A Daily Walk

Guest (Male): I'm sure you can relate to this on some level. We don't always have all the details. Have you ever found that to be true? Have you ever made a judgment call on somebody and you didn't know everything? You had a little bit, maybe you had somebody's story, but not the whole story. You were like, "Oh yeah, I can't wait till they come in. We're going to talk. We're going to lay hands on them and pray." You had it all figured out. "I'm going to tell them. I heard and then..." Then you got the rest of the story, and suddenly you realized, "Wow, I was wrong." As believers, it's important for us to give one another the benefit of the doubt.

It's time for A Daily Walk where you never have to walk alone. In a moment, we'll be joined by Pastor John Randall as we're nearing the end of a very practical study of James. We've all done it at some point. We've jumped to conclusions about someone and later on discovered we had it all wrong. There's a way to save yourself that grief, and we'll learn what that is a bit later on. But first, this word about the heart.

John Randall: Interesting that he then goes on to say in verse eight, "Purify your hearts, you double-minded." When the Bible speaks of the heart, it doesn't refer to the physical organ pumping the blood in your body. It's used figuratively to describe and refer to the seat and the center of human life and emotion.

When we talk about the heart, it's the center of the personality. It controls the intellect, the emotions, the will. No outward form of obedience without the change of heart really does you any good. You can do something, you can force something, but what you really want is a change of heart. There has to be a purifying of the heart internally.

The Bible tells us that our hearts can be deceitfully wicked above all else. Not that they could be; they are deceitfully wicked above all else, and who can know it? Our heart can trick us. Our heart can lie to us. "Follow your heart." I don't think so. No, Hallmark, I'm not going to follow my heart because my heart is deceitful. "Do what your heart tells you to do. Just follow your heart." No, because I know what the Bible says about my heart.

It's double-minded. It needs to be purified because it's deceitfully wicked above all else. Remember the Pharisees in the Bible? Big phylacteries on their forehead, nice robes. Jesus came to them and he rebuked them. He said, "You guys are like whitewashed tombs." What does that mean? He said, "You appear beautiful on the outside, but inside you're full of dead men's bones."

A whitewashed tomb was like they would scrub these tombs and make them as white as possible. Wow, that is so white. But if you open it up, it's dead in there. Jesus said that's kind of what you're like. Outwardly, you look pure. You look clean. But to open that thing up, it's like, wow, something died in there. Yeah, it's death in there. That's what he said concerning the Pharisees.

He said, "Even so, you outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly you're full of hypocrisy and lawlessness." Yeah, you look totally clean on the outside, but inside you're not. There's got to be this cleansing on the inside. Only Jesus can do that. Listen, friends, you could take a pig and you could clean it, put perfume on it, take it to the fair, and win a contest for having the best pig in the world.

That is such a clean pig. Then you take it home to your farm and the first opportunity that it gets, it is in the mud eating whatever it eats. Why? Why won't he stay clean? Because he's a pig on the inside. There has to be a transformation, not just this outward cleansing—an inward transformation.

Today we have so much about rather than submit to God and draw near to him and allow him to cleanse you and purify your heart. No, you don't need that. You can do it yourself. Just do it yourself. Make your own alterations that will suit you. Seek to find the better you within. It's not there. It's not there. I've looked.

You can change things externally. You can lose this, gain that, alter this, stretch that. You can do all of it. But all of that could be just this external thing when there needs to be a transformation of the heart. James goes beyond the hands to the heart. The Lord must purify our hearts because if we just stop doing what's wrong outwardly without a change inwardly, then we'll go back in the near future to doing the wrong outwardly again. I've seen it over and over. James makes this point. He calls the double-minded man to be purified because a double-minded man or woman is unstable in all of their ways.

