Hearing Is Not Enough: James 1:22-25

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I would ask you to please turn your Bibles to the book of James, chapter 1, verses 22 to 25.

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Actually, no, I'm sorry, it's 27. But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves.

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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.

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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.

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If anyone thinks himself to be religious and yet does not bridle his tongue, but to seize his own heart, this man's religion is worthless.

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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.

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Let's pray. Heavenly Father, Lord, we would just pray now that you'd be pleased to bless the preaching of the word.

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Lord, that you would superintend my tongue to say the things that you want to say. And Lord, that the hearts of those who are here,

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Lord, would be receptive. Lord, that we would have ears to hear and hearts to understand. And so,

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Father, I pray that you would be glorified in this message. It's in Christ's name we pray. Amen.

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You may be seated. The sermon title today is,

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When Hearing is Not Enough. And the subtitle could be, The Blessing is in the Doing. And trying to think of an illustration to bring this to light,

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I had a couple of things in mind, but I decided to reflect on the parable that Jesus gives back in Matthew 21.

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When he's talking to the people, particularly the Pharisees, and he says,

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What do you think? A man had two sons, and he went to the first and said, Son, go and work in the vineyard today.

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And he answered, I will not. But afterward he changed his mind and went. And he went to the other son and said the same.

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And he answered, I go, sir. But did not go. So, which of the two did the will of his father?

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Obviously, the first. Now here he's talking about, he's referring to the tax collectors and the prostitutes who are entering the kingdom ahead of the

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Pharisees. The Pharisees were giving all inclination that they would obey the Father. That they would do what he told them to do.

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They had all the externals seemingly in place. They were going to the synagogue.

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They were teaching. They were listening. They were offering the prayers. They were doing all the ceremonial things.

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But their hearts weren't right. And then you had the tax collectors and the prostitutes that didn't even bother giving the lip service to God.

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Didn't even say they would obey. They were just out living how they wanted to live, giving no regard for the

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God who was the God of Israel and indeed the world. But Jesus came to preach a message of repentance to everyone.

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Whether they seem like they had it all together or they seem to be in open rebellion, God is always looking at the heart.

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And he's always calling us to be obedient to that call. That's why Christ has come.

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First of all, because we can't. But he's come to make it possible that we can.

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So, there's a temptation in our day to be a hearer only.

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To pride ourselves on our Bible reading, our intake of sermons, the books we listen to, the podcasts.

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To pride ourselves on our doctrine. We've got all our ducks in a row. Of all the doctrine, we've got the best doctrine.

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Right? We have it. And we're pleased with that.

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And we should be pleased with that. And doctrine is essential. Doctrine is vital. It's important. But there's a temptation to think that because we agree with what we read and that we listen to it often, that we're actually living it out.

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That's the problem. To believe that because we have put in the time attending church and even making sure that the doctrine that we hold to is sound, that that would be sufficient.

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That would be enough. There's a temptation to compare ourselves to others. Hey, there's plenty of other professing believers out there around me who seem to be doing the same thing.

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They're either holding on to the same doctrine and living the way I'm living, or worse, they're not holding to the same doctrine.

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Shame on them. Let's look down our nose. There are plenty of people claiming

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Christ and going to church and reading the Bible and we act the same. So that must mean that's what

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Christianity looks like. As long as we can say, I can see other people who call themselves Christians acting the way

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I do, speaking the way I do, well, we can't all be wrong, can we? Who else would profess

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Christ, profess to believe in God, and then not live in a way that's consistent with that? Well, the

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Pharisees, for one. Here the problem is that agreeing, when we consider the passage before us, when he says, prove yourselves doers of the word, not merely hearers who delude themselves, the idea is if they're hearing it, they are agreeing with it.

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He's not even really arguing with them at this point whether they agree with it or not. It's sort of understood that they must agree with it.

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If you didn't agree to it, why would you keep coming back for more? Why would you keep submitting yourself, subjecting yourself to listen to all these things and to make sure you hit the checklist.

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I did my daily devotion and I listened to that sermon and I listened to that podcast. I must be holy in God's eyes because I'm listening and agreeing with everything.

