Transcript

Let’s go to James this evening. I’m doing in James what I did in Ephesians, I went there to look for a couple of things and I got stuck, so I want to bring some exhortations to you, some practical things and, um, ah, we should be brief this evening on “Practicing the Word.” James 1:20 through, 22 rather through 27. James is the pastor of a local church and he’s already dealing with the same issues that all local churches deal with and, um, I, I guess there can be an unintentional, um, neglect or contempt even, is that too strong of a word, for the preached word when you get it very regularly, when you feel like it’s always going to be that way, and, ah, I, I would charge you not to feel that way. There are, ah, ah, I got, a, a, a message from a, a person who responded to something that was on, ah, ah, social media that I put out about the local church and being in a solid local church, and the person wrote back and said, “I agree with you but do you know how hard it is to find a good church?” And they went on to talk about how far they drive one way to go to a church. So don’t take it for granted and this is part of what James is talking about here as he challenges the people of his local church about the way they practice the word which includes listening to the word preached and taught.

James 1:22, go through verse 27.

22 But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves. 23 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror; 24 for once he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was. 25 But one who looks intently at the perfect law, the law of liberty [that’s the Gospel truth], and abides by it, not having become a forgetful hearer but an effectual doer, this man will be blessed in what he does. 26 If anyone thinks himself to be religious, and yet does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this man’s religion is worthless. 27 Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

Practicing the word. First of all, let’s talk about the exhortation he gives here and in verse 22 we begin with this phrase, “But prove yourselves doers of the word.” Now that means your practice. It’s a present tense verb which means is your pattern to go to the word to do the word. He’s not talking about, ah, some sort of perfect, um, ah, effort perhaps but the heart attitude that, “I go to the word so that it may fashion and shapen my life.” Keep on, therefore, becoming doers of the word. Don’t grow lax. Don’t come to church undisciplined in your heart and mind. Don’t come sit under the word just to go through the motions and say, “Well, I’ve done that for this week.” That’s not what it’s about. We’re not Catholics. This is not a meaningless sacramental exercise that you might get a little closer to, ah, to heaven and a little shorter stay in purgatory one day. No, we already are sealed for heaven. We already have embraced our justification. Now we get to by the Spirit’s enabling, sit under the word with the mindset of, “Lord, show me what I can learn. Show me how to grow. Show me how to live my life.”

Keep on being doers. Ah, sometimes I’ve referred to those folks who come and just don’t have a serious mind about what the word of God is saying to them. They’re like sermon sippers, they flit from one, ah, doctrinal dessert to another just wanting the meringue, if you will, like some sort of hummingbird popping from one flower to another instead of settling themselves in a church and sitting under the word and saying, “Lord, grow me here. Teach me what I need to do.”

He said, “If you’re not sitting under the word with that intention and purpose,” what does he say in verse 22, you are indeed “merely hearers who delude themselves.” It means you make a miscalculation. That’s a seriously, serious spiritual miscalculation. In other words, you’re cheating and defrauding yourself. We’re deceived when we come to church and think we’ve done all that is necessary when we’ve just listened or we’ve just been here instead of having a devotion to be what we call in our Bible study in small groups, a good expository listener. Are you a good listener to the word of God? It is a work in a sense. It’s an exercise. No wonder Paul tells Timothy in his, in 2 Timothy he said, “There’ll be a time when they will not endure sound doctrine, people will just grow out of the custom of coming to church disciplined to hear the word of God. Prove yourselves.” That’s the exhortation, “Prove yourselves doers of the word.” Someone said that too many Christians mark their Bibles instead of letting their Bibles mark them.

The, the, the, some time ago, I, I, I would say three to four decades ago, the trend started happening where, ah, churches became consumer-driven, “What does the consumer want and we’ll start fashioning the church, ah, to whatever fads or gimmicks people are kind of into so we can keep them interested and keep them coming.” Well, that’s right the opposite of what James is saying to his local congregation. The exhortation, “Prove yourselves. Keep on. When you find yourself growing weak, when you find yourself being indifferent, when you find yourself not prayed-up and serious about the word you’re about to hear preached, ask God to help you to keep on being a doer of the word as you hear the word.” These things should be happening in our minds: we listen, as we listen we are repenters and we are reformers. Listening, repenting and reforming. And by the way, this is normal average Christianity. That’s what we do when we sit in church and sit under the word. That’s how we worship. We’re glorifying God in all of these things.