Double-minded. "I can't make up my mind. Should I follow Jesus? What time's that party? I'll follow him after that." You just keep going back and forth. You just keep living one way then this way. "Should I do this? Nah, I'm going to church on Wednesday night. No, it's cool. I can make atonement, and then Friday night. But Sunday's coming, so I'm good. I can go back." Just living like that.

There's got to be a transformation on the inside. So James says in verse nine, he goes a little deeper here, "Lament, mourn, and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom." Remember the context that James is writing this in, who he's talking to, what he's talking about. James says in this cleansing and this purifying, there is a lamenting, there's a mourning, there's a weeping.

What James seems to be implying here is that true, genuine, sincere repentance understands what sin produces and the pain that it causes. When I see my sin for what it really is, it should break me. It should humble me to the point where I lament that I've offended a Holy God and that I've hurt people in the process.

It should impact me. It should humble me. The heart realizes the pain that the sin has caused and the devastation it brings to their lives and the lives of others. It was John Stott that said this, "I fear that we evangelical Christians sometimes by making much of grace make light of sin."

We make light of our sin when we compare our sin to others who we feel have committed greater sin, and this adds to our lack of true, genuine repentance. Or we feel we're better than them, and rather than mourning over it, we really don't take any thought of it. It's interesting because the word that he used for mourning here, *pentheo*, to mourn, is the strongest and most severe word in the Greek language.

It represents the deepest, the most heartfelt grief, and generally, it's reserved for grieving over the death of a loved one. This word carries the idea of a deep inner agony. I think it's conveyed in the Psalms when the Psalmist declared in Psalm 51 in verse 17, "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart."

By the way, broken and contrite means bruised, brokenhearted for sin, deeply affected, having offended God. "You will not despise that kind of heart." Remember in Luke's gospel that Jesus told a parable of a Pharisee and a tax collector? They both went to the temple to pray. The Pharisee went and showed up and was praying. The tax collector was there by him.

"Lord, I'm so glad I'm not like that guy right there, that tax collector. Lord, I pay my tithes. I do this. I do that." He was telling God everything why he's so awesome in his prayer. The tax collector Jesus said showed up and he says that he wouldn't even lift his eyes to heaven. He just beat upon his chest and he was repenting.

He was in this lamenting agony and mourning over his own sin. There were tears that filled his eyes and all he could say was, "Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner." Jesus said that one went away justified, forgiven. When we truly understand the love of God, that God loved me enough to die for me, and that I spent a portion of my life turning my back on that love and rejecting that grace, when the light goes on, suddenly I can see it for what it is and it should break me.

Have you ever had that experience with Jesus? Maybe it was when you first got saved. I know for me in coming to the Lord with everything, surrendering to the Lord, I remember that moment so clearly, so vivid in my mind. It was like this moment when the light went on and I could see my sin for what it was, and the Lord allowed me to see it and it just leveled me. But the Lord doesn't leave us there.

He restores, he renews, he rebuilds, he forgives, and he redeems. But coming to this spot, that's where it starts. James says, "Let your laughter be turned to mourning." Again, James is not condemning laughter. That's legitimate. I've personally found, maybe you have as well, that a sense of humor can get you through a lot of difficult days. Seriously.

The Bible says in Proverbs 17:22 that a merry heart does good like medicine, but a broken spirit dries the bones. Exactly what Solomon said. I remember reading about one lady was commenting to Charles Spurgeon about he was being too jovial in the pulpit. "Why do you laugh in the pulpit? Why are you joking like that?"

He said, "Madam, if you only knew how much I don't say, you'd be thankful." There's a whole lot more that he could but he just held it back. It's okay. James is talking about the opposite of this brokenness over sin. He's talking about making light of it. It's a joke. "So what I hurt them? Come on, grow up. Get over it. You're fine."

That's what I'm talking about. That's ridiculous. It's so brazen by sin that the thought of one day standing before a Holy God and answering for what I've done—judgment for sin? That's unthinkable and even laughable. James says, "Listen, you better stop laughing and start mourning before you stand before God in judgment."

