Books of James & Jude - Doers of the Word - James 1:22-24

Morning. So I'm glad you're here, Roger. You seem to give me some pretty big verses. Of course, I get the easy ones. I wasn't going to call you. It's funny. Isn't it neat how when you set up to teach, you get this random list of verses that you're supposed to tackle. And it's interesting how the ones that I'm assigned more often than not have directly to do with things that I might be either needing more insight on or maybe in some cases struggling with understanding. And so that's just to say that you must have some divine divvying out process. I'm joking.

I am. Well, this morning we're going to look at James 1, 22 through 24. We've titled this lesson, Doers of the Word. And I think here at Holly Hills, we instantly have this gut reaction to doers and this idea of being a doer or work or obedience. And it's not to say that those things aren't a part of what the scripture says. We're all called to be doers of the word.

And as we'll see in James, that's very clear. But I think a lot of those that are in the dispensational camp or in the grace camp that we would kind of find ourselves in, have to do a lot more talking and studying to make sure that when we say these types of things and when we title lessons in these ways that we are very clear about what that means and how those things that we're supposed to do, the works and so forth, get accomplished. And so I'm excited to be able to tackle that in the book of James this morning. We'll try to cover three verses.

And I'll just go ahead and read for you these three and then we'll jump in. So James says, 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 who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away at once and forgets what he was like.

So, these sets of verses have been used for many, many years to grind an axe for an obedient body, haven't they? just running right into the text with maybe the right kind of fervor and the right kind of desire to teach and to train a body of believers, young pastors, old pastors alike, will instantly look at the pew and use verses like this to encourage their body to be busy and to get to doing. It's tied very closely to this idea of the religious behavior of the Christian body. In fact, in the following verses, James talks about true religion and what true religion really looks like. These verses have been used in a lot of ways to get the body busy.

Why? Well, because it seems so clear that you're to be active and you're to be doing things and not just listening or not just hearing. And so, how do we take this and understand this in a way that doesn't result in a religious kind of law-based doing? And that's what we're setting out to do this morning and hopefully we'll be able to accomplish that with the correct understanding of these verses.

So, I started with the word be, not because I want to be extremely detailed in this, but I think that it's interesting to note, if you have the New American Standard, it actually says prove yourselves. So I wanted to make sure that that's what was being said there, that that translation came across in the right way. And actually this particular word, be, happens to communicate possessing a certain set of characteristics. But I think the prove yourself is not necessarily a helpful translation here. So if you have the English Standard or the New King James Version, that it's better to understand this possibly as a process or a growing state where a person is becoming something.

So this same word in the same way is used in John 1.14 where it says, the word became flesh. Instead of proving yourselves, like when I first read it in the New American Standard, it's like, well, goodness, how in the world am I supposed to prove myself? And who am I proving myself to? Well, that's not what the idea here is, and I don't think it's the right way of looking at it. This is a present imperative, which means it's better translated, you must continue to become. So if you, I don't know, Al, what translation do you have there?

I've got New King James, and it says doers. Okay, what does it say before that? So, but be doers, right? And that be right there, that be that word, it could be drawn out and expanded to, you must continue to become. So, but, continue to become doers. Does that mean that the, go ahead, did you have a thought? Yeah, I did. Okay, go ahead. I didn't want to break out, I'm sorry.

Well, I think the point, the previous point there is that this is a growing state. This is a process of what these believers were already doing. And so James is wanting to encourage them with some further insight into what they had been doing in the past and potentially correcting some of the things that were preventing them from growing.

Going back to that, that's a really excellent reference there in John 1.14.

If you think about it, it says the Word became flesh. Gidomai is to really, in that context there, is to come into a new state of being. Because if you think about the Lord, He wasn't flesh before. For all eternity past, He wasn't flesh. Then He came into a new state of being, which is flesh.

So you kind of translate that kind of concept here, and it's like that we could not be doers of the Word before we became a believer. It's impossible. So in a sense, we've come into this wonderful new state that we can actually be doers of the Word, or be doing the Word, or be becoming. It's a process. I think the more you study the Word became flesh, it helps you to kind of see the tie over, and it's not so much, it's who you are. And that's where you're going to go, I know. No, that's the word. That's great. That's right.

So my main hope was, in taking a look a little bit deeper, and getting a little geeky-greeky here, was to draw out the fact that this is not something that is instantly accomplished. That this is something that happens over time and it's a state of being. And that time is different for you as it is different for me. And this process of becoming a doer is something that is based on who you are, but it's carried out over time.

And so that's where I wanted to take that. This term doers, I think this is probably the big hang-up, and we want to get the biggest clarification on this. But the neat thing is that we have so much context, and one of the rules or the guidelines that we have for interpreting scripture is to see things in context. So, the surrounding context of James, and then even the surrounding context of the New Testament. But in this term, doers, it simply is a keeper of the law or principle.

