Put Away All Filthiness and Every Remnant of Malice

Let us turn to the word of the Lord. As you know, we are studying the book of James, focusing on certain specific moments, certain specific points. We are in no hurry; we are moving little by little, as long as we benefit from that word of the Lord, which is so rich and so profound.

In verse 21 of chapter 1, the Wednesday before last, we were talking about how James says, “Therefore,” and that “therefore” means, as a consequence of what was said previously. And James has spoken about the Father’s generosity, his love for us, his goodness. He says that every good gift, every perfect gift, comes from him, and then he says that, as a result of all these things and of the fact that we must be careful about how we speak, how we behave toward others, and be slow to speak, slow to anger, quick to listen, etc.—because of all these very serious things—we must therefore lay aside all filthiness and abundance of wickedness.

Listen, right there they took out four or five of us at once: all filthiness and abundance of wickedness. I hope no one here falls into that category. It seems I struck a nerve with someone there; you are laughing as if to say, “Could it be me, Lord?”

And I was saying, unless I am mistaken, that sometimes you first have to take things off before putting things on; you have to lay aside before receiving. And something occurs to me right now—notice how the Holy Spirit works—this very moment, as I say this, I receive new insight into that. “Laying aside” is a very strong, very intentional expression.

We have to lay aside, which means something like repudiating, renouncing, rejecting. Do you know something? Unless we make a radical decision in our lives, I believe that the essence of the remainder of that passage, of that verse 21, is the call to holiness; it is the call to a life that pleases the Lord; it is the call to a life of integrity. It is a difficult call for all of us, but it is the very essence of the Christian life.

Until we confront God’s call to be different from the world, to live a lifestyle different from the way we lived before—until that becomes a passion in our hearts and a great desire—we frankly have not truly arrived. We are merely religious people, but we are not spiritual people.

So I believe that, at this time, God is calling all of us as a church to embrace holiness so that he can do what he wants to do in our lives and in our congregation. You will remember that in the Old Testament, when the Hebrews were about to cross from the wilderness into Canaan, an angel of the Lord met Joshua, who was now the chief leader after Moses’ death, and told him, “Circumcise all the people for me, because from this day forward I am going to perform great wonders among you.”

And that circumcision meant that they were to consecrate themselves. Circumcision was a sign of total belonging to the Lord; it was the mark upon a man—and, by extension, upon his women as well—that this human being belonged to God. It was like branding cattle with a hot iron; well, a man was circumcised in his most strategic place, so to speak.

At the very center of his personhood, he was marked as a man who belonged to God, and for the rest of his life he would bear in his body the mark of belonging to the Lord. No other tribe or nation bore that mark. Nowadays it is done for reasons of hygiene, but at that time the Hebrews were the only ones who did it, and it was a mark that the person belonged to the Lord.

Notice that God tells him, “Before I can perform the wonders I want to perform among you, you must consecrate yourselves to me and be sealed.” And I believe that this happens in our lives: before God can do something in us, he has to sanctify and purify us.

I call you—and myself as well—right now, brothers and sisters, in this season of our life as a church, to redouble our resolve to live lives that are pleasing to the Lord, to be a congregation distinguished by people of integrity, and to ensure that anyone who is not living with that integrity feels profoundly uncomfortable.

I am speaking in very radical terms, and may God help me to do this on Sundays as well. It is a shame—truly, we ought to be preaching these meditations on Sundays too. It happened to fall on a Wednesday, and I stumbled upon it and became immersed in this process, but I know that we will have to do it as well, and I intend to.

God wants each one of us to make a commitment to consecrate ourselves so that God can then do what he wants in our lives. I am talking about something difficult, brothers and sisters; it is not easy. I understand very well how difficult it is. I understand what it means to struggle against the flesh, to struggle against the temptations within us and our normal biology, and therefore—unless one lays things aside—I want to pause there over that word, “laying aside.”

We must renounce sinfulness, we must renounce impurity, we must develop an aversion, a strong aversion to sinfulness in order to achieve holiness.

If we do not come to repudiate and abhor sin, we will not be able to live proper lives. We must ask the Lord, “Father, develop in me an active aversion to a sinful life, so that it truly pains me to offend you and violate your will.”

I believe that before we can please the Lord, we must repudiate and reject. The words of Job also come to mind. This man Job resolved to live a life of integrity, and that is why God honored him as he did, and that is why, in fact, he suffered what he suffered: because he was a threat to Satan. And that is why Satan speaks to God; he wants to discredit Job before God.

