It was great to come on campus yesterday and notice some people working out in our landscaping. I want to thank at least two life communities that were here yesterday working on some areas. We appreciate very much your labor of love and helping us in that way. Let's give them a hand, indeed. This afternoon at 5 o'clock there is a praise service at Church on the Hill for what God did during the Harvest Crusade. I want to encourage you to come and be a part of that one hour session.
There will be some great stories shared as to what God did. That's at 5 o'clock this afternoon. And then please remember that Thursday night at 7 is our prayer meeting that we call Body Life Intercession. We meet up in Fellowship Hall and it's going to be a great, great evening. This Tuesday is the day to go out and vote. Now I don't know how you feel about it. You may feel like, well, what's the use?
A lot of people feel that way these days for some reason, but I want to tell you it's a big use to it. There are some very important ballot initiatives on the ballot here in California, and I encourage you to go and make your voice heard. If you don't vote, then somebody else is going to make their voice heard, and you may not like what they have to say. So let your voice be heard along with many others this Tuesday in voting.
Next Saturday we have our first class, which is an opportunity for those of you who may be new to our church to find out more about the ministry of Los Gatos Christian Church. So please join us at 9 o'clock on Saturday morning. We just go straight for three hours, but it goes so fast you can't believe it.
We're going to be talking about some of the history of the church and the doctrines, what we believe and how we operate here, and it lines you up for membership if you want to take that step, and we hope you will. But it's an opportunity also for me to get to know you as a newcomer more personally. So please join us and let us know that you're coming. The details about that are in the worship folder today. Well, oxymorons are a lot of fun to me. I enjoy reading some of them.
I think you know what they are. They are self-contradictory expressions. For example, civil war. A war that is civil? Come on now. I grew up in the Midwest, and in the state where I grew up there was a town called liberal Kansas. Not a chance of that one fitting together, let me tell you. We occasionally hear the term on the news these days, conservative Democrat. Well, really. But I know we have to have fair play, so let's think about another phrase we sometimes hear.
This was a Republican initiative. Some of us have been waiting years for some initiative from the Republicans. We were out eating at a sandwich place this weekend. My wife, we ordered one large sandwich and we cut it, right? And so she said to the girl behind the counter, cut one half larger than the other. No, no, it wasn't for her, it was for me. But the point is larger half. Really, okay? We talk about deafening silence. We may see somebody and we say, oh, they were pretty ugly. Okay?
And then of course there's accordion music. No, really, I don't mind the accordion myself. Married life. No, I'm sorry. I just threw that one in for free. And then there's one of my favorite ones, organized religion. I have yet to see religion be organized. Excuse me, in 35 years of ministry. Well, that word religion is the one I want to key off on in our text today and I ask you to open your Bible with me to James chapter 1, where we're going to look at verses 26 and 27.
James chapter 1, 26 and 27. If anyone considers himself religious and yet does not keep a tight rein on his tongue, he deceives himself and his religion is worthless. Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this, to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. Religion is a word that doesn't resonate very well with most evangelicals.
It smacks to us of institutionalism or of some system of ethics rather than a real vital faith. We say Christianity is not a religion, it's a what? A relationship. And that's true enough, isn't it? Christianity is in fact a miracle. It is a new birth into eternal life. It is by grace through faith in the saving, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And we understand that Christianity is not just a religion, it's a relationship that we're brought into.
In fact, James talks a little bit about this in verse 18 when he says, God the Father chose to give us birth through the word of truth that we might be a kind of first fruits of all he created. James recognizes that it's a relationship, it's a birthing relationship. In chapter 2 and verse 1 he says, my brothers, as believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ. So Christianity is a belief system, but it's also a miraculous birth into the family of God. Have you been born again?
If you do know the meaning of what it means to be born again, you know that it's not just religion. But having said that, we have to deal with what James says in our text. That having a relationship with Jesus, being born by the word of truth, there is inherent in that religion. And he seems to say here, doesn't he, that religion can be worthless or religion can be, as he puts it, pure and faultless before God. The Greek word religion has to do with piety.
It's the outward expression of one's religious duty. Finally it goes back to the idea of wailing, of wailing. And you say, well how's that? Well because wailing was an outward expression of what one felt in his heart. The heart's invisible and the wailing was the expression of the sorrow and the grief. And so this word developed over time to mean that which is outward or ceremonial. It's what a worshiper performs. And we talk of it as being piety.
It's the religious duty of somebody who is a person of faith. James' perspective as he writes these words is very Jewish. He wants to know what practical difference does your faith in Jesus Christ make. What is the religion, the piety that is seen in you because you are a person of faith? Your profession to be a person of faith, a follower of Jesus, James is saying, is validated by what it produces in your life.
