Do What it Says
Notes
Transcript
why was Cinderella so bad at soccer? She kept running away from the ball
This week we are finishing up the thought we started last week. Last week, James was telling us what we are supposed to do with the Word of Truth. James told us we were born again through the Word of Truth, that is he gave us new life through this Word of Truth. We talked about how the Word of Truth is basically the Gospel, the idea that God created us, and sin entered the world through Adam, and because of that all of us were separated from God, unable to be made right with Him. Yet, because of His great love for us, He sent Jesus to die on the cross for our sins and make us right with Him again. And this is the Gospel, but it goes so much deeper, because it goes in to the entirety of the word, the entirety of the Bible. So, last week we discussed James telling us the first two things we are supposed to do when with the word of truth, the first thing we are supposed to do is listen to it. The problem with many of us, when it comes to anything in life is we hear something and immediately we begin to think we should start speaking on it because our passions well up inside of us, but we have to really take the time to let it get into us, because, the listening leads to the next step which is the receiving of the word of truth. Now let me stop quickly and say what we said last week, while listening does indeed mean hearing, and you can do that here when someone is preaching the word of truth, it also means through your own reading of the word, through Bible studies and so many other things, so we have to be sure we are putting ample opportunities for us to hear the word in our lives. 3
The second thing he told us to do with the word of truth was to receive it. For us to receive it, he tells us we have to put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness so we can receive it. So we can’t just keep living the same old dirty life, this doesn’t mean you won’t mess up, because most certainly we will all have our problems, what this means is we will have to leave some of our old ways of life behind. The people, the places, the situations, the things that cause us to sin the most, we will have to willingly and obediently leave those things behind so we can continue in this sanctification process, so we can receive the crown of life at the end of our life. its not about not messing up and falling, this is about making conscience decisions about the sin in our life to leave it behind.
So where does that leave us this morning, we will look at what hetells us we are supposed to do next, and that is to Do What it says.
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, and abides by it, not having become a forgetful hearer but an effectual doer, this man will be blessed in what he does.
So you know what James is telling us it is possible for us to hear the word and think it good, but do nothing. He says, Look, don’t just come and hear a message and think, man that was an awesome message, and then walk out the back door and do nothing with it. CHANGE! Allow it to move in your life and do something . Do what it says
He says if you don’t its like this, so let me just give you a sort of extreme example. It would be like if I were working on a self portrait of myself, and here I am looking in this mirror, and then for some reason it can’t move, so I am coming to look at myself in this mirror and get an idea, and I walk over here and start painting, and when I get done, this is how I see myself. And its this picture of Brad Pitt, I mean the resemblance is uncanny, but it would be just like that. We come and we hear and we say it is an amazing message, or we read the Bible and the Spirit touches our heart and we think man that word is so good, but we get up and walk away without anything changing.
The thing is for some of us we do that, we come and hear this message we think is great, and then we try to get out of the door as quickly as possible and by the time we get to lunch we have almost forgotten everything we have heard and we definitely haven’t allowed it to change us.
The word used here for hearer of the word would have been used for those people in the first century who used to go and listen to the great debates in the lecture halls and when they walked away they would say, man, that guy made a really good argument, it was a really good debate, but they didn’t follow it. It was the same idea here.
I think about this in the life of King Herod in the Bible, he regularly got to listen to John the Baptist preach, and this is what he said about him
20 for Herod was afraid of John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man, and he kept him safe. And when he heard hi m, he was very perplexed; but he used to enjoy listening to him.
Isn’t that interesting, Johns words confused Herod, but he still loved hearing him preach. So the thought is the same with Herod, he’d hear John preach and it would work something up inside of him making him question what was going on and the words Herod spoke, but when he walked away, it was all over, that build up was not much of anything other than him just liking to hear him preach. No life change, no moving forward, just liking the word. See, the problem is, for so many of us hearing becomes an end to itself, and when we allow hearing to become an end, there is no benefit to our life, it has to go beyond all of that.
This is the fear I talk about so often, so many of us come into this place and we call ourselves Christians but we have never had a true relationship with Jesus, because while we have heard his word, and maybe can even recite some of it back from memory, it hsa never changed us, it has never moved us to action; never taken deep roots in our hearts and caused us to do something different. So the fear is we get to this place where we come before Jesus at the judgment and because we were just hearers and not doers he looks at us and says away from me I never knew you.
There is a second side of this Jennifer and I used to talk about often in youth ministry, we would say, Man, non-church kids are so much more easy to share the Gospel with and lead to Jesus than it is for those people who have been in church and I think these verses kind of do a good job of explaining why that is. You see, when it comes to the Word of Truth what James is telling us is we are supposed to look into our Bibles and see our own lives and use what we see to change ourselves. For example, we should look at scripture and see what God is speak to us about a sin in our live and as we look into scripture and use it as a mirror to our lives we shoudl see he wants us to put all of that to death. And we used this example of the beginning of how we forget what we look like when we look in the mirror so we come to paint ourselves as Brad Pitt. The problem is, as one commentator speaks to is, this really isn’t an accident, in James the language shows we willingly chose to see ourselves as different. So what happens with so many of us is we look at the word, and we see it, and we turn it into this pharasetical checklist thing, where we look at it and say, “Yes, I go to church, check. Yes, I help feed the hungry some, Check. Yes, I hold my tongue because I never curse, check.” So when we look at ourselves we see ourselves as these good people much like the pharisees, but we ignore parts and don’t allow it to move us.
