Mirror Image

to the Epistle of James, where
we have been in for several weeks. The Epistle of James, and we’re
in chapter 1. Last Lord’s Day we were considering
a passage that had a very simple illustration, that of gardening. that of preparing the soil and
readying the soil for the planting of seed. Look, if you would,
at verse 21. It’s a simple illustration, and
it was a simple outline. Therefore, putting aside all
filthiness and all that remains of wickedness, receive the word
implanted, which is able to save your souls. The simple illustration
that James uses there of a garden, a fruitful garden, he lays out
for us what I pointed to as phases in the gardening growing season.
There is the cleanup phase, and James addresses that when he
says that we are to put aside all filthiness and all the remains
of wickedness. We are also called in the second
phase to amend the garden, add to the garden, make sure that
the soil is receptive. And so James says that we are
to receive the word in humility. And then finally there is the
harvest stage that James points to at the end of verse 21 that
we are to receive the word implanted which is able to save your souls. James is not suggesting for a
moment that we earn our salvation or that we work towards salvation
because you remember this passage rests on those earlier verses. James is concerned about the
faith of those to whom he’s writing, and not just whether or not they
believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, but how that is manifesting itself
in their lives. Verse 14. where James challenges
his readers and says, what use is it, my brethren, if a man
says he has faith but he has no works? That is the theme of
the book of James and it frightens some readers, some commentators,
some great church leaders were greatly fearful of this because
they thought it countered or went contrary to the doctrine
of justification by faith, it doesn’t. James is challenging
the nature of our faith. Is it really saving faith? Look at verse 14 again. What
use is it? My brethren, if a man says he
has faith, but he has no works, can that faith save him? James is concerned about the
nature of faith. If a brother or sister is without
clothing in a need of daily food, and one of you says to him, go
in peace, be warmed, be filled, And yet you do not give him what
is necessary for their body. What use is that? Well, that
theme will come up again and again throughout the book of
James, throughout this epistle that we’ve considered. But in
this particular context, I want you to note the directness in
chapter one. In chapter one, we looked at
verse 19. This you know, my beloved brethren,
but let everyone be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow
to anger. For the anger of man does not
achieve the righteousness of God. In other words, James says,
look, the way that you live, the way that you speak is telling
about your faith. And then we come to that section
that we considered just a moment ago, the garden illustration.
The theme is the same here in these verses this morning. In
verses 22 through 25, the context is exactly the same. James is
concerned with our growth in grace. James is concerned with
the nature of our faith. And though the illustration here
in these verses is different, the metaphor is different, The
theme is the same, the context is the same. James switches now
from a gardening theme to that of a man examining himself as
it were in the mirror. Now, had James stayed with that
gardening theme that we saw in verse 21, the illustration might
have unfolded as a picture of two different garden plots. One,
fruitful and productive, and James may have painted a very
clear picture of a fruitful garden. The other garden, in contrast,
James might have painted as a plot that was nothing but a weed patch,
full of weeds, completely unproductive. But as I’ve said, James does
change his metaphor. And instead of two garden plots,
he presents two men, two people, two different kinds of people.
One that is growing in grace and flourishing in the Lord,
the other one still dead in his sins. As one faithful commentator characterized
this passage, He characterized it as a description of wholehearted
acceptance of the word, which must result in an active obedience
to the word. That is the essence of living
faith. That is the theme of James’ epistle. If you would look at verse 22
as we consider our passage this morning in this new illustration. But prove yourselves doers of
the word and 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 his natural face in a mirror. For once he has
looked at himself and has gone away, he has immediately forgotten
what kind of person he was. But one who looks intently at
the perfect law, the law of liberty, and abides by it, not having
become a forgetful hearer, but an effectual doer, this man shall
be blessed in what he does. I’ve entitled the passage or
the message, if you will, Mirror Image, because what James does
in switching this metaphor is draw us into the idea of looking
at oneself in the mirror. I have a curious history with
my family that I expect them to be my last line of defense
before I go out. And I can’t even tell you how
many times I’ve gone out out into public, mind you, before
friends, before total strangers, with my hair dressed as a rooster.