Sometimes James is thought to be in conflict with Paul and his teaching of justification by faith. That's thought because of what James says. For example in chapter 2 verse 24, let your eye drop down there. James says you see that a person is justified by what he does, not by faith alone. Now if you take that verse right out of its context and you look at it you say, well absolutely Paul and James are on different pages.
Because Paul said justification by faith alone, James is saying works, has to be involved. How do you explain that? Well the answer is that they're talking about two different things. James is talking here about one's profession of faith being justified. How can you justify your claim to be a person of faith if you don't have some works to it? That's his point. James is telling us that real faith wears work shoes. It works itself out in observable and measurable ways.
For example in verse 14 of chapter 2 he says, what good is it my brothers if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds, has no works? He says can such faith save him? And the answer is no. It's a worthless faith. In verse 17 he says in the same way faith by itself, if it's not accompanied by action, is dead. It's dead, it's worthless. Real faith wears work shoes. In the text that we're looking at though, James says about religion that it must be pure and undefiled. What does that look like?
Well we find out. James gives us in this short text three practical, everyday, work shoe kinds of evidence that one's faith is real, that one's religion is real. First he says real religion is communication that is bridled. He says it this way, if anyone considers himself religious and does not keep a tight rein on his tongue, literally he says does not bridle his tongue, he deceives himself. His religion is worthless.
He says in the negative, the positive way of saying it is, that real religion is characterized by communication that is bridled. The tongue is the capacity that God has given you and me to communicate. It's the means by which we're able to articulate our thoughts so that we can give people a piece of our mind. Hopefully we don't give away too many pieces over our lives. With God's good gift of speech we can communicate our thoughts and our feelings.
We can articulate that which is known only to us, ourselves, and to God. We can tell others what's inside of us. And James has a lot to say about the tongue in this brief epistle. He views how a Christian uses his tongue as evidence of faith, a measurement of one's spiritual walk. He says that one who has real religion has a bridle on his tongue. I grew up around horses. When I was just a young boy we bought a pony and we named him Comet. I grew up with Comet. I rode Comet everywhere I went.
He was trigger, he was champion, he was all of those horses that the cowboys of that day rode depending upon which cowboy I wanted to be that particular day. But his real name was Comet. He was pretty wild when we first got him. He hadn't been broken yet. We had to train him to allow us to get on him. That began by getting him used to what's called a halter. Are you familiar with that? It's a piece of leather and harness that goes around the horse's head. It scares them at first.
They're uncomfortable with it. But you gradually get them to wear this piece that allows you to lead them and to hold them in place. Then after they're used to the halter you put the bridle on them. The bridle is likewise made of leather and it goes around their head. But the bridle has one additional feature. It has a bit in it. That bit goes in the mouth. Horses don't naturally like that, just as you probably wouldn't. Sometimes they will clench their teeth so you can't put the bridle in.
So you try to patiently work with them to get their mouth open so they get used to having that bridle that goes behind their teeth so that then with the reins which are attached to that bit, which are a part of that bridle, you're able to guide the horse to go where you want him to go. So you keep a tight rein on that horse. The idea is that you let the horse know that you're there, that you're in control. A bridle makes a horse tame and usable.
Likewise James says our tongues need to be bridled. We need to exert control over our tongues. And he says one who has real religion is somebody who has learned to do that. He says a wild tongue, an untamed tongue in a professing Christian is really saying two things. It's saying that person is saying I am self-deceived. If my tongue is wild and I claim to be a Christian, I am saying I am self-deceived. I am really not a Christian. I'm deceiving myself about it.
Secondly he says one who has an untamed tongue is saying my religion is worthless. It's empty, it's useless, it's impotent, it's uncontrolled. That's what James is telling us here. I would call that fairly practical, wouldn't you? I would say that's kind of down in work shoes to say that real religion is communication that is bridled. There's a tongue there that is tamed and under control. A reign is held on that tongue because one is a believer in Jesus Christ.
Now we're going to skip to the third one because I want to focus more on the second one as I close. That is that real religion is character that is protected. James writes here of keeping oneself from being polluted by the world. You see real religion knows the necessity of a good defense. There's a threat that we live in the midst of and that threat is called the world. The word world is the word cosmos. It's the opposite of chaos.
When I think of those two words I think of two rooms or two places, two spaces in our house. I think of the living room and I think of the garage. The living room is cosmos. Jeanette has decorated it. It's organized. It looks lovely. Very happy with it. The garage is, that's right, chaos. I have to confess that's more my space. Although I will say it's not all my problem, but it is my space. I store things there for children who refuse to come and get it.
