“Be Doers of the Word”
(James 1:22-25)
Series: Living the Faith (James)
Rev. Todd A. Linn, PhD
Henderson’s First Baptist Church, Henderson
•I invite you to take your Bibles and join me this morning in James, chapter 1 (page 812; YouVersion).
We are preaching our way consecutively through the Book of James, this short letter of the Apostle James to Christians who are scattered all over the Mediterranean world as a result of oppression. So we’re preaching verse-by-verse through James and we will begin reading in a moment at verse 22.
James has just said made this statement about “laying aside” all sin that we may be in a better position to hear from God. We talked about that last time from verse 21. That’s where we left off, verse 21, “Therefore lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls,” able to save your life from a world of hurt.
When you come to know Christ and are saved, God’s word is implanted in you. It’s there but you have to receive it, to hear it, to open it, to read it. God promised through the Prophet Jeremiah, when speaking of the new covenant age in Christ, remember God said in Jeremiah 31:33, “I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.” So allow this word of God that is written on your heart, Christian, allow this word to take root in your life.
If you can’t hear God, don’t blame God. He’s always speaking. You need to receive what He’s saying. It’s like radio waves that you can’t see. There are sound waves, radio waves, bouncing all over this sanctuary. I’ll bet you can’t hear them. But if you had a receiver you could hear the radio, right?
So God is speaking this morning. If you can’t hear God, don’t blame Him. If you have a Bible and your Bible is open and you are listening, you can hear Him.
•Please stand in honor of the reading—and the hearing—of God’s Word.
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 observing his natural face in a mirror;
24 for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was.
25 But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does.
•Pray.
Introduction:
Our message this morning is entitled, “Be Doers of the Word.” It comes straight out of the text, right at the start from verse 22, “But, be doers of the word, and not hearers only.” It’s one thing to hear the word or read the word, and it is another thing altogether to do what the word says.
Can you imagine a guy who wants to work out and build his muscles. He goes to the gym where he meets a friend and his friend is big and bulky and so he tells his friend he wants to be big and bulky, too. So his friend gives him a book on bodybuilding, a book about diet & nutrition and physical fitness and how to build muscle mass. And his friend says, “Here, take this book, read this book, do what it says and you will be fit and you will build your muscles.”
So the guy says thank you and leaves with this book. A few weeks pass and his big, bulky friend runs into him. And he looks at him and he doesn’t really see any difference in his body. It doesn’t appear that anything has changed and so the big bulky friend says, “Hey, have you been reading that book I gave you?” And the guy says, “Oh, yes! I’m reading it. I read it every day! It really blesses me. I’ve underlined some of my favorite sentences. I’ve written in the margins and highlighted different sections with different colored pens. When Arnold Schwarzenegger was in town, I even had him sign the inside cover! Oh, it really blesses me!” His big, bulky bodybuilding friend would be like, “Look, I gave you that book so that you would not just read it, but that you would—what?—do what it says.”
Many Christians treat the Bible the way that guy treated the bodybuilding book. They say, “Oh, the Bible blesses me. I’ve underlined some of my favorite verses. I’ve written in the margins and highlighted different sections with different colored pens. My Bible is even signed on the inside by Billy Graham.” And James is saying to us this morning, “Look, I’m glad you love the word of God. There’s nothing wrong with underlining and highlighting. But be sure you’re not only a hearer, but a doer of the word.”
So this passage teaches us “How to be a ‘Doer’ of the Word.” So, if you’re a note-taker, write that down at the top of your note page: “How to be a ‘Doer’ of the Word.” First:
I. Correctly Respond to it (22)
Initially, my notes read merely, “Respond to the Word,” but that was lacking the emphases James makes here because everyone responds to the word in some way or other. James is telling us to respond to the word correctly. An incorrect response would be merely to hear the word and do nothing with it. So verse 22 again:
22 But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.
Correctly respond to the Word. If you merely “hear” the Word, but don’t respond to the Word by “doing” what it says, then you will be—says James at the end of verse 22—you will be “deceiving yourselves.”
The word “deceiving” there is a mathematical term that means to make a miscalculation. You may think you have really been to worship, for example, when you attend the worship service and hear the wonderful music and hear the preaching and you leave without living out what you learned. And James says that would be a serious miscalculation. You are deceiving yourself.
The New Living Translation has, “Don’t just listen to God’s word. You must do what it says. Otherwise, you are only fooling yourselves.”
We must hear the word of God and take action by doing what it says.
