A Fake Religion

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Transcript:

The passage we’re going to look at in James tonight is kind of a study in contrast. It’s kind of a, one says here’s what you don’t do and the other side of it it says here’s what you should do. And so tonight we’re going to talk about what you don’t do and in two weeks I guess we’ll talk about what you should do. We’re going to talk about fake religion.

It seems to always come up in our 5 o’clock class something about some TV preacher and there is a lot of fake religion on TV. There’s a lot of fake religion on the radio. although it doesn’t seem to be as much as fake religion on TV.

There’s a lot of fake religion anywhere you look. Sometimes even in Bible-believing churches. I’m not just talking about the churches that say donate to us and all your problems will be taken care of.

Yeah, there’s some false religion as far as churches go. We were talking last night. I have some cousins who are kind of skeptical about Christianity.

and we’re talking to them last night and Charlie and I I don’t even know how it came up but we’re telling them a story of a church we visited in New Mexico, a few hundred year old church where they sell holy dirt. I’m not kidding, they sell holy dirt. Something about a well in this church where they dig the dirt out of it and it’s blessed and they mail it to people all over the United States or around the world I guess and over the centuries they run out of dirt so They truck in more dirt.

I think, what did they just go get? I went and bought a bunch of dirt at Lowe’s this week. Could I do that and start selling dirt, I guess?

They dump it in there, they bless it, and they mail it all over the place. Fake religion. I told my cousins, I said, stuff like that makes me angry because it makes me realize, or, you know, I look at that and think, no wonder the world outside thinks we’re all full of it when they see things like that.

There’s fake religion that is taught in churches, you know, that you can get somewhere with, if you’ll just do this, then you can make God do this. But even within Bible-believing churches, there’s sometimes fake religion found among the people where it’s just not real. It’s put on. It’s pretend.

And James talks about this. We’re going to look at the book of James tonight. James is an interesting book because it seems to be different from a lot of the other books in the New Testament.

whereas you can read through the Apostle Paul and his emphasis is always on not by works, not by works, not by works. The book of James in contrast seems to say works, works, works. And some people have said, well see there’s a contradiction there in the Bible.

And Martin Luther for all his good ideas and bad ideas, he had some ideas that were not correct but for all of his right ideas about justification by faith he thought for a while the book of James shouldn’t even have been in the Bible because he didn’t understand that they were talking about two different things when he was talking about works. Paul and James don’t disagree. As James is teaching, you need to work, you need to do the right thing, you need to work out your salvation.

I don’t think he’s the one that uses that phrase. But as he’s teaching these things, he’s not saying that you work as a way to get salvation. So when he says in here, be doers of the word, he’s not saying be doers of the word in order to be saved.

When he says faith without works is dead, he doesn’t mean that you do good works in order to get saved. He’s not really disagreeing with the Apostle Paul. It’s like, for example, I tell my kids, and I used to tell my sister, my sister got married in November and she’s not a Byrns anymore.

But I used to say all the time to her and still do say to my kids, you’re a Byrns, act like it. To my sister, when she was a teenager, she’s only three years younger than me, but I was in college, she was in high school. I’d say, you’re running around the city of Moore with my last name.

You use it wisely because my name means something. Not to everybody. It’s not like I’m famous, but the people who know who I am, knew where I stood on issues, you use my name wisely.

Don’t embarrass the family. You know, in some parts of southeast Oklahoma, our name doesn’t necessarily mean something good, knowing the background of some of my family members. But for me and for my kids and my family, we’re trying to do something good here.

My name means something. Our name means something. So you use it well.

Because you are a Byrns, act like this. It has nothing to do with me being pastor because I said that before I was a pastor. Because you’re a Byrns, you do this.

You act this way. Now, it doesn’t mean that you become a Byrns by acting that way. But if you act nice and do the things I say, that you’ll be a Byrns.