In fact, in Acts 17.28, it's even used as a poet or a performer. So they were performers. So you might also say, be performers. But that wouldn't be as strict as the way James wanted to use it, so we don't translate it that way. But it's the same word, and in certain contexts it is used as a performer, but here it's actually a doer or a keeper of a law or a principle.

And I wanted to make clear that difference between law and principle here, because what you're doing is different depending upon the context, right? So you could be doing a law if you're an Israelite. You could be doing a principle as a New Testament believer. It depends on the context of it. But doing is the idea, and keeping, keeping by way of your actions, by the things that you do. And that's in contrast to just merely hearing, as we'll look at in a moment.

Romans 2.13 is an echo verse to this. It says, for it is not the hearers of the law who are justified before God, but the doers of the law will be justified.

And that same word there, doers, is used in Romans 2.13. And so, very clearly, this has to do with doing. and being seen by our fellow man as doing something, not merely listening or hearing as we'll see.

So, you know, this implies a lot, and at first glance you could get really carried away with, well, okay, what are you doing, Al? I want to make sure you're not just sitting in my class and auditing the Word of God. No, I'm just following Vern's advice. Don't just do something. Stand there.

That's a good point, and we'll get to that. But if I didn't understand maybe what Vern was teaching with that kind of funny way of saying it, and I think it's a good way because it's brandy. I always like the brand of things. He's got a good brand with that little thing.

I don't want to jump too far ahead in your outline, but the verse that always comes to mind is Philippians 2, 12 and 13, where it talks about work out your own salvation. Not work for it, but work it out. For it is God who works in you, both to will and to do. I'm doing, but I'm not doing it with the old man. I'm letting the new life in Christ that's been implanted in me work out in me. And it is natural for that new life to do what the Word says. It follows the principles that God has laid down. That's right. Exactly right. And you're right, we are going to get to that exact verse. I think it's good to maybe kind of give an intro to it.

So, here's the question for you. Doesn't this rule out being an auditor of God's Word? I mentioned that already. But James is saying here, don't just come in and sit down in the class and get an understanding of what's being said. Right? He's talking about having a response to what you heard. And without the response, James is saying there's a problem with that, and he's going to use an analogy to explain that problem.

So this is directly related to these concepts. When we see doers, we also relate other types of topics throughout the New Testament and the Old Testament. What about obedience? What about walking? What about keeping commandments, works, etc.? There's a lot of imperatives throughout the New Testament. What do we do with these as believers in the church age?

So doing isn't new, and I just wanted to give us a little bit of a background based on the last two classes that we've studied together. Some of you have been there, some of you haven't. But these were the things, as I started thinking about the most recent context of what the Lord's been teaching me in His Word, I thought, I'm going to go back through 1st, 2nd, and 3rd John. I'm going to go back through the book of Philippians. That's what we've studied in depth. And I'm going to look for these themes and see how the context of doing and walking, keeping commandments, obedience, and so forth, how that context is carried out. So this is going to be a quick survey of a couple books that we've looked at recently.

1 John 4, 6, the one who says, I have come to know him and does not keep his commandments. Uh-oh. How are you doing? How are you keeping his commandments? You've got to think about that. Where's your little list that you've got? Is that the idea here?

No, he's a liar and the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps his word, uh-oh, am I keeping his word? So we dealt with these kind of overwhelming statements in 1 John as well, these keeping commandments and obedience and how in the world do you do this and how do you deal with them to the point that you're not being told or communicating yourself as a lie.

But in Him the love of God has truly been perfected. By this we know that we are, and there's the kicker. In Him. The one who says he abides. So you've got commandments and obedience and walking, but in the same context you've got being in Him. So that's an identity thing. It's who you are. That's where you're placed. That's where you're effective. That's where you're doing. Your doing is in Him.

And you're doing it by abiding in Him. And then it goes on to say that he who abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked. Does that mean that we do as Jesus did? No, because you're in Him. you're abiding in Him. So you're not mimicking Jesus, it's literally Jesus doing the walking, and the living, and the obedience, and the keeping of the commandments through you.

And so we're going to talk more about that. Here's another one. The one who keeps His commandments, uh-oh, and then there's that, you know, how in the world do we do that, abides in Him, and He in Him. And then we know by this that He abides in us by the Spirit whom He has given us. How does this walking and keeping commandments get done? by abiding in Him, and it is the Spirit who has been given to us that enables us, that energizes us, and so forth, to do that. So I'm bringing to bear a lot of what we're learning in the main service, what we've learned in previous lessons in this class, and we're seeing in the context of this commandment keeping, and the doing, and the walking, and all this stuff, is this abiding, and this identity in Christ.

Here it is in 2 John. I was very glad to find some of you children walking in truth. Just as we have received His commandment to do from the Father, and this is love, that we walk according to His commandments. This is the commandment, just as you have heard from the beginning, that you should walk in it. So here's the thing.

