On James 1:19

Some years back, in a little church we were attending at the time, I learned something.  It was a Sunday evening service, typical of so many, and we came at length to the point in the service where it was time for the preaching.  A text was taken--Hebrews 5:8, if my notes are to be believed, "Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the tings which he suffered:"  But no sermon followed.  My, what an occasion it would have been to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ using that text as an opening.  But instead, it what had become a sad pattern over a stretch of weeks, the pastor asked each member of the congregation to give his or her own comments upon the verse.  And so we went around the room and heard this silly notion and that, this half opinion, and that educated guess.  We went home unedified.  We almost always went home that way.

The pastor had no message!  Imagine that!  In what would seem to be the easiest service for him to prepare for, this pastor persisted in apparent obliviousness to even the need for preparation.  Not even the barest of thought given to the text, to the hearers, or to his sacred calling.  Were there circumstances which made it difficult for him to prepare?  Yes, there were.  But it was never about the circumstances with this man.  It was his attitude.  I am a man of God, I can almost imagine him saying to himself, Whenever I open my mouth wide, God fills it.  But again, on this particular night, the people were deprived of an opportunity to hear the word of God.  How often did this happen!  

How sad it was and, at the same time, how strange.  For God had called this man to preach.  That was his own testimony.  God had sent this man to the best Bible institute in the land.  This, too, was according to his own testimony.  But to me, evaluating him not just upon that night, or upon that dismal stretch of weeks during which much of this kind of thing was repeated, but upon the whole of my time in that place, this man was an absolute flop as a preacher.  An embarrassment.  Oh, he was such a brilliant man!  He really was. But he was woefully ignorant of spiritual things.  If he were but cognizant of that fault, we all could have the more easily borne with him.  But he was one to parade himself.  He exalted his own intellect and imagined himself the spiritual counselor of those gathered in the Lord's name.

What I learned that night was something I had long known in my head; but which, that night, I finally understood in my heart.  That is, when a man thinks of himself more highly than he ought to think, he is a most unbearable person.  Much more this:  "If any among you seemeth to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man's religion is vain."