So that is the exhortation, now let’s go to the second main point and that is the exercise of it. The exercise of this whole thing and he’s gonna use the idea of a mirror here. Ah, he says, um, in verse 23, ” if anyone is just a hearer of the word and not a doer.” Now, now again it’s, there’s a real intentionality here. He’s talking about the person who just as a settled lifestyle pattern, they’re not interested in repenting about anything. They’re not interested in calling themselves to account as the word of God is preached. They’re gonna do what they want to do. They’re comfortable with the way they’ve worked out their religion. He said, “If that’s where you are, you’re really deceiving yourselves.”

Verse 23, “if anyone is just a hearer of the word, not a doer, he’s like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror; for once he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he is.” Now literally the gender here means a man, when a man, a man can look at a mirror and walk away and forget what he sees. The older I get, the more I look at a mirror, the more I want to walk away and forget what I see. But he uses the male gender here because a woman’s not gonna look and forget what she sees. She’s gonna be, she’s already making calculations what she’s gonna do different.

So he said but a person doesn’t do that. Ah, you see, the word of God, when the word of God is properly taught and preached or when you have quiet time and you’re really humbling yourself under the word of God, there is, first of all, an examination that happens. You undergo an examination as you sit under the word of God. The word reveals who we really are but there are several mistakes you can make when you open the Bible and it is that mirror, that examination before God.

First of all, you make a mistake by just merely glancing at yourself, just making a quick glance at yourself instead of more of a thorough examination of what the word of God is telling you about himself. Just glance and off you go. Has your daily devotion time, we call it a quiet time, has that become just a thing you do? Do you seek the Lord in that? Are you humble before God? Are you listening to the Lord? Are you repenting? Are you reforming as you study your Bible at home? Are you studying your Bible at home? Are you having a time before the Lord? There’s no personal profit if it’s just something you do and say, “Well, I checked that off for the day.”

Our conscience should bother us if we are just careless about our time in the word of God. A careless reading of the word of God is sort of like taking a, a quick photo with your iPhone. Isn’t it amazing the number of pictures we take today? At my house, we have large expensive computers locked up because there’s so much stuff on them they don’t work anymore, and you can’t take it off because they’re special people. You take it off, you don’t go to heaven. But we just take pictures all the time. Just picture, picture, picture, picture, picture, video, video, video, video. I think that’s sometimes the way we do the word of God and we shouldn’t. When you go to the word of God, it should be more like when you have a PET scan or an MRI. You take some time. There’s preparation. You’re praying about it. You’re humbled about it. You’re very still. There’s discipline involved in it, and you want a real and accurate picture of what’s going on.

I’ve had a bad back since college, really a little before that, but had to go in the hospital with it in college, been in it since then one time and it’s flaring up on me again. I had an MRI the other day and I’m telling you , they said, “Now lie still.” I said, “I’m not moving nothing. I want to know what’s in there.” Sometimes you don’t want to know but I really approached it with sobriety and discipline and seriousness. Well, that’s, we don’t need to look at the Bible like we’re taking a snapshot with our iPhone, we need to act like we’re going to get an MRI with a heart to see what is really in here.

So, first of all, when we go to the word of God, it’s a mirror and we’re looking at it as an examination, we can make the mistake of just merely glancing at ourselves. Secondly, we make the mistake of forgetting what we see. We just kinda cast off what we see. Ah, they, they don’t keep, ah, ah, enough of a, an interest and a concentration on what they see. You see, if you look deep into your own hearts as you’re studying the word of God, what you see would be unforgettable and God wants us to do that. That’s one of the reasons why the Bible says, “Blessed are those who are meek, and blessed are those who mourn, and blessed are those who are poor in spirit.” They’ve been in the word and they have an accurate understanding of what’s in them. They took time to look well at what’s in there.