James is not unique in this whole idea of doing stuff. We pick on James so much. Oh, the book of James. Oh my goodness. How in the world are we going to make James coincide with what Paul says? And there's a lot of problems in Christianity in doing that. There's a lot of hang-ups. But the same problems could exist for John. We talked about John's a black and white kind of guy too.

What about 3 John 11? Beloved, do not imitate what is evil, but what is good. The one who does good is of God. The one who does evil has not seen God. How about this? Philippians 2.13 and 4.13. For it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. Now, I'll mention that a little earlier in the lesson here, but that particular verse is really, in my mind, the central tenet of this whole doing concept. Who's doing the doing? It's God who's doing the doing through you for His will and His good pleasure. Philippians 4, 13, I can do all things through him who strengthens me. If you're doing anything in your own will, in your own strength, are you doing biblically?

You're not. You're not doing anything. Well that kind of comes back to the idea that the Ginnomai word before, the B, that that's a new operating system that you're now under. And that's what's so cool about that word. You've moved from this state as an unbeliever of no operating system, so to speak, to the state where Christ is your life and he's doing the doing. And that's a marvelous thing to kind of grab a hold of. It is a marvelous, yep, you're right, it is.

There's an interesting thing, you talk about the problem of works in the Christian Church, that the emphasis can be on the works, kind of put in the cart before the horse, you might say. So we were created unto good works, as the patient famously says. So God, if he's allowed to work through us, produces something that looks the same to the world and that's the problem the outer appearance of taking care of widows and orphans can come from a humanitarian concern and not necessarily the spirit of God working and so to realize the difference I love that sign that I think I mentioned a month or so ago that one of the churches in my neighborhood had you can give without loving but you can't love without giving and without realizing it they were stating a very important principle that yes I can go through the motions with all the doing to satisfy my conscience or to keep requirements of law or so on but I'm reminded of the scripture where Christ He was talking about the people on the one side who were complaining, well, didn't we do all these wonderful things in your name? We even used your name when we had a label on it saying, this is a Christian ministry.

And he says, depart, I never knew you. What a sad, sad thing to not realize that it's the identification with Christ. It's a new life in Him. And not something where I just crank up my motivation and enthusiasm and say, I don't really want to go to church this morning, but If I don't go, I'll lose my brownie points for the day. We'll get a smiley face on my resume from God.

It's just so easy to see the external. Man sees the external. Well, I think that's a really important point, and I want to come back to that. So hold on to that thought. That's a good one, because I want to come back to that. There's different points of view here.

And there's also different types of doing. Even as a believer, there is biblical doing, and then there is mimicry, which is not biblical. Imitation, that's right. Imitation in a non-biblical sense, because we do have that word imitate, but it can be understood biblically.

So this last verse here, this is not new. and my God will supply all your needs according to His riches and glory in Christ Jesus." So the needs that you have to do the things that come out of actually understanding the Word of God, as we'll see, are all supplied through the strength, the will, the pleasure, and the enabling, energizing, and so forth of God Himself through the Spirit. Let's look at this term of the Word. So this is Logos, again we looked at this a few classes ago.

The content of what is preached about Christ or about the Good News. So what did James' audience have from the Word so far? They didn't have everything that Paul had written because it was yet to be written, but they had all of what Christ had said. And they had James, what James had been communicating and what's being communicated to them in this letter. But they had much to know and to understand of the word with concern of Christ, His death, burial, and resurrection. and they had started getting into the identification truths that were a then growing topic throughout the New Testament. So what I'm just trying to point out here is that they had the content of what had been preached about Christ in the Good News, and they were starting to lay down foundations of biblical identification as it related to New Testament Christians.

So if you think about how God, and I mentioned how I like to teach classes without the handouts, for this idea of progressive disclosure so you're not ahead of me. But in the same way, that's how God did things, right? He taught with progressive revelation. He revealed himself progressively. He didn't give you the whole story up front. He gave you just enough so that you could learn.

And Israel, if you look at how Israel was revealed to by their God, you see them growing, just like a child grows up and is learning from simple to complex principles over time. And so, in the same way that God was progressively revealing to Israel, He is now progressively revealing more and more to the church about their identity in Christ. And Paul happens to be the one who most clearly communicates how that gets done, James is simply starting to state what it is that it looks like and how it functions, not how it functions, but what it is. And I'll make that final comparison at the end of this class.

But of the Word, what place does God's Word have in the life of the doing believer? From a perspective of James, it has every place that is critical to getting anything done. It's a paramount part of being a quote-unquote doing believer. And that's what James is talking about.

So how does the word fit in here? Let's think about God's revelation to mankind real quick. We've got general and special here. We've got general on this side in the yellow. And we've got special here in the blue. God's revealed by nature, by providence, and by conscience.

So he's revealing himself outside of the Word in a general sense in these ways, but then he's revealing himself specifically or especially in Scripture and in Christ himself who is the Word. And what we're talking about in this particular passage that James is referring to is Scripture. We know these things about God and we know what to do because of the special revelation of God.

