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Three
Platinum Rules |
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Pocket Paper ______________________ Message by Robert J. Morgan, Senior Pastor The Donelson Fellowship 3210 McGavock Pike 615/871-4769 www.donelson.org Today is a great day for us because it’s a
great day for our young people; and as we dedicate our The first sermon that I remember preaching was
when I was just a kid in Well, if there was ever a day of golden
opportunities for students, it’s today. The Lord has never needed teenagers
more or used them more greatly.
But neither has there been a time when temptations have been more
accessible, dangers more evident, skepticism more blatant, and the future so
uncertain. Today I’d like to give our students and all
the rest of us three platinum rules for living. You’ve heard about the Golden
Rule—well, these are platinum rules, and they are easy enough to
memorize as lifelong principles for a great life. They’re found in the book of
James, chapter 1. We’re in
a series of studies from the New Testament book of James, and last week we
finished with verse 18, and today we’re going pick up our study with
verse 19, so this special sermon for young people and for all of us is a
continuation of our winter series entitled 365. The passage says: My dear
brothers, take note of this:
Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become
angry, for man’s anger does not bring about the righteous life that God
desires. 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 (James The first thing to notice about this passage is
that there are two preliminary comments.
The first is the address: My dear brothers…. That is, “my dear brothers
in Christ… my fellow Christians.” Later this year, the Olympic Games will be held in
Now suppose that I found one of those rulebooks,
which had been left behind on a café table or park bench. I might find it very interesting. I might find that it contained helpful
advice. But if I had not
qualified for the Olympics, it would not apply to me. It would be somebody else’s
book. I would not even be able to
keep the rules and observe the regulations. I’d be on the outside. That’s the way it is with these three platinum
rules—they are for people who are on the inside of the Christian life,
who have made a decision to follow Jesus Christ and who, as a result, have
the Holy Spirit indwelling them and empowering them to live a supernatural
life. The Bible is full of
insights about supernatural living, but we can’t claim its promises or
obey its commands without the supernatural aid of the Holy Spirit. That’s why it’s important
for you, if you’re not a Christian, to come to Jesus Christ today. Now, there is a second word of introduction before
we get to the three rules. Look
at verse 19 again: My dear brother, take note of this. The King James Version follows a
variant reading and just says, “Wherefore….” But the Greek word is oida, which means, “You know
it,” or “Know this,” and it really comes at the very
beginning of the sentence.
It’s very emphatic.
If you translate this from the literal Greek, it is: Know
this, my beloved brothers….
Or, Of this you can be
certain…. Or, Remember this…. Some commentators think James is telling us to
memorize this passage and to hide these three rules in our hearts. It seems to be written in an
aphorismatic style, as an aphorism, to be committed permanently to our brain
cells. So the first phrase of verse 19 says two things: Ø
This is very important; we should memorize it. Ø
This is for believers, to those who are brothers and sisters in
Christ. 1. Be Quick to Hear And now, with that prologue, we come to the three
platinum rules. The first: My
dear brothers, take note of this:
Everyone should be quick to listen. This word quick is found thirteen times in the New
Testament. There are times when
we need to do something quickly, urgently, promptly. For example, Matthew 5 tells us to
settle things quickly with our adversary. In Matthew 28, the angel at the tomb
told the women to go quickly and tell the disciples that Jesus had risen from
the dead. Well, said James, here
is something we should do quickly—we should be quick to listen, quick
to hear. The Jewish rabbis said that God gave us
two ears and one mouth so that we would do twice as much listening as
speaking. Who should we listen
to? Well, the book of Proverbs
says that we should listen to our parents. This is especially in the earlier
chapters of Proverbs; there are a lot of admonitions about this.
Listen, my son, hear my words, treasure my teachings…. I’m bringing this up because
it’s not always an easy thing to do. The years from 13 to 19 are years in
which we’re learning to be independent, to be self-governing, to be
more in control of our own reactions and decisions. So we tend to bristle when our parents
still try to control or advise. I remember how it was between my parents
and me when I was in high school.
My parents were both high school teachers, and I had them for class
every day, so I couldn’t escape them! And there were occasionally some
difficult moments that I’ll not go into. But I can say that even when I
didn’t want to listen and even when I disagreed, and even when I knew I
was right—I still knew that my dad had a lot of sense. And at the important moments, he spoke
to me in a way that I could accept, and I listened to him. And even today, even though he’s
been gone many years, I still find myself thinking, “What would my dad
say? How would he advise
me?” Let everyone of us be quick to listen. And then we should listen to our leaders
at church and to the preaching of the Word. When I was in college, I had a buddy
named Joe who was a close friend to Billy and Ruth Graham. We sat together in chapel and we went
to church together in That was a rebuke to Joe, and later he
asked Ruth about it. She told him
to listen more carefully and to take notes. And I remember seeing Joe in chapel
and in church with his little notebook, meticulously taking notes during the
sermon, jotting down the outline, the cross-references, and even the stories
and illustrations. And it made a
huge difference every week. Let everyone of us be quick to listen to
our parents and advisors, to our preachers and teachers. But to be perfectly honest with this text,
the specific application of James Look at the context. The preceding verse, James To hear what? The Word of Truth. And notice what comes next, right after
this paragraph in verse 22: Do not merely listen to the Word, and so
deceive yourselves. Do what it
says…. So while its important to listen to our
parents and to our teachers and preachers and counselors, it’s even
more important to read our Bibles, listen to God’s Word, and do what it
says. I read this week about a Hispanic teenage
girl named Madolyn who was working at a restaurant. One of the other waitresses made a
racist comment to her in front of customers. As soon as she could, Madolyn confronted
this other girl. They got into a
shoving match in the back room, and Madolyn’s anger exploded, and she
punched the girl in the face. The manager fired both girls on the spot, and
Madolyn marched out of the restaurant in a rage. On her way home she thought about her
anger. For many years, she had
been subject to racial taunts.
