Well, last week, since I was under the weather, I watched the sermon, the service at home on live stream. And my thanks and appreciation to the men who've worked so hard to put this together. It worked very well on the live stream. And in fact, talking to Karen after she came home, I think I could hear the sermon better than she could. It sounds like there was quite a bit of excitement going on around you all last week. And, you know, this is a bit of a distraction, but I think about the biographies of the old time preachers, the men who often preached in the field, preached outside. And I think of George Whitefield and his stories of having dead cats thrown at him. And I'd rather deal with traffic going by, maybe some sirens, maybe some aircraft, than having a dead cat thrown at me. So let's give thanks for God's graciousness and his goodness. So this morning we're continuing in our sermon on James. The title of the sermon this morning is Doing the Word. Doing the Word. And we will be in James chapter 1, specifically verses 22 through 25. So turn with me in your Bibles there and follow along with me as I read James 1, 22 to 25. But be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he's like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away, and at once forgets what he was like. 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. I want to remind you of the context in which James was writing this letter. He's the head of the church in Jerusalem, but he's writing to those believers, Christians, Jewish Christians at this time, almost exclusively, that were in the Greco-Roman world, that lived elsewhere in the empire, that were having difficulties. Persecution was arising in the early church. Persecution, as I've explained before, was primarily from their fellow Jews. The Roman Empire didn't care one way or the other about the religions as long as it didn't disturb the peace of the empire. You could believe whatever you want as long as you obeyed the law and kept the Roman peace. So they had no attention turned towards the Jews, excuse me, the Jewish Christians at this time. And as we go through this, think about this. This is a word sent by a pastor to people that are undergoing persecution. And contrary to what we might think, there's calmness in it and there's specific directions, commands, admonishments to focus on the Word of God. Not to react to what's going on around them. We're going to dig into that. And I think in our day and age, we can identify with these early Jewish Christians. In many ways, we see an increase in opposition to Christianity, even in our country, but especially in other countries if we look at international news. In our country, perhaps it's not exactly what may be termed rightly persecution, but there is a tension. There is the beginnings of perhaps oppression. So James is writing to us also. That's the point I'm getting at here. When we think about what James is writing about, what we have read so far in his letter, it brought to mind this well-known quote. And many of you, I'm sure, have heard it. It goes like this, 90% of success in life is just showing up. I think about that, and then if 90% of success is just showing up, then hard work, determination, and talent contribute only, in each little piece, 10% to success in life. Well, I don't necessarily agree with this speaker's assignment of value, but he has some underlying truth in what he's saying. First, of course, you have to show up to get anything done. If you don't show up, you're not gonna be a success at whatever it is. So let's talk about showing up first. College instructors often will give points to their students for attendance, for being in class, and it counts towards the student's final grades. These instructors have various reasons for doing it, and I think all of their reasons are valid. You get young people just out of high school coming into college, and suddenly they have a great degree of freedom that they hadn't had before. A wise instructor wants to motivate his students to be there in class when they could very easily go do something else that's a lot more fun and no one is going to hold them accountable for that. So it's a way of motivation, especially young people as they're struggling with their college studies initially. And these points are small, they don't account for much, and no one is going to make the dean's list based on attendance alone. But the student who does well in college finds that their discipline at showing up is part of it. Now we can go to the other extreme and we've seen in our culture this phenomenon that we've often heard many people poke fun at and this is the idea of participation trophies where you show up and just for showing up and being there you get a trophy for doing it. Well, again, there's value to this. With young kids just having their first experience in sports, participation trophies are great. And I think it's a good idea. We've all probably been to these where the kids are learning t-ball when they're three or four years old, or they're learning soccer. And basically, it's just mob ball, where little kids are chasing the ball all over. And it's fun for them, and they get a trophy at the end. That's fine. But it grew into