The Mindful Doer | Sermon 03/20/2022

Apologia Utah

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We're going to be in James chapter 1 verses 22 through 25. The title of this sermon, brothers and sisters, is

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The Mindful Doer. The Mindful Doer. Starting in verse 22, my friends, these are the inerrant and infallible words of the living

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God. 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.

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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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Thus ending the reading of God's holy and inspired word, let's pray quickly. Father, please speak through me today.

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Help me to get out of the way. Lord, let your people only see you and your word. Lord, please help us to take seriously the warnings here, to examine ourselves,

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Lord, and to move forward as necessary. Lord, please teach us today from James and help me to speak,

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Lord, in a way that is clear and helpful. Let it always be true. I pray this all in Christ's name. Amen.

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In practically everything we do, our actions speak louder than words, right?

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Our children aren't praised for how quick they say they will obey our requests.

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They're praised when they actually clean their rooms when we ask them to. A student can say they are smart all they want.

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They can go around. I'm the most intelligent one here. But it's not until that they're put to the test and they take that test and they prove what they actually know through it.

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The husband can tell his wife incessantly that he loves her, and he should frequently do that, of course.

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But that endearing moment of I love you, I love you, I love you needs to be backed up by how he treats his bride.

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In God's economy, we can say words like I repent, I repent all we want.

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But repentance has action. It turns away from sin and moves towards righteousness.

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It does a 180, so to speak. The Bible demonstrates this very truth, church.

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The external works of a believer prove the internal change wrought by God.

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They will manifest outwardly. The works themselves aren't the catalyst for the internal change.

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Rather, the internal change is the catalyst that made external good works possible.

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That's the order. Even after the giving of the law to the

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Israelites, it was clear when they were taught the law, it wasn't enough to simply know it.

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They were to do it. Deuteronomy chapter 4 verses 5 through 9 says,

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See, I have taught you statutes and judgments, just as the Lord my God commanded me, that you should do thus in the land where you are entering to possess it.

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So keep and do them, for that is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples who will hear all these statutes and say,

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Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. For what great nation is there that has a

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God so near to it as the Lord our God whenever we call on him? Or what great nation is there that has statutes and judgments as righteous as this whole law which

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I am setting before you today? And Moses gives a final warning, Only give heed, give heed to this word and keep your soul diligently, so that you do not forget the things which your eyes have seen, and they do not depart from your heart all the days of your life.

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And just in case we don't think this is an Old Testament exclusive, Christ says in John 14, if we love him, we will keep his commandments.

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We will keep his commandments, we will commit to action, we will commit to doing.

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Paul says we'll walk in the good works that the Lord has prepared beforehand. We won't be idle.

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We will walk. There is action. Peter says we must be obedient children and conforming to the

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Holy One in all our behavior. And the Apostle John says we will recognize that we truly know

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Christ when we keep his commandments. That is John's barometer.

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That is his measuring rod. He says we will know that we follow Christ if we keep his commandments.

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We will know that we know Christ if we keep his commandments. Do you know

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Christ? From front to back, cover to cover, Genesis to Revelation, God's word demonstrates there is an action response, a doing when one serves the

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Almighty. And you think about it, even God himself simply doesn't speak only.

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His speaking works. His speaking creates. His speaking brings forth action.

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And that is what we will look at today. The mere hearer is rivaled by the doer.

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And both have masters that they serve. Both have masters, but only one serves the eternal master.

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Our passage in James today will juxtapose the mere hearer and the doer together while giving us attributes that characterize these two types.

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So then the duty each and every one of us has today is to examine ourselves and see which accurately describes us.

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Praying of course that everyone's a doer here today. Then in the most fitting way, whichever we are, the mere hearer or the doer, we should strive to action, demonstrating eager obedience and repentance where applicable.

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So starting in verse 22, let's pull that up.

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One of the most memorized verses in all the book of James right here, but prove yourselves doers of the word and not merely hearers who delude themselves.

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This change from James isn't out of line with his thinking. In verse 18, we learned we were given rebirth by the word of truth.

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Then in verse 21 from last week, we received the word implanted at rebirth, at the rebirth.

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And as the word is being cultivated and growing in you, it will bear fruit.

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It will bear fruit. It will move from an internal root and branches will shoot forth out of you.

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And those branches will then bear fruit. Fruit will develop. The fruit will develop in such a way so as to be evident.

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There won't be a question. The fruit will be there. And right about now at my old home in Phoenix, Arizona, the peach and citrus blossoms are probably fully pollinated.

