Have you been faithful to your Three responsibilities when it comes to Gods Word? That is the question that we are going to answer in today’s Encouraging Word:

So, take your Bibles and turn to the book of James. We are going to be in James chapter one. We’re going to read down through here verses 17 through about 25 here today, and I want to talk to you about what James has to say here, about the way that we ought to Conduct ourselves and things, in relationship specifically to the Word of God.

Do you remember those “GOT MILK” commercials? They would always show you alot of people. with Milk mustaches and things. Right? They didn’t show you refrigerators or display cases at the Kroger full of gallons of milk; because their purpose and their point wasn’t to ask you, do you possess milk?

But have you consumed milk? And that’s what’s important. It’s not just the possessing of it, but have you been consuming it? And the same holds true for the Word of God. Not only do you possess the Word of God, and it’s important to know that you do, That’s good and that’s a starting point but then you have to consume that word. It has to get in you.

If it doesn’t get in you, just walking around toting it under your arm, or having it on a bookshelf or on a coffee table or somewhere, with a bunch of dust laying all over it. It’s not doing you any good that way. And so that’s what James has to say to us here today. If you look here in verse number 17, he starts off here and he says,

James 1:17–25

17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.

18 Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.

19 Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath:

20 For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.

21 Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls.

22 But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.

23 For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass:

24 For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was.

25 But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.

It’ll stick with you.

So James is telling us here if you just hear the word but you don’t ever do it, you’re like somebody who would look at themselves in a mirror and straight away, as soon as they walk away from the mirror, they forget what they were looking at. But if you’ll be a hearer and a doer of the word, then it’ll stick with you.

We need to receive the word.

We need to receive the word. We need to be attentive to the word. He tells us here that we need to be swift to hear, but slow to speak. Most of us have the bad. Habit, characteristic, if you will, of being slow to hear, but swift to speak. And that’s not the way that we ought to be in our relationships with other people. And of course, in our relationship with the Lord, as you’re reading and you’re studying your Bible, we need to be swift to hear and see what the Lord is saying. Because all too many times we’re trying to jump to our own defense or something. We say ..Yeah, Lord. But this or that but, No! Be swift to hear. Slow to speak. Slow to wrath. We’re too quick to jump off the handle and be angry about things.

And it’s not a, it’s not a spiritual and holy wrath or a holy anger that fills us. Nine times out of ten, if you’ll be honest. And a lot of times what causes that is the fact that we weren’t swift to hear. We were too busy not listening. Most people in conversations, you can you can see it. You can see it going on. You can see it happening when you’re talking to somebody and you’re in conversation with somebody and everything else.

If you want to have a genuine conversation with somebody, You need to be genuine. You need to be genuinely interested in the other person that you’re having a conversation with. A conversation is not, I just have some talking points. I’ll let you respond. Doesn’t really matter what you say, so I can jump back in with my next talking point. That’s how most people approach conversations. That’s not a conversation. You understand? That’s a dissertation. That’s a speech maybe, but that’s not a conversation. We’re too quick to do that in our personal relationships, but even more so, we’re too quick to do that with the Lord.

We don’t want to wait and see what the Lord has to say about something. We want to make our own minds up about it, and then we want to do something about it. We want to have our say, well, at the end of the day, our say doesn’t matter. His say does. His.

James says here in verse number 21, he says, lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word. You’ve got to pull the weeds out of your life. You’ve got to get that stuff out of your life so that you can receive The engrafted or the implanted word of God that you have, that he’s placed on your heart and your mind and in your lap today so that you can receive what it is that he has for you.

You have to approach the Word of God, not just before you come to a church service, but it’s always a good practice before a church service. We have you plead the blood, get your get your sins taken care of; So you’re not distracted by those things. So those things aren’t standing in the way. so those weeds aren’t in there keeping the good things from being able to grow.

So we need to be doers of the word, not just hearers only. In these verses, James gives us three responsibilities that we have towards God’s Word, that is, we need to be:

• swift to hear
• slow to speak, and
• slow to wrath.

And if we will fulfill those responsibilities, we’ll have an opportunity to hear from him today. And that’s what I want to encourage you with today. I want you to be able to hear from the Lord today.

Our hope at Irvington Bible Baptist Church is that this podcast provided some encouragement and has helped you to develop a closer relationship with the LORD Jesus Christ.