You know, sometimes we laugh off the old days of revivalism and there were excesses and there was emotionalism and there was, was a lot of false conversions in some of those things, the old brush harbors maybe or tent meetings, but sometimes God did some things and people saw themselves like people ought to see themselves. John Wesley in his diary on June 22, 1739, talked about a meeting he preached in and he says, and I quote, “One man before me dropped as dead, and presently a second, and then a third, then five others sunk down in half an hour and most were in violent agonies.” As he preached the word of God and men considered the weight of their souls before a holy God.

Perhaps we could use some of that today. Before we assign these kind of responses immediately to some emotionally disturbed person, ah, some person that belongs in some unstable category of humanity, let’s remember some of the biblical examples of men who really saw themselves accurately before the Lord. Isaiah in Isaiah 6:5 says, “Woe is me, for I am unclean! I’m undone! I’m a man of unclean lips, And I live among a people of unclean lips. Woe is me!” Peter said in Luke 5:8, “Depart from me because I am a sinful man, O Lord.” Have you ever opened the word of God and you saw a sense of what you are before the holy God and you thought, “Lord, You just have to separate from me. I, I can’t be in Your presence.” Of course, we want to be but there’s a sense of that in our spirit. Job in Job 42:6 says, “I abhor myself and I repent in dust and in ashes.”

Do we come examining and take the time to really see? A mistake we can make is just taking a quick glance and forgetting what we see and that’s what James says here. It’s like people who, who look in a mirror then immediately forget what they see. Thirdly, they fail to obey what the word tells them to do. That’s another way you fail when you examine yourselves under the preaching of the word. You fail to obey what the word tells you to do. There are folks who literally think, “If I just come and sit through it, then I’ve done what I’m supposed to do.” You know, a good doctor will take the time to examine you correctly and a good doctor will tell you the truth. Well, Jesus is the good doctor. The Bible says he is the great physician. He wants us to give him the time to do a thorough examination.

So remember the word is like a mirror in that it examines you. Now look, as, as the word of God examines you, you don’t have to have a fearfulness about that. You, you don’t have to approach that with some sort of dread. Know that your standing before God is settled and sealed and fixed forever by Jesus Christ. You can’t lose your justification. You can’t lose your right standing before God. But God also wants you to be aggressive and, ah, persistent in your sanctification and that’s the examination I’m talking about.

Have you had some breakthroughs? I remember so distinctly one time I was going through some tough days and, ah, there were things outside of me that were causing some of the tough days and then God opened my eyes to a disposition in my own heart of raw pride and selfishness and it probably wasn’t an, an outward manifestation that somebody could say that’s pride and that’s selfish. Now I had enough of that, I’m sure, but in this case you probably wouldn’t have known it but God knew it and it was the most piercing dark revelation to me when God just showed me that about the way I was thinking because it wasn’t premeditated. It wasn’t like I got up in the morning and I said, “I’m gonna be selfish today.” You know, but when God showed me, then it was my job to, to begin to be a confessor and a repenter on those issues. Now it didn’t happen every day but there should be occasions where there’s a new sobering examination that you go, “Wow, I can’t walk thinking that way anymore. I can’t have that viewpoint anymore. That is so self-centered. That is such self-idolatry. Didn’t know it before but I’m responsible because under the word of God I know it now.”

So, first of all, when James says here the word’s like a mirror, that speaks of examination but also it speaks of restoration. We look in a mirror to restore ourselves back to, a, a, a good presentation of ourselves, restoration. The word has a cleansing and restoring power to it. In Exodus 38, um, the Bible shows how Moses, ah, told the ladies of Israel to bring their looking-glasses in. Actually they weren’t glasses at all, it was metal that had been beaten and polished so they would have something of a mirror. It wasn’t a very good mirror but it’s the only mirror they had and Moses took those articles from the ladies of Israel and he beat them out and put them together and made a laver that stood between the brazen altar sacrifice in the holy place, and they filled that giant reflective laver with water and it’s where the priest would purify himself, his hands and feet, and wash himself ceremonially before he went into the temple, into the holy place, and there’s a real picture there of what God does for us with the word of God. The word of God purifies us and restores us back to a closeness to the Lord and a close walk with the Lord. Ah, John 15:3, “Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken to you.” Ephesians 5:26, the church is sanctified and cleansed and here’s the quote, “by the washing of the water with the word.” In 1 John 1:9, the word gives the promise of cleansing. So there is a sense in which we’re restored back, cleaned back up and restored back in intimacy and in fellowship with our Lord under the ministry of the word.

