11.27.22 - James 1:22-25

Open your Bibles to James 1:22-25. •This morning we come to a text that teaches us that our Faith consists in much more than mere hearing.  James 1:22 is probably the most famous verse in this short letter.  •It says, “But be doers of the Word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.” Brothers and sisters, the Bible is different from other books.  •It’s different in that it is the very Word of God, inspired by Him, without error. It is heavenly wisdom and Good News for sinners. It proceeds from the mouth of God. •Christ is found in it’s pages, and so, it gives life to those who receive by faith what is revealed.  But the Bible is different in another regard, too: •Most books teach you things, but they don’t demand anything of you.  •A fiction book demands nothing from you. A history book teaches you about the past, but demands nothing. A cook book tells you how to cook, but does not command you to cook. Science books teach about the natural world, but they demand nothing from you.  •BUT THE BIBLE is the Law of the Lord. The Bible is the Word of God. And it demands things of you.  •It demands faith in the Lord Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. Faith in the Good News that He saves sinners.  •It demands faith in God’s own self-revelation.  It demands agreement with what God has said about all things. •And it demands ACTION as well. It demands life change. It demands obedience.  And why does the Bible make demands of us? •Because it is the WORD OF GOD.  •And God Almighty makes demands of His creatures.  •And, because He is God, these demands cannot be put aside without terrible results for those who ignore Him.  •The Bible legitimately demands things of us because God legitimately demands things of His creatures.  But, brothers and sisters, how often, when when we hear the Word, do we say either aloud or in our hearts, “I know…” •We hear what God commands us to believe or do and then we say, “I know…” and then there is a “but.” Maybe it’s actually said. Or maybe it’s unspoken. But, either way, it’s still there in your heart.  •We often know what the Word says about how we are to live, what we are to be busy doing, how we are to think, what we are to do in the situation we find ourselves in, or how we are to navigate the daily difficulties of life.  •We often “know.” We’ve heard the Word. We’ve read the Word. We’ve heard it preached. We “know.” •So here is the question for every single one of us: If you “know,” then why don’t you do it? There is so much that we know and understand in the Bible, but we simply don’t do it.  •We hear the Word. But we don’t do the Word.  •Reality Check: Have you committed yourself more to prayer since last week’s sermon? (If you hadn’t formerly, that is.) Or are you still carrying around your worries? •One man said quite well, “It’s not the parts of Scripture that I can’t understand that bother me. It’s the parts I do understand.” Brothers and sisters, we must do what we know. That’s the point of our text this morning.  •We must hear the Word. And then we must do it.  •I submit to you that it’s better to know less but believe and obey what you know, than it is to heap up knowledge that goes unpracticed and unapplied and is essentially useless.  Hear me: ALL that we learn and understand from the study of God’s Word is meant to bring about CHANGE in our hearts and lives.  •Don’t ever forget that.  •Our religion is intellectual, yes. But it is NEVER merely intellectual. That’s a worldly thought. God did not give us His Word for mere mental stimulation.  •This text in James reminds us that our faith is always meant to lead to action. Our hearing the Word must result in our obeying it.  But before we go any further, let me be clear: •I don’t believe that this is a huge problem in our church right now.  •I don’t believe that I’m pastoring a group of people who don’t give a rip about obeying the Word. I see continual growth in many of you. I see a desire to obey and honor the Lord in you.  •But I do know human nature well enough to say that this is a general problem for Christians at different times in our lives.  •And I know that it has been a problem in this church in years past. And I don’t want us to ever go back to it.  •So, as Peter says in 2 Peter 1:13, “I think it right, as long as I am in this body, to stir you up by way of reminder.” So this sermon is not meant to be a rebuke to this entire congregation.  •Maybe it will be for some of you. That’s the Lord’s business between you and Him.  •But my intention is for this sermon to be a REMINDER for us to have a continual aim at hearing the Word and then DOING what God has said.  •And may the Lord bless us this morning and encourage us to continue in the way that w’ve been going, but with more zeal and focus on glorifying Him in our lives.  Now, if you would and are able, please stand with me for the reading of the inspired, inerrant, and infallible Word of God.  James 1:22-25 [22] But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.  [23] For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror.  [24] For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like.  [25] But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing. (PRAY) Our Heavenly Father,  We thank you for your Word. As our Lord Jesus said, your Word is truth itself.  We humbly sit at the feet of your Book this morning and await your instruction.  We ask that you would make us teachable today. By your Holy Spirit soften our hearts and grant us faith to receive the Word.  Speak to us, and grant that we would take in what you have said, digest it, meditate upon it, love it, glory in the truth, and then walk according to the light you’ve given.  We want to glorify you as we obey you through faith in Christ. So, please, work that in us today.  Glorify yourself in us.  We ask these things in Jesus’ Name and for His sake.  Amen.  1.) Before we begin our study of these verses, I’d like make a brief clarification about something of central importance to our Faith.  •This morning, I will be talking an awful lot about DOING. An awful lot about obedience to God.  •I’ll be talking about our WORKS and the necessity of Christians doing good works and obeying God.  But let me be clear right out of the gate: NONE OF THAT MEANS THAT YOU ARE SAVED BY YOUR WORKS.  •The Word of God asserts over and over again that we are justified by faith apart from any works of the Law.  •That is, we are declared legally righteous through faith in Jesus Christ, apart from any obedience to God’s commandments.  •The constant teaching of Scripture is that we are justified, declared righteous in God’s sight, by faith ALONE in Christ ALONE apart from any works rendered by us.  Faith alone in Christ alone. But why? •Only Christ has rendered perfect obedience to God on your behalf. You could never do it. You’re a sinner. And even your best works are stained with sin and have no merit before God. But God demands perfection.  •Only Christ has offered Himself as the atoning sacrifice that takes away the wrath of God for those who believe.  •Only Christ can wash you clean of your sins and make you fit to approach God in His glory.  •And Christ, the Savior, is received ONLY by faith.  •He will not allow you to receive Him on any other terms. The glory is His. Salvation belongs to the Lord. He will not share glory with you.  •And so your works do not matter with regard to your right standing with God.  •Jesus Christ has accomplished salvation all by Himself for all who will trust in Him.  And having come to faith in Christ, there is nothing to add to His work on your behalf.  •“It is finished,” as He said.  •There is no merit for you to add to His perfect work. You can’t get more justified. You can’t be more saved by your obedience to God.  •You are saved solely by the merits of Jesus Christ.  •From beginning to end, you are justified by faith alone.  •Jesus Christ is sufficient. And He is received by faith apart from works.  Hear me: The Gospel is NOT ABOUT YOU DOING ANYTHING.  •It’s about what God has done in Christ to save sinners.  •It’s about believing the promise of God concerning Christ. Namely, that He has saved sinners through Him.  •The Gospel is a MESSAGE from God about what He has done through His only begotten Son to save sinners.  •The Gospel is a message to be received by faith.  •And God freely justifies all who believe, apart from any good works performed by them. He saves us because of the works of Jesus Christ done on our behalf.  •Christ has done enough. Christ is sufficient.  •Faith alone in Christ alone saves a sinner.  BUT works always proceed from faith.  •True faith is a living faith and is ever accompanied by good works.  •As Martin Luther famously said, “We are saved by faith alone. But the faith that saves is never alone.” •When someone has been born again and granted faith in Christ, they are now alive in Him. And good works begin to pour out of him of necessity.  •True faith always results in a change of thinking and the adoption of new ways of living. •Just as a living man is radically different from a dead man in that the living man DOES things while a dead man does not, so also a living faith DOES and a dead faith (that cannot save) lies dead in the dirt.  Hear me: Faith in Christ is the root of salvation.  •And that is just another way of saying that CHRIST is the root of salvation. (We receive Him by faith.) •But works of obedience, doing the Word, good works, are the fruit that springs forth from the root.  •Wherever Christ is, there is godliness and goodness. And those who trust in Christ are united with Him.  •Again, Christ is the root. And those who receive Him will always and inevitably bear fruit. He is the vine, we are the branches (connected to Him). Where He is, there is fruit.  2.) And with that said, let’s now consider the words of James here, beginning with v22: •[22] But be doers of the word, and not hearers only,  •Before we get into the “doing,” let’s pause and notice something that often goes overlooked in this verse: •We must first HEAR the Word BEFORE we can do it.  •If we are to live according to God’s commandments, if we are to live a life pleasing to Him, if we are to believe what He commands us to believe, think as He wants us to think, and live as He wants us to live, we must first LISTEN to what He has to say.  •We must first turn to His Word and be HEARERS! This is actually James’ big thrust in vv18-21. And he’s simply following it through here in our text: •God has caused us to be born again through the Word of truth. •So then, we must be quick to hear the Word, slow to speak against it, and slow to be angry with what we’ve heard because that will not produce righteousness in us.  •We must receive the implanted word with meekness.  •This whole section is about rightly receiving and responding to the Word of God.  Brothers and sisters, we must first hear the Word.  •We must receive it. That’s what James is getting at.  •We must read it, hear it read, hear it preached, study it as we’re able, meditate up on it, think through it, turn to it for instruction and guidance, and think about how it applies to our lives.  •We must be hearers before we are doers, or else we will be very zealous for the Lord but absolutely ignorant about what pleases Him. (This is the case for many.) And this means that we cannot let sermons or Scripture reading go in one ear and out the other.  •We are to TRULY HEAR THE WORD.  •So many times we listen to teaching, but we aren’t really thinking deeply about how it applies to us specifically. We’re kind of like a teenage cashier. We’re just putting in our time until the sermon is over.  •Or we read our Bible, shut the Book, and then not give another thought to what we’ve read. Not another thought to what it calls us to believe or do, how it encourages us, how it challenges us, or anything else.  •We simply check it off our list of things to do that day and move on with our lives.  •Brothers and sisters, that is not the way. That is actually breaking the Third Commandment, because we are not treating God and His Word with the reverence and seriousness that it deserves.  •Such “hearing” is not even really hearing.  •We must take it in thoughtfully and seek application, whether it be in regard to our beliefs, thinking, or actions.  But again I say, before any good works or godly reformation of life can take place, we must first hear the Word.  •This is how it works with our salvation: We must first HEAR the Gospel and believe.  •The same is true for our sanctification and growth in Christ: We must first hear the Word and believe it.  •So, brothers and sisters, be careful how you hear.  3.) But truly receiving the Word means more than merely hearing and believing that it’s true.  •And that brings us to our next phrase for consideration: •[22] But be doers of the word, •Listening is good. But what James is condemning here is MERELY listening. MERELY hearing the Word is unacceptable for a true Christian.  We must be doers of the Word and not hearers only.  •Frankly, this is the only appropriate response to truly hearing the Word of God.  •And I say that because those who do the Word are those who have heard it with FAITH. They have received the Word, and are clinging to it as the very Word of God.  •And, as I said earlier, faith always results in action and change.  •So hearing with faith will result in change. It will result in DOING the Word.  •Anything less is a superficial hearing. There is no faith. Brothers and sisters, striving to obey the Word of God is second-nature to the person who has been born again.  •More theologically, we could say it’s “New-Nature” for those who have been born again.  •It’s like a baby that cries when it comes out of the womb. It just does it. Nobody teaches it to cry. It just cries.  •In a similar way, those who have been born again immediately want to please God.  •Now, we don’t do it perfectly. And we need instruction in what pleases Him because we are sinners still. But the desire to please Him is IMMEDIATELY present. Nobody has to teach that. In fact, it can’t be taught. It just exists in the heart of every Christian.  •God has fundamentally changed us. Radically, at our core, He has transformed us. He has given us a new nature, a righteous nature, a new inner man that desires Him and desires to glorify Him in all we do.  How do I know that is the case for every Christian?  •I know that because of what the Bible says about the blessings of the New Covenant inaugurated in the blood of Christ.  •Jeremiah 31:33-34 says, “For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” •There are three great blessings mentioned here that our Lord Jesus has purchased with His blood. Three great blessings mentioned here for ALL who are in the New Covenant through faith in Christ.  1. First, the one we tend focus on the most: •God will no longer remember the sins of those in the New Covenant.  •Their sins are forgiven in Christ Jesus.  2. Second, EVERYONE in the New Covenant KNOWS the Lord.  •Every person in the NC has a personal relationship with God. An intimate, loving relationship with God.  •He loves them. And they love Him. A new heart has been given to them. They personally know and love God.  •And with this obviously comes a desire to please Him.  3. Third, God will write His Law on the hearts of EVERY member of the New Covenant.  •That is, He writes His WORD on our hearts. His commandments on our hearts. His Law on our hearts.  •Why? Not so we can simply know what they are. We can have that by considering the Law written on tablets of stone (written Scripture).  •No, writing on our hearts in this context has something to do with making the Law PART OF US. Making our hearts beat with His Law.  •God writes His Law on our hearts and, in doing so, gives us the ability and desire to walk in His ways and glorify Him in our obedience.  •This is the reality for every genuine Christian. This is what we are now: People with the Word of God written on our hearts so we can and will obey Him.  So then, we do not hear the Word to MERELY hear it.  •We do not come to church to MERELY have our minds filled with knowledge.  •We come to the Word of God to be instructed in what to believe and how to live in order to glorify the God who has forgiven us, brought us to love Him, and enabled us to obey Him.  •Mere intellectual assent to the truth of the Word of God simply isn’t enough. Our religion is much more than that. It’s not less than that, mind you. But it is indeed more. Allow me to continue to highlight this: We must DO.  •We are NOT entirely passive in the Christian life. “Let go and let God” is silly and unbiblical. We are to DO.  •We do not read and pray and then sit on our couches and wonder why we have not grown and why we are not obeying the Word like we had hoped.  •No, brothers and sisters, that is not the way. Rather, we are to use CONSCIOUS EFFORT and apply what the Word says PRACTICALLY.  •We are absolutely passive in that God is the One who first works in our hearts to give us the desire and ability to obey Him, but, nevertheless, we are to take an active role and attempt to DO and OBEY Him.  •“Doing the Word” will not just happen. It won’t fall into our laps. It takes effort. It requires us to be uncomfortable. It requires us to exercise self-control. It requires planning at times. It takes effort.  •Killing sin takes effort. Striving to living righteously takes effort. It’s an act of the will in dependence upon the Lord.  •We still have a sinful nature with which we must war daily in prayer, hearing the Word, and attempting to DO what the Word says.  •We are at the same time wholly passive as God works in us, and also wholly active as we strive to work out our salvation with fear and trembling.  NOTE: It is so easy to become self-satisfied with our knowledge of the Word and leave it at that.  •We sit under decent, expository preaching, have Sunday School classes that are profitable, read pious and deep commentaries, read the old dead theologians (and some living ones, too), and then sit on the couch, so to speak, pleased with ourselves for learning so much.  •AND THEN DO NOTHING WITH IT.  •And that is a sin. As James says later, “So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.” (James 4:17) You know, you can audit a college class. You can hear it. But you are not accountable to what you’ve heard.  •There are no tests. There is no required study outside of the classroom. You simply hear but do not have to do anything with what you’ve heard.  •Brothers and sisters, Christianity is NOT AN AUDITING RELIGION.  •You are accountable to what you hear. You are to DO. The Christian is to be KNOWN as a DOER of the Word.  •This should be the descriptor of every believer: He is a doer of the Word. She is a doer of the Word.  •This is WHAT YOU ARE in Christ, Christian! •This is who you have been made into as a member of the New Covenant.  •So, I beg you, BE WHAT YOU HAVE BEEN MADE! •Be what you are! •Don’t live as one who has been unchanged. Don’t live like a worldling. That’s not who you are anymore.  •You have the Law of God written on your heart. You have a heart of flesh where a heart of stone used to be. You have been brought to know the Lord. You have become His special possession. You are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works.  •So go and be what He has made you! Do the Word! 4.) But for those who will not heed James’ words, he gives a warning at the end of v22: •[22] But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.  •This is the danger of hearing but not doing.  •Such a person who only ever hears the Word but does not practice it, is self-deceived.  •And I think there are two major kinds of deception that we fall into: 1. Such a person might be deceiving himself into thinking he is a believer when he is not. (I think this is James’ primary thought here.) •If a person’s life is one of habitual and unrepentant inaction and unresponsiveness to the Word, such a person is not converted. Such a person is still dead in their sins and on their way to Hell.  •They may be quite religious and very familiar with the language of the Faith and proper doctrine, but they have not yet truly received Christ. They have not been born again. They are still spiritually dead with no faith.  How do we know that? •Because they clearly have no desire to walk with God.  •And that means that they do not have a new heart with God’s Law written on it.  •They still have a chest full of stone and lawlessness. Hear me: It doesn’t matter what you profess, with regard to religion.  •What matters is what you possess.  •And if you have no fruit of obedience, no desire for obedience, but are simply at peace with merely hearing the Word, you do not possess true faith in Christ.  •And you must come to Him in faith and repentance or be lost eternally.  •Jesus knows the truth. He knows those who have come to Him. And their lives give evidence of what is true of their hearts.  2. A second kind of deception may be for someone who is a true believer but has fallen prey to a lie.  •Such a person who hears but does not act may have deceived himself into thinking that God is pleased with his hearing, when God absolutely IS NOT pleased. •God is disgusted with the idea of our hearing His Word but not doing what He says.  Does this not anger you? •When someone knows what you’ve said, agrees that you’re right, knows it’s the best thing to do, but then just flatly doesn’t do what you’ve said, IT IS INFURIATING.  •How much more with Almighty God?  •He is not pleased with such inaction and disobedience.  •He did not give the Word for us to merely learn it. He gave it for us to obey.  •As it is written, “The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.” (Deuteronomy 29:29) •Or as our Lord says, “Blessed rather are those who hear the Word of God and keep it!” (Luke 11:28) •Or again, “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you?” (Luke 6:46) No, our Lord is not pleased with inaction.  •Inaction is disobedience. It is sin.  •And such a person is either unconverted and dead in their sins, or is a child of God who is in for a rude disciplinary awakening from their Father who loves them. For God will not allow them to live so foolishly forever.  •If this applies to you, receive the rebuke of the Word of God and repent.  •He has more mercy and grace than we have sin. Do not be afraid to come to Him Christ, acknowledging your sin and asking for forgiveness. He will give it. And He will strengthen you for godliness going forward.  5.) Back to our text. James continues by giving us an illustration of the worthlessness and absurdity of hearing and not doing in vv23-24: •[23] For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. [24] For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like.  •Hearing and not doing is like looking at mirror and then forgetting.  Then, like now, mirrors (made of polished metal) had a toiletry use.  •Fixing hair, checking for cleanness of face, examine your appearance, and that sort of thing were the use of mirrors.  •You looked intently into a mirror to examine your appearance to see if ANYTHING NEEDED TO BE TENDED TO OR CHANGED about yourself.  •And James here compares the Word of God to a mirror.  •Looking into he mirror is to HEAR THE WORD.  Brothers and sisters, the Word of God is a mirror.  •It shows us what we are. It tells us that truth about who we are, both negatively and positively.  •It doesn’t lie. It doesn’t flatter. It doesn’t exaggerate. It gives us the straight truth about ourselves.  •It reveals us to ourselves.  Surely, you’ve experienced this.  •The Word shows you your dirty face. It shows you your sin. It shows you your ugliness in the full light of truth and God’s righteous standard.  •And praise God, it also points us to the fountain of Christ’s blood where we can wash and be made clean! •And then it shows us how to live, what changes need made to our spiritual appearance. It shows us how to keep ourselves “unstained from the world,” as James says in v27.  To look in the mirror, but then forget what you look like and do nothing with the knowledge of your appearance simply doesn’t make any sense.  •To what end did you look into the mirror? What was the point? •The mirror did it’s job. It showed you the mark on your face that needs washing. It showed you that your hair needs fixed.  •But because you went away, forgot, and did nothing with the self-knowledge you received, the mirror was of NO USE to you.  •Brothers and sisters, to examine yourself in the Scriptures and then do nothing in response is madness.  •When you see your imperfections, your sins, the ugly marks on your face, you should do something about it.  •You should run to Christ for washing. And then you should consider how to avoid becoming dirty again. You should consider how to walk CLEANLY before Him. And you should devote yourself to obeying Him.  No one in their right mind examines their face that closely and then utterly neglects the flaw they discover.  •How much more ludicrous is it to ignore and neglect what you’ve seen in the mirror of God’s Word? •It is the height of foolishness. To treat God’s Word so lightly and irreverently is absurd for one who professes faith in the God of the Word; for someone who has been born again of that same Word.  Or, more positively, you can look in the mirror and see your own beauty.  •I don’t mean this in a vain way, of course. But you can look in the mirror of God’s Word and behold what you really are in Christ.  •You can behold His beauty that has been given to you through you union with Him by faith.  •You can see that He has made you into something beautiful and new and clean and good.  •So when then would you walk away from seeing that and live in such an ugly manner? •That doesn’t make sense. To see in Scripture that Christ has made you beautiful by His blood, to see how He says He has changed your heart, and then live without another thought to that is madness.  •You’re living contrary to what He has made you.  To use, or really, to NOT USE, the Word this way is to make it worthless to yourself.  •Of course, the Word is not worthless in itself. It is the very Word of God.  •But you are making it useless to YOU by neglecting it’s PROPER USE to change you.  •Hearing with our doing, or even a desire to begin to do, is a terrible, worthless use of Scripture.  •It’s a corruption of the purpose of Scripture. And it is making light of the revelation God has given, which is the terrible sin of breaking the Third Commandment.  And yet, this is often what we are tempted to do.  •This is how a lot of professing Christians treat the Word.  •Some more and some less, but we’re all guilty of it at times or James wouldn’t have written this for us.  •Brothers and sisters, we must use the Word rightly. We must be DOERS of the Word.  6.) Now we come to our last verse. And here James tells us of the blessedness of hearing and doing.  •[25] But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing. •James now makes a contrast between those who only hear and those who hear and DO.  •Here James calls the Word of God “the Law of Liberty.” •And “the one who looks into” it is one who hears.  •But this person actually DOES it and is blessed IN THE DOING OF THE WORD.  Here James says that those who obey the Word will be blessed in their doing.  •How is that? Because the Word is the Law of Liberty.  •The Law of God, the Word of God, brings blessing and liberty to those who hear and do it.  •But what kind of liberty? What kind of blessing? Well, let’s be clear that obeying the Word doesn’t give salvation. Obeying God’s commandments doesn’t give salvation.  •But the Word does reveal our sin, reveal the Gospel, and sends us to Christ for salvation.  •So, in that sense, the Law/Word brings liberty to those who receive it and do what it says. (BELIEVES.) But there is another sense in which the Word of God gives liberty to those who obey it: •Through faith in Christ, the Word of God becomes our rule for living. It becomes our guide and standard for life.  •It can no longer damn us. Christ has taken that away by dying for us and cleansing us.  •Instead, now the Law of God is our friend. It teaches us how to truly live in FREEDOM. It gives liberty.  •Christ has freed us from the penalty for our sin AND from the dominion of sin and Satan.  •We are FREE MEN in Christ. And the Word of God teaches us how to live freely.  •It teaches those who obey it how to live, no longer being a slave to sin and our own wicked desires, but teaching us to walk in the light of liberty.  Hear me: True freedom is living in obedience to God.  •Living according to our sinful desires is pure slavery.  •Anger is a slave-master. Selfishness is a slave-master. Lust is cruel slave-master. Worry is a cruel owner. Laziness is slavery. Lying is bondage. Your will is a cruel taskmaster. Lack of self-control is misery. A guilty conscience is a terror.  •You get the point, I think. Sin is slavery. But obeying the Word of God teaches us how to live in dependence upon God to overcome our sin and live freely.  Brothers and sisters, we have been set free SO THAT we might live for God.  •This is what we were designed for. This is what we were supposed to be from the beginning before sin came into the world through Adam.  •Once we could not and would not obey God. But now, since we have been set free in Christ, WE CAN.  •And the Word guides us in our freedom.  •Freedom from all manner of things that weigh us down and enslave us is found in submitting to and obeying the Word of God through faith in Jesus Christ.  Such a person who obeys this Law of Liberty is truly blessed.  •God grants peace to this one. He grants Assurance of salvation to this one. He grants more and more freedom, more and more new desires to this one.  •He gives more and more help and strength to overcome sin to this one.  •He gives a sense of His own Fatherly pleasure to this one.  •The one who does the Word is blessed.  Do you want to be blessed, Christian? •Do you want to be free from the sins that threaten to bind you once again?  •Do you want to live as a free man? •Then obey the Word. God will bless you in it.  7.) So, brothers and sisters, how do you hear the Word? •Do you hear it only to fill your head with facts?  •Or do you hear with an eye to how it might change you in your beliefs, thoughts, words, affections, and actions? •If you don’t hear the Word with an eye to doing it, you are in a dangerous and foolish place, spiritually.  •Please, don’t waste the precious Word of God.  Do not leave here today today agreeing with the truth of what you’ve heard but not applying it.  •Don’t you walk out that door and forget what you’ve seen in the mirror.  •Don’t you leave this place today and forget what Christ has done for you and has written on your heart.  •Be a doer of the Word.  •Resolve today to begin a great practical application of what you hear in Scripture.  •And cry out to God for enabling grace for the task ahead.  •He will help you. He loves to help His children to be what He has made them.  And, please, do not leave here today saying, “I really wish so-and-so could’ve heard that.” •THIS SERMON WAS FOR YOU.  •Don’t be arrogant and assume that this is not absolutely for your own benefit, rebuke, encouragement, and reminder.  •The Lord brought you here this morning. Whether that was to bring you to repentance or to encourage you to continue as you’ve been doing, only you and God know. But, either way, this sermon was FOR YOU.  •Do the Word, brothers and sisters.  But remember, as you always must remember, your doing will not save you.  •I’ve been talking this morning about the life of a Christian.  •Your works will never make you right with God. Only faith alone in Christ alone can do that.  •But those who believe will be doers and not only hearers.  So then, brothers and sisters, live free in Christ! •You are free. Now live like free men! •Live for the glory of the Great Liberator who has set you free from the tyranny of sin and has written His Word on your hearts! Do the Word, not for salvation. No, never for that.  •But do it because you are a new creature in Christ.  •Because this is your great desire, at root.  •Because you have tasted the sweetness of the Savior’s love and now want to show your gratitude and affection for Him.  •Because you now love the One who first loved you and saved your soul.  May God help each one of us to not merely hear, but to do the Word of God to the praise and glory of the God of our salvation.  •Amen.