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The bees have come by. Things started a little earlier there if you could imagine. And the petals are probably falling off.

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And the tiniest little peaches are forming now at my old home, I would imagine.

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For the peaches though, if you were to look at that tree, it would be hard to tell right now what the crop will be like.

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It would be difficult to see. They're probably light green. They're all over. It'll just look like it camouflaged in with the rest of the leaves.

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But by May with this peach tree, you don't have to look carefully anymore. You'd have to look carefully to be able to see the green because red blushed yellow peaches will be filling the whole tree.

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It's truly amazing. It'd be overwhelming the eyes. Now not all of us have bumper crops every year.

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I don't know if I've ever had a bumper crop yet in my good works in my Christian walk. But we go through seasons.

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We go through times of little fruit and no fruit. There's times where the harvest is few.

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The season was a harsh one. There was environmental elements that affected the fruit production.

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But no doubt the believer bears even a single fruit. And that person bearing fruit is the doer, my friends.

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In typical James fashion, he makes an imperative, Geneste de poieta lagu.

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But be a doer of the word. Be a doer of the word. That's the imperative.

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Be a doer of the word. There is no suggestion here. For one to even obey the command, they must be a doer.

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These verses from James are actually very reminiscent of Christ when he gave the

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Sermon on the Mount. Let me show you. That sermon, probably the most famous sermon in all history, the most read, the most known, the

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Sermon on the Mount, Jesus Christ gives that sermon. And it spans from Matthew chapter 5,

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Matthew chapter 6, and it goes all the way through chapter 7. And what are the very last things that Jesus say as he finishes this most magnificent discourse?

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What are the last things he says? He says this, Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them, who hears these words and acts on them, may be compared to a wise man who built his house upon the rock.

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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.

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Everyone who hears these words of mine, they hear, but they do not act on them, will be like a foolish man who built his house upon the sand.

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The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and slammed against that house, and it fell.

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And he says, great was its fall. James echoes his

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Savior in this section of his letter. He is not making anything novel or controversial.

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He is right in line with Scripture. The doer is like a wise man. He acts on Christ's words.

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They are put into practice. It's like being taught something incorrectly your whole life, then you hear and learn how it is properly done, and therefore you change.

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That's what happens with believers. You do now what is right, not what is wrong.

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The mere hearer is like the fool who doesn't act on these words. He learns something. He's done something wrong, but chooses to remain in a state of ignorance and inactivity.

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He hears the truth, but he remains in his ignorance and inactivity. You ever told a child something that they need to do, and they go, no, no, no,

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I didn't hear it. I didn't hear it. That's kind of what the hearer has to do, the mere hearer.

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In fact, whatever he does do, it is futile. He can build a house, all he wants, but if he builds the house on sand after learning not to, it will all come crashing down.

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James moves on from the doer and says not to be a manen akrotai, an only hearer, an alone hearer, merely a hearer, and that's the thing

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I want to make clear. Just because the focus is on the doing aspect doesn't mean the hearing of the

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Word of God is unnecessary. I'm sure you gather that already, right? James is not trying to say we're at odds with hearing the

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Word of God or reading the Word of God. He's saying it's when it's alone, manen, when it's hearing or reading only, and there's no doing accompanied with it.

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Hearing or reading the Word of God and doing nothing with that knowledge of God's desires and commands is the danger we're talking about.

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You know what's interesting regarding the word hear, the root word is akuo, which is the same root for periko.

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You say, why is this significant? What are you even saying? Because periko is the word in the

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New Testament for disobedience. So hear and disobedience have the same root.

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So to hear and do nothing is straight up disobedience. To hear and do nothing is disobedience.

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When we read God's Word, we are confronted with commands, and they are living and active commands, because God's Word is living and active.

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They demand a response. To walk away from the Word and not to do what's in that Word is disobedience to the

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Lord. Think about this too, because of God's all -powerful, all -knowing, and divine and eternal nature, to not do what he tells us to do is actually an attack on his nature.

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It's an attack on his authority. When we disobey, when someone is disobeying

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God, it's saying that he's not divine, not eternal, not all -powerful.

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It's an act of rebellion with the unregenerate sinner. The very idea of doing because God has planted his

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Word in you is unique to Christianity. You say, well, I know a lot of religions where they say you have to do stuff to be holy or be saved.

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I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the real Word of God implanted in someone and called to action because of that Word.

