DOERS, AND NOT HEARERS ONLY
Posted by Pastor Greg Allen on May 1, 2024 under AM Bible Study |
AM Bible Study Group: May 1, 2024 from James 1:22-25
Theme: True blessing from God’s word comes not merely by hearing it, but by faithfully doing what it says.
(All Scripture is taken from The New King James Version, unless otherwise indicated).
The Lord Jesus gave His disciples a very serious warning at the end of His Sermon on The Mount. It’s the best-known and best-loved of all sermons; and in it, He passed great spiritual truth on to His followers. But He closed His great sermon by telling all those who heard it;
“Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock. But everyone who hears these sayings of Mine, and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it fell. And great was its fall” (Matthew 7:24-27).
The people who heard Jesus’ teaching in that sermon on that day were greatly privileged. They heard the greatest sermon ever preached by the greatest Preacher who ever walked the earth. But sadly, it may have been that many who heard it were not ultimately blessed by it at all. And sadly, many who have read the words of that sermon in the Bible over the years—or who have even committed some of its words to memory—did not end up blessed by what they read either. And it would have been because they only ‘heard’ it … but didn’t put what they heard into practice.
This was a great concern for Pastor James. He had been writing to his fellow believers who were undergoing a great deal of trials. He wanted them to grow in their Christian lives; and he knew that the word of God would help them. And so, in James 1:21, he told them;
Therefore lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls (James 1:21).
He knew that all that they needed for their growth and security in the Christian life would be found in God’s written word. But simply ‘receiving’ it—simply hearing it, and reading it, and encountering it through preaching and teaching—would not be enough. Just as the man in our Lord’s parable, someone can ‘hear’ … and yet still suffer loss in the moment of trial. And so; in verses 22-25—in words that we can be sure were a reflection of our Lord’s own teaching at the end of His great sermon—Pastor James added:
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 observing his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does (vv. 22-25).
Pastor James’ words remind us that simply having an abundance of God’s word within our reach will not do us any ultimate good if it isn’t put into actual practice. He reminds us that true blessing from the word comes not merely by hearing it, but by faithfully doing what it says.
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This reminds me of something I heard once from a world-famous motivational speaker. We should, of course, always be careful of so-called ‘self-help’ and ‘success’ teaching. What constitutes ‘success’ in the eyes of the world is often very different from what constitutes ‘success’ in our walk with the Lord. But this famous, secular motivational speaker seemed to have understood something of the principle James is setting before us.
This motivational speaker said that he had spent his life reading and studying success literature. He read every kind of success material he could find—from all the way back to the 1700s up to modern times. And he made a remarkable observation. He found that—statistically—less than 10% of the people who read or listen to such ‘success’ material actually ended up experiencing ‘success’ as a result. Why was that? Why so few? He concluded that the main problem was that most people simply didn’t put any of what they learned into practice. They ended up knowing what to do, but had failed when it came to actually doing what they know.
For people in business, or in secular leadership, that would certainly be a sad loss. It might result in a lower income and a lower standard of living than what someone might have been able to enjoy in the course of their lifetime. But for followers of Jesus, it’s far more disastrous. It would involve a failure to live the victorious kind of life our Lord wants us to live; and may even result in eternal loss. It would result in a failure to gain the growth and blessings that God would want us to derive from the trials He allows us to undergo. And for the unbeliever—who hears the word of God calling him, but who doesn’t respond by believing on Jesus and turning from sin—it would result in a greater and more terrible condemnation on the day of judgment.
The blessing from God’s word doesn’t come merely by the hearing. So then; how do we—who hear God’s word in such an abundance—truly become blessed by it?
First, as verse 22 shows us, we should …
1. BEWARE OF THE DANGER OF ‘HEARING ONLY’ (v. 22).
James wrote, “But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves” (v. 22).
The word that’s translated as ‘be’ is in what’s called the ‘imperative mood’. That means that it’s meant to be understood as a command. But it’s also in what’s called the ‘present tense’ of the verb; which means that we’re to be in an ongoing state of obeying this command. We are always—as a regular habit of life and practice—to be ‘doers of the word’ and not merely hearers of it.
This is a principle that our Lord repeated in His own teaching. In Luke 11, for example, we read that—as He was teaching publicly;
… a certain woman from the crowd raised her voice and said to Him, “Blessed is the womb that bore You, and the breasts which nursed You!” But He said, “More than that, blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it!” (Luke 11:27-28).
Think of what He said to His disciples in the upper room—just before He went to the cross—right after He had washed their feet. He told them;
“Do you know what I have done to you? You call Me Teacher and Lord, and you say well, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done to you. Most assuredly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master; nor is he who is sent greater than he who sent him. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them” (John 13:12-17).
At one point in His public teaching, in Luke 6:46, He asked;
“But why do you call Me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do the things which I say?” (Luke 6:46).
So; James reminded his brothers and sisters in Christ about this important aspect of our Lord’s teaching—and, in fact, of the whole word of God. He even went further to explain that to be a hearer only, and not a doer, is to deceive one’s own self. It can lead someone to think that they’re gaining benefit from the word of God by simply being exposed to it, but the whole while long be losing any benefit of the ‘hearing’ by not ‘doing’.
How might this happen? For one thing, people can deceive themselves by being ‘sentimental’ about the word—treating the mere ‘hearing’ of it as an end in and of itself. Ezekiel once had to deal with this problem in his preaching ministry. People came simply to listen to his impressive presentation. In Ezekiel 33:31-32, the Lord told him;
“So they come to you as people do, they sit before you as My people, and they hear your words, but they do not do them; for with their mouth they show much love, but their hearts pursue their own gain. Indeed you are to them as a very lovely song of one who has a pleasant voice and can play well on an instrument; for they hear your words, but they do not do them” (Ezekiel 33:31-32).
