Practicing the Word, p.1

Go to James this evening I'm doing and James what I did in Ephesians. I went there to look for couple things in the got stuck solar brings vegetations to use in practical things in the we should be brief this evening on practicing the word. James chapter 1 verses 20 through two rather through 27 James as pastor of a local church and he's already dealing with the same issues that all local churches deal with and I guess there can be an unintentional neglect our content even sent to strong of a word for the preached word.

When you get it very regularly.

When you feel like it's always going to be that way and how I would charge you not to feel that way there.

There I got message from a person who responded to something that was on the social media that I put out about the local church and being in a solid local church and the person wrote back and said I agree with you but you know how hard it is to find a good church and they went on to talk about how far they drive one way to go to church. I don't take it for granted and this is part of what Jane just talking about here as he challenges the people his local church about the way they practice the word which includes listening to the word preached and taught James one verse 22 go through verse 27, but prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves or for anyone.

Asia is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror. Once he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was the one who looks intently at the perfect law, the law of liberty, that's the gospel truth and abides by it, not having become a fearful 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 side of our God and Father is this the visit orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself unstained by the word of the world rather practicing the word. First of all this talk about the expectation he gives here in verse 22 we begin with this phrase, but prove yourselves doers of the word that means your practice. It's a present tense verb which means is your pattern to go to the word to do the word is not talking about some sort of perfect effort. Perhaps the heart attitude that I go to the word so that it may fashion in shape and my life. Keep all therefore becoming doers of the word don't grow lacks don't come to church undisciplined you're in your heart and mind don't come sit in the word just to go through the motions and say what I've done that for this week. That's not what it's about, were not Catholics. This is not a meaningless sacramental exercise that you might get a look closer to the have been a little shorter stay in purgatory one day know we already are sealed. For heaven we already have embraced our justification. Now we get to by the spirit in a blink, sit under the word with the mindset of Lord, show me what I can learn to show me how to grow show me how to live my life.

Keep on being doers, sometimes referred to those folks who come in just I don't have a serious mind about what the word of God is saying to them there like sermon sippers they flit from one doctrinal desert to another. This morning the meringue if you will like some sort of hummingbird popping from one flower to another is to the settling themselves to the church and sitting under the word and saying, Lord, roaming here teach me what I need to do a sit. If you're not sitting on the word with that intention and purpose you say verse 22. You are indeed merely hearers who delude themselves to meet you make a miscalculation that that's a spirit.

Seriously serious spiritual miscalculation towards your cheating and defrauding yourself were deceived when we come to church and think we've done all that is necessary when we just listened. Are we just been here instead of having a devotion to be what we call in our Bible study in small groups. A good expository listener. Are you good listener to the word of God. It is a work in a sense it's an exercise in order.

Paul tells Timothy in his and then second Timothy. He said they'll be a time when they will not endure sound doctrine. People just grow out of the custom of coming to church discipline.

Dear the word of God prove yourselves. That's expectation prove yourselves doers of the word someone said that too many Christians mark their Bibles and settle in their Bibles marked them there that that some time ago, I would say 3 to 4 decades ago the tree and started happening where churches became consumer driven. What does the consumer want, I will start fashioning the church to whatever fads or gimmicks.

People are kind of into so we can keep them interested in keep on coming.

What, that's right, the opposite of what Jane just saved his local congregation. The exultation prove yourself keep on when you find yourself growing week when you find yourself being in different when you find yourself not prayed up and serious about the word about your preached.

Ask God to help you keep on being a doer of the word as you hear the word. These things should be happening in our minds we listen as we listen, we are re-printers and we are reformers listening, repenting and reforming about the way this is normal average Christianity. That's what we do we sit in church and said in the work that's how we worship were glorifying God in all of these things so that is the exhortation telescope. The second main point and that is the exercise of it. The exercise of this whole thing and he's going to use the idea of a mirror here.

He says in verse 2351's just a hearer of the word and not a doer.

Now, again, it's it, there's a real intentionality here. He talked about the person who just has a settled lifestyle pattern.

They're not interested in repenting about anything they're not interested in calling themselves to account as the word of God is preached to do what they want to do their comfortable with the way they worked out the religion patient. That's where you are. You're really deceiving yourselves. Verse 23 for anyone is just a hearer of the word not a newer, he's like a man who looks at his natural face in the mirror once he's looked at himself and gone away, he is immediately forgotten what kind of person he is literally the gender here means a man what a man a man could look at a mirror and walk away and forget what he sees out of the older I get, the more look at a mirror, the more I will walk away and forget what I say but uses the male gender here because a woman's not go looking forget what she said she's going to be.