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But the problem is that hearing the word is not enough. Agreeing with it is not enough. James says that to be only a hearer is to be deluded.

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That the one who does so is like one who looks in the mirror and then forgets what he looks like.

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Now what does a mirror do for us but to show us our appearance for good or bad? It shows us what needs to be addressed.

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Are we dirty? Are we messy? Do we have a spot or a stain or a wrinkle that needs to be dealt with?

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Are we unpresentable completely in need of a shower? Or are we mostly except for this one little thing?

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So we use the mirror to make sure that we're presenting ourselves the way we need to. So we think, we're looking at it to see if there's any issues.

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But how silly it would be if we look in the mirror and go, yeah, that's a mess. And then we go away and we completely forgot what we saw and we never address it.

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It doesn't really do us much good. Why bother with the mirror in the first place? The Word of God, carefully considered, carefully considered, is going to show us that we fall short of the perfect standard.

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When we look at the mirror of God's Word, we're going to see that there are some things that need to be addressed.

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But seeing it and being a believer means that we are able to correct these things and to grow in grace.

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We're meant to correct these things and grow in grace. But you can never get there if you just casually read and refuse to apply.

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If all you do is quick glance at the mirror and walk away and don't do anything, obviously the problem is going to remain.

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And if all we do is a cursory, I read through the Bible, I hit my checklist for today, and we don't meditate on it, we don't think about it, we don't seek to see how it applies to us and our circumstances and our situation, we're never going to get there.

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We're not going to be what James calls us to be, effectual doers of the Word. So there's the problem, the temptation.

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There's a blessing. James says, the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres.

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Well, I should say, in the New American Standard that we read from, it says, the one who looks intently at the perfect law, the law of liberty, and abides by it.

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The ESV says, perseveres. Same difference, different word. But the one who looks at the perfect law, 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.

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Now, you think, well, that the law, most people, they think of the law and they go right to Moses and the commandments and all the other, you know, the case law and the ceremonial law.

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I'm like, well, that seems like a lot. I thought we weren't supposed to follow all that. And didn't they say that the law was not good?

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It was the law of death. So what is he talking about? But the Word of God is the law of God.

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Everything that proceeds out of his mouth is obligatory to us, right? And it's really not a restrictive law.

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It's a law of liberty. That's how it identifies itself. And God and his

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Word are the only things that can identify themselves and set the standard. We don't have the right to just make up our own identities.

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Our identity is according to what God has created in us. So, it's not a restrictive law.

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It's the law of liberty. But so many look at God's law as that which holds them back from pleasure, from enjoyment. But that's really nonsense.

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But how many people can you think of who would say exactly that? The law of God, what it is in reality, is it keeps us from being enslaved to our sin.

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It keeps us from being enslaved to every fleshly desire that would entangle and suffocate us.

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When we look at the law, Word, that puts requirements on us that we feel is impossible, not just to abstain from the obvious immorality, like, oh, we know that there's some big sins out there we're supposed to avoid.

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Sometimes we don't want to even. But then there's also these requirements in God's Word that tells us that we have to live and act righteously in such a way that it seems alien to what everyone else is doing.

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No one else is doing that. All these other people are Christians, but they're not doing that. And so we think of it as a burden.

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No, if you feel uncomfortable, then it's probably legalism. But the reality is that the resistance that we feel in our spirit when

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God's Word confronts us with something and is telling us you have to act in this way, and we see that, we recognize, it's black and white, it's clear.

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There's some passages that we can, you know, try to discuss and see, is it really saying what we think it's saying?

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And then there's other passages that are, it's black and white, it's crystal clear, but it makes us feel very uncomfortable.

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And it starts making us reflect on the grace of God to forgive all our sins, right? He's going to forgive us if I don't do this thing because I'm not under the law anymore,

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I'm under grace. But when we feel that uncomfortable resistance and that pushback against God's requirements for holy living, recognize that that is our old man still within us, still fighting for supremacy, still doing everything he can to avoid mortification.

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He doesn't want to be put off. We don't want to put off those things that make us feel comfortable, that sort of help us get through in this world and get by without too much headache or persecution or just embarrassment.