And I would also say that he is referring to some of what was seen in the person of Christ because it was such a recent event for them that they would still be talking about it in the oral communication to a young Jewish Christian early New Testament group of believers would still be talking about the person of Jesus Christ as things had not yet fully been put into the words of Scripture in the New Testament. Does that make sense? That's a lot of words. So what I'm saying is that those young believers in the church, they've got a certain amount of scripture, but they've also got a lot of oral communication surrounding the person of Jesus Christ.

That eventually ended up in our Bibles that you have bound and nicely tucked away in fancy cases and stuff like that. Or iPods or pads or phones. So that gives us a little bit of a better context. I'm going to just kind of work through this a little bit.

How is it that we understand God's word so that we know what to do? This wasn't fully in view as James was talking to these early Jewish Christians, but as believers who now have had all revelation revealed to us. We can go back and look at all the notes and have all insight. When we think about doing, one of the things that we see is God's Word as a role in our life and how we get to the point of knowing what it is that we're doing. Because we're talking about here this application being the final stage of Bible study. Well, you're doing... What is James asking us to do? Well, have we walked through these stages so that we have the correct application?

So you can also be misinterpreting the scripture and doing things that you've misinterpreted. So this is just something about a slide that I put in there to help us understand God's intended message so that when you are doing, And we'll talk about how that gets done later, but I'm just talking about what is being done. When you are doing, how do you know that it's what God intended? That you're applying what He actually intended?

So we have this how to study the Bible slide. So God's message through Scripture, the Holy Spirit, He inspired it, He preserved it, and He guided in the recognition of it as Scripture. So it's God's work. through the Holy Spirit. We have the scripture in the Hebrew, the Old Testament, and the New Testament that conveys God's message precisely as he intended for us to receive.

So that being the background, we move into these three stages of observation, interpretation, and application. The first, objective observations regarding the written text, including language, history, and culture. These all help us understand, who is he talking to? Are you doing something? Are you taking a lamb to an altar?

Now, James said, be a doer, not just a hearer. You heard, you're told, or are you told? See, that's the difference. That's where observation comes in. Are you told to do these things? Or does this apply to another group of people in another time period, in another administration of God's overall administering His plan and His people? So, observation has everything to do with knowing whether or not He's even talking to you so that you know what to do.

Interpretation, we talk about it being a logical, singular interpretation of the text based on a complete and objective set of observations regarding the written text. So, this is a lot of words. This is more than what we're going to be able to take in today, but take this away. When correct observation is done, it gives way to the proper opportunity for interpretation. And you're expecting that I'm doing these things. because you would not want myself or Roger or anyone else standing up here asking you to do something like James says to do and telling you something without having gone through this process because you might end up wanting God to energize you to do something that you're not even remotely supposed to be involved in doing. And there's a lot of our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ that are busy doing things that they've been told or think that they're supposed to be doing, and all along they've been taught the wrong way because these processes of understanding Scripture were not taken into consideration. So interpreting is critical. We have to interpret based on the context and what is seen in an objective set of observations. One of the things that Vern does regularly with me is he says, okay, we've got the book of James.

Are there parallel passages throughout the scripture that give greater insight into the interpretation of this? It says this here, but it's the same concept made clear to us in the same administration of God's New Testament by another author. And what we're going to see here is at the end of this lesson, I'm going to bring to bear some of the things that Paul said in another verse to give greater insight into what James is saying. Al? It's interesting. Downstairs, they're studying the Holy Spirit. Nature and ministry and so on.

But what immediately comes to my mind when you talk about this, I think of Jesus' words as he was preparing to leave the earth when he said, I'm going to Father, but I will send another, a comforter, a paraclete. And when He comes, He will guide you into all truth, among other things. He will bring to your mind the things that I have taught you.

So, the ministry of the Holy Spirit comes in in a very direct way here in the interpretation. Yep, in the next slide I'll show how that is maybe a little clear, but good point. And finally we have this application, and that's the doing part. So, you think about what's packed in to James saying, be a doer. of the Word of God, and we'll get to that in the next class more specifically with James 1.25 and exactly how that works in James 9. But here he's saying, for us, these things are in the background, and this is what is helping us make sure that we are doing and being clear on the things that are involved in our walk in this day and age as New Testament believers. Without going too much further into that I just did want to mention these three points the Holy Spirit to Al's point is involved in every part of the right understanding of scripture and Are beholding the Lord Jesus Christ through his word and thereby being changed from glory to glory I'm not going to go into that right now because I'm going to cover it at the end of the class But it's a big concept that's going around in our body right now, and I think it's very, very critical in understanding better what James has in mind here, or what we have in mind in view of the full New Testament scripture that we have available.

But this 2 Corinthians 3.18 is very critical, because it does talk about the things that Al just mentioned, and that is the role of the Spirit in terms of beholding Christ through His Word.