People can also be deceived in the mere hearing of the word by becoming prideful of what they know. In 1 Corinthians 8, Corinthian believers had become so boastful of their knowledge of God’s instructions about idols that they failed to obey the command of love. Verses 1-2 say;
Now concerning things offered to idols: We know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies. And if anyone thinks that he knows anything, he knows nothing yet as he ought to know (1 Corinthians 8:1-2).
We can even deceive ourselves by merely hearing God’s word and yet holding on to the sins that God’s word condemns—justifying ourselves in His sight. As it says in 1 John 1:8-9;
If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:8-9).
So; we should—first of all—beware of the danger of ‘hearing only’. Second, as verses 23-24 go on to show us, we should …
2. UNDERSTAND THE DECEPTIVENESS OF ‘HEARING ONLY’ (vv. 23-24).
The deceptive nature of ‘hearing only’ is shown to us through an illustration drawn from everyday, common life. In verses 23-24, James wrote, “For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was” (vv. 23-24).
Just stop and consider how many times—in the course of a day—you and I deliberately look in a mirror. Mirrors were rare things in James’ day. But for good or ill, we live in a time when there are mirrors almost everywhere. We can even see ourselves reflected in a store window as we pass by, or on a car windshield on a sunny day. We do so—supposedly—for a practical reason. We want to see how we look in order to fix anything that might be out of order. But what if we see something out of order and don’t do anything to fix it? What would then be the point of having looked into a mirror at all? Why bother? It wouldn’t even matter if we had a large collection of beautifully framed mirrors, or if we set aside a full hour the first thing in the morning gazing into each one of them. What would be the benefit of looking … and then never doing anything about what we saw?
But what an even worse thing it would be to do this with the holy word of God. What if we looked, and read, and studied, and listened—what if we collected many copies of the Bible in different translations, and had lots of commentaries and charts and maps and helps—what if we listened to great Bible teachers and preachers and accumulated vast knowledge of what the Bible says—but didn’t then do what it says? What good would all of that work be?
The word of God reveals the greatest truth to us of all—the beauty of our Redeemer, who gave His life to make us sharers of His own glory. As it says in 2 Corinthians 3:18;
But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord (2 Corinthians 3:18).
But how dreadful it would be to look and not be transformed at all; and all because we did not do what the word says!
That leads us, finally, to verse 25; and how it teaches us …
3. THE CURE FOR BEING ‘HEARERS ONLY’ (v. 25).
In verse 25, James wrote, “But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does.”
He referred to the word of God as “the perfect law of liberty”; or, as it’s translated in the New International Version, “the perfect law that gives freedom”. Why does he call it this? It’s because—as the law of God—it shows us what’s wrong in our lives. And by showing us what’s wrong, it leads us to the grace of God through faith in Jesus our Redeemer who sets us free from our sins and makes us holy. As Paul once put it;
All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work (2 Timothy 3:16-17).
It’s the ‘perfect law’ because it comes from a perfect Source—God our Father; and it gives us all that we need to know. And it’s a law of ‘liberty’ because it brings us to God’s life-transforming grace through His Son; and as Jesus Himself said, “… if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed” (John 8:36). No wonder it’s worth ‘hearing’ regularly!
And because it’s not enough to be ‘hearers only’, James also gives us a four-step process by which to be truly blessed in the hearing. He tells us first that we must be characterized by ‘looking into’ it. The word that he uses isn’t the usual word for merely ‘looking’ at a thing. It isn’t a mere ‘passing glance’. It’s a very intense word that means “to stoop down and look into” a thing in order to see it in a complete and exact way. It was the word that was used to describe how the apostle John arrived at the tomb of our Lord and, “stooping down and looking in, saw the linen clothes lying there …” (John 20:5). We ourselves need to ‘look into’ this perfect law with the same intensity and intentionality—that is, to truly learn what it says.
Second, James says we must be ‘continuing’ in it. We’re not to merely ‘look’ once; but we’re to keep looking. When we find we don’t understand something from God’s word, we mustn’t give up and simply move on to something else. We must keep at it—staying with it—remaining in it. We must keep it before us so that it sinks in. We must be like it says in Psalm 1:2;
But his delight is in the law of the Lord,
And in His law he meditates day and night (Psalm 1:2).
Third, we must make sure we’re ‘not forgetting’ it. As James puts it, we must not be “forgetful hearers”. That’s very often our problem. We read what the word says—we gaze into the ‘mirror’ of God’s truth—and then walk away and forget what it told us. For this reason, we need to keep it in our memory. We need to write it down and take it with us. We need to post it somewhere so that we’re constantly reminded of it. Keeping hold of God’s word in our memory is key to experiencing its life-changing power in our lives. As it says in Psalm 119:11;
Your word I have hidden in my heart,
That I might not sin against You (Psalm 119:11).
And finally, we must make sure that we are ‘faithfully doing’ it. Looking into it, continuing in it, and not forgetting it, are all preparatory for—and are to lead us to—faithfully translating it into action in the challenges and circumstances of daily life. Dr. John Mitchell used to say that he never intentionally memorized Scripture—even though he was able to quote much of it from memory. He said that he simply put a passage into practice; and in doing what it said, he ended up memorizing it because it had become a part of his life and thought through action.
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Here’s a suggestion. From now on, every time we look in a mirror—and then do something about what we see—let’s let that be a reminder to us of Pastor James’ exhortation to treat God’s word in the same way. Let’s use that as a prompt to our prayers; and to ask God to help us—as we look into the mirror of His word—to “be doers of the word, and not hearers only”. That way, we’ll be truly blessed in the hearing!
AE