When we make a covenant with God and resolve to live a life that pleases the Lord, you can be sure that the enemy will do everything possible to try to discredit and defeat us, but we must persevere. But I like what he says: “I made a covenant with my eyes.” One has to make a covenant with one’s mind, make a covenant with one’s heart, make a covenant with one’s body: “I made a covenant with…” That means something like, “I bound myself by a commitment with my eyes,” regarding looking at a young woman, but it can apply to anything else in life.

If you do not make a covenant with holiness, you will not attain it. It is hard, it is difficult, but we must do it, brothers and sisters. And we must make an agreement with God. I call my brothers and sisters to that; I call my own life to it as well. May God help us and deliver us from the enemy’s cynicism and evil intentions.

That is why I believe James says, “Therefore, laying aside…” And that is what the Lord has placed on my heart. Let us lay it aside; let us make an agreement with ourselves and with God not to live lives that discredit the gospel. And if we are struggling, brothers and sisters, do not receive this as condemnation that adds more pain to your struggle. If you are doing everything possible and are struggling, then entrust yourself to the Lord’s grace and mercy, because God is merciful too, but let us not use that as an excuse. But neither do I want you, if you are struggling with some situation in your life, to leave here in despair.

The Christian lives within the tension between God’s justice and holiness and his grace and mercy. That keeps us from becoming neurotic, because there are also people who become so obsessed with holiness that it turns into a neurosis. Then they are continually scourging themselves; that is where you get the monk in his cold cell with his whip, beating himself to drive the demons out of his body. That did not work.

We have to live between God’s holiness and his grace, and if we fail, we get up again, but we maintain our resolve. We do not abuse the Lord’s holiness, because the Lord has to be just; even if he does not want to, he has to do it, because he cannot violate his holiness. And the devil is a horrible accuser who does not let even one thing slide.

We have to lay things aside. That is why it says, “laying aside all filthiness”; that is, filthiness means every impurity, uncleanness, sinfulness, things that are unbecoming to the Lord, everything ugly, everything vile, every impurity, all lust, all those things. Many things qualify. In fact, I do not believe it refers only to sexual things: every sin, every filthy thing, every vile thing that is contrary to the nature of God—we have to lay it aside, reject it, cast it out of our lives.

And all abundance of wickedness—because there are people who are not filthy, but they are malicious. So we all fall under this: whoever does not fall into one category falls into the other. Some people are not filthy, but they are gossips. “Oh, Lord, thank you that I am not…” but they are gossiping over there, cutting people down, criticizing, and driving away the new little sheep who come to church with hurtful words.

The idea is that whether they are flaws of character or flaws of behavior, let us lay them aside and remove them from our lives; let us reflect the character of Jesus.

Laying that aside, and receiving… So we must receive with meekness; we lay things aside and then open ourselves to receive actively. That word “receive” is an active word. It is like welcoming something, actively opening ourselves to it, and saying, “Come, enter; I am open to you.”

“And receive with meekness.” Notice that; this idea of receiving with meekness is interesting. Here the Christian is presented to us in a feminine form, receiving as the word penetrates—forgive the sexual image; I am talking about purity and should not even get into that subject. But the idea is that we are, as it were, impregnated by the word: we open ourselves to the word, and the word penetrates us, implants itself within us, and brings forth its life. It is like the image of a man impregnating a woman. We open ourselves to the word with meekness; we say, “Lord, I will not resist your word.”

This idea of receiving it with meekness means that we do not fight against it; we do not try to rationalize the word away. So many people sit there, and when the pastor is preaching and says something, they are trying to see what clause they can find to escape what he is telling them, like a lawyer. And it should not be that way. What we have to do is say, “Okay, he told me that, and it is true. I receive it and apply it to myself.”

We have to be fertile soil, soil open to the penetration of the word of the Lord. I love those Christians who are like children. You tell them anything, and they receive it and believe it and pursue it. I am excited by those people who are in love with the Lord, in love with the word, and are trying to please the Lord and submit their lives to the Lord. You tell them anything, and like children they take hold of it and run with it.

What happens is that, as time goes by, we become very sophisticated as Christians and cease to have that hunger and simplicity of spirit. How beautiful it is when people are in their first love. In truth, we ought to live in our first love every day of our lives. There is no second love; there is only a first love. Everything else is indifference; there is nothing else.

But when people are in love with the word of God and receive it like children, with meekness, then God can do his work in us. God loves the Christian who is meek, humble, and simple toward the word, who does not fight against the word but opens himself to its penetration.

Then it says, “Receive with meekness the implanted word.” The last time we spoke, we talked about that: “implanted” is like grafting, the grafted word. I said then that what a graft does is impart the graft’s nature to the tree; it enters it almost genetically, and then the fruit that emerges reflects the genetics of the graft.

