Doing the Word

At the age of 57, Eric Weyenmaier is a phenomenal American athlete. Have you heard of him?

Well, he's an adventurer. He's also a motivational teacher who loves to skydive,

snow ski, kayak rapids, and climb mountains.

Mountain climbing is actually his specialty, however.

As a matter of fact, he was one of the youngest ones, youngest people,

to climb all of the seven summits of the world, which are the seven highest

mountains on each of the seven continents.

In 1995, he scaled Mount McKinley, now known as Denali, meaning the high one.

In 1996, he climbed El Capitan.

In 1998, it was Mount Kilimanjaro. In 1999, he climbed Argentina's Akakaga.

On May 25, 2001, he reached the summit of Mount Everest, a peak that 90% of

those who begin to climb never finish.

In fact, hundreds have died trying.

By 2008, he had successfully climbed all of the seven summits,

including something pyramid in West Papua New Guinea, as well as many other

of the world's tallest peaks.

Then to add to those many Adventures in September of 2014, at the age of 46.

Eric combined with Navy veteran Lonnie Bedwell to kayak the entire 277 miles

of the Grand Canyon, considered one of the most formidable whitewater rivers in the world.

And his kayak partner, Lonnie Bedwell, was blind.

Oh, by the way, Eric is also blind.

Eric became blind at the age of 13 from a degenerative eye disease.

Eric has accomplished all of these major feats of athleticism without the benefit of his eyesight.

Now, you have to ask yourself, how is that possible? How can a guy who can't

see climb the highest peaks in the world?

If you ask him, he'll tell you. He has learned to listen well.

He listens as a bell tied to the back of the climber in front of him shows him

which direction to climb.

He listens to his climbing partners who shout back to him, deathfall,

two feet to your right, so he knows which direction to climb.

He listens to the sound of his pick jabbing into the ice so he knows which direction

to climb and whether the foothold will be secure enough.

It's my understanding that he listens to the sounds of the rapids and the echo

from the canyon around him to know which direction to steer his kayak,

to know where the routes in the river are to avoid rocks.

For Eric Weinmeier, being a good listener is a matter of life and death.

So here's the thing. According to Jesus' brother James, the same is true for every one of us.

Listening to be a good listener is a matter of life and death.

Listening, I mean really hearing, is the only way any of us can follow the path

in which God is leading us.

This morning, my hope is for each of us is that we will learn the necessity

of becoming better listeners, even straining to hear what God has to say to us,

and willingly deciding to follow his direction. It's a matter of life and death.

My wife and my daughters tell me that when we would go shopping,

I would go off and do my thing,

and they could always tell where I was because I would either cough or clear

my throat or something like that, and they could tell exactly where I was in

the store when that happened.

So listening, now that's not a matter of life and death, but at least a listening

is important. So we're going to read from James 1, verses 19 through 27.

James 1:19–27

My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this. Everyone should be quick to

listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry, because human anger does not

produce the righteousness that God desires.

Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent,

and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can't be. can save you.

Do not merely listen to the word and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.

Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone

who looks at his face in the mirror and after looking at himself goes away and

immediately forgets what he looks like.

But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom and continues

in it, not forgetting what they have heard but doing it, they will be blessed in what they do.

Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on

their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless.

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this,

to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from

being polluted by the world.

Did you hear what James is saying to do? What he's saying to us?

He's challenging us to take faith in Christ seriously enough that it changes our behavior.

It transforms us.

James is addressing Christian people here, Jews who have become believers and

are scattered to all the nations,

and he's saying that we have to be willing to listen to what God says to us

and then modify our behavior to confirm that our will is the same as God's will.

In order to do that, we have to do three things. We need to hear God's Word,

we need to accept God's Word, and we need to do God's Word.

So James might have easily pointed out here that it wasn't by accident that

God has given us two ears and only one mouth.

Oftentimes when I'm at the school substitute teaching, there's so much talking

in the classroom that I know that the students can't hear themselves.

And on occasion when there's excessive amount of talking, I'll stop the class

and I'll ask them, when God made you, how many mouths did he give you?

Well, of course, the answer is one. And how many ears did God give you?

Well, by this time, most of them get it, but they would answer two.

And then I would ask, well, why do you think God gave you two ears but only one mouth?

And of course, without even having to say it, they understand that the correct

answer is that we're expected to listen twice as much as we speak.