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That is unique to Christianity. And it's opposed to other religions that say to gain more holiness, to gain more spirituality, you have to be inactive.

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You have to just be idle. So there's some religions like that. The less you do, the less you're involved in the world and all those things, the more still you are.

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Maybe you're mute. Maybe you take a vow of silence. You take whatever vows it may be.

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And the less they do, the more they think they are holy. One must meditate or practice general inactivity.

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But God, in his Word, is, I've saved you. Now get to work, son.

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Get to work, daughter. I've saved you. I've allowed you to do these things. You get the privilege to participate in this life.

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The love Christ has wrought in us makes us active people to serve God and others.

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First John chapter 3 verse 18 says, little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but indeed in truth.

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Not just in word, not just in word, but indeed and in truth. It's difficult to talk about holiness and good works in the

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Christian world today, though. Many will say a call to follow

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God's commands is legalism. They will say, what you're preaching here is legalism. That's not what we're doing here today.

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I recognize the golden chain of redemption displays acts that are solely done by God alone.

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As much as he justifies the ungodly in Christ, he sanctifies those he justifies.

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He will complete what he started in you. He will do it. You could say

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God's complete work in you will result in works you get to do.

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God's complete work in you will result in works you get to do. You get to do these things.

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You get to be like your savior in this regard. God doesn't purchase for himself a bride and keeps her spotted and blemished and covered in mud.

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He doesn't desire that. He desires the opposite. But back to the verse, in many ways this could be read like a proverb.

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It could say something like, doers of the word are not deceived, but those who are only hearers of the word deceive themselves.

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One's not deceived, one deceives themselves. Self -delusion, self -deceit, deceiving or deluding here in the

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Greek is paralogism. It is made up of two parts.

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That word para means contrary to and logizimi means to reason.

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So this is someone who feeds themselves contrary reason.

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Reason that is contrary to sound reason. They deceive themselves.

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They feed themselves contrary things. A person who reads or hears the word and walks away doing nothing in response to it has to create and consume conflicting reasoning lest they be crippled under the guilt.

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In his letter to Colossians, Paul is concerned about the church being deluded by a false brother with persuasive speech.

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He is concerned, don't be persuaded by this false brother. That's warranted.

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But James isn't so much concerned with someone else deceiving them, but they themselves falling under their own spell that they could be merely hearers of the word and not doers of it.

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Don't deceive yourself. This is on a whole other level. But what does it mean to deceive?

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There's some examples here in scripture. In Genesis 3 .13, Eve told

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God the serpent deceived her to eat the fruit she was not to eat. So we see in one way to deceive someone is to tempt one to disobey

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God's commands. That's one way to deceive. Genesis 29 .25,

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Laban deceived Jacob by giving him Leah as his wife and not

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Rachel as he promised. Okay, making him work longer for her in the process.

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So deceiving someone here is taking advantage of another person unrighteously.

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Leviticus 6 .2 says when a man steals from another person, he may do it out of deceiving him.

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He does it by deceiving him. So deceiving someone can be robbing someone who is unsuspecting.

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Deuteronomy 11 .16, do not be deceived and turn away to follow other gods. So deceiving or deceiving yourself is making someone worship a false god.

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A couple more. 1 Samuel 28 .12, Saul deceived the medium, the witch at Endor.

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Which I was like, is that from Lord of the Rings? No, the witch of Endor is in the Bible. The medium at Endor.

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And he lied to her not revealing who he was. And when she found out, she said, why did you deceive me?

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So we see here that deceiving someone can be lying to them or withholding the truth.

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Galatians 6 .7, Paul warns that church to not be deceived and understand a man reaps what he sows.

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So deceiving yourself can be believing something contrary to God's word.

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So those are just some of the various ways deceiving can manifest. The mere hearer is lumped in with these examples.

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But James goes on to describe this person further in verses 23 and 24.

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Let's read both of those together. It says, 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.

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So the hearer, not doer man, looks at his natural face in the mirror.

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Mirrors have been made out of glass for a while now. But in the first century, mirrors would have been forged out of a thin piece of metal.

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They would have taken that thin piece of metal that they, you know, hammered very thin, and they would have polished it very well to be able to see their reflection.

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Those were first century mirrors. They were not the best. They were not the biggest.

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They were typically kind of small. The Romans eventually, after a couple centuries, made full -length mirrors.

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Full -length mirrors. They weren't the best quality or afforded you the clearest look at yourself though.

