Absent Obedience

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I want to invite you to take out your Bibles tonight and turn with me to James, chapter 1.
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And we are going to be looking at verses 22 to 25 tonight.
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However, before we begin looking at our verses for the evening, I do want to examine the preceding context because that is important.
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And also, I want to make an additional note to something that I said last week.
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Or actually, now it's been two weeks because we were off for Thanksgiving week.
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In the previous lesson, I addressed how the Word of God is used to bring us to salvation.
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And let's look at verses 18 to 21.
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This is the preceding context of our lesson tonight.
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Of His own will, He brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first fruits of His creatures.
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Know this, my beloved brothers.
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Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger.
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For the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.
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Therefore, put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word which is able to save your souls.
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Now, that brings us to tonight's verses, but I want to just make a point because I mentioned last time about verse 19 when it says, let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger.
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I mentioned it in a very generic context.
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I said, in generalities, we should always be quick to hear and slow to speak, because in the conversations that we have with other people, that is the way that we learn how to engage and how to have proper conversations.
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We listen, as has often been said, God gave us two ears and one mouth, so that we listen twice as much as we talk, which is often not the case for some people, but that ought to be how it is for us, that we be slow to speak and quick to hear.
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However, something I did not mention, and I felt remiss afterwards, I said I want to go back and make sure I make this clear, is that this command, while it certainly has a general rule, quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger, there is a context for this that is easy to overlook, and I don't want us to.
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The context that verses 18-21 are, is the context of how the Word of God operates in the life of the believer.
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Of His own will, He brought us forth by what? By the Word of Truth.
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God saves us through the preaching of the Word of God.
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And that is the context that verse 19 comes to us, and so we see that the Word of God is the context for when He says, now be slow to speak and quick to hear and slow to anger.
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So, if we consider the context, we realize this, what is it He is telling us to be quick to hear? Well, He is telling us to be quick to hear the Word of God.
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He is telling us that we should be attentive to the Word of God, that we should be open-eared to the Word.
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I think oftentimes we are slow to hear the Word, because we know that it will challenge us.
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We are slow to hear the Word, because we know that it is going to cause us to have to look inwardly.
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We are slow to hear the Word, because we don't really want to hear what it has to say.
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As it has often been said, sin will keep us from the Word, or the Word will keep us from sin.
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And that is true, sin will keep us from the Word.
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If we are in sin and we are doing something, we don't want to hear the Word of God.
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We don't want to read the Word of God.
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So, the Scripture is telling us to be quick to hear the Word.
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We should be attentive to it preached.
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We should be studying together.
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That is why I am thankful for you all tonight.
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The vast majority of you are the normal Wednesday night crowd.
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Not that you are really normal, but you are the Wednesday night crowd who comes on a normal schedule.
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You are above normal.
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You are my blessed Wednesday night people.
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You are my blessing, because I get to see you guys on Wednesday nights and study with you on Wednesday nights.
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You are quick to hear.
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You are making it a point to be here.
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And that is important.
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He says we should also be slow to speak.
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Now, how does that work in context of the Word? Well, I think what he is saying here is we need to be slow to speak in our response to the Word.
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We need to listen to what the Word is saying and not automatically try to find ways to justify our own actions or to give responses to what is being said.
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Now, that isn't to say that we never offer a response, because there are some people who don't handle the Word rightly.
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Some people do need to be answered back if they are maligning the Word.
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Which is why he says slow to speak, not never to speak.
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Think about it.
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If we are going to respond to someone who is teaching us the Word of God, we should know that our response is correct.
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Or we should at least be willing to hear what they have to say.
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So we are slow to speak, but quick to hear, and slow to anger.
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Now, that may seem like it is out of place, but it is not.
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Few things can stir the anger of men like the Word of God.
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The Word brings conviction, and often with that conviction, there is a desire to justify and defend ourselves.
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Trust me, I have been there.
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I have had several conversations wherein I confronted somebody with the Word of God, I confronted them with the truth, and they got angry and stormed out of the conversation.