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But the reality is that the law of God, every part of it, is a revelation of God himself, of his own divine character, who he is.

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You ever wonder, would we be happier if he were to break his own law so that we had the freedom to do the same?

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Well, if he breaks his law, then I can. Because there's, again, there's so many who are thinking,

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I can't be a Christian, I can't be that good. It just seems like too much no.

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I don't want to submit myself to that life. I don't feel a desire to repent. I don't feel a compulsion to bow the knee and dedicate myself to God.

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But again, the life he's calling us to is the one to bear his image properly.

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Everyone created, everyone has been created in the image of God.

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And yet we know that sin has corrupted and tarnished that image. We can't escape who we're meant to be.

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That's why there's so many people unhappy. Because they want to, but it's an inescapable reality.

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She's tracking with me. But he's made us to bear his image.

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He's made us to walk in his ways. And Christ has come so that we can actually do what we were called to do.

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So if we believe on Christ, if we're recognizing he's the Savior of the world, he came to take away my sin, he came to give me his righteousness, then you walk in the reality that I can bear his image in all things.

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And now the law is no longer a burden. It's not a weight. It's freeing.

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You have been set free to walk in that freedom. And so we're supposed to bear his image properly.

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Could you imagine if he had no law? If he had no standard? Imagine if he had no holiness?

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Imagine his power. The power to create the cosmos. The power to keep everything together.

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He can do whatever he pleases. And imagine he had that power without the restraint of his moral perfection.

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Think about it. Think about the stories you hear about Greek mythology and what those supposed gods did with their power.

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How people were nothing more than pawns and they're doing all sorts of things and using them for their own gratification or killing them at will, doing whatever they wanted just because.

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That's what they felt like. Imagine if he acted the way we do. Imagine we had the power that he had and we allowed our every thought and every desire to just have sway.

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We could do whatever we wanted to do. Now you're thinking, well that would be okay if it's me.

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What if it's the person who you don't like? Or more poignantly, the person who doesn't like you.

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And they have that power. What a horrifying thought. There are those who find fault with God for not restraining the sin of others but they rarely blame him for not restraining the sin in themselves.

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We want the Lord. We want the Lord to be morally perfect. We need the

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Lord to be morally perfect. But how many of us don't want that for ourselves?

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We're not interested in being perfect like he is perfect. We're not interested in being holy as he is holy. We want his acceptance.

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We want his approval much like Cain. But we want it on our own terms. Like I said, all mankind was made in his image.

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All mankind is meant to operate according to his law. And if we did, could you imagine if we actually all operated the way he calls us to?

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If we lived out his law day in and day out, everyone, the joy and the peace that would reign at all times.

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Because the law of God is good. The law of God is built on the prerogatives.

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Love the Lord and love your neighbor. And if we're all loving each other and loving him and living it out according to his standard, what a wonderful place this would be at all times.

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And so when we look into it, when we look into the perfect law, we should recognize that true liberty exists in the perfect law.

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That when we abide, when we persevere, when we're essentially meditating on it and diligently seeking to obey it.

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Again, you have to recognize that just reading the word it's good.

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But just letting your eyes pass over the words, just trying to get to the end of your checklist for the day, is not going to help you much.

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We're called to meditate. Psalm 1, right? Marinate.

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That's what Pastor Anthony preached on a while back, right? To marinate on the word of God. And to think about how does this apply to every area of life.

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But when we meditate on it, when we diligently seek to obey it, when we persevere by his grace and power, recognizing that it's not our own power, it's not our own strength that enables us to do what

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God is calling us to do. When James is telling us this, he's recognizing we need Christ to do what he's encouraging us to do, what he's exhorting us to do, what he's commanding us to do.

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But if we do that, if we would look into it, if we would abide by it, we will be blessed.

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He says, the one who looks intently at the perfect law, the law of liberty, and abides by it, not becoming a forgetful hearer but an effectual doer, this man will be blessed in what he does.

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That's why I had us read from John earlier. And what an example.

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Jesus washes his disciples' feet. I'm the teacher. I'm the master.

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That's what you call me, and you should. Right? And he goes, I'm doing this for you.