We need to spend twice as much energy listening to others than we are speaking.

But each one of us believes that

what we have to say is so important that it's just begging to be said.

In men, while we are listening, if we are really listening, our brain is already

formulating our response before we hear everything that is said.

And usually we have to give somebody, usually our wives, a solution to their

problem that we think they are describing for us.

And really, they just want us to listen to them. It's just our nature.

With our kids, we worked very hard to help them learn not to interrupt when

someone else is speaking. And it's a slow process.

We try to teach them to be patient and wait until the person is finished speaking

before they speak in response. But it's hard to wait.

We believe that what we have to say is of absolute importance to everyone involved,

and they deserve to hear it.

Just ask us. or it should be important to them. If they don't think it is,

they should know that it's important to them.

Besides, the older we get, the more afraid we are that if we have to wait,

we'll forget what we were going to say in the first place.

Now, I was critical of men in that last point, but one time I was watching a live webinar.

What was interesting about that webinar was that the most of the respondents

that had to have something to say,

most of those that felt like they needed to speak and thought that they had

something that was of supreme importance were women.

Just saying. I find it interesting that the same behavior we try to correct

in our children is the same behavior we are guilty of ourselves.

When James wrote in verse 19, everyone should be quick to listen,

slow to speak, and slow to become angry. He wasn't talking about our willingness

to speak and not listen to others.

He was talking about something entirely different.

He was talking about our natural tendency to speak to God and not listen to him.

You can't miss that from the context.

He says, my dear brothers and sisters, take note of this.

Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry

because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires.

The only word planted in you which can save you is the word of God.

Don't miss the point. We need to be more interested in hearing what God has

to say to us than telling him what we think or what we need or what we want.

We need to listen to and hear the Word of God, whether it's written or oral.

A George Barna survey from several years ago found this.

In any given week, about 37% of the angelical American Christians will read

their Bible, but 85% say they will pray.

I think that should be proof enough that people are much more interested in

talking to God than listening to him.

It seems to me that this is an indication that we are quick to speak,

but slow to listen to what God has to say.

Question. How often do we immediately stop talking when someone leads out in prayer before a meal?

But keep on talking to our neighbor even while the Bible is being read publicly,

or the message is being preached.

It could be because we speak to God more than we listen to him,

or it could be simply that we know that we aren't going to get to eat until

the pastor's done praying the blessing on the food, so we listen while he prays

to know that as soon as he says amen, we're going to charge the plates in the name of Jesus.

And we need to make every effort to make ourselves available to God's word.

We need to hear it by reading it for ourselves, maybe even out loud,

hearing it read to us or hearing the word of God. You know how to memorize scripture the best?

If you want to memorize scripture, you read it out loud, you write it down multiple times.

When you write something down and read it out loud, you will put that into your memory.

Excuse me. Many of you have the one-year Bible, have purchased that,

and have been reading it on a daily basis, and I'm thankful that you are.

But during these types of kinds of cold weather or snow, when we're expected

to stay at home, And what better opportunity to stay at home than to read,

spend time reading, and studying God's Word?

If you have a fireplace, put some wood in the fire and sit there and read your

Bible in front of it, but don't fall asleep.

Even journal some of your questions and answers. I was remarking to one of our

guys in our discipleship group, and he brings a journal with him everywhere

he goes, and he writes down questions and answers and thoughts.

He has when he's reading scripture and praying.

And we need to be doing that.

We need to be writing down. Solomon wrote in Proverbs 18, 15,

the heart of the discerning acquires knowledge.

The ears of the wise seek knowledge out.

We need to be listening for the word of God, just like Eric Weinmeier had to

be actively listening to the bells and warnings and sounds around him to know

which direction to climb, because it was a matter of life and death.

And then James goes on to say that it's not enough just to hear the word of

God. We must move beyond simply hearing to accepting.

I found a Bible one time that had several phrases written on the inside of the front and back covers.

One of those phrases was this, this book will keep you from sin,

but sin will keep you from this book.

Isn't that interesting? This book will keep you from sin, but sin will keep

you from the book. Isn't that true?

The more we allow sin to control our lives, the less we are willing to expose

ourselves to God's word because we don't want it messing with the way we live.

On the other hand, I found, and I'm sure you have too, that the more time we

spend in the word of God, the less time we make available for sinfulness.