But I'm not going there because my tongue is bridled. All right, cosmos. You get the picture. It's something that is ordered. It's ordered. Now James is telling us that we live in a world system, an ordered system around us. The world, he says, is a threat to us because of its organized system of thought and values and power and goals. The cosmos is ordered because it is arranged by Satan. It is infused with his principles and his values.
Even though the world presents itself very often as being cultured and refined, it presents itself as being scientific and religious and tolerant and sensible, under the surface of all of this order is chaos. Under the surface is the reality of lies, of politics, of decadence, of self-promotion and all that goes with it. In the context of James, he's thinking of the world in a particular way. It is the arrogance that comes with one's perceived status.
It's who I think I am because I'm a part of the world. Now that status may come from wealth. It may come from one's class. It may come from one's race. But whatever it comes from, it causes one to look down upon others, to think oneself better than others. It can be found in racism and bigotry against a group of people. It can be found in school cliques or in gangs or in a circle of people that exclude others because they're considered different. That is worldliness in James' view.
He goes on to talk about it in the second chapter. It's a sort of elitism and snobbery that is never of God. It's really of the devil. The devil has incorporated this idea of I'm better than you into the world system. And James says keep yourself unspotted from that. By God's design we live in the midst of the world that has this kind of attitude. We are in the world but we must not be of the world, as we say. We must not be like it. What is the danger that we face?
It is that you and I will compromise ourselves, that we will begin thinking of ourselves like the world thinks of itself, that we're better than others, and as a result of that our religion will be spotted. It will be impure. The world will promise you anything and everything, but when it's done with you it will leave you with nothing. It will cause you to compromise your witness. The world will spoil what the good plan is that God has for you. The world will waste your God-given gifts.
The world will lure you into its den, and then it will chew you up and spit you out and leave you for dead. That's the world. And James warns us by saying, be careful of the world. Be on guard against it. Keep yourself from it, unspotted by it. An authentic follower of Christ is careful to guard and to keep his character from being polluted by the world's toxic waste. John adds to the chorus when he says, the world is passing away and its sinful lusts with it.
The world is passing away is a very strong term. He says the world is rotting is the word that was used in that day of a corpse that was beginning to decay. John is saying the world is decaying around us. It is rotting away. You have nothing to do with it, lest you be contaminated and be diseased by it. But I want to get to the third point this morning because it is there that the thrust of this service leads us. And I apologize for my voice today. I'm still recovering from some bronchitis.
James tells us thirdly that real religion is compassion that is engaged. James points to those considered to be the needy, the neglected, and the nobodies in that culture. Those are the words, of course, that Doug Nichols used back on the 22nd of October in his amazing message. The needy, the neglected, the nobodies. James refers here to the orphans and the widows who were in need.
And he tells us that religion that is pure, religion that is unblemished and faultless, is religion that looks after orphans and widows. That is, those who are the outcasts, those who are the overlooked, those who are the invisible in our culture. Doug told us about 800,000 prostitutes in Bangkok, ages 12 to 16. Almost as many of them in Bangkok as there are people in our city. Children selling themselves.
Doug told us about 15,000 boys and girls, ages 9 to 12, who are sold into prostitution and who live on the streets of Manila. The unheard, the overlooked. He told us about 240,000 children on the streets in Mexico City. He said that worldwide there are 160 million children who live on the streets. That there are 104 million orphans worldwide. He told us that 10%, one out of every 10 children in the country of Malawi has no mother or father.
He told us that by the year 2010, which is what, four years away, it's projected that in Africa alone, in Africa alone, there will be 40 million orphans. He told us that there are 35,600 children worldwide who die every day from malnutrition and disease. Our press has been very concerned about the number of GIs killed in Iraq just since the first of November. It's been a horrific fall over there, and our hearts grieve for those young men and women who have fallen for their families.
Each one of them is a person with a story. Many of them leave behind wives or husbands. They leave behind children. I think it's now something like six or seven US servicemen killed in Iraq since the first of November. But do you know that during that same time, the same five or six days, there have been almost 200,000 children who've died of malnutrition and disease in the world? Where's the media on that one? These kinds of numbers, to me, are almost overwhelming. Do you feel that way?
James speaks about these who are overlooked and neglected as being in affliction, that they have troubles. This word that is translated distress in the New International Version comes from a word that means to be in a rut. The idea is that you're in the rut, and because you're there, you're crowded. You're hemmed in. There's pressure that you feel because of that. You feel overwhelmed. You're in the need of extrication from that rut that you're in.