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You know, we think about, well, we can't die for each other's sins, right? Only Christ can do that. And so he gives us an example that hits a little closer to home.

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No, you don't have to climb up on a cross to take away someone's sin to show them that you love them. But wash their feet.

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And again, if you know the historical context, that was the lowest servant's job. They got the pleasure of washing someone's feet.

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It wasn't a job meant to boost your ego, boost your pride, make you feel like the most important person in the house.

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No, you were the lowest. It was a humbling thing. It was a humility. And Jesus does it.

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The king of kings, the lord of lords, the one who deserves all glory, lord, and honor.

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And he puts on the towel, and he gets on his knees, and he washes their feet.

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And he says, you gotta go and do likewise. And so, you know these things, and you do them.

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Blessed is the one who does them. So Jesus says, blessed is the one that recognizes us and do it. And James says, blessed is the one in what he does.

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To just give us that example. So blessed is the doing. Notice what he doesn't say.

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If we have a life that is similar to other professing believers around us, we'll be blessed. If we feel pretty good about ourselves, we'll be blessed.

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If people think that we're a stronger Christian than most, we'll be blessed. No, the calling is not to compare ourselves to others.

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The calling is not to go based off our feelings. The calling is not to measure the amount of compliments that we praise and praise that we get from other people.

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The standard is the word of God, the law of God.

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The perfect law, the law of liberty. The one who is blessed is the one who perseveres at looking into the word and applying it.

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Not settling for what others say is good enough. Not settling for hearing lots of good truth and agreeing with it.

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Not settling for saying, I have given enough to God, and he should be satisfied. Not settling for thinking, there's only so much

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I can do, and God understands. Now, my friends,

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I'm not saying to set your mind on a perspective that you will only be saved if your works are good enough.

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I'm not calling you to live a life lived under a crushing weight of condemnation that you can never measure up.

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We are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

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Not how perfectly we keep this passage of Scripture. However, we need to be warned of the danger of complacency.

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The danger of apathy. Of a heart that is more focused on self -centeredness and self -satisfaction rather than gratitude and humility towards God.

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You know, I think about the situation today and the difficulties we face.

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I think about the old covenant Israelites. Like, how easy it would have been for them to meditate on God's word.

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To think about it. To reflect on it. To try to live it out. I mean, they didn't have all the extra stuff that we have today.

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All the work and the commute and the media and the social media and all these different extracurricular activities to make sure that we and our kids are well -rounded.

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There's a thousand things to do out there. They didn't have to deal with any of that stuff. They didn't have cars. How far could they go?

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No TV or radio to distract them. All they had time to do was meditate on the law of God. Right? But apparently they didn't.

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Because they didn't obey. And even the things where God told them, do this and you'll be blessed, they didn't believe.

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You know, if you read in Leviticus, it talks about giving the land a Sabbath rest. Everyone knows about the

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Sabbath. Everyone supposes that seventh day, you're not supposed to work. You're supposed to rest. Trust in God. How many people didn't do it because it just pragmatically seems counterintuitive.

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Rest and I'm going to be prosperous. Work, work, work while the sun's up. Get the work done.

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But God had actually given them the command that every seventh year, don't work the land. I'll give you enough in the sixth year that you don't have to sow or reap in the seventh.

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But just dedicate it to God. And he would provide for them. You know how often they actually kept that Sabbath year?

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John's right. Zero. You never hear about them doing it. And in fact, when

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God is punishing them and saying, you're going to go into exile for 70 years,

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God's done the math. 70 years, one for each of those Sabbath years that were neglected the last 490 years.

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So it gives the commandment in Leviticus 25. It gives the judgment that will happen in Leviticus 26.

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Jeremiah 25 tells them about the 70 years. Second Chronicles 36 says the land got its rest.

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And here's the thing. 490 years. And we read about the prophets and how often do they actually mention that requirement of God?

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God is long -suffering. He let them go 490 years before the day of reckoning came.

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And that's part of our problem sometimes is we think it's not that big a deal. God's overlooking it.

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Obviously we're all doing this stuff. We're all doing the same thing. How bad could it be? How seriously does God take it? He keeps track.

