Introductory Comments
1. To be a Christian may not always seem easy. But being a believer has its benefits as well. As James indicates in vs. 25 - a believer can live in freedom and the fullness of God’s blessings.
2. This evening I ask you, do you have freedom? Do you have the freedom to live as you really want to in order to please God? Or do you feel bound up - bound to sins and habits and worries and concerns that lead to discouragement and continuous struggles? Do you feel controlled by infections that are deeply rooted within us? Things like pride, as we discussed this morning, or anger or lust? Are you as free as you could and should be as a Christian?
3. A second question. Are you experiencing the blessings of God? Can you say on a daily basis "I am truly blessed"? Can you say "God is so good to me"?
4. If you don’t live in this freedom and blessing, do you want to? This evening we consider how to experience freedom and blessing in our lives.
5. James tells us they are available to us and, as always, he tells us in a just a few verses, what we are to do and then how we can do it. He tells us that we can be free and blessed by being doers of the word and not just listeners. And after that he tells us how to become doers.
Teaching
1. First we are to be doers not listeners. Last week James told us to be quick to listen. This week he says don’t just listen, but act upon what you have heard.
2. So many of us Christians are listeners. We focus on hearing, reading and learning the word rather than doing the word. We give Sunday School awards to those who memorize the word rather than those live according to it. We come to church to hear word but do we go home to live the word? Someone said that "many Christians want to enjoy the thrill of feeling right but are not willing to endure the inconvenience of being right."
3. Chuck Swindoll gives us a good illustration of this, in his book, Improving Your Serve:
"To make the value of obedience just a practical as possible, let’s play ’Let’s Pretend.’ 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 make plans to travel abroad and stay there until a new branch office gets established. I make all the arrangements to take my family and move to Europe for six to eight months. And I leave 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 and you stay. Months pass. A flow of letters are mailed from Europe and received by you at the national headquarters. I spell out all my expectations. Finally, I return. Soon after my arrival, I drive down to the office and 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 is doing her nails, chewing gum and listening to her favorite disco station. I look around and notice the wastebaskets are overflowing. The carpet hasn’t been vacuumed for weeks, and nobody seems concerned that the owner has returned. I asked about your whereabouts and someone in the crowded lounge area points down the hall and yells, "I think he’s down there."
Disturbed, I move in that direction and bump into you as you are finishing a chess game with our sales manager. I ask you to step into my office, which has been temporarily turned into a television room for watching afternoon soap operas. "What in the world is going on, man?" "What do you mean, Chuck?" "Well, look at this place!
Didn’t you get any of my letters?" "Letters? Oh yes! Sure! I got every one of them. As a matter of fact, Chuck, we have had a letter study every Friday night since you left. We have even divided the personnel into small groups to discuss many of the things you wrote. Some of the things were really interesting. You will be pleased to know that a few of us have actually committed to memory some of your sentences and paragraphs. One or two memorized an entire letter or two - Great stuff in those letters." "OK. You got my letters. You studied them and meditated on them; discussed and even memorized them. But what did you do about them?" "Do? We didn’t do anything about them."
4. Does this seem somewhat familiar? - does it remind us of church? Are you a doer of the word? All the time?
5. If not, James tells us you to become a doer.
6. He first tells us what a listener does that stops him from being a doer and then he tells us what a doer does that makes him a doer. He uses the metaphor of a mirror.
7. A listener looks at his face in the mirror but then walks away and then immediately forgets what he looks like. This may seem strange but it happens all the them. Each morning I stand before the mirror and I wash my face, shave and brush my teeth. I see my face but I don’t really take a good look at it.
a. Either I am preoccupied and look but don’t see.
b. Or else I am so familiar with my face I really don’t take a close look.
c. Or else I don’t really want to look at myself to closely. To do so would be to see the increasing number of wrinkles, the chubbier cheeks, the grey hairs or worse yet not see any hair at all. Sometimes it is safer and nicer not to look to closely.
8. Perhaps when we were teenagers we spent hours looking at each blemish trying to make it disappear or to try to get our hair brushed the right way, but usually that changes after time. As a teenager we want to look just right and when we are older either we can’t make ourselves look just right or more probably, it really doesn’t matter that much to us anymore.
