Lying is a funny thing.  At one time or another, every one of us has lied, and yet, despite its universality, we must acknowledge that it is a thing of extraordinary power.  Lies have destroyed marriages, churches, nations, and souls.  Even if Jesus had not told us so explicitly, it would be easy for us to conclude that something so evil has to be the handiwork of Satan.

However, the most damaging lies of all aren’t the ones that others tell us.  They are the ones we tell ourselves.  Self-deception may be even more common than other forms of deceit, but it is no less dangerous. 

Indeed, it may be even more so.  When we are tempted to lie to someone else, at least we know we are being tempted.  We have to make a conscious decision to lie.  However, when it comes to self-deceit, part of the lie is that we aren’t lying to ourselves.  Consequently, even if Christians can reach a point in their spiritual development when they reliably tell the truth to others, none of us ever outgrow the temptation to believe a lie rather than the truth.  This evening, then, let’s explore the dangers of self-deception.

In our study tonight, we’re going to be looking at a context in James 1, in which James reveals three unwelcome truths about self-deception.  The first of these is that IT DOES NOT ACCOMPLISH RIGHTEOUSNESS.  Look at what he tells us in James 1:19-21. 

James here is concerned with one particular form of self-deception—self-righteous anger.  He warns us to be quick to listen and slow to speak, which generally is good advice, but contextually, he’s warning us to be slow to express our anger and quick to listen to the righteous rebuke of the word of God.  It is for God to tell us how to be righteous, not for us to self-righteously tell others how they ought to live.

This is a temptation that every one of us faces when we become angry.  When we’re angry at someone, a feeling of self-righteousness is always part of the mix.  Here we were, going along, living our blameless little lives, when some despicable person does something that makes us mad.  Maybe it was our thoughtless, inconsiderate spouse.  Maybe it was that obnoxious co-worker.  Maybe it was that jerk who cut us off on the highway.  Regardless, they have offended us, and so we are going to tell them just what we think of their inexcusable, awful behavior, even if the only way we can communicate is laying on the car horn!

The problem is, though, that even though we feel so righteous, we truly are not righteous.  God has the right to condemn people, but we don’t, because we ourselves are so often thoughtless, inconsiderate, obnoxious jerks.  Our angry condemnations of others are sheer hypocrisy, and indeed, even in the moment, our words that feel so righteous are likely unrighteous. 

I’ve been saying this since I started preaching, and it’s still true.  Never once have I spoken in anger and later been glad that I did.  Rather than expressing that deceptive sense of self-righteousness, then, let’s learn to hold our peace, to think things over, to pray, to calm down, so that when we do speak, we humbly repeat the words of God.

Second, self-deception KEEPS US FROM IMPROVEMENT.  Let’s read here from James 1:22-25.  This passage begins by pointing out something that we may not have considered.  Every time someone hears the word and chooses not to obey it, there is self-deception involved. 

Maybe the lie is that God isn’t real and so His commandments can be ignored.  Maybe it’s that God is a God of love, so we don’t have to worry about all those bothersome legalistic little rules.  Maybe it’s that we’re in a hard place right now, and God understands why we’re not obeying.  Maybe the lie is that I’m doing a great job on this particular commandment, and I’m so glad that Brother Orville is here for this sermon, because he really needs to hear it!  Regardless, when we hear and don’t do, we are lying to ourselves somewhere.

It makes sense that this would be so.  There is nothing on earth that the devil fears more than the word of God.  If everyone received it honestly, everyone would obey the gospel, and on the judgment day, hell would be empty.  Thus, Satan constantly is hard at work defeating the gospel, doing everything he can to put armor plate between it and us so that it can’t pierce our hearts. 

If he succeeds in doing this, nothing will happen, but it will be a deadly nothing.  Just like when I get up from the dinner table and look at my face in the mirror and see that I’ve got spaghetti sauce smeared all over my mouth like a two-year-old, when we look into the mirror of the word, we must see that there is something we must do.  If we don’t, there is no point to looking into the mirror in the first place.

Thus, every time we read the Bible or hear it read, we must ask ourselves, “How does this apply to me?”  “Where do I fall short?”  Then, we need to go out and make the changes God wants to see.  Only in this way can we receive His blessing.

Finally, self-deception MAKES OUR RELIGION USELESS.  Let’s conclude our reading with James 1:26-27.  Once again, there’s a generic statement in v. 26 that I think gains a specific meaning from context.  I think it’s generally true that religious people shouldn’t go around shooting their mouths off, but James seems to have something particular in mind.  Notice that in v. 27, he identifies the way that true religion expresses itself—by helping people who are in need and living a godly life.  V. 27 is set up as a contrast to that.

What James is really warning us against, then, is a particular kind of uncontrolled speech—uncontrolled speech about religion.  He wants us to understand that if we think we are serving God by running our mouths with no filter about some religious topic, we are lying to ourselves.