Or perhaps with something in my teeth or on my face, or my
collar askew, or my tie crooked. And for many years, I expected
my family to function, to play the role of the mirror. And then, after so many such
missteps, I gave up on my family playing that role, and I began
to look in the mirror. And the mirror serves a vital
function, I discovered. The mirror will show you when
you have spinach in your teeth. The mirror will show you when
your attire is not quite straight. The mirror will show you when
your hair needs work. The mirror will show you sometimes
even things that you don’t wish to see, but the mirror provides
a function and that is the illustration that James uses to perfection
here. He essentially says that just
like the mirror provides a function in the physical realm, that we
can go to a piece of glass, look at ourselves, a reflection of
ourselves in that glass, and take whatever necessary action
is needed. We can adjust our tie. We can
brush our teeth. We can comb our hair. We can
go out with confidence then before a world that now we are what
we believe ourselves to be. We have seen the mirror image. James says, that the Word of
God essentially is just like the mirror for the spiritual
realm. That when we come to the Word
of God, when we have the opportunity to look at ourselves and our
reflection from a spiritual point of view, then we have opportunity
to change. We have opportunity to repent.
We have opportunity to call down God’s grace. We have opportunity
to be and become what God has called us to be. James says in
this passage, his angle, if you will, in this new illustration,
is that these two men that he presents, perhaps if I were writing it,
I might have done two garden plots, but James says two men. And in switching the metaphor,
he says that these two men couldn’t be any more different. They couldn’t
be any more different. There are differences between
those who come to God’s word in the way that they respond
to God’s word. There are differences, drastic,
traumatic differences. And I want to look at three this
morning. Three differences between those
two men that come to consider God’s word. The first difference
is really simple because it’s just a characterization, an assessment,
if you will, an identification of the two respondents of the
word to the word. The first of all is that their
characterization is different. There are the doers and what
I would borrow from my Puritan heroes, there are the dullards. There are those that read the
word and see the disparity in their lives and know that they
need God’s grace to change and appeal to God for that grace
and they change by God’s grace. And then there are the dullards.
Whatever they see, they soon forget. Whatever they see, they
disagree with. They think that they can accomplish
and live all of life on their own, by their own power, by their
own strength. And if they cannot overcome some
sin, then it’s God’s fault for making them that way, or that
his standards are simply too high. Look, if you would, at verse
22, where you see the characterization of these two people, the doers
and the dullards. Verse 22, but prove yourselves
doers of the word and not merely hearers who delude themselves. James here He isn’t just observing
conduct. What he’s doing is identifying,
assessing character. And he says that by nature, by
character, there are those that read and heed. There are those
that see God’s word, see themselves for what they are, see their
desperate condition, cry out for grace, and by God’s grace,
and it’s only by God’s grace, do what he asks. And then there
are those that hear. Sometimes they hear
the same sermons. They read the same books. They
hear the same message. They hear the same gospel call
that the doers hear. But James says they’re merely
hearers. They heard it. They just didn’t do anything
with it. And in that sense, they’re dullards. There are a number of different
ways to look at the distinction that James brings up here. They’re
either those who are all about deeds that are pleasing to God
or those that are content to be deceived, even self-deceived. There are not only doers, but
there are those who are deluded. They see themselves, they see
nothing wrong. They think that God is completely
unreasonable in his standards. They believe that they are good
enough. You could even say it so simply
in looking at this, there are doers and there are donters. There are those that see God’s
word and see God’s standards and plead for the grace to rise
to that standard and there are those that simply disregard almost
everything God says. Look first of all at the doers. where we are exhorted to being
people that do. Prove yourselves to be doers
of the word. Many people will lay claim to
this. Many people will aspire to this. The word doers, it’s
used only six times in all the New Testament. But the fascinating
thing that four of those occur in James’s epistle. He’s concerned
about the nature of our faith. He’s concerned that our walk
matches our talk. He’s not concerned with those
who aspire to be doers or profess to be doers. He’s concerned with
those who are doers. The word literally means keep
on becoming doers. It’s a life process, right? It’s
a lifelong effort. Never stop becoming doers. One faithful Puritan said, those
who receive the work of the word into their hearts express the
effect of it in their lives. Remember several weeks ago, receive
the word implanted. Well, that’s what James is talking
about. He’s talking about cultivating
the soil of your heart so that it becomes fruitful and productive
for the Lord’s sake. This is a constant preoccupation
in our lives. It sets in front of us real people. And if you read through this
and you’re not listening with your elbow and you’re listening
with a heart to examine your own life, then you know there’s
a little bit of this in each of us, right? And the great goal
of Christianity is to weed out of our life that tendency to
neglect, that tendency to downplay God’s Word, that tendency to
