper references to my sources, if any. as it is purely unintentional.
If you are looking for a church in British Columbia, Canada please visit our website at:
www.wordchristiancommunity.com