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And that's why a lot of people are missing what Paul is saying in his first and second letter to the

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Corinthians. Because he talks about, he says to the Corinthians, right now this life is like looking in a mirror dimly, but when the perfect comes, it'll be as face -to -face.

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Right? He says right now, you know, we see things as if in a mirror dimly, and then once Christ has returned, once we are with Christ, we will see perfectly.

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Or he says, beholding God's glory as if in a mirror, one day to be glorified and to see his glory clearly.

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That's 2 Corinthians 3 .18. It was hard to see clearly in those ancient mirrors, but James paints a different picture for us here.

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This man sees his natural self in full clarity. He sees himself.

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The Word of God has breached the creaturely world in the form of his

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Scripture and cannot help but reveal the true nature of that world. The Scripture exposes this world for what it is.

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In other words, the words of heaven reveal to the hearer the reality and depravity of fallen creation.

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And that means seeing oneself for who they really are in that mirror.

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He sees himself for who he is. Think about it. We look at mirrors daily, and it's not a once -a -day thing.

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Typically, you wake up in the morning, you're getting ready, you're looking at yourself, you're brushing them chompers, you know, you're combing your hair, you're getting ready, all those things.

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Whenever you make a trip to the restroom, you're making sure that you look okay. When you go to a bathroom that doesn't have a mirror, you're kind of disappointed, right?

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Just be honest. They're everywhere. You might even keep one by your front door so you could check yourself before you leave for the day.

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People even walk by a building with highly reflective windows, and they're kind of like, all right,

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I'm still okay, I'm still okay. You know, we have this infatuation with mirrors, with seeing ourselves.

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Gyms are full of them. You see those guys, right? Of course, Andrew. Why all these glances?

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Why all these glances? Did we forget what we look like? Did you forget what you look like? No, that's not the case.

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You see, what's going on here in the text is, the individual who looks into the mirror to see their own image and quickly forgets is like a person who hears the

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Word of God proclaimed, but fails to respond to it. That's the meaning of this, okay? That's the meaning.

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They hear the Word, and they fail to respond to it. A person sees their reflection in the mirror, swiftly adjusts the external appearance, then walks away.

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That's what we see. For once he has looked at himself and gone away, he has completely forgotten what type of person he is.

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They hear the gospel preached. They make minor adjustments and go on their way. No real change or doing or commitment to action has been forged in them.

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The Word of God doesn't allow for subtle adjustments, my friends. It doesn't allow for subtle changes.

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It's all or nothing. God demands all of yourself. If you are

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His, if He has purchased you, He has all of you, not some of you. He wants your full allegiance, your full loyalty, your full submission.

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He wants everything. He purchased us with the blood of His Son and will not let Christ's bride come to Him blemished and soiled.

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It says, for once he looked at himself and gone away, he at once, he immediately forgets.

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He immediately has no memory of what sort of person he was or is.

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And the root word here is a me, his be, his being, his am, his is.

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He doesn't remember anymore what his being should be. A person can hear the

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Word preached. A sermon can greatly convict them, but they can walk away and a week later they don't remember a single word from that sermon.

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Conviction isn't enough. You need to confess to God and produce conformity to His Word.

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Right? We all say that. We can have a feeling. I've been to sermons where I have that convicting feeling.

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You know what? It can be this feeling of guilt, but the Bible says that there is a righteous guilt and it leads to repentance.

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If your feeling of conviction doesn't lead you to confession and conformity to God's Word, then it may not be true conviction.

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It may be an ouch. That hurts to hear that. That's not me. The Bible doesn't describe me there.

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That's not what I am. Ouch. That hurts. That's helpful. Well, it's not helpful if you don't leave here or leave

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God's Word and do what it says. That's what true conviction leads to.

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Godly repentance, the Word of God says. So you were convicted on Sunday.

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What did you do on Monday? What about the next week and the next?

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The mere hearer is never exacting change in his life. This type of man has no goals.

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He has no motivation in life to serve God. He ponders his existence in the mirror, decides who he thinks he is, but then forgets what he even decided.

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He has no purpose. I suppose the forgetting aspect is related to the self -deceiving.

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You must forget to deceive yourself. But Christianity, my friends, is all about remembering.

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It's all about remembering. We are to remember what Christ did when we take his supper today.

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We are to remember what God has done when we exposit his Word today. You are to remember what God has done for you every day.

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We are a people who are called to remember, not to have spiritual dementia.

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You are to remember all that God has done. And it helps you.

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Truly, remembering helps you. God doesn't call you to forget, but to remember him and his statutes and accomplishments.

