What does it mean to be a doer of the Word? Let's find out today on Change by Grace. Welcome to Change by Grace. I'm Pastor Steve Hereford. Today we're looking at James chapter 1 and verse 22, which says, Be doers of the Word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. Many times we think that just because we hear the Word of God that we're automatically a doer. Well, I think James tells us something different, and let's find out. This morning as we share together in the Lord's Table, I want to invite you to turn in your Bibles to James chapter 1. As we look this morning at verses 22 to 27. James chapter 1. verses 22 to 27. Just so that you have the context in mind, I want to begin reading at verse 19. It says, This you know, my brethren, but everyone must be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger. For the anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God. Therefore, putting aside all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness, in humility receive the word implanted, which is able to save your souls. But prove yourselves doers of the word and not merely hearers who delude themselves. 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. For once he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was. 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. If anyone thinks himself to be religious and yet does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this man's religion is worthless. Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this, to visit orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself unstained by the world. If there's ever a phrase that would describe a Christian, it's the phrase that you find in James 1.22. They are characterized as doers of the Word. They don't just hear the Word, but they look intently at it, and they make the necessary adjustments in their life to it. Their mind, their emotion, their will is all taken captive by the Word of God. Now, the unbeliever, on the other hand, does not do the Word, but he immediately forgets what kind of man he was after the Word exposes his sin. And the reason for that, according to Ephesians 2.1, is because he is dead in trespasses and sins. In his helpless, dead state, he cannot see the rottenness of his soul without divine intervention. Now, as we look here at James 1, v. 22-27, we see a test of living faith. In v. 19-21, James gave the test of the reception of the Word. And now in v. 22-27, he gives the test of obedience to that Word. You can properly receive it by being convicted by it and by not speaking out against it or against its messengers, but you still do not apply it to your life unless you appropriate it. I've said on many occasions that hearing and doing are two separate acts. Just because you hear the Word, don't think that you've applied it to your life. Many come in here, they hear the preaching of the Word, they go away and they forget about what they heard. Or they forget about what the Word of God has revealed of their heart. And they walk away thinking that just because I went to church that I have applied the Word. And that is not true. James specifically speaks to this issue, that doing the Word is the proper response to hearing it. Every time you hear the Word of God, you're charged by the Word of God to be obedient to it. When you are obedient to the Word of God, then you are a doer of the Word. And that's James' point in this section of Scripture. Now, there are basically three areas that I want us to look at as we look at this section. We'll see the command, the character, and the contrast. Now, let's look first of all at the command. We find that in the first phrase in verse 22, it says, but prove yourselves. James begins this section with a transition, and it's the word but. That there is indicating that something further needs to be said. What has He said at this point? Well, verse 21, Therefore putting aside all filthiness, and all that remains of wickedness, in humility receive the word implanted which is able to save your souls. Now He's talking about here the proper reception to the Word of God. But as He transitions into verse 22 with that word, but, or the Greek word, de, He is telling us that there's more that needs to be said about this. See, receiving the Word is not the believer's whole duty, but active obedience must follow. Now, the word that he uses for prove, that's genomine. That's where we get our command here because it's used in the imperative. It literally means, because of the present tense, to be continually proving yourselves, to be continually striving to be doers of the Word. Again, it's used in the continuous tense. John MacArthur writes, he says, when people are blessed with regular in-depth preaching and teaching of Scripture, they may become so enamored with their knowledge and forsake the effort to live out the profound truths that they have come to understand. But a true believer will not be inwardly satisfied with merely knowing the Word. His conscience and the prompting of the indwelling Holy Spirit will keep convicting him of his failure until he becomes obedient. See, the whole issue, as we keep talking about, is the heart. Just as we talked about the heart issue in parenting your children, the heart is always the issue in our life. Every day we need to do those things that guard our heart, and do those things that cause us to keep on striving to do the Word of God. I like what John Walvord says. He says, the growing number of sermon sippers who flit from one doctrinal dessert to another like helpless hummingbirds are deceiving themselves. If you run from