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They got angry and threw the situation out, and I don't want to hear anymore of what you have to say.
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I am going to take my ball and go home kind of thing.
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I don't want anymore to do with this.
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Several conversations I have had over the years have been with people who get angry when they hear the Word of God.
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And we are being told here by James that we are not to allow our anger to well up.
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Now, that doesn't mean we can't have righteous indignation.
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Again, if somebody is preaching untruth, if somebody is preaching falsely against my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, yes, it can cause my righteous hackles to get a little raised.
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Right? But, that is something that should not be our immediate response.
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It should not be the quick response.
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It shouldn't be the setting that we have, is to always blow up, always quickly, always be on edge.
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Rather, we are to be slow to speak, and even slower to anger.
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So, just to be clear, while this certainly has a far-reaching application, and that is what we dealt with last time, the context of this admonition is in relation to hearing the Word.
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But, hearing the Word, and this is where we are getting to tonight, hearing the Word is not where we stop.
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If all we do is hear the Word, and it doesn't affect our lives, then it is not fulfilling its intended purpose.
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The Word is not simply meant to be heard.
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The Word is meant to be obeyed.
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And that is the subject of tonight's lesson.
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The title of tonight's lesson is Absent Obedience.
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And I have entitled it Absent Obedience, because in so much preaching today, and so much belief today among people who call themselves Christians, there is an absence of obedience.
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People know what the Word of God says.
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They can articulate what the Word of God says.
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They can even preach what the Word of God says in all the original languages, and be very good at it.
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And yet, the obedience is absent.
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Within Christianity from the beginning, there have been two widely divergent heresies.
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Well, they're widely divergent, but complementary heresies which have been a part of the church.
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Two widely divergent, but complementary heresies that have been a part of the church.
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The first one is legalism.
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We all probably are familiar with what legalism is.
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So this is on this side of the spectrum.
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If you imagine kind of a spectrum here, what would be on the other side? Liberalism.
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I put licentiousness.
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You could say, you know, something to that effect, but that's getting to the same idea.
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I would say the licentiousness.
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Let me make sure I spell this as always.
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All right, licentiousness.
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Legalism says that a rigorous adherence to the law is necessary prior to justification.
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If you want a definition of legalism, a rigorous obedience to the law is necessary prior to justification, meaning you are justified by what you do.
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That's ultimately what legalism says.
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Now, here's the thing about legalism.
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Legalism says that it's a rigorous adherence to the law, but then if you really look closely, it's certain laws.
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Every legalist only concerns themselves with the laws that matter to them.
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Women can't wear makeup, but it's okay for women to preach.
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Right? You've seen that in churches.
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I could throw a stone and hit churches where that's the rule.
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Women can't wear pants.
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They have to wear skirts, but they also can preach.
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So we're going to choose what we want, but not what the Scripture says.
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So it becomes an issue, right? Legalism has, at its very core, the idea that it's the laws we want or the laws we think are most important become the legal standard, and we jettison the ones that don't.
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It's interesting.
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Now, on the other side is licentiousness.
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That says that a virtual absence of personal righteousness is proper in justification.
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That's what licentiousness says, that an absence of personal righteousness is proper or acceptable in justification.
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Now, I didn't go to Webster's to get that definition.
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I wrote it, so some of you are looking kind of funny.
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Maybe I should explain.
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What I'm saying is a person will say this.
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I'm in Jesus.
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I'm saved.
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I can live a life of wanton rebellion to the Word of God, and yet I am still saved.
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It doesn't affect the fact that I'm saved.
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Hypergrace is one term that's been used for licentiousness.
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Antinomianism is the more older, more, I think, specific term.
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Antinomianism is the idea that the Christian can live devoid of the law of God.
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Namas means law.
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Antinomas or antinomian means to be against the law or opposed to the standard of God.
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Well, see, that's the thing.
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Yeah, yeah, I could make this look good.
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I could make it.
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We call them carnal Christians.
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We call them worldly.
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We say they're dabbling in the flesh.
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We call them all kinds of stuff.