But it's not enough to simply spend more time in the Word of God,

we need to accept it on faith that it is the truth for daily living.

And the more time we spend in the Word of God accepting it on faith as truth,

the more we will find that the truth of God in the Word of God proves itself to us.

It is by act of our own will that we position ourselves to accept the Word of

God into our life as truth.

Verse 21 in our passage says this, "'Therefore.

Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent,

and humbly accept the word planted in you which could save you.

Did you notice that James says we must get rid of some things before God's word

can grow and flourish in our minds? If you look at Colossians and Ephesians

and Philippians and some of the others, Paul says some of the same things.

Put to death these other things. Get rid of these things so basically that Christ's life can be in you.

We have to get rid ourselves of moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent.

And I think every one of us knows deep down what moral filth is.

Paul tells us that in the third chapter of Colossians, to put to death certain

unholy attitudes and desires and to get rid of unholy actions, he said,

let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one

another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs of the Spirit.

Philippians chapter 4, verse 8 says, whatsoever things are pure,

Philippians 4:8

lovely, holy, righteous, noteworthy, think on these things.

We have to rid ourselves of the unholy to be able to hear the Holy One.

What James is saying in this passage is that from the garden of our heart,

we can only reap what is sown.

If we do not sow God's word into a heart, we'll reap weeds and godlessness.

James says, make a choice to rid your life of the filthy weed and allow God's

word to grow and prosper in your life.

If you believe that you want to be serious about this, I suggest that you find

someone you trust and to make yourself accountable to them.

Say, look, I have this problem that's destroying my relationship with God and I need to get rid of it.

Would you come alongside me and help me to keep me accountable for this that I'm dealing with.

And then next, James dives into the conclusion for his discussion by urging

us to do more than just hear God's Word and accept God's Word.

One time before our worship service began in Peoria, Illinois Church,

our sound technician called in sick right before the worship service was to begin.

So I had to get the sound system ready for the service. I asked my wife to go

up to the pulpit and speak into the microphone so I could set the volume.

When she got up there, she asked what she was supposed to say.

So I told her just to preach a sermon.

So she held up a Bible and this is what she said. This is the Bible.

It's God's word. Y'all need to read it and do it.

Of course, congregation heard it loud and clear and I had to get up and expound

on what she would just say, but never mind.

James was very insightful. He was an elder in the church of Jerusalem.

I'm sure he saw many people coming to worship who listened to the word and maybe

even accepted the truth of the word, but who left the place,

continued in their life they were living, and were unchanged by the word of God.

I think that's why he said in verse 22.

Do not merely listen to the word and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.

Do the word of God. This is the Bible. It's God's word. Y'all need to read it and do it.

The story was written in the Boston Globe on November 10, 1993.

Several years back, the annual convention of the American Heart Association met in Atlanta.

That year, 300,000 doctors, nurses, and researchers gathered to discuss,

among other things, the importance that a low-fat diet plays in keeping our hearts healthy.

Some smart-aleck researcher did some checking around and found that during the meal breaks,

those American Heart Association attendees consumed fat-filled fast foods such

as bacon cheeseburgers and fries at about the same rate as people from other conventions.

One cardiologist was asked whether or not by eating high-fat fast foods he was setting a bad example.

He quickly responded, not me, because I took off my name badge so nobody would

know I'm part of that group.

When I worked as a director of materials management at a hospital,

we found that about half of the doctors and technicians that worked in the cardiopulmonary

department dealing with patients with all sorts of lung and heart diseases from

fibrosis to emphysema were actually heavy cigarette smokers.

The doctors and technicians in the cardiopulmonary department were sucking in

that stuff worse than anybody else. Isn't it amazing how we can disconnect our

behavior from our knowledge?

We can hear something and even accept it as the truth and even say amen to it,

but never change our behavior.

It may be kind of humorous to think about heart doctors who eat high-fat diets

or respiratory therapists who smoke heavily,

but what's disheartening and incredibly damaging is when we are talking about

believers who hear and accept the Word of God as the Word of God and yet live lives of disobedience.

This is the Bible. It's God's Word.

Y'all need to read it and do it.

You see, there are a lot of Christians who mark their Bibles,

but very few who let their Bibles mark them.

Write that down. There are a lot of Christians who mark their Bibles,

but very few who let their Bibles mark them.