just one sermon to another sermon to another sermon or just run from reading one passage to another passage to another passage, those things are good. But you've got to go the next step. You've got to do it. You've got to do what you're hearing. You've got to do what you're reading. You've got to prove yourself as a doer of the Word. Now, notice the character that he mentions here. The command is to prove yourself. The character that he's talking about is being a doer of the Word. And the word doers here that he uses, he uses it six times. Actually, it's used six times in the New Testament, and four of those six times occur right here in the epistle of James. It occurs in verse 22, verse 23, verse 25, and also chapter 4 and verse 11. Now this word here, it calls attention to the individual characterized as carrying out the demands of the word. James wants his readers to be individuals who habitually submit and comply with the requirements of the Word of God. They are doers of the Word. Listen, that's the character of a Christian. That's how the Word of God characterizes those who are followers of Jesus Christ. They are doers of the Word. Now let me point out two things about that. First of all, They live the Word. They live the Word. This is their new disposition. This affects their whole personality. This affects all of their inner being. This affects their mind, their soul, their will, their emotions. The Word of God is what characterizes their life. They're not just doers, but they're those who live the Word. They're consumed by it. They wake up in the morning and they want to be consumed by the Word. They go throughout the day seeking to do those things to cause them to be consumed by the Word so that it's conscious on their mind and so that they live it and they do it. They go to bed at night thinking about the Word of God. Everything about their life is consumed by Scripture. Why is that? Because they have a new desire. When Jesus Christ saves you, He gives you a new desire. He gives you a desire for Him. Not only a new nature, but in that new nature is you have a new desire. You're a new creature in Christ. And now, instead of delighting in sin, you delight in holiness. You delight in righteousness. You delight in Christ. You delight to serve Him. You delight to live for Him. That's all because of the new desire that He has placed within you. Let's look at that new desire. Let me have you to turn to Psalm 119. Psalm 119 is a commentary on Scripture. Throughout this chapter, over and over, David says various things about the Word of God. And I want you to see, first of all, that those who are the ones who live the Word, they are the ones who love the Word. That's why they live it. This is the love of their life. This is the occupation of their heart. This is the love, this is the joy of all that they seek to have, and all that they seek to be, and all that they seek to become, is that the Word of God is what they love. Look at verse 97, and we'll just look at several passages as we look at this. David says, Oh, how I love your law. Now how do you know if you love God's law? Look at what he says next. It is my meditation all the day. David loved the law of God. And the law of God is not necessarily talking about the Mosaic law, but it's encompassing all the word of God. Because he uses various titles to talk about scripture here. He calls it the law, he calls it testimonies, he calls it judgments, statutes, precepts. All of this is reflective of the word of God. And he says that he loves it. Look over at verse 113. He says, I hate those who are double-minded, but I love your law. Look at verse 119. You have removed all the wicked of the earth like dross, therefore I love your testimonies. Verse 127. Therefore, I love your commandments above gold, yes, above fine gold." You know what he's saying right there? Let's put it in contemporary terms. I love your Word. I love the Bible. I love the Scripture more than all the riches in the world. More than the lottery. More than winning the lottery. More than somebody leaving me a large inheritance. He says, I love it above gold, yes, above fine gold. Look at verse 132. He says, Turn to me and be gracious to me after your manner with those who love your name. And now he equates the word of God with the name of God. Look at 159. He says, Consider how I love your precepts. Revive me, O Lord, according to your loving kindness. Verse 163, I hate and despise falsehood, but I love your law. 165, those who love your law have great peace and nothing causes them to stumble. 167, my soul keeps your testimonies and I love them exceedingly. See, the reason why he keeps the testimonies, the reason why he keeps the Word of God is because he loves the Word of God. Do you love the Word of God in this way? Now, I know that we wax and wane in our affections, we wax and wane in our commitments, but is the highest commitment of your life the Word of God? Notice something else here. Go back to verse 16. And you'll see not only do believers who have this new disposition and new desire love the Word of God, but they also delight in the Word of God. Verse 16. He says, I shall delight in your statutes and I shall not forget your word. This is telling us the key here of not forgetting the word, but allowing it to be the delight, the joy, the passion of every aspect of our life. Look at verse 24. Your testimonies also are my delight. They are my counselors. Verse 35. He says, make me walk in the path of your commandments, for I delight in it. Verse 47. I shall delight in your commandments which I love. Verse 70. He says, their heart