brush aside responsibility, and to become more and more like
Christ, to do what God would have us to do. That is a lifelong
effort. Doing the Word of God, doing
what God would have us to do, that is the main role of a Christian,
isn’t it? Jesus put a premium on doing,
on not just listening, not just hearing, but in actually obeying
His Word, Matthew 7, 24, which verse we’ll come back to in a
moment. Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and
acts on them may be compared to a wise man who built his house
on the rock. Luke 6, 46, why do you call me
Lord, Lord, and do not do what I say? Luke 11, 28, on the contrary,
blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it. In this particular word, in the
form of it, it points to the behavior, the attitude, the performance
of a person’s life that characterizes their life. It isn’t just a one-time
effort. It’s not just that you had a
good day as a Christian. Christianity is a lifelong effort,
right? James here says very clearly
that we are to be about becoming those who prove out that they
are doers of the Word of God. In James’s day, there was a rabbi. We’ve noted how many times James
was, if nothing else, a good listener. He had his ear on the
culture. He had his ear attentive to the
church. He knew exactly where his people
were. He knew their weaknesses. He
knew their strengths. More than once, James has noted
either statements that were made in the culture or statements
that had made their way into the church attitudes. And this
exhortation is really no different than that. There was a rabbi
current in James’s day who said, whoever’s works are in excess
of his wisdom, his wisdom stands. In other words, you had to have
the works, you had to have deeds and effort to back up your so-called
wisdom. But he also went on to say whoever’s
wisdom is in excess of his works, his wisdom stands not. In other
words, if you think that you’re wise, if you think that you’re
all-knowing and you don’t have the deeds to back it up then
your wisdom is really worthless. Even NFL football coaches know
this truth. There was an NFL football coach
years ago who said, what you do should speak so loudly that
people don’t have to hear what you say. Our deeds matter. Our intentions are good and noble,
but they’re worthless if we do nothing about them. One faithful
shepherd said, in its nature, this is a practical exhortation
intended and fitted to act on the hearts and lives of those
that become acquainted with it. The scriptures principally teach
truth. of which it is the very essence
to have an immediate bearing on the conduct of life to prompt
us through reverence and gratitude and love to a hearty compliance.”
Did you get that? That is Christianity. We’re not
trying to earn our salvation. Our salvation, as we look at
James’s epistle, has already been bestowed. It’s already been
given. But out of love and affection
for the God who saved us comes our life. Our life is in response
to what God has done, not by means of earning it. And James
offers us the first, as I said, of three contrasts. There’s a
contrast here between the doers, between those who do by God’s
grace and those who simply do not. Look at the passage once again,
verse 22. Prove yourself doers of the word
and not merely hearers who delude themselves. And here, don’t make
the mistake that some people suggest that just by hearing
the word, you’re dulling yourself down, that more sermons make trouble. Hearing isn’t the problem
it’s hearing only that’s the problem. I’ve issued this warning
many times and I do it for shock value. I tell people people listen
to too many sermons and then just about the time I see them
up in arms and ready to strike me I say they listen to too many
sermons that they do not apply. Would to God that we listen to
more sermons. that we apply. When he says, hearers only, hearers
merely, he’s pointing to it’s like a group of people that just
sit in class. We used to call them auditors
when I was in seminary. Once you paid for a class, you
could sit in the class again and again and again. You’ve audited
classes before, likely. You’re not there for a grade.
You don’t have to perform. You don’t even have to take notes,
which is really nice. You don’t have to take the tests.
You don’t have to turn in any papers. If there are any presentations,
you don’t have to stand up and embarrass yourself and everyone
else. You’re just there as an auditor. You’re just listening. What James says is there’s a
lot of people in Christianity that are functioning like auditors.
They think that just by virtue of their attendance they’re there
and they’re not. That’s James’s point. They’re
there and they’re listening. But they’re not there to hear,
to examine their own heart. They’re not there to hear, to
discover new ways where they have offended God. They’re not
there to hear things that need to be eradicated from their life. They’re not there to hear any
of that. They’re auditing the class. He hears, but he hears merely. It’s not followed by a heart
of obedience. They don’t follow God’s word. They don’t seek to obey. Now, I want to flag this one. It’s
a quote, but I am going to quote it. But it’s a quote. Somebody
else said this, but it was appropriate enough that I’m going to quote
it. He said, our churches are filled with spiritual sponges. That’s not a bad thing. We ought
to be soaking it in, the truth that’s given week after week
after week. But hang on to that image of
a sponge. Our churches are filled with
spiritual sponges who soak up the information, sit, sour, and
eventually stink. His point is, that if that’s
all we’re there to do is to hear, it will rot us from the inside
out. If we’re not there to hear and
be changed by the word of God, it has the opposite effect in
our hearts and lives. Thomas Manton said it this way,
many go from sermon to sermon. They hear much, but they do not
digest it into their thoughts. The thought was that it was enough
to be busy. in the letter of scripture and
that a bare reading would yield them eternal life. Church is a dangerous place.
