Summer 2025 | Doers of the Word - James 1:22-25 | July 27

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serving a real God in the high country.

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Father, we thank you for the ability to come before you,

for the ability to gather together in your name in a public space to gather

together as your people unified under the name of Jesus.

Just pray that you would instill your word deeply into our hearts,

God, that you would transform our thoughts into your thoughts,

that you would transform our hearts and our desires into your desires.

As you said in your scriptures, that you would place within us a new heart,

that you would melt our heart of stone and you'd give us a new heart, God,

that we would be hungry for your word, that we would just be amazed at who you

are and that out of that heart and out of that transformation that you bring into our lives, Lord,

that the overflow would just be obedience and action,

that we would love as you have loved us, that we would go and do and be all that you call us to be.

That you would make yourself and your word more and more real in our lives each and every day.

That we would see the magnitude, the importance.

We would be able to grasp just the gravity of what's at stake here.

That it's not just whether we happen to read a book a day or not,

but that being transformed and being changed and having your word lived out

in us is something of the most importance in our lives.

So much so that the Bible warns against our failure to do that.

So help us to see that gravity. Help us to see that importance.

Help us to be measured in our hearts and for us to grasp fit, God.

And I pray that you would make us doers of your word and not just hearers only.

Amen. This is James chapter one.

James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ to the 12 tribes in the

dispersion. Greetings.

I counted all joy, my brothers. Count it all joy, my brothers,

when you meet trials of various kinds for, you know, that the testing of your faith produces.

Steadfastness unless steadfastness have its full effect that you may be perfect

or the meaning perfect and complete, lacking nothing.

If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God who gives generously to all without

reproach, and it will be given him.

But let him ask in faith with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a

wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind, for that person must

not suppose that he will receive any from God.

He is a double-minded man, unstable in all of his ways.

Let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation, and the rich boast in his humiliation

because like a flower of the grass, he will pass away.

For the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the grass,

its flower falls and its beauty perishes.

So also will the rich man fade away in the midst of his pursuits.

Blessed is the one who stands firm under trial, who perseveres, who remains steadfast.

For when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life,

which God has promised to those who love him.

Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good gift and every perfect gift

is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no

shadow or variation due to change.

I did skip some verses. I am trying to do this from memory.

Let no one say when he is tempted, I am being tempted by God,

for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one.

But each one is tempted when he is lured enticed by

his own desires and desires when it has conceived gives

birth to sin and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death do not be deceived

my beloved brothers every good gift and every perfect gift is from above coming

down from the father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due

to change of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth that we would

be a kind of first fruits of his creatures.

Know this, my beloved brothers, let every person be quick to hear,

slow to speak, slow to anger, for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.

Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness, and receive with meekness

the implanted word which is able to save your souls.

But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.

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.

For he looks at himself, and he goes away, and at once he forgets what he was like.

The one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, being no hearer

who forgets, but a doer who perseveres, he will be blessed in all of his doing.

If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue,

that person's religion, but deceives his heart, that person's religion is worthless.

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this,

to visit orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained from the world.

So why read all of James or recite from memory all of James when all we're going

to be looking at is four verses?

It's been a while since we've done something like this. I think Eric was the

last one to do it at Sky Ranch.

And for all of the times that we've mentioned the importance of internalizing

God's word, soaking God's word, memorizing it, letting it transform the way that we think.

And for all the stories that I've ever heard about someone talking about their

own journey with memorization and the importance that it has made in their life,

all of their stories tend to start the same way.

They heard somebody recite a chapter. They heard somebody recite an entire book of the Bible.

And that's what sparked their own journey with internalizing,

with meditating, with committing the word of God to their hearts, to their minds.

It all started with their listening to someone else do it. So I wanted to provide

that opportunity as well.

And perhaps we can remind each other of that over the years.

As we come and go, we'll revisit this idea.

Not to, I mean, obviously I didn't get everything right.

So not to impress anybody, but also to encourage you that it's something that

you can do. It's not out of your reach.

It's something that everyone can do. But even more importantly than that.

The results of memorizing the Bible are not just found in having it memorized.

The results are found in the process of memorization.

We say something at work sometimes to remind ourselves when a project perhaps

is struggling along to trust the process.

