HOW TO BE A BLESSED HEARER OF GOD’S WORD
Posted by Pastor Greg Allen on September 2, 2018 under 2018 |
Bethany Bible Church Sunday message; September 2, 2018 from James 1:22-25
Theme: The way to become a blessed hearer of God’s word is to make sure we are not just a hearer but a doer.
(All Scripture is taken from The New King James Version, unless otherwise indicated).
Among the things he wrote to them was how to have the right attitude toward hearing God’s word. One of the greatest things we can do to grow in Jesus Christ together is to hear regularly from God’s word. 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)
That, of course, is what we seek to do in the ministry of our church. We love God’s word; and we seek to read from it, study it, and grow in it together. May God help us to be meek enough to receive it in the holy way that we should.
But some of us were talking with one another the other day about this. And we agreed that we need to beware of the idea of just ‘hearing’ God’s word. ‘Hearing’ it is a very good thing; of course. But just ‘hearing’ it alone—only receiving’ it—will not, by itself, lead to any benefit from it. Pastor James goes on to write these important words of instruction:
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 (James 1:22-25).
If we want to truly be blessed together in the hearing of God’s word, then we must make sure to move beyond just being hearers; and to become sincere doers.
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I read something once from a famous motivational speaker. I think you’d know who it was. It’s that big tall good-looking fella with the gravelly voice. Now personally, believe that we should be discerning when it comes to “success” and “self-help” literature. Sometimes the advice such literature gives is good, but sometimes it isn’t very biblical. But I was impressed with something that this very famous leader in that movement had to say. He said that, statistically, less than 10% of people who buy and read or listen to “success” material actually follow through on what it says. Less than 10%! He said, “The main problem most people have is that they know what do to, but they don’t do what they know.”
I don’t know what that motivational speaker’s spiritual commitments are, but I believe that what he said was a rather biblical thing to say. It certainly reflects what Pastor James told us in this morning’s passage, doesn’t it?
As professing Christians, we very often know—and in great abundance!—what it is that God’s word tells us to do. We read the Scriptures regularly, listen to sermons, and go to Bible study groups together; and we listen to or watch teachings on the Scripture, and we quite literally hear over and over what God’s will for us is in His word. But at those times when we most need to do so—at those times when God’s word most needs to be put into action in our lives—we just simply neglect to do what it says. It’s not a problem with God’s word. It’s a problem with us. We cut things short in the follow-through. We are, all too often, “hearers” but not “doers”.
And being a “hearer” of God’s word only—no matter how much of it we may hear—will not lead to God’s blessing in our lives.
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So then; let’s look a little closer at what Pastor James tells us about putting God’s word into practice as a regular habit of life. First, notice how he tells us that;
1. WE ARE TO BE ACTIVE ‘DOERS’ OF GOD’S WORD, AND NOT MERELY PASSIVE ‘HEARERS’.
I always think it’s a good policy to read the Bible with a special attention to the ‘commands’ that we find in it. (That’s a great way to enhance your Bible reading, by the way—to look carefully for the things that we’re specifically told to do.) And Pastor James even started off in this passage with a command—an imperative. It’s basically a command about keeping the Bible’s commands. He wrote in verse 22, “But be doers of the Word, and not hearers only …”
Have you ever thought about how often the Lord Jesus Himself commanded His disciples to be “doers” of what He said? Think, for example of what He said at the end of His famous Sermon on The Mount. Even unbelieving people love to hear portions of that great sermon; don’t they? Some of them even have portions of it memorized. But when He was all done giving that wonderful and much-loved sermon, Jesus made it clear that He wasn’t speaking merely to be “heard”. In His conclusion to the sermon, He said,
“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).
Do you see? Both of the individuals in Jesus’ parable “heard”. But both didn’t benefit from what they heard. One was a wise man, and the other was a foolish man. And the ‘difference’ was in the ‘doing’. The wise man was the one who not only heard what Jesus said but also put what He said into action.
