Responding to the Word of God: Part 2 James Lesson 10

 We need to return to the first chapter of James again today. This is the second message on the topic of responding to the word of God. James is giving us a series of tests of genuine faith. He gave us the test of our response to trials, followed by the test of our response to temptations, and now the test of our response to the word of God. These responses are reliable indicators of the truth concerning our relationship to God in salvation. Let’s read verses 19-25 together. 

 Our response to the word of God consists of two parts. First, we must receive the word of God. This was the theme of last week’s message from verses 19-21. In order to receive the word of God we must have receptive hearts. A receptive heart is marked by a desire to hear what God’s word says. It is quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger. While these are great principles that apply to many aspects of life, James is giving us this instruction in the context of receiving the implanted word which is able to save our souls.

 To receive the word of God we must also have pure hearts. We must put aside all filthiness and excess wickedness. We don’t want to try to take the holy, pure, precious word of God and put it into a filthy heart. I used the illustration of serving great food on a plate that has yesterday’s dried food on it. We must come to the word of God with repentant hearts. We must receive the word with pure hearts.

 Finally, we must receive the implanted word with humble hearts. In humility we receive the implanted word. To have a humble heart is to receive the word without arguing, disputing, or resisting. It is to esteem right all God’s precepts concerning everything. To have a humble heart means we set aside our pride and open our hearts to hear what God wants to address. It is to acknowledge that God alone is the ultimate authority in my life and to embrace His word with eagerness, honesty, and transparency.

 We must receive the word implanted because it is vital in saving our souls. We are born again by the word of truth, Peter tells us. It is the imperishable seed. We must receive the word because it sanctifies. We must receive the word because it nourishes us as milk and meat nourishes the body. We must receive the word because it informs and instructs us on the fruitful life that brings glory to God and honor to our Lord Jesus Christ. There is no greater need in the Christian’s life than the need for the word of God.

 And, as we will see today, we must receive the word because our goal in receiving it with receptive, pure, and humble hearts, is that we may become those who act on God’s word and prove ourselves to be doers of the word. This is important because it is not the one who hears the words of Christ and admires them that survives in judgment. It is the one who hears the words of Christ and acts on them. Look at Luke 6:46-49.

 James was greatly influenced by the teaching of Jesus. James includes doing the word as part of our response to the word of God as evidence of true saving faith. I continue to emphasize this because the Bible emphasizes this. Simply believing is not sufficient evidence of genuine conversion. Doing what the word tells us to do, producing fruit because fruit is reliable evidence, living for God’s glory…these are the proofs of genuine saving faith. If the proof is not there, the problem needs to be exposed.

 We will need two weeks to get through these verses. Today we are going to look at what it means to prove ourselves to be doers of the word. Next week we will come back and look at a portrait of one who deludes themselves. This will let us finish chapter 1 and we may take a break to focus on the Resurrection for a couple weeks.

 We have a very simple outline for today. There is a very simple process by which we prove ourselves doers of the word. The very simple three step process involves looking into or listening to God’s word, learning from God’s word, and living by God’s word.

 This is not a new process. This has always been God’s program for His people. In Deuteronomy 5:1 we read, “Then Moses summoned all Israel and said to them; ‘Hear, O Israel, the statutes and the ordinances which I am speaking today in your hearing, that you may learn them and observe them carefully.” God’s program was simply listen, learn, and observe, or live by what you hear and learn.

 To prove ourselves doers of the word we must being by looking into God’s word. Looking is an emphasis of James in this passage. He is warning against looking and forgetting, and we will look more at that next week. But he describes the doer as one who “looks intently at the perfect law” in verse 25.

 The verb translated “looks intently” is “parakupto.” It literally means to bend down beside. It speaks of stooping to get closer for a more careful examination. This word was used of the disciples at the empty tomb. They stooped down to look in to make sure about what they were seeing. Metaphorically this means to look carefully so that we find out what we need to know.

