James 1:26-27

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had this conversation with someone:

Me: Are you a Christian? Do you go to church? Them: No, all Christians are a bunch of hypocrites.

Or here is another variation:

Me: Are you a Christian? Do you go to church? Them: Mr. So-and-So goes to church, and all he cares about is getting rich. He doesn’t care about us at all.

Or here is one more:

Me: We would love to have you join us in church sometime. Them: I worship God my own way. I’m a spiritual person. I don’t need church.

Lots of people claim to be followers of Jesus. They claim to love God, but their life doesn’t match up. This is a real problem that hinders our witness.

I think this is more of a problem the more “religious” your town is. Mattoon is kind of a “Bible-belty” type of town. We’ve got less than 20,000 people and more than forty churches. Most people in our town would claim to be Christians. There is a lot of “cultural Christianity” where you have people who go to church because it’s a socially acceptable exercise and not necessarily out of a heart of devotion.

What happens is you have a lot of goats; a lot of tares. Lost people see that, and they see right through it and think, “You guys don’t live any differently than we do. What’s the point?”

This is the problem that out text tonight is going to deal with. It’s just two short verses at the very end of James 1. Let’s read it together:

”If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man’s religion is vain. Pure religion and undefined before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself I spotted from the world.”

The government estimates that counterfeiting costs the American economy over 200 billion dollars each year and that it costs about 750,000 lost American jobs. The United States Secret Service takes counterfeiting very, very seriously. It’s a real problem.

But it’s not just money that’s counterfeited. Let’s say you have a great idea for a new invention, and you spend hundreds of thousands of dollars developing it, getting the proper patents, and getting it manufactured and marketed. Because of all this, you have to price it to pay back your investment. Well, some guy in China gets a hold of your awesome widget, and he says, “I can build an exact replica of this for pennies and sell it on Amazon.” That would ruin your business. It happens every day.

So how do you tell a fake? How do you tell a phony?

These verses are all about how to tell the difference between phony or fake religion and the real thing. For our outline tonight, we are going to talk about two things:

1. What fake religion can and cannot do.
2. How to tell if your religion is fake or real.

Let’s pray and we’ll jump into our message:

The first thing I want to preach on tonight from these verses is...

1. What fake religion can and cannot do:

Look at verse 26 again:

”If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man’s religion is vain.”

There are several interesting words in there:

The word religious is a unique word that is only found in these verses. It talks about our outward show of religion—our outward acts of worship.

What it is saying is that if a person is going through the motions of outward worship—if they are going to church, if they are singing hymns, if they are getting dressed up on Sunday—but they aren’t doing some things we’ll talk about in a minute, then their worship or their religion is vain.

That’s another interesting word. Vain here means pointless, useless, and worthless.

So the problem here is phony worship—counterfeit worship. It’s worthless.

I once bought a Rolex watch and some Ray Ban sunglasses on the street in Juárez for about $20. They weren’t worth $20. They were worthless junk masquerading as something valuable. They were phonies. They were fakes.

Now, there are two things these verses teach us that fake, phony, worthless religion can do, first...

A. Fake religion can fool others.

The verse says ”if any man among you seem to be religious.”

You can go through the motions and seem to others to be religious when all you have is a fake, phony, counterfeit Christianity. It happens all the time.

All over the New Testament, there are instances when Jesus is preaching in basically a church—a synagogue—and he is opposed by demon-possessed people. Get this: Demon-possessed people in the synagogue. They were fakers.

The biggest opposition Jesus faced on this earth didn’t come from the Roman government or the worldly Herodians. It came from the Pharisees—the religious guys.

Let’s be honest. All you have to do is put on some respectable clothes, show up at a church once or twice a month, and daydream through a sermon, and most people will assume you are a true Christian trying to live the Christian life. It’s not that hard.

Fake religion can fool other people. You can “seem to be religious,” but your religion can be pointless.

Fake religion can fool other people and the other thing fake religion can do is...

B. Fake religion can fool you.

Look at the verse again. It says but deceiveth his own heart.

It’s one thing to fool others, but quite another to fool yourself, to fool your heart. But you can do it. If you lie to yourself enough, you will start to believe your own lie.

The world likes to say “trust your heart” and “follow your heart,” but the BIble says that ”the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, who can know it?”(Jeremiah 17:9)

You can deceive yourself.