9. We can look in the Bible the same way.
We can read or hear it but we are preoccupied and thinking about something else. I- remember asking someone right after church about a sermon I had just preached, and was deflated when they told me "Sorry, I wasn’t really paying attention, I was preoccupied"
b. Or sometimes we think we know God’s word so well we don’t take a close look. "I know what it says, I’ve heard it before".
c. Or perhaps we think we know ourselves very well and we don’t need to use the Bible as a mirror.
10. For the Bible makes us look at ourselves by comparing us to God’s holiness. Iit makes us see ourselves as God sees us. And in His perfect light we can’t hide any blemishes. So when we hear word we don’t apply it to ourselves. We don’t think of what it means for us and what it expects of us. I’d rather think of how I looked when I was younger and not face reality of what I look like now.
11. And so I easily forget what it says. Its easier. At Teacher’s College learned saying "I hear and I forget, I see and I remember and I do and I understand." And so we would rather only hear and forget. Its easier that way, so we think.
12. But that is not how a doer looks in the mirror or in the mirror of the Bible. A doer looks intently into the perfect law.
a. The Greek word here translated looks intently means the following: "to stoop to a thing in order to look at it; to look at with head bowed forward; to look into with the body bent; to stoop and look into; metaphorically, to look carefully into, inspect curiously: of one who would become acquainted with something."
b. This means to examine oneself carefully in the mirror. To look intently into the perfect law means to study God’s word closely. To examine it to see what is says and how it applies to oneself.
13. But what is perfect law. It is what God expects of us/
a. James 1:17 Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father.
b. Mark 12:30-1 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ’Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these."
c. Gal 5:14 The entire law is summed up in a single command: "Love your neighbor as yourself."
14. When we look intently we see God Himself and His heart - His purity and holiness.
15. As we look at word, it becomes like a mirror.
a. A mirror must have a perfect smooth surface or it will distort the truth of what it is reflecting. God’s word does not lie about what is right and about how we fall shgort.
b. And the mirror does not change - God’s word does not change. 1 Pet 1:24-25 For, "All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord stands forever." And this is the word that was preached to you.
c. If we seem out of line with the word , it is we who have changed, not the word. To line up again, some try to change word, but we must change back to it. And because we change, we need to look to see if we have drifted away - must do on an ongoing basis - continue to look intently in it.
d. And mirror is useless unless we use it - so we must use the word. As said before, we may not like what we see, but it is necessary.
16. We need to make changes so that we start appearing in line with God’s word. To apply and then to go back to see if we have done so correctly. To ask "Have I loved God with all my heart today?" What would your answer be?
17. When first learn trade, needed to study and apply and refer back to manual. Gerry, do you ever refer to manual after 20 years or so? I would think so. To deal with things we forget or with new situations. This takes work and discipline but the benefits are worth it.
18. We become free. As we walk according to word we discover we are freed from slavery to sin. Not all at once, but in growing ways. The desire to curse or drink left me before I realized it when I committed myself to living God’s way.
a. John 8:31-32 To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, "If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."
b. Rom 8:2 because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.
c. I challenge you to start reading even only 5-10 verses a day and ask God to help you apply them to your life. Look intently at them and you will see yourself become free.
19. And then we will also be blessed in what we do. God wants to bless us, but I believe there are rules to when how He blesses.
a. He will not bless us if they will become more important to us than He is to us. We have discussed this before.
b. Also He will not bless us if we think we will be blessed doing things our way. I believe that when we start going our own way in disobedience to God’s perfect law, we will not be blessed.
Why?
c. God’s law is perfect for all of life. We have a bread maker - great to wake up to fresh bread. But unless we follow the recipe perfectly, it won’t work. That’s simple logic.
d. 2nd - if God blesses disobedience that He would not be letting us grow but would rather lead us to sin, which is impossible, James as James told us earlier in James 1.
20. Friends - are you free, are you blessed? Do you want to be more free and feel more blessed? Look intently in this mirror .