 Proving ourselves doers of the word starts with a genuine desire to know what God has to say to us. We don’t want look into His truth for informational purposes only. We want to look into His truth for transformational purposes. Looking into God’s word isn’t a sight seeing tour. It is to be an insight gaining experience. We must look into God’s word because it will reveal to us what kind of person we are. The problem with the forgetful hearer is that he looks and immediately forgets what he sees. His problem was that he looked only with interest to see what it says. Doers look intently. The main word in the adverb “intently” is “intent.” Intent suggests purpose, reason, and meaning.

 Proving yourself to be a doer of the word begins with looking intently into God’s word. Jesus said it like this, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” To have ears to hear is to have the receptive heart that truly wants to know what God’s word says.

 Martin Luther wrote this concerning the necessity of God’s word. “God will not be seen, known, or comprehended except through His word alone. Whatever, therefore, one undertakes for salvation apart from the word is in vain. God will not respond to that. He will not have it. He will not tolerate any other way. Therefore, let His book in which He speaks to you be commended to you. For He did not cause it to be written to no purpose.”

 What do we learn? When we look, if we look intently, what will we see? We will see the truth. If we look intently at the perfect law we will find out what kind of people we are. Verses 23-24 describe the one who looks and goes away, and immediately forgets “what kind of person he was.” This is what God’s word reveals to us. It reveals what kind of people we are. God’s word is truth and God’s word reveals the truth about the things we must understand.

 It may help if we consider James’ description of what it is we are looking intently into. It is the perfect law. We have encountered this word “perfect” already in chapter 1. In verse 4 we are told to “let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” This describes the person who is mature. It describes one in whom all the necessary stuff is there to stand strong and respond to trials in a way that glorifies God.

 The same word was used in verse 17 to describe the “perfect gift” from above. We know that God’s gifts are perfect, complete, and lacking nothing. God has given us everything we need to withstand temptation if we will accept what He has provided as good, sufficient, and lacking in nothing.

 James calls the law of God the perfect law in verse 25. The idea is that the law of God is complete. The law of God has all the necessary parts. Nothing is missing from God’s law. God’s law is an expression of His own perfection. God’s law manifests God’s righteous requirements. What we learn from God’s law is that God is righteous and His requirements for us are that we live by His righteous requirements.

 There is a real sense in which to look intently at the perfect law means to look for, and understand the intent of God’s law. What is the intent of God’s law? Why did God give us the succinct, condensed version of His law in the Ten Commandments? Most people think that this is how we get to heaven. We get to heaven by keeping the Ten Commandments. But is that the intent of God’s law? It is not.

 Let’s turn to Matthew 5 to see this explained by Jesus. Begin in verse 17-19. Jesus warns about annulling any of the commandments of God. He addressed this because this was a real problem in His day. He points His finger directly at the culprits in verse 20. This is a stunning statement when you consider how exact and fastidious the scribes and Pharisees were in their commitment to keep the commandments of God. But here was the problem. The Pharisees were trying to keep the commandments of God without having learned what God wanted them to understand from the law of God. They never sought to understand the intent of God’s law.

 Jesus goes on to explain what we must all learn from the law of God. We learn that the law of God is a perfect law. We learn that God expects perfect obedience to His standard, not man’s watered down, externalized, ritualistic observation. W learn that keeping the law of God isn’t simply about what we do on the outside. It is an issue of the heart. What we learn as we look intently into the perfect law is that we are far from perfect. Yet, God says that we must be perfect even as He is perfect. What we learn from the perfect law is that we are in trouble.

 The tax collector in Luke 18 learned what must be learned from the perfect law. The same story tells of the Pharisee who had learned nothing from the perfect law. The tax collector learned what kind of person he was and it left him undone, broken, humble, and desperately hungry and thirsty for righteousness, the righteousness that would make him acceptable in God’s presence. He learned the intent of God’s perfect law and this was the first step to him being justified.

 To look intently into the perfect law is to come to realize how completely spiritually bankrupt we actually are. It is to come to grips with our utterly sinful, rebellious hearts. It is to come to understand that we are in trouble if God holds us, at the heart level, to His perfectly righteous standard. And that is exactly what God intended for His law to do. That is why Paul calls it the tutor that leads us to Christ. Look at Galatians 3:24 says, “Therefore the Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith.”