Imagine a guy receiving instructions for how to beat a debilitating disease. The doctor is like, “You know, what you have may prove fatal. But here’s what you need to do. Take this medicine and follow this regimen and you will be well.” Well, if the guy merely hears or listens to the instructions, but never does them, never takes action by doing what he has heard, he has made a serious miscalculation.
Christians must “receive with meekness the implanted word which is able to save their souls.” Christians must both hear and do what the Bible says. And lost persons must also hear and do what the Bible says. A lost person can hear the Word and not do it.
Herod enjoyed hearing John the Baptist. The Bible says in Mark 6:20 that Herod “heard him gladly,” but he didn’t do what John preached and so he remained lost. As you know, he eventually had John the Baptist beheaded. He “heard (John) gladly,” but he did not respond correctly to John’s preaching about repentance.
You’re here this morning as a non-Christian. You can merely hear the word about salvation, hear the Gospel, and not do what it invites you to do, to turn from sin and receive Jesus Christ as Lord alone. To just come to church Sunday after Sunday after Sunday, or to merely listen on the radio Sunday after Sunday after Sunday, and never do what the Gospel says its to deceive yourself, to delude yourself, to fool yourself into making a serious miscalculation, thinking that you are going to go to heaven when you die when you’re not.
You must do something, you must respond correctly to the Word. You must today turn from your sin, making a break from the sin that has dominated your life and, at the same time, turn to Christ Jesus, which means that you are trusting Him alone to have done for you what you could not do yourself. You believe He acted both actively and passively on your behalf, actively living a perfect life which is necessary for entrance into heaven. You are not good enough for heaven. You sin. So you need a perfect person to take your place and to live the life you are incapable of living. Jesus did that for you and you can receive credit for what He has done if you receive Him as number one, as Lord of your life.
You must believe Jesus did both actively and passively on your behalf, passively giving His life, dying for you, dying on a cross to take the punishment—not for His sin, but for yours. He died for your sin. He absorbed the wrath of God on your behalf. He took your punishment and rose from the dead on the third day to demonstrate that this substitutionary death is accepted by the Father. And you can receive credit for what Jesus did for you if you receive Him as number one, as Lord of your life.
No one is saved because she goes to church. No one is saved by being good. You are saved only by turning from sin and turning to Christ. Dressed in His righteousness alone, faultless to stand before the throne. Cling to Christ.
Does your family know you are saved? When you die this week, or next, whenever that day comes—we’re never prepared for it—when you die today or whenever, what will your family say when asked whether you are in heaven? You will not be in heaven because you went to church or taught Sunday school or were a good person. No one is saved by works.
Make sure your family will say something like this, “My dad, or my mom, or my son, or whomever, is in heaven now not on the basis of what they did, but on the basis of whom they knew and on the basis of what Jesus Christ did for them.” Make sure your family will tell the pastor at the funeral home, “My loved one knew Jesus Christ. He or she talked about Jesus and believed Jesus alone lived and died for them. My loved one was saved.” If all your family says is, “Well, he went to church,” that’s not the right answer. Yo can go to church twice on Sunday and every Wednesday for 85,000 weeks and still be lost. You can be confirmed, baptized, teach Sunday school, mow the church lawn weekly, and still be lost. You must be born again. You must be saved.
So you have to hear the Word, hear the Gospel and do what it says otherwise you are deceiving yourself about the Gospel, deceiving yourself about your salvation, deceiving yourself about whether you are going to heaven when you die. Don’t fool yourself.
We must correctly respond to the Word. Number two, to be a doer of the word, we must:
II. Carefully Reflect on it (23-24)
James gives this very practical illustration of a mirror. Verses 23 and 24. Look at them again as I read, verse 23:
23 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror;
24 for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was.
It’s a good illustration, isn’t it? James says merely to hear the word and not do it is like a guy who gets up in the morning and looks at himself in a mirror, sees his reflection, just a quick hurried glance, and then goes away and immediately forgets what he saw.
In James’ day, 2,000 year ago, there were no glass mirrors like we have today. Mirrors were a polished metal of some kind, polished silver or copper or tin.
I read once about a young woman who was a native somewhere in Africa, an area of the continent far from modern conveniences and innovation. As she did not have a mirror, she had never seen an image of herself. And a foreign missionary pulled out a mirror so she could see herself. And she looked at herself in that mirror and then grimaced in disgust and raised up the mirror and threw it down to the ground smashing it to pieces. She didn’t like what she had seen so she destroyed the mirror. But the mirror wasn’t the problem; the problem wasn’t with the mirror, she just didn’t like what she saw.
You take the Bible and you read it, and you don’t like what you see, the problem is not with the Bible.