It means to be devastated by the issues that you face in your life. Who are the neglected, the needy, the nobodies in our day? Well, we've talked about orphans. We've talked about the hungry. We could talk about widows. We could talk about single parents. I had a single parent come up to me on the patio last Sunday, and she said to me, Pastor, please pray for me. I'm exhausted. I know what she means. My mom was a single parent.
You single parents out there, you understand what that exhaustion is about. We could also talk about the disabled, especially children who are disabled. We could talk about those who do not have a proficiency in English and are the nobodies of our culture. We could talk about those who lack cultural skills because they are immigrants or because they are students who are studying in this country and they don't yet know how to fit in.
We could talk about the elderly, especially those elderly who are homebound or who are in care facilities. You look at all of this and say, what can I do? What can I do? Well, the fact is you can't do everything. We don't want to be like the cowboy with a stick of dynamite in his pocket who jumped on his horse and went off in all directions. We can't afford that. What can we do? Well, as was said earlier, some of us may be able to adopt a child.
We may be up to adopting a child with special needs. Perhaps you can come alongside a couple who are adopting in the system in some way. Perhaps you can volunteer with Young Life's Capernaum Project and holding babies in a loving babies that are disabled. You can support a widow or a single parent in your life community, encouraging them. Or you can support a single parent perhaps in your school or your neighborhood by helping with the kids occasionally.
You can volunteer with Helping Hands, which is our ministry to widows and to single parents who have practical needs around the house. You can send money to World Help or World Vision or Compassion International to underwrite the cost of caring for an orphan or an impoverished family in another part of the world. You can work with an organization helping spouses and children of those who are incarcerated in prisons and jails. You can visit an elderly person or somebody who's in prison.
I mean there are tons of things you can do. The point is, do something. Isn't that what Doug said? You do something. What are you going to do? We can't do everything, but we can all do something. Warren Wiersby writes, true religion is not a matter of forums and ceremonies. It's a matter of a controlled tongue, sacrificial service, and a clean heart. Beautiful day is an opportunity for us to show some religion, some real religion in work shoes.
You see, when you come right down to it, the most important question that we face this morning may well be this. Is my religion wear work shoes or just dress up shoes? James says if we have real religion, it's going to wear work shoes. It's going to get down to the practical things of life and the way that we talk and how we keep ourselves from the threatening world system around us trying to force us to conform to it.
And we're going to be looking after the nobodies, the neglected and the needy, as God leads us, as God enables us. We'll plug in and do something. What I want to encourage you this morning to do is to put on the work shoes. Put on the work shoes of your religion. I thank God for those of you who are already doing that. I think of those who are in helping hands.
I think of those who are coming alongside one of our elderly persons to help her in very practical ways over the coming weeks with some challenges that she's facing. I think of those of you who provide meals for those who have needs. There are so many of you involved in ways that it just amazes me. It makes me very proud of you as the children of God. This morning the appeal that I have is to all of us, roll up our sleeves, put on the work shoes and somewhere plug in to get involved.
And we're thinking this morning especially about adoption. And I want to come back to that just as I close because there are so many children, so many children who need a home. This last Friday night NBC television had a report from one of its reporters named John Larson, reported from Santa Fe, New Mexico. He was reporting on a woman by the name of Diane Granito, I think it is. She works with the New Mexico Adoption of Family Services.
And she thought that the very least that she could do for the children that she was seeking to place was to make a decent picture of them. Not just have a snapshot, but to actually take a portrait of these children. And so she started doing that. And before she knew it, she had a room full of these beautiful portraits of children who were looking to be adopted. And so she connected with somebody who owned an art shop. And this person agreed to put those beautiful portraits in her shop.
They call it the Heart Gallery, the Heart Gallery. And as a result of that, the first three pictures put in there were three sisters. They were adopted within an hour. I mean the process was started. Somebody said, I want them. And suddenly people saw the faces of the children. It wasn't just 105,000 of them. It was one precious little girl, one precious boy who was available and looking for a home. And the piece closed Friday night with a 16-year-old boy who's been waiting for years.
Children who are of that age are very difficult to place. And the 16-year-old boy said, I'm still hoping someday to have a family. There's some child out there today perhaps who's waiting for you. Are you willing to think about it, pray about it, investigate it, explore it? I hope you will. Father, I pray that we will listen to what Your Word says this morning and that we'll put the work shoes on.
We'll take off the slippers, lay aside the dress shoes of religion, and put on the work shoes and serve You. Show us, I pray, each of us individually how we can respond to be obedient to Your Lordship in our lives. In Jesus' name I pray, amen.