Sorry, it doesn’t work that way. and it doesn’t mean that my kids stop being a bones if they don’t do what I tell them same thing with God we don’t become his because we did the right things James is saying really the same thing the Apostle Paul said about you do the right thing because you’re his not to become his but you do it because you’re his and doing the right thing that doesn’t make you his and when you slip up and you don’t do the right thing it doesn’t make you not his anymore that because you’re his, do the right thing. Because of this faith that saved you, because of God’s grace that saved you through faith, do the right thing.

Work and show evidence of the change that he’s made in you. And so he begins in verse 22 to tell them, be doers of the work. Okay, because of the change that God has made in you, because you belong to him, be doers of the work.

Because of what he’s done, do what he says. You’re a Christian. Act like it.

We take that from saying what I say to my family, your burns, act like it, and say to the church, you’re a Christian. Act like it. Be doers of the word, not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.

And that’s interesting. I’ve always quoted that passage as deceiving yourselves. And it’s not a big difference, but that word own in there kind of emphasizes it for me when I notice it, deceiving your own selves.

I mean, that sounds a little harder than saying deceiving yourself. You’re deceiving your own self. He says when you’re just a hearer of the word and not a doer, the only person you’re really fooling is the one in the mirror.

When you’re pretending to follow Christ and you say the right things and you sit in church and you hear the right things, but then you don’t go and do them, he said the only person really that you’re fooling, that you’re deceiving, is your own self. He says, For if any be a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man beholding his natural face in a glass. For he beholdeth himself and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was.

I’ve always been a little bit puzzled by that verse, because he’s saying here, if you’re just a hearer of the word and not a doer, then you’re just like the man who looks at his face in a mirror and goes away immediately and forgets what he looked like. We don’t seem to have that problem, but I think the reason why we don’t really have that problem, I know what I look like. I may not remember from moment to moment, it was my, well, what hair?

Really? Honestly, but back when I had hair, before I started cutting it so short and it started thinning out, was it out of place? I may not know from minute to minute, but I know what I look like.

But then again, we have more mirrors than they do, probably. They were more expensive in their day. So you may not see the mirror all the time.

You may not be as familiar with what you look like, and you might forget, you might forget your own face you know I think about that sometimes I’ll see somebody and I’ll put a name with the face and then I think I don’t remember what that person looked like I have the same trouble I see a face and can’t remember a name but I have the opposite trouble too where I hear a name and I think I can’t remember what that person looks like and I hope I don’t offend them that they show up one day and I introduce myself all over again to them because I don’t remember what they look like but folks we can forget things boy can we forget things I’m getting real bad I was just telling Kathy I had a great memory until I had kids you hear parenting websites talk about momnesia I may be the only sufferer of dadnesia on the face of the planet but I cannot remember anything unless it’s written down and maybe not even then but I can look at something maybe not a mirror because we see mirrors all the time I’ve been seeing myself in a mirror for probably 30 years So I pretty well remember what I look like.

But we can look at something and just instantly forget it. I can be trying to write something down that I’m seeing somewhere else, and I have to look at it 15 times because in the time it takes me to look from here to here, I’ve already forgotten what I just looked at. What was that phone number again?

What was that person’s name? I did it this morning. I had just looked at the bulletin, and then as soon as I looked away from the bulletin, and I forgot what was going on, completely skipped ahead of Brother Ken’s special this morning.

I had to come back and apologize to him tonight. I felt awful about it. That happens sometimes.

We look at something, and immediately we forget. It’s like the memory span of a goldfish, at least for me it is. And what good am I in those circumstances if I act like I have no memory of what God has just told me?

I’ve just sat under the teaching of the Word. I’ve just read His Word. I’ve just studied it.

He’s just spoken to me and told me what to do, and I walk off, and it’s like I instantly forgot it, just as if I was looking at a piece of paper or looking in the mirror as the example he gives, and I’ve instantly walked away and forgotten everything I just saw. Sometimes we do the same thing with God’s work. He just told us what to do, and we walk away, and it’s like it’s gone out of our minds.