Someone says, “I don’t agree with you,” or, “I don’t agree with the teacher, or the pastor, or, Brother Todd.” The issue is not the teacher, the pastor, or Brother whoever. Take this person to the Bible and say, “Look, let’s you and I read this Bible and let’s you and I hear the Bible. We’ll listen to it. We’ll allow it to speak to us and if, rightly interpreting the plain teaching of Scripture, then we’ll be in no position to disagree with it.”
The problem is not with the Bible. The problem is we may not like what we see. So we’re wanting the Bible to justify our sin. We open the Bible to look for a way out of a troubled marriage, or we look for a way to compromise on some behavior, and we see something that tells us to stay in that marriage or to avoid sin and live in purity, if we don’t like what we read, the problem isn’t with the Bible.
James says if you just hear the word and don’t do it you’re like a man—he says in verse 23—like a man “observing his natural face in a mirror.” The word “natural” there is the word “Genesis.” Does that sound familiar? Genesis, or origin. This is the face you’re born with. This is the face you begin the day with when you get out of bed. It’s your “Genesis face.” This is your face before you do anything with it or to it.
The Beatles sang of “Eleanor Rigby” who, “waits at the window, wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door.” (Who is it for?!) James isn’t talking about the face that we keep in a jar by the door, a face that covers up all of the blemishes. He’s talking about our Genesis face, our natural face.
So he says, “Here’s a guy who looks at his ‘Genesis face,” his natural face and sees what needs to be corrected, but just ignores what he sees.” Verse 24:
24 for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was.
We must reflect upon what we see. Carefully reflect upon the Word. This means we listen with a view to doing something about what we hear, to doing something about what we’ve read. We think it through. We reflect upon what we see. So we’re in a position to change what needs to be changed because we’ve allowed the implanted Word of God to take root within us.
James gets so much of his preaching material from the sermons of his half-brother, his big brother Jesus. Remember Jesus’ preaching the parable of the sower in Luke 8? There’s a sower going out sowing seed and some of it fell on the wayside, hardened ground, ground that had been and trampled down, and so the birds of the air flew down and ate the seed that was just lying on top of the hardened ground.
James is warning us not to be like the wayside hearer, just hearing the word but we don’t receive with meekness the implanted word. It doesn’t take root. We don’t correctly respond to it, we don’t carefully reflect upon it.
We must correctly respond to it, we must carefully reflect on it. Thirdly,
III. Continually Read & Remember it (25)
I actually slipped-in two words there: read & remember, because they’re both taught in verse 25:
25 But he who looks (James turns from hearing the word to reading the word) into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does.
We must continually read the word. He who “looks,” verse 15, he who “looks,” active voice, actively, continually looking. It conveys the idea of really getting a good, long, careful look. It is “to stoop down and look into.” It’s the same word used in John’s Gospel where John writes about his visiting the empty tomb of Jesus and stooping down and looking into the tomb (John 20:5).
Verse 25, “But he who looks into the ‘perfect law of liberty,’” The “perfect law of liberty” is used synonymously with “the word.” We know that because it is used in contrast with those who merely “hear the Word” but do not do it (22-23). So we know that James is referring to the Bible as “the perfect law of liberty.”
And it makes sense. The Bible is the written word which points to the Living Word, our Lord Jesus Christ who, through the life-giving, liberating power of the Gospel, sets us free (John 8:32). So the NIV has, “the perfect law that gives freedom.”
So James says that if we “look into the perfect law of liberty,” which means we are reading it continually and then doing what it says, “He who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it…this one will be blessed in what he does.”
But you’ve got to read it.
Question: How many of you believe everything you see on TV? How many of you believe everything you read on the internet? How many of you believe everything you read in the newspaper? How many of you believer everything you read in the Bible?
So here’s the question, “Do you spend more time reading something you don’t believe than something you do believe?”
You’ve got to read the Bible. Read it every day. Get a plan of some kind and read. Read a psalm a day. Read the Gospel of Mark, a chapter a day. Just read the word. And read it continually.
And when you are reading, remember what you read. James says in verse 25, “But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does.”
You want to be blessed? Read the Word, remember the Word, and do what it says. Don’t be what James calls in verse 25, “a forgetful hearer.” Don’t just read or hear the word, see what needs to be changed in your life, and then just walk away and forget.
So you hear the word in worship or Sunday school and you walk out of the classroom or out of the sanctuary, how do you talk to others? Did you already forget? You heard the word but you show that you forget it by behaving in a way incongruous to the very word to which you earlier said, “Amen.” You show you are a forgetful hearer when you talk evil about others, daydream with lustful thoughts, show hatred for another person, fail to talk to that friend about Jesus, fail to talk to that server about Jesus.