Did you realize that? Church is a dangerous place and
it’s almost better, I’m not suggesting this, it’s almost better not
to be here at all than to be here with no intent to hear and
obey. You’re heaping judgment upon
yourselves every time you hear God’s word. Always learning, Paul said to
Timothy, that there were people always learning and never able
to come to the knowledge of the truth. They never had a heart
to obey. They never sought to examine
their own hearts to see what God wanted to do in their hearts
and lives. The point is that James begins
to make here is that there are some people that don’t even dare
go near the mirror. They don’t want to see what the
mirror has to offer. They don’t want to see that they’ve
long since gone gray. They don’t want to see how much
weight they’ve got. They don’t want to see. But they’re spiritually people
that way too. They don’t want to go to God’s word. And if they
go, they don’t want to hear. They don’t want to consider how
far off the mark they are as believers, if they’re even such. And so this man deludes himself. He tricks himself. He falsely
convinces himself that hearing is okay or that whatever was
communicated to him isn’t about him or that he’s better than
others. And so God no doubt grades on
a curve and he after all is okay. One of the other times that this
passage or that word is used is in Colossians 2, 4, talking
about people being deluded with persuasive argument. This is
a man who has to work hard at convincing himself that he really
is okay, that the standard really is too high, that God really
is too much of a killjoy. That it really doesn’t apply
to him. This is a hearer only who hears
the sermon, by the way, he hears the message of God. He knows
the truth. But that’s all he does is hear
it. It never distills down into his
heart. It never convicts. It never brings about any change. It’s self-deception, said one,
by fallacious reasoning. It’s arresting in literal a pool
of ignorance. Jesus addressed this. In chapter seven of Matthew’s
gospel, Jesus addressed it very pointedly. Not everyone who says
to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven. He says that there are going
to be those who had come to church who were hearers, they heard,
but they were hearers merely, just like James says. They never
did anything about it. Here’s what Jesus said. Not everyone
who says to me, Lord, Lord will enter the kingdom of heaven.
But he who does the will of my father who is in heaven will
enter. Many will say on that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy
in your name and in your name cast out demons and in your name
perform many miracles? There are many, Jesus says, that
are going to come and say, we were in church, we heard, we
talked about all these things. And I will declare to them, I
never knew you. Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness.”
It’s sin, it’s the eradication of sin that’s in focus in that
passage and in all of Scripture. There are plenty of people in
this world that are satisfied to be hearers and nothing more.
To be content with just being hearers, who have heard a good
sermon or read a good book or read on a regular basis the Bible,
the best of all books. And if you think of it, that
was the great fault of the Jewish people, wasn’t it? They heard,
they attended, faithful, dutiful. They trusted that just by being
in church, just by being a Jew, just by being, that they were
exempt from the judgments of God, they were hearers who deluded
themselves. Those people completely missed
the point of salvation, that we are saved
for good works, not saved by good works. They have a false idea of what
Christianity even is. And as one pastor said, they
allow themselves through man’s natural aversion to all genuine
spirituality. Did you hear what he said? We have a natural, inborn, innate
aversion. to stepping in front of a mirror,
to having our spiritual lives put on display. We don’t want
to see what God has to show us. A natural aversion to all genuine
spirituality, to be persuaded by the wicked one that this is
the sum of all Christian duty and itself is the gate of life
so that by mere hearing they enter in. That’s what they think.
And they trick themselves, they delude themselves into thinking
that just their mere attendance is enough. He concludes and says, To rest,
satisfied with the means of grace, without yielding up our hearts
to their power as means, so as to receive the grace and exhibit
its working in our lives, is manifestly folly of the same
class as that of a workman. who should content himself with
possessing tools without using them. Did you hear what he said? He said it’s just like the guy
who owns all these great tools and never uses them, so is the
person who comes and comes and comes with no intent to let God
touch their beloved sins. And so many
people come And some come to church and they’re inattentive.