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He's aware. Consequences come. Sometimes not right away and that's our problem. Because we think there is no consequence coming.

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But that's what the foolish people say. That's what the wicked say. God doesn't see. He doesn't care. He's not going to take a call to account. The wise, the spiritually faithful recognize what

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God does. So, here they are. They don't have all the distractions that we have.

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But they would say, well we had this whole survival thing going on. You know? We're so busy trying to live and just make it through the day.

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We didn't have grocery stores and thrift stores and all these different things. We're trying to survive. Don't have time to focus on the law of God.

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I don't even have a copy of it. We've got to go to the synagogue and hope that the teacher can give us a little part of the scroll.

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Every seven years or so we hear. We're all supposed to gather and hear the teaching but obviously it wasn't a priority.

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They weren't familiar with the word and they didn't try to keep it. But what about us today?

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We've got multiple copies in every house. Right? We've got commentaries by great theologians in our pockets on our phone.

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And we're looking at cat videos instead. That's not to denigrate cat videos. It's probably better than what other stuff we could be looking at on there.

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But we're looking at stuff that doesn't matter. We're not focusing on the word of God.

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We're not meditating on the word of God. We're filling our time with all these other things rather than what would be pleasing to the

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God who saves me? What would be working towards the furtherment of the kingdom that will last forever?

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Do we think about the future in that way? So here's the problem.

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There's a danger in being complacent. There's a danger in making excuses and unfortunately that's where most of us fall.

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Is that we consider ourselves too busy. But we can say we're busy to each other but if we had to stand before God and tell him, well, you know,

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Lord I had to do fill in the blank. And feel how comfortable you would feel telling the

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God of the universe about whatever activity or whatever little thing you wanted to watch or whatever you wanted to read or do instead.

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How that worked. The people probably thought it was counterintuitive to give a Sabbath rest to the year. To follow his way of doing the economy.

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And yet we see the consequences. How often do we think if I do what God is telling me, I'm going to lose my job.

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I'm going to get fired. What are we saying? God's not going to take care of me.

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I've got to do it my way, not his. We'll get to that in a minute. Okay.

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So, we're told to look at the law, to meditate on the law, to be a doer of the law.

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And we see the danger of just saying, well I heard it, I agree with it, isn't that enough? Or like the

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Pharisees, I do some things, that should be enough. But he's telling us and now

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James is this book of wisdom and he broaches this vital topic of not being merely a hearer of the law, but a doer.

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And then he immediately, the next couple verses, touches on three areas that are part of the embodiment of true and genuine religion.

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Control of our tongue, our concern for those in need, and avoiding worldliness.

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So, just touching on three of them. Again, he takes the rest of the book and he actually expands on all these areas in this book of wisdom, but what does he say?

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We're told to keep our tongue under control. It's so important and so difficult that James says later on, that the one who can control his tongue demonstrates he can control his whole body.

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That's how hard our tongue is to control. We sin with our tongue in so many ways because while anatomically it isn't connected to our heart, spiritually, it's a direct connection.

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Okay? Our tongue and our heart, it's got a little distance.

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But our tongue and our spiritual heart? Right there. Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.

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So with our tongues, what do we do? We curse. We boast. We gossip.

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All things that God says no. We employ our tongues in rushing to judgment about other people, about a situation, about whatever, and then perhaps sharing that ill -informed assessment with others.

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With our tongues, we show ourselves to be insensitive. We show ourselves to be careless. Perhaps we show that we are coarse, crass, filled with unholy humor, the things that make us laugh, the things that we will try to get others to laugh along with.

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With our tongues, we cut down others to win an argument, or to make us look better than others, or to cut them down to feel better about ourselves.

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With our tongues, we lie to avoid trouble. We lie to escape consequences we deserve.

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With our tongues, we lie to impress others. We flatter others to gain advantage.

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Our tongues are an incredibly active participant in our sinfulness. And James says, if you're able to control it, well then, you may have a religion that's actually worth something.

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And how often do we just let our tongue go and we don't give it a thought?