So, the hardest thing is if we have been doing this for a long time, this ignoring and not changing and listening, receiving, and doing what the word of truth says, the harder it becomes for us to actually hear it.
Its that we see what the word of truth is calling us to, and when we read it, we don’t want to do those certain things its wanting us to do, so we write it off, surely he couldn’t want me to leave all those friends or that job behind, it makes me happy. So we just quit listening.
I think a lot about that in context of what we hear here on a Sunday morning, and I have been just as guilty of it as anyone else, but we come in and we hear an amazing word, and its life changing. But its not so life changing many tiems that we want to sit and revel in it. We still have lives and we are trying to get to lunch, or the next task on our list as quickly as possible. I remember times when we first got married and we were in a church and after it was over people would just linger and talk about their lives and what God had done and what he was showing them, they were amazed and wanted to revel in it. It reminds me of sports, and what happens when in say baseball a team gets a walk off home run to win the game. The guy hits it and everyone leaves right? Wrong. The guy hits the home run and everyone comes to the plate because it was such an amazing thing, and then then all huddle together and celebrate. At some point during the post game interview the guys are still so happy they give the hitter a gatorade bath. Its all about changing what has happened and doing somethign with it.
So James tells us in verse 25 if we aren’t just hearers but doers we will be blessed…
25 But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.
So he tells us if we are are going to really benefit from the law we have to allow it make us doers, and who are the people who become doers? The ones he says who look intently at the law, the word of Jesus and continue doing it. THe word we use here as intently is the same word that was used when we see Peter and Mary looking intently at the tomb on Easter Morning to see if JEsus was inside and the tomb seemed empty. It was this amazing, intense, wonder as they searched the tomb, maybe even worshipfully you could say because he wasn’t there. So, if we are going to really get any benefit from the Bible, this is how we are to look into it, with the same wonder and excitement and intensity.
Really get into the word and it will bless your life. This has always been the thing people tell me is the hardest in their lives, to get into this natural rhythm of reading their Bible, so thats is why I put together the daily Bible reading for us. It should only take you a few minutes each day to do the daily reading and it will help direct you. And if you want to take it a step further, don’t just read but sit down with a pen and maybe a notebook and as you are reading you can make some underlines, or take some notes about what God is teaching you as you read. Ask yourself lots of questions while you read, what does this teach me about Jesus, the father, the HS. Ask what life lesson you can learn from what you are reading. Maybe ask what command or promise you are reading. All of these are great questions for moving forward and not just listening, but receiving, so you can do something with it.
I want you to understand something, when you study the Bible, and especially if you do some of these things, you may not see the immediate benefits of it, but what will happen is it will slowly start to seep out of you. You may be going through a crazy trial in your life and people around you know it, but every time they see you, you are smiling and happy and moving on with life, and they may ask you, how is it in the middle of all of this you are happy? You will say, “You see, in the Book of James, he tells us in teh middle of every trial, we should find joy.” I just want some of you to understand for most people that is how it works, becasue there are some of you when you read your Bible you get frustrated, because you have heard people tell the stories about how they were reading their Bible and it seemed like God hit them in the back of the head with a 4x4 of truth and you are like I don’t have those moments, just know that isn’t how it always works, but when we receive it, it always gets inside of us.
So James tells us we have to look intently, and then he tells us we need to make a habit out of it,
25 But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.
Continues in it… Keeps doing it.
So it’s not enough for us to just do it once, we have to do it continuously. Thats the other reason why we have to keep doing this daily bible reading. So we can get in the Habit of doing it over and over.
So he tells us we are blessed if we do it… listen, what we all need to realize is coming to church and just knowing the words of Jesus, or the words of the Bible, are not enough. Its not enough to just store it up for ourselves and hold on to it, we have to do something with it. I was scrolling through tik tok the other day and I saw one of these videos where the guy is on a subway in, I think New York, and he asks people for their hot takes in life, and the one I saw this lady tells him, she doesn’t believe anyone is religious - except for the fanatics. She said those are the only ones who are really religious, and there is this push, I know by some of us to say I don’t want to be religious, I want to follow Jesus, but that is what she means, because she said, “If we were really religious, and we really believed there was this place called Hell were everyone goes if they don’t know Jesus, how do we not start conversations with that?” And while it is easy to find some push back and think of how we can write off much of what she is saying, the real thing is, she’s not exactly wrong.
And I think this is pretty much what James is telling us, if we are really following Jesus, we can’t just take what we know and hear it and store it up, we have to do what it says, and we have to move in the world around us and use it to change what we are doing and what we want to do.
Can you imagine how different our world would be, or even how different Georgetown would be, if we did what Jesus told us to do and we lived like we believed every person around us who didnt have a relationship with Him would die and go to Hell? Like what if we stepped into that space and we started to share the Gospel with people on a regular basis and We Did what it says? How different would it be here?
as I stumble home you run to me… because you’re worth it… you are valuable. His life for yours.