You read where God says, “Love your enemies” don’t forget it when someone hurts you this week. You read where God says, “Forgive as you’ve been forgiven,” remember that when your daughter breaks your heart. You read in the Bible where it says, “God loves a cheerful giver,” remember that the next time you write out a check.
When you look at yourself in the bathroom mirror and you see something that needs to be fixed, what do you do? You do something about it! You have some dirt on your face, you deal with the dirt.
So Christians, when you look into the perfect law of liberty, looking into the mirror of God’s word and you something that needs to be fixed, what do you do? Do something about it. Deal with the dirt.
By the way, when you’re in your house looking into your mirror you can’t see me in my house looking into my mirror—praise God! Right? So before you get ready to clean up the dirt in other people’s lives, let me encourage you first to take care of what you see in your own mirror, okay? I’m not saying you can’t see imperfections in the lives of others, nor that the church isn’t supposed to address matters requiring church discipline. We are to be involved in spiritual accountability, integrity, and purity.
What I am suggesting is a healthy dose of humility—receive the word “with meekness,” as we ourselves gaze into the perfect law of liberty. Imagine if every one of us just took time this week to deal with the muck in our own lives, the dirt on our own faces. We’d be in a much better position to help a brother or sister out.
It’s the same point of our Lord Jesus in Matthew 7. He doesn’t say, “Don’t judge another Christian.” Jesus doesn’t say that. What He teaches is, “When you are in a position to point out an imperfection in the life of your brother or sister (and you will need to, at times), but first take the plank out of your own eye so that you can see clearly to remove the speck of dust in your brother or sister’s eye.” You want to help a brother or sister? Deal first with your own dirt.
A mirror is honest with us. I mean you can have a picture taken. You can even take one of yourself. Got an iPhone or another smartphone? Take a selfie. You can photoshop it. You don’t like what you see, just photoshop some hair on that head, smooth out the lines, you know. But a mirror is honest. You can’t photoshop that reflection!
The Bible is honest with us.
And this is how we are able to grow and have a meaningful relationship with God, the author of the Bible. Because God is the ultimate author of the Bible, then the Bible is the only book whose author is with us every time we read it. Think of it! The Bible is the only book whose author is right there with us every time we read it.
This is how we grow and get to know God and have a meaningful, intimate relationship with Him, by dialoguing with Him, by hearing Him when He speaks, by allowing Him to be honest with us, painfully honest when necessary.
Tim Keller wrote a book we have in our church library—I think—it is a book called, The Reason for God. And in Chapter 7 of the book he writes about the Bible and he concludes the chapter writing about this matter of God’s being honest with us, and unnerving us and challenging us, and calling us out, you know.
And he reminds us of the movie The Stepford Wives. I don’t know if you ever saw the movie; there are actually two of them, but the movie is about these men in Stepford, Connecticut who turn their wives into robots so that their wives are predictably compliant and never argue with them. Their wives are programmed to agree with their husbands and just say, “Yes, dear” and never argue with them, never contradict them. You know, they’re just robots.
But obviously that’s not a human relationship of growth and meaningful dialogue. That’s no personal relationship. That’s just a robot who never says anything you don’t want to hear and never pushes you to change or be better because it never disagrees with you. It just accepts your behavior as it is.
So if you never allow the Bible to just speak to you and address you where you are wrong and challenge you and call you out on your behavior. You don’t have a real, intimate, personal relationship with the author of Scripture. And if you read only what you want to hear and you skip over the hard stuff and never allow the Bible to just call you out, you’ve got a sort-of “Stepford God.” It’s not a real relationship because you don’t allow the Bible to challenge you, to address your wrong behavior, to argue with you, to outrage you. You have a “Stepford God,” a god of your own making.
Allow the Bible to address you in your sin. Allow the Bible to speak to you. Allow the Bible to call you out on your behavior. Then, do what it says and you will be blessed. This is how the passage ends, verse 25 again, “But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be—what?—blessed in what he does.” But you’ve got to do it; you’ve go to do the word to be blessed.
And again, James sounds just like his half-brother Jesus. The end of Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount,” Matthew chapters 5-7, at the very end of the sermon remember what Jesus says, Matthew 7:24-27:
24 “Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock:
25 and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock.
26 “But everyone who hears these sayings of Mine, and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand:
27 and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it fell. And great was its fall.”
Be doers of the Word. Show that you “Cherish the Word” by allowing yourself to be “Changed by the Word.”
To quote again Charles Spurgeon: “A Bible that is falling apart usually belongs to someone who isn’t.”
Do the Word.
•Stand for prayer.
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