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In the Exodus, Moses said to the people, remember this day in which you went out from Egypt, from the house of slavery, for by a powerful hand the

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Lord brought you out of this place. He says, remember this. Don't forget this. One day you're going to be tempted to turn to idols, so remember what the

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Lord Yahweh, our God, has done. Don't forget. In Deuteronomy, God tells the people, watch yourselves, that you do not forget the

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Lord. He says, I am the one who delivered you. In Malachi, God says to his people, remember my law, even my statutes and all the ordinances

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I commanded. Remember what I've spoken. Then there's all the moments of these memorial stones in the

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Bible. You might have read through some of them. Jacob set up a stone in Bethel to remember the vision he had when

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God promised him innumerable descendants. He put a stone there at Bethel to remember.

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When Joshua and the Israelites miraculously crossed the Jordan River, they set up 12 memorial stones so that when their children ask what the stones are, they will all remember what

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God had done for them there. And they will tell them. You are to remember and share it.

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Remember and tell. When the Philistines were about to attack Israel, the

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Israelites were desperately afraid, it said. I mean, they were horrified. The Philistine army was approaching them, and they were not ready for it.

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But Samuel, the prophet, beseeched the Lord, and he performed a sacrifice right there to God and offered it to him.

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And as the Philistines were charging forward, they were about to descend upon Israel.

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And what did God do? God made this huge, the most loudest thundering sound from the heavens anyone had ever heard.

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It confused them, it scared them, and it routed the Philistines' army. And they just went crazy.

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And so seeing that and seeing what God had done, the Israelite army then descended upon the Philistines and vanquished their foes.

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And that day when they defeated them, it says Samuel took a stone and set it between Mizpah and Shen and called it

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Ebenezer. And I have to say it that way because Pastor James White said, guys, it's not

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Ebenezer. It's not Ebenezer. It's Ebenezer. The stone of help.

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That's what it means, the stone of help. They wanted to remember the help the Lord had given them then. After Jesus gives a long exhortation to his disciples, he says, but these things

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I have spoken to you so that when the hour comes, you will remember all that I spoke to you.

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You are to remember. You are to set up stones. You are to read the word, to keep remembering.

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It's like, come thou found, prone to wander, Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love.

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We are prone to forget. Every day you need a reminder. God's got you. God holds you.

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God saved you. God changed you. And God will bring you into everlasting life.

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We have to remember every day, God help me to remember the reality that I am in Christ, that I am saved.

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We are a forgetful people. Paul exhorts the Ephesian elders to remember the words of the

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Lord Jesus. Peter tells the Christians in his letter that he wants to stir them up by way of reminder.

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He is eager to remind them of what Christ has done. And you could go on and on.

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The mere hearer forgets, but we are called to remember. Now on to our final verse, verse 25.

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It reads, 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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I'm sure you might even be seeing the structure here of this

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Scripture passage. Basically, verse 22 set it up.

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There's a mere hearer and there's a doer. That was verse 22. Verse 23 and 24 gave us the description of the mere hearer.

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And now finally, verse 25 gives us the description of the doer and the exhortation to be such as that.

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So the previous verses showed us folly that we may learn from verse 25 to see the truth.

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I said the hearer looks at himself in the mirror. He looks at himself.

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Think about it. The mere hearer looks to himself, but the doer looks to the perfect law.

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How often do we make mistakes doing that? We get off track because we're looking at ourselves.

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We need to look to God's Word. Some would interpret the hearer's look to be a short one, but here where it says looks intently, that's one word in the

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Greek. Looks intently is one word. It is parakupsis. It means to stoop down and to look with intent and intensity to make sure you stoop down and you're clear.

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It's an extra level of looking. Looking intently. The person who was able to listen by their ears and changed heart now don't simply glance as if in a mirror.

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They stoop down, they look intently, bending down to see the perfect law of God. That is the difference.

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Not the quick look in the mirror and the quick adjustment. This is someone who stops. They look at the perfect law of liberty.

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They take the time to stoop down. They give it their full focus. This person stares at the law, this word.

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They come back to it. They spend time with it. Not for the quick adjustment or fleeting look, but they obediently put into practice what they hear and read.

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There's a big difference between the dad who as he's walking past his son without a pause in his steps keeps walking because he's busy and he's got a thousand things on his mind and his son says, dad look at this picture

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I just made and that dad doesn't even skip a step. He keeps walking and he says that looks good buddy.