And then we also talk about God's Word at work in terms of individual growth. Like newborn babies, long for the pure milk of the Word so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation. And then finally, God's Word feeds the growth of the church body as a whole. That's what we're doing right now. You can read Ephesians 4, 11 through 13 to get a better insight into that. So God's Word is absolutely essential to understanding and doing anything as a believer and also for any gathering such as this to be effective, we need the Word of God. And we also need the person of the Holy Spirit, right? So these are just some background thoughts in terms of that phrase, of the Word. Then we go on to say, and not hearers only, or James goes on to say. So, be doers of the Word, not hearers only.

So here, I got that backwards there. The term here was used to identify a person who attended the synagogue service. So remember these are Jewish Christians. They would have understood this term being used in context of the rabbi's teaching. So they would go to a synagogue service and they, without necessarily becoming disciples, they would sit in an audit and listen and figure out what it is that's being said.

So, as a result, a hearer, in that context, might develop great admiration for a rabbi or a teacher, and they might receive emotional and intellectual stimulation. But the New Testament has no room for this kind of person, in this particular context especially.

Maybe I should ask this to you guys in the class. What would that look like in today's setting, to be a hearer only? Pat, you're a hearer only. What are you doing back there? You're auditing me, right? You're checking it out. And you may come up after the class, and I'm not saying that you're actually this person, but as an example, a gentleman comes and sits in the back and listens intently and pays attention to exactly what I'm saying. Doesn't raise up a bunch of trouble in the class or whatever, but listens and is maybe potentially stimulated and emotionally connected. but walks up after the class and says, you know, you've given me a lot to think about. This is very interesting. And I can see how this particular lesson might be best translated in a Buddhist context. Or I can see how this is carried out in an evolutionary context. It's just really interesting to understand what you're saying.

See, James had in mind a person who was sitting back in the back of the audience, so to speak, auditing and listening, and could very well be interested and intellectually stimulated, but listening only, because it didn't result in anything with regards to doing. And we're going to talk about how that carries itself out. But here he is making clear the difference between a hearer and a doer. or a hearer and a hearer-doer, as I should say, because hearing presupposes doing.

So let's look at this. In the same way that we have five senses in the physical realm, the scripture says that we have the analog of these five in the spiritual realm. So here, we're talking about hearing. We've got sight and touch and smell and taste. This is Vern's slide. He's been really good about communicating the parallels in scripture with regards to the senses. And so I'll just utilize these. And I'm thankful to have a lot of this stuff from him.

So we've got this hearing thing. You know, and we've got, is James talking about in this case a physical hearing or a spiritual hearing? Spiritual. Is he encouraging a spiritual hearing or is he warning against only a physical hearing? Yes. Yes. So in this particular case... Good answer. In this particular case, well let's talk about the five senses as they relate to the spiritual realm.

So, they obviously heard, but in the sense that, from a spiritual sense, they were potentially just like the Hebrews were, dull of hearing. So they were dull of hearing, they heard it, but they were dull in the spiritual sense. So they didn't receive it spiritually.

Right? And that's what happened to this person, because we want to see the analogy of the person looking in the mirror and forgetting what he looks like. So, it didn't go to the deepest, most inner place that the Word has the capability of doing it. And so the point here being, you've got this physical realm, you've got this spiritual realm, and you've got the body and the spirit and the mind and the emotions and the will.

We've looked at this quite a bit. And Hebrews 4, 12, talks about how the Word of God, unique in terms of any other body of content ever, has this ability to go to the spiritual layer. and it has the ability to affect a person at a spiritual level. And so, if we're talking about hearing the Word of God from a physical realm, it can get into the body and you can be very stimulated and emotionally affected by it, which is what was likely happening in the context of James. They heard it, and they maybe even liked what they heard. They were stimulated by it. But what happened is that it didn't quite get down to the spiritual level. Because when it gets down to the innermost being, it has a spiritual effect that results in doing.

Okay, and that's, yeah, go ahead. It kind of reminds me of the parable of the sower, doesn't it? I mean, there's different kinds of soil, and the good soil really grows healthy plants that last. But some, even like is it the rocky soil that has some sprouting up for a little while, But then when the sun gets hot, it just withers. So I mean, there's a little bit of... So there are actually, I'm going to bring up in a moment, the parallel between James and the Sermon on the Mount. So hold that thought.

That's a great observation. See, Ingrid's observing. She's doing a great job. And Vern helped me find that one as well. So we'll talk about that. Good point. Does this make sense, what I'm saying here? There's a physical hearing. And then there's a spiritual capability of the senses that James is saying is not happening at this level.

So he moves on to say that because of this, you're deceiving yourselves. And this is the process. Now we've talked about something like this in recent passages, but this idea of deceiving, to reason falsely or incorrectly, to deceive, to mislead, to delude with the accusative of a person. So you're deceiving yourself. Or you're being deceived by someone else, but in this case, you're hearing something and not doing it, and you're deceiving yourself.

