Keep Looking Intently

Well, good morning.

It's good to be back.

Good to be back home.

Actually, we were also home when we were in Indiana last week.

The arrangement is that once a quarter we go back to where we have a home there.

A number of practical things to attend to.

A couple of days of that week we considered vacation.

Came back not completely refreshed, but ready to begin again.

It's good to be with you.

It's good to be home here.

Some wise person once told me that home is where my wife is.

So I'm home.

Today is Sunday, the 31st of January.

I'm not quite sure how that worked already.

The 31st of January 2016.

And God really is still on the throne.

We don't always feel that.

We don't always see that.

But it's always true because that is how God has revealed Himself in the scriptures.

And though we don't always feel that, and we don't always experience that at an emotional level, it's for that reason that we keep affirming what is true even when we don't feel it or experience it.

Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things unseen.

And we don't always see it.

And when that verse says things hoped for, it doesn't mean I hope so.

It means it just hasn't happened in its fullness yet.

Things that are true and that will be experienced that aren't yet here, we have faith in.

Truths that are true, but we don't yet see in its fullness that we have faith in.

And so, with confidence, wherever you are today in your experience, whatever this last week was like, whatever the week ahead is like, we affirm because we believe what God has said that He is good, He is sovereign, He is patient, He is kind, He is with us, He is involved with us, and He desires our absolute best.

And you better believe, I'm going to keep repeating that day in and day out, week in and week out, because I need it.

And so do you.

So that's what we do here.

I'd like to have you turn to the passage that uh Mandy read for us.

All right, I don't think we're working up here.

Can we get the first get that up in running?

There we go.

Thanks so much, Horace.

Um we have been uh slowly working our way through the book of James.

We're working our way slowly through it because James, like the book of Proverbs, contains short, pithy statements, sometimes two or three verses alone, which in a sense are complete in themselves, and we must not hurry through them.

We simply must not hurry through them lest we listen without hearing and see without really paying attention.

So we simply take each section as it comes.

He began, and actually the theme of the book of James is a very practical one.

It's talking about a faith that works.

A faith that doesn't work is not true faith.

True faith makes a difference in our lives.

It's manifested in the circumstances, the contours, the details, the ebb and flow of our lives.

And if our faith doesn't work out there, then it's not working.

James began by talking, and James has a way of saying things that I don't know, they're a little hard to hear.

Like, all right, when your world falls apart, is God there or is he not?

Our faith manifests itself at its highest, not on our better days, but on our worst days.

It manifests itself when things go well on the mountaintops, when God is near and life is sweet.

But there's something about our faith that finds its fullest expression on the days of darkness, when our world has fallen apart, God seems far away, and life really stinks.

And that's where James begins.

He doesn't stay there, he moves us on, and that was the first 18 verses or so.

In various ways, that theme of when life goes south, where's your faith?

Where's God?

He has not changed.

He is trustworthy and good.

But now, uh beginning with verse 19, which we looked at uh a couple of weeks ago, um, he shifts the focus away from trials and tribulations.

Don't worry, he'll come back to it.

As will trials and tribulations.

But now he starts to lean in a little bit.

He starts to press us with the question of what are we doing?

What are we doing with what God says?

So in verses 19 through 21, the focus was, are you listening?

Are you listening with what God says, to what God says?

Are you really paying any attention?

And to listen, we have to close our mouths.

And so he had that powerful, wonderful statement of the theme of our life ought to be quick, slow, slow, quick to listen, slow to speak, and very slow to get angry, where our lives tend to be slow, quick, quick.

He wants our lives to be quick, slow, slow.

That was last time.

He shifts now from talking about our sense of our sense of hearing.

In the passage we're looking at, there is a shift.

He touches on that, but he moves to the sense of sight.

And as he said in the last section, um, are you listening and are you listening well?

Um now the focus in these three or four verses, he says, Are you looking?

Are you really looking?

Are you peering intently and continually in God's word, the word of God which has been implanted within you, what God is doing in your life, what God has revealed in the Word?

Are you really, really looking?

And the reality is, there we go.

If we're not careful, we may find ourselves hearing without really listening.

Ever happened to you?

I know it's happened to your kids.

That's what you complain about.

Well, we be them.

It's possible to find ourselves hearing without really listening, and the focus now is looking, looking into what God has said without really seeing it.