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That looks good and he keeps going. He just gives a quick glance. He doesn't give him any genuine praise.

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He gives a half -hearted acknowledgement compared to the dad who hears the request of his son and directs his full attention and focus to his son.

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Dad come look at this picture I made. I'm really busy, but you know what? He stoops down.

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He parakoops us. He stoops down. He takes a look. He grabs the picture. He looks at the detail.

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He sees the color. He sees all the lines and he gives his son genuine praise and affection and admiration.

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Wow this is good son. That son goes, wow my dad spends time with me. He'll stop and take a second for me.

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So this is what we're talking about. That's the kind of looking and attention we are to have peering at the perfect law.

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The doer doesn't look to himself like the mirror here, but he looks to God's word. James calls it the perfect law.

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The perfect law. And growing up as a Jewish boy, he would have known the psalms very well.

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No doubt James could probably recite full psalms to people. When he says perfect, he may be referring to Psalm 19.

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Very common well -known psalm. Says the law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul.

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The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The precepts of the

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Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes.

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That's possible what he was thinking about when he says the perfect law.

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But it's also possible the fact that the law is rightly an expression of God's perfect and holy character.

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So the law is perfect because it represents a perfect God and his character.

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That could be it. But one commentator states, this is not perfect in a relative sense, but absolute sense.

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Meaning culture and men change, but God and his law are absolute.

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They don't change. They don't change. God's law is binding on all people everywhere for all time.

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But there may be even another reason that I possibly think when he means perfect. He could mean all these things.

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He could mean several of these things. But he could mean this when he says the perfect law of liberty.

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That before Christ, the word and the word law and the word liberty could seem at odds.

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Yet that before Christ, the word law and the word liberty or freedom could seem like an oxymoron.

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Law of liberty, something I have to obey, and then freedom here. Those don't seem to go together.

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But now in Christ, it is a law of liberty. It is a law of liberty.

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Because there is an aspect of this concerning the law that is no longer just law alone.

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It's not just law by itself. There's liberty with it now. James knows what his half -brother, now

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Lord, accomplished. The law is perfect or complete because of Christ, and that makes it a law of liberty.

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The law once showed us our true colors. It showed us to be slaves to sin.

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But now we have liberty. We are free in Christ. He says, if the

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Son sets you free, you are free indeed. That's what Christ says.

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You are free. You have liberty. Without the pressure of living out the law to earn salvation, because Christ earned it for us.

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The law is now a law of liberty because Christ accomplished it. There's freedom with it now.

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Do it freely, knowing your performance doesn't change one bit of your standing before God if you are in Christ.

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You don't have to, oh my gosh, did I do enough today? Did I do enough good works today?

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Am I saved today? No, your Christ is stronger than that. His atonement is more efficacious than that.

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It's more powerful than that. If He saved you, if He's done the work, then He's done the work.

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Now we get the freedom to obey. I also believe

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James was trying to mention law more in a general sense. We've gone over this before, pointing ultimately to all of Scripture.

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During my study though, I thought of the most wonderful picture. Think about God delivering

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His law on Mount Sinai right after delivering the

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Israelites from Egyptian slavery, saving them by instructing them to take lamb's blood and put it on their doorposts, saving them from death, right?

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So you have that moment. Now God gives us His Word, the Logos, which is

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Christ's title, who is the one who fulfills the law. He is given, except not on Mount Sinai, on Mount Zion, Mount Moriah, you have the new law, the new

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Word that is Christ in the flesh, and we are delivered from slavery as well.

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We're delivered from slavery and bondage to sin. And then how are we saved?

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The blood of a lamb was given for us too. The blood of a lamb was given for us who is Jesus Christ.

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Jesus Christ is that perfect lamb. We must peer into and glare intently at this law and remember it always.

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That's what the verse says. The doer doesn't forget God's Word. He remembers it and abides by it.

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He practices what it prescribes. The Greek word here for abides by is peraminas, which is continues in, stays with, perseveres, doesn't stop, continues.

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The doer looks at God's Word, hears it, reads it, continues with its teachings, and works and perseveres.

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Affectual doer is literally doer of work. He is a doer of work. That's an effectual doer.

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Someone may claim, I spent an hour in the Bible today. I feel so good.

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I am remembering what I read even more. And James would say, wonderful.

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You are reading and hearing God's Word. Well done. But now having read

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God's Word, did you obey the words and commands from it? That's the question the pastor

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James would ask us from Jerusalem. Here's an example.