And so when we memorize the word of God, the result of having memorized it doesn't end there,

but it is with great effort that we

put into reciting it over and over again

and committing it to memory that the great effect is

found and whenever someone talks about memorization I feel like one of the responses

that we tend to build up in our minds is oh you must have great discipline to

be able to do this either great natural ability or great discipline but to be honest.

The discipline is not really the important part either.

I think it's often there's a tipping point to where we crave the word of God

enough that the discipline follows through.

It's hard. Some people are more disciplined than others for sure.

But for all of us, praying for discipline isn't necessarily the solution to the problem.

It's praying that we would crave God's word more and more.

In Psalm 63, that we would crave it like David says, like fat and rich food.

He says, Oh God, you are my God.

I earnestly search for you. My soul thirsts for you.

My whole body longs for you in this parched and weary land where there is no water.

That we would pray to crave the word of God with every fiber of our being.

That whatever flows out of that is not because of our own effort or discipline,

but because of the spirit within us, building that yearning.

So I hope that we pray to crave the word of God.

And what happens as we've been talking about this whole summer,

soaking in the word of God, what happens?

What is supposed to happen when we actually spend time listening and hearing

the voice of God and his word?

What should the effect to be on our hearts. And how does that happen?

James will say, to receive with meekness the implanted word,

which is able to save your souls.

That the word isn't just something you study. It's not just something you read,

but it's something that you receive, that it's implanted.

It takes root within you. And the result of that root is changed,

that there's something different, that something is moving within you as a result of the word of God.

We talked about this last week, that through the scriptures,

we would meet God time and time again.

We talk about what the Bible is about, what the Bible is for,

what we primarily encounter within it. It is a story about God.

He is the hero. He's the main character. I think the back of Asher's shirt says something about that.

This is a book about God. And so we meet God in it.

The God who is on a rescue mission to save his people, to bring us back home

to him. a God who loved us so much that not only did he make us,

but as the good shepherd, he follows us in all of our wanderings to bring us back home.

The God who pursues us relentlessly, God who loves us to the point of his own death on the cross,

to taking our own sin, our own shame, to taking and removing our punishment

and giving us righteousness that we could be with him when And we couldn't come

to him, the God who pursued us and all of our strivings on this earth.

God pursues us. This is the God we get to meet there.

And so when we read the scriptures and we meet this God, the result in our hearts should be awe.

It should be astonishment. A godly life is lived out of a heart that is astonished.

99% of our day, 99% of our decisions, we are not actively considering our options.

We're not actively weighing the costs.

99% of the time we are deciding and acting out of who we are.

So we, our hearts have to change as a result of our work in the scriptures,

our listening to the voice of God, because out of the overflow of our hearts, that's where we live.

It's not always an active decision.

When was the last time you were astonished by God? When was the last time you

stood in awe of the creator of who he is, of all that he's done?

And I don't mean just curious. I don't mean just interested.

I mean, when is the last time that you encountered God and all that you knew

was wrecked as a result of that in the best possible way.

When we act out of our heart, the result is often,

if our heart isn't regularly stirred by God, that is, the result is that we're

going to be making the decisions out of tired, distracted.

Unformed places.

The missionary George Mueller, he cared for like 10,000 orphans or more.

One of the things that he would say is that the first greatest and primary business

to which I ought to attend every day is to have my soul happy before the Lord.

To be in the word and to be amazed and astonished, not to let the word be something

that we occasionally visit.

To have it something that transforms and forms our daily existence.

The 99% of times that we're just reacting out of who we are.

So that's what happens or should happen in our hearts as we interact with God's

word, that we should stand amazed.

But the goal of proper hearing isn't only found in that alone.

It doesn't stop with amazement because proper hearing, proper amazement must move.

In Ecclesiastes, at the end of the book of Ecclesiastes, chapter 12,

Ecclesiastes 12:13

verse 13, which I don't have a slide for, but it says, this is Solomon's conclusion

over all of his pursuits.

The end of the matter, all has been heard.

Fear God, be amazed and obey his commandments. This is the whole duty of man.

It's found in these two things.

Be amazed by God, obey God.

So proper hearing has to end with movement or else it's not proper hearing.

It's not proper amazement.