So that's that's the thought that we we want to meditate on uh this morning from this passage.

We noted last time that uh the book of James is very similar to the book of Proverbs.

I made reference to that, I think, already.

It's very clear that you could almost close your eyes and find yourself in the book of Proverbs when you're reading James.

Uh short, pointed, sometimes disturbing observations of how life really works and how life with God really works.

Um The other thing we find about the book of James is that a lot of what he says sounds a lot like what his elder half-brother Jesus said.

So in our section, verse 22, we hear James saying, But prove yourself doers of the word, not merely hearers who delude themselves.

For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at a natural face in a mirror, and he looks at himself and goes away, and at once forgets what he is like.

But the one who looks intently into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets, but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.

Now, if we didn't know that this was in the book of James and not one of the Gospels, we could picture Christ speaking these words.

In fact, he may have.

Jesus said much more than what is recorded in the Gospels.

He said and did much more.

That's a selective account.

There was oral tradition.

Most learning in the ancient world was done not out of books, but it was done by hearing, and Jesus spoke, and Jesus repeated himself a great deal.

And not everything that Jesus said is recorded in the Gospels, but it's quite possible that this section, James, heard his elder half-brother say, and then repeats it for us.

I have no proof of that.

It just smells like Jesus.

It looks like Jesus, it feels like Jesus.

In fact, if we compare it to some of the things that Jesus said, there's a great similarity.

Luke 6, 46, why do you call me Lord, Lord, and not do what I say?

John 15, 4, you are my friends if you do what I command you.

And Matthew 7 talks about the tree that bears fruit, and you can tell the nature of the root by the fruit that is born.

Figs don't grow on thistles, they grow on fig branches.

And the nature of the fruit reveals the reality of the roots, and that's exactly what we will see James saying in this passage.

John 13, 17.

If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.

Luke 11, 28, blessed are those who hear the word of God and do it.

The point both of those statements of Jesus and of this section of the book of James is that true living faith involves much more than simply hearing or simply seeing.

That hearing and that seeing inherently, necessarily leads to action, to a response, to a life built upon the reality of what God said.

And we can run the risk, you know it as well as I do, of hearing the word of God without really listening.

I have the same problem.

And and and looking into the word to see what it says about me without really seeing.

So that's the theme we're we're looking at this morning.

Let's just work our way through it.

Verse 22 says, but prove yourself doers of the word and not merely hearers who delude themselves.

Now, if you tried to follow along in your ESV, which many people have, you'll notice that I was not reading it exactly as it's written in the ESV.

If you by any chance are carrying a New American Standard Bible, you probably would have recognized, oh, finally he's reading from my Bible.

Anyone out there?

Yeah, a couple.

All right.

Now, I do that not to throw you off.

But I'm uh as I prepare these messages, I work with the original text, the original language, and most of the times the ESV does a wonderful job.

But sometimes none of the translations are perfect.

Together they're everything that we need, but I just am stubborn enough in looking at this verse to say what the ESV gives us is true, but there's a nuance missing that is not insignificant.

So bear with me, and I'll try to make that clear.

And it's particularly the idea of prove yourself doers of the word and not merely hearers who delude themselves.

What he uses here is a special verb to be.

Now, the verb to be in different languages has multiple different words for the same thing.

And Greek is that way.

The normal verb to be is the normal word.

This one occurs, but it's a little more rare, and it has many different nuances, some of which are hard to bring over into our language where the verb to be just means to be.

But there's a nuance here that comes a bit to the fore with the idea of prove yourself to be.

Without going any further into detail, there's an emphasis that we might translate to continually be doers of the word, or to keep on striving to be or become doers of the word, or very simply to prove yourself doers of the word, to demonstrate in outward ways that you are responding to the word, not merely hearing and deluding ourselves.

If we don't do what Jesus said and we think we have got it down pat, we're delusional.

Delusional.

And that's some of what James wants to talk about.

So what I would suggest is there is a difference between just doing something and being the kind of person who naturally does that.

Let me give an illustration that hopefully will be helpful.

Uh last week we were back in Indiana, and I found myself needing to do some projects around our house.

It's been sitting empty.

We walk in that evening.

Jane says, What's that noise?

And that noise was the alarm on our backup sump pump that was telling us you need to pay attention to me.

So not being much of a plumber and realizing in that sump are two regular pumps plus a backup, plus the input for the radon remediation system, and it's all covered with a piece of steel that I can't possibly lift off or get into.