There are a lot of people today who say that they love Jesus and call themselves Christians—people who love to call Him “Lord”; and yet, even He Himself once asked, “But why do you call Me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do the things which I say?” (Luke 6:46). To hear what Jesus says, and to then not do what He says, is to be a foolish hearer. He Himself said so.
Or take the story told to us in Luke 11:27. Jesus was teaching the crowds;
And it happened, as He spoke these things, that 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!” (Luke 11:27).
Now; doesn’t that sound spiritual? It sure sounded like she was an engaged listener. Right in the middle of Jesus’ teaching, she stood up and shouted out this blessing in an approving response to what she heard. What a very pious and spiritual thing for this woman to say! Many people, I’m sure, would have nodded and said “Amen!” to that.
But He said, “More than that, blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it!” (v. 28).
What good are all the pious and religious-sounding things we might say about the Lord Jesus—what good are all the pieces of evidence we might give that we heard Him with approval—if we don’t put what we have heard into action, and actually do what He says?
Or think about what Jesus told the disciples on the night before He went to the cross for us. The 13th chapter of John’s Gospel tells us that He completely astonished the disciples by rising up after supper and washing their feet. Imagine!—the promised Christ, the Son of God, the Master Teacher, washing their feet like a common servant! They must have all sat around watching Him in stunned amazement! Then we’re told:
So when He had washed their feet, taken His garments, and sat down again, He said to 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” (John 13:12-16).
What an amazing truth! What a remarkable word of instruction! But knowing about it wasn’t enough. Notice how Jesus then told them;
“If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them” (v. 17).
And that’s the imperative—the command—that Pastor James gave to us in this morning’s passage. Don’t be just a hearer of God’s word. Be a doer of it. Put it into action. And by the way; it’s important to note that it’s a command that’s put in what’s called the “present tense”. That means that it’s a command that we are to continually put into practice as a regular habit of our lives. We’re not to just do it on some noteworthy occasion, and then be rather proud of ourselves for having done it. Rather, we are to always be ‘doers, and never just ‘hearers’. It is to be the habit of our Christian lives to be ‘doers’ of God’s word.
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Now; there’s a very serious danger that comes from being a “hearer only” and not a “doer”. It’s a rather surprising one. James goes on to show that …
2. MERE ‘HEARERS’ ARE SELF-DECEIVED.
James told his readers to be “doers” of God’s word, “and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves” (v. 22b). When we only ‘hear’ God’s word but who do not ‘do’ what it says, we are actually fooling ourselves. We think that we are receiving a blessing from ‘hearing’ God’s word; when we are, in fact, actually robbing ourselves of the blessing that God intends for us to receive.
Now; how might we deceive ourselves by ‘hearing’ only? One way is by becoming what we might call ‘sentimental’ about hearing God’s word. God’s word is, often, beautiful to hear. I happen to know of a few passages that aren’t so beautiful to hear, but those passages usually don’t get put on coffee mugs and t-shirts! But most people usually ‘feel good’ about hearing most of God’s word—even if they have no real intention of doing what it says. Sometimes, they love hearing it for what it says that someone else ought to do—but not so much for what it says they should do.
This whole business of being ‘sentimental’ about hearing God’s word was what the people of Israel were doing back in the days of the prophet Ezekiel. God once told the prophet;
“As for you, son of man, the children of your people are talking about you beside the walls and in the doors of the houses; and they speak to one another, everyone saying to his brother, ‘Please come and hear what the word is that comes from the Lord.’ 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. And when this comes to pass—surely it will come—then they will know that a prophet has been among them” (Ezekiel 33:30-33).
Very often, people come to church to hear beautiful and encouraging words from the Bible. And they especially love it if it’s from a good speaker. It sounds ‘lovely’—like a gifted musician playing skillfully on a musical instrument. But they are deceiving themselves if they only hear the beautiful sound, but do not obey the clear commands.