is covered with fat, but I delight in your law. Verse 77. May your compassion come to me that I may live, for your law is my delight. And then we go to verse 174. He says, I long for your salvation, O Lord, and your law is my delight. So we see two characteristics here, two things that flow out of this new disposition, two things that flow out of living the Word of God is that you love it and you delight in it. Let me have you to go back to verse 20 of Psalm 119 and notice now as that one who loves the Word and delights in the Word also longs for the Word. He says in verse 20, He says, my soul is crushed with longing after your ordinances at all time. Here he's saying, I desire so much your word that my soul is literally crushed with longing. You know what that longing feels like? That longing just controls you. No matter what it's for, you know what it means. It can be desiring something good or desiring something bad. He says he is just crushed with this. Look at verse 40. He says, Behold, I long for your precepts. Revive me through your righteousness. 131. He says, I opened my mouth wide and panted, for I longed for your commandments. Again, we know what that means. He longed for the Word of God. This was his passion. And of course, let me give you one more. Go back to verse 15, and you'll see there that he meditated on the Word. He says, I will meditate on your precepts and regard your ways. Verse 23, even though princes sit and talk against me, your servant meditates on your statutes. Verse 48, and I shall lift up my hands to your commandments which I love, and I will meditate on your statutes. Again, he just goes on and on and on by talking about how to live the Word. This being the new disposition, this being your new desire. You love the Word, you delight in the Word, you long for the Word, and you meditate on the Word of God. The second thing that I would point out is that believers obey the Word. They don't just call Jesus Lord, but they obey Him as Lord. In Luke's version of the Sermon on the Mount, in Luke 6.46, Jesus said, Why do you call Me, Lord, Lord, and do not do the things that I say? I mean, that makes sense, doesn't it? That's a good question. Why do you say, I'm your Lord, but you don't do what I tell you to do? But yet, a believer with the deepest desire of his heart, the deepest inner passion, desires to do what Jesus says, right? Jesus put it this way in John 14, 15. This is what He said to His disciples. He said, if you love Me, keep My commandments. How can we prove that we truly love Jesus? How can we prove that we truly love God? Well, let's take the test of the Word. Are you living the Word? Then let's take the test of obedience to the Word. Are you obeying the Word? Let's even go more specific. Are you obeying Jesus Christ? You say you love Him. Are you doing what He says? Over in John 15, verse 14, Jesus said to His disciples, you are my friends if you do whatever I command you. And again, this is the disposition of a believer. This is the character of His life. And as you look back there in James, you see there that To continually prove yourself as a doer of the Word is essentially to be a Christian. That's what it means to be born again. You are one who continually does the Word of God. You don't just call Jesus Lord. You obey Him as Lord. And you hear the Word of God and you do the Word of God. Look with me over at Luke chapter 8. Luke chapter 8. Jesus had just finished the parable of the soils. And over in verse 19, it says his mother and his brothers came to him and they were unable to get to him because of the crowd. And it was reported to him, your mother and your brothers are standing outside wishing to see you. Now listen to what he says. But He answered and said to them, My mother and My brothers are those who..." What? "...hear the Word of God and do it." See, many times we like the first part of that phrase, to hear the Word of God, but it's the second part that we're dealing with. Doing the Word of God. See, again, We attach ourselves to Christ, we attach ourselves to His Word, we say that we live the Word, we say we love the Word, we say we obey the Word, but do we live it? Do we truly obey it? When we read the Word of God, do we sit down and ask the simple question, how can I apply this to my life today? How can I live this today? And what we read this morning, what can you apply out of those narratives to your life today? That's the question we need to be asking. As we study this today, what can we ask ourselves in terms of application of the Word? Well, simply we ask ourselves, are we doing it? Are we living it? Are we applying it? Are we looking into the perfect law of liberty as it mirrors our sin and the disposition of our life? And are we doing something about it as the Word reveals that? Or do we just get up and walk out at the end of the service and forget about what was all talked about? It's so easy to walk away from a service, and as time goes on throughout the day, to forget about anything you heard for the time that you spent here this morning. What was talked about in Sunday school? If you went to Sunday school this morning, have you already forgotten what was talked about? Well, you say, well, it was in the book of Colossians. Well, what about the book of Colossians? What did Matt talk about in Colossians? Or what did the ladies talk about? I'm not sure what they're studying, but what did they talk about in there pertaining to the Word of God? Or you walk away from here and we get into Monday or Tuesday and ask yourself, what did we talk about from the Word of God together as the corporate body