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A man goes out of town on a business trip. He tells his oldest son, who is at the age about to depart on his own as a man, that he will need him to accomplish some things while he is gone.

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The father needs his oldest son to accomplish some things while he is gone. He approaches him, and he says, on the trip,

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I will send you some to -do letters, and when you receive them, you are to do what the letters say, son.

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And the son goes, okay, dad. So the businessman goes off. He's away for a few weeks, and he arrives back home to find none of the things he asked to be worked on completed.

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In fact, it looks to be in a worse state than it was before. He finds his oldest son, and he sternly questions him, son, what happened here?

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Did you not get my letters? And his son replies, yes, father, we got your letters.

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Well, then what happened? Why didn't you do what was in the letters? And the son looks at him in almost an innocent way, and he said, well, on Sundays, one of us would read your letters and teach them to the rest of the family.

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On Wednesdays, we would gather as a family into smaller groups, and we would read and study your letters.

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And even some of us would put some of your letters to memorization, dad. We know your letters really well.

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Washed over in complete confusion and shock, the father says, I sent you my word so that you would do what

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I asked you of them in them, and not just read them. I asked you to do something in them.

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Beloved God sent you his word and his letters to do them. They aren't just theory to be studied.

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They aren't just ancient documents to be analyzed. These words are living and active and have power, and they demand a response every time you look at them with your eyeballs.

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They are the all -commanding, soul and spirit -splitting, living words of God.

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And the man and woman in Christ who rests under his finished work will be blessed in their own work.

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That's what it says. This man will be blessed in what he does. Blessed now in obedience, but also in the future promises of resurrection and glorification due to Christ's obedience.

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And honestly, obedience gives way to the greatest enjoyment and blessing in this life.

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I've said this before, when we go out evangelizing, when we go out witnessing, and you know, a lot of you other men do it as well.

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When you go and you head home, you know, you've kind of been at war, you've been to battle, but don't you feel good?

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Don't you feel like, oh, I obeyed my Lord. I gave the word of God. Some of you do it at your work. Some of you do it with family.

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When you give the word of God, you just feel this sense of nothing that you did. It's just an extreme humble moment where you're so glad that God allowed you to be obedient in giving that word, that feeling you get.

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Great enjoyment, great blessing. I've used this father and son illustration twice now in this sermon, but I'll use it again.

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Because I remember as a young boy, if my dad asked me to do something, or if I did something without his request to bless him, for instance,

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I don't know why, I really like to reorganize stuff. So my dad would be gone, and I'd surprise him by organizing the garage, and my dad would come home, and it wasn't even really like his, oh,

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Wade, thank you so much for doing that. You cleaned up the garage real well. It was actually, it was in putting it all together and stepping back and being pleased in obedience, being pleased in what

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I did for my dad. And that's often what we get. That's often the way we are blessed with the doing.

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Obeying God brings peace. Obeying God brings joy.

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Obeying God defeats the wiles of the flesh. Luke chapter 11, verse 28,

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Christ says, on the contrary, blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it.

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Blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it. Jesus says again in John 13, 17, you are blessed if you do the righteous things you know to do.

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And Christ speaks a blessing not just to his audience then, but to all people everywhere. Blessed are those who hear the words of God and do them.

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I hope you can see the pattern by now. Zoe, if you would put up this next slide, I think this will help you visualize what we just studied.

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Take a look at that. So on one side, you have the mere hearer. On the right side, you have the doer.

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So the mere hearer looks at himself, he looks at his face, he looks at his existence, but the doer looks at the perfect law of liberty, the word.

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The mere hearer goes away, he doesn't remain. The doer abides, remains, perseveres.

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The mere hearer forgets and is inactive after that, but the doer remembers and works and acts.

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Finally, the mere hearer is deceived while the doer is blessed. That really lays out the structure of what

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James is talking about here. Being a mere hearer and not a doer is being a hypocrite.

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It's a pretender. It's acting like you care about God's commands, but the care comes with demonstrating you doing what it says.

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We all know the friend or family member who calls himself a Christian, and it causes us to pause and take a look.

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Oh, yeah, that's right. You call yourself a Christian, right? And we take a look.

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What do we do? Do we analyze their profession? Wow, he said that he's a

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Christian pretty well. Do we analyze what they say, how they say it about their profession of faith, their words?

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What do we do? We look at their life. You know people right now. You're thinking of someone right now.

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You're thinking about them, and you're thinking about how they call themselves a Christian, and you've seen their life, and it kind of doesn't add up to you, right?