Some come to the scriptures and they’re inattentive, little regard
to what they hear. They don’t take it to heart.
They think it’s all about someone else. Or they’re inconsiderate. They don’t ever ponder what they
hear. They don’t meditate upon it.
They don’t mull it over. They don’t try to tear it apart
and see how it applies to their own life. They’re just there to hear something
fancy. They read the Word almost as
if it’s literature and not as the very Word of God. There are some who come and all
they want to do is come out of church with some kind of novel
idea. Others come so that they can
just interact socially. But those who come to hear, those
who come to submit themselves to Almighty God, they’re there
to become doers. They’re there to examine their
hearts and lives and to be and to become what God would have
them. But there’s a second distinction
that is very clear here in this word. Very clear in this passage. And there are differences between
these two respondents. One is a doer and one is a dullard.
But secondly, they are different in their ability to focus. I
want you to look at this. There are those who give a casual
glance, and I want you to notice this, at themselves. They give
a casual glance at themselves. Their focus is themselves, but
it’s a casual glance. They don’t look too deeply. I
don’t want to see that. But that’s contrasted here in
these passages. And the greater measure of this
is given to the one who just casually glances at himself. But the contrast here is with
those who devote an intense attention, not to themselves, but to God’s
word. They want to know the standard.
And if they know the standard, then They will know how far they’re
off the mark. They will know what God requires
of them. And so you note from this passage
immediately that between the two men pictured here there is
not only a difference in what they consider, what they look
upon, but there’s an obvious difference in the intensity of
their willingness to even focus. Look at the passage if you would.
Verse 22, 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 his natural
face in a mirror. For once he has looked at himself
and has gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person
he was. It was a casual glance. We were laughing about this the
other day. Have you ever looked at your watch or your phone watch?
And you tuck it back in your pocket and then you realize it
didn’t register. You looked, you know that you looked at it
because you can still remember putting it back in your pocket,
but it didn’t register. That’s exactly what he says are
these people that look in the mirror and they, as soon as they
walk away, they’ve forgotten. Spiritually, he says the same
thing. They know. They know that they’re
off the mark. They know that they’re off of
the standard of God’s word. They know that they’ve transgressed.
They can hear it and read it in God’s word. But no sooner
do they walk away. No sooner do they close up their
Bible. No sooner is the sermon finished.
They’ve forgotten all about the conviction that they sensed for
a moment. Look at v. 23, “‘For if anyone
is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who
looks at his natural face in a mirror.'” He’s just like that. There’s nothing wrong with looking
in a mirror. Mirrors have been around for thousands of years.
Paul speaks of mirrors in both of his epistles to the Corinthians. There’s nothing wrong with looking
at the mirror, and sometimes it’s rather advisable. But James’s point here is the
tendency to look at the mirror, walk away, and forget completely
that your hair needs to be combed or that your teeth need to be
brushed, spiritually speaking. There’s something that needs
to be done. There’s something that needs to be attended to. That’s his point when he says,
if anyone is a hearer of the word, not a doer, he’s like a
man who looks at his natural face. That’s what a mirror does. It reflects the natural face. The face that God gave you. As
soon as he looked at himself, he’s immediately forgotten what
kind of person he was. You see both of these people
here. They both read. They both hear
the standard that God issues in His Word. It’s the same for
both. And God’s word will be like a
spiritual mirror for us if we’ll only go and submit ourselves
to it. The problem isn’t that this group
doesn’t hear. The problem is that they merely
hear. There’s nothing wrong with the quality of the seed. There’s
nothing wrong with the quality of the message. The issue is
that people have a tendency to forget immediately and conveniently
what God says of them. He does not abide. He doesn’t
ponder the word for himself. He doesn’t examine his heart
and his life. Look at verse 25. He has become
a forgetful hearer. Do you hear the oxymoronic statement
that is issued there? It doesn’t make any sense. And
it shouldn’t. A forgetful hearer is one that
practically never heard it in the first place. These kinds of people live as
if the word doesn’t apply to them, or the word doesn’t mean
what it says. Thankfully, as you glide into
verse 25, there’s a contrast with this dullard who has become
a forgetful hearer, it’s the doer, it’s the one whose life
lives out God’s word. Look at verse 25, one who looks
intently at the perfect law, the law of liberty and abides
by it, not having become a forgetful hearer, but an effectual doer.
He looks and he abides. He lingers long over the Word.