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Nobody will just say, well, what if he just ain't saved? You know, what if he just ain't saved? Well, we don't want to go there.
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Legalism makes justification something which we accomplish.
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Licentiousness makes justification something which has no effect.
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You understand? This says we have to do it ourselves.
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That says it doesn't do anything.
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It just happens and it doesn't change you.
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The Bible teaches neither.
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The Bible doesn't teach legalism.
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It preaches against legalism.
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If there was anybody who Jesus condemned, it was the legalists, the Pharisee.
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Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites.
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But the Bible also preaches against licentiousness.
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So we have to understand.
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Yes, ma'am.
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I think, yes, and historically, the rise of the purpose and the reason behind, you realize the Pharisees and Sadducees did not exist in the Old Covenant Scripture.
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They come about after the time of the Maccabees and during actually the time of the, what we would call the intertestamental period.
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And they're given rise because of the, there's political division that's happening within Judaism.
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And the Pharisees were considered to be the supernaturalists.
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They believed in God and they believed in afterlife and they believed in miracles and they believed in angels and these things.
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And the Sadducees didn't believe in all those things.
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They were the liberals of their day.
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They didn't believe in life after death.
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They didn't believe in the supernatural.
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They didn't believe in the angels and things.
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That's why we say they're sad, you see, because they didn't believe in these things.
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So yes, among the religious people, the Pharisees certainly had a doctrinal desire for that which was right.
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But what happened was they allowed themselves to do what Jesus said.
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They allowed themselves to teach as doctrines the traditions of men.
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And when the traditions of men became the doctrine and became more important than the doctrines of scripture and they became adherents to Phariseeism rather than adherents to scripture, that's when the problem really took a foothold.
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And that's what we see today.
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How many people are more concerned as to the placement of the flags than as to how we handle communion? How many people are more concerned with the color of the carpet than to whether or not the songs we sing are doctrinally accurate? I mean, you know, we get this concern.
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And so we become legalistic again about the things that are important to us.
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And the Pharisees, they would count how many steps they would take on a Sabbath day because they couldn't take past a certain amount of steps, couldn't walk a certain distance.
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And that's when Jesus came.
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He just blew all that out of the water.
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And so yes, I think that in the beginning there was an attempt at doing what was right, but it got entrenched with these traditions and they lost their spirituality.
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One of the things we have to remember, not all of the Pharisees were evil men.
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Nicodemus came to Jesus at night and he became a Christian.
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He wanted to follow after Jesus.
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And he did in his death, followed after him.
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So yes, there were men in the Pharisees who were willing to repent of their traditions, repent of that false stuff.
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And so we do see that.
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Yes, the politics of church.
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And I know this is the Old Testament, the politics of religion.
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Look at Rome.
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Look how much money has been spent on St.
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Peter's and other places.
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People say, oh, look at how beautiful these churches are.
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It's a mausoleum.
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It's a monument to death.
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It's sad.
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And yet, you're right, power and corruption and political financing and religious, all these things are not good.
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But they would be the legalists.
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And tonight, like I said, we're going to look more at the licentiousness because that's what James is dealing with.
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In our last lesson, we discussed regeneration.
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And we remember what that means, be born again.
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And that's what he says in verse 18, of his own will, he brought us forth.
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He gave birth to us.
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He born us again.
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That's a bad use of the verb.
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He born us.
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He gave birth to us spiritually by the Word.
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And now James switches from regeneration to sanctification.
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Because once we're born again, God changes our desires.
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This is where licentiousness is failing.
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Because it's saying that justification doesn't change us.
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Or regeneration doesn't change us.
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It must change us.
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If we are who we were before coming to Christ, we have not come to Christ.
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I remember being an unconverted man.
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I was a young man, but I was unconverted.
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I could barely sit through a sermon.
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Because I didn't care.
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I just wanted the guy to finish.
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Now I listen to several hours of sermons every week.
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Because I want to learn.
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And because as a teacher, I think one of the best ways you can be a better teacher is to listen to other men who are better teachers than you.
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And learn from them.