It never slowed down in between the two years. For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. So we do well to listen to God’s word and take heed to it and not just say, oh, that was good.

Wait, what was it about? It’s kind of like the video I showed this morning. Wasn’t even really the point that he couldn’t, I mean, the point of the video was not that he couldn’t remember what the pastor taught on.

But I did think, I wonder how many people remember from moment to moment, from week to week, what I taught. Sometimes I don’t even remember what was the last thing I preached about. He said, what did the preacher talk about?

Jesus, you just came from church. In the skit, the guy did. He just came from church.

He’s already forgotten everything that was taught to him about God’s word. I do the same thing. God just said that, and I’ve forgotten.

So we do well to take these things that we learn from God’s word, not just what the preacher says, but when we study God’s word on our own, on our own time at home, the things that we learn from God’s word, to commit them to memory, and say, I’m actually going to do that, rather than I’m just going to let it bounce around and then out the other ear. 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. This law of liberty is the idea that as Christians we have the liberty of not being bound by the Old Testament law for our salvation.

Now, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t still right and wrong. It doesn’t mean that there isn’t still a standard of things which are pleasing to God and which are not. And it doesn’t mean, honestly, that there aren’t principles in there, even if they don’t apply to us, that are wise to live by.

You know, we don’t lose our salvation because we eat pork. That’s an Old Testament principle. It doesn’t mean that there’s not still some wisdom in saying, you know, your whole diet shouldn’t be made up of bacon, as delightful as that would be.

in the moral law yes there’s wisdom in that there’s still a standard of what’s pleasing to God in the ceremonial law I don’t know how some of that would even apply to us even though in the dietary laws it doesn’t mean that there’s not wisdom in God’s word but it does mean that we are not we’re not looking at the Old Testament law and saying this is how I get to heaven now we have this law of liberty that Christ has fulfilled the law and set us free and we’re saved by him and because of this we can walk with him, we can follow God, we can serve God without the fear that we’re going to lose our salvation and lose our soul if we don’t cross every T and dot every I in our adherence to the law. We have this liberty, but we’re also taught in the scriptures not to use our liberty as an occasion to sin, but use our liberty as an opportunity to love others and serve God.

So what he’s talking about here, looking into this perfect law of liberty, is the idea that we as Christians are free to do what we need to do in loving other people and loving God and serving. And we’re free to do those things. Well, that means following what he’s told us.

Again, not because we get our salvation that way or lose our salvation that way, but just because it’s right and because we’re his, and so we follow him and do those things because we’re his. But if he being not a forgetful hearer of the word, but a doer of the work, this man shall So when we try to go and serve and try to follow his word, he will bless that. That doesn’t mean that there’s always a reward that, hey, you’re going to have a great life, you’re going to be rich, you’re going to be successful, you’re going to be healthy all the time if you’ll just serve God and follow his word.

But what it means is that our efforts to serve him will prosper, that he will bless the efforts in his service. He says, if any man among you seem to be religious, He’s talking here about the difference between the doers and the hearers. He’s talking about real followers versus fake followers.

If any man among you seem to be religious and bridleth not his own tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man’s religion is vain. Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world. Now, we’ll come back, like I said, probably in two weeks and talk about this.

Verse 27, pure religion. What does true religion look like? Just in general, what does a person look like?

What does their attitude, their motivation, their lifestyle look like if they’re following Christ? But today we’re going to start with verse 26. What does it look like if it’s fake, if we’re just pretending to follow Christ, if we are just a hearer of the word and not a doer?

First of all, it’s interesting to me that he says, if any man among you seem to be religious. That word seem just jumps out and just screams off the page at me. He seems to be religious.

He seems to be a follower of Jesus Christ. He’s pretending, isn’t he? It doesn’t say if any of you is religious. It says if any man seems to be religious.