Now, we've talked about a related term, or a related verse in Colossians 2.4. I say this so that no one will delude, that's the same word, deceive or delude you with persuasive argument. In this case, the accusative person is someone else. But what might this reasoning sound like for James' audience?

How might they be deceiving themselves? So they hear the word of God, but they deceive themselves. As a result, they're not doers. So what might that internal dialogue sound like, maybe in your own life? Well, that's good to know, right? You hear it, you recognize that the Word of God requires keeping commandments, obedience, walking in the truth, and all of these things, and then without the information of the full context of the New Testament in terms of understanding identity, you might plan to go do that yourself and deceive yourself. So doing without recognizing that it's Christ doing the doing through you, is a way of deceiving yourself, isn't it? Because you can get really busy, and I don't say this in a way, hopefully, that is taken the wrong way, but what would Jesus do? You could slap on your What Would Jesus Do? bracelet and get out there and start doing. I did that. That's how I did things. That's what I thought. This is my reminder And I've done other reminders too. What I'm saying is that I was mimicking what I thought I was to do in the Word of God by staying busy. evangelism, teaching, whatever.

Now, those all had their purpose. Remember, God is at work to will and to work to his good pleasure through you. So he uses these incorrect understandings to grow us. And that's what's really exciting. Hold on just a second. So the idea here is that You know, we slap on this whole, what would Jesus do concept, and we get really, really busy. But in the context of the full New Testament, especially as we get enlightenment from, I keep using that word, enlightenment, but insight rather.

I shouldn't use that word. Insight from Paul, we realize that that's a way of deceiving yourself. Doing without recognizing who does the doing is a deception. Here's another way of deceiving yourself. You say, that's very interesting. Maybe one day, not now. I'll hang on to that for a later point in time." Because you're deceiving yourself to think that, okay, this is good information, I'll tuck it away and hang on to it for another day. So, there's multiple ways that you deceive yourself. In fact, in James 1, 13-15, Good thing. We talk about this temptation process being very, very clear in several previous verses. So, you know, I taught this class several weeks ago. This is how you deceive yourself.

It starts, you're abiding in Christ, you get a lust or a desire, the source being the sin nature within you, it draws you away, it entices you, and you lure your own self. You literally draw yourself out, you bait yourself, and you hook yourself. And then from that point, you take the bait, you become pregnant or large with the conception concept, how lust conceives itself, and then it gives birth to sin and then death, loss of fellowship.

So I'm not going to go into this in great depth. This is something that we covered in a previous lesson. If you wanted to get a better understanding of that, go back to James 13-15. And we'll talk about it a little bit in a minute. And we're going to cover it again. Yeah, it keeps coming up. It's a big deal, isn't it? We'll talk about it some more.

Trials and temptations and the process of that is a big concern for James, isn't it? So for him to use deceiving in this verse packs a lot of context just in the book of James. Al? Just in this thing, one way that I could deceive myself is to say, well, God's tempting me. and he made me, so I can't help it. No big deal. And some people use that. I am who I am, and if you say God made me, well he made me this way, and weaknesses and all. And so it's easy for me to say, I am tempted by God.

That's right, and if you hear that, so let me just maybe say this, if you hear that being said, or if you believe that to be the case in your own life, then the book of James is written for you. Because the previous verses to this passage that we're talking about now all deal with the reality that God does not tempt. It is your sin nature that does the tempting, or the flesh, the world, or the devil. Now, does God use those temptations? He absolutely does.

And we've talked about that in previous classes to James. So, if you're hearing or believing in your own mind that God tempts you, The book of James is written exactly for that, and it will help clarify the reality concerning that, that he does not do the tempting. So here's that parallel with the Sermon on the Mount.

So James 1.22, Be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. Now how similar does that sound to the word that they receive from Christ himself?

Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock and then the rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and beat on that house but it did not fall because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine, there's the hearing, and does not do them, there's the doing, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.

Now this is what James is saying. He packed it into this, and Christ gave a much bigger description of that with this analogy of the house being built on the wrong foundation. So these are not new terms. These are the very same things that Jesus said on the Sermon on the Mount. And so there's this parallel here.

So let's move on to James 1.23. If anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, we already covered that. This is just the mirror image, the reverse image of what he just said. Then this is the result.

He's like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. Let's get that down and then we'll see what happens after he looked in the mirror. So he's like a man who looks intently at. So, is like to be like or similar to something else, to resemble, to look intently at, to discover something through direct observation. This is a guy who's looking into a mirror and he's taking notice of something.

Again, what is James talking about here? He's using the senses. And what senses is this man using? Is he using the spiritual senses or the physical senses? In the analogy. I would say that he's using physical senses to observe himself. He's looking in a mirror. And he's looking at a natural face, as we'll soon find out. He's looking at the face that he was born with.