When we hear the word of God and it stuns us, when we hear the word of God,

when it stirs our hearts, if it doesn't, it doesn't just leave us inspired.

It reforms us. It shapes us. It prepares our obedience. And this is the progression, right?

We hear God. We are astonished by God.

We are changed by God. And then we act.

This is not a progression that happens in completion. We don't fully hear and

then we fully are astonished and then we're fully changed and then we fully

act. If we all waited till that, none of us would do anything.

It is a cycle that happens daily, moment by moment. We hear, We listen.

We're astonished by God and amazed by him. We're changed. And so we act out

of that day by day, moment by moment.

So James writes these words, be doers of the word and not hearers only,

deceiving yourselves, which these words should give us great warning that it's

possible to read the word of God every day,

hours upon hours every day.

It's possible to listen to sermons and podcasts and read books about the Bible.

It's possible to do all of these things and still be deceived unless the end

of proper hearing as action.

The story goes that Gandhi would read or remind himself of the Sermon on the

Mount every day for like 24 years, but still he never occasioned as far as our

knowledge goes to be a Christian.

There are lots of people who read the Bible every day, but don't let it change who they are.

So we read for astonishment, that astonishment works on our hearts and the overflow

of that is action, application.

It is crazy for us.

It's crazy for us to read the word of God and to be amazed at who he is and for it to end there.

As if we are reading some ancient texts that has no application to our lives today.

Jesus thought this was crazy as well.

He would challenge the Pharisees over and over again. Have you not read what the scriptures say?

Because his challenge to them is if you had read, you would know. You would be prepared.

Obviously they were reading. It's not that they weren't reading.

Jesus assumed that in the word of God, they would find applications for their lives as well.

And not just some textual study, right?

Thomas Watson said this. He said, take every word as spoken to yourselves.

When the word thunders against the sin, think thus, God means my sin.

When it presses any duty, think, God intends me in this.

Many put off scripture for themselves as if it only concerned those who lived

in the time when it was written.

But if you intend to profit by the word, bring it home to yourselves.

A medicine will do no good unless it is applied.

Proper hearing leads to proper action. And sometimes, you know, that's immediate.

Sometimes we hear and we hear the word of God and he places it on our hearts.

And then we are urged into movement in that moment.

And sometimes that obedient takes some time.

It's slower. It's a seed that must grow in our hearts that results in action over time.

So it happens different, but the posture is not, Wow, what a good message.

I really know somebody who could listen to that. I know somebody who could hear that.

The response is, Lord, where do I need to obey as a result of my hearing?

We looked at this the last several weeks, but in Joshua chapter one.

Joshua is leading the people, we're about to lead the people of Israel into the promised land.

We have all these famous verses, but this one particularly in verse eight,

It says, this book of the law shall not depart from your mouth,

but you shall meditate it on a day and night so that you may be careful to do

according to all that is written in it.

For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.

Even here, we see this progression in Joshua.

God's instructions to Joshua is we hear, we meditate, and then God tells Joshua

to act in obedience. and as a result of that, the blessings of the Lord come. We meditate.

Meditation is for application that we would walk in to all that the Lord has

apportioned for us in his blessing.

And if we ever doubt what the word of God can do, there's lots of places we can look to it.

In Psalm 19 particularly, it says, the law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul.

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

Lord are right, rejoicing the heart.

The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. These are tangible, physical results.

And for the keen observer, there's also the acronym FEAST.

That it focuses us. It enlightens us. It addresses our sin. It satisfies our soul.

It trains our hands. That it works on our whole being, our mind,

our heart, and our hands.

All as we feast on the word of the Lord.

Focuses our mind, it enlightens the eyes, it addresses our sin,

it satisfies the soul and trains the hands.

But that only happens as we allow the hearing to turn into doing.

So here's the question for us this morning to ponder. The main point, why don't we?

Why don't we obey? Why so often are we found as hearers only?

Why is it that we can hear the word of God, be moved by it, be amazed by it,

and still walk away unchanged so frequently.

Why don't you obey? God obeys his own word. We know that.

God never calls us to something that he hasn't already lived out.

He doesn't break the first commandment.

God has no other gods above himself either. He calls us into obedience.