People can seem to be a lot of things, but they’re not always what they seem, unfortunately. How many times have we looked at some, you know, take this big picture of our country as a whole. How many times have we looked at some young up-and-coming actor or actress in Hollywood and thought, you know, they were a great role model, the way they lived, the way they carried themselves, only to see them go berserk a few years later and thinking, I let my kids watch them on TV.

People are not always what they seem. How many times have we voted for people who promise that they’re going to do one thing only to, okay, fool us once, shame on you, fool us twice, shame on us, fool us three times. We’re into double digits now.

People are not always what they seem. And we’ll begin, I hope that as we go on, we wake up to these things, and, you know, I don’t want us to be hardened skeptics, but maybe look, and I’m not talking just politics, I mean life in general, Take a little bit of a closer look and see if people really are what they claim to be. That’s, you know, I know that this church was without a pastor for a year, and I don’t know what the circumstances were with that, who you interviewed.

So this is not a comment on anybody who might have come here and viewed a call or anything like that. I’m just saying I know a lot of churches that are without pastors a year, two years, three years, and they have a hard time finding somebody. And sometimes it’s because they’re getting all these resumes, they’re getting all these applications, and they’re reading through and reading about people and saying, are they really what they seem?

That’s a big decision. You’ve got to be careful with something like looking for a pastor. Is he really what he claims to be?

Because I’ll tell you, there are a lot of men out there who say they’re one thing and teach another. It’s the same business that was going on in the days of the apostles. They claimed to be followers of Jesus Christ, but once they got in there, once they won their way into the church, they taught something completely different and led the people astray.

You know, in so many circumstances, whether it’s in our politics, whether it’s who we let our kids listen to, whether it’s in our churches, whether it’s, you know, who we trust in our daily lives and our business dealings, whatever it is, we’ve got to take a close look and see our people what they see. But folks, by the same token, we’ve got to look at our own lives as Christians and say, Are we really followers of Jesus Christ, or do we just seem to be? Do we just look the part on the outside?

There was a study years ago, frightened me, there was a study years ago put out by the Southern Baptist Convention that said that they estimated that as many as half of the people sitting in the pews of Southern Baptist churches every Sunday morning were lost. I mean, that was a terrifying statistic to me, because I don’t know that in every church they’ve got as many visitors on a given Sunday morning as they do church members. I mean, they’re probably looking at some church members. I’m not saying that’s the case here.

I don’t want you looking down the pew and going, hmm, it’s you. It’s you. But I’m saying there are a lot of people in churches who look the part, and may even think they’re the part, but based on what they believe, They’re really not following Jesus Christ. They’re really not born again.

I can give you an example of a man that I pastored for years and talked to for years. And he has now passed away. I had moved off before he passed away.

And my hope is the next guy was able to get through to him. But he was a church member for years before I even came to this particular church. And, you know, I assume church has done their due diligence.

Somebody joins, you’re going to ask them about their salvation. You’re going to know about that kind of thing. But we would talk about heaven.

We’d talk about spending eternity with Christ, and he would say things like, well, I hope so. That always bothered me. That always bothered me.

What do you mean you hope so? I mean, I stand up there every Sunday morning, and especially at that time, I had been preaching some really hard evangelistic messages because we had a lot of people visiting. I stand up there every Sunday morning and explain how you can know for sure.

Well, I just hope he’ll look on me favorably. What do you mean you hope so? You do realize you can know for sure.

You do realize Jesus Christ died to save you and to give you assurance of that. Read the book of 1 John. The whole thing is that God didn’t want us to be in doubt about this.

And the whole time I was there, we’d talk. We’d sit in my office and talk. We’d sit down after church and talk.

I’d go to his house and we’d talk. I don’t know that he was a church member. He was actively involved.

He was a leader in the church. And still, everything I know said he had no assurance of his salvation. And I’ve just wondered how many people there are, not just Southern Baptist churches, not just Baptist churches, but churches all over the country, where people sit week after week.

And they look the part. They come in. They do the right things.