• “I’m a good person.”
• “I’m a good Christian.”
• “I go to to church.”
• “I give in the offering.”
• “I don’t lie...that much.”

It’s self-deception. Being in church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than being in a garage makes you a car. Don’t lie to yourself. Don’t fall for a fake Christianity. Don’t buy the counterfeit.

Phony religion can fool others. Phony religion can fool yourself, but one thing phony religion can’t do is seen in the next verse:

Notice it says:

”Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this.”

What phony religion can’t do is...

C. Fake religion cannot fool God.

God is looking. God is watching. He knows a fake when he sees it. He’s like the Secret Service or the treasury. He can spot a counterfeit.

You might be able to pull the wool over other people’s eyes. You might have been doing it long enough that you even start to believe it yourself, but God isn’t fooled.

Many times in the gospels, it tells us that Jesus knew what people were thinking. The Bible teaches us that God sees our hearts and He knows our thoughts.

Jeremiah 17:10 says:

”I the Lord search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings.”

God knows a phony. He can tell a fake, and you won’t be able to fool him.

---

So listen: If fake religion can fool others and fool ourselves but it can’t fool God, how do we tell if our religion or worship is real? I mean, we aren’t God. How do we tell if others religion is real?

That’s our second point...

2. How to tell if your religion is fake or real.

Just like a anti-counterfeiter knows for specific details to look for to tell if a bill is real, James gives us three specific details to look for in a persons life to see if their religion is real or phony.

It’s important that we understand that these aren’t the only things. It’s not an exhaustive list, but it’s the list James gives us here.

The first thing it tells us about people with real religion is...

A. People with real religion keep their tongues under control.

Verse 26 says:

”If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man’s religion is vain.”

So the first thing is bridling your tongue.

I don’t know if you’ve ever spent any time around horses. They are huge animals. They are really intimidating.

Down in Tennessee, we had this annual carnival fundraiser for the school, and all of the teachers had to help. Somehow, I always ended up on horse duty, walking the horses around in a circle giving horseback rides. I think whoever planned the thing thought, “Who would be most uncomfortable around horses? I know! Ryan! Let’s make him do it!” Horses are huge, strong animals, and if they wanted to knock me over or push me around, it would be no contest.

But horses have this really sensitive space between their front teeth and their back teeth and you can put a piece of metal in there and attach some straps to it, and the horse will do what you want it to (for the most part). That is called a bit and bridle, so when it says “bridleth not his tongue,” what it’s talking about here is controlling your tongue.

Just like a huge horse, your mouth can be this really strong force with a mind of its own, and when it’s out of control, it can cause a lot of damage.

If you read this book, James keeps coming back to this over and over and over again. You have to keep your mouth under control. You have to watch your tongue and your words.

Now why is that? Why is this an acid test for true spirituality?

Here’s why: Your tongue is a direct reflection of your heart. Jesus said to the Pharisees in Matthew 12:34:

”for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.”

Here is the deal: If God is controlling your mouth and if God is controlling your words, then God is controlling your heart. If your mouth is out of control, that means your heart is out of control, too, and God isn’t controlling that.

So the first acid test of real religion is your tongue. Do you keep it under control or is it out of control?

A second test of true Christianity in these verses is...

B. People with real religion look out for the needy.

Verse 27 says:

”Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and the widows in their affliction.”

So I did some word studies here. The word visit in these verses means “to check in on to help” or “to look after.”

Fatherless is another word for “orphans.” It can also refer to any needy people.

Widows of course means “widows,” but remember that in the Bible times, if a woman lost her husband, very often she had no way to support herself and could be destitute.

So orphans and the fatherless were really, really destitute people. The word affliction means pressure, anguish, persecution, and trouble. These people were really, really hard up.

So James says that if you want to see if your religion is real, try to help the people who are most hard-up in society, the people who are struggling the most.

Now this might seem totally strange to you. It’s certainly not something that is emphasized often, but if you are a child of God, that means you’ll resemble your Heavenly Father. The Bible has a lot to say about God’s heart for the poor and helpless.

Look at Psalm 68:5.

”A father of the fatherless, and a judge of the widows, [is] God in his holy habitation.”