It didn't take me long to say, I'm going to call a plumber.

And$1,100 later we were all set.

But at least I had the sense to know I'm not a plumber.

However, there was another project that I got myself into.

Um I kind of like simple wiring.

I've done a little bit of that in the past.

And there was a wiring project in our house that I took on uh foolishly.

Um we had a uh in our entryway, there's a ceiling light, and that's a three-way switch.

You can you can turn it on and off over here, or you can turn it on and off over there.

No big deal.

It's a little bit more complex than uh just a normal single pole or double pole switch, whatever you call that, uh, which I can wire with no problem.

A three-way switch is a little bit more complicated, but hey, I can do that.

So I started doing it, and then I suddenly said, maybe I ought to look online to see how to do this.

And so I, in the course of doing it, I think I earned an amateur electrician certificate or something.

It took me 16 hours to change that switch.

Now, not only was it a three-way switch, which is slightly more uh complicated, but it was installed properly, but in an abnormal way.

If some of you may be electricians, and there are various ways you can wire a three-way switch.

And all of the website, most of the websites that I found were showing me that it was wired this way, but it didn't match up with what I saw.

So it was taking me more time because I'm not an electrician.

I can do some electrical things, but I'm not an electrician.

And to make it more complicated, uh I decided I needed to replace those switches with smart switches.

We've got our home automated so I can open and close the garage door in Indiana while I'm here in North Dakota.

I can see if somebody's come into the house, I can turn on and off lights, I can lock and close in uh entry doors.

And I decided this light over the entry hall, I needed to be able to control.

No, I don't have a control problem whatsoever, of course.

So I was installed uh Jane, watch it.

Uh so I was installing smart switches.

Dumb Walt was installing smart switches.

And at one point we had the the switch over here was in a uh a four-gang switch box.

I had the plate off, I had all of the switches out, they were sticking out every which way, looked like spaghetti with somebody having thrown up on it over here, and then on this switch that was a double gang box, and that was wide open, and I had taken everything out and I had labeled, okay, this is the line, this is the common, everything I was supposed to do.

And you know, it didn't work.

I almost called an electrician.

But no, I'm not stubborn, right?

About 12 hours into it, I almost called an electrician.

I finally got it working, and it's actually working perfectly, and it's put back in, and it you wouldn't know that I had screwed things up.

But to me, it was pretty clear I can do some wiring.

But boy, I am not an electrician.

We can do certain things without being the kind of person who can do that naturally and appropriately.

You may be an introvert.

You can learn extrovertish behavior, you can learn to chit-chat with people, you can learn to get out of your comfort zone, but it will cost you a great deal emotionally.

It's a good thing to do.

It really is a good thing to do.

But that doesn't make you an introvert.

It just means you've learned extrovertish, uh, doesn't make you an extrovert, it just means you've learned introvert, extrovertish behavior.

Um you may want to serve without being a real servant.

There's a huge difference from somebody who serves because it's the right thing to do, but isn't by nature a servant, and and you can just you can just tell.

Just serving doesn't make you a servant by nature.

Just doing Christian things, and here's the point.

Don't remember the illustration about my smart switch and forget what it's all about.

It's possible just to do certain things without being the kind of person who from the inside does it and does it well because that's the kind of person you are.

That's what verse 22 is talking about.

It has to do with the kind of person we are on the inside.

Doing Christian things does not make one a Christian.

Christians are to do Christian things, no question about it.

But if we're not careful, we misunderstand when the Bible tells us to do this or to do that, as though in the process of doing, that's what it's all about.

That's the fruits which is manifested from the root of our nature.

We run a danger of doing Christian things without being Christians.

There's a problem here with Christian schools.

Now, I am not against Christian schools.

We sent our two uh two boys to a Christian high school in Europe, and it was a wonderful experience.

But uh, and I pastored the church that was uh was in that community, and uh uh believe me, I understand how challenging it is with a Christian school to avoid just purely socializing these kids into doing Christian things when their hearts are far removed.

But you see, just doing Christian things is not what it's all about.

Doing Christian things out of a heart that's been reborn, a heart that's new, desires that are new, new inclinations, new desires of what to do.

When we come to faith, God changes us at our core.

That's why it's called a new birth.

And there are things that become more and more natural as we grow in our faith because we are changing.