They say the right things. They looked the part as good Christians, and everybody thinks they’re good Christian people. And I’m not saying they’re bad people, but they think they’re Christians.

And yet on the inside, there’s been no experience of being born again. There’s been no faith in Jesus Christ that just settles the question once and for all. There’s been no transformation.

And so they just seem to be Christians. I’ve wondered, is that statistic really true? is that true?

And how many of the people that I know that I have known in my ministry or just in my life, how many of the people that I’ve known just seen the part? Well, as he’s talking about the difference between a hearer and a doer, and remember the doer is the one he says we want to be. I mean it’s good to hear the word, but if that’s all you ever do, it’s pretty much worthless.

James says we want to go a step beyond that and be a doer of the word. Well, he calls out this fake religion that sometimes we see in churches and by churches, and this fake religion is full of show. There’s a show to be put on by fake religion if we’re not really following Jesus Christ and just seem to be.

You know, I really don’t want to get into anything radical like actually doing what the word says. Or the thing the preacher talked about last Sunday, I don’t want to do that. That would be too much trouble.

But I can sure look the part. And we want to guard ourselves against saying, I’m not really going to do what God asked me to do, but I want to make sure that I look. How am I going to look to the people at church?

How am I going to look to the people next door? We want to avoid, we want to make sure as doers of the word that we’re not putting on a show. Sometimes we can work harder at putting on a show than actually doing the thing that God called us to do.

I got a call this afternoon from, obviously from some scammers, calling and saying they had a message about the security settings on my computer, and it was sending them automatic messages that the firewall was turned off. And, you know, I try very hard to be just a polite man, and that’s how my parents raised me, but I find myself more and more turning into my dad, and I called him and told him so. Because as he’s talking, I’ve heard this story before, and I start laughing at the man on the phone.

I said, this is such a scam. Get off my phone. And I was going to hang up, and it really was a scam because he hung up before I could even push the button.

My mother called me this afternoon and said, you know that phone call you got where you said you were turning into your dad? I said, yeah. She said, they just called me too.

So she said, are you giving out my number? I said, no, ma’am. I didn’t have time to give out your number.

He hung up. Now, these people are working hard at scamming and trying to seem legitimate. I was sharing with Greg yesterday.

My grandfather was not great with money, and we knew that he was dealing with scammers. They’d been bleeding him dry for two years. My dad kept trying to put a stop to it.

Dad’s a banker, attends seminars with the FBI and different groups about teaching how to stop fraud and things like that. And we just never could get him to realize, hey, if you’re having to pay $10 to get your winnings, you did not win $108 million. And I told my mother, they forwarded the mail to them now that he’s passed.

I said, save the mail for me. And I brought back a bag this big from the city yesterday just of the mail he’s gotten in a week. And I said, you know, these scammers, I’m going to send them gospel tracts.

Or, because of what they’ve done, if it’s return postage paid, I’m going to fill it up with washers and mail it back. But these people, is that okay for the pastor to say? Because that is kind of mean.

Folks, you read this mail, I am coming to a point with this, I promise. I am coming to a point with this. You get these phone calls from these scammers, and you read this mail, and they try so hard to look legitimate.

And they try so hard to sound legitimate. And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought or said to somebody, if they would put as much creativity and ingenuity and effort into actually producing something for the good of society and helping people make people’s lives better and go into a legitimate business that does something, They could change the world and make millions. But they’re working harder at appearing legitimate than they actually would work at being legitimate.

I’m afraid sometimes we do the same thing. We work harder to look the part of being good Christians. I say we, I’m talking about Christians in general. Sometimes I fall into this category, sometimes you may fall into this category.

I don’t want you to feel tonight like I’m saying, this is what you do all the time and how dare you. I’m just sharing with you what James says, and sometimes I see myself in here that we work harder at trying to look like the real thing than we would work at actually being a real follower of Jesus Christ. There’s a lot of show in fake religion. Second of all, there’s a lot of bitterness in fake religion.