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So I listen to hours a week where I didn't want to listen to 30 minutes.
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When I was a young man.
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Had no desire to go to church.
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I'd find every reason I could not to go to church.
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And now I get excited to be with God's people.
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Especially small groups like this.
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Where we can interact and ask questions and get to know one another.
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Have your desires changed? And I'm not saying I'm the standard by any means.
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I'm just saying I know my desires changed.
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Have your desires changed? When coming to Christ.
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The teacher of licentiousness essentially teaches that it comes with no change.
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And James teaches us that if salvation has brought no change, then we are self-deceived.
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So that's where we're going to begin tonight.
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In verse 22.
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All that was introduction.
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To get us to our verse.
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Verse 22.
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But be doers of the word.
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And not hearers only.
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Deceiving yourselves.
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Doers of the word.
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Poietai.
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Poietai is a maker.
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It's a author.
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And it's interesting of this word.
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Actually, it's where the word poet comes from.
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Poietai.
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It's where we get the word poet.
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And basically, if you think about it like this, the root and idea of the word is someone who does something.
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If you read something written, what's the necessity of that? Someone had to write it.
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Someone had to do the work of writing it before you could do the work of reading it.
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Right? And so the idea of being the doer, not just the receiver.
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You're the doer.
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And the person who receives the word of God is not writing the word with ink.
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Of course, it's already been written.
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But they are writing the word with their obedience.
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You see, you're doing what the word is saying.
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I hope I didn't lose you with that.
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I hope that wasn't confusing.
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What we're saying is the word doer here.
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We're supposed to be actors in this.
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We're supposed to be making action out of what these words say.
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We're supposed to be taking these words on the page and making them happen.
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Not just letting them stay on the page or letting them go into our brain and stay in our brain.
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Because if they go into our brain, if we are hearers only, the word mono, only, mono, it's where we get the word one.
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If the only one thing you do is hear it and you're not responding to what you hear, then you're deceiving yourselves.
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To deceive yourself.
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It's the same word used in Colossians 2.4 where the Apostle Paul says, I say this in no order that one may delude you with plausible arguments.
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And in that sense, Paul is talking about false teachers.
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I'm telling you this so that no one will delude you.
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No one will deceive you.
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But James used it in the context of you doing that to yourself.
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You know the person who can deceive you the most? You.
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There is no one who is so blind than the one who chooses not to see.
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We cover our own eyes to the reality.
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It's like when you were a child and your mother was yelling at you to do something and you'd plug your hands over your ears and you'd run away going, la, la, la, la, la, I can't hear you.
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Right? Well, that's what we do.
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We self-deceive.
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Because we read the word, we know what the word tells us to do, we know what we're supposed to do, and yet we don't do it.
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In Romans 2.13, Paul writes a very similar sentence, but with a different meaning.
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In Romans 2.13, this is what Paul says.
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For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous, but the doers of the law will be justified.
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Now you might say, well, that sounds like legalism.
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It's not.
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Because in the context, what Paul is saying is that if you want to be justified by the law, you better understand you've got to keep the whole law.
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And because you haven't kept the whole law, guess what? You're already condemned.
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If you're trying to be justified by the law, know that you didn't make it.
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You came tonight already condemned.
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That's Paul's argument.
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If you're going to be a doer of the law, you've got to do the whole law.
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But he says this, because he's talking to the Jews.
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He said, you heard the law, but you can't be justified by hearing the law.
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If you want to be justified by the law, you've got to do it.
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Exactly, because they were saying the right thing and doing the wrong thing.
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They were religious hypocrites.
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Exactly.
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And I saw the connection as I was studying between James 1.22 and Romans 2.13, because both of them used the phrase hearers only and doers of the word.
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But Paul's context is telling you you cannot be saved by the law.
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But James' context is this.
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When we are saved, we cannot simply be hearing the scripture.
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We need to be doing the scripture.
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So both of them are using just two different divergent ideas, but they're similar language here.
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Did you...
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We're going to hear the name, aren't we? Actually, I hadn't written his name.
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I figured 2.2 would be the...