She started making calculations what she's going to different so he said, but a person doesn't do that. See the word of God when the word of God is properly taught and preached her when you have a quiet time and you're really humbling yourself in the word of God. There is first of all, an examination that happens you undergo an examination. As you sit under the word of God.

The word reveals who we really are. But there several mistakes you can make when you open the Bible and it is that mirror that examination before God. First of all, you make a mistake by just merely glancing at yourself just making a quick glance at yourself instead of more of a thorough examination of what the word of God's telling you about himself. This glancing off you go.

Has your daily devotion time. We call the quiet times that become just the thing you do you seek the Lord in that. Are you humble before God, are you listening to the Lord, are you repenting are you reforming as you study your Bible at home.

Are you studying your Bible at home. Are you having a time before the Lord. There's no personal profit if it's just something you do and say will I check that off of the day. Our conscience should bother us if we are just careless about our time in the word of God. Careless reading of the word of God is so like taken off a quick photo with your iPhone.

Isn't it amazing the number of pictures we take today at my house we have large expensive computers locked up because there's so much stuff on them. They don't work anymore and you can't take it off because their special people take it off you go to heaven. We just take pictures all the time just for trip attribute protector video video video video.

I think that sometimes the way we do. The word of God and we should when you go to the word of God. It should be more like when you have a pet scan are an MRI. Take some time. This preparation you're praying about it. You're humbled about it. You're very steel. This discipline involved in it. You want a real inaccurate picture what's going on. I've had a bad back since college are really brutal. Before that, but had to go the hospital with that in college been in it since then. One time it is flared up on me again had MRI the other day and I'm telling you base in the last Delos and I'm not moving nothing.

I want to know what's in there. Sometimes you don't know, but I really approached it was sobriety and discipline in seared with us. We don't need to look at the Bible locker taken a snapshot with her iPhone when he got locker going to get an MRI with a heart to see what is really in here so first of all when we go to the word of God.

It's a mirror and and were looking at as an examination we can make mistake of just merely glancing at ourselves. Secondly, would make the mistake of forgetting what was say. We just got a castoff what was say that they don't keep enough of a an interest in a concentration on what they see you sick if you look deep into your own hearts. As you studying the word of God. What you see would be unforgettable and God wants us to do that. That's one reason why the mouse is blessed are those who are meek and blessed are those who mourn, and blessed are those who poured spirit they been in the word and they have an accurate understanding of what's in them but took time to look well at what's in there. You know sometimes we laugh off the old days of revivalism and there were excesses and there was emotionalism there. One lot was a lot of false conversions and some of those things the old brush harbors major tent meetings. Sometimes God did some things and people saw themselves like people want to see themselves.

John Wesley in his diary on June 22, 1739 talked about a meeting he preached in any says and I quote one man before me drop this dead and presently a second and then 1/3, then five others sunk down in half an hour and most were in violent agonies as he preached the word of God and men considered the weight of their souls before holy God. Perhaps we could use some of that today. Before we assign these kind of responses immediately to some emotionally disturbed person.

Some person that belongs in some unstable category of humanity. Let's remember some of the biblical examples of men who really saw themselves accurately before the Lord. Isaiah in Isaiah 65 says woe is me from unclean. I'm undone.

I'm a man of unclean lips.

I live among the people of unclean lips. Woe is me Peter said in Luke 58 depart from me, because I am a sinful man, oh Lord, I got the word of God and he saw a sense of what you are before the holy God, and you sought Lord you sent to separate from you. I can be in your presence. Of course we want to be, but there's a sense of that in our spirit. Job, in Job 42 six says I abhor myself, and I repent in dust and ashes. Do we come examining and take the time to really see a mistake we can make is just taking a quick glance and forgetting what was say that's what James is here. It's like people who who look at a mirror than immediately forget what they say. Thirdly, they fail to obey what the word tells them to do.

That's another. What you failed when you examine yourself in preaching the word you failed to obey what the word tells you to do.

There are folks who literally think if I just come and sit through it than I've done what I'm supposed to do you know a good doctor will take the time to examine you correctly in a good doctor will tell you the truth, where Jesus is the good doctor.

The Bible says he is the great physician.