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That's why the Proverbs talks about the wisdom of being discreet. The wise keep their mouth shut, for the most part.

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Where there's a multitude of words, there's usually transgression. Then there's visiting orphans and widows in their distress, he says.

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Pure and undefiled religion, the sight of our God and Father. Not the sight of the world, although they recognize some of those things by common grace.

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But how often do we do this? The Lord has made it abundantly clear in His Word that His concern is for the fatherless and the widow.

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I mean, we see that throughout the Old Testament and we see it continue on into the New. They are the ones who lack what

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God has obviously considered essential. A father, a husband, a provider, a protector, a primary source of security.

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How much of it is it a priority to make sure that their needs are being met? We live in a society where we expect the state to do everything for us, because they've taken over everything, and we just say, well, great.

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Our taxes are going to it, so that's the same as us doing it, right? And so we comfort ourselves that the fatherless and the widow, the needy are being taken care of through our tax dollars.

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But does the state give glory to God? Does the state provide comfort and guidance in a way that honors the

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Lord? Will we allow the state to care for those who God has put in our path?

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Especially those who God calls on us to father as well? Are we looking outside of our own families and our own situations to see how we can minister to others?

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To meet needs, to show love, to bear burdens? It's an obligation of the church, and each one of us actually makes up part of the church.

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We shouldn't just throw a few bucks in the benevolent fund and think it's like our taxes. Our obligation to meet those needs are met.

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Someone else will take it from here. It's a good thing, but it's not enough. We should look for opportunities to serve those in need.

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That's just one example of being doers of the word, turning our focus toward others. Visiting the fatherless and the widow in their distress.

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What would we want if we were looking to the Lord to visit us in our distress? And we all have times of distress, right?

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We all have times of difficulty, of affliction. Just wanting some comfort.

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We want Christ to speak words of truth to us. We want those words of comfort. We want him to meet our needs.

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And he calls us to do the same for others. To be his hands and feet. To show his love in those tangible ways.

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It's not about just trying to be good. It's about seeking to be holy as God is holy, and recognizing that he has revealed in his word what holiness looks like.

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Now, everyone has different situations and different means and abilities to come alongside others who are in distress.

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And so sometimes we think, I can't help anyone. Look at me and my situation. Consider the

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Macedonians, though. Giving out of their poverty to help those who they saw in a greater need than themselves.

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We shouldn't be quick to dismiss our obligation thinking we have nothing to offer. We all have the ability to bring hope and encouragement to someone at some level.

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And then we're connected to a body that, if they're informed of a situation, they can come alongside and help as well.

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And so we can all be working together to be Christ to those who are in need. And when we're serving them, we're serving

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Christ. Jesus said, when you did it to them, you did it to me. You know, when it talks about the followers and the widow, that's the primary application, right?

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This is something that God has always spoken of, Old Testament, New Testament. But there's a secondary application.

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The needy, in general, whether they have a husband or father or not, there's all kinds of people being in need.

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And I would point again to the body, not as only the source of a help to those in need, but it's also a source of people who need.

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We recognize that we all need each other. We're reading through Pilgrim's Progress on Wednesdays, and we just read a little bit on Wednesday where Christian meets faithful.

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And Christian has been a Christian for longer. And he runs ahead of faithful.

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And it's an allegory. And he looks back and he has a little moment of vainglory and sort of smiles and then he immediately falls.

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And he can't get up again until faithful comes and helps him up. This guy who's not even as far along as he is, he's the only one around who's able to help

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Christian get back up again. And what does that remind us? We need each other.

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Doesn't matter how long you've been a Christian or how short you've been a Christian. Doesn't matter how much Bible you know or how much you don't know.

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Doesn't matter how much money you have or you don't have. We all have something that's used by Christ for the edification of his body.

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We need we need each other. We're too quick to dismiss.

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Listen, it's our flesh. We come here like, I don't know if I'm getting a lot out of church. The teaching's good.

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But I can get that on the computer. I can get that on the radio. But I feel like I don't fit in. I don't feel like anyone's in my situation.

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I don't feel comfortable. I don't feel like anyone's making enough of an effort to reach out to me.