Now we go back and we use the illustration often but we think about David in his sin with Bathsheba and then literally murdering Bathsheba’s husband, and Nathan the prophet comes in to David knowing the, the truth as God’s revealed it, and he points a finger at King David and says, “Thou art the man!” And David said, “I, I, I, I’ve sinned.” And then the prophet said in 2 Samuel 12:13 to David, “The Lord has put away your sin. You shall not die.” Restoration. You’ve gotten it right. Now there were consequences, of course, but you’re restored back. I don’t know about you, brothers and sisters, but I’m glad th our God is a God of the second chance and the 100 chance, and as his child, it’s loving and good and gracious of him to take me back to the word of God where I open the word of God or I sit under the preaching of the word of God and sometimes you think I’ve been reading your mail, your email, but I haven’t but God knows and his Spirit takes his word and he shows you something and the Spirit of God through the word of God being preached says, “Thou art the man!” And you humble yourself and you say, “I see the examination. I am wrong and I repent of that.” And God says, “Yes, and your sin has been forgiven.”

There’s a restoration that is beautiful. There’s an examination. There’s a restoration and there’s a transformation. That’s the obvious outcome here. Verse 25, look, “But he who looks intently at the perfect law, the law of liberty, and abides by it,” lets it have its effect, that is, “not having become a forgetful hearer but an effectual doer, this man shall be blessed in what he does.” He’s different and he walks in a different way.

I told you about the time that I had, ah, ah, hopefully I’ve had a bunch of them but I had a significant breakthrough in my thinking about something that I didn’t know was sinful in my thinking and it, and it was and God showed me that, and my life has been blessed by not walking in that any longer. Now I still fail there some but it’s not a pattern of who I am anymore. That’s the transformation that God wants us all to have in our lives, to look at the mirror of the word of God and look at it with a sense of obligation.

He says, “Look intently,” verse 25. He looks intently. That means an intentional and sustained look. It literally has the idea of stooping down and looking very closely. Then he says not only intently, he says, “and he abides by it,” verse 25. He’s looking with a ready response at what James calls the perfect law of liberty. That’s sort of a paradox to use the law that way but notice the amplifiers, it’s the law of liberty. It’s not the old Mosaic law that was cold, harsh legalism that only could condemn. He’s using the figure of speech here the Gospel is the law of liberty. It’s a law that brings you peace and forgiveness and cleansing and grace and mercy.

It’s the law of liberty and the one who abides in Christ’s word will find a new liberty and that’s, that’s the great truth that you and I know as the children of God that the world just cannot grasp. They think when we teach and preach the things of God, that somehow it puts us in some sort of woeful, ah, self-condemning and downcast spirit. No, it’s a liberation. It’s a joy. God’s word to us is a liberating joy. When God’s word says, “Thou shalt not,” what he’s saying is, “I don’t want you to hurt yourself.” When God’s word says, “Thou shalt,” he’s saying, “Help yourself.” It’s for our good.

Listen, listen, church: God loves you. He’s not trying to put you through something, he’s trying to help you through something, help you come out of the lies and the bondage and the constrictions and the condemnation, and all the negative that the, the world and the old law would put on us. The Bible says the Psalmist in Psalm 119 verses, ah, verse 45 rather, ” I will walk at liberty, for I seek thy precepts.” John 8:34 reminds us, “everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin.” That means a, a, a present tense continuing to sin; a, a, a willful embracing to walk in sin. When you do that, what are you? He says, John 8:34, you are the slave of sin. It’s a bondage. All of this stuff that the world keeps throwing out at us and the church, especially liberals in the church, keep throwing out that, “Well, times have changed and things have changed. This is a new kind of morality. You can indulge in this pleasure and follow this lust and you ought to be free to do these things.” It’s not freedom, it’s bondage. It’s not freedom. It’s not liberty. It’s a destroying bondage. As a matter of fact, ah, John, ah, chapter 8, verses 31 and 32, just to get a, a broader context here. John 8:31-32, “So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, ‘If you continue in My word,'” in other words, if this is real and you’re striving now to walk in the truth I’ve been teaching you, “‘then you are truly disciples, truly disciples of Mine; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” Jesus is not lying. He’s telling us the truth. The truth, walking in his truth, receiving his truth, it makes us free. Free indeed.

