Keep
Notes
Transcript
Handout
James 1:21-26
We have been studying our theme verse for four weeks now.
3 Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time is at hand.
Here the Bible tells us how we can be blessed.
The person who does these three things will be blessed.
Then he tells us the reason we need to do these things - for the time is at hand.
When we look at the world around us, it is almost like we can watch as it gets closer and closer as pieces are possibly falling into to prophesy being fulfilled right before our eyes.
The time is at hand, my friend!
So what do we need to do to be blessed during this time?
This verse tells us that we need to read the Word of God.
We need to be studying the Word every day, so we can have wisdom, and understanding during this time.
He says we need to Hear the Words - Last week we looked at scripture that spoke of the importance of hearing the word as it is preached.
God has chosen to use preaching as his method for us to hear His Word proclaimed.
But we need to be under the preaching of God’s Word if we are going to receive this blessing that is promised.
If we hear it will build our faith, because
17 So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.
So our faith is built and increased when we hear the preaching of God’s Word!
I wish the people in our church knew how important it is to hear the preaching of God’s Word as often as they can!
Today we look at the third requirement to receive the blessing that is promised in Revelation 1:3.
Keep - keep those things which are written therein
When the Bible talks about keeping the Word of God there are two meanings that are present.
I want to take a look at those two today.
The first meaning when we say we need to keep the Word of God deals with:
I. Keep It in Your Heart
I. Keep It in Your Heart
That is to memorize and meditate on the Word of God
4 Thou hast commanded us To keep thy precepts diligently.
Why is it important to keep God’s Word hidden in our hearts?
What are the benefits of memorizing God’s Word.
Although there are many, I want to look at four this morning.
First of all, and probably most practically…Memorizing God’s Word...
A. Keeps You from Sin
A. Keeps You from Sin
When Jesus was tempted by Satan, He used the Word of God to fight those temptations.
The Bible tells us if we resist Satan he will flee!
The best way to resist him is to quote Scripture to Him!
The Bible says in ...
11 Thy word have I hid in mine heart, That I might not sin against thee.
I read an interesting article the other day...
London cabbies have been an iconic fixture in any London street scene for decades. Now the black taxi cab and their extraordinary cabbies are the focal point of a new expedition into Alzheimer’s research.
Cabbies have an incredible knowledge of London streets that seems to confer some protection against Alzheimer’s Disease—this could be clinically relevant to struggling patients, or those seeking to mitigate their risks.
Since 1865 London cabbies have been required to pass a difficult test known as “the Knowledge” to prove that they can find 100,000 businesses and landmarks in a labyrinth of tens of thousands of streets.
The series of exams — which take three to four years to complete — have been hailed as possibly the most difficult memorization test in the world. To be fully licensed to drive anywhere in London, a cabbie needs to know how to plot routes without a GPS on about 26,000 streets spanning a six-mile radius from London’s center point.
But London cabbies’ skills are now being tested for a different reason: to determine whether their brains hold clues that might be applied to Alzheimer’s research. A project called Taxi Brains is underway at University College London to study the brains of London cabbies as they map out taxi routes while undergoing MRI scans. The hippocampus regions of taxi drivers’ brains — which play an important role in learning and memory — appear to grow larger the longer the drivers are on the job while the same region is known to shrink in people with Alzheimer’s.
Research lead, Prof. Hugo Spiers said, “Maybe there’s something very protective about working out your spatial knowledge on a daily basis, like these guys do. It may not necessarily be spatial, but just using your brain rather than Google Maps might actually help—in the same way that physical fitness is important.”
God’s Word also confirms that Scripture memorization is crucial to our spiritual health. We must not use Google, smartphones, and the Internet as a crutch in “hiding God’s Word in our hearts”
Are you worried about losing your memory…exercising it will help!
How easy it is to fall on the internet to draw up verses that we need…just like all other pieces of information…but we do ourselves a disservice if we rely on this and do not hide it in our hearts!
Secondly the Bible says that having God’s Word in your heart...