There are so, so many possible applications here, brethren!  This is about the Christians who call the elders up and give them what-for about every decision they make.  This is about telling people who are staying home from services because of COVID vulnerability that they’re forsaking the assembly.  This is about embarrassing your neighbor with their lack of Biblical knowledge instead of trying to persuade them to follow Jesus.  Generally, it’s about any time that we use religion as a way to express our pride and elevate ourselves over others.  That’s the kind of thing that gives religion a bad name, and it does not give us a good name in the eyes of God.

Instead, the real path to becoming great in God’s kingdom is to become a servant.  Don’t complain about problems in the church.  Work to solve problems in the church.  Don’t blast the brother who is struggling spiritually.  Give them a shoulder to lean on or cry on.  Don’t show contempt for outsiders.  Show them that you love them and want to help them.  Only when our lives first show forth the glory of Christ can our words guide others to Him.

When I was in law school, all my classes were graded on a B curve.  25 percent of the students in the class got an A-range grade, 50 percent got a B-range grade, and 25 percent got a C-range grade.  As a result, my grades depended much more on the understanding of my peers than on my own grasp of the material.  If I understood next to nothing about the class, but my classmates were completely clueless, I would get a good grade.  If, on the other hand, I nearly had mastered the material, but my classmates understood it fully, I. . . wouldn’t.  My GPA was about them, not me.

Well, it probably was about my horrible handwriting too, but that’s another story.

Similarly, there are lots of people out there who want to grade their spiritual lives on a curve.  On some level, they know they’re not perfect people.  They lie, they get angry, they have impure thoughts, and so on. 

However, then they start comparing themselves to their neighbors, and they conclude that they’re in pretty good shape after all.  Sure, I’ve lied, but at least I didn’t get busted for selling drugs to a cop like them.  Yeah, I’ve gotten mad and said ugly things, but I don’t get in fights at the bar Friday night like them.  True, I’ve had impure thoughts before, but I didn’t run off with the waitress from Waffle House like they did.  Clearly, in God’s eyes, we have earned A-range grades while those wicked worldlings have earned C-range grades, or worse!

There are several problems with this.  First, all of us tend to regard our own sins with greater charity than we do the sins of others.  There are plenty of people out there who think they are better than their neighbors even though God would not agree.

Second, and even more importantly, our neighbors’ actions reveal who our neighbors are, not who we are.  The standard is not their bad behavior.  It is the law of God.  As Jesus reveals in Luke 17:7-10, God doesn’t consider service from His servants to be a bonus.  Instead, His expectation is that we follow the law fully.  Even if we manage that, which none of us do, it still wouldn’t be anything praiseworthy.

Once we stop grading ourselves on a spiritual curve, our true condition becomes obvious.  I am not justified because (according to my own reckoning) I am better than my neighbors.  Instead, because I have transgressed the divine commandment, I stand condemned.  Rather than not needing help from anybody, I desperately need help from somebody!

This is a painful, humbling realization, but in exposing the lie of self-righteousness, it sets our feet on the path to true righteousness.  We can’t trust in ourselves.  It’s already too late for that.  Even if we do everything right from now on, we’ve already blown it.

  Instead, we must trust in Christ who justifies the ungodly.  We can’t boast in ourselves because we’re sooo much better than people in the world.  Instead, our boasting never can be in anyone but Him.

The other day, Steve Wolfgang sent me a link to this article.  In it, the author points out that James D. Vaughan, founding father of the Southern gospel genre of hymnody (though not the author of “Love Lifted Me”, despite what the article implies) was a leading figure in the local Ku Klux Klan.  James Rowe (who was the author of “Love Lifted Me”) wrote racist lyrics for temperance-movement songs.

This is not terribly surprising.  We are talking about Southern gospel, after all, a worship-music movement which flourished in the states of the former Confederacy a hundred years ago.  By modern standards, both the ones who wrote those hymns and the ones who originally sang them were dyed-in-the-wool racists.  The author implies that we need to “have a conversation” about whether those hymns should remain in the repertoire, the kind of conversation that usually ends with things getting canceled.

Really, though, the issue that the article raises is much larger even than racism.  How do we handle hymns that were written by people with significant spiritual problems?  From the perspective of New-Testament Christianity, the most famous hymnists of all time come with baggage that is as bad or even worse. 

Isaac Watts, author of “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross” and many other great hymns besides, was a hyper-Calvinist minister.  Charles Wesley, who wrote “Love Divine”, was the brother and partner of John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist Church.  Among modern writers, Keith and Kristyn Getty, the authors of “In Christ Alone”, are staunch and vocal Calvinists.  I could say much the same about the authors of literally hundreds of the hymns in our repertoire.

Scripturally speaking, is the false teacher to be preferred to the racist?

One response is to say, “We should not sing such things.”  Unless we approve of your life, we aren’t going to sing your hymn.  However, if we follow through on such a conviction, our repertoire shrinks by at least 95 percent.  Everything from “Abide with Me” to “As the Deer”—gone.  Off to the bonfire it all goes!