Numbers chapter 23, it says, God is not man that he should lie or son of man

Numbers 23 · chapter mention

that he should change his mind.

Has he said and will he not do it? Or has he spoken and will he not fulfill it?

Does God not accomplish every word that he speaks?

Does he not bring it about? Is he not faithful? Paul will pick up this theme in Romans.

He says, what if some were unfaithful? Does their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God?

By no means. Let God be true, though everyone were a liar.

When God makes a promise, he keeps it. When God declares the truth, he backs it up.

When God calls us to obey, it's because he himself is the ultimate doer of his word.

So God obeys his word. So the problem isn't God's reliability when we find ourselves as hearers only.

If we know the word and the word is good and the God behind it is trustworthy, why don't we obey?

There are several reasons that James outlines in his letter.

I just want to go through some of them quickly.

I think sometimes we can count our hearing as doing.

That we can listen. Our culture is great hearers of lots of things,

which ends up making us human Spotify playlists that just reiterate the things that we've heard.

And we can talk about evangelism more than we actually do evangelism.

We can talk about prayer more than we seem to find time to pray.

We can talk about anything and be utterly convinced that we are doing it because

we've heard about it and we've talked about it.

And when we see somebody else, a new believer, perhaps stepping out in that

faith and being a doer of the word, and though they get it wrong because perhaps

they haven't heard as much as we have,

It's easy for us to criticize them, but they're stepping out,

even in some of their foolishness and unknowing, a lot more faithfulness than we are.

There's this famous story with D.L. Moody, and I'm not going to retell all of

the details very effectively, but he was doing some evangelism,

I believe, on the streets of Chicago.

And a woman came up afterwards and said, I don't really like the way you do

evangelism. He's like, okay, how do you do it?

And she says, I'm not an evangelist. He goes, I'll take my way of doing it rather

than your way of not doing it. We have to be doers of the word.

We think that we are obeying because we think about obeying.

We talked about the great Shema last week, hero Israel, the Lord our God,

the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord with all your heart,

with all your mind, with all your strength, all your soul.

Sometimes we think loving God is the same as thinking about loving God.

Something that goes along with this idea is not just that we mistake our hearing

for doing, but we also, especially for those who have spent all of our lives

basically in church, we mistake our knowledge of obedience for obedience itself.

In some ways, we can even mistake other people's obedience for our obedience.

That's why James warns us to be doers of the word and not deceive ourselves.

So, so where do we know more about the Bible?

Where do you know more about the Bible than you're living it out?

That's where the danger is found

where you, where you know what God's word says, but you haven't done it.

And it's important for us to answer these questions. Like why are we not obeying

in a moment or in our lives?

Because when we can identify the why, when we can identify the,

what it is that's getting in the way, then we can begin to move past it.

Here's another easy one we fall into that we are afraid of failing.

So we might not actively think this, but the logic is if I'm going to fail, why even try?

We see other people try and we see other people try and walk in obedience. It gets messy.

We're messy, adverse, mostly in our lives. They fumble.

So we grow cynical and we think if they can't get it right, I'm probably not going to get it right.

So this is pride masquerading as wisdom, right? Right?

That the idea that God needs us to execute something perfectly,

to be able to walk in obedience.

But obedience is a found in perfection.

Obedience, as always, if we could define it as about trusting God and taking

the next step towards Jesus.

Was that next step towards Jesus? I think this one for me, and I don't want

to speak for all of you, but perhaps is the most relevant definitely in my life.

It's just like procrastination.

And maybe it's not even, maybe it's well-meaning procrastination,

but we think, we feel God leading us to do something.

And it's very easy for us to convince ourselves that now is not the right timing.

So we should wait until tomorrow. The reality is, is that the devil doesn't need you.

He doesn't need to destroy your faith with lies. He doesn't need to deconstruct

all that you've built up.

All he needs you to do is put it off till tomorrow.

In Hebrews chapter three, it reminds us that today, if you hear his voice,

the voice of God, do not harden your hearts.

So today, where are you telling God tomorrow?

Where have you delayed what you already know that he's called you to?

That he's calling us in moments when we are astounded by him,

astonished by him to confess our sin.

And we think now's not the right time. Thank you.

Convinced that we need to step out in obedience, but we think tomorrow will be better.