B. Keeps You from Failing
B. Keeps You from Failing
Look at what the Bible says in Psalm 37:31
31 The law of his God is in his heart; None of his steps shall slide.
The Bible says here that if the Law of his God is in his heart None of his steps shall slide.
If you keep your focus on God’s Word
You keep it in your hearts, and the center focus of your heart
You memorize the words and meditate on them.
The Bible says none of your steps will slide
The word speaks to someone slipping and falling.
What a promise!
What power there is in memorizing God’s Word!
But at times we fall away from the focus that we ought to have.
When that happens we are not keeping them in our heart.
It’s more than just having it in our head, it’s having it in our heart.
Nikita Khrushchev the former Communist Czar of Russia won awards in Sunday School for memorizing all four of the gospels.
And yet as an adult he fought against Christianity and declared that God was nonexistent because his cosmonauts had not seen Him in space.
But there is always hope.
Because God’s Word is powerful and sharper than any two edged sword.
If we allow it and open our hearts to it, it can do it’s work in our hearts.
Philip Turner, small-town attorney, realized he was waking up in the intensive care unit of a hospital somewhere, for reasons he couldn’t fathom. There were machines and strange blinking lights and sounds. His body didn’t feel right, and concerned faces hovered above him. He closed his eyes and tried to think. He listened to the electronic hums of a strange and sterile place, the beep beep beep of a machine he’d rather not have heard so close to his ear.
It had been a balmy evening in Shelbyville, Illinois, and a friend had dropped by Philip’s house, suggesting a nocturnal plane ride. Philip and his wife, Bobbie, were game. They drove out to the town’s small airstrip, climbed into a four-seater Beech Musketeer, and a few minutes later were airborne, looking down on their serene, sleeping town, recognizing landmarks, and feeling like birds soaring through the moonlit darkness. A few minutes later the runway lights came into view, and the passengers prepared for landing.
That’s the last thing Philip remembered. Later he learned that the nose wheel of the Musketeer hit a power line, flipping the plane over. Bobbie was thrown through the side window onto the ground while Philip remained suspended, head downward, in his seat belt with over a hundred fractures.
As he regained consciousness, Philip’s mind was fragmented with scattered, confused images. Hours passed, and as his head began to clear, a series of thoughts suddenly came into his mind like brilliant shafts of light. Not that we loved God, but that He loved us. . . . Who hath saved us, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace. . . . Fear not. . . . For God so loved the world. . . . Is there anything too hard for me?
These were fragments of Bible verses, but Philip wasn’t a religious man, and he didn’t go to church. He hadn’t opened a Bible in years, and he had certainly never memorized any Bible verses.
Or had he? Slowly a few vague memories filtered into his mind. A little circle of red chairs. Old Mrs. Wolf with an open Bible on her lap. Little cards. Awards.
As a five-year-old boy, Philip had attended a Sunday school class, and the teacher had drilled them on Bible verses. Those who learned the verses were given prizes, but Philip had never earned any awards; he had been a disappointment to Mrs. Wolf. Yet down in the depths of his brain, those memory verses lay like dormant seeds, waiting for just the right moment to germinate.
Philip and Bobbie slowly recovered from their injuries, and in the process they committed themselves to Christ and started going to church.
Philip later began teaching Sunday School himself with a great emphasis on Bible Memorization.
We may lose sight to what is the most important, but if we will just come back…God is there ready to help us and keep us from failing.
Thirdly, Bible Memorization ...
C. Brings God’s Blessings
C. Brings God’s Blessings
of course, that is what we are talking about here in Revelation 1:3.
But the blessings may not always be what we envisioned.
Joshua tells us...
8 This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success.
When we think about this verse in Joshua telling us our way will be prosperous and we will have good success and we think that means we will have great amounts of money.
And maybe God will allow that, and bless us in that way.
But far more precious than piles of gold is the blessings that he bestow on us when we meditate on God’s Word during times of trial.
Vietnam Veteran and former POW Howard Rutledge tells of the blessings that Bible memorization had in keeping him sane during his time in the Hanoi Hilton being brutally interrogated and tortured.
He and other prisoners began to remember veres that they had memorized as children in Sunday School, and began to work together to piece them together from their collective memories.