of Christ? What did we get charged with by the Holy Spirit of God as being those who live the Word? Folks, I want to encourage you, be that specific. Don't just come in here and feel good about the fact that you're here and that you're hearing. Listen, there are two ways to hear. You can hear it one way or you can hear it another way, and you need to hear it the way God wants you to hear it. In fact, in James when he talks about putting aside all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness, in that phrase it simply means to remove the wax out of your ears. You know what happens when you get a lot of wax built up in there? It affects your hearing. You can't hear. So you need to have that removed so you can hear clearly what is being said. What does the Holy Spirit say to the seven churches? He who is with ears, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. So ask God this morning to give you the right kind of ears, the right kind of hearing to hear what you need to hear today. What characterizes a true believer? Well, Jesus answers that question for us when he says, you're my mother, my brothers, if you hear the word and do it. Over in Luke 11, 27, I don't know if you're still in Luke. If you look over at chapter 11, Jesus had just casted out a demon and the crowd had accused him of doing this by the power of Satan. But you'll notice in verse 27, it says that while they were saying, while Jesus was saying these things, one of the women in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, blessed is the womb that bore you and the breast at which you nourished. But he said, on the contrary, blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it. See, again, it's going back to this whole issue of hearing the Word and doing the Word. Those who belong to Christ, those who believe in Christ, those who abide in His Word or continue in His Word, Jesus said in John 8.30, if you continue in My Word, you are truly disciples of Mine. See, it's not just hearing or hearing only, but it's hearing and doing. And so, James is exhorting his readers, keep on becoming doers of the Word, not just hearers. Because as a hearer, you're going to delude yourself. And the word that he uses for delude, it's also translated deceive. See, if you are one who just hears and you never do, then you're thinking that everything is okay. You're thinking that you're saved when in reality you might not be. You're just deceiving yourself. Let me prove that. Let me have you go to Matthew chapter 7. Matthew chapter 7. Look at verse 24. And you remember how he ends this sermon. Jesus says, therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock. and the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and slammed against that house. And yet it did not fall, for it had been founded on the rock. Everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand, and the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and slammed against that house, and it fell, and great was its fall." Now, what is he referring to right here? He's referring to your reception to the gospel. Because he mentions over in verse 13 about entering the narrow gate, and he talks about two gates, a wide gate and a narrow gate. He talks about false prophets who stand there leading people to the wide gate. He talks about those who are true disciples, true followers of Christ, because you'll know them by the kind of fruit that they produce. And he talks about the kind of foundation you're building on. If you're the one who enters at the narrow gate, you're the one who hears the Word of God and does it, you're the one who doesn't just say, Lord, Lord, but you're the one who truly, affectionately and continually commits himself to the Lord, then you're the one who is hearing the Word and doing it. You're acting upon the Word of God. You heard the warning of the Gospel and you responded. You didn't just hear it and say, well, they've been saying that for years. You're not like 2 Peter 3 when it talked about those who come as mockers in the last days, talking about judgment coming. They go, oh, we've been hearing about this judgment thing for a long time. And they forget about the fact that God had destroyed the world the first time with a worldwide flood. And the second time when He comes back, He's going to destroy the world with fire. And He says they forget about that. You don't want to be that kind of hearer. You don't want to be one who just hears. And again, you never do. He says they're not merely hearers who delude themselves, who reason beside themselves. And it refers to an incorrect reasoning. In fact, in mathematics, the meaning is that of a miscalculation. Those who are professing Christians, they hear the Word without obeying it, they're making a serious miscalculation. And that causes them to delude themselves. They are self-deceived. Well, what about you? Are you a doer of the Word, or are you a hearer only? As we've learned today, Jesus gives a stern warning against those who just hear the Word. James says they are self-deceived, or put it in terms that we can understand, they are lost. You've been listening to a new study that's taken from James 1 verses 22 to 27 called Doers of the Word. This message is available in two ways. You can go to our website at changebygrace.org and download the free mp3 or you can write us or call us for a copy of the full length CD. Place your order today. Call us at 904-651-3351. Well I'm Pastor Steve Hereford and I want to thank you for listening today and I do hope that you'll join us again next time as we listen to part two of Doers of the Word.