My wanna doer has changed.

I want to do things I never wanted to do before.

Now I just want to do them better and I want to do them consistently and everything, and I fail in that just as you do.

But but if I'm doing, doing, doing without my being having changed, then I'm not proving myself to be a doer of the word.

I'm just proving myself to be someone who knows how to artificially conform to certain expectations.

Tremendous challenge for all of us with child rearing.

It's very easy.

In the years that my sons were bigger than I was, it passed quickly, I could say, stand there, keep your mouth shut, listen to what I say, and do it.

Does that change the heart?

Not at all.

Standing, standing, but what's going on in his heart?

The challenge as parents, and no book, no seminar will give you all of the clues to this.

We only learn by doing, is to shepherd the heart of those children.

Not just to build in external conformity, to socialize them into doing Christian things.

The problem is, if it doesn't grow out of a changed and changing heart, then what does it accomplish?

It doesn't accomplish anything except making hypocrites and Pharisees.

And as soon as they can, they'll get out and they'll shove it all aside, of course, skin deep.

The difficulty is we can't change the heart of our children.

Only God can do that.

And that ought to keep us on our knees, keep us totally dependent.

Because the things that we care about most are the is the root out of which doing must flow.

So I just want to emphasize that there's a difference between just doing Christian things and doing them from a heart that is right and true and imperfect, but being changed.

So how, forget how your kids are doing with this.

How are you doing with this?

How am I doing with this?

And when we read, be doers of the word and not hearers only, deluding ourselves, what it really means is be a doer who is doing, because that's what God has made us, proving ourselves to be doers from the heart.

God is much more concerned about our being, out of which our doing flows, than our doing.

Well, let's uh let's go a little bit further.

Uh verses 23 and 24, two wonderful practical verses with a real life uh illustration about the danger of looking without seeing.

And we're talking about looking into God's word and paying attention to what it says about ourselves.

That's that's the looking.

Looking and seeing ourselves in God's word as it is revealed to us.

And there's a wonderful, horrible illustration here.

A great, a good bad illustration.

The bad illustration.

For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he's like a man who looks at his natural face in the mirror, for he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like.

Um you know, many of us used to wear watches instead of carrying cell phones.

Uh I used to wear a watch.

Um, and I have distinct memories of looking at my watch, and then somebody noticing that I looked at my watch, and they said, Hey, Walt, what time is it?

And invariably I had to look again.

Because I had seen it, but I hadn't seen it.

Does anybody else?

It doesn't get better with cell phones, by the way.

I left mine down on the uh the pew, so uh, but there's a clock there, never fear.

Not that I look at it, but um so what he's really talking about here, he uses an example of a mirror.

Now, mirrors uh in the ancient world were not nearly like the mirrors that we have today, with actually very good reflections, for some of us too good.

Um mirrors were typically made from a flat piece of metal that had been highly polished but was full of imperfections, and what you saw in the mirror was just a mere reflection of the real thing.

It'd be like looking into a pool of water to see yourself.

Okay?

You look in the pool of water, and if you get close enough, your breath starts rippling your face away.

It's a reflection, but it's not a perfect one.

That's the way mirrors were.

Mirrors were present, people had mirrors, but not mirrors like we have.

It's interesting.

Um you go into somebody's house and you'll often see many mirrors.

Now, sometimes that's because it's a very, very narrow uh room and you want to give a sense of more space, but why do we have so many mirrors around?

Does that say something about ourselves?

We want to see ourselves.

Well, if we really saw ourselves the way we were, I'm not so sure we'd be happy with it.

But they had mirrors, they just weren't all that sharp.

Now that's what's behind what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13, 12 when he says, Now we see but a poor reflection in a mirror, then we shall see face to face.

And in that case, it's talking about the Word of God revealing to us who God is, God's being, God's character, God's attributes, God's goodness, his grace, his patience, his righteousness, his wrath, all of the things that we find out about God.

We get some understanding from God about God through the scriptures.

That's part of what it's written for, but that doesn't mean we know who God is exactly.

That doesn't mean we can put God in some kind of a box as though we've got him all defined and we can put our arms around him, and yeah, that's God.

There are things about God that remain mysteries to us that we do not and cannot, and perhaps never will comprehend.

There is coming a day, and that's what he's talking about in that Corinthians passage, where we will see him face to face.