You can tell a lot about a person based upon what they laugh at or what they find amusing. If you laugh at sin and living in sin, it may be a clear indication that you've become desensitized to it. But now that I'm broken before God, the next step. "Can I get any lower?" James says, "Humble yourself." Almost. "Humble yourselves in the sight of God."

The promise? "He'll lift you up." Humbling ourselves, I think that is probably one of the most difficult things for us to do. Why is it so hard to humble ourselves? Because to humble myself would be to admit that I'm culpable for what they said I did. And although I am, I'm too proud to admit it. So I don't want to humble myself because I'd have to agree with what they said and I'm better than that. No, you're not.

So we don't humble ourselves. But there is such freedom when you humble yourself. Husbands, wives, let me just say something to you real quick. It's amazing how when you humble yourself in a time of intense fellowship with your spouse, if you'll be the one to humble yourself, wow, why did it take me so long to do that?

Why are you so stubborn? Because you have a hard heart. But the moment you just say, "You know what, I'm sorry." And it's the sorry that says, "I'm sorry, but by the way, don't you have something to say? No, I don't have anything to say. I forgive you." There's something more. You want to reciprocate? Nope. Okay, awesome.

But just humbling ourselves. The moment you do it, it's like there's actual freedom. I'm free. Pride makes you a prisoner. Humble ourselves before the Lord, and as we humble ourselves, the Bible says here that he will lift us up. Submit to God, resist the devil, he'll flee from you. Draw near to God, he'll draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners. Purify your heart, you double-minded. Lament and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning, your joy to gloom, and then humble yourselves.

Then here's what God's going to do. He's going to lift you up. He's going to lift you up out of that. Oh man, I have been lifted up out of the darkness of sin. I've been lifted up out of the miry clay. He has set my feet upon a rock by his grace. That's what he does. If you're just drowning in that, if you're just sitting there and you're just swirling and you're just going down in this depravity of your life, listen, the moment you turn to God, that's the moment he's going to reach out and he's going to lift you up.

But you've got to turn to him. You've got to humble yourself. You've got to stop fighting God and resisting him. Get over yourself. When you get over yourself and you come to the end of yourself, that's when God steps in. Don't fight it. Resist it. When we do, wow, I didn't know it could be like that. Why did I wait so long? No need to wait. Just humble yourself. Now watch what God will do.

Well, two more verses. Verse 11, "Do not speak evil of one another, brethren. He who speaks evil of a brother and judges his brother speaks evil of the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you're not a doer of the law but a judge. There is one lawgiver who is able to save and to destroy. And who are you to judge another?"

There is a position, a job in this life that has been filled. One person has it. You can't get it. You can't apply for it. It's not available to you. It never will be. It's the judge of the human race. That's Jesus' job. Jesus tells us in the Gospel of John, "The Father judges no one, but he's committed judgment, all judgment to the Son."

Jesus is the ultimate judge. Paul told Timothy in 2 Timothy 4:1, "I charge you before God and the Lord Jesus Christ who will judge the living and the dead at his appearing in his kingdom." Jesus is the judge. That's not my place. Now, lest there be some confusion about this—and I will tell you, there is some—the world thinks we'll know that we are his disciples by the love we have for one another, not the judgment we pass on one another.

But it's important to clarify that James is not referring to judging evil in the sense of, "That's sin." Sometimes people, when they look at judging, think of Matthew chapter seven, "Judge not, lest you be judged." People who are in sin know that verse. That is their verse. That's the go-to. Always. They don't quote any other Scripture but that one.

"The Bible says don't judge me somewhere in there. You know that?" You need to listen to what it says. It also says repent of sin and come to Christ. But judging, and I've encountered on more than one occasion in pastoral ministry, those who've chosen to live in disobedience to the Word of God for their lives.

As a shepherd to God's people, you have that responsibility to lovingly call it out and encourage them to walk with the Lord, and sometimes the response is "don't judge." But what did James and what did Jesus for that matter mean when they said "do not judge"?