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What are we doing for each other? What are we doing to see how we can build up other people?

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We live in a day and age of it's a consumerist mindset. The marketing is what you deserve. What you need.

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You, you, you, you. And you're right. Me, me, me, me. But how often are we thinking, what about my brothers and sisters in Christ?

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How well do I know them? How much of an effort have I made to get to know them? How many times do I avail myself of opportunities to fellowship with them?

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We need each other. So, this is sort of a secondary application.

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But it's a, it's a vital one nonetheless. We need each other. We're a people.

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I've, one of the last times I preached, I talked about us being one. When Jesus is talking to the church, he's identifying them as one.

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I'm like, how often do we identify ourselves as one? How often are we concerned about judgment that's coming on a church because they're not being faithful and thinking,

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I'm part of that. I need to do what I can to help. You know, I need to be praying. I need to be encouraging.

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I need to be making sure I'm being an example. We're not a social club.

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We're not, ah, if I have time I'll go and I'll make it. I'll hang out. But then

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I gotta go. We're not a social club. We're a people. We're a kingdom. We're a body.

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We're one. But I digress, but only slightly. Keeping ourselves unseen from the world is the third and last thing he mentions in this brief section here.

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The world system, as we know, is corrupt and polluted. The spirit of the age is that which is against God's holiness.

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In fact, I had shared something the other day. I read, talking about how worldliness is that which makes everything that's righteous, well, that which makes sin seem normal and righteousness seem odd.

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That's what worldliness is. When we look at something and go, yeah, that's about right. Well, that's okay.

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That's what everyone else is doing. It's not that big a deal. And then when someone is living righteously and really above and beyond, it's like, ah, don't have to be quite so whatever that is.

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So for the Israelites, idolatry and sexual morality were a constant snare for them. And the reality is that idolatry and sexual morality remain a threat to us today.

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A snare to us today. Idolatry, we have said before, is when we give worship that is glory and sacrifice is involved in worship to anything other than God.

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When we declare that our needs or those wants that we elevate to needs can't be gotten from the

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Lord, that he isn't sufficient, that he's not going to meet those needs, so we seek out other gods who will hear our cry and answer if we are pragmatic.

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If we go with the idols of the day. But reality, it's a betrayal of our creator and provider.

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Our redeemer and our king. When we compromise on his standard because we believe that keeping his word won't satisfy us, doing that is to stain ourselves with the filth of the world system that's opposed to God.

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Sexual immorality is always tied to it. There's a throwing off of modesty, which is just a start. We mock people who are trying to be modest as being too puritanic or acting like puritans.

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You know what I'm trying to say. Oh, are you a Muslim? We're going to cover you head to toe. Don't show your ankles, that sort of thing. We mock at modesty.

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We live in a society that mocks purity and continually pushes the boundaries. We know some of the more egregious manifestations, homosexuality, transgenderism, all that.

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Yet pornography, promiscuity, and even abortion have been found too often in the church.

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We went to a Love Life conference a little while back, trying to get some of the pastors of the local churches as they're trying to open up a chapter out here and have an impact fighting against abortion.

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And what he shared with us is that 54, 54 % of those getting an abortion identify as Christian.

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Now again, we're all about doctrine, like, well, are they really Christian? How many of them are? How many believe themselves to be?

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How many of them are in our churches? Going to Planned Parenthood on Friday because they have a situation that they can't face the congregation with.

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And so they'll go and hide their sin by destroying their child and come to church on Sunday.

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It happens. We have people who have had abortions. That's just the reality of it.

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We have people who have engaged in pornography, perhaps even this week. People being promiscuous.

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But because we're all separated from each other, and we live in our own little worlds until we come here on Sunday for a couple hours, we don't know what we're struggling with.

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We don't know what's going on in our lives. And this stuff has infiltrated the church and rendered us ineffective.

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Because how can we speak to the sin of the world when we have sin in our own dwelling? Policy seems to be, in too many cases, don't ask, don't tell.

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We don't want to know. It's too messy. It's too difficult. We don't want to deal with it. And yet, these are the things that are going on in the world.

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That's not to mention the crude joking, the crude entertainment that continually desensitizes us to our sin and to the sin of others.