He wants us to give him the time a to do a thorough examination. So remember the word is like a mirror in that it examines you now look as the word of God examines you. You don't have to have a fearfulness about that. You have to post that was some sort of dread. Know that your your standing before God is settled and sealed and fixed forever by Jesus Christ. You can't lose your justification. You can't lose your right standing before God got all sold you to be aggressive and persistent in your sanctification and that's the examination I'm talking about. Have you had some breakthroughs. I remember so distinctly one time I was going through some tough days and there were things outside of me that were causing some of the tough days and then God opened my eyes to disposition in my own heart of a raw pride and selfishness. And it probably wasn't an outward manifestation that some of his height, so that's pride in that selfish not had enough of that, I'm sure, but in this case, you probably wouldn't have known it but God knew it and it was the most piercing dark revelation to me. When God just showed me that about the way I was thinking because it wasn't premeditated. It would like.

I got up in morning sun will be selfish to info but when God showed me then it was my job to begin to begin to be a confessor and a repent, or on those issues that didn't happen every day but there should be occasions where there's a new sobering examination that while I can't walk thinking that way anymore.

I can have that viewpoint anymore. That is so self-centered that is such self idolatry. Didn't know it before, but I'm responsible because, under the word of God. I know it now, so first of all, when James says here the words like a mirror that speaks of examination, but also it speaks of restoration. We look at America, restore ourselves back to good presentation of ourselves.

Restoration the word has a cleansing and restoring power to it. In Exodus 38 to on the Bible shows how Moses told the ladies of Israel to bring their looking glasses in actually let work glasses at all. It was metal that had been beaten and polished that I would have something of a mirror when a very good mirror is only mirror they had. And Moses took those articles from the ladies of Israel, and he beat them out and put them together and made a labor that stood between the brazen altar sacrifice in the holy place and I feel that Cheyenne reflective labor with water. It is where the priest would purify himself, his hands and feet and wash himself ceremonially before he went into the temple to the holy place and there's a real picture. They are what God does for us with the word of God. The word of God purifies us and restores us back to a closeness to the Lord in a close walk with the Lord. John 15 three now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken to you. Ephesians 526.

The church is sanctified in Clinton. Here's the quote by the washing of the water with the word first John 19. The word gives the promise of cleansing, so there is a sense in which were restored back claim to back up and restored back in intimacy and fellowship with our Lord of the ministry of the word. We go back to use the illustration often but we think about David and his sin with Bathsheba and then literally murdering Bathsheba's husband, Nathan, the prophet comes into David, knowing that the truth is Godfrey ability points a finger at King David and says that the man David said I I've sinned and then the prophet since I could see him at 1213 to David, the Lord has put away your sin, you shall not die restoration you got it right that there were consequences. Of course you're restored back. I don't know about you, brothers and sisters, but I'm glad our God is a God of the second chance and the hundred chance, and as his child, it's loving and good and gracious of him to take me back to the word of God where open the word of God are similar to the preaching of the word of God.

And sometimes you think I've been reading your mail, your email but I haven't but God knows his spirit takes his words.

He shows you something.

The spirit of God to the word of God been praying since thou art the man and you humble yourself and you think I see the examination I am wrong and I repent of that and God says yes and your sin has been forgiven.

There's a restoration that is beautiful is an examination there's a restoration and there's a transformation that's the obvious outcome here.

Verse 25. Look but he who looks intently at the perfect law of the law, liberty, and the buyer has been advised by licit habits affect that is not having become a forgetful hearer but an effectual doer, this man shall be blessed in what he does these different and he walks in a different way. I told you about the time that I had. Hopefully I've had a bunch of them but I had a significant breakthrough in my thinking about something that I did know was sinful in my thinking in it and it was an God showed me that in my life has been blessed by not walking in that any longer. Now I still fail there somebody is not a pattern of who I am anymore.

That's the transformation that God wants us all to have in our lives to look at the mirror of the word of God and look at it with a sense of obligation, he says, looking intently.

Verse 25 he looks intently.

That means an intentional and sustained look little has the idea of stooping down and looking very closely. This is not only intently.

He says and he abides by verse 25. He's looking with a ready response at the what James calls the perfect law of liberty, that sort of a paradox to use the law that way. But notice the amplifiers is the law of liberty is not the old Mosaic law, that was cold, harsh legal legalism that only could could BM using the figure speech here. The gospel is the law of liberty, it's a law that brings you peace and forgiveness and cleansing and grace and mercy.

It's the law of liberty, the one who abides in Christ word will find a new liberty and that's that's the great truth that you and I know it's the children of God that the world just cannot grasp. They think when we teach and preach the things of God but somehow it puts us in some sort of wall full of self-containment condemning and downcast spirit know it's a liberation.

It's a joy.