That is James’s idea: implanted—the idea of being grafted in. We could stay here; what a shame that we do not have more time, because I am stuck here. For days I have wanted to delve into this meaning of the living word, the power of the word, the life of the word. Do you know that this is not an inert book? This is paper, but it is also alive. Do not ask me to explain how that chemistry works, but this word is as alive as a living being. The content of the word of God, the spirit within the word of God, is a living spirit. This is not like any other word. The words of men are like bullets that, when fired, eventually lose their momentum and fall dead to the ground.

But the word of God is living, the Bible says. And time and again one sees that quality the word has: when it enters a heart filled with faith and open to it, it goes in and begins to move within the person and does something inside us; it has an effect, changes us, reconfigures us, transforms us, and little by little reorganizes the nature of our being. Over time, that word will change you into something different if you love it, venerate it, respect it, try to obey it as much as possible, and fill yourself with faith when you approach it. That word will perform a transforming work in your life, but it takes people who are in love with the word, people who are respectful and reverent before the word, and people who receive it with meekness.

So, I want to get into that later, but time is already—nor do I want to get into something else that is going to take us a long time. One of the things it says about that word is that it can save your souls. Let me finish with that. One of the things the word of God does is that it can save, preserve, our souls. That word can ensure that when we die, we go into the presence of the Lord.

Everything the Bible does is show us how to have fellowship with the Father and how to live in such a way that, at the end of our days, we can enter into the presence of the Lord and have eternal life with Him. That word is so powerful; that word gets inside us, does its work, and its final product—what makes it so worthy of respect and admiration—is that it can save our souls.

If only each one of us had a serious sense of what is at stake when we are in the Gospel.

One of the most serious things is that, as Christians, we need to be possessed by this idea that we are involved in something very serious. It is a matter of life and death; our eternal destiny is at risk. And so, when we are in the Kingdom, we are dealing with matters of eternal life and eternal death, and we need to understand that what guarantees our eternal life is that word of God, which contains all the teachings we need for a healthy relationship with God so that we may enter into that eternal life at the end of our earthly life.

I believe many of us sin because we do not understand the seriousness of what we are doing here. And we do not understand how serious it is to walk in the ways of the Lord—that it is a matter of life or death; it is about decisions that can affect our eternal destiny and the destiny of many people in humanity. As children of God, we are possessed by a sense of seriousness about what we do, and we have to take hold of that word, clinging to it as a castaway clings to a plank in the middle of the sea, which is his guarantee that he can at least stay afloat until someone comes to rescue him.

And the word of God is like a plank that God has thrown to us in a dangerous world so that we may take hold of it; it is like a burning torch shining in the darkness. That word is our guarantee of eternal life, and that is why we have to revere it, receive it with meekness, and work with it. Let us fall in love with the word of the Lord.

I always talk about my mother. One of the things she taught us from childhood was to love the word. She was not a highly educated woman, but when she converted to the Lord, she gave everything to the Lord. I have hardly ever seen anyone—I am sure there are many women and men like that, but I have known few people, and I do not say this merely because she was my mother—who loved the word of God so much and who gave herself so radically to obeying it and living it out.

We live with the fruit of that devotion. You could see how that word lived in her, filled her with a natural wisdom, a simple wisdom, and produced incredible fruit. And that is what happens when a person falls in love with the word. And she somehow bequeathed that to us. All of us have always loved it; we know that you cannot be a mature, powerful, fruitful Christian if you do not love the word.

Brothers and sisters who are new to the faith, if you do not have a Bible, run and get yourself one quickly. Buy yourself a good Bible, begin reading it, and ask the Lord to give you wisdom. The beautiful thing about the word of God is that you do not have to be highly educated. If you can barely read, you already have everything you need to benefit from that word. Do you know what is ironic? There are people who have doctorates in theology and do not get half as much benefit from the Bible as some people with almost no education, because the Bible is a book that opens itself only to the person who approaches it with humility and an appetite of the heart, asks the Holy Spirit to illuminate his life, and then gives himself time to study the Bible.

Brothers and sisters, I encourage you in the name of the Lord: do not be intimidated because you do not read very well or do not know anything; believe that the Bible is able to speak to you if you give it time. And begin to study that Bible; do not let a single day go to waste without reading. I know I am speaking to people here who love the Lord and come to church but do not read the Bible at home; they have not developed an appetite for the Bible. You are content—I am not saying this to condemn you—but you are content to receive your food from up here, and that is not enough.

There is nothing like reading the word and eating from it directly. It is the difference between eating canned peaches and going to a tree, picking a fresh, perfectly ripe peach from it, and eating it right there. It is the difference between drinking that watered-down milk they sometimes sell at the grocery store and going to the cow herself and drinking it there, frothy and warm. There is a big difference.