But you better believe there are things about the Creator, infinite God of the universe, that no creature, even a glorified creature, is going to see and understand completely.

We will know far more, and I long for that day.

But there are things about God that we are simply as creatures incapable of understanding.

Then, much less now.

But this passage is not talking about the view of God that we see when we look into the mirror of his word, but the picture of ourselves.

It is much harder to get an accurate picture of ourselves than we might think.

I want to show you a painting.

Um, it's by Norman Rockwell.

It's a famous painting.

It's called uh the Triple Self-Portrait.

It's saying in a graphic way what James is saying to us here.

So here's Norman Rockwell.

It's a triple self-portrait.

Norman Rockwell is sitting with his back to his painting.

We see a reflection of Norman Rockwell in the mirror, and then we see what Norman Rockwell painted as he saw himself.

Now, this is one of those clever, insightful paintings that uh pictures that we ought to just stop and kind of focus on a little bit because it helps us understand what James is saying.

The more you look at it, the more you will see some differences between the man in the mirror and the man in the painting.

Now, at the time that Norman Rockwell painted this, he was about 65 years old.

And the man in the mirror is a 65-year-old man.

The man he painted is about 20 years younger.

Isn't that interesting?

I know about you.

I walk down a hallway and I see an image of myself in the mirror, and I step back and I say, Who is that old guy?

I have dark hair.

You you know that, don't you?

When you see me, you see a gray-haired man.

When I see myself, I see a dark-haired man.

That's just the way we are.

And that's what Norman Rockwell was getting at.

And if you could study the face of Norman Rockwell in the mirror, uh you would see he is somewhat tired and um not exactly the vibrant face.

Uh his pipe is hanging down in reality.

He's got his pipe in a jaunty uh uh FDR type uh optimistic kind of a thing.

Uh Norman Rockwell made some interesting observations about uh this painting.

He commented on it and he said, when asked about the foggy glasses in the mirror, did you notice that?

His glasses are fogged over.

He said, I had to show that my glasses were fogged and I couldn't actually see what I looked like.

We've all got foggy glasses on.

What I look like is a homely, lanky fellow.

I therefore could stretch the truth just a bit and paint myself looking more suave and debonaire.

That's an old expression from the 50s or 60s.

Brill cream, little dabble do you, you look so debonaire.

Um he saw himself.

He could he could stretch the truth because his eyes were were fogged up.

Um Norman Rockwell was making very much the point that James is making.

It's possible to look in a mirror and not see ourselves the way we really are.

How about you?

How are your glasses doing?

God's word is written in part to help reveal who we really are.

We just have trouble seeing it.

I want you to turn to uh Hebrews chapter 12, just back a couple of pages into the book of Hebrews.

Hebrews 12 · chapter mention

Sorry, Hebrews chapter 4, verses 12 and 13.

Hebrews 4:12

This is one of the two or three classic texts about the inspiration of Scripture, what God has done and why God has done it by giving us an inspired, inerrant word.

So we read in Hebrews chapter 4, verse 12, for the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and it pierces to the dividing of soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and it discerns the thoughts and intentions of our heart.

Hebrews 4:12

It lays bare what's going on within.

That's what the word of God was given for.

Verse 13, no creature is hidden from his sight, and all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give an account.

The word of God was given to show us who we really are.

Are we looking?

Are we really looking at ourselves and seeing ourselves as God sees it?

That's why God has given us a great bit of the scriptures.

Some of it is to help us understand who He is, and some of it is for our benefit to understand who we are.

Two major dangers in peering into the Word of God.

One, we err when we look at the Word to simply gather Bible facts and Bible knowledge, as though God has given us his word primarily to give us theological facts.

The Bible is not intending to be a book of systematic theology or even a biblical theology.

The word of God is given to reveal who God is and who we are.

And when we, with all of the best intentions, my friends, I get it, approach the scriptures as though the goal is to fill our notebooks full of truths about God, nicely outlined.

When we use the word that way, we are using the word, not sitting under the teaching of God's word, but with all the best intentions.

In our evangelical world, in our Bible churches, our Bible teaching churches, Bible teaching pulpits, if we're not careful, it becomes Bible information.

The word of God is given for so much more than just satisfying our curiosity about God and about theology.

I'm not disparaging theology.

I have more years of formal theological training than anybody in their right mind would want to have.

Does it change my life?

That's really the question.