They would say the verses over and over to themselves and to each other. he said that he never dreamed that he would end up spending seven years (five of them in solitary confinement) thinking about the verses, which made the whole day bearable.
He said how he wished that he had memorized more than the few he had in his mind. He was able to hold on to those throughout indescribable torture.
We do not know what we may face in this life.
And we do not know how precious those verses we are able to remember will pour out blessings on us during the most difficult times.
What a difference these verses made to these men.
We may not face this kind of imprisonment or torture.
But whatever the Lord allows in our lives, the Blessings of God can flow on any of them, if we meditate and memorize God’s Word.
By the way, memorizing God’s Word does not guarantee life will be easy and everything will go well…but it does mean that we will have help and blessings no matter where God takes us.
Fourthly Memorizing God’s Word...
D. Enables Us to Witness
D. Enables Us to Witness
The Bible tells us...
15 But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear:
I remember being in the park as a child, playing with a boy I had only met.
I remember that I looked over at my Mom where she was sitting on a park bench with this little boys mother.
She had pulled her New Testament out of her purse and had begun witnessing to his mother.
I could tell what she was doing, because I had seen it before with both my mom and dad.
I thought, well I should probably do the same.
I didn’t have a New Testament or a Bible, and this was a long time before smart phones…plus I was way too young to have one, so I began to talk to Him about salvation, and what I had learned.
I began to quote verses from Romans that I had memorized.
My parents had seen the importance in all of us kids memorizing the Romans Road verses even as I was only in first or second grade.
As I looked over at our moms as I was wrapping up talking about the verse I was quoting, I saw our moms bowing their head and praying together.
I told him what they were doing and asked him if he wanted to accept Christ as His savior as well.
He did, so we prayed together.
That day, a mother and her 8-9 year old son accepted Christ.
That boy never would have accepted him there that day, had I not hid God’s Word in my heart and was ready to give an answer.
Through the years I have used those and many other verses on basketball courts, frozen sections of the supermarket aisle, on sidewalks of busy city streets, around a table at a restaurant, around a break room table at work, and many other places.
People are dying and going to hell all around us!
Are we going to do anything about it?
Or are we going to allow our discomfort and embarrassment make us miss the chance to be a part of God’s salvation plan for those people?
Memorizing God’s Word has so many benefits in our lives!
But Keeping God’s Word is more than just memorizing...
The other definition or usage of this word in the Bible means to ...
II. Keep It in Obedience
II. Keep It in Obedience
There are five or six words that are translated as keep in the Bible, two of which can be read as memorizing, especially dependent upon context.
But all of the others carry the idea of obeying the Word of God.
This is the meaning of the usage in Revelation 1:3
3 Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time is at hand.
To receive God’s Blessings we need to read the Word of God
We need to hear the Word of God preached
And we need to obey (keep) what is written therein.
I have often used the James 1:22 in the last few weeks, because it is so vital to what we are talking about!
22 But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.
Reading the Bible every day all day, Memorizing great passages of it, Sitting under preaching every day of the week will only do so much if we only let it go in one ear and out the other…and never let it touch our hearts!
We must not be hearers only , but doers of the Word also!
This is true for
A. The Lost Man
A. The Lost Man
It is the difference for the lost man between hearing the truth and accepting the truth.
I think of the passage in the Bible in Acts 26 where Paul is brought before King Agrippa.
Paul is there able to give a great testimony about how Jesus changed his life and he challenged King Agrippa to believe what the prophets and Jesus said.
Then in verse 28 he says some of the saddest words
28 Then Agrippa said unto Paul, Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian.
He was so close…He heard the Word of God, but He did not obey the Word.
George Whitefield, who preached during the Colonial Era before the American Revolution to tens of thousands and brought on a Great Awakening in our country was good friends with Benjamin Franklin, and old skeptic.