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Yeah.
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And when we get to chapter 2, we're going to hear all about Luther and the issue of justification by faith alone.
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Because the thing is, James doesn't deny justification by faith alone, but he does teach us this.
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Faith will never be alone.
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Faith will never be devoid of righteous works.
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And if it is, it's not true faith.
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Faith without works is dead.
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So we see here, he's calling us to action.
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James immediately, this is in the first chapter, the very last part of the first chapter, he's calling us to action.
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Be doers of the word.
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Don't just hear what's being said, but actually act on it.
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Because if all you do is hear it and you don't do it, you're deceiving yourself if you think that you are counted among God's people.
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That's harsh, but it's true.
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Verse 23 then moves on to give an illustration which I've always thought is a really neat illustration.
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He says, For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror.
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For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forget what he was like.
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Now this is an illustration trying to help us understand the foolishness of only hearing.
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And James paints a picture for us.
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He says, Imagine you get up and you go to a mirror.
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Now in the first century, mirrors were not quite as precise as they are today.
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They were polished metal where today we have a certain chemical that we put on glass which makes them very clear and very precise.
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But still they had in that day mirrors that were able to provide a positive reflection, an accurate reflection of what was there.
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And James' point is this.
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An accurate reflection should not be ignored.
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If you look intently at yourself and you leave and you forget what you saw, that would make the looking intently at yourself purposeless.
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So let me give you a picture, a painting, draw you a painting because I've always thought this.
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Imagine you get up in the morning and maybe you're like me.
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The first thing you do is you go to the restroom, you go in the bathroom and you look at the mirror that's right over your sink.
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And if you're like me, you said oh, maybe you have a little bit of crust in your eye.
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Maybe you have a little bit of that white stuff that forms around the edge of your mouth.
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Maybe it looks like somebody stirred your hair with a blender while you were in bed.
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Things aren't as they should be.
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Now imagine you look at that intently and you think of the things that need to be changed.
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You think of the things that need to be fixed.
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And you walk out of your bathroom, you put on your shoes, you put on your clothes, you get everything ready and you leave.
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And you didn't do anything about all this.
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What's the indication? You forgot what you saw.
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Or what you saw didn't do anything to change your mind about the need to make a change.
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That's really the idea that James is providing for us here.
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If you look intently at yourself and you leave and you forget what you saw and it doesn't cause you to make a change, then why'd you look in the first place? If you weren't going to do anything about it, why'd you go look? And see, now you're even more responsible because you know your hair looks bad.
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You know you've got that white crusty stuff in your mouth.
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You know your eyes are all plugged up with gook.
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You know who you are and yet you're unwilling to do anything.
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That's a very practical illustration and that's the illustration that James is giving us.
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People spend lots of time in Bible studies in America.
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We've become experts at designing Bible studies, at designing worship events, conferences, small group studies, home group studies.
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We've become experts at creating opportunities to learn the Word.
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We have bookstores now that other countries couldn't even dream of.
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We have places to go where you can sit and read the books without buying them.
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They give you chairs to go sit and read and yet what do we do? We put it right back on the shelf and we walk away unchanged.
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We've checked the Bible.
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I read my Bible today.
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I'm not going to do what it says.
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I've read the devotions that I was supposed to read today or I've read that new book by John MacArthur.
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I've read that new book by R.C.
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Sproul or I've read that new...
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I've heard that sermon by Paul Washer or I've listened to that message by James White and man it was good.
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He used Greek like he knew it from birth.
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But nothing has changed.
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That's sad but that is American Evangelicalism.
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It's where we are.
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We are absent of obedience.
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We've got everything else.
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We've got knowledge but no change.
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So verse 25 he tells us but the one who looks at 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.
31:06
Now in the Greek construction of this sentence the ESV breaks up what doesn't necessarily have to be broken up and if you have an ESV or I'm sorry if you have an NASB you can actually look at the sheet that I gave you and I give you different translations along with the Greek.
31:27
Did you get one brother when you came in? Is there an extra one that we can have? I provide various translations.