What is the Word of God for?

It's to transform us, including as we know more about who God is, but not in an abstract way, disassociated from our lives, but brought to bear in the realities of our life.

A faith that works in our lives.

That's one danger.

A second danger, we also err if we fail to see that the word was given to reveal and heal our hearts.

And if we fail to use the word of God and primarily the word of God, as we explore and deal with the issues within.

The scriptures were given to reveal what's broken within and what needs repair, what needs healing?

We must not simply go on a journey in the inner world and leave the Bible out there.

That is just as dangerous and just as wrong as using it to fill our minds with Bible trivia.

Hear what I'm saying?

Why has God given us the scriptures?

That we might see Him as He is, and that we might see ourselves as He is.

And as a result of the Spirit of God working to transform us from within, behold, if anyone is in Christ, he's a new creature, the old is passed away, the new is come, that we begin to change.

And if we are not changing, if we are not proving ourselves to be doers of the word, we are not looking, we are not listening.

It's all worthless unless there's transformation taking place.

I don't like that.

You don't either.

It just happens to be true.

Keep looking intently.

Verse twenty-five.

From the NIV.

But whoever looks intently, the verb here is very important, looks intently into the perfect word that gives freedom, perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it, looking intently, continuing in that, and forgetting what they have heard, not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it, they are the ones who are blessed in what they do.

And again, in this case, the NIV brings out these verbs just a little bit more strongly.

To look intently.

Whoever looks intently, that's one of the various words, verbs that are used in the Greek language for looking, and it's not just a casual glance.

This is the word that was used on the morning of the resurrection when Peter and Mary went into the empty tomb, and they, it says they stooped over and peered at the grave clothes.

That was not a casual look.

And there were all kinds of things going through their mind and heart as that was going on.

It is something that points to a continual, intense and I would say soul-absorbing scrutiny.

That's what is, my goodness, what's happened here?

He is risen.

Do you have any idea what that means?

And all of this was flooding over them at the time.

They were looking intently.

That's what we are to be doing with God's word.

This is not just a casual glance.

Now, I have a problem with this.

You have a problem with it.

Let's just be honest about it.

How do we really pay attention to God's word?

What does it take for us to peer intently?

What I know doesn't work is, okay, God, I've got 15 minutes.

I sure hope you show up.

As though God ought to be pleased with us that we carved out 15 minutes for him, and now he's supposed to jump out of the lamp like a genie.

I'm not trying to make anybody feel guilty.

I'm just saying I have a problem with this as much as you do.

It's not enough just to spend a little bit of time in God's Word.

Now, everybody's circumstances differently, and I don't know what it takes for you to peer intently into the Word of God and see what it says about Him and what it says about you.

It's probably different for everybody.

But it cannot be a casual, flippant.

Oh, I got a few minutes, I guess I'll do my quiet time.

All we are then is little hypocrites.

We've just learned to be socialized, to do Christian things.

And that's not what we want if we're really believers.

Again, everybody's different.

I know someone whose uh practice with this is to actually copy over uh the scriptures by hand, not on a computer, but by hand, just writing it.

Uh several journals as this person works through, starting out with the gospels and doing other things.

And the point is not penmanship, the point is not you get credit because you've got a journal filled with God's Word.

The point is that's what it may take to be able to focus on what is really said there.

There's something about copying it over in my own lousy chicken scratching.

Uh, that Helps focus.

And so this person is just a discipline.

It's not a law.

It's not the way it has to be done.

It may not work for you.

But what does work for you, whatever it takes, to not just not just glance, but to look and look intently.

See, James is getting, he's messing with us because we are a mess and we need to change.

So allow James to say what he's saying.

What's observed here is the law that gives liberty, the law of freedom.

We have such a problem with the word law, commands.

That's why when we were going through the Ten Commandments, I used the phrase the tender commandments, because it helps us see it in a different way.

Somehow or another, we think that if God tells us what to do, it's oppressive and unpleasant.

That's because we're all screwed up.

God wants the best for us.

So why would we neglect what the God of the universe, who has sent his only Son to save us from that yuck?

Why would we then have the attitude that if we did what God wanted us to do, it would be unpleasant and it's really a burdensome task?

No.

It frees us.

The Word of God frees us to be and do what we were meant to be and do.

Now the problem is I don't do it as well as I would like to, and you don't either, because I'm still in process, and you are too.