God calls himself a father to the fatherless and a judge (or a deliverer) of the widows. In other words, God really has a soft spot for those who are truly in need, and He takes up to help them.

In the late 1800s, there was this movement that was launched called the Social Gospel that was all about helping poor people and ridding the wrongs of society. It went too far. It overshadowed the actual gospel, and it turned churches into aid centers instead of Bible centers.

Another thing that’s happened in recent history is the Democratic Party in America has taken two positions simultaneously. They portray themselves as the party that cares about the poor and the destitute and those that are down and out, and at the same time they support and push lots of things the Bible is plainly against, like abortion and gay marriage.

So Bible-believing churches tried to distance themselves from the social gospel crowd and from caring about the poor, and I think we’ve gone too far. We as Christians and we as a church should care about the destitute and needy. We should care about the housing project kids. We can’t throw the baby out with the bathwater and ignore the needs of the less privileged.

I want you to imagine some of the kids I met when I worked in the inner city. They live in a violent, filthy housing project. Their mother is addicted to drugs and probably sells herself as a prostitute. She can’t string three words together coherently. There are four kids in the house, all boys. The oldest is 13. All have different dads. Every one of the dads is in prison.

The kids basically look out for themselves. They have no furniture besides a big screen TV and a big couch, both of which could probably be repossessed by the rent-to-own company at any minute.

They go to horrible schools with almost illiterate graduates and huge dropout rates. They see violent crime and unspeakable immorality almost every day of their lives even as children. They have almost no positive role models in their life.

And they are children. They didn’t ask for that. They didn’t have any control over their parents’, their grandparents’, and great-grandparents’ sins. They are just as innocent as our children.

Now let me ask you something: Do you think God has compassion on those people? I do. I think he expects us to have compassion on them, too.

How do you treat needy people? Do you look after them? Do you care?

James is going to come back to this point too.

The third acid test James gives us of true religion is...

C. People with real religion aren’t worldly people.

It says ”to keep himself unspotted from the world.”

We have to remember that the word “world” in the Bible doesn’t refer to the globe or the earth. It refers to the world system. It refers to this system of people living for things other than God. One author said it is “anything and everything at odds with the lordship of Christ in our life.”

Romans 12:2 says:

”And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.”

We aren’t supposed to be like the world. Molding to its ways. We are supposed to be different.

1 John 2:15-17 says:

”Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.”

People with real religion aren’t living for the same things as the lost world. They aren’t watching the same things; they aren’t reading the same things; they aren’t partaking in the same activities. They are marching to the beat of a different drum.

Phony religion is worldly religion. It is religion that just backs up what the world is saying.

I was reading in my devotions this morning and I read a verse that applies to this. Micah 2:11 says:

”If a man walking in the spirit and falsehood do lie, saying, I will prophesy unto thee of wine and of strong drink; he shall even be the prophet of this people.”

There are plenty of religious people who just want their ears tickled. They want a preacher to tell them that it’s ok to go get drunk and party. They want a preacher that will look the other way at adultery, look the other way at lust, look the other way when they are living just like the world in every imaginable way and just tacking on a little church on Sunday.

But that kind of religion is a counterfeit. It’s phony. If you claim to be a bible believing, God-saved Christian and yet you are just dripping with the world in every possible way. That’s phoniness.

Conclusion

I read an article today about a fairly new problem that is spreading because of the internet. Apparently, there are people who are manufacturing counterfeit cancer pills and marketing them on the internet at people who have just had a cancer diagnosis. These pills can have no active ingredient, or the wrong dose and can potentially kill people.

Counterfeit cancer pills.

Imagine being diagnosed with cancer and given pills that are supposed to save your life. You dutifully take the pills as the doctor prescribed. You go on like this for months. Only to find that the pills are fakes, they are counterfeits, and that all this time cancer has been spreading in your body.

This world is sick and it needs Jesus. Jesus is the only answer to the great problems this world is facing. People need Jesus and they are supposed to see Jesus in our lives and hear Jesus in our words. But far too often, what they are getting is a counterfeit.

You might be able to fool others. You might even be able to deceive yourself. But phony religion never fools God.

• Are you watching your tongue?
• Do you care about the down and out?
• Are you worldly?

Let’s have true religion. Let’s be the real deal. Let’s stand for invitation and prayer.