The word translated "judge" here properly in verse 11 says "speak evil of another." It's a Greek word. It can be translated "backbiter." It carries the idea of criticizing, to slander, and the assumption is that a person is being slandered when they're not personally present. That's a very cowardly thing to do. It's not in front of them where they can see you or hear you; it's behind them, as it were, when they're not around.

This is what James is condemning. Don't do that. Don't be bad-mouthing people when they're not there. If you can't say it to their face, well, you probably shouldn't say it behind their back. That's what James is condemning. This is something we have to avoid. "Don't speak evil of one another, brethren."

I think it's important when you find yourself about to say it, ask a few questions. Is this edifying? Is this true? What is the source? Why am I saying this? Is Jesus pleased with this? These are kinds of questions that you've got to—sometimes we don't take the time to run through that grid, but we just kind of say it and we didn't think about it.

Suddenly, that's how things get started. "Hey, did you hear about..." "No, I didn't. Can I quote you on that?" "No, you didn't hear from me. I didn't—I heard it from—no, you can't." If you can't say it, then don't say it. He's telling them don't speak evil of them and don't take that place of a judge. Sometimes when we take that place of a judge, we don't always have all the details.

Have you ever found that to be true? You ever made a judgment call on somebody and you didn't know? You didn't have everything? You had a little bit, maybe you had somebody's story but not the whole story. And you were like, "Oh yeah, I can't wait till they come in. We're going to talk. We're going to lay hands on them and pray."

You had it all figured out. "I'm going to tell them. I heard and then..." Then you got the rest of the story, and suddenly you realized, "Wow, I was wrong. Like really wrong." And I made all these calls and I jumped to all these assumptions and I assumed this about them and I thought it was that.

How could they? We live in a world where that is happening nonstop. So as believers, it's important for us to give one another the benefit of the doubt. I do not believe that we are to ever excuse sin or say, "Hey, that's cool. Don't worry about it. Live in sin." Yeah, it's going to hurt you and probably wreck your family and probably destroy every relationship you really like. But hey.

No, I don't think that's what we're talking about here. He's talking about slandering, backbiting, etc. These are the things that we want to avoid in the body of Christ. Who am I to judge another person's servant? Remember Paul said the Lord is able to make them stand or fall. That's not my place. What I should do?

I think sometimes God reveals some things to us in order that we might pray for people, not talk about people. If you're going to talk to somebody, talk to the Lord. He reveals it to us that we might intercede for them. There may be a moment when you need to go to them and speak to them, but also to pray for them.

One day we all stand before the Lord, we're not going to be standing before one another. We're going to be standing before God. So may God put a door over our lips not to speak evil of one another. This is something we really have to work on and pray through because if, as James says here, if you judge the law and you're not a doer of the law, then you're a judge, but there's one lawgiver, and that's not us.

May God help us to be careful what we say. When you're submitted to God, drawing near to God, you're lamenting over your own sin and you're humble before God and he lifts you up, he helps with this. But it's important. Maybe you've been saying something about somebody else because you're envious of them.

People say things about other people because they're envious of them and what they have or what they do or what their gifting is. Maybe that's why you're doing it, but you justify it in other means. You say it with ways like, to make it sound spiritual, "Oh, did you hear about..." or if somebody tells you about somebody else did, you immediately say, "Well, that's only because that you know, they're not exactly, you know."

It's almost like you tried to take away from it. Don't do that. That's not godly. That's not the heart of Jesus. God help us. Help me, Lord, to speak the things that are edifying and building people up rather than tearing them down.

Guest (Male): Well, thanks for joining us today for A Daily Walk. To catch a replay of today's message from Pastor John Randall, simply go online to adailywalk.org. You can also listen to studies from John on our free mobile app. Do a search for Calvary South OC in the App Store or Google Play.

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