No biblical truth tastes as good as the truth you have discovered through your own exploration of the word. Yes or no? Those discoveries in the morning, with a little cup of tea or coffee in your hand as you read your word—there is nothing like that, brothers and sisters; that will remain in your life. Love the word; let us become lovers of the word.

I challenge you tonight in the name of the Lord to become avid consumers of the word of God and to have your Bible marked up. Do not be afraid to pick up a pencil; the Bible loves to be marked. Yes. Do not be falsely reverent: “Oh, no, it is the word of God; I cannot.” No, my friend, wrinkle the Bible, mark it as much as you want; let drops of coffee and tea and café au lait be visible on it—that means you were consuming it while you were—never mind. In fact, a little drop of blood and a few tears on it from time to time would not be bad either.

Amen. There is nothing like a well-marked, well-wrinkled Bible. That means it is being used. If I see a Bible around here that is perfectly neat, I say, “This person is not reading the Bible.”

Therefore, laying aside all filthiness—in fact, stand up; let us all read that. Get yourselves ready, straighten your shirts and your pants, and let us all read it together in the name of the Lord. Let us make a covenant with the Lord right now.

Therefore, laying aside all filthiness and abundance of malice, receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls. Give the Lord a great round of applause. Amen. Glory to God. Glory to God.

You can even memorize a verse like that. A verse like that is extraordinarily powerful, brothers and sisters, and you can memorize something like that, and it has incredible power because it gets into your spirit, and you can remember that passage: “Wow, it is telling me this; it is telling me that.” Pause over every word, every verb; that is how one consumes the word of the Lord.

Father, thank You for Your word, which we have proclaimed tonight. Lord, each one of us receives that message in our hearts. We place it, Lord, in our souls, in our spirits, and we ask You to help us reach that goal, Father. I clearly understand that what I have declared is incredibly serious; it is a commitment, Father, that I make to myself and to my church, and that every brother and sister makes to Your word tonight.

And we ask You to help us not to fall from that height, Father, which we have declared tonight, and may this word reach the hearts not only of those who are here, but may it run throughout our congregation, Father, creating a church like the one this verse describes. We receive it in our hearts now, Father, and we thank You for Your word.

Thank You, Lord. Thank You for this beautiful people whom You are raising up. Thank You for the service, Lord, that You are giving us. Bless my brothers and my sisters tonight, renew their strength within them, Father, and take them home rejuvenated and strengthened anew. And tomorrow, Father, and during what remains of Friday and Thursday, may we have a good week of work, whether at home, in the factory, on the bus, or wherever it may be. Father, bless and prosper Your people.

And Lord, we ask You to fill this church with Your power, Father. Nest in this place, Lord. We want more of You; as we were saying, we hunger for You, Lord, we hunger for You. This church hungers for You. Oh, Holy Spirit, we are hungry for You. Spirit of God, if You would rest upon this congregation, Lord; if You would visit us, Lord; if You would visit us as You visited those Apostles in the upper room, Lord; if You would make this church a display of Your glory, Father, of the God who is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

Oh Lord, if You would do something different, something new, something that would capture the world’s attention, Father, for Your glory. If You would make this place, Lord, a fountain of grace for humanity—we dare to ask You in this way, Lord—if You would visit us, if You would fertilize us, if You would impregnate us, Lord, with Your mighty Spirit and make us worthy, Lord, to contain Your glory and manifest Your power, Father. Flood our service, Lord; flood our gatherings; flood our programs; touch our leaders; burst forth, Lord, in our midst with Your power. Oh God, we ask You, have mercy. Look upon our hunger, our thirst for You. We have an appetite to see Your glory manifested, Lord, and to see Your church lift up its head, Father, instead of being ashamed as it is in this time, Father—powerless, Lord.

Lift up the head of Your people, Lord. And may Your will be done among the nations, Father. Quiet the madness, Lord, that has taken possession of this world, Father, and give Your church power, a prophetic voice, Lord, in the city. Do something, Lord, in our midst; we offer ourselves to You, we open ourselves to You, Lord. We lay ourselves upon the altar of sacrifice so that You may do something different, Lord, with this congregation. We surrender it to You, Father. I am not worthy to manage it, but You have the power to take control of it, Father, and that is what we ask of You tonight, Lord. Glorify Yourself, Lord. We need You, and we want more of You; we want more of Your glory. Work in us, Lord. Please, Father, we ask You, we ask You, we ask You in the name of Jesus. Amen. Thank You, Lord.