I have said before, and I’ve said it from the pulpit too, that some of the sweetest, most wonderful people that I have ever met in my life have been in church. You know, you hear all these, well, I could go down the list of people that I have pastored or people that I’ve attended with, attended church with before I was a pastor, who I just love to pieces. And I know they love me too, not because I’m so wonderful, but they’re just such sweet people.

And all the great times that we’ve had together. So some of the sweetest, most wonderful people I’ve ever met have been in church. Some of the meanest, nastiest people I’ve ever met have been in church.

is it not true there’s both of it unfortunately I haven’t seen any bladder here yet and I’m thankful for that but I have seen such meanness in church I have seen such gossip I have seen churches torn apart by gossip and by innuendo and by you know I want to look good so I’m going to tear this person down I have seen it and it is awful and sometimes I look at people and I think, you claim to be a Christian. Now, I’m not saying I’m perfect. I have said things I shouldn’t have said before.

We all have. But I’ve seen people who profess to be a Christian and make a habit of just being mean and nasty and rude to people. And guys, I’m not bragging on myself because like I said, I have said things that I shouldn’t have.

I have been harsh with people when I shouldn’t have been. I’ve used the wrong tone with people that I should not have used. And it makes me feel bad.

It makes me feel bad inside, and I have to go back and apologize. And there will probably be times, I’m sure, if the Lord keeps me here long enough, there will be times with probably each one of you that I will have to come to you and say, I’m sorry, if that sounded rude, I did not mean it that way. Because sometimes a tone will come out that just wasn’t intended.

It makes me feel bad, and I wonder sometimes how people who profess to be Christians can just make a habit of being hateful and nasty to each other or to other people and never seem to be bothered by it. Well, I’m just doing the Lord’s work. They needed to hear it.

James tells us, If any man among you seem to be religious and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man’s religion is vain. Not having control of your tongue, having a bitter, angry tongue that just lashes out all the time, is a sign that maybe the whole following Jesus thing is a show and not real. It might be a sign that we’re being hearers at that point and not really doers. And folks, even though I know I’m a believer, I know I’m saved, I know what Jesus Christ did for me, and I know the change that he’s made and is still making, sometimes I hear what comes out of my mouth, and it’s a reminder to me of, you need to check where you are with God right now, because this is not, you know, please don’t think your pastor’s out cussing people out.

I’m not. But sometimes just that little short tone, or sometimes just that, you know, I’m just going to tell you like it is, a little further than I should. Sometimes that sneaks out of there.

I’m human. and I hear myself and I think, okay, I need to make sure that I’m where I need to be with God because if I can’t control this, or better said, if I’m not letting him control this, there’s a problem. You probably all heard that saying, that prayer that people pray sometimes, Lord, keep your arm around your shoulder and your hand over my mouth.

I need God to do that. I need God to keep his hand over my mouth. I need his help in bridling my tongue.

And I think even when we’re trying to be doers of the word, I’m not saying we’re going to be perfect. But folks, if it’s just whatever I want to say, I don’t care how it makes you feel, I don’t care who it hurts, it makes me feel better and I’m going to say what I want to say, we might need to, at the very least, I’m going to tell you we need to stop and check that we are where we need to be in our relationship with God. Because James tells us if we can’t bridle our own tongues, then our religion is fake.

Our religion is fake. And third of all tonight, fake religion is not only full of show and full of bitterness, but it’s full of deception. It’s full of deception.

See, we put on a show to everybody else, but the deception is us. He says that he deceiveth his own heart. If any man among you seem to be religious and bridle with not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man’s religion is vain.

See, we can fool people for a little while. We can put on a show for a little while. But eventually our true colors are going to show through.

Everybody’s going to see who we really are. But we are the easiest people in the world to fool. It is easier for me to fool me than it is for me to fool you.

And it’s easier for you to fool you than for you to fool me or to fool each other. See, we look in our own hearts and see what we want to see. A lot of times I have to pray and sa

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