this absurd idea that everyone deserves an award just for showing up. And we've even seen this as adults in our workplace. It got so bad in my first career that we made jokes that officers were getting commendations for remembering to tie their boots before they came to briefing. So it just cheapened. It cheapened the praise that people would get. So it can go too far. So participation is vital. In order to do anything, accomplish anything, you've got to show up first. But showing up, of course, is minimal. It's the least of what you must do. And all of us that are adults have experienced this because we've all gone to school at some point in our life, in our jobs, many of us have had jobs or do have jobs, and there are very few jobs that don't require some amount of training to do, even if it's very minimal training. Someone has to show you the ropes, show you how to do things. My first job was washing dishes in a convalescent hospital, and I had to be shown how to operate the dishwashing machine by another kid, another high school kid who was a dishwasher there. All of us have gone through that to a lesser or greater degree, and you find that in that time when you're being trained, you have to show up for it, but you also have to listen. And if you don't listen attentively to what the person teaching you has to say and you can't do the job, you're not going to last very long in that job. And then sometimes some of us have or have had careers that required ongoing training, that is often called continual professional training. Or in police work, back in my day, we called it advanced officer training, AOT. And the state of California actually requires a great deal of this advanced officer training or in-service training for serving police officers. And I've worked out of the state of California and found that It wasn't so elsewhere. And I realized how fortunate, what a blessing it was to the residents of California that California officers have a high degree of training compared to elsewhere. And I saw this in the performance of Officers, so when we sent officers on a very regular basis to this training, these same officers that had worked very, very hard to get hired, the hiring process for the police department is very grueling, and it lasts like a year, and you've gotta be motivated to get through all the testing. Then they go to the academy, and the academy, again, is very intensive. It's hard physically, it's challenging intellectually, and there's a lot of stress there. You graduate, then you go into field training, and you're with a training officer for a long period of time. And again, you're being trained, and there's a lot of pressure. You have to perform, otherwise you lose your job. Well then, some of these officers that I had seen that were so gung-ho at the beginning, then they get through all their training, they're off probation, and they get sent to school, to advanced officer training, and they have completely lost their motivation. They don't want to be there. They pick a spot in the back of the class and they kind of zone out. Well, there are other schools. Schools I went to, schools that we would send other officers to, where you didn't just show up and get a certificate, like the annual training that you have to go to. Like the SWAT school, motor school. I went to motor school, we had officers tenured, you had to be a veteran officer to go to motorcycle school that were washed out on the last day and they went home in disgrace and never again to be a motor officer. Usually you got one shot at motor school, if you didn't make it, that was it, you went back to a squad car. At a SWAT school, I saw very seasoned, actually officers that I thought were very good officers, being sent home, being packed home in disgrace because they weren't sufficiently attentive to the instructors in the school. I think the difference is that in some of the schools, we looked at them as, these skills are vital for me to survive in the job. I need to know this stuff so I don't get hurt and other people get hurt. In others, it's kind of like, eh, I don't know if I'm ever gonna use this stuff, so I don't pay much attention to it. So the schools where the training was necessary to keep you alive were intense, required motivation and commitment. Now, Christians of all people, just like what I spoke of, should be motivated and committed to our faith. I see a correlation there because our faith is our very life's blood. Our eternal life depends on this faith, not what we do, but what the Lord has given us in the faith. And so we should want to know, I think, And Scripture agrees with me. Well, I shouldn't say it that way. I agree with Scripture. That's a better way to put it. Scripture tells us that this is our life's blood, that we need to pay attention, that this is what we should be focused on. We have been purchased by our Savior's blood. It is through him we've been given life. And there's no participation trophies for doing what God commands. And I wanna just take a minute, or not, a few seconds, and turn a little bit before the letter of James to the book of Hebrews, in chapter 10. And I wanna point out this idea of just showing up. as our starting place. Hebrews chapter 10 verses 24-25. And