So, I just said that. He's looking at his natural face, meaning that was literally the one that he was born with. He gave the word his genesis. It's not pronounced that, but it's the same. The idea of the origin. This is the origin of your face. This is where it came from. Your natural is another way we might say it.

And in the mirror that he was looking at, this was the way that those mirrors looked like. And Verne's covered this a lot in the main service. But this is a Corinthian mirror. And the Corinthians were famous for their mirrors. And they would have to polish these things. Now, this isn't polished. So looking into this mirror would not give you a reflection of your natural face at all. It's a tarnished mirror. But they would polish these. And they would polish them regularly so that they could see themselves.

And so James has this in mind, that a person who hears the Word of God, but does not do it, is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror like this, and then what happens as a result of it will go into. But let's talk about God's Word as a mirror, because that's the point here. It's not about looking in a mirror and knowing what you look like and spending a good amount of time understanding what you look like in comparison to anyone else. God's Word is a mirror.

Paul also used the word for mirror in 1 Corinthians 13.12.

And 2 Corinthians 3.18, which is a major verse to what we'll look at at the end of this class and also in the main service. And James used it here as well. But in all three of these passages, the mirror represents God's written word. So these are the passages that we're looking at today.

James 1.22, 23, and 24. And here we have the word, the word, and a mirror. These are all a part of the same analogy that are being made clear by James' writing here.

So, but be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if one is a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. So he looks at himself in the word of God, and what does he see? That's what we're interested in figuring out.

So James 1.24, he looks at himself and goes away, and at once forget what he was like. So there's a result. He sees his natural face and then he turns around and he forgets. So let's look at this. He goes away. This is a departure, literally a sudden departure. So you can imagine, it's like, not like what I see, and then, and that's what's going on here in the text. This is a sudden departure and he goes away and he leaves. He just leaves the mirror. Now what is he leaving? He's leaving the Word of God. What he saw, what he observed in that brief moment of observation caused him to depart and leave instantly.

Yeah, Jen, some people call that cutting out pieces of your Bible that might give you bad feelings. Yeah, that's right. There's another way to depart from the Word of God. Maybe it's not you leaving it. Maybe you take it away from you. You cut it out and trash it. Now we may not physically cut things out of the scripture, but mentally speaking, you heard it in such a way that James is talking about here. You cut it out and you departed from it. It didn't result in an understanding and a doing.

And I'll just be real honest, I know that there are areas of my own life where that's the case. And you say, wait a minute, that's not, how can that be for you? You know, maybe that's the way you think. I think we all have areas of our life that we have conveniently tucked away the Word of God and departed from it in terms of not recognizing that it results in a doing.

Now that's great to understand, but realize that that first word we looked at, be, You must continue to be. Come. So, going back to that very first word, be, in this verse 22, be doers is a process. We grow in this process, okay? So, that's one of the things that keeps the spiritual sanity of all of us intact, is that we're growing, we're maturing in a process, okay? From a conditional standpoint. Positionally, we are already there, aren't we? at once, point in time, immediately, I just mentioned that, which is right then.

Bam! And then he forgets. So not only does he leave, he makes a point to forget. Not to recall any information concerning, don't want to have that stuck up there in the gray matter in my brain. I don't want it there. I don't want to remember. I called it visual amnesia for this guy. He looked at himself and he's like, I don't want to look at myself. I don't like what that mirror showed me about myself, and so I'm gone.

What I feel like might be the most important part of drawing greater observation and interpretation and hopefully application of this passage comes from the verse that we've been looking at in the main service, 2 Corinthians 3.18. Because I believe that this will help us in comparison, will help us draw a lot of greater clarity into what this has to say to us. So, let's read this. 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, justice from the Lord, the Spirit. So let's talk about how believers behold differently.

What I'm going to do is I'm going to compare just the passages that I had today, James 1, 22-24 to this first 2 Corinthians 3.18. Because James is talking about a process that we all go through in terms of not doing. not being doers.

James is going to talk about in previous verses, 25 and following, what the response to that is, but I'm going to go ahead and draw a parallel to 2 Corinthians 3.18 so that we can walk away from this class having some greater insight. So, James is talking about a lot of natural senses, isn't he?

Hearing, seeing, 2 Corinthians 3.18 is spiritual senses. It's beholding? How do you behold? You know, this is a spiritual thing, isn't it? And we've been talking about it in the main service.

In James 1.22-24, the focus is on the self.

In 2 Corinthians 3.18, the focus is on the Lord. In James, he talks about this kind of man that's looking intently, but instantly forgetting.

And in 2 Corinthians 3.18 it's beholding as a present action. You must continue to behold. Not look and forget. James is talking about the natural face of a man in the analogy.

Here in 2 Corinthians 3.18 we have an unveiled face. So even you as a believer now are unveiled from the law. You do not have the law veiling you, the Mosaic law. The law has been fulfilled by Christ and you now have an unveiled face by which to behold him.