God's word to us is a liberating joy when God's word says thou shalt not what he saying is I don't you hurt yourself. God's word says thou shouting saying The sale. It's for our good. Listen, listen, church, God loves you, trying to put you through something you try to help you through something You come out of the lies in the bondage and the constrictions in the condemnation and all the negative that the the world and the old law would put on us about us as a psalmist in Psalm 119 versus verse 45. Rather, I will walk at liberty, for I seek thy precepts done 834 reminds us everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin.

That means I a a present tense continuing to see it like I a well fully embracing to walk in sin when you do that. What are you he says John 834 you are the slave of sin. It's a bondage. All this stuff that the world keeps throwing out at us in the church, especially liberals of the church keep drawing out that what time to change and things have changed. This is a new kind of morality you can indulge in this place turned follow this lust to know to be free of these think it's not freedom it's bondage. It's not freedom it's not liberty it's a destroying bondage but affect John chapter 8 verses 31 and 32 just get up a broader context here. John 831 32 Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed him. If you continue in my word towards it. This is real and you're striving now to walk in the truth I've been teaching you, then you are truly my disciples truly disciples of mine and you will know the truth and the truth will make you free. Jesus is not lying. He's telling us the truth. The truth walking in his truth receiving is true that makes us free. Free indeed a look at second Creighton chief web chapter 3 second Creighton, chapter 3. Look at verse 18. I was so spoiled of the screens.

We can't look at Scripture in the sermon. I conned them to be honest second Creighton chapter 3 verse 18… Backup. I will spend a little time here.

Let's back up to verse seven and go down to verse 18 second Corinthians 3 starting in verse seven that the ministry of death. That's the old law code, through Moses, if the ministry of death and letters engraved on stones came with glory so that the sons of Israel could not look intently at the face of Moses because of the glory of his face fading as it was how the ministry the spirit felt to be even more with glory with the ministry of condemnation has glory, much more does the ministry of righteousness abound in glory. So the new word that you and I grasp the word of grace.

The word of the gospel has a great glory to a great liberty even to verse 10 for indeed what had glory in this case has no glory because the glory that surpasses it. He says take the glory and the wonder of the law of Moses, and in contrast to the glory we know the grace of Jesus Christ. He didn't have any glory at all. Verse 11 for that which fades away was with glory, much more that which remains is in glory.

Therefore, having such hope, we use great boldness in our speech and are not like Moses used to put a veil over his face of the of the sons of Israel not look intently at the end of what was fading away, but their minds were hardened for to this very day. The reading of the old covenant the same veil remains unlimited because it is removed in Christ of the Jews had just clung to Moses and didn't say what Moses was pointing to a clung to the old law and not the Christ in God hardened their hearts. Verse 15 but to this day, whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their heart for 16 whenever person turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away, were liberated of the Lord is the spirit nor the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. God book God is not going to let you go on with your fleshly desires and your fleshly lust because it will put you in bondage and enslavement and given enough time will destroy you.

That's why the, the law of the Lord. It is a got a law of liberty is to get you out of that bondage and away from the destruction of CNN giving into everything that our fallen flesh might desire, verse 18. But we all, with unveiled face. Moses put a veil over his face because it is glory was in the law and it it it it was not lasting. We always unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed in the same image from glory to glory. This is from the Lord, the spirit for saying the ministry of the word continues to change us in a closer consecrated communion and walk with Christ and increases our joy and increases our liberty as we go forward. So Paul here uses that example of Moses and compares it to our own experience Moses on the old covenant. His glory was fading away. He covered his face up so they wouldn't see the glory departing, but we are on the opposite. We are continuing in a transformation tour.

We grasp embracing and enjoying more of the glory that is ours through Jesus Christ. That's our pilgrimage.

Have you not notice that in your pilgrimage you not notice that your sanctification new Joyce new sweetness.

It does get sweeter the more we yield to him. The more repentant drawback near to him. Ours is not a fading glory, like Moses, that's the old law.

Ours is a growing glory as the word transforms us from one level of his image to another level to another level. What's going to happen when you get to heaven you be just as he is that it be glory upon glory upon glory.

Listen to me and I to be joy upon joyful joy that it be pleasure upon pleasure, upon pleasure, it just gets better for us just gets better. The word transformed in our original takes over and changes the word we get metamorphosis from the same word that was used on the Mount of Transfiguration when Jesus was transfigured in change before him, he says, little by little, God changes you. More to the image of Christ Jesus. As you are under yield to this examination process and as the word of God is preached as the word of God is taught if you had your quanta should be a sobriety. There should be a serious intent in your heart, Lord, show me what this mirrors. Show me what I need to learn what I need to repent of that resource you examined you. It restores you and then it is continually transforming you from one level of glory to another until we get home in glory practicing the work