He studies the Word. He examines the Word. And he
lets the Word of God examine him. And if you let that happen,
God will show you areas that need to be addressed. God will
show you your sin. God will show you your great
need of His grace. And then He will supply it. This
little phrase, one who looks intently, it’s a word that we’ve
seen many times. We’ve seen it most recently in
the gospel, the gospel of John. Remember of those as those went
to the tomb, Christ’s tomb, they came to the tomb and they stooped
over and looked in. Same word. The same word that’s
used in 1 Peter, things into which angels long to look. That’s what God has given to
us. It’s a deep, intense investigation. And I would suggest to you that
most people never get there. Most people are content to just
skim along the surface of God’s Word. They don’t want to be confronted
with the deep truths. They don’t want to be confronted
with their own inconsistencies, their sin. And so he says that by contrast,
there is one. There is one who looks intently
at the perfect law, the law of liberty, the liberating law. that shows us in our desperate
condition, that shows us of our need of Christ, that shows us
of what sin is, that shows us of the holiness of God, that
shows us that unless we are in Christ, we are doomed. It shows
us. If we look intently at that perfect
law, that liberating law, and abide by it, We become effectual doers. We
see our sin for what it is. Can’t reason it away. Can’t excuse
it away. It’s sin. And it must be dealt with. And
sin has already been paid for by Jesus Christ, and that by
God’s grace, if I’m a Christian, God will give me the grace to
overcome this area of sin as well. Because Jesus Christ paid
for it. But there’s a third distinction,
and it’s a short one. There’s a third distinction here
that is almost profound. Because not only does he point
to the characterization as being different between these two individuals
and their focus is different, but the third thing, their reward
is different. Their reward is different. The reward of those who do who
humbly look at themselves and see their sin for what it is
and cry out for grace and forgiveness. This man shall be blessed in
what he does. It’s a third contrast. But only
one of the two men is even mentioned. As we look at this third contrast,
the obedient man, the mindful man, the humble man, he will
be blessed. The other man, James ignores
altogether. He doesn’t even mention him.
But the inevitable conclusion is that this man is not, cannot
be blessed. That little word blessed, we’ve
seen it before. It is the biblical word for happiness. But it’s beyond our understanding
of earthly happiness. It’s a blissful, fortunate state
in which a Christian alone finds himself to be before God. Someone
who is in an absolutely positive state of being. We don’t tend
to look at it this way, but if you are aware that your life
has offended God, you are blessed. Because God in his infinite holiness
wants you to be holy. He has blessed you by bringing
that to your attention. And if you have a heart to repent
of that sin, to be done with that sin, then you are blessed. And if God has brought that to
mind and brought you to knees of repentance. He offers you
grace, grace to change. You don’t have to live in it
and wallow in it. You don’t have to be that person
anymore. It’s a blessing. It’s a blessing
to be convicted. It’s a blessing to be brought
to repentance. It’s a blessing to have the grace
to change, and it’s a blessing to be different. And that’s what
he says the doer is in the end. It wasn’t him, inherently him. It wasn’t because of his upbringing.
It wasn’t because of his DNA. It wasn’t because of his denominational
affiliation. It was because it’s a work of
God that God has done in his life. He’s blessed, happy. We have a tendency to listen
for everybody else. We ought to be listening for
ourselves. Would you examine your heart as we bow before Almighty
God? Our merciful God, we do humble
ourselves before you, each one of us. And Lord, there have been
many times where each one of us have come in and casually
listened to God’s word, either here or someplace, or maybe listened
for someone else, thinking that the word didn’t apply to us,
or read a passage of scripture flippantly and carelessly, or
heard a message or an article. Lord, we’ve all done this. And
so it’s not hard and fast whether we are in one camp or the other
but to what degree are we becoming doers of the word? Lord we see
how easy it is to slip and to be deluded into thinking that
some passage doesn’t apply to us or some principle, some exhortation,
some sermon Lord God grant us the grace to
examine our hearts that we too might become doers of the word. And Lord as we bow we acknowledge
those of us who know the Lord Jesus Christ that our salvation
is never by doing. We’re not saved by law keeping. We’re not saved by what we do
or how much money we give. We’re saved only by our faith
in the Lord Jesus Christ. But once we’re saved, you expect
us, you demand us, to become doers of the word. Grant us that
blessing. It’s in Jesus’ name that we pray.
Amen. As we close, if you would take
your boards and stand and be close during the living breath
of God, Three prizes, two medals.