the reason I want to read this, and I want you to think about it, is think about this letter or sermon to the Hebrews was written, of course, sometime in the first century. And it was to the very early church. And think about the problem that the author of Hebrews is kind of as an aside mentioning, and it's the same problem that we have in the church today. So thus, it's plagued the church throughout its history. Hebrews 10, 24, 25. And he says to us, let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some. So even then, in the early church, You know, we think, oh, if I was in the early church, I would be motivated. I mean, could you imagine? Maybe the Apostle Paul's gonna show up. We're gonna get a letter from Apostle Paul that no one has read before. We've got these mighty men of God that are preaching to us. And yet, we see right here that people are already in the habit of not going to the worship services. but rather we should be encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day drawing near. Well brethren, the day is drawing near. It's drawing nearer than it was when this was addressed to the Hebrews and the day after this was read to that audience, the day was drawing nearer and it draws nearer each day. Back to our main topic here. Worshipping our triune God, the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, is a privilege that we are given. We have been chosen as God's elect before the foundation of the world was even laid, and we alone who are in that elect have this privilege. Others may join us for a time but usually it's only for a time and their human will and their human enthusiasm quickly dies out compared to what we are given by God through the Holy Spirit. Jesus, excuse me, James admonishes Christians in this passage we read to be quick to hear. The last time we met, on James, we read about that, and how it's especially true regarding God's word. When we hear the word of God, we are to receive it into our minds, our conscious mind, as well as what is sometimes called our our subconscious or unconscious mind, but I think it's probably better to think of the subconscious as receiving it into our heart, even into our soul. That's what the Bible tells us. It doesn't use modern psychological language. So our heart and our soul is more meaningful, and I think we understand that better. But we do not hear and receive the word without good reason. Hearing the word is not a mere byproduct of showing up to church on Sunday. The word is not preached to no avail. We don't hear it just to pass the time or increase our intellect. We hear God's word and it is beautiful to us. When we hear it, we hear the words of eternal life. That's what Peter declared to the Lord Jesus. When Jesus asked if his inner band, if they too were going to desert him, you remember Peter said, no Lord, where would we go? For only you have the words of eternal life. That's very true. Peter recognized it. God revealed that to him. That's been revealed to us also. But think about this. It's not beautiful to all people. To some it has the stench of death about it. And we're not to be like those people, treating God's word as common or even despised. Here's my first point. Doing what the word commands flows from the hearing of the word. So we the people of God are to hear, receive, and do. In verse 22 of our passage, this command from James has two parts about receiving God's word. There's a negative part that says, do not merely listen. Then there's a positive part, do what it says. Let me give you an illustration. And it's been told many times in many different versions. It's not original to me. But since it's one of those great illustrative stories, it's morphed and changed and who knows who came up with it. There's this man, in my version of the story, who owned a very large, important company. And he was called away from his business for an indefinite period of time. He had to leave, he didn't know how long he was gonna be gone. And he called in one of his top executives and told them, listen, I gotta go. Don't know when I'll be back, but you're gonna run the place. Don't worry, I'm gonna send you emails from time to time. Says, okay boss, I got it. So after a very long time, the owner's able to return. And he pulls up into his parking lot. And he sees the parking lot's overgrown with weeds. There's trash everywhere. The building looks horrible. A window's broken. He goes inside and he finds some of the employees sleeping at their desks. And other employees are having a party in the break room. He goes out on the factory floor and he finds machinery broken and rusted. He stops by the accounting department and finds out that the company's nearly broke. And he goes into sales and marketing, and he finds out that the company's lost most of their customers. And he called the executive who he left in charge into his office, and he says, what happened? Did you get my emails? And the executive says, yes sir, we got your emails. I read them, I had everybody read them. We even had group discussions on your emails. And we talked about what your emails meant to us. We even parsed your emails in Greek and Hebrew and deconstructed them and put them back together to find the deep meaning in