Another way that we can deceive ourselves is by being ‘prideful’ in the way we hear God’s word. We hear lots of great preaching, and accumulate lots of Bible knowledge. We become ‘connoisseurs’ of great Bible teaching, and are even able to compare and critique one preacher against another—suggesting what is right with this one, or what is wrong with that one. We become loaded up to the gills with ‘knowledge’. But we don’t do anything with it all—other than to become proud of it.
As we have been seeing lately in our study of 1 Corinthians, this was what was happening in the ancient church of Corinth. The professing Christians there were becoming proud of all the teachers and preachers and expert speakers that they knew and celebrated. They were boasting in their ‘knowledge’. They were identifying themselves as under ‘this teacher’ or ‘that teacher’—and were becoming divisive and factious as a result. As you’ll remember, Paul wrote and told them;
Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you seems to be wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, “He catches the wise in their own craftiness”; and again, “The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile” (1 Corinthians 3:18-20).
If we’re becoming proud of the knowledge we’re accumulating from the hearing of God’s word, then we’re probably not putting it into action as we should. Personally, I have found that nothing shows you how self-deceived you might be in a boasted ‘Bible knowledge’ faster than actually trying to put that knowledge into practice in your life.
A third way that I think we might deceive ourselves as mere hearers of the word—and this one is sadly very common—is by ‘justifying’ the sin that we hear about from it. We can hear what God says, but figure out a way of thinking that it doesn’t actually apply to us. We think that we’re walking in fellowship with God simply by the fact that we go regularly where we can hear His word—even though we’re not putting away from ourselves the sins that God’s word condemns, or are not doing what God’s word says we are neglecting to do. We hear it, but we’re careful not to allow ourselves to be convicted by it.
Just as we also heard recently in one of our Sunday messages, the apostle John—in the first chapter of his first letter—wrote these words;
This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin. 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. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us (1 John 1:5-10).
Now; look again at Pastor James’ words, and notice the picture he gave us of this whole matter of ‘self-deception’. He 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 (James 1:23-24).
Have you ever thought about how many times in the course of a day you look in a mirror? Why do you look into it? Isn’t it to get practical information that can be applied? Aren’t you checking to see how things are, and seeing whether or not if there is some work that needs to be done? But if you take a good long hard look in the mirror, and then immediately walk away and forget about what you saw, why even bother having looked into it all? It seems ridiculous to do such a thing.
But isn’t that what so many of us do with God’s written word? We look into it; we let it show us the things that are wrong with us; we hear the things that it tells us to do—but we then walk away and forget everything it says, because we didn’t put it into action.
I would never go so far as to say that it would have been better if we had never bothered to look in the Scriptures at all. I’m glad that we—at least—look into it. But if we look regularly, but do nothing about what we see, we shouldn’t fool ourselves. We are mere “hearers” and not “doers”. We are only “deceiving” ourselves.
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And this leads us to a final point. James tells us that . . .
3. THE BLESSING OF ‘HEARING’ GOD’S WORD ONLY COMES THROUGH ‘DOING’ WHAT IT SAYS.
James says, “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” (v. 25)
This is true, first, because of the way that true ‘doers’ of God’s word look into it. The way that they do so is strategic; and by considering the strategic method that James says that they use, we can learn how we—too—need to look into God’s word.
First, Pastor James tells us that they are carefully ‘observational’ in their approach to God’s word. The word that he uses is the same word that the apostle John used to describe the way that the apostle John once looked into the tomb of Jesus on the day of His resurrection. We’re told that after he and Peter arrived at the tomb, John “stooping down and looking in, saw the linen clothes lying there …” (John 20:5). And that’s how a true “doer” also looks into God’s word. We’re not to be merely passing time when reading God’s word. As ‘doers’, we must first ‘stoop down and looks into’ it with great intentionality—in order to truly perceive. We do so because we eagerly want to truly know what it says.