Even back in elementary school, children had called her names because
of her Mexican heritage. She had
internalized her anger until she had gotten to high school, and now she was
increasingly vocal and physical in the way she expressed her anger. She’d even gotten into some
fistfights. She certainly had a reason to be angry;
but Madolyn was also a Christian, and she knew that she had not really
allowed God into this angry part of her life. One night shortly afterward at a meeting
of her church youth group, two guys got into a shouting match and started
shoving each other. The next
week, these two guys got up and stood in front of the group, apologized to
each other, and read Proverbs 22:24:
Do not make friends with a
hot-tempered man; do not associate with one easily angered.” Madolyn wrote, “Those words hit me
like a blow to the gut. That
verse is talking about me.”
She thought of how hot-tempered and immature she had been. And even though her anger was
understandable and even justifiable, it wasn’t healthy. She thought about her bad language and
threats. And she later wrote that
hearing Proverbs Let everyone one of us be quick to
hear—our parents and teachers and preachers and advisors, but
especially our God and His Word. 2. Be Slow to Speak That brings us to the second platinum
rule: Be slow to speak. Verse 19 says: My
dear brothers, take note of this:
Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak…. Now, I’m not going to say a great deal about
this because we’re going to come back it again and again as we work our
way through this little book of James.
This epistle is very concerned about the way Christians use their
mouths and their tongues, and James keeps bringing it up. Look at verse 26: If
anyone considers himself religious and yet does not keep a tight rein on his
tongue, he deceives himself and his religion is worthless. And look at chapter 2, verse 12: Speak
and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom. And look at chapter 3:5: Likewise
the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on
fire by a small spark. The tongue
also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person. And look at chapter 4, verse 11: Brothers,
do not slander one another… And chapter 5, verse 9: Don’t
grumble against each other, brothers…. I have no respect for people who grumble or
slander or resort to obscenity and profanity. We’ve had an example of this
very subject this week in our headlines.
The basketball coach at Texas Tech resigned—Bobby Knight. He
should have been remembered as a brilliant basketball coach and for winning
more college games than any other coach, but how people do people think of
him? What’s his
reputation? When we hear his
name, we think of an angry man who can’t control his temper or his
mouth. Let everyone of us be slow to speak. 3. Be Slow to Become
Angry And that brings us to the third platinum
rule—be slow to become angry.
Verse 19 says: My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen,
slow to speak, and slow to become angry. Someone once said, “People who fly into a
rage always make a bad landing.” This is one of the most important lessons for
students, because it is the barometer of maturity. When we’re born, we have little
control over our emotions, and so we get angry easily and throw temper tantrums. I was in the grocery store the other
day when this happened. A parent
was at the store with her preschool child, and I’m not sure what
happened but that child had a total meltdown. You’ve never heard such
screaming and crying kicking and fussing. To her credit, this parent handled it
as well as she possible could, but all of us who are parents know something
about children’s meltdowns and temper tantrums. But as we grow older we’ve got to learn to
control our emotions. One of the
most important aspects of maturity is gaining control over our reactions, and
one of the most important aspects of Christian maturity is letting the Holy
Spirit have control over our emotions, like the Hispanic girl I talked about
earlier. When people lose their
temper, they lose the respect of others, but they also lose respect for
themselves. But there’s an even bigger reason to be
long-tempered, and it’s given in the next verse, which I think is one
of the most profound verses in the Bible on the subject of anger. Look at verses 19-20: My
dear brothers, take note of this:
Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become
angry, for man’s anger does not bring about the righteous life that God
desires. In other words: Ø
A holy life never grows out of an angry spirit. Ø
Bitterness never makes us better. Ø
A hot temper never leads to higher ground. Ø
Positive accomplishments for the Lord are never produced by angry
passions. Ø
The Phillips Translation says:
Man’s temper is never the
means of achieving God’s true goodness. Ø
The Living Bible says: Anger
doesn’t make us good, as God demands that we must be. Now, here’s what I want to say to our
students and to all the rest of us.
These three platinum rules—as simple as they are—can make
all the difference in the future as to whether you are a person who is mature
and respected and useful for the kingdom. You say, “Well, I’m not
exactly hitting on all three of those cylinders. What can I do?” That’s the last verse of the
paragraph—verse 21: Therefore, get rid of all moral
filth…. Is there any moral filth in your life? Get rid of it… …and
the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word that is planted in
you, which can save you. The Lord wants to take these three little rules and
plant them in your brain and in your heart. So you have to clear away the weeds
and prepare the soil and let these three little seed thoughts take root in
your mind and heart and soul. And as we dedicate this Youth Ministry Center
today, my message to you is this:
My dear brothers and sisters,
take note of this: Let every one
of us be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to become angry, because our
angry reactions do not produce the mature and holy life that God desires. So get rid of all the moral filth in
your life and the evil that is so prevalent, and humbly accept the word that
is planted within you, which can save you and mature you and make you great
in the eyes of the Lord. Copyright StatementWe grant permission for any edition of The Pocket Paper to be photocopied for use in a local congregation or classroom, provided no more than 1,000 copies are made, the material is distributed free, and the copies include the notice: "Copyright (year) The Donelson Fellowship."For any other use, advance permission must be obtained from The Donelson Fellowship church office.Other messages are available from our website. Just click on the Pocket Papers link on our home page for a list of available messages. |
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