Benjamin Franklin was the publisher of many of George Whitfield sermons and made a lot of money off of Whitefield, based there in Philadelphia. And he came and heard Whitefield preach, and he said this, "Whitefield had a loud and clear voice and articulated his words and his sentences so perfectly that he might be heard and understood at a great distance. Being among the hindmost in Market Street, Philadelphia, I had the curiosity to learn how far he could still be heard by retiring systematically backwards down the street to the river. And I found his voice distinct till I came near Front Street when some noise in that street obscured it. Imagining then a semi-circle of which my distance should be the radius and that it was filled with hearers to each of whom I allotted two square feet, I computed that he might be heard clearly by more than 30,000 people." This is what Benjamin Franklin was doing during one of Whitefield sermons. I think there are better ways to hear a Whitefield sermon than that.
George Whitefield, as I said, became very good friends with Benjamin Franklin, and they dined together frequently. And Whitefield earnestly sought his salvation every time they got together. After his famous lightning experiment, he wrote him a letter saying, "You're advancing much in science, I would urge to you the study of the Doctrine of the New Birth. It will do you much more good both in this world and in the world to come.” One of the saddest things I ever read about George Whitefield was something said about Benjamin Franklin after he died. And he said, "we were good friends," Franklin said this, "And he consistently sought to win me but he never had the answers to his prayers." That was Benjamin Franklin talking about himself.
Franklin had a knowledge of God, but as far as we know never let it penetrate his heart.
How sad it is!
It is said that many people will miss heaven by only 10 inches, the distance from the brain to the heart.
Oh if you do not know for sure that you will go to heaven when you die…please do not miss heaven by 10 inches!
Trust in the one we speak about today, whose Words we read and whose truths we preach!
Talk to me today…do not delay!
Trust Christ as your savior!
But it is not just the Lost who hear the word, but do not do the Word…unfortunately it is also ...
B. The Saved Man
B. The Saved Man
James is written, after all, to the saved, to the brethren of the twelve tribes that are scattered abroad.
Likewise he is speaking to you today!
Do not be a juts a hearer of the Word today!
Do what God has told you to do.
If you wish to have the blessings of God on your life, you must Read the Word, You must Hear the Word, and you must keep what you read and hear.
You must obey it!
James tells us
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.
How foolish it would be for us to see ourselves in the mirror…see that our hair was messed up, see that our clothes are wrinkled and then just go on about our day as if nothing is wrong.
That would be foolish!
But James continues...
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.
If you hear the word…you look into the Word of God and see where you need to change…don’t forget about it…but do what it tells you…James tells us that this man shall be blessed in his deed.
You want the blessings of God on your life?
How many of you want the blessings of God on your life, Raise your hand!
Then you had better Obey what you read, what you hear…keep it!
Conclusion
Conclusion
A pastor stood at the back of the church as people filed out.
One man stopped by the pastor, shook his hand and said, “That was a good sermon that you preached!”
The pastor smiled, shook the man’s hand and replied, “Well, that remains to be seen.”
What is implied is that the measure of a sermon cannot be determined until the message of the sermon is applied in the lives of the hearers.
You know the phrase, leap of faith? We’ve all heard that phrase. It’s most often used in reference to the supposed need for Christians to ignore evidence, shut the eyes of their mind and leap into a belief that is not reasonable.
The man who made the phrase famous was Soren Kierkegaard, a Danish philosopher and Christian who wrote about faith in the first half of the 1800’s
The concept of Kierkegaard’s leap was very different than the traditional interpretation. The Denmark of Kierkegaard’s day was considered a Christian nation, much like modern America. What he observed, however, is that the term Christian had very little meaning in his country. To say, “I am a Christian” was about as meaningful as saying, “I was born in Denmark.”
Kierkegaard saw a Christianity that had no power, no life. It took no risks. It was a Christianity of knowing but not doing.
“Today’s Christianity is a matter of being elevated for an hour once a week just as in the theater. It is now used to hearing everything without having the remotest notion of doing something.”
Kierkegaard called Christians of his day to a different way of living the Christian life, a way of risk and commitment. He called for a leap from endless talk and rationalizing into action. He longed for a Christianity that converted not only the intellect, but also the will.
This was Kierkegaard’s leap of faith.
The question today is are you willing today to take that leap of faith from someone who warms the pew, hears the Word preached, but now goes out and lives the Word.