But God has changed my want to do or I want to do things I never wanted to do before.

And I don't want to do some things that I used to want to do before.

The problem is the things that I don't want to do, I find myself doing, and the things that I want to do, I find myself not doing.

Who can deliver me from this body of sin and death?

That's the way Paul put it in Romans 7.

So we're imperfect.

I get that.

Nobody is expecting you to be perfect.

Perfection will not come in this life.

A time is coming when we will be what we want to be, where we will be freed not only from the penalty of sin and the controlling presence of sin, the controlling power of sin, but also the very presence of sin.

And we will be what we want to be in our inner being, in our depths.

So what he's talking about is something that frees us to be who we are.

Is that the way you see the scriptures?

If you don't see the scriptures that way, you're wrong.

Sorry.

James is saying there's so much more.

So we are to prove ourselves doers.

We are to be looking intently because there we find freedom, and the result is a great blessing.

I want to ask you, how are you doing with doing?

How's it really going?

Please don't answer me.

That's not my point for asking the question.

But I think God is asking us on the basis of passages like this.

How's it going?

Are we just doing some wiring or are we electricians?

Is that our nature?

Are we growing in what God has called us to be and is changing us to be?

Are we becoming more and more who we most truly are?

Or are we just very superficial going through the motions?

I want to read a short story as I close.

It's from Chuck Swindall, one of my favorite uh writers, Chuck Swindall.

It's in his book, Improving Your Serve.

Here's Chuck giving a hypothetical story.

Just listen.

Let's pretend that you work for me.

That'd actually be pretty nice.

Let's pretend that you work for me.

In fact, you are my executive assistant in a company that is growing rapidly.

I'm the owner and I'm interested in expanding overseas.

To pull this off, I've made plans to travel abroad and to stay there until the new branch office gets established.

I made all of the arrangements to take my family and to move to Europe for six or eight months.

And I'm leaving you in charge of the busy stateside organization.

I tell you that I will write you regularly and give you directions and instructions.

I leave, you stay.

Months pass.

A flow of letters are mailed by me from Europe and received by you at the national headquarters.

I spell out my expectations.

Finally, I return.

Soon after my arrival, I drive down to the office.

I am stunned.

Grass and weeds have grown up high.

A few windows along the street are broken.

I walk into the receptionist's room.

She's doing her nails, chewing gum, and listening to her favorite podcast.

Now, he said listening to her famous favorite disco station, but that's about 20 years old.

So chewing gum, doing her nails, listening to her favorite podcast, the receptionist.

I look around and notice that the wastebaskets are overflowing, the carpet hasn't been vacuumed for weeks, and nobody seems concerned that the owner has returned.

I ask about your whereabouts.

And someone in the crowded lounge points down the hall and says, I think he's in there.

Disturbed, I move in that direction and I bump into you as you are finishing a chess game with our sales manager.

I ask you to step into my office, which has temporarily been turned into a television room for watching afternoon soap operas.

What in the world is going on here, man?

What do you mean?

Well, look at this place.

Didn't you get any of my letters?

Letters?

Oh yeah, yeah.

Sure, we got every one of them.

As a matter of fact, we had a letter study every Friday morning while you after you left.

We've even divided all of the personnel into small groups and discussed many of the things that you wrote.

Some of those things are really interesting.

You'll be pleased to know that a few of us have actually committed to memory some of your sentences and paragraphs, and one or two memorized an entire letter.

Great stuff, those letters.

Okay, okay.

You got my letters.

You studied them.

You meditated on them, you discussed them, you even memorized them.

But what did you do about them?

Uh do?

Well, we didn't do anything about them.

We didn't do anything about them.

Now that's overdrawn, that's exaggerated.

But the point that James wants to make is that we must be doers of the word, doers from our hearts, doers out of our new nature, doers because we want to do, because he is changing us from within.

So how are you doing?

How are we doing?

Let's pray.

None of us.

We need your grace, we need your help, we need that transforming power from within.

But Father, may we not be content to just hear without doing.

May we not be content to just look and read and not do.

Oh Lord, you want so much more for us.

By your grace, not out of guilt, that is not what this is about.

By your grace, may we strive to prove ourselves through your spirit doers of the word.

And if that happens, Father, it will be of no credit to ourselves, and you truly will get all of the glory.

Be glorified, O Lord, be glorified, I pray.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.