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Our leisure time that is often filled with that which normalizes the stain of this world. And yet, the law of God calls us to real liberty that calls us to escape the snares of this world that would enslave us.

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Being a doer of the word is to demonstrate our religion to be real, to be genuine. Being a doer of the word demonstrates our devotion to Christ, because He's worthy.

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Being a doer of the word demonstrates that we're not merely deluded in our hearing, not merely deluded hearers, because Christ is able.

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He's able to save us. He's able to transform us. He's able to make us walk in the newness of life that He purchased with His blood.

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And He's able to make it our delight. Obeying Christ is at times difficult.

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She knows.

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I make it difficult sometimes. Babies, toddlers. It's sometimes difficult.

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But the difficulty lies within us. And the world around us that will push back on us trying to live holy lives.

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If you want to live a holy life, expect some persecution. If you want to live a holy life, expect some pushback within your own soul.

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As the old man says, no, no, no, no, no. Don't go too crazy with this. No one's going to understand.

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No one's going to appreciate it. You're not really doing anything that God needs you to do. Careful. Careful.

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We don't want to be merely hearers of the word. We want to be doers. And we want the blessing that God brings with that, knowing that He has enabled us to do it, and He can make it a delight.

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When our conscience is clear before God, there's a peace there that does surpass understanding.

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And then we can point people to Christ, to live a life that's glorifying to Him, to make that aroma of Christ a pleasant smell, a life that makes

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Christ appealing to those who are lost and perishing and desperate for a Savior. James is a book of Proverbs.

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I'm sorry, a book of wisdom like Proverbs. And much of Proverbs is written by the great king

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Solomon, who was gifted by God with great wisdom. And the wisdom found in Proverbs was the practical outworking of the law of God.

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It wasn't just something that materialized out of nowhere. It was manifesting from what

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God's law obligates us to. It was showing us how it works out, how it applies.

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That wisdom brought kings and queens from far away to hear Solomon. Again, no cars, no planes.

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They're traveling great distances, slowly, to come and hear about this wisdom and this

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God who's given it. But the greatness of Solomon only lasted as he was a doer of the word.

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All his knowledge, all his doctrine, all his understanding meant nothing when he failed to apply it.

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So my brothers, my sisters, we must be doers of the word. We must meditate and reflect and then apply what

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God's word has shown us. And again, as I say this, we're singing things like trust and obey, but we're singing

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Christmas carols like joy to the world. Why? Because he's come to redeem as far as the curse is found.

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It's found in your heart. Christ came to redeem it. Came to enable you to walk in his ways, to make it a delight, and to bless you through it.

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And so I want to encourage us to remember that if we are believers, we don't live with condemnation.

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The condemnation has passed. But the obligation to live for our king remains. And he will give us the grace that we need to do it.

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He'll give us the wisdom. He'll give us everything we need for life in godliness. He has promised it. We just have to avail ourselves of the means that he's given us for that grace.

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So I want to encourage us that we would be holy as he is holy, that we would not delude ourselves in our hearing, but be doers as well.

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And if you're here today and you don't know Christ, I know you've heard of him. If you're here, you've heard of him.

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Perhaps many times. Perhaps more times than you wanted to hear of him.

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But he's the king of kings. You're breathing his air. The air in your lungs is his, and he's given it to you as a gift for this moment.

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That next heartbeat, and the one after that, and the one after that, and the one after that. All by his common grace to give you life.

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He's calling you to repent. He's calling you to trust. You're singing Christmas hymns everywhere you go.

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The Christmas music, the advent of a savior has been born. As I preach outside the abortion mill every week, we mark our calendars by God stepping into history.

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They can call it CE, common error. They still have to mark that number at the same time that Jesus just happened to be born.

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We mark our calendars by his birth for Christmas. We remember his sacrifice on Good Friday.

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We celebrate the resurrection on Resurrection Sunday, also known as Easter.

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Around the world we mark our calendars by his reality. So I encourage you to bow the knee, confess him as Lord, find forgiveness of your sins and life everlasting, and you can sing with us with genuine meaning, joy to the world.