them. And the owner of the company says, okay. But did you do what was in the emails? And the executive says, do? We didn't do anything. Were we supposed to do those things? The point I hope you see is we should not treat the letters that God has preserved from the apostles in the early church Men who directly knew, in some way or other, Jesus Christ. I say some way or other because Paul, as we know, was not in the inner band. He became an apostle later after being a persecutor and an enemy of Jesus Christ. But Jesus Christ appeared to him multiple times. And he learned from Jesus Christ himself, the resurrected Lord and Savior. So these letters that we are blessed to have, that God has preserved, that he inspired these men to write with words of life in them, as though from God himself, we are to do what is in those letters. We are not just to study them and be experts and be scholars on them. As you invariably know, there are scholars who are top-ranked in their fields of specialty that study these letters and other parts of the Bible who are not believers, who examine them just like this top executive and the employees at this company examine them, as an object of curiosity, not as words of eternal life. So we hear God's word, then we are to do what God commands in his word. And in this way, we please our heavenly father. And in our obedience to his commands and precepts, we live ethically as he would have us live. And we grow in sanctification as the Holy Spirit leads us in that process of sanctification. And here in James, we are admonished to be not hearers only. Now this term hearers that James uses is closely linked in Hebrews to the word disobedience, of course in the Greek. So the author of Hebrews joins this verb to hear, this Greek verb, with a noun of disobedience in the same thought. And in Hebrews two, verse one and two, this is what he says. Therefore, we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution. Now, this is clearly a warning. that's being given. And the writer's context here is the giving of the law on Mount Sinai. And then the judgment of God upon Israel for disobedience in not doing what they heard. So the writer in Hebrews is saying, don't be like those guys. Because he's addressing Jewish Christians. They have a new covenant. But they need to pay attention to the new covenant. They need to hear it and they need to do what's commanded now. He's saying pay closer attention, otherwise, this is the example, you're going to drift away. And that's what happens, isn't it, when you don't pay attention. We've all had that experience if we're licensed drivers, where we're on a, let's say a long trip, and we lose focus, and next thing you know, you're in the rumble strip, you know, heading to the shoulder of the road, or the botch-dotch, you hear those, and you're drifting, and it's very dangerous. Well, this is drifting away from God's word is dangerous spiritually to us. So we should not drift away from what we should be focused on. And James has a warning here. He says, if you are only a hearer of the word, you are deceiving yourself. And again, I'm gonna go back to Hebrews to help illustrate this. Hebrews chapter four. Hebrews four, verses 12 and 13. There we read, For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account. We're being told here that this is what the word of God is intended to do. It pierces, it prods, it reveals, and all who hear it are responsible for what God is revealing to them, whether believer or unbeliever. God is revealing to them about their secret thoughts and hidden intentions. And do they respond as they should? No, no, not all people do respond as they should. Many ignore God's word. But we are told here they will give an account for their response, for their ignoring of God's word. The Christian then should respond to the sword thrust of God's word. To call yourself a Christian and only be a hearer of the word is actually to be disobedient. to the Word, because God's Word is a call to action. It requires a response. Well, if your response to God's Word is to walk out of church service as if God has nothing to say to you, James says you are deceiving yourself. If you think all you gotta do is show up. There's no brownie points in heaven for attendance. here at church. This is our necessary, I don't really want to call it duty, but in a sense it is. This is what we should be doing. This is what we should long to do, to gather together with one another. Those who do not want to gather together with their brothers and sisters in Christ, I fear, are not really in Christ. For how will heaven be to them? Those who do not want to be around other believers, other Christians, will they be happy in heaven? Because we're going to be around a lot of brothers and sisters in heaven. And I look forward to it. This is just a small taste of heaven, as many of you have also expressed, and as we have discussed, and I know you feel the same way, that, oh, this is just a small, sweet sample of what our eternity will be like. That it will not be, you know, sitting and listening to Pastor Ken. It's gonna be a lot better than that. The Bible assures us of that. Let's put it that way. So let me add another deception you need to be aware of