It's so easy to listen to a word from God and say, yeah, I hear that and I accept

that as true, and that's the end of it.

But to let God's word dwell in you and grow within you until it motivates you

to do something about changing the way you live or minister, that's the challenge.

James says that we become motivated to change by looking into the mirror of

God's word. Do you have that down yet, Peggy?

Okay. He says, anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is

like someone who looks at his face in the mirror and after looking at himself

goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.

But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gets freedom and continues

in it, not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it, they will be blessed in what they do.

Have you ever noticed that men

and women look in the mirror for different reasons and in different ways.

Men usually look in the mirror to do a quick brush up on their bedhead look

and put a little piece of toilet paper tissue on the little nicks that they've gotten from shaving,

and usually forget about that when they leave the house on the run and walk

into work with toilet paper stuck on their face.

Women look at the mirror intently. They have to make sure they fix their hair

in such a way as to cover up their bedhead.

They also go to great lengths and expense to cover up that same pillow damage

on their faces before they would dare be seen in public, let alone stepping

outside to let the dog out.

But every once in a while, there comes a time when you check yourself out in

the mirror and really see yourself.

Maybe it's the appearance of a new wrinkle, but...

Or more gray hair, or dark bags under your eyes, or that little turkey waddle under your chin.

When that happens, it can affect you profoundly.

When I got my progressive lenses or bifocals at age 42, when I went to the eye

doctor, I knew it was going to be coming, and the eye doctor diagnosed that

I needed to have bifocals.

I went into such a period of of depression.

After that, we begin to realize that life is happening to us.

And when that happens, it can affect you profoundly. You look in a mirror differently.

That reflection makes you think about who you are, what you've become,

how you've used your years on this earth, and if you've actually made the world any better for it.

It's not very common introspection, but it's what James says we should do when we read God's word.

We should look at ourselves in face of God's laws and life and say, how do we fit into this?

How do we live up to this? Now, we can simply read God's word for the exercise

of reading, and that will eventually do us some good.

But really seeking God's word and reading God's word should involve introspection,

looking within ourselves. The psalmist wrote this, Search my heart,

O God, and know if there is any wicked way in me.

When we read God's word, it's the time for God and us to consider who he is and who we are in him.

That takes more than a cursory reading. It takes inspection,

introspection, and revelation from the Spirit of God.

We need to listen to God's words as if our life depends on it because it really

does. Our life really does depend on listening to God's Word.

So many people do Bible study for knowledge only, but God's Word is a love letter

to us and a life operation manual that defines how best to get along with Him and with others.

An amazing thing happens when we look intently into the Word of God,

when we hear the Word, when we accept the Word, and when we.

Choose to do the Word, a transformation of our heart begins and our mind and

our soul and our strength begins to be transformed as well.

We are completely and beautifully changed when we come into the intimate presence

of God through his scripture.

To us, and in us. I shared with the guys on Wednesday night one of my favorite

verses, especially in my early conversion years, when I would have began to

doubt myself, is 2 Corinthians 5.17.

Whoever is in Christ, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.

Behold, the old ways are gone, and the new ways have begun.

When we look at ourselves in the light of God. When we look at ourselves in

his mirror, we begin to see who we are, and we find out that all of those old

things are gone, and we're beginning to take on the likeness of Christ.

In the book of Exodus, there's an account of when Moses was able to enter in

the presence of God. You remember this, and they see him, and to see God, and to hear God.

The Bible says that Moses' Moses' appearance, physical appearance, changed.

It tells the reader that the glory of God shone on Moses' face so intently that

the people could not look at him.

He had to cover his face so he would not blind the people that were looking

at him, because the glory of God, the Shekinah glory of God, was so much on him.

In 2 Corinthians, Paul reminds us of that occurrence and tells us that if we

hear, accept, and do the will of God, a supernatural transformation will occur in our lives.

He says this, And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory,

are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory,

which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

So when you look in the mirror of God's word, Yeah.

Is the you that you see more like the Lord than what it was two years ago or

five years ago or ten years ago?

Search your hearts. Let God stand you in front of his mirror of holiness and

reveal what he wants to change in you.

If you're really listening and accepting and do the word of God,

God will change you from the inside out.

Heavenly Father, as we heard your word and listened to your word and read your

word, We ask that your word would be more than something that we listen to and

accept, but that it would be something that we do.

In Jesus' name, amen.