To know that what we need to do, I need to be surrounded by the word of God. I need to be in it.

I need to be in his presence daily more than that.

But if we start tomorrow, J.C. Ryle said, tomorrow is the devil's day.

It's not yours. You may never see it.

Every time we push obedience off till tomorrow. What we're choosing for today is disobedience.

And the last that James brings up specifically is that we don't like what the mirror shows us.

He tells us, right, that one who looks intently into the perfect law,

the law of liberty, and that those who are just heroes, what do they do?

They look at their own face in the mirror and walk away and immediately forget

what they're like. And then he compares the law of the Lord to that mirror.

So we look into the law, the law of liberty. We'll look into the mirror of God

and it's hard. And we don't like what we see.

And it hurts and it's convicting.

So what do we do? We think perhaps, oh, I don't really understand this verse.

Let me go read a few commentaries.

And then we find one that gives us a better word.

We gravitate to certain authors and to certain sermons, certain speakers who

we know will give us a better word.

We convince ourselves that it's not a matter of repentance. It's a matter of,

just not fully understanding.

So we look into a different mirror.

But there is only one mirror. You will never find a better one because this

is the only mirror that truly shows us who we are because it truly shows us who God is.

It's the only mirror whereby we see who we are becoming in Christ and truth.

And as we sang this morning, that's where liberty is found.

It's not found in embracing our own desires. It's not found in going our own way.

It's found as we look into the mirror of the perfect law, the law of liberty.

So what mirrors do we run to? What mirrors do we look in when we don't like

what we see in the Word of God?

Okay, so we've looked in the mirror. We've seen what we see.

We are astonished by God.

So the question now is not, did I enjoy the teaching today?

The question is, what am I going to do about it? Am I going to obey what God has for me?

This is where transformation begins. It's not, it doesn't begin.

It's not found as we stop at knowing the word of God.

It's not found as we stop at hearing the word of God or agreeing with it,

mentally assenting to what we've encountered.

It's found as, as we do it, as we take that next step towards Jesus.

Because we haven't truly heard scripture until we've been moved by it.

Moved to worship, moved to repentance, moved to obedience.

In the second letter that we have that Paul writes to Corinthians,

he talks about the effects of his first letter to them and how he was worried about it.

And then he goes on this dialogue about how godly repentance,

godly sorrow leads to repentance.

And he is thankful that in their godly sorrow, they found repentance.

That his words to them found their place as they repented and turned to God.

Your next step? Where is it you've been delaying? Is it confessing a sin?

Is it stepping out in faith into the unknown?

Is it picking up the Bible again?

Is it surrendering your whole life and not just the pieces you've so far let go?

It's not found tomorrow. It's found right now.

I just want to, I want to end this part by sharing a couple verses,

and then we're going to spend some time in prayer.

In Hebrews 4, I want to link, I just want to increase the importance of what we're reading.

The author writes, God's promise of entering his rest still stands.

So we ought to tremble with fear that some of you might fail to experience it.

For this good news that God has prepared his rest has been announced to us just

as it was to them, that is to the Israelites.

But it did them no good because they didn't share the faith of those who listened

to God. For only we who believe can enter into his rest.

That there is a serious reality that some of us, many of us will fail to experience

the rest of God, just as the Israelites in the desert.

Failed to enter into his rest because they failed to listen and they failed to believe.

And in the Bible, believing is not a mental agreement.

It is a word that moves you to action.

In 2 Corinthians chapter 8, Paul writes, and in this matter, I give my judgment.

2 Corinthians 8 · chapter mention

This benefits you who a year ago started not only to do this work,

but also to desire to do it. So now finish doing it as well so that your readiness

and desiring it may be matched by your completing it out of what you have.

That our desire to do the work of God would match our doing of the work of God.

This is what Paul is urging the Corinthian church towards.

He is thankful that they have begun to desire it and they have stepped out and

begun to do it and that their desire has increased as a result.

And so now he prays that their action would meet and compliment their desire.

And that's my prayer for us today, that our desire for God's word would be matched

by our action in doing it.

That we would be no hearer who forgets, but a doer who acts.

And that we wouldn't wait till tomorrow, but they would pursue it now and in the.

Music.