 James does not only call it the perfect law, he also calls it the law of liberty. It is the perfect law of liberty because it not only reveals how we are imprisoned to sin, but also how we are set free from bondage to sin. This is so eloquently outlined for us in Romans 8. We must look at this. Read Romans 8:1-17.

 When James speaks of the law to his Jewish readers, he is speaking of something they understood much better than us.  They had grown up under the law of Moses. The O.T. system was full of sacrifices and religious observances were extensive. What the Jews needed to understand was that those bloody sacrifices and meticulous rituals were never able to set one free from the dominion of sinful passions and lustful appetites. The O.T. law was truly the law of sin and of death as it is described by Paul in Romans 8:2. 

 So we also learn from the perfect law of liberty that the O.T. law of sin and death becomes, in Christ, the law of liberty. The law of liberty represents our freedom in Christ and because we are in Christ we have been set free from slavery to the corruption of the flesh. We are free to become effectual doers. We are empowered to “abide by it…” as James says in verse 25. We live by the Spirit and walk by the Spirit and we prove ourselves doers of the word.

 The one who looks intently at the perfect law of liberty, and learns what it is intended to teach us, comes to understand his need for redemption through Jesus Christ. This person realizes that he or she must be rescued from sin and death. This person will renounce all manner of self-righteousness, and embrace Christ as the only hope. This produces the transformational work of salvation making the one who has looked, and learned, the one who then lives by the word of God.

 The word “abide” literally means “to remain with.” Paul used it in 1 Cor. 16:6 to express his desire to stay with the Corinthians through the winter. Abiding in the perfect law of liberty means that we are not just giving lip service to God’s word, but giving life service. We have not truly heard what we will not truly heed.

 One of the most dangerous traps we fall into as Christians is the belief that going to church and hearing the message is the extent of our duty. Listen to this warning of Paul in Romans 2:13. “For it is not the hearers of the Law who are justified before God, but the doers of the Law will be justified.”

 The one who proves him or herself a doer of the word, an effectual doer, will be blessed in what he does. James had to have had Psalm 1 in mind. The man is blessed because his delight is in the law of the Lord. In God’s law he meditates day and night. He is looking into the word of God, and learning what the word of God says, in order that he might live by the word of God. Because he is a doer of God’s word he is like a tree firmly planted by streams of water. When seasons of drought come, this tree has a source of water that is always available. Because of this his life is fruitful and he prospers in all he does.

 In verse 27 James gives us two of the evidences in the life of the doer of God’s word. James calls it pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father. These two evidences are a willingness to sacrifice for the needs of others and keeping oneself unstained by the world. Orphans and widows were among the neediest in that society. They lived in constant distress, facing poverty and abuse. There were no government run social programs to care for them. Orphans and widows were often destitute. Not only that, they couldn’t reciprocate acts of generosity or kindness. To visit them was to help them by taking responsibility for their care. It involved more than just stopping by to say hello. Those who are doers of the word will demonstrate the same kind of compassion and love they have received from God.

 They will also keep themselves unstained by the world. Being a doer of God’s word means we will avoid being contaminated by the influences of the culture. The doer of God’s word let’s God define morality. The doer of God’s word let’s God decide what is right and what is wrong. The doer of God’s word proves his or her allegiance to God by living according to God’s holy truth.

 This does not mean we will be perfect. We all stumble in many ways. But the general orientation of our lives as doers of the word will be to show our love to God and our love to others consistently. Our deepest desires are to please our heavenly Father and live for the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. We see the wretched world for what it is and we want no part of what it says or does. We will not love the world, nor the things in the world because the love of the Father is what compels us.

 We are going to come back one more time to this passage because there is a lot here we have not covered. The part we have skipped will paint for us a portrait of the one who is a hearer only. This is one who is deluded. This is one who looks at God’s word but never learns what he needs to learn from it. Because he never learns, he never actually lives it. Therefore his life is void of the blessings. He thinks himself to be religious, but he does not bridle his tongue. He deceives his own heart. His religion is worthless. You won’t want to miss next week.

 Let’s pray.