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That happens to a lot of us. We make no final judgment.

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That alone is left for God in that person, but we look through the lens and filter of God's standard and word, and we observe.

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We observe, and we see often that they aren't truly a believer. Jesus even tells us, you will know them by their fruits.

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You will know them by their fruits. We observe their fruit or lack thereof. We make no judgments on their eternal destination.

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That's God alone, but we can see Jesus gave us indicators. We know a lot of people like that in our life.

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Many we see with no fruit of saving faith, and I wish it weren't as common as I'm used to.

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There's a lot of people in my family and friends I've known who need Christ. The warning is not to delude ourselves in thinking we have fully obeyed

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God's will as a believer in just hearing his word. Don't be deceived. Just hearing it and not doing it.

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We've learned here that hearing is just one step in the obedience process. You ask, what's the purpose of all this doing?

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The Swiss theologian Heinrich Bollinger gives us the purpose of good works when he says that good works are for the glory of God, number one.

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Good works are to glorify God. He says, number two, good works are to adorn our calling, adorn our calling.

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Our good works are to show gratitude to God, and our good works are for the profit of our neighbors, getting the gospel out, being a good neighbor, loving your neighbors yourself.

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Our doing here is preparing for doing in eternity. You hear that? Our doing here is in preparation for our doing in eternity.

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Praise God for the day when we, when our doing will be without temptation and mixing of sin, right?

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Lord, let my doing no longer be with temptation and mixing of sin. Young guys stacking up the chairs at churches thinking, yeah,

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I hope they saw that. You know, I used to do that. Lord, we we taint our good works.

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We mix it with sin. In the letter to the Corinthians, it says that one day all our works will be stacked up high, and they will be tested by fire, and wood, and chaff, and things that were mixed with sin, and things that I did for my own notoriety, my own fame.

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It says those things will burn up, and the gold, and the metal, and all that remains is what we did in the good works that God prepared beforehand, the works that Christ has wrought in us.

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And sometimes I think that'll be about this big for me. I don't know about you.

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It'll all burn up. It'll be tested by fire. It's a serious thing to consider that every time we open our

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Bibles, every time you walk into those doors back there and hear the word expositive, every time that I study and prepare to teach this word, we are all obligated to respond to it.

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And even when someone doesn't know Christ hears it, and thinks as they walk away that they are simply not responding, they hear it, they come in here, they visit, and they walk away, and they do nothing.

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They think they have no response to it, but may I suggest to you that no response is a response.

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So ask God today, my friends, if you've been deceiving yourself. Do you walk in here?

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Do you read God's word even? Do you play church, but do nothing of what it says?

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If you are a mere here today, it is likely, according to this book, that you don't know

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Christ, and Christ doesn't know you. And that is the serious reality of this passage in Scripture.

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We are to repent then. Repent and turn to Christ. The more you hear, and the less you do, the more judgment you heap onto yourself.

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The more you hear, and the less you do, the more judgment you reap upon yourself. Brethren and sisters, if you are truly in Christ, this sermon should cause you to remember who you are and, of course, correct if necessary.

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And for those who line up more with the mere here, this is your opportunity to respond in faith and repentance.

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And may God's church all exhale a breath of relief that Christ carried out the perfect deeds and the completed work on the cross for us.

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As if you did what Christ had done, so sure is his life, death, burial, and resurrection applied to you.

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So by the empowerment of the Spirit Church, let's be a doer of the word. Amen?

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Let's pray. Father, we praise you.

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Please bless the message that went out. Lord, help us to not have a fleeting moment, a quick conviction.

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Lord, help us to truly see if we have been playing church, if we've been just merely hearing this word and not doing it, deceiving ourselves.

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But Lord, for those of us who seek to be doers, who've been changed by Christ, and maybe we're in a season,

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Lord, of little to no fruit, and we've let sin come over us. Lord, cause us by your

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Spirit, Lord, to repent. Cause us, Lord, to course correct. Cause us,

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Lord, not to merely just read these words daily. We can all say we read two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine chapters,

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Lord. We could say that we did that every day. But Lord, if these words don't impact how we live, who are we?

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So Lord, help us to make correction as necessary. Help us,

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Lord, to not read them in a fleeting way, as looking in a mirror, glancing and walking away.

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Help us to stoop down and to look intently at the perfect law of liberty that Christ has afforded us.

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Lord, we thank you for this opportunity to hear your word. We praise you and pray this all in Jesus' name.