I think most brethren would consider such a solution a trifle. . . extreme.  The alternative, which is what all of us do in practice, is to separate the hymn from the hymnist.  I don’t have to agree with everything Isaac Watts stood for to sing “When I Survey.”  I only have to agree with “When I Survey”.  Nor, indeed, am I endorsing anything about Isaac Watts other than the words that I am singing.

So too, I think, with Southern-gospel hymns written by authors with murky pasts.  Yes, they believed, and in some cases wrote, some awful things.  However, if our minds are on the human author when we sing a hymn, our minds are in the wrong place. 

Those hymns are not memorials to Confederate generals or leaders of the KKK.  They are memorials to God.  If we use them for their intended purpose, we are glorifying Him.  To that, what Scriptural objection can be raised?

The second verse of John Newton’s justly renowned “Amazing Grace” reads,

‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears relieved;
How precious did that grace appear
The hour I first believed!

That certainly was true in my experience, and I suspect in the experience of most Christians.  When I was baptized, it was a big deal!  However, I have found that since that day 30 years ago, grace has grown more, not less, precious.

This is not because year by year, I have grown more like John Newton the unbelieving slave trader.  Indeed, I think the opposite has occurred.  Though the heart is deceptively deceitful, my self-impression is that I sin less than I did 20 years ago, or even 10 years ago.  I am wiser, less contentious, less easily led astray.  For this, I can take no credit.  Instead, the glory goes to the Lord, who has begun a good work in every Christian and labors to perfect it.

However, with increased wisdom comes increased self-awareness and increased understanding of the Scriptures.  In quantitative terms, I may sin less, but I am more conscious of sin and more sorrowful over it.  Every year, I behold the awesome perfection of the Son of Man with greater clarity, and I am forced to acknowledge how short I fall of His image.  The more I grow, the more discontented I become with where I am, and the more I see how far I have yet to grow.

Along with this, though, I have grown in my appreciation for God’s grace, the only thing that can perfect me.  The unbeliever concludes that goodness is not difficult, the new Christian thinks they can get most of it done without help, but the one who has walked with Christ for decades learns to despair of their own righteousness.

All that remains is grace—grace, purchased at such hideous cost by the dying anguish of the Lamb of God.  Grace, offered in prodigal splendor by a God who must be great to show such mercy.  Grace, which transforms and enlightens the hearts of those who taste it.  Grace, which will be glorified eternally by the presence in God’s presence of all who have been redeemed by it.

What is like the grace of God?  What is as beautiful to the eyes of the believer?  What else can offer such comfort and peace and joy?  Without it, the struggles of life are hopeless. With it, victory is assured.

Grace was precious in the hour I first believed, but it is far more precious now, and with each passing day, it grows more precious still.  Every day, I see God’s goodness in His creation, and I am thankful.  Most of all, though, I am thankful for His grace.

Now that the 2020 presidential election is coming to dominate the news cycle more and more, I find my thoughts turning to what the Bible teaches us about who is in control of such things.  Romans 13:1-2 tells us that God appoints all human authorities.  Daniel 2:20-21 reveals that He removes and sets up kings.  According to Proverbs 20:5, the heart of the king is a stream of water in the hands of the Lord.  In short, it clearly is God who decides who will lead any nation.

This does not mean that God will only send wise and benevolent rulers.  Exodus 9:16 reports that God raised up Pharaoh, even though he was arrogant and foolish, in order that God’s power might be displayed through his downfall.  This is true even for God’s own people.  In Jeremiah 13:13, God warns that He will fill the kings of Judah with drunkenness as part of His judgment of their nation.  Similarly, Isaiah 3:4 promises that God will send capricious children to be the rulers of His wicked people.  Though He leaves us our free will, it is nonetheless His will that is done.

We still should remember this, even though we live in a nation with a system of government that allows us the illusion of control.  “Your vote counts!” says every high-school civics class.  Well, yes, it is true that we can go to the polls and cast our ballots, but we should not imagine that we or any other human beings are dictating the outcome. 

God has not ceased to be the King of kings, nor the Lord of lords.  Our leaders, just as the leaders of every other nation, will be the leaders He chooses.  Perhaps He will be merciful and send us rulers who will help us on to prosperity and peace.  Perhaps He will be just and send us those who will bring us to ruin as part of His judgment on our national sins.  In either case, our votes cannot and will not override His purpose.  Prayer might.  Voting won’t.

Though my children are past it now, I still remember that parents whose kids are in car seats can buy steering wheels for those car seats.  Often, little Johnny is enthusiastic about his steering wheel.  He’ll spin that thing wildly, honk the horn, and be utterly convinced that he is the one who is driving the car.  However, it’s really Dad in the driver’s seat who is determining where the vehicle is headed.

We ought to remember that the same thing is true of our political participation.  If you want to study the issues, pick a candidate, and even advocate for that candidate, great!  There’s no sin in that, though there is sin in acrimonious political debate on Facebook. 

However, we must not forget whose steering wheel is connected and whose isn’t.