Now look at 2 Corinthians, if you will, chapter 3. 2 Corinthians 3 and look at verse 18. As we so spoiled to the screens we can’t look up Scripture during the sermon anymore? I kinda am, to be honest. 2 Corinthians 3:18. Now listen, let’s back up. I’m gonna spend a little time here. Let’s back up to, ah, verse 7 and go down through verse 18. 2 Corinthians 3, starting in verse 7, “But if the ministry of death,” that’s the old law code through Moses, “if the ministry of death in letters engraved on stones, came with glory, so that the sons of Israel could not look intently at the face of Moses because of the glory of his face, fading as it was, how will the ministry of the Spirit fail to be even more with glory? For if the ministry of condemnation has glory, much more does the ministry of righteousness abound in glory.” So the new word that you and I grasp, the word of grace, the word of the Gospel, has a, a great glory to it, a great liberty even to it.

Verse 10, “For indeed what had glory, in this case has no glory because of the glory that surpasses it.” He says take the glory and the wonder of the law of Moses and in contrast to the glory we know through grace in Jesus Christ, it doesn’t have any glory at all.

Verse, ah, 11, “For if that which fades away was with glory, much more that which remains is in glory. Therefore having such a hope, we use great boldness in our speech, and are not like Moses, who used to put a veil over his face so that the sons of Israel would not look intently at the end of what was fading away. But their minds were hardened; for until this very day at the reading of the old covenant the same veil remains unlifted, because it is removed in Christ.” So the Jews had just clung to Moses and didn’t see what Moses was pointing to, they clung to the old law and not to Christ, and God hardened their hearts.

Verse 15, “But to this day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their hearts,” verse 16, “but whenever a person turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.” We’re liberated. “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” God, look, God is not going to let you go on with your fleshly desires and your fleshly lusts because it will, it will put you in bondage and enslavement and given enough time will destroy you. That’s why the, the law of the Lord is, is a, a law of liberty. It’s to get you out of that bondage and away from the destruction of sin and giving into everything that our fallen flesh might desire.

Verse 18, “But we all, with unveiled face,” Moses put a veil over his face because his, his glory was in the law and it, it, it, it was not lasting. “But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.” So he’s saying the ministry of the word continues to change us in a closer consecrated communion and walk with Christ and increases our joy and increases our liberty as we go forward.

So Paul here uses that example of Moses and compares it to our own experience. Moses under the old covenant, his glory was fading away. He covered his face up so they wouldn’t see the glory departing. But we’re on the opposite, we are continuing in a transformation to where we grasp, embrace and enjoy more of the glory that is ours through Jesus Christ. That’s our pilgrimage.

Have you not noticed that in your pilgrimage? Have you not noticed that in your sanctification, new joys, new sweetness? It does get sweeter the more we yield to him, the more we repent and draw back near to him. Ours is not a fading glory like Moses, that’s the old law. Ours is a growing glory as the word transforms us from one level of his image to another level, to another level, and what’s gonna happen when you get to heaven? You’ll be just as he is and that’ll be glory upon glory upon glory. Now listen to me, and that’ll be joy upon joy upon joy. That’ll be pleasure upon pleasure upon pleasure. It just gets better for us. It just gets better.

The word “transformed” in our original text over in James is the word we get “metamorphosis” from. It’s the same word that was used on the Mount of Transfiguration when Jesus was transfigured and changed before him. He says little by little God changes you more to the image of Christ Jesus as you are under, yield to this examination process and as the word of God is preached, as the word of God is taught, as you have your quiet time, there should be a sobriety, there should be a serious intent in your heart, “Lord, show me, let this mirror show me what I need to learn, what I need to repent of.” And that restores you. It examines you, it restores you, and then it is continually transforming you from one level of glory to another until we get home in glory.

Practicing the word.