I suggest a good way to learn to look ‘observationally’ is to begin with prayer. Always ask God before you read His word to help you to learn from it. Ask that the Holy Spirit open your eyes to the truths that are there.
Second, Pastor James tells us that ‘doers’ not only look intently, but are also ‘persistent’ in their approach to God’s word. He says that they ‘continue’ in it. You know how, sometimes, we might read God’s word and see something that it says; and tell ourselves, “Well; that’s interesting. I should ask the pastor what that’s all about”—and then, go on to something else? Well, if we are true “doers” we won’t do that. We will linger at the word, and remain in it long enough for what it says to have the chance to sink-in deeply and change our inner-being and inner-thinking. We will wrestle with it.
I suggest that a good way to become a ‘persistent’ hearer of God’s word is to give yourself time in it. Don’t rush. Allow enough time to read slow. And make the commitment, when you find something that you don’t understand, to do the hard work of getting a concordance, or a good Bible dictionary, or another translation for comparison, and dig-out the correct meaning of the things God’s word says. When you say, “I wonder what that means?”, then follow it up by saying, “I will find out!” ‘Build a bridge’ in your understanding between what you already know and what you don’t yet understand. Study until you understand it. That’s how you ‘continue’ in it.
Finally, James tells us that good hearers are ‘applicational’ in their approach to God’s word. They do not become “forgetful” hearers, but instead make it their intention to be immediate doers “of the work”. They make plans to put what God’s word says into action. Dr. John Mitchell—the founder of the Bible college that I attended—was a man who was a walking encyclopedia of Bible verses. We students were all constantly amazed at how many verses of Scripture he knew by heart. We once asked him how he went about memorizing, and we were surprised to learn that he never consciously set about to “memorize” Scripture. He said that when God laid something on his heart from the Bible, he simply put it into practice; and in doing what it said, he ended up memorizing it. It had settled into his memory because, after studying it, he had made it an active part of his life. No wonder the “hearing” resulted in a blessing in his life!
I suggest that that’s how to become a good ‘applicational’ hearer of God’s word. Look for the ways to put to use what you have heard. Write the words of instruction down in a journal. Ask God to help you know what He wants you to do about what you hear—and be assured that He will!
Now; that’s what makes a hearer of God’s word into a truly ‘blessed’ hearer. They hear it in a deliberately strategic way: They encounter it observationally, persistently, and applicationally; so as to put what it says into action.
Another reason it’s true that the “doer” is blessed is because of the nature of the word itself. James calls the Scriptures “the perfect law of liberty”. When we look into the word of God in the way that a careful ‘doer’ would look into it, we are looking into something that is perfect because it is from God Himself; and is a complete revelation from Him. It tells us all that we need to know for life and godliness.
But it is also a “law of liberty” because it sets us free in Christ. It shows us the truth about ourselves, and drives us to the Savior so that we can be forgiven by Him. As Paul wrote in Galatians 2:22-24;
But the Scripture has confined all under sin, that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. But before faith came, we were kept under guard by the law, kept for the faith which would afterward be revealed. Therefore the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith (Galatians 3:22-24).
Once we come to Jesus Christ for justification, we are set free. The Bible not only shows us our sin so that we learn to come to Christ to be made right with God; but also how to continue to trust in Him for our full acceptance in God’s sight. It truly is the “law of liberty”.
No wonder those who are “doers” are the ones who are blessed!
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I love listening to old Dr. J. Vernon McGee on the radio. I heard him talking once about different translations of the Bible. They all have their faults of course. No single Bible translation is perfect. But Dr. McGee said that he believed that there is one very good translation of the Bible—the very best one of all, in fact. He said that the best translation of the Bible is the one that we translate into action.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ; let’s translate the Bible into action. Let’s make it our practice to be “doers” of God’s word, and not merely “hearers”.
For it’s the “doers” who are truly blessed!
EA
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