here. There are false teachers and wolves in sheep clothing. Not necessarily teachers, but those who manipulate the church, who mislead Christians regarding what we should do according to God's Word. There's many people, and we have seen it in the last few years, have we not, that are not Christians, that actually abhor God's Word, and are enemies of God, who will preach to you, have preached to you as Christians, telling you, this is what God says, this is what Jesus says in your Bible, and you need to do this. Whatever their little thing is, which generally is about control, power, economics, has nothing to do with spiritual salvation, has to do with forwarding their agenda. Now this has been a major problem in the church. It's not just these last few years. It's been a major problem in the modern era. Let me qualify that. The modern era, the time when liberal theology has come into the church and has watered down the gospel, or replaced the true gospel with false gospels. And the Christian church, especially in the United States, because believe it or not, it doesn't seem like it, but we are considered, evangelical Christians are considered a powerful voting block. So you are targets. of those who have nefarious agendas. And they will come across as though they understand Christian religion and what the Bible says, but they're using the word against you, against us. So the church now is being targeted by atheist activists to promote various ungodly agendas from communism to homosexual marriage, transgenderism, man-made global warming as a way to economically crush certain democracies in the world. As I said, this is not new. I hesitate, and I will not call this man a pastor or a preacher, but he took on the garb of a man of religion to build a church His name was Jim Jones. If you're old enough, you remember this man who took his church to Guyana and 900 of them committed suicide or were murdered there. Well, this man was not a Christian. He hated the Bible. He hated God. He was a communist. And he later admitted that he decided to become a preacher of the word because he could push the communist agenda, he could trick Christians, and he would use it as an enemy of God to further a communist agenda. Friends, brothers and sisters, this is going on in the church today. So my point here is, this rabbit trail has a point, and that is that Be careful of what someone tells you the Word of God says you must do. Our actions, what we do according to the Word of God must align with the entirety of the Word of God. Don't let someone pick out a verse and interpret it in a way that does not correlate, does not match, does not correspond to the rest of the Bible. And we've seen this in the last three years. I could talk the rest of the morning about how the concept, the very important commandment, the second most important commandment, love your neighbor, has been misused by these wolves. We must be wise as serpents, as God words, as God words tells us. The next point, point number two, God's word reveals who we are. And we see this in the second half of verse 23 and verse 24, where James says, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror, for he looks at himself and goes away and at once forget what he was like. In this passage we're looking at this morning, James gives us two examples of two men who look intently into a mirror. The Greek word James uses here is from the root, to look in the mirror, it means to appear, they become visible. Interestingly, our word mirror has a Latin root, which means to admire yourself. I think we can see the irony in that and how it's true. In our age, mirrors are inexpensive, right? We find them everywhere. So you see yourself, you think about it, you see yourself very frequently on your average day. And our mirrors are generally wall-mounted, right? So when you're washing your hands in the bathroom, you see yourself in the mirror. And our cars have mirrors in them. I don't know if they're still called this, but they used to be called vanity mirrors. Ladies can carry small mirrors in their purses. There's nothing wrong with any of this. This is just a feature of modern life. But my point is, I want you to think about how often you can look at yourself daily. And we compare this to the first century, where glass mirrors were very, very rare. They were in existence, but they were extremely expensive. They weren't very effective because the ability to make clear glass had not yet been discovered. So the mirrors were, the glass used in the mirrors was kind of discolored. It was a dark, you know, bluish color often. And the reflection in them was dark and dim. Most of the mirrors were polished metal, usually bronze, maybe copper. And James says, this first man looks at his image in the mirror. So he's looking in a metal, a burnished metal mirror. And what does he see? Our translations say, his natural face. He sees his natural face. Well, what does James mean by this? Well, these two words in English, natural face, are actually five words in Greek, and they mean literally the face of his birth. or the face of his existence. So the man sees himself as he truly is, not as he thinks he is. And perhaps this man has a high opinion of himself, but in the mirror, he