And the identity seen in the mirror is a natural self with no effect, in James, but in 2 Corinthians, the identity seen in the mirror is the glory of the Lord with great effect. In James, and then finally in this final comparison, we are deceived and are not a doer. In 2 Corinthians, we are transformed and Christ does the doing.

Now, what I don't want to communicate with this comparison is that James is not saying that this is the right way to go. Not at all. Verse 25 and following will talk about the things that are seen by the person who does not do this. So he's not advocating that a person do this, he's saying this is what is wrong with hearing and not doing.

But 2 Corinthians 3.18 gives us great understanding about how we, having the full knowledge of scripture in terms of the New Testament here, can counter the possibility of being found in this place that James is talking about.

So I brought out a note that Vern talked about, that growing from glory to glory in that verse, 2 Corinthians 3.18, and I wanted to bring that note out.

The growing glory is not the result of our trying really hard to be glorious or to be worthy of Christ's glory, but is a process resulting from the ministry of the Holy Spirit, Al. That's what you said earlier, and that's right on. It's the process resulting from the ministry of the Holy Spirit bringing the Word of God to us bringing us to the Word of God, and bringing about the transforming process in each of us.

Who does the transforming? The Lord does it through His Word. And as you behold it, you will be transformed. You say, well, I'm listening, I'm hearing a lot of things, but I'm not doing it. Well, are you beholding the Lord through His Word? Because that's how the transforming gets done, and that's how the doing gets done.

I think it's also And it's easy for us to criticize. God does some great event, and then it's almost like the next verse, they're forgetting what God has done for them. And we think, oh, how stupid of them. Well, aren't we the same way? It's so easy for us to, the moment we stop beholding Christ in His Word, to fall back and forget who we are in Christ, and to fall into this not being a doer. So I think a part of this is the fact that what James is describing is kind of the natural inclination of man, that as soon as we stop beholding, it's very quickly that we start forgetting who we are in Christ, and we stop acting or living according to who we are in Christ. And so, how important, as Paul brings out, that continual process. It's not just, oh, I saw Christ once, it's good, I'm set for the rest of my life. No, we have to continually go back, because our propensity is to forget almost immediately when we're not intently looking into the word. Yep. That's good.

Let's look at some final helpful observations between James and Paul just to give context to this larger study. So from a James perspective, and Vern helped me make these connections, so I'm thankful to him for that. James focuses on the applying and doing of what one reads. So the very reality, and we talked about that, and I include the verse 25 because it results in James' solution to this.

Which you'll get to. I intentionally moved it to the other one because I wanted to... Because you wanted a solution. No, no, no. I think actually Bob's going to do it. Bob's going to do it. Yeah, blame him. I wanted the conversation to keep going beyond one week. I thought it was pretty important. Yeah, no, it's good. So James is focusing on the what, the reality, right? Paul, in comparison, he would point out to how that doing gets done.

Literally, life and power, Galatians 2.20, Colossians 1.29. So there's no problems here. It's just a matter of understanding that different authors picked up the who, what, when, where, why, how. And when you put them together, you see the big picture.

And that's one of the biggest challenges with studying the scripture today, especially as we start communicating like motivational speakers and communicating the scripture to felt needs, we miss out on how the Bible works together and gives us a larger picture on the who, what, when, where, why, how. Paul is talking about how. James is talking about what.

And you know what? What? No pun intended. John did it too, didn't he? In 1 John 1, 2, 3, we were talking about the what a ton. So we had to bring out this how with Paul's insight. James focuses on how things look to others. You know, John did that too. So did James.

Be a doer. You're justified from an earthly perspective by those that see you, your fellow believers. He's talking about the perspective of other believers. When I look at you, there should be a result of you having heard the Word of God and doing it.

That's what James is talking about. He talks about it a lot, and a lot of people get hung up with it and frustrated. But it's just part of the story, right? It's one perspective that if you continue to learn, Paul goes on and points out how to look at Christ and how He sees us. And the result is this beholding and understanding that you're justified heavenly.

So there's a different angle positional, conditional. We talk about perspectives all the time here. James is a very conditional perspective, but it presupposes a positional perspective. It wasn't his role as an apostle to talk about the things that Paul did. His role was to talk about what and the earthly perspective of the body. And he does talk about heavenly things in some instances, but he doesn't give complete clarification to it like Paul does.

So that's why I brought in 2 Corinthians 3.18 to help give us insight. So, that being said, I'm a minute behind. So why don't we close in a word of prayer, and if you guys want to ask me questions afterwards, that's great.

Lord, I thank you so much that we have the full counsel of your word so that we can not only hear what it has to say but be doers and we know that from other insight into the scripture that you are the one who does the doing and that you strengthen and supply us with all our needs so that your will and pleasure might be carried out through us as we behold you in your word, as we abide in you, and as we understand our position and believe it to be true. We thank you for that truth. We thank you for how you desire to actively use us and actively do your work through us. And we thank you for that. It's your name we pray. Amen.