sees an image he doesn't recognize. I think we can all relate to that. How many times have you looked in the mirror? It's like, oh man, is that me? Well, this man sees himself and he sees warts, wrinkles, a crooked nose, maybe offset eyes, and he thinks the same thing. He thinks, that's not me, and walks away, dismissing the true image of himself, forgetting all of his blemishes and imperfections. So here's the point. This is why James is using this illustration. This man, James is saying, is like the one who hears the word of God and dismisses what he hears because he has a high opinion of himself, yet the word shows him that he is far from perfect. He's marred in his natural state by sin. In fact, the mirror of God's word, he looks into that and he sees that he is a dead man. He's looked at himself and he has seen a living corpse. He is dead in his sins. Most people, even some Christians, refuse to accept this. They admit that they may have a small blemish here or there. But a little makeup, of course, will cover that up. No one will notice it. It's just little. In our sinful vanity, we view ourselves as better than we really are. We look in the mirror and we brush a stray hair. We straighten a collar. and to correlate it to what James is getting at. It's like we hear a sermon and maybe we make a small adjustment in our life, but then carry on as we always have. What we do more frequently is we take that mirror and we turn it towards others. And there's these lighted makeup mirrors. and one side is like regular magnification, and you can flip them over, and boom, it's up close, and that's what we do with others. We flip it, and we magnify their blemishes, their sins, what's wrong with them, and we think and we say, well, at least I'm not looking like he looks. In this illustration, James is using We must not dismiss this idea of images because we, in every single human being, we are created in the image and likeness of God. We're God's image bearers. The Word of God reveals God to us and then reveals ourselves to us. as we naturally are without God's transforming intervention. And we find we are a very distorted image of God. So this man, this first looker in the mirror, walks away from the mirror and promptly forgets what he has seen. This is the person who hears the word of God and dismisses it. He walks out of church and immediately forgets what he has heard because it has not pleased him. He wanted a positive message about how God loves him, just the way he is, and how much God wants to reward him for being so wonderful. But the word from this book preached truthfully hasn't made him feel good about himself, hasn't boosted his self-esteem. So he chooses to ignore it and find something else to tickle his ear. Of course, man-made mirrors only show our external appearance. The mirror of the word, however, reveals our internal condition, which demands a response from us. That means doing after hearing. If the person who hears the gospel but does not respond to it, forfeits salvation, then the one who acts in response to God's word is not deceived, but rather is blessed with salvation. It stands to reason that the person who acts in obedience to the word of God gains salvation. Point number three. We are not saved by doing. We are doers because we are saved. We are not saved by doing. We are doers because we are saved. Our works are not the roots of our tree of faith. Not the roots, but they are the fruit of the tree of our faith. Jesus Christ alone is our root. From him alone are we reborn, and from him alone do we grow and prosper on the limb of this tree. Paul wrote to the Philippians, Philippians 1.11, he says, the fruit of righteousness comes through Jesus Christ. And then he said, to the church in Colossae, in Colossians 1.10, Paul said, walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God. Now these two short excerpts from Paul's writing show us how Paul and James are of one accord here. They are not at loggerheads with each other in disagreement about faith and works. And it's important that we see that, that we don't jump into that controversy that has too long plagued Christians about this so-called disparity in their theology. What James is saying, if there's no fruit, then there is no faith. That's very easy to see. And if you're that person that has no fruit but claims faith, James says you're under a delusion regarding your spiritual condition. Well, one of the great reformers in the 16th century was a Swiss theologian named Heinrich Bollinger. Not as famous as others, but an important man. And he wrote about this. He wrote that the purpose of good works, and this is what Bollinger says, is for the glory of God, to adorn our calling, to show gratitude to God, and for the profit of our neighbor. We can see though, all of those are very important, but nowhere does it say we are saved because we do good works or a certain level of good works. That is just not so, we know that. So in this next illustration that James uses of the second looker, we see how faith and action properly align. And this is in verse 25, where James says, 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. Now these polished metal mirrors in the first century were usually placed flat on like a table, let's say. So the word that James uses in verse 25 for looks actually means to stoop over, to bend over and look intently at something. Which is a perfect illustration if you have this piece of polished metal on the tabletop and you want to look at yourself. So this looker here that James is referring to really wants to see himself. He's getting down close to the mirror. He wants to see what he really looks like. And this is the person who desires to know what God's Word means to his or her life. This is the person who meditates on God's Word and then puts it into action into their life. And notice how James uses in this verse, how he describes the Word using law or nomos in the Greek. This takes a little bit of explaining because the word the law is used with different meanings in the New Testament and we have to understand the meaning of how it's used. And we can tell by the context in which it is used, and by the authors, how they use the word in various different places that they write. And here, very simply, it's not what we think. When we hear the law connected to the Bible, we often think of the Decalogue, right, given on Mount Sinai, or we perhaps think of that long Levitical law. That's not what James is saying. He's referring to the whole of scripture here by the law, all of God's word. And James calls it the perfect law, perfect in an absolute sense. And human laws, we compare it to human laws, which we know are temporary. They're always subject to change and repeal. Hopefully we're going to have some laws repealed in California after this next election, the laws that excuse thievery and let criminals out of jail. Excuse me. God's law, though, because it is perfect, is unchanging, unchanging, and unchangeable, unchangeable. It applies to all people, at all times, in all places. Many today think they can change God's word. Excuse me. I feel like I have something caught in my throat. Maybe I swallowed a gnat. Supposed to strain those out, right? So many think they can change God's Word today to suit our evil culture, because they don't like what the mirror shows them. So they're deluded into thinking they can change the mirror, and so change the image that they see. James calls this law also the law of liberty. The law of liberty. because it's the only thing that sets man free, truly free. It's the only means by which we are freed from the bondage of sin, by which we were sprung from that fowler's snare, unshackled from the chains in which we were trapped, and led out of the dungeon of darkness into the light of the kingdom of God. The law of God through Jesus Christ sets us free from our sin and selfishness. Our Lord Jesus, speaking to a group, as recorded by the Apostle John in John 8, 31 through 33, so Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. They answered him, we are offspring of Abram and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say you will become free? Well, these men who claimed to never have been enslaved to anyone had been enslaved by virtually every world power that had come along. They deluded themselves in this manner. Jesus offered them freedom from the slavery of sin, but just like they denied their bondage to human conquerors, they denied their bondage to sin. The hearer of the word who forgets what he has heard is like these men. In the next three verses in the book of John, we read Jesus' response to them. Jesus answered them. Truly, truly, I say to you, Everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever. The son remains forever. So if the son sets you free, you will be free indeed. This is the one that bends down and looks intently into the word of God. He is the one Jesus has promised will be free and free indeed. persevering, not forgetting what he hears soon after hearing it, doing what the Word says. Brothers, sisters, when we do what the Word says, we find joy, joy in our family, joy in our work, joy in our Lord and Savior. And you, friend, who are not amongst Christ's sheep yet, hear what the Word of the Lord is saying to you. and you are responsible, you need to respond to this. There's no passes given. And as Jesus said to his inner band of disciples, after he gave them their very last teaching before his arrest, trial, crucifixion, and resurrection, this is what he says to them. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them. Join me in prayer. Heavenly Father, Your Word is wonderful. It is wonderful like our Lord Jesus is wonderful to us. It's through Your Word that we learned of Him, that we know Him, that we learn of what He would have us do in response to the gift of eternal life that has been given us, Father. We give thanks for that. We ask for guidance in doing the Word. Father, we ask that the Holy Spirit lead us in all we say and do, that we find joy in our lives, that we be good witnesses for our Lord and Savior, that we are able to make disciples of people of all nations as he commanded. Father, bless these brothers and sisters as they go out this week. Let your word be written in their hearts and in their minds. Father, illuminate your word as we all study it through this week, as we read it daily. Lord, let us meditate upon it. We ask for your blessings, in Jesus' name, amen.